senator, you describe this idea that you go into these briefings and aren t getting a lot of information from the white house. the white house rejecting documents request. what strategy do you think democrats in particular in congress should take to get more answers out of the white house and do you think people around the president people who aren t working at the white house who can t claim executive privilege what should congress do to press those people for ans? one of the things they can do is demand these hearings be in public than classified. if the american people so you how little information we re getting there would be more general outrage and more conversation amongst people like you. you have to rely on us to report that we re not getting anything useful. we don t have to wait for the president. we don t have to wait for more information. we can pass sanctions on saudi arabia or on mohammad bin salman. we can pull the united states out of the war inside yemen. we can p
does the president then have to, is he compelled to give up documents and answer questions, or can this just go on forever? i think because he doesn t want to do it. that s where we ll get into the courts. this will ultimately be decided by judges not the white house counsel or by congress because the white house is going to claim that they have executive privilege and everyone i talked to at the white house says they see this as harassment, they see this as the president laying out they tell me the president laid out his stance on this the day after the mid-term elections if democrats want to investigate me they are going to have to they won t be able to work with me on anything else and i ll say that s harassments. as a result this president is pushing back because he s not used to a congress doing oversight. rick tyler, democrats are doing exactly what they promised to do in lead up to the mid-term elections. if they got power they would look into the president s life.
pages of material. so the president was lying. we haven t even gotten to roger stone and that story. but let s stay with the president. is it possible the president could just simply not comply with all these requests coming his way from congress and from oversight? well, white house official tell me that they are going to do whatever legally they have to do which is really them hinting that subpoenas are going to have to be issued for this white house to comply with some of these document requests. so the idea is that they are going to claim executive privilege over and over again and going to point to other administrations and say they all claimed executive privilege. the issue, of course, is as you just stated and as the new york times reports the obama administration gave over documents and gave republicans all sorts of issues, so i think if they issue the subpoena
eric: when president obama signed executive privilege i think he has made this as big as watergate and iran contra. greg: i want to read a quote. president can t claim executive privilege to hide information needed for criminal investigation. congress should exercise all authority to get details on crimes broken. who said that? the director of the american civil libertys union in 2007. bob: they will line up with the republicans on this. they will. they always do. andrea: do republicans risk looking a bit distracted if they keep focusing on this? the left would argue that the details of fast and furious, how this was formed, terry s death, this is not in the communication of the documents that issa is looking for. what are they looking for? besides bob: he read internal communication. i don t know how you got it but you did. shouldn t be. the answer is the republicans they want to play this game
on what legal ground are you withholding that email? the president can t claim executive privilege to withhold that email, is that correct? martha: senator charles grass rejoins us live, why u.s. attorney general eric holder says he is now will to, quote, compromise in the fast and furious investigation. bill: also a close look at this video here. ha child thrown from a minivan during a police case. she is 18 months old. we ll tell you how this wound up, disturbing video in a moment here on america s newsroom.