don t know for sure. what s the consideration for the justice department, do you think? the problem is because congress isn t the victim here as it would be in the case of criminal contempt, they don t really give it as much weight. certainly, they will be looking at the evidence the select committee has been gathering and that will be important to them but the fact of the criminal referral i don t think carries a lot of weight with the doj but the building of the facts happening over months and over months will compel them. it s all about attorney/client privilege. this part of it. people generally understand that, of course, but the committee is pointing to the crime fraud exemption which i think, better if you explain it rather than me. if there is an attorney/client privilege and one thing the committee is saying there s not a legitimate privilege but if there were, it can be initiated if the purpose of the communication was to enhance or further an ongoing crime or planned
cohen says that secolow never asked him to lie. he gave him information that cohen knew was false. that the trump tower negotiations ended in january 2016, not june as cohen knew they did. cohen repeated that to congress. and he believes the president knew when he gave that testimony that it was false, but he doesn t have evidence that secolow knew. that said, this is something that people want to investigate. robert mueller tried to investigate it. he couldn t pierce the attorney client privilege and decided not to invoke the crime fraud exemption. it allows you to pierce the privilege if you can prove a crime. he thought he didn t have it. congress is more sanguine about attorney client privilege. the house has tried to do that. they re subpoenaing, demanding evidence and testimony from these lawyers. they re going to resist, it s going to be litigated like everything else we ve been talking about. does he enjoy any of the protections that were argued
so far his political play has been to frame this as this is terrible, this is terrible, not just for me this is terrible for america this is overstepping the boundaries. we just saw a report that republicans might actually run on the idea, well, if you elect democrats, they re going to impeach president trump. if you re a person in america weighing this not as read in, not as an expert as you are and you are, does the president say, the president s lawyer has just been investigated, does that person say, that s really a bad thing for america, or does that person say, that seems really bad for donald trump. i would think it s the later, but maybe he s right. what s so frightening about what he said is his lawyers office was broken in. for people not following this as closely and know all the intricacies of the law, they are going to believe the tweet that privilege is dead and there s no crime fraud exemption, it s not