administration to obstruct the lawful and constitutional duties of congress. this will only further add to the body of evidence on a potential obstruction of congress charge against the president. i will say this. it s quite obvious and we fully expected this. we have seen a serious of shifting, ever changing rationales for this campaign of obstruction. joining us now is laurence tribe, harvard law professional, constitutional law. i want to get your reaction to what chairman schiff is saying there, especially since you are the co-author of the book, to end the presidency, the power of impeachment. is this a possible way to go, to simply say they re refusing to testify rather than try to push this through the courts and take months to get an order to testify. we re simply going to treat this as an on instruction of congress and possibly create an article of impeachment out of this behavior? i think chairman schiff is
and as part of that, to help congress if they seek his testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry. you know, again, he does have a fifth amendment privilege. he has a pending case. and so i understand why he wants to cooperate, but he has a good attorney now. i know one of them, and i respect him, and i think they re going to be very careful with what he says before that trial, before that open matter in the southern district of new york, lawrence is resolved. i just want to remind the audience how shocking this new posture is because his previous legal posture was so shocking enunciated by john dowd who worked as donald trump s lawyer for a while. john dowd said that mr. parnas testimony could include attorney/client privilege because he was working with rudy giuliani. therefore part of the president s legal team. so he would somehow fall under
activities involving ukraine. rudy giuliani is a continuing subject of that criminal investigation. and now after dropping a lawyer who once represented donald trump, lev parnas is saying through his new lawyer that he will cooperate with the impeachment inquiry by testifying and supplying documents subpoenaed by congress. the new york times reports tonight that lev parnas s change of heart has to do directly with donald trump, who denied knowing lev parnas after his arrest. mr. parnas was very upset by president trump s plainly false statement that he did not know him, said joseph bondy whose client has maintained that he has had extensive dealings with the president. chuck rosenberg is back with us. chuck, what do you make of this flip? at least in relation to the congressional inquiry. how does a witness say not witness but a defendant in a criminal case say i m willing to testify as a witness in this
parnas says he will agree to testify to the impeachment inquiry and turn over any documents subpoenaed by congress involving his dealings with rudy giuliani and donald trump and ukraine. lev parnas is reportedly very upset that donald trump has claimed that he does not know him, even though lev and his partner igor, igor fruman have photographic evidence that they have met donald trump. we begin tonight with the first public release of deposition transcripts in the impeachment inquiry, the most important thing in the transcripts of the depositions. most important thing in these depositions in the impeachment inquiry that were released today is that there is no defense of donald trump in those transcripts, not one word of defense. the republican members of the investigating committees who love to play tough guy in the hallway in front of the
exactly right. it s exactly the way to go. there is no reason to drag things out in the courts. the precedent of richard nixon is clear, obstructing congress when it performs its solemn function of investigating a president to see whether articles of impeachment are justified is itself an impeachable offense. otherwise the entire system would collapse. if the president could do what this president is doing, which is even more extreme than what richard nixon did and try to get everyone who has anything to do with the matter to just clam up, then we couldn t really get to the bottom of everything. now happily, in this case, ambassador yovanovitch and others have agreed to testify so that the president s stonewall has to some extent collapsed. but that doesn t prevent the congress from deciding that building that wall was an