justice. it s been reported that special counsel bob mueller is investigating potential obstruction of justice. we have learned in the last 24 hours that a senate. can, the judiciary committee will also be looking at it. are you looking at that in the house? is any committee in the house looking at that? well, we are the only committee in the house that s been authorized by the speaker to look into any of the russia related matters whiches why it s so important we do investigate this. i don t think we can allow, for example, senator sessions s testimony to go untested. we don t want to create a precedent where members of the administration can come before congress, not answer questions, not invoke the privilege either. that would be a terrible precedent and we need to know the answers. if rod rosenstein s memo, if his letter were written knowing they would be used as a pretext for a decision made to hide the true motivation. i don t know that that s the case. i do know we should find
of them were ultimately pardoned by reagan s successor, george h.w. bush. both watergate and iran-contra incidentally happened to be scandals from republican presidencies. but, you know, the investigations into those two scandals were not particularly partisan affairs. members of congress and the various people involved in the scandals didn t drop their party affiliations as soon as the scandal came to light. in both watergate and iran-contra those republican presidents in the end faced both democratic inquiz inquiz tors in congress. democrats and republicans challenged them on their involvement in the scandals. both democrats and republicans took an active role in the investigations. both democrats and republicans denounced those republican presidents in their
criminal wrongdoing. in those circumstances, people even elected officials in congress have dropped their partisan allegiances and let them slip a little bit for the good of justice, for the good of the country, for the good of criminal accountability. today, vice president mike pence hired private counsel. he hired a private lawyer to represent him personally in the ongoing investigations into the trump russia affair both in congress and by the special council former fbi director robert mueller. as of last night we now know the mueller special counsel investigation has now spread to include not just the russia investigation, but also the behavior of the president himself. the special counsel now looking at potential obstruction of justice by the trump white house related to the ongoing russia investigation. and because of this news about mike pence today, i think now we have learned one of the things
undoubtedly will have an impact certainly on those of us in the congress and hopefully people around the country. i remember the first day gabby giffords stepped back on the house floor of a her grievous injury. there was no question about how united we were in just our sheer happiness at seeing her again, having her take those brave steps onto the house floor. you know, that left an impact. certainly didn t completely transform the institution but it did have an impact. this had an impact. i hope it will help us come together to recognize we are all americans, all part of the same family. we can debate things. but at the end of the day we all love this country and want the best for this country. congressman, you have a senior and a key role on a committee that s got very grave responsibilities right now, investigative role that the intelligence committee has taken with this russia attack and with
secord for allegedly hiding his swiss bank account records while congress was trying to figure out the money flow between the reagan administration illegally selling weapons to iran and illegally shipping weapons to central america. they thought the money went through richard secord and paul tribull was trying to find the money and it made secord really mad. a republican but he became a real combatant, an aggressive figure in the iran-contra scandal. to defend himself and his own interests in the scandal he hired recognize him? he hired richard cohen, the same guy mike pence just hired to represent him in our current republican presidential scandal. it s very interesting. richard cullen had a similar role in watergate. very interesting.