happy as a newly minted msnbc contributor and john thnathan a an nbc national political reporter. about the hill, very few genuine surprises left. it turns out this guy from arizona who has the true serum of retirement and is no friend of this president had a move up his sleeve today? you hit that on the head, brian. i m not sure anybody knew what jeff flake was going to do. obviously chairman grassley seemed to be somewhat unsure of had the vote scheduled for 1:30. you could see him conferring with die an feinstein. president trump has tweeted nasty things about jeff flake calling him a flake, before flake has said nasty things about the president. one thing i would keep in mind here, jeff flake thinks the republican party has moved a lot on him rather than him moving away from it. when he was in the house this is a guy who was considered an ultraconservative. in the senate he s been considered much more moderate. the one thing that s been consistent throughout, i think, if you lo
because of these very important issues, and that s that democrats in congress won the right to pursue their case against donald trump, president trump, for enriching himself, their allegation for enriching himself through his hotels and other businesses as a sitting president without the permission of congress as is required by the constitution. my guess is that comes before the supreme court. how is a justice kavanaugh who demonstrated that he would politicize this process by claiming that the democrats did a, quote, search and destroy, will they get a fair hearing in interpreting the constitution if that case were to come before him as a sitting justice? two things, we didn t even workshop what if that had been a woman that angry in front of congress, and b, we ll ask david
national political reporter. jonathan, about the hill, very few genuine surprises left and it turns out the guy from arizona who has the truth serum of retirement and is no friend of the president had a move up his sleeve today. you hit it on the head. i m not sure anybody knew what jeff flake was going to do. obviously chairman grassley seemed unsure how to move. you can see him conferring with dianne feinstein. certainly the white house was not going to get a heads up. president trump has tweeted things about jeff flake, calling him a flake. one thing, flake thinks the party has moved a lot on him. when he was in the house he was considered an ultra conservative. in the senate he is considered more moderate. the one thing that s on-cyst ent throughoent consistent with where he is from, arizona, he has the western independence. he is not about geography or
president trump is firmly standing behind his supreme court selection even as he authorizes an fbi investigation into brett kavanaugh s past. we ve just learned in the last few minutes that investigation is up and running. it was, as we said, arizona republican senator jeff flake who may have changed the course of history today after huddling with democrats, he was allowed to announce the delay for the investigation. no one saw it coming. politico is reporting it this way, senate republican leaders were rattled by the arizona senator s move, and they say flake s maneuver dropped a political land mine in the lap of majority leader mitch mcconnell i ll say and the white house, which now must keep kavanaugh s nomination on an already narrow path to approval. let s talk about all of the aspects of it with mara gay, a member of the new york times editorial board and we re happy as a newly minted msnbc contributor. and jonathan allen, an nbc news
it. these lawsuits might allow us to do that. courts like to talk about standing. what standing do you have to sue this individual or this company? what standing do 200 members of congress have? what is their stake in the president if he s guilty of this? this was really interesting. so this is the big hurdle, just to get sort of get your foot in the door of the courtroom. does the judge say you have the right to bring a lawsuit. members of congress normally can t just sue the president because they re supposed to be using congress for whatever their political ends are, right. you can t try to convince your fellow legislators to do something, fail and use the courts as a plan b. so it is a high bar for congressmen suing the president to actually be allowed to continue. in this case though what the judge said was basically the ee moll clause of the constitution requires president trump if he is taking a payment from a foreign government he has to come to congress and ask if it is