felonies since he s been serving as president, if clear evidence of that is made public tomorrow, i mean, the justice department has to be prepared tonight for how they re going to react or not to the public airing of that evidence. they re also presumably preparing for the possibility that this evidence may generate a formal criminal referral from congress concerning the president s alleged crimes. they may refer this matter for prosecution to the justice department. now, in terms of whether or not the president can be indicted and can be prosecuted for a crime, the somewhat shaky justice department internal policy on that issue is based in part on the spiro agnew precedent. on the agnew-era justice department guidance which said that a vice president could be indicted but a president could not. and i describe that as somewhat shaky justice department policy.
fact, becoming a nutty news week and today has been sort of insane. but let s just jump right in. there s a lot going on. i got to tell you also the next 24 hours are going to be even nuttier than today was so we also need to pace ourselves a little bit. but let s start with what the house has just done tonight. the house of representatives tonight has just voted to block the president s declaration of a national emergency. which is the way he s trying to go around congress to try to build a wall between the united states and mexico. now, this vote tonight in the house is not a surprise. today in congress the top u.s. military commander with responsibility for homeland defense said directly that there is no military threat related to anything that s going on on the southern border. which is a specific way of undercutting the president s assertion that there is some sort of national security emergency there. this is also not a surprise in terms of this vote tonight because the house is
so-called emergency declaration. so stick a pin in that. they say nothing bipartisan ever happens anymore. that was bipartisan. this has been a day of a lot of unusual things happening on capitol hill. the other must-see news from congress we ve got coming just ahead. do stay with us. when a stranger rips a child from a parent s arms without any plans to reunify them, it is called kidnapping.
unanimous that this emergency declaration from the president about the border is bogus and potentially illegal. so all democrats voted against the president on his emergency declaration tonight in the house. what was perhaps a surprise is that more than a dozen republican members of the house crossed over to vote with the democrats on this resolution. the final vote ended up tonight being 245-182. again, that is the vote to block the president s emergency resolution. well, now this heads to the senate. they have no choice in the senate but to vote on the same thing the house just voted on. the democrats we think will all vote for it. if four republicans cross over to vote with the democrats, this thing that just passed the house will also pass the senate. so far already three of the four republican votes needed in the senate are committed. so it really looks like the president will likely lose on this, that the congress will block him from declaring his emergency so he can build his wa
it s just a matter of how long it s going to take for him to lose. the senate has 18 days to take up this matter and they do not have a choice, they have to vote on it now that it has passed the house. now on a related matter, you should also know that the house today issued its first subpoenas to the trump administration since the democrats took control in congress. the subpoena the subpoenas issued today are for documents from various federal agencies. documents that the trump administration has thus far refused to hand over to congress. all on the issue of immigrant kids being taken away from their parents at the border. there was a very dramatic hearing on that subject today. the democratic chairman of the judiciary committee jerry nadler put it bluntly. he described that policy as kidnapping. again, though, that issue has generated the very first subpoenas from the new democratic-controlled congress to the administration. the administration has been having a very hard time comin