hi, everyone we start with the fireworks in washington, d.c., today. emanating from the committee set up by the housegop. it took republicans 15 votes now in the days and months that fod followed, the house gop has done nothing except projecting the rest of their colleagues and us to the grievance of lies and conspiracies that animate life over on earth 2 where they live. today a hearing by the so-called weaponization commit presumably focused on censorship on social media and a lawsuit brought by the then-republican attorney general of missouri, he has to be an attorney from missouri, pushing back against efforts by social media to fight disinformation schmidt was one of two witnesses brought forward by republicans, but republican majority on this committee who testified and was dismissed, sent away before democrats could ask one single question so much for a functioning committee in which the free exchange of ideas and sharing of witnesses prevails democrats were justifiabl
department proactively to go after his enemies. and i ve always seen that type of behavior as falling distinctly into its own bucket there was the obstruction bucket that we knew a lot about trump s attempts to throw sand in the gears ever all of inquiries looking at his conduct. that s not the way the system s supposed to work and people can be prosecuted for it but there was this other bunt which, you know, for lack of a better term, the proactive bucket where trump was trying to proactively use the government s powers to target his rivals. and i think there is an insidiousness to that type of behavior that is distinct and it really shows someone trying to use the sacred powers of the federal government, and with trump we didn t just see it on the law enforcement side kelly says trump was talking about trying to use the irs, as
invoke something called constitutional immunity? right. so kupperman s saying that he s between a rock and a hard place. he s saying, look, i don t want to defy my former boss, the president, who s not letting me come here. and i don t want to defy congress, who wants me to come testify. so he s saying, oh, i can t do anything about it. it s not up to me to make this decision. so, hey, judicial branch, you guys make this decision for me. now, democrats say that that s an absolute copout. that of course he is required to come before the congressional investigators. and they re saying that they re not going to wait around. they re not going to wait for the court system. they re just going to continue moving along with their investigation and putting this in some sort of impeachment or obstruction bucket should it come to that. so does this play any differently if there is a public hearing on this? if the vote goes through and and there is now suddenly public hearings when people do
if the whittaker thing, if the president told him to replace the person in charges of sdny, he did it while he was in office and that would fall within that obstruction bucket, correct, paul? i agree. also i m going to gently disagree with ross. the misuse of presidential authority is precisely what the founders thought was the ground for impeachment. george mason objected to the pardon power on the ground that it was too broad to which james madison said that s og, we ll impeach anybody who aputibuc ab power. when we think the president has overstepped the bounds of presidential authority in a way that transgresses the rule of law, destroys the checks and balances, attacks the free press, for example, that is, i think, a suitable ground for impeachment and actually a superior one in some ways. two questions quickly, paul. do you think we re there? think we re close. i certainly think that it would not be outrageous for the house
mike flynn and paul manafort. mike flynn being the former national security adviser who pled guilty to making false statements in this investigation. and obviously manafort. and that is something that mueller has been looking at himself. mueller was looking at the question of why is it that the lawyer was offering a pardon? why was he discussing a pardon? it was among the 49 questions that mueller wanted to ask the president, that had fallen to the obstruction bucket. that was not in the responses the president sent just a few weeks ago. those were related to russia. but sort of a larger looming question over the investigation and that continues to loom now over manafort is would there be a pardon? what would the president do about that? and how would he use that authority? and if he used that authority would that be obstruction? phil, your interview dealt with putin and russia. for part of it people have