one is in the typical oversight area, that is nonimpeachment oversight, typically the executive and the congress try to work it out. the congress has executive privilege claims that he or she may want to make and the congress wants the testimony and they try to work out some accommodations so that the president can protect the privilege to some extent but the congress receives the information that it wants. but now we re in impeachment. and the congress is making the case, and i think it is obviously a very strong case, that the impeachment power is when congress s demand for the information is as its apex. it is when there isn t a defense against providing that information except bolton and cupperman want to know where the conversations between the president and the senior aids implicates sensitive national security matters. final question for you. you have always struck me as a very careful lawyer. you were white house counsel when one has to be quite careful in that position. rudy
endangers that claim. that was the point that bolton and cupperman made. they said we have never done anything like that, and we don t want mulvaney in our action. they claim they re completely neutral. they will do what the court directed them to do. whereas in mulvaney s case he appeared to be pro-executive. he had a position in the case, and they didn t want his position to tar their more neutral position. it is striking to me that a lot of this we have talked about this a bit before as we head into the formal part of this process. these fights between the branches who has to testify and who doesn t, there is very little jurisprudence on it and very little guidance by the courts. it is a kind of power struggle between these two branches about who has what power in what scenario, right? yes. but there are two layers of analysis here. one is in the typical oversight area, that is nonimpeachment oversight, typically the
this is systemic. i think when the nation, and i think the american people and the rest of congress and the senate found out this was systemic, you know, there s a lot of things that need to happen now, but this say great opportunity. and i m grateful that the secretary has stepped aside. i m grateful that the president said today that this needs to be an urgent action type of thing. it does need to have urgent action. i think that s one of the things that s been missing. the slow response, just the beleaguered continued refusal from the va to have any cooperation with congress at all in the oversight area. let me ask you something. yes. i m watching my computer and i am getting a flood of e-mails one after the other from your colleagues all sending out their blasts with lovely graphics, you know, celebrating what s happened today. this is exactly what they calledecalled ed f for. this is only minutes until the e-mails went out. i want to know how much of this is going to be poli