not appear under this theory of absolute immunity. they can hold him in contempt of congress, as i understand it, barbara. what s the risk here for don mcgahn? well, he is caught a little bit between a rock and a hard place. he has been subpoenaed to appear and he must appear, and yet the trump administration is directing him not to. as a private citizen, he is not obliged to obey the orders of the trump administration. and so i predict that in the end, he ll show up. but the executive privilege would still exist as to things for which is properly covered, but it s going to be a very limited area. barbara mcquade, thank you. hallie jackson, double duty here for us. love seeing you. thank you, as well. with us now, california democrat congresswoman zoe loftgren, member of the judiciary committee. she was just inside that room. congresswoman, thanks for your time. let s just start with next steps here. do you support opening an impeachment inquiry? well, i think that s kind
committees that are in many ways, like judiciary here, able to move the ball forward, are not yet there. but you do have more rank and file members who are saying they believe that with the white house rebuffing them on different kinds of investigations and ignoring subpoenas and doing other things that democrats on capitol hill believe are obstructing their ability to do their own oversight and their constitutional duties as elected members of congress, that s where the, kind of the sort of, if you look at the whole array of things, you ve got a lot of people feeling the same way about impeachable offenses, different opinions when it comes to what steps to take. now, you played jerrold nadler, the committee chairman who is a democrat from this hearing. don mcgahn is the former white house counsel who was told by the president, instructed through his lawyer not to appear. the republican ranking member of this committee, doug collins, had a very different take on today s proceedings.
service as a senior adviser to the president. the president has directed mr. mcgahn not to appear at the committee s scheduled hearing. what do we make of cipollone s argument there? i think that argument is ultimately going to fail if the judiciary committee challenges this opinion in court. i m confident that they re going to prevail and get mcgahn to appear. there is only one court case that has ever decided this issue of whether a presidential aide has immunity from even appearing before a court and that one opinion ruled against the white house in that case. it was harriet miers, the bush administration sought to prevent her from testifying before this same house judiciary committee during the scandal involving firing of u.s. attorneys. the court, a judge, john bates, who was appointed by that same president, george bush 43 found that absolute privilege does not exist for presidential aides. he must appear. he may exert question by question executive privilege, but he may not ch
here s what he had to say about democrats, their leadership, and why don mcgahn is not here. the special counsel closed up shop without giving democrats anything to deliver to their base. now the democrats are trying desperately to make something out of nothing, which is why the chairman has again haphazardly subpoenaed today s witnesses. that move, though, has actually ensured the witness will not testify. reporter: so there are the two differing views. the republicans who oppose the way this is being handled, who say the mueller report was a thorough, deep, two-year investigation that caused taxpayers $35 million. enough, they say. democrats, very different view. so, again, watching over the days and weeks to come, look for instances where members are saying, their views have changed or evolved greater toward impeachment or perhaps less than if situations change, but unless and until there are committee chairpersons or members of leadership who say it s time to turn toward an imp
process, then it s simply more of the same in just varying degrees of heat. craig? all right. kelly o donnell there outside that hearing room for us in washington. kelly o., thank you pip tu. i turn now to our chief washington correspondent. is this the white house strategy? you re seeing it. it s say yes to no. they re getting back up from the legal opinions that the department of justice is putting forward, speaking in one voice for this administration, saying in the case of don mcgahn, hey, he should get immunity! legally, we think this is right, we re going to point to these past precedents in which that has happened. they believe they have the right argument here to be able to do this. and when i talk to sources at the white house, that s what you hear. they re also crucially, craig, getting back up on capitol hill from allies of the president, like lindsey graham who said just this morning, if he were the president, he would do the same thing because this is a political w