and entities. now they say they re prepared for more of that to come. now they say the president s tax returns could be next. that may be a safe bet. kaitlan collins at the white house, thank you so much for that. democrat ted lew is part of the house judiciary committee. he s with us now from capitol hill. sir, thank you so much for being with us. thank you, brianna. you heard some of kaitlan s reporting there. the white house team is reporting that the trump administration was pretty surprised by just how expansive this list was and they re planning to limit the number of documents they have to produce, including those from trump s time in office like his communications with the former white house counsel don mcgahn. what recourse do democrats have here? thank you for your question. let me say a number of these individuals and organizations cannot claim executive privilege because they did not work in any capacity in the white house, so
something the white house and republicans have roundly rejected. now, bomb, those leaders are supposed to come back here to the white house tomorrow, but outlook the outlook is not good, and it doesn t seem any more promising than it was when the president randomly hand that had letter from kim jong-un to chuck schunler. meantime, the partial government shutdown continues and the ramifications are clearly there. kaitlan collins at the white house, thank you. joining us now, democratic congressman ted lew of california. congressman, thanks so much for joining us. now that you re officially back in the majority in the house of representatives, your party is going to face some very tough choices. some democrats want to immediately move ahead with aggressive investigations of the president and his administration. potential impeachment proceedings and others want to focus on passion legislation. what would you like to see the democratic majority in the house prioritize? thank you, w
linchpin in nch shthis showdown the budget. i want to read to you one of them. he tweeted the following. as you can imagine that illicited some strong responses from democrats and one in particular, representative and democrat ted lew of california tweeting yesterday, even #folks would concede that he is making stuff up again in january. #january is coming. that is representative ted di, u, a democrat of california tweeting that. the president referring to the death of an 8-year-old guatemalan boy and girl who were
ted lew of california. congressman, your reaction to the news jeff sessions has essentially been fired. thank you, jake, for your question. look, attorney general jeff sessions hard line ideology was completely in sync with donald trump. except on the russia investigation. so it seemed like the only reason donald trump fired him was to interfere with the special counsel s investigation. if that s the case, that could constitute obstruction of justice the same way that firing james comey was obstruction of justice. well, you are part of the new democratic majority. in january, you will all be sworn in, and nancy pelosi presumably will be speaker. what will, i suppose, the house judiciary committee, of which you re a member, what will you do about it if that s your view? i believe we need to be sending out, first of all, document preservation letters to the special counsel, to make sure that during this transition there s no shredding of documents or any documents are
these writings from matt whitaker that i just referred to, what he has said on don lemon s show. so ethics officials at the justice department could scrutinize that. but here s the thing. matt whitaker is not bound by whatever the ethics officials suggest. jeff sessions, of course, as we know, took the advice of the ethics officials, recused himself, much to the dismay of the president. but that s not necessarily the case with matt whitaker. he can take over the reins of the russia probe and basically do whatever he want at this point. pamela brown at the white house, thank you so much. this just in. senator mark warner, ranking democrat on the senate select committee on intelligence, just reacted to this news. he said in a statement, quote, no one is above the law, and any effort to interfere with the special counsel s investigation would be a gross abuse of power by the president. while the president may have the authority to replace the attorney general, this must not be the fir