records to prosecutors. excuse me, to congressional oversight committee. he can block those records from being handed over for you. pending a possible supreme court hearing on that issue. so that s just the one-page order. the other one we are following, the chunky one, is about former white house counsel don mcgahn and whether he has to comply with congressional subpoena to testify before the house judiciary committee. the short answer from this federal judge on the don mcgahn issue is, yes, don mcgahn must testify, but the full 120-page answer is honestly worth every word. some select lines. what is missing from the constitution s framework as the framers envisioned it is the president s purported power to kneecap investigators in the house of representatives. or this, the court cannot abide the department of justice less than subtle suggestion that the president yields virtually unchecked power, continues,
security projects, the president does not have the power to excuse him or her from taking an action that the law requires. stated simply, judge jackson says, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded american history is that presidents are not kings. this means that they do not have subjects bound by loyalty or blood whose destiny they are entitled to control. rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the white house work for the people of the united states and that they take an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the united states. like i said, this is, like, this is the judge s ruling equivalent of a speaking indictment. right? this is a history lesson and a message to the public. i just want to read you just one last piece of this because this is the don mcgahn case which is being decided here by this judge. right? the ruling says, bottom line, that don mcgahn has to testify. that trump can t tell don mcgahn
example of a high-level trump administration official resigning on principle, rather than agreeing to carry out an immoral or illegal order. and we also get something that turned into sort of a theme song for today s news because we started the day with that that defense of the rule of law, that principled resignation in protest from the navy secretary. we ve now ended the day tonight, at least i think the day s over, with a clarion ruling basically along the same lines from a federal judge. federal district court judge in washington, d.c., who has been hearing the case of whether or not the president is within his rights to simply tell high-level administration officials that they should not testify to congress even when they are subpoenaed to do so. the judge in this case, judge katanji brown jackson tonight has ruled against the president and has ruled that in this specific instance, the official that the president has instructed to defy the subpoena, former white house counsel do
these other senior officials who are also defying subpoenas the way that don mcgahn did, there s been a question as to whether or not this ruling would be narrowly targeted to just apply to don mcgahn or whether it might also apply to people like john bolton or the deputy national security adviser under bolton, charles kupperman, or any of the other people who are fighting subpoenas including those who have asked other judges to weigh in on that. can you tell us how broad or narrow you think this is construed? i think the judge here used language deliberately to try to suggest that it s not narrow, that it implies, for example, she says even to witnesses who work in the national security space. nonetheless, this opinion applies to this witness, if other witnesses received subpoenas they, too, could file a legal challenge in court.
mcgahn, the judge says don mcgahn must comply with that subpoena and he must turn up to congress to testify. and this is this is a long ruling tonight. it s but it s interesting, it seems to me like it is written with a broad audience in mind because it s not it s not a super legalistic thing. it s not just a mechanistic order that mcgahn has to show up and here s the precedents that lead to that and so forth. this is the kind of court order, the kind of yjudicial ruling tht is if this were on indictment, you d call it a speaking indictment, right? this is a ruling that is designed to be read by people who are outside this case. this is a ruling, i think, in the specific, that is designed to remind us all what kind of government the constitution spells out for us and why, when all else fails, we should be able to count on the judiciary, the court system, the rule of law, to protect the constitution, to make sure that the law is upheld. to make sure that nobody is above the law. i