based on doj guidelines, that doesn t mean that the congress doesn t have the right to impeach. in fact, that is exactly where it should be taking place. congresswoman jackie speier, thank you for your time. really appreciate it. thank you, jake. let s chew over this with our experts. amanda, let me start with you. so one of the questions here is about the meeting that president trump had with lewandowski when he told him to tell jeff session, then attorney general, that to instruct sessions to tell the public that mueller s investigation is unfair, and that he s going to tell mueller to stop looking at things that happened in the past and instead look at the future. lewandowski said he didn t think the message was illegal but he didn t deliver the message. he just didn t deliver it because he was on vacation. yeah. somehow it just got lost in the mail. listen, it is clear from the mueller report he was a willing agent of obstruction, attempted obstruction because they didn t o
manu, what has lewandowski been able to see about the meetings he had with president trump? reporter: rl he s defending meeting and he said he didn t have any concerns with the president s private comments about limiting the scope of the mueller probe. now he did confirm the elements that were in the mueller report. namely, that the meetings that occurred in 2017, the president directing lewandowski to deliver a message toev sessions to unrecuse himself and to limit the investigation going forward and instead focus on future campaigns. he said those are accurate descriptions in the mueller report. but, jake, it took him some time to get there. initially he said he wasn t aware of some of the things that were in the mueller report. he said he needed his memory refreshed. he had to read from the report. democrats said in was simply a stall tactic and that back and forth between democrats and republicans over the rules and we ve seen a lot of theatrics play out. but the overall theme is
republicans, trump people talk about owning the libs, corey lewandowksi owned the judiciary committee today. jerry nadler played a stupid game and they won a stupid prize because lewandowski made a sham of that. the republicans on the committee with the mockery of the process, this system is broken. if the democrats want to go impeach the president, they should have started that process a long time ago. i don t know what they were looking to get from corey lewandowksi that they can t get from the mueller report. you can t do impeachment in an election year. it will look terrible. so they need to figure out a game plan because it is clear they have no idea how to handle thisvation. i want to bring in laura coates, legal expert. and laura, what do you make of congress woman jackie speier saying that lewandowski is not answering the questions and therefore chairman nadler should hold him in context of congress? well, she s accurate. he has been stonewalling and as amanda alluded to he
mr. mueller said, but for the department of justice decision, the guidance that they would not file an action against the seated president, that there would not be an indictment made, this is one of the key elements that shows the president was attempting to obstruct justice by giving corey lewandowksi a script that he was supposed to turn over to then jeff sessions, the attorney general, to stop the mueller investigation. so congresswoman, that kind of feeds into the next question i have, which is i ve seen a lot of critics saying that house democrats are too timid when it comes to dealing with the trump administration that you re never going to get them to cooperate until you start treating them with the same hard ball tactics they treat you. you say that you think jerry nadler, the chairman of the house judiciary committee, should cite lewandowski, issua citation so he is in contempt of congress, that is what you are
reporter: now at the hearing, rick dearborn and rob porter, who former white house aides were subpoenaed and expected to testify today but they have not shown up because the white house took steps to block their testimony as well. saying they have absolutely immune ilt as senior level presidential advisers and they are not they don t have to testify before congress and democrats are objecting to that as well and fighting a separate matter, don mcgahn s testimony because the white house cited he s immune from testifying as well. that will play out in the coming weeks and months in court. manu raju on capitol hill. thank you so much. joining me now is democratic congresswoman jackie speier of california on both the house intelligence and the house oversight committee. congresswoman, thank you so much for joining us as always. take a listen to the ranking republican on the house judiciary committee, republican congressman doug collins in his opening statement. it is become less