Somebody really caught in the middle of it, and that doesnt excuse the person from the consequences. Professors, weve talked about abuse of power and bribery. When we started, we said we would also discuss Obstruction Of Congress. So id like to ask you some questions about Obstruction Of Congress. Professor gerhardt, in your view, is there enough evidence here to charge President Trump with the high crime and misdemeanor of Obstruction Of Congress . I think theres more than enough. As i mention in my statement, just to really underscore this, the third article of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee against president nixon charged him with misconduct because he failed to comply with four legislative subpoenas. Here it is far more than four that this president has failed to comply with and hes ordered
the Executive Branch as well not to cooperate the congress. Those together with a lot of other evidence suggests Obstruction Of Congress. Professor karlan, do you agree .
ordering his then white house counsel don mcgahn to fire the special counsel in order to thwart the investigation of the president, correct? that is correct. and the second was the president ordering mr. mcgahn to create a false written record denying that the president had ordered him to have mr. mueller removed? that s correct. and you also point to the meeting of the president with his former campaign manager, corey lewandowski in order to get him to take steps to have the investigation curtailed, right? yes, sir, i did. you also point to pardon dangling and witness tampering as to paul manafort and michael cohen, former campaign official, former personal lawyer of the president. both individually and collectively, these are evidence of obstruction of justice. how serious is that evidence
of obstruction of justice, sir? it is quite serious. that s not all of it, of course. and we know, as you ve mentioned before and others have mentioned, obstruction of justice has been recognized as an impeachable offense both against president clinton and president nixon. this evidence that s been put forward by mr. mueller that s in the public record is very strong evidence of obstruction of justice. professor karlan, when you look at the department of justice russia investigation and how the president responded to that and when you look at congress ukraine investigation and how the president responded to that, do you see a pattern? yes. i see a pattern in which the president s views about the propriety of foreign governments intervening in our election process are the antithesis of what our framers were committed to. our framers were committed to the idea that we as americans,
opposite tack and claiming privilege on everything. that shows you what they actually think about the mueller report which even though people claim it clears them. they know it s much more damning than that. let s listen in. or his counsel have 45 minutes to question the witnesses. ranking member. thank you, mr. chairman. before i begin on the question, i do want to revisit a comment made earlier by you mr. chairman. it was our demand for a minority hearing day. you said you would rule on it later. the rules of the house do not permit a ruling on this, they do not permit a vote and you cannot shut it down. according to your own words it guards against the majority from abusing its power. call it being the fair and balanced rule. it s not the chairman s right to decide whether prior hearings
as we go back through this, there has been work and progress. even internally we have had committees not being to let members see transcripts, not being willing to give those up aurpd the guise of impeachment. the timing issue that you ve talked about here. again, i believe we talked about this with the mueller report. this is one of the fastest we re on a clock. the clock and the calendar are seemingly dominating this. it s irregardless of what anybody on this committee to think about what we re actually seeing of fact witnesses and people moving forward. so the question becomes is an election pending when facts are in dispute and you made a