that investigation. how do you frame tomorrow? what will you be looking for? i think there are going to be things happening on two levels here. some of this is going to be for the cameras, this is democrats first opportunity to try to draw some blood on the administration with their new oversight powers. keep in mind one of the things that changes, they have far more members on the committee s now than republicans, so they re going to be rounds and rounds and rounds of democratic questions. and fewer republicans to offer a break in proceedings for the testimony. so that s one level is just sort of the show. the other level of this is, this is also an opportunity to set some precedent. if there are going to be these fights over whether you can claim privilege over what what you can take to court. let s think back to when republicans had the benghazi committee, they established a lot of precedent about what congress can go after from the executive branch. this is also the first
wants, it s a separate body of government, they don t answer to the president, they can choose to what they think is relevant. and that could be his finances that go beyond the russia investigation. a lot of people believe that those tax returns have been in a locked drawer in mueller s desk for the better part of two years. we have restrictions on who can go rooting around in who s tax returns. could this fight that this subcommittee is about to wage could we talk about months or years of fighting over this? certainly could be. any time you may end unin court to have a fight about what congress can have under subpoena, it could be tied up for a very long time. we re also talking about something, if it happened to go all the way to the supreme court. we don t know what the supreme court would decide. because remember, that in most cases, when there s a contempt issue with congress, congress either resolves it, negotiates with the person before it goes to court or if it goes to co
this is the carrot, they have to tell everything, the good, the bad, if they do that dirty work, they could try to get a reduced sentence. here, where you have this competing element of maybe you ll get a reduced sentence from the court. maybe you ll get a pardon from the president, everything s kind of turned on its head, and the prosecutors mentioned that in this hearing, they said this is one of the reasons they felt that manafort had been holding back, had not been telling the whole truth, he was trying to play his odds and trying to keep the possibility of a pardon open, which is dangerous for a cooperating witness, and absolutely infuriating for the government. michael schmidt, do we please engage in rampant speculation if you wish. when do you think we will next hear from the mueller effort, did the grand jury sit today for example in washington, when do you think the next utterance will be? you sound like my editor. look, we don t know, and speculating about it is hard, i
to a certain extent some of this is going to be for the cameras, this is democrats first opportunity to try to draw some blood on the administration with their new oversight powers. keep in mind one of the things that changes when they take the majority is they have far more members on the committee s now than republicans, so they re going to be rounds and rounds and rounds of democratic questions and fewer republicans to offer a break in proceedings for the testimony. so that s one level is just sort of the show. the other level of this is this is also an opportunity to set some precedent. if there are going to be these fights over whether you can claim privilege over what what you can take to court, let s think back to when republicans had the benghazi committee, they established a lot of precedent about what congress can go after from the executive branch. this is also the first opportunity for democrats to plant some of those markers as well. all three of our guests have agreed
wants, it s a separate body of government, they don t answer to the president, they can choose to look at what they think is relevant. and that could be his finances that go beyond the russia investigation. a lot of people believe that those tax returns have been in a locked drawer in mueller s desk for the better part of two years. we do have restrictions on just who can go rooting around in whose tax returns. could this fight that this subcommittee is about to wage are we talking about months or years of fighting over this? certainly could be. any time you may end up in court to have a fight about what congress can have under subpoena, it could be tied up for a very long time. we re also talking about something, if it happened to go all the way to the supreme court, we don t know what the supreme court would decide, because, remember, that in most cases, when there s a contempt issue with congress, congress either resolves it, negotiates with the person before it goes to court