this is more there are two different main kinds of contempt. there s the civil process, then there s the criminal process. the challenge with the criminal process is that it is more punitive. it is about punishing. in fact, it is not even interested in whether or not the person complies ultimately with the contempt order. right. on the other hand, the civil proceeding is a little more flexible. it allows a person to actually argue the issues in court without seeking to immediately punish the contemnor, or person being subpoenaed or from whom documents are sought. in that sense, the civil procedure is more coercive than punitive. so walk me through one more time the specific difference between the two. the average person out there is going, what? the average person is confused, sometimes lawmakers and courts. some courts have said that the difference between civil and criminal contempt is whatever our legislators say it is. broadly speaking, criminal contempt is punitive. it
who failed to appear. in fact, sometimes, they can t even comply to get out of the criminal contempt. right. in other words, they can t say, here are the documents. can you take back the charges? that doesn t always work. on the other hand, civil contempt, especially in congress, is available to the senate, and it allows them to argue this out in district court. and it allows them to seek another branch of government to say, hey, you need to comply. this is a court order saying you must comply. we re not seeking to punish you or jail you. yeah, but you must comply or else. or else what? if there is no punishment or jail, you know, when i have my kids, do this or else, i promise, nothing happens. there is a difference between congress saying to the executive branch, do this or we ll hold you in contempt, and the executive branch says, we deent have don t have to comply. when you bring in the judiciary, saying to the outlier executive branch, no, we listened and
contempt. they re not doing that. they re keeping contempt off the table for now, just as a stick out there because they re starting to see compliance from barr. are you confused enough yet? so the point is, it is slow, procedural stuff, danny. it is about as slow as congress can move while still looking like they re moving in a direction that, politically, a lot of people want them to move in. yes and no. sometimes civil proceedings and, again, they re divided as we heard between actual civil lawsuits and civil contempt proceedings, which themselves are different. the distinctions start piling up. the bottom line is, congress has several different options, but the challenge is, congress person to investigate and issue subpoenas, what we re learning is without a vehicle to enforce that power, enforce the subpoenas, those powers may exist ultimately only on paper. interesting. danny and charlie, thank you for that. we will continue to follow what the developments are. we ll be
white house, starting to comply with the subpoena. in exchange, they are not holding him in contempt. one way to sort of sort through this mystery you ve been trying to understand is, in the past, when there s been a recalcitrant executive branch official defying a subpoena, the house has voted to hold that person in contempt, then it is both ask the justice department to prosecute them and filed a civil lawsuit, asking a judge for a order to comply with the subpoena. that second stage has been called civil contempt. here, they are not holding him in contempt. they re nearly authorizing a lawsuit. it is not quite clear you could even call this civil contempt because it is not preceded by any holding of contempt. it is possible that at the end of this process, the judge might order them to turn over more information. if they still refuse, they d be in contempt of court, not contempt of congress. it is really a different animal than anything we ve seen before. some democratic lawmakers a
migration numbers go down. so we don t yet know from the administration or mexico what exactly is the framework that we re going to measure, if the number goes down and what is mexico specifically doing, what did they agree to that made the president decide to call off the tariffs? up next, former vice president joe biden is set to speak any moment in iowa. we ll bring that live. next, the house is preparing to vote to file a lawsuit against attorney general bill barr. we ll look exactly at what civil contempt is and how the attorney general is building power within the administration. you are watching velshi & ruhle on msnbc. corey is living with metastatic breast cancer, which is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of her body. she s also taking ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor, which is for postmenopausal women