it s donald trump. you know, he tried to ban 1 billion people across the world who are muslim. he told american congressman to go back to their country. we all know what he s like. and we know the republican party were utterly devoted to him no matter what awful awful outrageous things he says. but, here s the thing. this is bigger than that, and i think it is genuinely much more disturbing. so, take this tweet from the staff of the republicans on the house judiciary committee, they are the minority committee, although they have a good shot of being the majority. and they ve card carved out a niche, this particular twitter page forensic, regularly tweeting intentionally outrageous inflammatory things. on october 6th, they wrote simply, kanye, along, trump. which is i gotta say, actually a pretty effective succinct on his expression of their worldview. like, that s what they like. that is paramount rushmore. antisocial people who act like enormous jackasses. that is actuall
nbc news has confirmed he s currently in custody and is set to make his first appearance in federal court just a few minutes from now. let us get to it. joining me now is nbc news nas political reporter sahil kapur, host of the beat ari melber and barbara mcquaid. pete, i want to begin with you. this is a bit tricky territory for the d.o.j., is it not? reporter: well, it didn t seem to be in his case, in the steve bannon case, though it took the justice department almost twice as long to decide whether to pull the trigger on peter navarro on two counts, one for refusing to give documents to the committee and secondly for refusing to show up and answer questions in person to the committee. he said to an e-mail in the committee that he was powerless to act here because of the executive privilege claim by president trump. one of the problems for him, it seems to me, is that six days before he sent that e-mail, the supreme court rejected president trump s legal appeal in the
6th. so, it could go on for volumes, but probably, that ll keep us in sync to the point. and, you know, that, then we ll see what he does. i think it s an interesting gambit. and, again, as with bannon, i think the way it has been, former president trump s friend, and in this case, probably his best friend. there s also some interesting precedent. i think truman was actually subpoenaed before from congressional committee, after he left, and he didn t go, and he was wise. he actually has a little bit of president. but glenn, jimmy raskin made an important point to me when he said, the reason with these beginnings, people criticize us, we re not gonna get drawn into some long drawn out legal battle about what it would or wouldn t, that would essentially sort of sucked the oxygen out, we do our due diligence, we talk about how people operated. there s still some things we let you know from him, and that s why we subpoenaed him now, what do you think of that logic? i think it makes sen
effort to have him cooperate in the department of justice investigation. and then when he made it clear he wasn t planning to do that, then no reason to hold back any further. once you indict somebody in a criminal case like this, you sort of have given up on them as a potential cooperator. i think one of the reasons make mark meadows hasn t been charged yet is either it may be possible he s going to be charged in a bigger conspiracy or there s still hope he might cooperate. with navarro, as with bannon, once you charge them, they ll going to file things and delay things and this is about punishing peter navarro, making an example to protect congress s interest in its subpoena power. you led me to my next question. pete, meadows, the other criminal contempt referrals,
said this at the top of the show, it is complicated for the d.o.j. once they get involved in these political, partisan areas and indicting members of a former administration, it can be a slippery slope or it can open the justice department up to a criticism that they are partisan themselves and they re going after political rivals. am i wrong about that, pete? no, you re absolutely right. and remember how historically the justice department has responded to these requests from congress, and they dealt have dealt mostly in the past with subpoenas from congress for current members of the administration. and there the justice department has taken the view of we can t even refer those things to the grand jury because that s just a separation of powers problem we are not going to get into. so the decision to cross the rubicon with bannon was historic for the justice department.