vote in the house. which is significant because nadler has reportedly been pressing pelosi to let him open an inquiry now. this morning house intelligence committee adam schiff acknowledged something pretty significant in the wake of mueller s testimony that the decision about impeachment is not just about the facts as pelosi has publicly stated. it is also about 2020. 2020 is unquestionably the only way he gets removed from office. so we can never lose sight of that. i have tried to put the political question out of my head. that is, does an impeachment help us in 2020 or does it hurt us politically because i don t think it s the right question to ask. but we do need to be realistic. and that is the only way he s leaving office, at least at this point, is by being voted out. so, what does pelosi do? and does she acknowledge the obvious that this is ultimately a political calculation? if you take her at her word that this is about the facts, not the politics, well, yesterday
political headaches for him so he can run for re-election. well, i mean it s for them, too. i was going to say, a, he is president. they ve got to cut a deal with somebody. and he s he s gone back and forth and blown things up. and nothing s a given yet but his favorite advisers on that channel are also obsessed with mueller. they might not realize that a budget deal passed. it looks like this one will go through without a hiccup. the distraction of mueller will distract his friends. but this was good for the democrats and it was good for him. it just clears things out. and sometimes you have to do things that have to get done. and we said pelosi got 219 votes. so she got democrats alone were able to pass that s what our numbers were saying. we should check that again. that s a heck of a whip job to get that many democrats. the majority of the house. it truly would be unbelievable in the same week
mueller affirmed pretty much every fact of the case that the democrats have been making that the president welcomed the attack of russia to the democracy and that he tried to obstruct the investigation. let me go now to congressman sean patrick maloney. he is one of the folks that questioned the former special counsel yesterday. and he s somebody that is not yet ready to say, you know what, time for an impeachment inquiry, congressman. good to see you. and i want to get, because you were one of the few democrats that seemed to also want to do some accountability with mr. mueller. but let me start with this impeachment question. where are you? yeah. where i am is i want the president removed from office. so the question is what s going to work. and i don t think that s an academic question. so, right now because the republican party is morally bankrupt on this subject, that s the point, you know, adam schiff is making. impeachment is likely to be fruitful or productive in terms
wasn t as helpful. that s why you used words like incomplete, imprecise, inadequate, insufficient. is that a fair summary of what you thought of those written answers? that is a fair summary. and i presume that comes from the report. and yet, sir, and i ask this respectfully. by the way, the president didn t ever claim the fifth amendment, did he? i am not going to talk to that. all right. i want to know what were you going to ask respectively. it sounds like you think mueller that you were second-guessing mueller s decision not to subpoena the president. you better believe i am. i think it was a mistake, but i think it s important what he said. what he said was that they were balancing. in fact, he did this with his hands. and what he was trying to convey is that they were building what he called in the report significant and substantial evidence of the president s intent to obstruct justice. he was balancing what they already had with the delay required to possibly get mo
considering on how more animated that mueller was on russia. i ll remind you obstruction was a crime. so i think the judiciary committee began because we re the committee that has jurisdiction over impeachment so i think it made sense for mr. mueller first to come to the judiciary committee. he spoke about the president s conduct. so i m not sure the order mattered. i think we had an opportunity to hear from the special counsel and him walk through all the contents of the report. so i m not sure it made a difference. fair enough. congressman, democrat from rhode island, one of the questions yesterday in the judiciary committee, thank you for coming on and sharing your view. go vote. we ll be back after a quick break with more on this question of impeachment with the roundtable. that s coming up. so what now? and later a brand-new bipartisan senate intel report. bipartisan. it s a word that s going extinct. it s an extensive russian