Him through this committee for eight months. So i think following proceed sure is something that you have to look at because your idea is not really point of order. The time has expired. If he wishes. He doesnt wish. Good morning, mr mr. Lewandowski. Im questioning you right now. Thank you. The president asked you who had no role at all in the white house to deliver that message to Attorney General sessions. The president could have just picked up the phone himself at any time and called the Attorney General. The president also had a full staff of executive employees right down the hall. So this made me wonder. The president thought what he was doing was legal, why didnt he just pick up the phone and
call Attorney General sessions, or why not ask any member of his staff who worked right down the hall to deliver a message . It is clear to me that the reason he went to you, mr. Lewandowski, is because everyone said no. So i want to ask you about that. Two days before meeting you, the president had called white House Counsel mcgann at home on a saturday to fire the Special Counsel, saying, and you can see that on the screen, mueller has to go, call me back when you do it, plain and simple. But mcgann refused. When the president asked you to deliver that message, did he, the president , tell you that two days before your meeting his white House Counsel had refused to fire the Special Counsel . Volume 1186 is where you find that language. Volume 2. When the president asked you did you hear the question . Im sorry. Can you repeat the question . When the president asked you to deliver that message, did he, the president , tell you two days before that meeting his white House Counsel refused to fire the Special Counsel . The white house directed me that i not disclose any discussions with the president. You are not allowed to answer whether the president told you he called his counsel at home on saturday to remove the Special Counsel and counsel said no. The president had also personally called sessions at home and asked him to unrecuse himself and oversee the Special Counsels investigation and session said no. When the president asked you to deliver his message to sessions, did the president tell you sessions already said no, volume 2, page 107 i recognize the privilege is not mine, but skeufbed by the white house congresswoman, id be happy to answer your question, or you can have a conversation with yourself. Dont ask me a question if you dont want to hear my time. This is a House Judiciary,
not a house party. So if you ask me a question, give me the opportunity to answer your question. Id like my time restored please of his interruption. So he was a witness to the Special Counsels investigation. For that reason, sessions said publicly that federal law prohibited his involvement in the Special Counsels investigation. Heres a quote from the Report Fro Volume 2 pages 4950 which is on the screen. You can read that. Yes or no, did the president tell you the Attorney General was not allowed to take part in the Special Counsels investigation when the president asked you to deliver the note about that investigation. Did the president tell you that . You just read it on the screen, Congress Woman. You need to look at the screen. Yes or no . Read the screen. Youre welcome to read it, Congress Woman. Youre welcome to be stalling. Im not gonna stall. Answer the question yes or no. Did he tell you nobody at the white house was supposed to contact the Attorney General about the investigation . That you can answer yes or no. I will not disclose any conversation i had with the president. Again, you are here to block any reasonable inquiry into the truth or not of this administration. The white House Counsels quote, shortly after sessions accused his recusal directed that sessions should not be contacted about the Special Counsels investigation. In fact, the white House Counsels internal note states no contact with sessions and no communication serious about instruction. Can you read that . I just said it. Can you read that. Did you hear me . Yes, is there a question . Did the president tell you, as white House Counsel told him, no contact with sessions because of serious concerns of obstruction when he asked you to deliver a message to sessions . Im respecting the executive
branch privilege of confidentiality and i will recognize that at this time. Let me just say that you knew did you know the president was putting you at risk when he asked you to deliver a message to the Attorney General . I want to be very clear. The president knew what he was doing was wrong because everyone el had already said no. He called his white House Counsel to fire the Special Counsel. Mcgann said no. He called the Attorney General to ask him to unrecuse himself from the Special Counsels investigation. Sessions said no. His white House Counsel said theres to be no contact with sessions because of his recusal. So what does the president do . He calls you in to do what everyone el wouldnt do. He calls you in to do your dirty work because he knew it was wrong. Time. We will expose the truth. The president cannot hide behind you any longer. You should be here to be telling the truth. The truth will set you free and the American People. I yield back. The time has expired. The witness may answer the question. I dont believe there was a question, congressman. Very well. Could you repeat the question . Just a rant. The ladys time has expired. Did you know the Attorney General recused the gentleman from ohio is recognized. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Lewandowski, thank you for appearing this afternoon to testify before this committee. I understand that youve spent many hours testifying voluntarily before congress over the last few years. Isnt that correct . It is. If you had to hire and retain counsel to represent you for all the investigations that youve had to endure, simply because you served as the president s Campaign Manageer . Yes, sir. Thats unfortunate because you didnt solicit or receive assistance from the russian, did you . No, sir. Are you an agent working on
behalf of the russian government . No, sir. As a close friend and adviser of the president , you dont believe that the president is working on behalf of the russians, do you . Absolutely not. And to your knowledge, there is no effort on the part of the president to intentionally obstruct justice, is there . No, sir. Thank you. And yet again, coming here to tell this committee what we, Special Counsel mueller and the American Public already know, the president did not collude with the russians nor did he obstruct justice. Thats not to say the russians werent trying to interfere, influence our 2016 president ial election. Its clear that they were, by sending fake texts and operating fake facebook pages and holding fake rallies, all in an effort to try to influence the outcome of the election. Democrats want to ignore all of the real evidence of russian interference and hold this fake impeachment because it happened under a different president s watch. This all happened under president obamas watch, isnt that correct . Yes, sir. It was the Obama Administration that failed to protect us from the russian interference and influence in our election, isnt that also true . Yes. President trump wasnt president. He wasnt the one that failed to protect the country. If anybody failed, it was the Obama Administration, is that right . Yes, it is. I have said it before and ill say it again. Were wasting valuable Committee Time engaging in this impeachment investigation. The fact of the matter is, one thing this committee could be doing is to question Inspector General horowitz concerning the bias against the president at the origins of the russia investigation. We could be Questioning Horowitz about his recent report how,
then fbi director comey, mishandled department memos. This committee has such a rich history, has jurisdiction over a whole lot of very significant things. Were spending our time on this fake impeachment, but we could be focused on something that really matters, like immigration, asylum. We have Hundreds Of Thousands of people that have entered our southern border. Generally, theyre brought up either individually or in groups, caravan, usually often times connected with cartels. Cartels make a lot of money when they come up here. Theyre told the magic words. Come across the border. They say theyre in fear and come right into our country, and we put them on a bus or plane and theyre sent to communities all across the country. Thats something this committee should be working in a bipartisan manner to do something about. Opioids. We have about 70,000 americans who lost their lives in opioids
last year. Thats something in the jurisdiction of this committee, yet we do virtually nothing about it in this committee. Balanced budget amendment, something i have introduced in this congress. We got a 22 trillion debt hanging over our head, yet we do nothing in this committee about attempting to actually pass something that would make us balance the budget every year like all our states have to do. So finally, i just want to thank you again, mr. Lewandowski, for appearing at todays hearing. Perhaps your testimony today will finally convince democrats that there are much more important things that this committee could be spending our time on, rather than continuing to pursue this fake impeachment, an faux impeachment. The bottom line is, they dont have the votes in the house to move forward, for the house to vote or this committee to open up an impeachment inquiry. They dont have the votes. Some of the democrats want to vote for it, some of the democrats would vote against it, but they dont have the votes. So what they do is spend valuable Committee Time that we could be spending on other important things on this fake, faux impeachment. And its a shame, because this committee could be doing so much more on behalf of the American People. With that, i yield back. Mr. Chairman, point of parliamentary inquiry . Gentle man will state his point of parliamentary. The witness answered a long line of questions from the gentle man from Ohio About Whether donald trump had colluded with the russians, but he never testified as to any of those things before Special Counsel mueller. Can he now continue to invoke this white house rationale that hes confined to the four corners of the Mueller Report when hes gone way beyond it in his responses to the questioning from the gentle man from ohio . Regardless of whether he went beyond the four corners of the Mueller Report and the answers
that he gave to the last questioner, regardless of that im glad to hear he favors the patriots even though thats not in the Mueller Report. Regarding the long series of answers he gave that werent in the Mueller Report, the claim of privilege made by the witness is improper for the reasons set forth in our letter today to the white house and to the witnesss counsel. That said, i will take the claim of privilege under advisement. Mr. Chairman, parliamentary inquiry. Did you answer his parliamentary inquiry . You just sort of skipped on the Executive Privilege here. Act least acknowledge it was not a parliamentary inquiry. The gentlestphaeupbted the parliamentary inquiry. He did not. That was a statement. I answered his parliamentary inquiry. The gentleman from tennessee is recognized. Thank you, mr. Chair. Mr. Lewandowski, its been made clear you were not employed at
the white house. You had no w2, no card. You had nothing. You were not an employee. And you were a policeman at one time, so you know something about the law and about following the law. Didnt you think it was strange that the president would sit down with you one on one and ask you to do something that you knew was against the law . Did that strike you as strange . I disagree with the premise of your congress. You werent a policeman . I didnt think the president asked me to do anything illegal. You didnt think it would have been illegal for you to ask mr. Sessions to drop the investigation and just go on to future president s and o mit everything for this president and say were gonna start with the next one about colluding with russia. You didnt think it was illegal to object struck justice . The president didnt ask me to do anything illegal. Obviously, youve never been a judge and wont be one. He gave you dictation. He dictated to you a message to give sessions. Had you ever been a secretary to the president and taken dictation or shorthand . Many times. We got your qualifications now. You were a secretary. He asked you outside white house channels, Thats What Mueller wrote, this was outside white house channels. Could he have asked you to get the message to sessions because you would do whatever he asked, just like your former boss who said you were an implementer. News day called you the president s enforcer. Usa today said lewandowskis background is a trump guy, not a strategist, not a Campaign Manager but as a right hand man, a body man and enforcer. Esquire went further and said one time Campaign Manager for donald trump has the traits of an enforcer and the Conflict Resolution Skills to match. And youve even described yourself in your book, let trump by trump, you said we were fine with whatever role the president wanted us to play. Donald trumps army, there were
only loyal soldiers. Your previous boss was convicted of corruption and lying to authorities. You were fired from Americans For Prosperity after being accused of voter fraud. You are now involved in this. Either you were willing to break the law for politics and mr. Trump or you are some kind of forest gump relating to corruption. Let me ask you this. Did the president pick you as enforcer he thought you would play whatever role he wanted . That would be a question for the president , mr. Congressman. Well, donald trump was right though. First the white House Counsel, don mcgann refused to fireSpecial Counsel. Mr. Mcgann refused to do what he knew would be an illegal act. Then Attorney General sessions, who recused himself, was asked to unrecuse himself, but Attorney General sessions also not did the raoeu thing. Im not going to recuse myself. I have a conflict. I was involved in campaign. Cant do it. Then the white House Counsel advised the president not even to contact sessions. But you, his loyal soldier, would do it. You were different from session and mcgann. Trump could depend on you. You did not ask me questions. You took dictation. You gave to it hope hicks. You asked her to type it up for you. Not that you couldnt have done it yourself, im sure. Then asked Somebody Else to deliver the message to sessions when you decided not to. Donald trump talked to you outside normal channels. The president knew what he was doing was wrong. Mr. Sessions knew what he was doing was wrong. Mr. Mcgann knew what he was doing was wrong. You seem to be the only person who didnt think it was wrong. But mr. Trump was wrong. At the last minute you got cold feet. You chickened out. The president s trust was
misplaced. You decided not to do what you told the president you were going to do and you handed it off to Somebody Else. Did you realize at some point that mr. Nay, your former boss, got involved in criminal problems and went to prison and maybe you were going to be the next one . Did that cross your mind . Did you ever think about bob nays situation and going to prison . Congressman nay went to prison many years after i left his employment. Im sure you can clear up the record. Im asking did you learn from his experience and realize that what you were asked to do was illegal and you didnt want to end up in prison. The public will determine that. This has been more obstruction of congress by this administration and you followed their instructions and youre doing just exactly what you thought theyd do. Youre a loyal soldier. Except you didnt follow trumps instructions. You chickened out at the last minute. You got cold feet. Gentleman yields back. The gentleman from ohio. Mr. Lewandowski, you ran president Trumps Campaign between january 2015 and ju