How judiciary is going to approach work. Luckily a member is going to be on with ally in for lawrence tonight so that will do it for me so you can move on to that. See you again tomorrow. Now time for the last word. Thank you, my friend, good night. Im in for Lawrence Odonald tonight. Schiff said its committee preparing to turnover its report to the House Judiciary Committee soon after thanksgiving. Democratic congresswoman zoe will joan in me and Michael Bloomberg officially entered the race for the democratic nomination for 2020 but his fundraising strategy is ruffling feathers among other dm cat tem candidates. Charlie cook is here for strong thoughts but we begin to believe the tonight with breaking news. A federal judge issues a rebuke to the stone walling of congress that could have ripple effects for other potential impeachment witnesses. Tonight, judge jackson ruled that former white House Counsel, this man, don mcgahn must testify in compliance with the congressional subpoena. In her ruling, judge jackson rejected the Justice Departments claim of unreviewable absolute testimonial immunity calling it quote baseless. Executive Branch Officials are not absolutely immune from the process if the president expressly directs such officials noncompliance. This conclusion is inescapable precisely because the appearance by dent of a subpoena is a legal construct, not political and per the constitution, no one is above the law end quote. Judge jackson made clear mcgahn could invoke executive privilege during his testimony when appropriate. But she declared the president s cannot unilaterally block judges from testifying stated that the primary take away from the past 250 years of recorded American History is that president s are not. The chairman of the house jarry nadler said don mcgahn is a witness that President Trump obstructed special counsel muellers investigation and the claim that officials can claim absolute immunity from congressional subpoenas that has no basis in law. Now that the court has ruled, i expect him to follow his legal obligations. Not sure how promptly that might be. They announceded to appeal the ruling and said it will stay seek a stay to block the enforcement. Mccanns lawyer says don mcgahn will compile with the decision unless it is stayed pending appeal. The doj is handling this case so youll need to ask them whether they intend to seek a stay. While this legal fight is not over, tonights ruling has significant implications for other Trump Administration officials who have been instructed not to testify about Donald Trumps scheme to pressure ukraine to investigate and the rival in exchange for military aid. Those potential witnesses include secretary of state mike pompeo and chief of staff Nick Mulvaney and former National Security advisor john bolton. Jonathan schaub, a former attorney in the justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel told the Washington Post this ruling could quote cover for other witnesses especially former employees who are inclined to testify but feel compelled by the white houses direction not to. House Intelligence Committee char man adam schiff said the democrats are moving forward with the impeachment inquiry while leaving the door open for more witnesses to come forward. Tonight, chairman schiff had this message refusing to testify. Quote, to all those witnesses who hide behind fallacious claims of inmun mmunity, this c shows how meritless it is. They will have to decide whether their duty is to the country or to a president who believes that he is above the law. Leading off our discussion tonight, former staff member for the house Intelligence Committee and an msnbc contributor currently Vice President of the National Security program at third way. A former federal prosecutor that worked with Robert Mueller and an msnbc legal analyst and former chief counsel to the senate Judiciary Committee and senior aid to Vice President joe biden and president obama. Hes an advisor to joe bidens 2020 president ial campaign. Ron. Ill start with you, this is something the white house has been able to hang on to for sometime that don mcgahn central to so many things that donald trump was involved in was able to avoid testifying to congress. There were a lot of people looking for this judgment tonight to understand what was going to happen to don mcgahn. I imagine the white house is very uneasy this evening. I think they are. Look, it is several more steps before we get the truth out of don mcgahn, the Justice Department is going to appeal and seek a stay and even if mcgahn, that stay is denied and forced to come before congress, he can assert executive privilege and the fifth amendment to avoid selfincrimination. Its not clear if this will produce truth telling yet but what it does do is sends a powerful signal that the president cant just tell people not to come. The president cant just say hey, were not cooperating at all and it really puts a powerful piece of leverage behind the house committees, the Judiciary Committee, the Intelligence Committee to get the ball rolling of highprofile witnesses who they have been absolutely barred from talking to so far. Glen, let me ask you about this particular part of the judges opinion i want to read to you. When the doj insists that president s can lawfully prevent their senior level aids from responding to compelled congressional process and neither neither the federal court or process has the power to do anything about it, the doj promotes a conception of separation of power principles that gets these constitutional commands exactly backwards. Accordingly, dojs claim to unreviewable absolute testimonial immunity on separation of powers grounds essentially that the constitutional scheme is unassailable executive Branch Authority is baseless and as such, cannot be sustained. Glen, the only sentence i understand there is baseless and as such cannot be sustained. Tell us what the rest of that means. Ill tell you, the judge got it exactly right and it is a very forceful opinion and also a lengthy opinion. 120 pages long. One of the other sentences that really caught my attention is when judge jackson said and i quote, mr. Mcgahns failure to appear was without legal justification and let me take that one step further. Donald trumps ordering mr. Mcgahn not to appear was without legal justification. That is darn near being able to say it was illegal. I dont want to mince words but so i think this is really going to give the house some additional fuel for adding obstruction of justice as an article of impeachment because the president has never had a lawful basis to order all of these people not to appear, whether its mcgahn or pompeo or mulvaney or hicks. So hopefully we will now begin to see these people testify and provide some Accurate Information of what was going on behind the curtain. Of course, mika, were reaching out to those people, pompeo and mulvaney and bull ton. Mulvaneys lawyer said this ruling does not affect whether hell testify. This is robert driscoll, the attorney acting for white house chief of staff maick mulvaney. He said hell continue to follow with respect to the house subpoena. Anybody hoping that everybody whose been resisting these congressional subpoenas that will gave as a result of tonights ruling will have to wait a little longer. Thats right. This opinion is mid stream, usually when you have a disinstrudistrict court ruling, everything will be on pause. To m cobacome back to your ini question, congress is the branch that constitutionally is designated to do oversight of the executive branch. So for the executive branch to say its people dont have to show up in response to a congressional attempt to conduct oversight, that subverts the entire structure of the constitution that the department of justice is arguing this goes against the founding of our country but also it goes against pass precedent and sites the example of harriet myers, the Bush Administration white House Counsel also ordered to testify and also made a similarly broad claim that she was absolutely immune and that was also rejected. Ron, what do you think the white houses strategy will be in the face of adam schiff saying they basically conducted and finished got the information they need for the report thats going to go over to the Judiciary Committee . Momentarily well speak with the representative who is the second highest ranking democrat on the committee. But at this point, this thing is the horse left the barn. The white house is going to have to pull together a strategy that makes more sense than the one they employed so far. Yeah, well, white house strategy is an oxy moron in this context of this presidency and administration and, you know, what we seen is already the complete blowing up of their strategy. Yes, they were able to keep several of these high profile witnesses from appearing before congress but devastated by the career people, the less famous people until last week who came before the congress and told the truth in such a powerful way like fiona hill for example. And so now they face the risk that these higher level people are going to be either compelled to testify or merely get the fig leaf they need to testify. Will john bolton use this as an excuse to come forward and testify . Will other ex officials who maybe are less friendly to the president start to testify . So this takes what was already a fivedimensional chess game and adds three or four additional dimensions to it. Glen, let me read another piece of this ruling in which the judge talks about what is missing from the constitution. She writes, what is missing from the constitutions frame work as the framers envisioned it is the president s purported power to kneecap house investigations of executive Branch Operations by demanding that a senior level aid breach their legal duty to respond to compelled congressional process. This judge is not holding back on her view how the president and his legal team have interpreted congressional subpoenas that and as mika talked about, congressional oversight. Yeah, there are some people who are, i think, baselessly claiming maybe some of these judges just dont like trump or his policies. You know, ill tell you, i think the judiciary doesnt like people disobeying the law or making up laws like executive privilege to really try to avoid proper oversight function. So i actually think i heard you say Mick Mulvaney put out a statement hes going to refuse to compile and listen to trump if trump continues to say dont testify. I have to tell you, that couldnt be a more squarely unlawful act and it is in contempt of what a federal court judge just said with respect to the law. So i think these people now are really putting themselves in harms way. What does this do, mika, to democratic strategy now . Adam schiff said the investigative work tonights. Were learning Additional Information every day but while we dont with the investigative work and do not foreclose the possibility of further depositions of hearings, we will not allow the president or others to drag this out for months on end in the courts. He basically said by next week, possibly as early as next week they could hand this over to the Judiciary Committee. Yeah, i think its clear what we learned over the course of adam schiffs hearings is greater detail and filling in of a story the president admitted to from the very beginning. Weve known from the start the president brought a Pressure Campaign to bear against a foreign power to force the investigation of his most feared political rival and that is just fund mentally wrong. So i think that adam schiff is feeling like its so wrong, we cannot delay, you cant allow the president or his aids to hold the process hostage with endless appeals in courts and so what we know is the department of justice will try and delay this effect of the mcgahn ruling and any other ruling to prevent these witnesses from coming forward to talk to congress. Thanks to the three of you for getting us started. Coming up, chairman adam schiff said the Intelligence Committee is working on the report on the impeachment investigation and as we discussed, it could be delivered to the Judiciary Committee soon after thanksgiving. N after thanksgiving im a verizon engineer, and im part of the Team Building the most powerful 5g experience for america. Its 5g ultra wideband for massive capacity and ultrafast speeds. Almost 2 gigs here in minneapolis. Thats 25 times faster than todays network in new york city. So people from midtown manhattan to downtown denver can experience what our 5g can deliver. woman and if verizon 5g can deliver performance like this in these places. Its pretty crazy. Just imagine what it can do for you. When we were looking he wanted someone super quiet. Yeah, and he wanted someone to help out with chores. So, we got jeanpierre. But one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with renters insurance. Yeah, geico did make it easy to switch and save. Oh no. Theres a wall there now. Thats too bad. Visit geico. Com and see how easy saving on renters insurance can be. As a federal ruling puts pressure to testify, House Democrats are not willing to take the next big step to impeach president donald trump. Chairman adam schiff said soon after thanksgiving the Intelligence Committee will deliver a report with all of the impeachment evidence to the Judiciary Committee, which will then draft and vote on articles of impeachment. Chairman schiff writes quote we will catalog the instances of noncompliance with lawful subpoenas that as part of the report to the Judiciary Committee to allow the committee to consider whether an article of impeachment based on obstruction of congress is warranted along with an article or articles based on this under lying conduct or other president ial misconduct. One of the democrats that will decide is congresswoman zo of california. She was involved in the last two president ial impeachments. In 1974, there she is on the right. She was a congressional staffer when the committee prepared articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon and in 1998 she was a member of congress on the Judiciary Committee and voted against impeaching president bill clinton. Now congresswoman zo joins me for a second conversation. Good to see you. Thank you for joining us. I want to get your comment on what adam schiff said that they on the Intelligence Committee are looking at these refusals to be present for congressional subpoenas that and provide testimony as possible evidence of obstruction of justice but that is for you on the Judiciary Committee to determine whether that makes its way into articles of impeachment. Give me your thoughts on that. I think adam has it exactly right. The Intelligence Committee has done the factfinding. We cant be held up for months at a time through frivolous appeals of very well reasoned decisions. Weve got to move forward. The fact that the president has instructed people not to compile with lawful subpoenas that and hes done other things, a lot of si not a single document has been released as evidence only hes hiding something but he is refusing to compile with the lawful requests of congress and thats an obstruction matter. That was the third article in the Richard Nixon impeachment. There are lessons from the Richard Nixon impeachment that there are a few people like you who were there then, you were there for proceedings against bill clint clinton. What do you see here that youve drawn experience from here in the past . Certainly a picture of misconduct on the part of the president has emerged over these hearings and it has everything to do with sthe constitutional system for his personal interest. That certainly was not present with bill clinton. He was charged with lying about sex, not an admirable thing but not much to do with the constitution. Were not talking about President Trump lying about sex and lying about paying off these women that he was caught with. That has nothing to do with the constitutional order. What were talking about is activities that really threatened the National Security and the will of appropriations to keep russia from tramping over ukraine. One of the new lines of attack and there are several from republicans since this news about the quid pro quo for an investigation into joe biden came out. One of the latest is that youall are so occupied with this that no legislation is being under taken and nothing is being passed. You took issue with that . I certainly do. Weve passed over 300 bills out of the house of representatives that are just sitting over in the senate. I dont know what Mitch Mcconnell is doing but not doing any legisla