2020 candidate. We expect President Trump will address the impeachment inquiry and the memo of his july phone call with the president of ukraine. Thank you for watching. Deadline white house with Nicolle Wallace begins right now. Hi, everyone. Its 4 00 in new york where we are moments away from the first president ial press Conference Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosis announcement that she would begin Impeachment Proceedings into donald trump. And, donald trump, if youre listening, everything you say may be used against you in the court of public opinion. Donald trump manifesting his own destiny in terms of the Impeachment Proceedings now underway in congress by attempting to run a political Hit Job Operation on joe biden and his son by asking a foreign leader to investigate them. The white house revealing in notes today from the president s call with the president of ukraine that trump pushed the leader of a foreign country to work with his personal attorney
Rudy Giuliani and his a. G
And yet all of this is a distraction, an attempt to get us away from it. Whats also interesting to me, hallie, the president of the United States takes a lot of time trying to take down joe biden. That suggests to me that he believes biden is the strongest possible opponent. Weve had 70 headtohead matchups in polls. Biden has won every single one of them. In that sense its not a surprise the president is spending the time, using the power of his office to try to take down his number one opponent. Tony, thanks for being on. Im way out of town. I have to hand it over to craig melvin on what has been a very, very busy morning. Indeed, a Story Changing by the moment. Craig melvin here at Msnbc Headquarters in new york city. We pick up the breaking news. Huge implications for this president , the administration, the Justice Department, perhaps for the system of checks and balances in our country. The Trump Administration just releasing that memo detailing that controversial conversation bet
Somebody really caught in the middle of it, and that doesnt excuse the person from the consequences. Professors, weve talked about abuse of power and bribery. When we started, we said we would also discuss Obstruction Of Congress. So id like to ask you some questions about Obstruction Of Congress. Professor gerhardt, in your view, is there enough evidence here to charge President Trump with the high crime and misdemeanor of Obstruction Of Congress . I think theres more than enough. As i mention in my statement, just to really underscore this, the third article of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee against president nixon charged him with misconduct because he failed to comply with four legislative subpoenas. Here it is far more than four that this president has failed to comply with and hes ordered
the Executive Branch as well not to cooperate the congress. Those together with a lot of other evidence suggests Obstruction Of Congress. Professor karlan, do you agree .
how different, how much more significant the offense is. it goes to the national security, to our democracy. it doesn t go to a personal and terrible mistake president clinton made, i m not going to defend it, but it is different, and the republicans seem to be approaching this with a scorched earth policy the same way they did in 1998. what else is different is the nature of the impeachable act as well. even after hearing all of the debate in the house, all of the fact witnesses that came forward during the intelligence portion of the house impeachment hearings, new polls out this week show that didn t move americans. they re split on impeachment, 45% say the president should be impeached, 50 say he shouldn t. on top of that, you look at among democrats, 31 democrats in trump won districts, talking 21 or so undecided how to vote, eight have come out and said
allegations in volume ii of the mueller report. that said, i do think it s an odd thing to leave out. if you re going to impeach donald trump for abuse of power and for obstruction of congress, it seems kind of conspicuous to leave out the kind of flamboyant obstructions of justice that mueller describes, and i do think that runs two risks. first of all, while a criminal offense is by no means necessary for an impeachable act, i do think it s odd to leave out the most flamboyantly criminal behavior and the most clearly criminal behavior that the president has engaged in. i also think it runs some risk of suggesting that congress kind of doesn t mind if presidents obstruct criminal investigations. so i think it s an odd thing to do and i think it s probably not wise on the part of democrats,