MSNBC: The Last Word, Ali Velshi

Amicus Brief: McGahn Should Testify
MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, guest host Ali Velshi. Segment guests included Glenn Kirschner and former Rep. Tom Coleman (MO) who discussed the recently published Amicus Brief calling for former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify in Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. (1/3/20)

Source: MSNBC: The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell

The Last Word
Guest Host: Ali Velshi
1/3/20 10:00 PM

(START 1:58)

VELSHI: Alright, joining me now, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner who was in the courtroom today for that legal exchange and former Republican congressman Tom Coleman from Missouri. Welcome to both of you tonight. Glenn, you were there. You heard this. Was it meant to be funny? We couldn’t see what the expressions on their face were when this lawyer for the House seemed to be explaining to the judge that the court is the remedy available to the House unless I guess you do get the Sergeant at Arms to go in with guns.

KIRSCHNER: Yeah, you don’t often describe a conversation that involves gunplay between two feuding branches of government as lighthearted. I don’t think it was intended to be serious and it was really down in the weeds of a legal issue. If the court decided that these Grand Jury materials from the Mueller case can be sort of unsealed and available, that’s different from the court ordering the Department of Justice to turn them over. It may seem like a difference without a distinction but they are different things. So, I do think that Mr. (Doug) Letter was surprised by the question because you have to believe that if an appellate court, a federal appellate court orders that, “Yes, the House is entitled to these Mueller materials,” then naturally the Department of Justice headed up by Bill Barr will simply turn them over. Given some of what Bill Barr’s Department of Justice has done and said, I’m not so sure it wasn’t a actually question with some consequences.

VELSHI: Tom, in fact, when Glenn mentions it may be a difference without a distinction, the last three years have told us what that distinction is. There are things you’re supposed to do and then there are things that don’t happen and that’s what this House, and in fact many journalism outlets, are up against with this administration. The idea that you’re supposed to do something or supposed to provide information or supposed to provide transparency or disclosure, just doesn’t happen.

COLEMAN: Yeah, we’ve never seen this, I think, in the history of our nation. And what they’re trying to do is just play it out timewise. It’s like holding the basketball at the end of the game to make sure that time runs out. I think that another part of this is that when a judge like that creates a confusion and also raises issues like this almost in a joking manner, what they’re trying to do is to reduce the importance of what this is. And what this is, is a fundamental Constitutional issue that the House of Representatives, and the Congress in general, under the Constitution, has the authority and the responsibility to impeach people if they have high crimes and misdemeanors — presidents, judges, other people. So, here we are, trying to get the evidence and Mr. McGahn, for one, does not want to cooperate and he says he has “broad immunity” which means he’s never going to turn over anything and that is just not true. We looked at the, in our brief that we filed, 15 members, former GOP members of Congress, and we found that a good quote would be probably from John Quincy Adams who said on this issue, it would make a mockery of the impeachment power of Congress if they didn’t have the power to subpoena and get information, and witnesses and documents. So, I mean, it’s pretty well-settled law, I think.

VELSHI: Right. And that’s not a partisan issue because every Congress of every stripe is going to want to preserve that Constitutional right to do that. Thank you to both of you for joining us. Former Republican congressman Tom Coleman and Glenn Kirschner.

Source: TRANSCRIPT: 1/3/20, The Last Word w/ Lawrence O’Donnell

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