The Daily - Part 3: What to Expect When You’re Expecting (the Mueller Report)

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

Once the special counsel’s report has been released, it’s up to Congress and its oversight committees to determine what happens next. We spoke to the head of the House Judiciary Committee, who will have to make that decision. Guest: Representative Jerry Nadler, Democrat of New York. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, once the special counsel's report has been released, it's up to Congress and its oversight committees to determine what happens next. As head of the Judiciary Committee, much of that will fall to Representative Jerry Nadler. Part three of what to expect from the Mueller report. It's Tuesday, March 12th.

And good evening, I'm Erin Burnett. Out front tonight, the biggest threat to President Trump, his name, and it's a person, is Jerry Nadler. Jerry Nadler. Jerry Nadler. Jerry Nadler of New York. The Democratic head of the House Judiciary Committee. The committee with the power to lead impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States. He is investigating, quote, allegations of obstruction of justice,

public corruption, and other abuses of power. Democrats led by House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler are carpet bombing the White House with document requests. He's now facing a brand new investigation, the widest since the launch of the Mueller inquiry. This has given folks at the White House an idea of what they're in for for the next two years or so as Democrats lay the groundwork for 2020

and a possible impeachment. Testing 246, testing 369, testing 4812. Into the fives. Let's hear it. Hello, Congressman. Hi. Hi, how are you? Hi, how are you? Okay, how are you?

Good. Thank you again for making some time for us. We really appreciate it. You're quite welcome. So, Congressman, over the last couple of weeks on The Daily, we've explained to listeners how the Mueller report will be released. It goes to the Attorney General. The Attorney General then releases a report on the report that goes to Congress.

And we've explained that it will either say, we have evidence the president committed a crime, or we don't have that evidence. We wanted to talk to you about what happens when that report gets to you. We investigate further. The fact that he committed a crime is of great interest. It's not necessarily a guarantee of impeachment. Those are two different tests, as you know. We have a responsibility well beyond the Mueller report. We have an obligation to do our own work. The

Mueller report is only for what happened with respect to Russian interference in the election and with complicity by Americans in that interference, and what crimes were committed and by whom. We have to be considerably broader. I mean, that's part of our work, but our basic work is to provide for the rule of law, make sure that the rule of law is protected. That means that we have to look into obstruction of justice, into corruption, into abuses of power. And certainly what Mueller's looking into is part of that, but we have to abuses of power. And certainly what Mueller's looking into is part of that, but we have to be much broader. You said that a Mueller report that says the president committed a crime is not necessarily grounds for impeachment. Can you help

me understand what you mean by that? What's a scenario in which the Mueller report says the president committed a crime, but wouldn't equal impeachment necessarily in your mind? Well, you have to understand that not every crime is an impeachable offense, and an impeachable offense needn't be a crime. There are two different tests. So, for example, if the Mueller report were to show that the president committed perjury with respect to money laundering five years ago in some scheme in New York to cheat the, I don't know. That would not be impeachable because impeachment is an abuse of presidential power for the purpose or with the effect of aggrandizing power to the executive of damaging

liberty or the structure and function of government, the separation of powers, that's what's impeachable. Also, corruptly obtaining an election would be impeachable. But crimes that don't bear on that would not be impeachable. So I said 20 years ago that the president's perjury about a private sexual affair was not impeachable. And if President Trump were to be shown to have perjured himself about some business deal, that would not be impeachable. And if President Trump would be shown to have perjured himself about some business deal, that would not be impeachable. But if he was shown to commit perjury or to do something else that affected the structure and function of government or democratic rights or the integrity of elections, that would be impeachable. So what do you do if the Mueller report says that the

president committed a crime like money laundering five years ago, but did not commit what you see as an impeachable offense? Well, if the president was shown to have committed a crime of money laundering five years ago, I would hope in New York that he should be prosecuted for that. In New York, right? Yeah, in New York, by the federal Southern District of New York or by the New York authorities or both, period. That's the criminal justice. Now, the Justice Department maintains, wrongly in my opinion, that a sitting president cannot be indicted while in office. So they will not indict a president for committing some crime. I think it's the wrong policy. I think they should be able to indict a president while he's in office, but that's not the real function of what we're doing in our committee. Our committee's

job is not a criminal justice job. That's up to the Department of Justice. That's up to the New York State authorities. Our job is to protect the structure of democratic government and the liberties of the people. If the president committed a crime that has nothing to do with this, well, he ought to be prosecuted, but that's not our business. We're not a law enforcement agency. Okay, well, let's flip this around and say the Mueller report finds that the president committed a crime that is absolutely grounds for impeachment. What do you do then? Well, we have to further investigate it. Let's put it this way. We have to do all these investigations now that we're starting to do, focused on obstruction, corruption, abuse of power, obstruction, justice, et cetera. If we find that the president is guilty of that, then we have to decide what we can do about it.

Impeachment is one option, but impeachment is the decision to be made further down the road, and it's a very high bar. But it certainly would be on the table if we were to find that. Do you know what the bar is in your mind? Yes, and I've said it many times. I think there's a threefold test for impeachment, really. Number one, has the president committed impeachable offenses? Number two, are those serious? And if the answer to the first two is yes,

I think there's one further test, and that is impeachment cannot be partisan. What you don't want to do is divide the country so that half the country thinks for the next 30 years we won the election, you stole it from us. You don't want to embitter the country. The situation has to be such that you believe when you start the impeachment proceeding

that the evidence you have is so persuasive of such terrible deeds that once the evidence is laid out, an appreciable fraction of the voters who voted for Trump will reluctantly say, you had to do it. You know, just trying to steal the election. But the first two conditions you laid out, is it impeachable? Is it serious? Those feel quite subjective. So I wonder if any argument to impeach will inevitably feel partisan and therefore make your third condition hard, which is consensus.

Any argument to impeach is going to be political. Impeachment is a political task, and it's intended to be by the Constitution. Yes, it's going to be subjective. All political decisions are subjective. I shouldn't say that. Almost all political decisions are subjective. But if this occurs, people are going to be on both sides, and some people will think you're fair and some won't. But you have to really depend on the facts that you have at that point. You have to have very strong proof of very dire facts. And by the way,

let me just step back. I'm a little concerned that we're talking too much about impeachment. Our goal is not impeachment. Our goal is what I said a few minutes ago, to protect the rule of law, to protect the structure and functioning of government, to protect our liberties. That's the basic goal. And if we can do that without impeachment, fine. If we have to do impeachment, and if we meet the requirements so that we think we can do it, also fine.

Understood. I want to ask you about some of the comments you have made ahead of the release of the Mueller report. You were asked a question, and in your response, you said that you believed the president obstructed justice. And I wonder why you would— Let me say the following. I think there's a lot of evidence the president obstructed justice, but we have to go a lot further. We have to know a lot more.

But I wonder why you would say that publicly before the release of the Mueller report. What's the value in doing that? Does it not kind of inherently portray whatever investigation... I shouldn't be answering questions honestly. I was asked the question. I didn't volunteer it. I was asked the question. And I said, yes, I think certain things which

are in public view... I like asking questions, but why not say let's wait until the Mueller report comes out? Well, maybe I should have. But the fact is, I think certain things that are in the public record make a strong case that there was obstruction. And other people said the same thing. But a strong case is not proof. I should say a strong case.

A lot of evidence is a better way of putting it. That's not necessarily proof. And certainly not enough to convince the country at this point. And we have to have a lot more evidence and a lot more facts, and we need to know what the Mueller report said, and we may need to know a lot more than the Mueller report says. So re-asking the same question now that I think you were asked about 10 days or so ago,

do you believe the president obstructed justice? I think there's a lot of evidence that he obstructed justice, and Mueller will tell us a lot more about that. And it's one of the things we have to know. Are you concerned, and I appreciate you saying that maybe you shouldn't have said it, but are you concerned that people will see this as a preconceived judgment? I know that at least some of your colleagues, like Jim Jordan, do see it that way, heading into these investigations. No matter what I say or do, they're going to say that. It's the Republican strategy to say, I decided to impeach the president day after the election. It's just an attempt to

distract. We haven't decided, I haven't decided to impeach. Some people have said that when I say, especially that third requirement, it's a very high bar. And some people have said that it may be an impossible bar. It may be. The three tests that I have said, I didn't invent. When we had the Clinton impeachment, and I was a junior member of the committee, the first thing I did was to try to get my hands on everything that's been written from Blackstone onward

as to what's an impeachable offense. But the second thing I did 20 years ago was I demanded that before we held hearings of the committee on, you know, on fact, that we first hold a hearing on what's an impeachable offense. And even though I was an minority member of the committee, I persuaded people and we did that. And so what I've been talking about is basically what I got from that. I didn't make up this test.

Well, Congressman, I do have to point out that you said that we were talking too much about impeachment, but now you are talking about is basically what I got from that. It's not, I didn't make up this test. Well, Congressman, I do have to point out that you said that we were talking too much about impeachment, but now you are talking about impeachment. Okay, fair enough. But I'm trying to say, you know, what I'm trying to say is we're not focused on that. We will take the facts where they lead, and we'll see. I want to stay with the topic of Mueller for a moment. You and your colleagues have held up Robert Mueller as a kind of gold standard of objectivity and fairness in all of this. As somebody who has the integrity,

the background to kind of handle this properly. You have a lot of faith in him. Do you agree that there's basically no path to impeachment? Sorry to use the word again. If the Mueller report finds no crimes? No, not necessarily. It depends what else we find. Depends what else is going on. There may

be a lot of other things that we have to look into, and that may be very damning. Right. And as you said earlier, there is such a thing as an impeachable offense that is not a crime. Can you help us understand what that might look like? Okay. An impeachable offense is not a crime. Well, misuse of the pardon power, for example. Misuse of other powers of the presidency. It is not true, as Mayor Giuliani has said, and as a lot of other people have said,

that the president has the absolute right to do this, and therefore if he does this, it cannot be wrong. The president has the right to do certain things. Pardons, you mean? For example, the president has the absolute right to pardon anybody. Right. But if the president was shown to pardon somebody in return for a $50,000 check, that would be a crime. It would also be an impeachable offense. Or to obstruct an investigation.

Or to obstruct an investigation. In other words, if you were shown for a corrupt motive. So the motive is what counts in a lot of these things. So in November of 2016, right after President Trump was elected, you called for then FBI Director James Comey to be forced out of his job because of how he handled the investigation of Hillary Clinton. Yes. And his decision not to charge her with a crime, yet still detail her wrongdoing for the public. We all remember that news conference and how that worked.

And you called that unforgivable. Yes. If Robert Mueller says no crime has been committed when it comes to the president, would you, as head of the Judiciary Committee, still try to bring forward to the public the information behind the Mueller investigation? And if you were to do that, I wonder what's different in your mind between what Comey did and what you would be doing. Yes, there's a fundamental difference. The Justice Department has a very salutary general policy.

And that is if you don't indict somebody, you know, why don't you indict somebody? You didn't have the evidence, obviously. You've investigated so-and-so, you're not indicting her or him, You've investigated so-and-so. You're not indicting her or him. You don't comment negatively. You should, in the case of public notoriety, you should announce we've investigated, we're not indicting him.

That's fine. But you have a policy, which the Justice Department does, that the president cannot be indicted no matter how much evidence just because he's the president. Therefore, we can't comment on evidence against him or anything else. Then you're converting a normally good policy into a cover-up.

And you're depriving Congress of its ability to hold the president accountable. You, the Justice Department, won't hold him accountable because you've said you have no right to, you can't indict him. That leaves only Congress, and now you're going to deny Congress the right to the information that makes the president unaccountable and above the law. And that cannot be. But just to be clear, if Mueller says no crimes, the public still needs to see the evidence regardless, because the rules are different here. No, the public needs to see the evidence, number one, so it can be confident that it's true. I mean, we've tried to protect Mueller because by all accounts, he's an honest guy, et cetera, et cetera, and the investigation has to proceed.

But whatever he says, you can't take it on faith. We don't operate that way. We shouldn't take things on faith. If he says the president has committed crimes, we should know what the evidence is. If he says the president hasn't committed crimes, we should know what the evidence is. And if the president hasn't committed crimes but has done terrible things that he knows about, we should know that too. Or if the president has done nothing crimes, but has done terrible things that he knows about, we should know that too. Or if the president has done nothing wrong, we should know that.

And the public has a great interest in the president, obviously. So I just want to be very clear on why the case of Comey is different from the case of Mueller in terms of using... Essentially because when he announced that he wasn't indicting Hillary,

it was because he thought there wasn't enough evidence to indict Hillary, the normal reason you don't indict somebody. If Mueller decides not to indict the president, then the public ought to know that and hear that and see the evidence on which he bases that. Okay, so I want to talk to you, Congressman, about the politics of all of this

and what the path forward might mean for the Democratic Party. Because, as you know, the Republican Party has stood solidly behind the president this entire time. They have not budged at all. If Robert Mueller says at the end of the day that no crimes have been committed by the president,

but your committee and others continue to investigate the president. Are you concerned that this will inflict even more damage and partisanship on an already pretty divided and highly partisan American public? Not if we do it responsibly. And maybe hurt the Democratic Party in the process? Not if we do it responsibly. Congress must hold the executive accountable. And that is with respect to crimes, it's respect to bad deeds, it's respect to corruption, etc. And it's respect to policy. We have to provide the accountability and we have to let the American people know what is being done in their names and let them judge. But how do you explain to

the American people who are pretty exhausted by all this why you're going to keep pursuing an investigation after Mueller? Well, it depends what he says and how much he covers. And that will help determine how much we have left to do. And the answer is that we can't rely on others to do the work for us. We have an obligation to do our own work.

That's why we were elected. And at the end of the day, the American people decide, not the week after Mueller releases his report, but election day next year, whether we have acted responsibly or irresponsibly in a partisan or reasonable way. Well, would you put your belief in the need to pursue the facts over the short-term well-being

of the Democratic Party if those two things seem to turn out to be at odds with one another and in conflict? I think it's my constitutional duty to do so. This may sound a little corny, but in this moment, with everyone waiting for what's next, what message do you want to give to Americans on what we can see as kind of the eve of the Mueller report? What message? That, one, we have an administration that has attacked the institutions of government and of liberty in which we depend on in fundamental ways, and we have to rein it in.

We have to make sure that the separation of powers is maintained and that liberty and the rule of law is maintained. And that the Mueller report will give us, hopefully, a lot of information, but that Congress has to do the job we were elected to do. And that the administration has to understand that the American people elected a Congress that wants to hold the administration accountable, and we will do that.

And the Mueller report will help us doing that to a greater or lesser extent, but it's fundamentally our job. Congressman, thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. You're welcome. Take care. Okay, cheers.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. We are very, very saddened. Our heart is broken for this tragic accident. On Monday, at least 22 airlines stopped flying the version of Boeing's 737 jetliner that crashed in Ethiopia on Sunday, out of fear there may be a connection to a similar crash of the same model in Indonesia six months ago. But at least 12 other carriers, including American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, said they would continue to fly the planes

as they await the conclusion of an investigation into the Ethiopian crash. Both crashes occurred moments after takeoff, in clear flying conditions, and resulted in the death of everyone on board. At this stage, we cannot rule out anything. We cannot also attribute the cause to anything because we will have to comply with the international regulation to wait for the investigation to reveal the cause of the accident. The cause of the Ethiopian Airlines crash remains unknown, but investigators have retrieved the

plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorder, which are expected to provide clues. I wish to express my deepest condolences and prayers to the great nation of Ethiopia and to the families of the passengers and the crew members who lost their life in this tragedy. In Kenya on Monday, where the plane was headed, a week-long United Nations summit began with a moment of silence

for the 22 UN workers who died in the crash, all of whom were scheduled to attend the summit. Anne. Good afternoon. After 42 days without a press briefing, the longest stretch of the Trump presidency, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders returned to the White House podium on Monday to take questions from reporters. Does the president really believe Democrats hate Jews?

Look, the president's been an unwavering and committed ally to Israel and the Jewish people. And frankly, the remarks that have been made by a number of Democrats and failed to be called out by Democrat leadership is frankly abhorrent and it's sad. During the briefing, reporters repeatedly pressed Sanders on why Trump recently said that the Democratic Party is anti-Jewish and reportedly told campaign donors over the weekend that Democrats, quote,

hate Jewish people. You didn't say yes or no. Does he really believe Democrats hate Jews? I'm just trying to get a sense of that. I think that's a question you ought to ask the Democrats. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.