Trump declares executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report, and President Trump's tax returns from three decades ago spill out, and Democrats escalate impeachment talk. Today's After Show Was Hosted By: Ben Shapiro Ben Shapiro: Separation of Powers: The President Declares Executive Privilege over the Un redacted Mueller Report Robert Mueller's Unredacted Report: What's Blacked Out in the Robert Mueller Report? What's White House's Response to President Trump Declaring Executive Delistring the UnRedacted Mueller Report and the Evidence He Collected from Congress Special Counsel Robert Mueller released a redacted version of his report on Wednesday. What does it say about the Trump administration, and what does it mean for the possibility of impeachment by the President of the United States? The answer may surprise you! Plus, Mother's Day is fast approaching, so what are you going to do to honor the day you ve been waiting for? 1-800-FLOWERS is here to help you pick out a gorgeous bouquet that will show your mom that she is loved, even though she has been remiss up till now. 1 800-Flowers: To order a dozen multicolored roses for only $29.99, plus an extra dozen, plus a vase, for just $2999, you get 40% off the original price. That's a fantastic offer! That does expire on Friday, so make sure that your mom is taken care of, and your wife, sister, grandma, grandma, etc., everybody, everybody, etc.. by 1- ! or order today from 1800-Flower. . It's an amazing offer does not end on Friday! Ben's Note: This fantastic offer expires on Friday so you have to hurry because it does not! You have to be sure to take advantage of this fantastic offer until Friday, but it does expire, so you won t want to miss it! . . . You can t miss it, so order it by going to 1800 FLOWERS to make mom feel loved, and she won t have to wait too long to receive the bouquet until it s all finished by the end of the week! It s just that long-term! - Ben Shapiro, The Ben Shapiro Show is a show about everything you need to know about what s going to happen in the next 24 hours!
00:00:00.000President Trump declares executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report, President Trump's tax returns from three decades ago spill out, and Democrats escalate impeachment talk.
00:00:19.000I know, it's such exciting stuff when the President of the United States declares executive privilege in order to shield his Attorney General from possible impeachment.
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00:01:57.000The President of the United States this morning declared executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report.
00:02:04.000So, here is the report from the New York Times.
00:02:06.000They say, President Trump's asserted executive privilege on Wednesday in an effort to shield hidden portions of Robert Mueller's unredacted report and the evidence he collected from Congress.
00:02:15.000So, to recapitulate, William Bott wrote a four-page synopsis of Robert Mueller's report.
00:02:21.000He then released the entire report with certain sections blacked out.
00:02:24.000The sections that were blacked out, there was not a lot of accusation that this hid super secret, really bad stuff that was going to end in President Trump's impeachment.
00:02:32.000It looked, just politically speaking, it looked as though Democrats were trying to shove into the redacted portions all of their expectations that were unfulfilled in the actual Mueller reports.
00:02:42.000They expected from the Mueller report damning evidence of obstruction of justice, damning evidence of collusion and conspiracy.
00:02:49.000And none of that was in the actual unredacted Mueller report.
00:02:53.000There was some bad behavior by the president of the United States.
00:02:55.000There was some ugly behavior by the president of the United States.
00:02:57.000There was nothing that rose to the level of criminally prosecutable behavior, even according to Mueller himself, who declined to say whether the president should or should not be prosecuted, kicked it over to Attorney General Barr, who said, I don't have the evidence to prosecute here.
00:03:09.000So Democrats, instead of saying, OK, well, Mueller didn't do anything.
00:03:15.000Instead, Democrats said, You know what?
00:03:18.000Probably the material that we've seen does not merit impeachment, right?
00:03:21.000This is the implicit, the implicit acknowledgement of the Democrats putting all of their expectations on the redacted sections of the report is that they are implicitly acknowledging that the unredacted sections of the report are not enough to sustain any sort of impeachment push.
00:03:36.000So instead, what they did is they said, well, probably the redacted sections, that's the part that's nefarious.
00:03:40.000That's William Barr hiding material from us, from us!
00:03:46.000The reason that stuff is hidden is because it impacts ongoing investigations, number one.
00:03:50.000Or number two, to release it would violate the federal rules of criminal evidence, because I cannot just release grand jury information into the public view.
00:03:58.000And also, we have no responsibility to turn over grand jury information to the legislative branch.
00:04:03.000If the legislative branch wants to do its own investigations, they can subpoena any witness they want and bring that witness to them, so long as the president doesn't assert executive privilege over that witness.
00:04:13.000Now, from the Democratic point of view, they're saying, OK, well, here's the deal.
00:04:40.000And subjecting people who worked for me or people who are members of the executive branch to more of your questioning that will just generate more headlines that will end in nothing.
00:04:50.000All of this is just Machiavellian manipulation.
00:04:52.000So this is where we end up with Constitution Fight 2019.
00:04:56.000Because the question is, What can the president assert executive privilege over?
00:05:00.000The Democrats have now subpoenaed the full Mueller report.
00:05:03.000They want all the unredacted sections.
00:05:04.000They even are asking for the grand jury testimony.
00:05:07.000And William Barr is saying, I can't hand that stuff to you because to do so would be a violation of my obligations under the law to protect people who have not been accused of or convicted of any crimes, who are not being tried for any crimes.
00:05:19.000It would be to subject them to scrutiny unwarranted by law, which is a proper position.
00:05:24.000And Democrats are saying, no, if you won't hand us that material, then we are going to hold you in contempt.
00:05:28.000And Barr says, fine, then I'll just ask the president of the United States to assert executive privilege.
00:05:32.000And then I don't have to turn it over.
00:05:34.000And you can't hold me in contempt because you have no cause to hold me in contempt because you can't legally get those documents.
00:06:06.000The Fast and Furious scandal was the DOJ working together with the ATF to allow guns to be bought by straw purchasers in the United States and then smuggled south to Mexican drug cartels Where they would be used and then presumably we would we would track where the guns went and this would help us uncover the chain of weapons provision to the Mexican drug cartels.
00:06:27.000Some of those guns were then used in the killing of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and this became a national scandal.
00:06:32.000So Congress investigated and they investigated Holder and they said did you give the explicit go-ahead to the ATF to allow illegal sales of weaponry that you knew was going to be smuggled to Mexican drug cartels and that you could certainly foresee was going to be used in the murder of American citizens?
00:06:48.000Eric Holder then asked the president, then Barack Obama, to use executive privilege to shield him from the exposing of documents.
00:06:55.000Congress proceeded to hold Eric Holder in contempt.
00:06:58.000That executive privilege contention by the Obama administration ended up being overturned by a judge.
00:07:04.000Those documents eventually were turned over and it turned out that the documents didn't really show anything supremely damaging.
00:07:20.000There have not been a lot of judicial rulings on executive privilege.
00:07:22.000Executive privilege was only formally acknowledged by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1974.
00:07:27.000There's nothing in the Constitution that explicitly says executive privilege exists, but there's also nothing in the Constitution that says that the executive power has to bend before every subpoena of legislative power.
00:07:37.000There is a balance of power, and there is gridlock.
00:07:39.000So the idea of executive privilege does have long roots in English common law.
00:07:43.000It's not just an invention that's been made up in the last 50 years or so.
00:07:47.000So this is where we stand, and I will get into the analysis of whether executive privilege applies here, because there are a couple of different types.
00:07:56.000So, the New York Times reports that Mr. Trump's first use of the secrecy powers as president, the executive privilege they're now calling secrecy powers, came as the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote Wednesday morning to recommend that the House hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for the same material.
00:08:12.000Now, as I've been saying for a while, I think that this is all a game for Democrats.
00:08:16.000I don't think that they actually care about the underlying material.
00:08:18.000I think they are looking for an excuse to blame William Barr and cast him as an obstructor when, in fact, there's no evidence that he's obstructing anything at this point.
00:08:26.000Justice Department official Stephen Boyd wrote on Wednesday morning, this is to advise you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.
00:08:35.000Barr released a redacted version of the special counsel's 448-page report voluntarily last month.
00:08:41.000Democrats say that is not good enough.
00:08:42.000They've accused the attorney general of stonewalling a legitimate request for material they need to carry out an investigation into possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by Mr. Trump.
00:08:51.000And Barr says, well, listen, you're the ones buying votive candles of Robert Mueller.
00:09:06.000The House Judiciary Committee prepared to vote Wednesday morning to hold Barr in contempt, despite that threat issued late Tuesday night from the Justice Department.
00:09:14.000Committee Democrats did not take kindly to the department's threat.
00:09:20.000They said, Now the Trump administration says, what the hell are you talking about?
00:09:25.000We let Mueller go through all of his paces here.
00:09:35.000And the fact that he did not and let the report go forward.
00:09:37.000The fact that Don McGahn did speak for hours on end to Robert Mueller and that Mueller interviewed him.
00:09:43.000And Mueller, I promise you, is a better interviewer and a better lawyer than anybody who's on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee.
00:09:51.000Why are you suggesting that Robert Mueller did an insufficient job, but Congress is going to do a wonderful job?
00:09:55.000And if you think Robert Mueller did an insufficient job, well then subpoena the witnesses yourself.
00:10:00.000Don't do this routine where you use his underlying materials and then suggest that he was too foolish to understand the materials he had already compiled.
00:10:07.000Sarah Huckabee Sanders has released a statement.
00:10:10.000She says the American people see through Chairman Nadler's desperate ploy to distract from the president's historically successful agenda and our booming economy.
00:10:17.000Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler's unlawful and reckless demands.
00:10:22.000The AG has been transparent and accommodating throughout this process, including by releasing the no-collusion, no-conspiracy, no-obstruction Mueller report to the public and offering to testify before the committee.
00:10:32.000These attempts to work with the committee have been flatly rejected.
00:10:35.000They didn't like the results of the report, and now they want a redo.
00:10:38.000Faced with Chairman Nadler's blatant abuse of power and at the Attorney General's request, the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege.
00:10:46.000It is sad that Chairman Nadler is only interested in pandering to the press and pleasing his radical left constituency.
00:10:52.000The American people deserve a Congress that is focused on solving real problems like the crisis at the border, high prescription drug prices, our country's crumbling infrastructure, and so much more.
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00:12:45.000We are disappointed that you have rejected the DOJ's request to delay the vote of the Committee on the Judiciary on a contempt finding against the Attorney General this morning.
00:12:53.000By doing so, you have terminated our ongoing negotiations and abandoned the accommodation process with respect to your April 18, 2019, subpoena of confidential Department of Justice materials related to the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
00:13:07.000As we have repeatedly explained, the Attorney General could not comply with your subpoena in its current form without violating the law, court rules, and court orders, and without threatening the independence of the Department of Justice's prosecutorial function.
00:13:18.000Despite this, we have attempted to engage with the committee in good faith in an effort to accommodate your stated interest in these materials.
00:13:24.000Unfortunately, rather than allowing negotiations to continue, you scheduled an unnecessary contempt vote, which you refused to postpone to allow additional time for compromise.
00:13:33.000Accordingly, this is to advise you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.
00:13:39.000As I indicated in my letter to you last night, this protective assertion of executive privilege ensures the president's ability to make a final decision whether to assert privilege following a full review of these materials.
00:13:49.000So it's effectively a prophylactic assertion of executive privilege.
00:13:53.000The president will declare executive privilege and then they will analyze what can be released and then they will release what they think they can.
00:13:59.000Regrettably, you have made this assertion necessary by your insistence upon scheduling a premature contempt vote, Stephen Boyd, Assistant Attorney General.
00:14:09.000Now, the problem for President Trump in all of this is that the president has made it look as though he actively wants to stop people from talking to Congress.
00:14:19.000So the president has said that he doesn't want Mueller to talk to Congress.
00:14:24.000Again, because Barr's case is not that nobody should talk to Congress.
00:14:29.000Barr's case is, I came before Congress, I testified before Congress, I revealed as much of the material as I could legally speaking.
00:14:36.000And then you guys want me to release material that is not releasable.
00:14:43.000You guys want something from me that I cannot give to you.
00:14:47.000And that is a perfectly plausible case, a case in which I basically agree with William Barr.
00:14:51.000I haven't seen the unredacted materials, but I think that he would not commit perjury by going in front of Congress and then saying the unredacted materials are actually... I mean, the redacted materials.
00:15:16.000The press wants to push the image that the president of the United States is actually asserting executive privilege, not because Barr asked him to, in order to prevent Barr from violating the law and in order to prevent a contempt vote that is empty, meaningless, and politically motivated.
00:15:30.000The image that is being drawn by the press and by President Trump in many reports right now is that Trump just wants to stop Congress cold in its investigations.
00:15:37.000And that image is being painted by stories like this one.
00:15:40.000So yesterday, before the president's asserted executive privilege, the president started tweeting out that he didn't want Robert Mueller to testify.
00:15:48.000Well, there's no reason Robert Mueller shouldn't testify before Congress.
00:15:51.000There's no legal reason that Robert Mueller can't testify before Congress.
00:15:54.000Now, I understand the president being irritated.
00:15:58.000I don't think that Mueller is likely to give Democrats anything they want.
00:16:02.000I don't think that Mueller is going to go before Congress and say, you know, secretly, I wanted to indict the president.
00:16:06.000But publicly, I just sort of decided to skip it because...
00:16:10.000I don't think that Democrats are going to get that from Mueller.
00:16:13.000I understand the president being like, this is dragging on forever.
00:16:16.000This is just another sham by Democrats in order to prevent us from moving forward with my agenda.
00:16:21.000I have a lot of sympathy for the president's position on that.
00:16:24.000But it looks as though the president is trying to stop Mueller from talking publicly because he's afraid of what Mueller is going to say, not because he's irritated with Democrats.
00:16:32.000And this has been a consistent problem for President Trump.
00:16:35.000He fired James Comey, the former FBI director, because he suggested that James Comey would not simply say he wasn't under investigation.
00:17:13.000You can listen to this New York Times piece from yesterday.
00:17:15.000When President Trump declared that special counsel Robert Mueller should not testify before Congress, he contradicted Attorney General William Barr, who had already told lawmakers he had no objection to letting Mueller talk to them.
00:17:25.000That clash has raised the prospect of a major test of Justice Department independence on Barr's watch, Defying Mr. Trump would be awkward for Barr, in part because he has long subscribed to a sweeping theory of executive power under which Trump may rightfully override and control any discretionary decision by a subordinate executive branch official.
00:17:42.000Well yes, this is called the Unitary Executive Theory and it happens to be the case.
00:17:47.000They say, while the Trump team has been pleased with Mr. Barr's handling of the Mueller investigation, disregarding Trump's desires, risks angering a mercurial president who turned on once-favored subordinates, including Mr. Barr's predecessor, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
00:18:01.000Mr. Barr, citing his age and lack of further aspirations, promised Congress during his confirmation hearing, I will not be bullied into doing anything I think is wrong by anybody, whether it be editorial boards or Congress or the president.
00:18:10.000I'm going to do what I think is right.
00:18:12.000So as I say, the press is playing this as though Barr wants Mueller to testify and Trump doesn't want Mueller to testify because he's afraid of what Mueller will say.
00:18:22.000And that is followed up by this report that President Trump doesn't want Don McGahn to testify.
00:18:28.000So again, The president does have the ability to assert executive privilege with regard to internal communications with the White House counsel, obviously.
00:18:37.000With that said, McGahn already testified in front of Robert Mueller.
00:18:40.000Having McGahn go in front of Congress is not going to hurt the president.
00:18:50.000Because either he lied to Mueller, in which case lying to the FBI is a crime, or he would be lying to Congress, in which case he'd be committing perjury if he did not match his testimony.
00:19:01.000Trump, again, is irritated that Congress is calling McGahn.
00:19:04.000He doesn't want to rehash all of this again.
00:19:06.000But the press is playing this as though Trump is afraid of McGahn spilling the beans on him.
00:19:10.000So CNN reported yesterday the White House has instructed former White House counsel Don McGahn not to comply with a subpoena for documents from the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler, teeing up the latest in a series of escalating oversight showdowns.
00:19:23.000Between the Trump administration and Congressional Democrats.
00:19:26.000McGahn's decision not to comply with the subpoena could push Nadler to hold McGahn in contempt of Congress, just as he is currently doing with Attorney General William Barr.
00:19:34.000Nadler issued a subpoena to McGahn for documents and testimony related to the committee's obstruction of justice investigation, setting a Tuesday deadline for McGahn to turn over the documents, and proposing a May 21st hearing date.
00:19:45.000Nadler threatened McGahn again with being held in contempt if he failed to appear in a letter sent Tuesday night.
00:19:50.000He said, I fully expect that the committee will hold Mr. McGahn in contempt if he fails to appear before the committee unless the White House secures a court order directing otherwise.
00:19:58.000He said, a letter from the White House in service of the president's apparent goal of blocking or delaying testimony that the president believes would be politically damaging is not a basis for McGahn to violate his legal obligation to appear before the committee.
00:20:10.000The White House said it would not allow McGahn to turn over the documents.
00:20:13.000The White House has not relayed its position on whether it would seek to block McGahn's testimony, too.
00:20:18.000So, again, there's two plausible reasons that Trump doesn't want McGahn to testify or turn over the documents.
00:20:39.000He doesn't want any of them to talk or turn over the documents because there's something hidden.
00:20:42.000Now, the reason I think Theory 1 is more plausible than Theory 2, the reason why I think that Trump doesn't want these people to testify or turn over documents, is because we've already had a Mueller investigation.
00:20:54.000That Mueller investigation resulted in a 450-page comprehensive report with minimal redactions.
00:21:00.000If there were no report at this point, I would say, yeah, it looks more like a cover-up than it looks like the president being frustrated with rehashing the past.
00:21:20.000Because this is always how he has been.
00:21:23.000He has always acted frustrated with the investigation because he feels he is innocent.
00:21:27.000Democrats are playing that frustration as the president trying to engage in a cover-up.
00:21:31.000So they say the reason he's asserting executive privilege is not because he's irritated or he's within his rights.
00:21:36.000The reason that he is doing all of that is because he's trying to cover up evidence of a nefarious crime just like Richard Nixon.
00:21:43.000The difference is that Richard Nixon actually engaged in an underlying crime.
00:21:46.000There's no evidence that Trump engaged in underlying criminally prosecutable behavior.
00:21:50.000And number two, Richard Nixon tried to obstruct the equivalent of the Mueller investigation itself.
00:21:55.000He fired the special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
00:21:57.000He fired his own attorney general in order to do so.
00:22:01.000That would have been the equivalent of Trump firing Mueller and firing the AG in the middle of the investigation.
00:22:06.000Trump didn't do either of those things.
00:22:07.000So the attempt to link Trump asserting executive privilege to Nixon asserting executive privilege, as some have been trying to do today, I do not think that comparison holds.
00:22:15.000It looks much more like President Obama asserting executive privilege on Eric Holder.
00:22:21.000And even then, I think it's more plausible that Obama was trying to hide documents to protect Eric Holder than that Trump is trying to hide documents to protect William Barr.
00:22:30.000In a second, we'll talk about how effective this assertion of executive privilege is likely to be.
00:24:29.000The president's constitutionally based privileges subsume privileges for records that reflect, one, military, diplomatic, or national security secrets.
00:24:36.000This would be the state secrets privilege.
00:24:38.000So the president is negotiating with China, Congress subpoenas those records, Trump says no.
00:24:43.000Two, communications of the president or his advisors.
00:24:50.000That'd be attorney clients or attorney work product privileges.
00:24:52.000So presumably he asked Don McGahn for legal advice that is not subject to congressional oversight.
00:24:58.000And finally, the deliberative processes of the president or his advisors.
00:25:02.000The two most commonly invoked executive privileges are the so-called presidential communications privilege and the deliberative processes privileges.
00:25:09.000The presidential communications privilege protects from disclosure any communications that are either by the president directly or by his immediate advisers in the office of the president to the president.
00:25:19.000The Supreme Court did recognize this privilege in Nixon versus United States and Nixon versus administrator of general services.
00:25:25.000The Nixon cases were about Nixon being subpoenaed by Congress for records of his internal deliberations over Watergate, basically, including the including the Watergate tapes, including the Oval Office tapes.
00:25:37.000and the Supreme Court ruling that he had to turn them over.
00:25:40.000The court grounded the privilege and the need for cancer and executive branch decision making and the supremacy of each branch within its own assigned area of constitutional duties.
00:25:48.000In the Nixon cases, the Supreme Court applied the term presidential communication privilege solely to communications involving the president.
00:25:56.000So the president is talking with somebody and he wants to keep that communication secret.
00:26:04.000Circuit cautioned that not every communication with a presidential advisor would be protected.
00:26:08.000The privilege should apply only to communications authored or solicited and received by those members of an immediate White House advisor's staff who have broad and significant responsibilities.
00:26:17.000So in other words, the janitor at the White House doesn't have executive privilege.
00:26:22.000Once properly asserted by a qualified person, the Presidential Communications Privilege applies to documents in their entirety.
00:26:27.000It covers final and post-decisional materials, as well as pre-deliberative ones.
00:26:32.000Critically, it covers any factual matter contained in a communication, and in this regard sweeps broader than the Deliberative Process Privilege, which we will get to in just a second.
00:26:41.000But the presidential communications privilege can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need.
00:26:45.000So if this goes to court, expect that Congress will simply assert that they have a sufficient need because they are involved in a criminal investigation and they need to see these documents.
00:26:54.000One of the first judicial recognitions of an executive branch secrecy claim was written by Chief Justice John Marshall.
00:26:59.000He endorsed the idea that the privilege is defeasible.
00:27:01.000In other words, however well established the privilege may be, it has never been absolute.
00:27:06.000The Supreme Court has strongly suggested that the presidential communications privilege must yield whenever a coordinate branch's constitutional role is at stake.
00:27:14.000Nixon, the Nixon case, concluded that President Nixon had to yield to a subpoena to preserve the function of the courts under Article 3.
00:27:22.000Another Nixon case held that Congress could roll back a former president's privilege in light of the scope of Congress's broad investigative powers.
00:27:29.000So Congress says this particular piece from the Brennan Center ought to be able to overcome the presidential communications privilege in any instance that it exercises its constitutional powers to legislate and conduct oversight.
00:27:39.000So the question will be, is this legitimate oversight that Congress is attempting to engage in, or is this basically political posturing?
00:27:48.000Then there is a broader and more powerful deliberative process privilege.
00:27:52.000In other words, President Trump is having a conversation with Don McGahn about what to do about the Mueller report.
00:27:56.000And it's before a decision has been made.
00:27:57.000It protects executive branch officers' communications that are pre-decisional and a direct part of the deliberative process.
00:28:05.000A document is pre-decisional if it was generated before the adoption of a policy and reflects the give and take of the consultative process.
00:28:11.000In other words, President Trump is having a conversation with Don McGahn about what to do about the Mueller report and it's before a decision has been made.
00:28:20.000So this seems to fall squarely within that privilege.
00:28:23.000The privilege has long been recognized by the Supreme Court The underlying rationale is that the disclosure of deliberative communications will chill future communications, like Trump will never talk with his lawyer ever again, thus diminishing the effectiveness of executive decision-making and injuring the public interest.
00:28:38.000Now, properly invoked, the Deliberative Process Privilege is narrower than the Presidential Communications Privilege, primarily because the Deliberative Process Privilege does not extend to purely factual material, unless it is inextricably intertwined with policymaking processes.
00:28:53.000In other words, if there is an investigation and it covers factual material, that's not a Deliberative Process Privilege.
00:28:58.000Deliberative Processes began offering his opinion on the underlying materials.
00:29:01.000It doesn't necessarily cover the underlying materials themselves.
00:29:06.000It's also susceptible to congressional or judicial negation.
00:29:09.000The privilege disappears when there is any reason to believe government misconduct occurred.
00:29:14.000So, will this assertion of executive privilege hold up in court if the president tries to assert executive privilege over all of this?
00:29:21.000Only if the court, having looked at the actual privileged material, which it will, only if the court, having looked at the material, finds that Don McGahn was involved in legal discussions protected by privilege, or looking at the unredacted Mueller report, finds that William Barr is speaking the truth, and that this material could not simply be released into the public.
00:29:43.000In reality, this is more of a delaying tactic than it is a legal tactic designed to keep these documents secret.
00:29:50.000In reality, I think the courts would be likely to rule against the Trump administration on executive privilege grounds, as they did, by the way, when it came to executive privilege for Eric Holder and President Obama.
00:30:03.000There's a long history of presidents using executive privilege.
00:30:07.000That in and of itself is not impeachable.
00:30:09.000Democrats have been trying to claim that the president, because he's asserting executive privilege, is indubitably trying to hide something.
00:30:15.000As I said, there's a very plausible alternative theory where he's just frustrated and annoyed And where Don McGahn doesn't want to commit perjury by accidentally mis-answering a question, or where William Barr is trying to prevent himself from committing some sort of federal crime by violating the federal rules of criminal evidence.
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00:33:42.000So I want to go through a brief history of the use of executive privilege so we can see how President Trump fits in with precedent.
00:33:59.000So we'll start with Richard Nixon because the prior invocations of executive privilege were a lot less controversial, obviously.
00:34:07.000And Nixon is the one who people are trying to compare Trump to here.
00:34:10.000I don't think that the comparison is apples to apples.
00:34:13.000For a bunch of reasons, as I will explain.
00:34:15.000The Constitution Center has a really good summary of all of this.
00:34:18.000They say, In the landmark Supreme Court case U.S.
00:34:19.000always been nominally used in defense of the public interest, Nixon attempted to use it to protect himself and other advisors during Watergate.
00:34:26.000In the landmark Supreme Court case, US versus Nixon, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that executive privilege is constitutional and sometimes necessary for national security.
00:34:34.000But the court also held it is not all encompassing.
00:34:37.000If requested documents and testimonies are a key part of an investigation, they must be brought forward.
00:34:41.000Therefore, the Watergate tapes were turned over to the special prosecutor shortly after this decision.
00:34:46.000Nixon resigned because he was trying to stop those tapes from coming out because they showed that he had engaged in criminal activity.
00:34:52.000According to the Constitution Center, Nixon forever changed how Americans view executive privilege.
00:34:57.000His questionable use of the power led many Americans to believe that all uses are for the same undisclosed reasons.
00:35:03.000This may have led Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W.
00:35:06.000Bush to use the privilege sparingly, especially Ford.
00:35:09.000Reagan was so cautious he didn't even use executive privilege during Iran-Contra.
00:35:14.000The next controversy regarding executive privilege came with Bill Clinton.
00:35:17.000The Clinton White House was mired in two scandals, Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky.
00:35:21.000During those investigations, President Clinton used executive privilege 14 times.
00:35:26.000That included protecting First Lady Hillary Clinton from testifying during the Whitewater hearings and protecting himself from testifying in both of those cases.
00:35:35.000His executive privilege claims, as well as his attorney-client claims in the Lewinsky investigation, were challenged in federal court.
00:35:41.000v. Nixon, the courts determined that the prosecutors' needs outweighed the confidentiality of executive documents and discussions.
00:35:48.000This ruling was not appealed to the Supreme Court.
00:35:50.000The White House sought to avoid a headline-grabbing legal loss.
00:35:53.000Clinton, of course, ended up being impeached.
00:35:55.000Barack Obama used executive privilege during Fast and Furious.
00:35:59.000As I mentioned, ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, had run an operation to sell guns to Mexico, trying to track the guns.
00:36:05.000One of those guns was eventually used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
00:36:10.000Representative Daryl Issa and Senator Chuck Grassley held hearings to determine what went wrong during the mission.
00:36:14.000Obama and AG Eric Holder both said they didn't know about the mission until a few weeks prior to the killing and didn't authorize it.
00:36:20.000Congress and the DOJ ended up in a standoff over the sharing of 1,300 documents, leading Obama to assert executive privilege in order to keep them private.
00:36:27.000Congress voted to hold Holder in contempt.
00:36:31.000Obama's claim of executive privilege was rejected by a federal court.
00:36:34.000So as I say, the chances that this is held in, that these executive privilege attempts hold up are pretty low unless William Barr is telling the truth and this material simply cannot be released because this material would violate federal rules of criminal evidence.
00:36:55.000So if Barr is lying, then the executive privilege will be struck down.
00:36:58.000All of this will end up in the hands of Democrats, which means it will become public.
00:37:01.000If William Barr is telling the truth, then a court will adjudicate that and executive privilege will have been properly applied.
00:37:07.000Now, the way Democrats are taking that is that a mere assertion of executive privilege amounts to a cover-up.
00:37:12.000As I say, I don't think that's correct, just as I don't think that the president's mere firing of James Comey amounted to an attempt to stop the Mueller investigation.
00:37:20.000I don't think that the president, merely discussing with Don McGahn that he wanted to fire Mueller, amounted to a firing of Mueller.
00:37:27.000The president is a volatile human being.
00:37:29.000The president is a guy who doesn't like being bothered.
00:37:34.000So there's a very plausible explanation for not wanting Mueller to testify or McGahn to testify.
00:37:38.000There's a plausible explanation for Barr asserting executive privilege here.
00:37:43.000And even those are not for the same reason.
00:37:46.000Right, Trump doesn't, I don't think Trump really cares whether the unredacted material comes out in the Barr, in the Barr version of the report, the redacted report.
00:37:55.000I don't think Trump cares about the underlying material because, again, the report has found what it found, Barr found what he found, and we're done there.
00:38:02.000I think Barr is really, I've seen no evidence that Barr is dishonest, in other words.
00:38:06.000I keep hearing from Democrats that Barr is dishonest.
00:38:08.000I don't see evidence that Barr is acting dishonestly here to cover for the president.
00:38:14.000This seems manufactured to me on the bar front.
00:38:17.000That said, the president has a unique gift for making innocuous headlines seem non innocuous.
00:38:23.000And so instead of just saying, listen, my attorney general says Democrats are seeking material that he cannot publicize without violating the law.
00:38:45.000If the president had been a little more quiescent during this entire process, it would have served him a lot better.
00:38:51.000Instead, by thrashing around and struggling, it makes him look more guilty than he actually is, because I don't actually think that he's guilty of a crime here.
00:38:58.000Well, this has left it to Republicans to explain.
00:39:00.000Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, he points to the Democrats and says, these people are not serious.
00:40:39.000375 former federal prosecutors looked at the Mueller report and said publicly, The conduct of the president amounts to felony obstruction of justice.
00:40:48.000And that, in any other case, were he not president, those prosecutors would recommend bringing charges.
00:41:16.000No, but it's not smart of the president to grant the impression that the press would like to push forward, that he would like to cover things up.
00:41:24.000Again, there's no underlying crime that's been uncovered here.
00:41:26.000As far as that letter from prosecutors saying that they would have prosecuted President Trump, sure he would have.
00:41:39.000There's no way to read that second half of the report about obstruction and not read prosecutors struggling to death to try and catch Trump in something prosecutable and not quite being able to and having to let it go.
00:41:51.000All these prosecutors, they're not prosecuting Trump.
00:41:53.000So it's easy for them to say, yeah, I'd prosecute him if I had the chance.
00:42:16.000You've uncovered the great secret about President Trump.
00:42:19.000That President Trump is not as rich as he says he is, and that he has long been, financially, a sort of con man who pastes his name on the outside of giant buildings that lose money but is great at branding.
00:42:44.000There's an article from Ross Buettner and Susan Craig, and this was getting all the press this morning until the assertion of executive privilege.
00:42:51.000The piece from the New York Times says, by the time his master of the universe memoir, Trump, the art of the deal hit bookstores in 1987, Donald Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.
00:43:06.000Trump was propelled to the presidency in part by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome.
00:43:13.000He's attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990.
00:43:18.000But 10 years of tax information obtained by the Times paints a different and far bleaker picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.
00:43:24.000The data, printouts from Trump's official IRS tax transcripts with the figures from his federal tax form for the 1040 for the years 1985 to 1994, represents the fullest, most detailed look to date at the president's taxes, information he has kept from the public view.
00:43:39.000The numbers show In 1985, Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses, casinos, hotels, retail space, and apartment buildings.
00:43:47.000They continue to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.
00:43:52.000In fact, year after year, Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.
00:43:57.000The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the IRS compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners.
00:44:04.000His core business losses in 1990 and 1991, more than $250 million each year, were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the IRS information for those years.
00:44:14.000Overall, Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for 8 of the 10 years.
00:44:18.000It is not known whether the IRS later required changes after audits.
00:44:23.000The White House's response to the findings has shifted over time.
00:44:27.000Several weeks ago, a senior official issued a statement saying the president got massive depreciation in tax shelter because of large-scale construction and subsidized developments.
00:44:34.000This is why the president has always scoffed at the tax system and said you need to change the tax laws.
00:44:39.000On Saturday, A lawyer for the president wrote the tax information was demonstrably false and that the paper's statements about the president's tax returns and businesses from 30 years ago are highly inaccurate.
00:44:49.000And then he added the IRS transcripts, particularly before the days of electronic filing, are notoriously inaccurate and would not be able to provide a reasonable picture of any taxpayer's return.
00:45:59.000The president, though, has tied his ego to the public perception of his wealth.
00:46:03.000And so he tweets out, real estate developers in the 1980s and 1990s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write-offs and depreciation, which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases.
00:46:26.000Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate fake news hit job.
00:46:30.000He's gonna have to choose between it's inaccurate, and also I did all these things.
00:46:33.000Also, he's gonna have to choose between, yes, I was using legitimate tax shelters, and two, I was exaggerating my losses for purposes of taxes, which would be tax fraud.
00:46:42.000Suffice it to say, None of this is going to damage the president in any serious way.
00:46:46.000And the fact that Democrats continue to pretend that yelling at Trump about his wealth is somehow going to take him down is really, really silly.
00:47:01.000I have started watching the HBO series Chernobyl, which is about, of course, the Chernobyl incident from the 1980s in the Soviet Union, a nuclear meltdown that has provided the impetus for a slowdown in the building of nuclear One of the good we did.
00:47:14.000If you are involved in the Green Movement, if you would like a Green New Deal, the first place you should begin is with nuclear power plants that represent a great plurality of the power provided in, for example, France.
00:47:24.000The reason Chernobyl melted down is because it was in one of the worst places on planet Earth, the Soviet Union, and was botched from beginning to end.
00:47:32.000But the series itself basically shows that.
00:47:34.000Here's a little bit of the preview for Chernobyl.
00:48:29.000And again, it demonstrates that third world countries, the USSR was treated as a developed nation because it spends all of its income on weaponry pointed at the United States.
00:48:37.000But the fact is that the Soviet Union effectively was a third world country.
00:48:42.000The fact that environmentalists have used Chernobyl or Three Mile Island as an example of why nuclear power should no longer be engaged in is true foolishness.
00:48:54.000Again, there's communist nations not famous for running well.
00:49:41.000Amazingly, of course, you have the entire left unified in outrage that babies are being saved.
00:49:47.000So you've got Alexander Ocasio-Cortez tweeting out, six weeks pregnant equals two weeks late on your period.
00:49:54.000Well, if you consider a pregnancy the equivalent, the moral equivalent of just being late on your period, I have something called science to show you.
00:50:01.000This is a developing human life by every scientific measure.
00:50:04.000It says most of the men writing these bills don't know the first thing about a woman's body outside of the things they want from it.
00:50:10.000I've always found this contention particularly odd.
00:50:12.000That what men desperately want from women is for them to be pregnant.
00:50:15.000That the sexist men, what they desperately want is for women to be pregnant.
00:50:18.000That's why men go to strip clubs with pregnant ladies, obviously.
00:50:41.000As far as the idea that women need more time to detect whether they're pregnant so they can kill that baby, I'm pretty certain that the pro-lifers are not concerned with when a woman becomes aware that she is pregnant as much as they are with the protection of the unborn fetus.
00:50:57.000It is also worth noting that by this point in the pregnancy, There are arms and legs forming, fingers and toes, and a heartbeat.
00:51:05.000The moral blindness of all of this is truly astonishing.
00:51:38.000And this is about a woman having full agency and control of her body and making decisions about her body and what is part of her body with medical professionals.
00:51:49.000Those are the facts and that is the law of the land.
00:51:53.000Okay, this is the- It's not a part- It's a part of her body.
00:52:34.000Because Meghan McCain had quoted Ilhan Omar.
00:52:35.000And that's very bad according to Seth Meyers.
00:52:37.000Here is Seth Meyers with Meghan McCain who treats him with the appropriate amount of outrage and disdain.
00:52:41.000Meghan McCain is doing yeoman's work out there.
00:52:43.000Here is Seth Meyers making a fool of himself and Meghan McCain properly demonstrating this.
00:52:48.000Is there a way for people to talk about differences in Israeli policy without getting framed as anti-semitic language?
00:52:54.000Yeah, I just think you can't talk about Jews hypnotizing the world, talking about all about the Benjamins.
00:53:00.000You do keep bringing up the two tweets that she's apologized for, and I think that's a little unfair to her, especially because we've established... Are you a publicist?
00:53:07.000No, I'm just someone who cares about the fact that there's someone out there who is in a minority, who has had death threats against her, and I think that we should all use the same language that you're asking her to be careful about her language, and I would ask everybody else to be careful about theirs.
00:53:22.000Okay, you have to be careful about your language.
00:54:03.000She downplayed terrorism in 2016 and 2013.
00:54:06.000She made light of 9-11, on tape, in front of an organization that was an unincited co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial.
00:54:14.000And here is Seth Meyers, supposed comedian, lecturing... You know, I just have to lecture you, Meghan McCain, about your very bad language.
00:54:20.000Because, you know, she's been the victim of death threats.
00:54:22.000And if you quote her... I have a question.
00:55:01.000It's funny, I have not received a single question from, I have a lot of friends who work in mainstream media.
00:55:07.000I have not received a question, not one, zero questions from anybody in the mainstream media about inciting, about incitement and inciting language against me that results in that sort of death threat.
00:55:23.000I mean, I thought that if you say bad stuff about somebody, then that's incitement of violence against them.
00:55:27.000That's what I learned from Ilhan Omar.
00:55:29.000That's what I've learned, that Donald Trump quoting her is an incitement of violence against her.
00:55:33.000Because she's received death threats, so you shut your face.
00:55:36.000And yet, when I receive not only a death threat, a death threat so bad that the FBI gets involved and then arrests somebody, When I receive that sort of death, when I have full, round-the-clock security, full-time, I have full, around-the-clock security all the time.
00:55:50.000So just note to people who would potentially try to hurt me or my family, you do that, you're getting shot.
00:55:54.000I've got full, around-the-clock security, full-time, because of death threats.
00:55:57.000And yet, the media have asked not a question, a question about incitement, which suggests to me that they don't actually give a damn about incitement.
00:56:07.000Al Sharpton would not be sitting on MSNBC.
00:56:11.000Al Sharpton was involved linguistically in helping to incite a riot in Crown Heights against Jews in 1991 and incite the burning down of Freddie's fashion mart in New York City.
00:56:47.000And the fact that he's accusing Meghan McCain, who has fought against President Trump's originally stated Muslim ban.
00:56:54.000His actual ban on immigration is not a Muslim ban.
00:56:58.000Only five of the seven countries named on that ban, legally speaking, are Muslim.
00:57:02.000Most Muslim countries still can send people here, obviously.
00:57:05.000But his originally stated statement about, we need a shutdown on Muslim immigration, all of that, Meghan McCain opposed that.
00:57:12.000Meghan McCain, as far as I know, defended Ilhan Omar's right to wear hijab on the floor, and the congressional rules were changed because of that.
00:57:18.000So did I. But Meghan McCain is an Islamophobe, according to Seth Meyers, who incites violence because he likes Ilhan Omar.
00:57:24.000Now, why are members of the Democratic Party doing this?
00:57:26.000Why are Democratic hacks, partisan tools, like Seth Meyers, doing this sort of thing?
00:57:33.000Because here is the dirty little secret about the Democratic Party and anti-Semitism.
00:57:36.000They do not give a damn, so long as they are politically allied with the anti-Semites.
00:57:41.000They do not care, which is why all 20 Democratic presidential candidates said nothing as Hamas, a terrorist group that hates America and hates Israel and calls for the extermination of Jews across the world, fired 700 rockets into civilian areas.
00:57:56.000Seth Meyers, you got anything to say about that?
00:58:04.000Man, go perform some unspeakable acts on yourself, because that is just... What utter nonsense.
00:58:09.000The reality is that the Democratic Party, and too many Democrats these days, are not willing to face up to the anti-Semitism in their own party, because they are perfectly comfortable with anti-Zionism, and are perfectly unwilling to condemn anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, and they don't care if there are anti-Semites in their own party, ranging from Al Sharpton to Ilhan Omar to Rashida Tlaib.
00:58:28.000They do not give any damns about that.
00:58:31.000So long as they feel they can make hay while the sun shines.
00:58:33.000If you're not willing to condemn anti-Semitism across the board, then you don't care about anti-Semitism.
00:58:38.000And if you are playing active defense for Ilhan Omar and pretending that she... Oh, it's just a couple little tweets, guys.
00:58:42.000It was just a couple... She backed Hamas in the latest Gaza conflict.
00:58:47.000I don't know any other way to put that.
00:58:49.000Every Democratic presidential candidate has said zero things about Israel's right to defend itself from attacks on civilian centers by a group that calls for genocide against Jews in their charter.
00:59:01.000Yeah, I'm sure Seth Meyers takes incitement real seriously.
00:59:03.000All right, we'll be back here a little bit later today for another two hours of content.
00:59:07.000Otherwise, we'll catch you here tomorrow with more Breakdown.
00:59:37.000I'm Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show, breaking major New York Times investigative exclusive.
00:59:43.000Donald Trump was poor in the late 80s and early 90s.
00:59:47.000The only other way you could have found this breaking information is if you read the whole book he wrote about it, or watched even one episode of his show, or read any newspaper in the 90s.