MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jerry Nadler
Interview
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MADDOW: Two weeks ago, he and his committee sent out document requests to 81 people and entities from -- starts with "A", Alan Garten, the Trump Organization lawyer, to starts with "W", WikiLeaks, and lots and lots and lots of people in between.
The deadline to responding to those document requests is today. The Office of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler tonight says that they have received already, in response to these document requests, tens of thousands of documents.
Joining us now is Chairman Nadler, who`s here in the studio with us tonight.
Sir, thank you for being here. It`s nice to see you.
REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: It`s a pleasure.
MADDOW: So tens of thousands of documents, sounds like a lot. I want to ask how that comports with your expectations as what you thought you`d get by now.
NADLER: Well, we didn`t really know what we thought we`d get by now. We said today is the deadline to communicate with us. So, we`re getting -- we`re encouraged -- I`m encouraged by how much information we`re getting, how many people are responding. A lot of people responded, a lot of entities have responded.
Some have said that they`re going to, that they want to work with us. Some have said they will respond if we give them a subpoena, and we`ve gotten responses from surprising people like, for instance Steve Bannon, who sent us a few thousand documents. So, we`re encouraged, but we`re going to have to analyze all of this obviously and we go from here.
MADDOW: Steve Bannon sent you several thousand documents?
NADLER: That`s what my staff tells me.
MADDOW: Hmm.
In terms of people saying so far they`re not going to respond or that they`re giving a hard time about what you have asked for, there was a report tonight that the president`s lawyers -- the president`s personal lawyers plan on sending you nothing. "The Daily Beast" reported today that the president`s personal legal team informed the committee that they won`t be sending anything over.
Is that a -- is that likely to turn into some sort of standoff? Can you update us on that?
NADLER: It`s certainly possible. I don`t know yet. We will be talking to people to see if we can reach accommodations with them.
But ultimately, people have to respond to us, unless the president personally invokes an executive privilege, which is a rare thing. They have to immunity. They have to respond to us.
Of course, the White House and executive department generally has been stone-walling the Judiciary Committee, not just on these respect -- on these documents, but they`ve been stonewalling generally. They`ve been doing everything they can to have witnesses say, I won`t talk to you about the conversation with the president, I won`t talk about that, without asserting executive privilege. And they have no right to do that.
MADDOW: You have said in the past that upon ascending to the chairmanship of your committee, that you did not intend to issue any subpoenas without consulting with minority, without trying to work that out so that there was agreement between the Democrats and Republicans on who ought to be subpoenaed.
In terms of these document requests, some people haven`t responded, people you think might not respond, do you anticipate that Republicans will be willing to sign off on subpoenas with you?
NADLER: I don`t know, but they don`t have to sign off. What I pledged was that if they objected, we would hold a vote on the committee. And we did that once for the Whitaker subpoena. But hopefully they will cooperate in what is a very legitimate inquest by the committee on work we have to do.
We have to get to the bottom, on behalf of the American people, of all the allegations and suspicions of public corruption, of abuses of power, of obstruction of justice, because we must defend the rule of law. That is our job. And this president has posed a lot of challenges to the rule of law, and we cannot permit that to go on.
MADDOW: You`re at a point where you are raking in a ton of material. As you say, tens of thousands of documents already, thousands of documents of Steve Bannon alone. I asked you before whether you feel like you are adequately staffed to be able to handle this material. I mean, this is multiple lines of inquiry. This is not a president in your words who is, you know, suspected of doing one thing that needs to be looked into. There`s a number of things that you want to look at.
How are you -- how are you approaching that in terms of just getting the work done?
NADLER: Well, we`ll see how that goes when we review all these documents.
MADDOW: Yes.
NADLER: I think with modern computer technology and our staff, we can do a lot of work. If we need more staff, we`ll ask for it.
But I`m not terribly concerned about that right now. I am terribly concerned about doing the job we must do for the America people and I`m concerned about, obviously, what`s going to happen with the Mueller report. Now, we can`t wait for the Mueller report. We don`t know when it`s going to come out. We don`t know how broad it`s going to be. We don`t know if the attorney general is going to permit the American people to see the Mueller report. We will do everything in our power, including if necessary, subpoenaing it to see that they do, but that the American people see it.
But our work is broader than Mueller, anyway. Mueller is looking at crimes only. He`s a prosecutor. He`s looking at crimes and he`s looking at the issue of Russian interference in the last election, and of any obstruction of justice in connection with that.
We have a much broader mandate, an obstruction of justice generally, abuses of power. When the president attacks the free press, when he attacks the judiciary, when he attacks our law enforcement agencies, when he attacks the structures on which our Democratic government depends, that is a real problem. So, we can`t wait for Mueller and we can`t depend on that.
And in a particular, in particular, the Justice Department has said, and Attorney General Barr has said that whatever Mueller reports, they will make what they can public, but they will not make -- he said it`s their policy, the policy of the Justice Department not to make public evidence about someone they have chosen not to indict. That`s fine when you have chosen not to indict somebody because you don`t have enough evidence.
But when you can`t indict somebody or believe you can`t, because the Justice Department takes the position that the law prohibits the indictment of a sitting president, that means that they have taken themselves out of the business of holding the president accountable, and then to deny Congress and the American people information or evidence about the president, then it might hamstring Congress from doing its job of holding the president accountable.
And if the Justice Department won`t do it, and the Congress can`t or won`t do it, then the president is above the law, and that is absolutely undemocratic and it`s subversive of our form of government. So, we cannot perform that. We cannot permit and that`s why we will do whatever we have to do to make sure that the Mueller report and the evidence underlying the Mueller report is made public.
MADDOW: And you believe you have the tools to do that even if the Justice Department under William Barr decides that they`d rather keep it --
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NADLER: I believe we have the tools to do that. I believe that the fact of the matter is that this Justice Department gave the Judiciary Committee under Republican control last year, 880,000 pages of documents, which normally about people working in the FBI, et cetera, on the Hillary Clinton investigation, on the beginning of the Mueller probe, they made -- they gave it to the Congress. And they`re going to have to live by that precedent.
MADDOW: Congressman Jerry Nadler of the Judiciary Committee -- again, document request out to 81 different people and entities, those are due today. The chairman telling us tonight that the tens of thousands of pages they have received include thousands from Steve Bannon alone.
Mr. Chairman, thank you. Appreciate it.
NADLER: Thank you.
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