MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jerry Nadler

Interview

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MADDOW:  On a signal day in the history of this presidency, and a signal day in the long and storied career of Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler, joining us now for the interview tonight is Congressman Nadler, who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.  Today, of course, his committee voted to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt. 
 
Sir, thank you very much for making time to be here tonight.  Much appreciated. 
 
NADLER:  Thank you for having me. 
 
MADDOW:  This is serious act that your committee voted on today.  This confrontation with the attorney general is something that I know you did not rush into, and that you didn`t relish.  Can you just tell us a little bit about your thought process in terms of what brought you to this -- what brought you to this sort of extreme point today? 
 
NADLER:  Well, we certainly didn`t relish this.  We don`t need this kind of fight with the administration.  But what brought us here is that we have to defend our constitutional form of government. 
 
This is a lawless administration.  It is denying the American people the information they need by defying all subpoenas.  It`s the first administration you`ve ever seen where they say we`ll deny all subpoenas from Congress, whether it`s on the Mueller investigation or on security clearances or in anything else. 
 
They defy the law.  The law very clearly says that upon requests by the Ways and Means Committee, the IRS should turn over anybody`s taxes.  They`re simply ignoring that.  So, they`re ignoring the law, and they`re stonewalling and hoping that they can get away with it. 
 
We cannot have a situation where the president becomes a king or a dictator.  I mean, the American people understand that nobody, not the president, nobody may be above the law.  And we have to enforce that. 
 
MADDOW:  My sense of their strategy here is not that they have great faith in any of the specific subpoenas that they are defying in any of the specific stones they are putting up in this stonewall, as you describe it.  My sense of their strategy here is that they`re going to say no to everything, try to block everything, simply to try to buy themselves as much time as possible. 
 
They`re hoping to bog down you in particular and congressional Democrats more broadly in each of these individual fights so that these fights become your full-time job and you can`t do what -- you can`t pursue what you want to pursue. 
 
I wonder if you see it that way, and if so, what`s your strategy for counteracting that? 
 
NADLER:  Well, I certainly think trying to bog down things as long as possible, not to keep us from other things, I think, but to evade accountability, to evade the information getting out, to evade the American people having the information they need to judge the administration and to support or oppose whatever it`s doing. 
 
We will -- that`s why we can`t -- we can`t abide this, obviously.  We have to maintain a Democratic form of government, which means the people have to decide ultimately, and they can`t do that without the requisite information, which the administration is trying to deny them.  So that is why we issued subpoenas. 
 
That`s why we went to -- we cited the attorney general for contempt today.  It will be voted on the house floor in the next couple of weeks, and that will go into court to enforce the subpoena.  We`re going to ask the court to expedite the matter as fast as possible.  We have some strategies for that.  And that`s really what we have to do to thwart the administration`s desire to run a lawless administration. 
 
MADDOW:  You say you have strategies in terms of asking the court to expedite these matters.  A lot of commentators looking at the fights say, well, the president will succeed here in delaying this, certainly for weeks, definitely for months, hopefully in his view for years simply by getting this thing into court, he`ll delay it until after the 2020 election.  It sounds like you have a different view of the timeline on which you think will be resolved, even if it is resolved through the court system. 
 
NADLER:  Well, it has to be resolved through the court system.  We do think that it can be done much more quickly than that.  It may take months, but it has to be resolved, and this administration has to be called to account. 
 
MADDOW:  In terms of the work flow that you`ve got in mind here, I take note of the fact that Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, who is such an important witness in Mueller`s written report was the first Mueller witness essentially you`d asked to come and ultimately subpoena to testify to your committee, first to provide documents and then to testify.  He has defied the documents subpoena. 
 
You have written a letter now suggesting that he may ultimately find himself in contempt if he proceeds on this route.  Do you intend to call all the Mueller witnesses?  I mean, he`s number one, and you`re having this fight with him already.  Are you planning on calling --
 
NADLER:  Well, he is number two.  Mr. Mueller is number one. 
 
MADDOW:  OK. 
 
NADLER:  But we plan to call everybody necessary.  And it may be a lot of the Mueller witnesses.  I doubt it will be all of them, but it could be a lot of the Mueller witnesses to elucidate what was going on.  And there are many -- I mean, we have an attorney general who is not only acting as a personal attorney for the president rather than the attorney general of the United States but is really turning the Justice Department into a vehicle for evading the law -- for evading the law. 
 
Now, we have to get all the information, and we may have to get a lot of people besides those who are interviewed by Mueller.  A lot of questions besides that, but we have to get the information for the American people so that we can take appropriate action. 
 
MADDOW:  Mr. Chairman, you mentioned witness number 1 there.  I have a question for you about him, if you don`t mind sticking with us. 
 
NADLER:  Sure, sure, sure. 
 
MADDOW:  I have to take a quick break. 
 
Chairman Jerry Nadler, he heads the Judiciary Committee in the House today.  They voted to hold the attorney general in contempt.  The chairman is back with us right after this.
 
Stay with us. 
 
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
 
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
 
REPORTER:  Mr. Chairman, you said that the president has ordered Mueller not to testify.  Are you referring to his tweet last week saying that Mueller should not testify? 
 
NADLER:  Yes. 
 
REPORTER:  How does that made that harder?  Has Mueller specifically told you that, that he doesn`t feel like testifying? 
 
NADLER:  No, but it obviously puts a lot of pressure on Mueller, and the discussions are ongoing. 
 
REPORTER:  And how are the discussions, are they -- 
 
NADLER:  They`re ongoing.
 
(END VIDEO CLIP)
 
MADDOW:  We`re back now with Congressman Jerry Nadler, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. 
 
Sir, thank you for sticking around.  Much appreciated. 
 
On that same topic that we just had that tape from you taking questions from reporters, at one point you had said that May 15th, next Wednesday, a week from today might be a target date for getting Mr. Mueller in to testify about his investigation. 
 
Can you give us any sort of update? 
 
NADLER:  Well, no.  May 15th was the date we were trying to do it.  An agreement had not been reached on a given date.  But we certainly want Mueller and McGahn before the end -- during the month, during the month of May. 
 
And, again, the order by the administration to Mueller and to McGahn not to testify is a lawless order.  There is no possible interpretation of executive privilege which would justify telling someone who has already given information out publicly either to the Mueller investigation or to his own attorney that that is privileged information.  This is just the Trump administration being lawless, trying to deny Congress and the American people all information and putting pressure on Mueller and McGahn not to testify.  Of course, we have a lot of questions for Mueller and McGahn. 
 
And remember that Barr began this whole process by misrepresenting what was in the Mueller report twice and by making his own judgment of what the Mueller report clearly intended to be Congress` judgment, and then attempts to silence Mueller and make sure he doesn`t appear before Congress or now before anybody. 
 
MADDOW:  Because we`ve seen what I believe is a real escalation, a sort of steady escalation over these past six weeks from the president, from the White House, increasingly from the administration about trying to lock down as much as possible around the Mueller investigation, stepping up their ability -- or stepping up their efforts to try to keep more of the report under wraps, now exerting executive privilege over all of it, now saying they`re going to block all witnesses, all requests for documents, it seems to me like they`re probably getting more aggressive in their stance whether or not they`re going to try to prevent Mueller from testifying.  It makes me wonder what the process has been like thus far between your committee and Mueller and trying to get him there. 
 
Has it been the Justice Department who has been negotiating on his behalf?  Are you in communication with him directly?  Is the White House trying to assert his schedule? 
 
NADLER:  Well, first of all, it leads you to wonder what they`re afraid of.  Remember, the attorney general has told us repeatedly, and all the Republicans, Senator McConnell and others have told us that the finding of the Mueller report was no collusion, no obstruction.  If that`s true, why are they trying to hide it?  
 
It`s obviously not true. 
 
But secondly, we were negotiating first with the Justice Department for a date for Mueller, and then with Mueller himself. 
 
MADDOW:  And is Mr. Mueller willing to come in and testify? 
 
NADLER:  I think he will be.  The last -- the last communication we had with him as far as I know just before the president suddenly said this.  But I think he will be.  And he will no longer be an employee of the Justice Department in a couple of weeks, at which point they can`t tell him what to do at all. 
 
But again, even private citizens or employees of the Justice Department must testify for a congressional or a court subpoena.  It`s not optional, unless they have a legal reason not to.  And the so-called executive privilege is nonsense, period. 
 
And the American people have a right to that information, including information such as some of the questions you were raising.  Did Mueller -- was Mueller`s investigation stopped by Barr?  Was he told to stop?  Was he told not to mention certain subjects in his report? 
 
Those are certainly questions we`ll ask him. 
 
MADDOW:  One last question for you on this same front, Mr. Chairman.  It occurs to me when I think about the questions that I have based on reading Mueller`s report, the things that still seem like open questions and things I can tell they looked at it but didn`t seem to state what they thought were the implications of what they found, I imagine that I would get the most out of hearing from Robert Mueller and from his investigators, from the people who were on his team, either from the FBI side or the Justice Department side who were carrying out this investigation with him.  Do you expect to be bringing in Mueller and his team or Mueller alone? 
 
NADLER:  Well, Mueller alone initially, and then McGahn, and presumably others from his team, and other witnesses.  There are a lot of questions we have to ask a lot of people and find out what`s really going on, and to elucidate for the American people what is really going on. 
 
Because the bottom line in this is not a fight between Mueller and the Trump administration or Mueller and Barr.  The bottom line is, does the American people have the right to information with which they can make decisions in governing this as a democratic country?  If you can vote but you have no information, if the information is guarded by the administration and you don`t know what the administration is doing, you don`t know what crimes they`re committing, you don`t know anything, then the vote becomes very hollow. 
 
That`s why this is such a crisis for our democracy, and we have to -- we have to prevail here.  We have never had a president who instructed people to ignore all subpoenas.  And when you ignore a subpoena, you`re ignoring a subpoena not just from Congress, but for information for the American people.  And we`ve never had that before. 
 
And we have to vindicate the right of the American people to this information.  We have to vindicate the fact that the president is not above the law and that he can -- that people can tell -- can testify against him if they have something to testify about. 
 
MADDOW:  Chairman Jerry Nadler of the Judiciary Committee in the House -- sir, you`re in a very, very, very important job always, but particularly in this kind confrontational moment.  Thanks for helping us understand tonight.  I appreciate your time.
 
NADLER:  Thank you. 
 
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