MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript "Robert Mueller testifies tomorrow."
Interview
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MATTHEWS: Thank you, both, Natasha and Joyce, great help legal and journalist. Joining me right now is U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu of California who is on the Judiciary Committee. Thank you, Congressman Lieu. Here is a question for tomorrow, a romantic question, okay. I`m in the business of looking for heroes. Will there be one tomorrow? Will the American people walk away from watching seven hours of television tomorrow and say, you know what, I`m happy about the republic because I found a hero. Will they?
REP. TED LIEU (D-CA): Thank you, Chris, for that question. If you have read the Mueller report or followed these issues, you won`t be very surprised tomorrow. But if you have not read the report, your mind may be blown because Special Counsel Mueller is going to describe facts that many people have not heard of because they`re getting lies from Donald Trump and from Bill Barr. So I think it depends on what knowledge you have coming into this hearing.
MATTHEWS: Well, while a president can`t be accused of a crime while in office, a legion of prosecutors have said that if these offenses committed by the President had been committed by any other human in this country geographically, he`d be facing multiple felony counts. And to that point, Trump bragged today, I can`t believe he said this, he can do anything he wants. Listen to this, Congressman.
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DONALD TRUMP. U.S. PRESIDENT: I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president, but I don`t even talk about that. Because they did a report and there was no obstruction.
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MATTHEWS: I can do anything I want, according to Article 2 of the Constitution. Trump`s assertion he can do whatever he wants is eerily similar to the words of another American President. Here is Richard Nixon.
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RICHARD NIXON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By definition?
NIXON: Exactly.
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MATTHEWS: What do we make of that, Congressman? You`re on the Judiciary Committee. The President says anything he does is not obstruction of justice because he`s head of the executive branch, entitled by that branch, by the Constitutional Article, 2, to do whatever he wants. That`s his reading.
LIEU: History repeats itself. Donald Trump is simply wrong. The whole lesson on Watergate is that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States. And tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee is going to go very methodically over the incidents of obstruction of justice. There`re at least five of them. And after the hearing, the American people are going to know that we have a felon sitting in the White House.
MATTHEWS: Are you confident of Mr. Mueller`s performance qualities? I mean, he`s got the script. Its report. The Mueller report is his script. How does he bring that script alive in a way that the script has in itself? It hasn`t worked. We`re at 20 percent of the country who want impeachment. That report is a lot stronger than that.
LIEU: We`re going to help Special Counsel Mueller get his narrative out, I want to help him get the facts out. I think a lot of people in America may not even know that the President directed former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Special Counsel Mueller, that he then directed McGahn to cover it up and create a fake document. And when that didn`t work, he then directed Corey Lewandowski to tell Jeff Sessions to limit the investigation so it`s no longer into Donald Trump. There are multiple instances of obstruction of justice that many Americans will be hearing for the first time tomorrow.
MATTHEWS: Do you believe that Donald Trump and his people were the American connection to the Russian effort to screw with our elections in 2016, the American connection?
LIEU: So what`s going to come tomorrow out of this hearing and the hearing with Intel are three main goals. First, that the Russians attacked American elections 2016, second, that the Trump campaign embraced that interference, gave them internal polling data, knew interference was going to help Donald Trump, and the third, the President committed multiple acts of the crime of obstruction of justice to interfere with that investigation into the interference.
MATTHEWS: Well, break a leg tomorrow, you and the other members. I hope you get to the truth. I heard the American -- I hope as hell the American people hear all that`s in that report tomorrow night because it will be good for the history of our country going forward, not just looking backward. Thank you so much, U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu of California, member of the House Judiciary Committee, which will be the first to hear the questioning or do the questioning of Mr. Mueller.
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