MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "The real dangers of Trump's racist rhetoric."

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

HAYES: House Democrats yesterday continued the steady as she goes strategy for trying to rein in a lawless president running around inciting mobs. The House voted yesterday to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and criminal contempt for failure to comply with subpoenas related to their census probe. Also yesterday a majority of Democrats joined all the Republicans in voting down a resolution to impeach President Trump over his racist comments from this week. And while the Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally testifying next week, a lot of people are looking around and seeing mostly stalled or slow going attempts at oversight in Congress and a lawless president inciting a mob and wondering what the Democratic majority is actually doing to check Donald Trump. Here`s someone who could answer that question. Joining me now Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be appearing before next week. Let`s talk about pace first of all, right. I think you probably understand why people feel impatient particularly when they see the scene play out that we saw him last night. What`s your -- what`s your elevator pitch to folks about what is essentially I think a kind of tortoise and hare approach, a sort of scrupulous collection of the facts?

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): Well, we have no choice. We have to do what we`re doing. We have never -- no Congress in history has faced the administration that simply ignored all subpoenas and all the requests for information.

HAYES: Am I right they still have just ignored everything? Have they turned anything over to the Judiciary Committee?

NADLER: They have turned over some stuff.

HAYES: They have.

NADLER: But we call in witnesses and they say don`t appear, we call in witnesses and they say they have absolute immunity, don`t answer anything about anything that you saw or heard or said during the -- during the administration. This claim of absolute immunity is nonsense. We have to break it. So we`re having the Mueller hearing next week in which we will show -- I mean first of all, the President, and the Attorney General, and the right-wing media have been lying about what was in the Mueller report no collusion, no obstruction which was simply not true. We have to show the American people what was there. The special counsel indicted 37 individuals for breaking the law with respect to interfering the election. He showed ten instances of obstruction of justice by the president. He showed instance after instance of the president lying to the American people are instructing other people to lie to the American people with investigators. This has to come out so that people understand it and so we can go on from there. And we will be going into court and it`s been frustrating how slow it is getting into court but we have the House Counsel has got to do a number of them you know, the Deutsche Bank case, the Mazars case, the tax case. We`ll be going to court very shortly on enforcing the McGahn -- on getting a grand jury material and enforcing the McGahn --

HAYES: Subpoena.

NADLER: -- subpoena, yes, subpoena. And since the McGahn subpoena -- their opposition to it, their withstanding of it used the exact same legal theories which are nonsense in my opinion as they do in every other one, when we break that, that`ll break the log jam.

HAYES: I`ve seen some people argue that partly because the legal theories they`ve used to fight the subpoenas have to do with the legislative purpose that if you were doing this in pursuit of an impeachment inquiry, you would be on firmer constitutional ground because you`re clearly acting under an enumerated constitutional power given solely to the Congress. What do you think about that legal argument?

NADLER: It`s true. It`s true to some extent that --

HAYES: You would have a stronger case in the courts?

NADLER: Somewhat. The courts have held that our ability to investigate is at it`s -- is at its zenith when we`re -- when we`re doing an impeachment. We can get 60 information in a judicial proceeding. Impeachment has been held to be a judicial proceeding or a part of a judicial proceeding. Yes that is -- that is valid.

HAYES: You wrote a letter to Hope Hicks today. Hope Hicks, I believe, told you in the testimony for Judiciary Committee that she had no knowledge of the hush-money payments. There`s some documents unsealed today in the Michael Cohen case we`re going to cover in a little bit that suggests it`s possible she did. Do you think she lied to you?

NADLER: Well, it certainly appears she may have. We wrote -- we wrote a letter to her, we released that today inviting her back to clarify her testimony because there certainly seems to be evidence that she may not have told us the truth.

HAYES: You said I would expect you to clarify this matter before the committee in very short order but no later than August 15th. Do you expect some written testimony from her or for her to appear before your committee again?

NADLER: I don`t know which one. I want to -- I want to ask what your expectation is for Robert Mueller. There`s a sort of -- there`s a sort of strange situation in which he clearly doesn`t want to do this although he`s--

NADLER: He does not.

HAYES: He does not. And he`s a good soldier. I mean, he`s not going to defy a subpoena and he`s not -- so he`s going to come there. So how do you approach it given that your knowledge that he doesn`t want to be there?

NADLER: We will ask questions designed to elicit the information designed to get the information out there that we want, designed to show what his report found that is at odds with what the administration and the Attorney General have been -- have been saying. As I said, to show that the ten instances of obstruction of justice by the President, to show the repeated times where the president instructs people to lie to the American people or to Congress.

HAYES: So you want him to tell you the report in front of the cameras and the American people.

NADLER: To a large extent. Hopefully will go a little further, but yes.

HAYES: Do you think you can get him outside the four corners of the report?

NADLER: I don`t know. But the key is to get this there`s been -- from the-- from before the report was released, when Barr gave that bogus summary the report, there`s been a deliberate campaign of lying and disinformation and -- as to what`s in the report and it`s of supreme importance that people understand what we`re dealing with and we can go on from there. I think it changes the ground that we`re standing on.

HAYES: This is a weird process question but it`s my final one. Have you figure out a way to -- like are you pulling your time in any way, are you making sure that you`re working together on the questioning here?

NADLER: Yes.

HAYES: You are?

NADLER: Very much so.

HAYES: OK. That`s good to hear. Congressman Jerry Nadler, thank you for being here.

NADLER: You`re welcome.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source