MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "House Committees subpoena Sec of State Pompeo."

Interview

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HAYES: Congressman Denny Heck, Congresswoman Terri Sewell, thank you both. Joining me for more on the implications of the whistleblower complaint, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, members of both the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee, and someone who has been thinking a lot about impeachment and the constitutional duty. In the context of high crimes and misdemeanors, I want you to respond to people who say well, this was referred for criminal complaint to DOJ and they found nothing to prosecute here, and it`s not illegal for the president to do this, so why are you impeaching him?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, that`s an argument about the character of the Department of Justice. But the amazing thing about this episode, Chris, is that the whole country understands precisely what happened. And I`ll just try to improve a little bit on my friend Denny Heck`s formulation. I think there was a shakedown of the president of Ukraine to get him to turn dirt over to Donald Trump about political opponents. Then, there was a sellout of the American people, our Constitution, our 2020 election and his oath of office. And then there was a cover-up of the whole thing as they decided to put the records in a lockdown mode where as you point out there apparently or some other interesting documents hiding in there. And that kind of reminded me of the check off dictum that if a document or some kind of prop appears in act one of a play, you`re going to get to see what it`s all about that in act three of the play, it`s going to come live. So we`re going to find out what`s in there.

HAYES: Well, that -- yes, that`s my next question. I mean, so there`s a lot. Look, here`s what the frontier seemed to me. There are many people implicated and documents implicated by the whistleblower complaint that seemed necessary to extract to get to the bottom of all this. Are you going to get to talk to them and see the documents? And if they try to block you, what will you do?

RASKIN: Well, this is in the intelligence committee which has been doing a superb job this week ferreting out all of this information. And it`s true as Congresswoman Sewell said that there was a statute which compelled the whistleblower`s complaint to be turned over within seven days. But the politics of this situation have shifted dramatically from where it was say for example during the Mueller report. For one thing, the president is the president, he`s not a candidate. For another thing, he wasn`t using underlings, he was engaged in all of the attempts to shake down Ukraine himself. And third of all, he`s not running around saying, no collusion. He was bragging about it before he realized his mistake. So the law students learn in their first year a Latin phrase, res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself. I think the whole country understands the grievous damage that Trump is already inflicted on us. Now, the Intelligence Committee will go forward to call in certain key other witnesses, I suppose, I imagine, in order to flesh out the story more. They will try to get that complete word by word verbatim transcription of the phone call. But there`s not much more that we need, Chris. America needs action to impeach this most impeachable president. He`s guilty of very serious high crimes and misdemeanors it looks like, and the people have seen enough. When he today went after the whistleblower and called him a spy and is likened him to a traitor or someone betraying his country, it`s absolutely scandalous it and outrageous. A whistleblower in America is someone who tells the truth about people who have power who are committing crimes against the people.

HAYES: So final question. You talked about the Intelligence Committee and the reporting indicates and I think Hakeem Jeffries has said this, the Intelligence Committee will be running point on this particularly on this line of inquiry. You said that America wants to move quickly on this. By which I mean, I understand you mean that you and your colleagues want to move quickly on this. Does that mean that you view this the facts we have as enough to draft articles of impeachment and also the four corners of what the impeachment proceedings will be?

RASKIN: Absolutely. I mean, for the first time since we started talking about impeachment after the Mueller report, the polls are showing that a majority of Americans favor impeachment and have seen enough. So I think we`re moving very dramatically in that direction. We have a president who has converted his office into an instrument of private commercial gain, private political purposes, and the whole administration is at issue of corruption. There`s no agenda there. We`re trying to get real public policy done on a universal background check, we get nothing from the Republicans. We`re trying to lower prescription drug prices for the American people, we got nothing from the Republicans. They`re spending all of their time feathering their own nests, shaking down foreign dictators and despots who are their best friends, and ripping off the American taxpayer. And so that`s why we have a constitution, and that`s why the Founders to make sure that it was Congress that could impeach the president, the President cannot impeach Congress. Article one, the branch of the people is standing up and we`re not going to tolerate this anymore.

HAYES: All right, Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much.

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