MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Bahamas."

Interview

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HAYES: Good evening from New York I`m Chris Hayes. It was even worse than we thought. We all watched as the president appeared to descend into a kind of madness with a stunt so bizarre it`s been dubbed Sharpie Gate. At the time it just looked like you know, an incredibly bullheaded narcissist who`s so diluted and prideful that he just can`t admit he`s wrong. But the thing you have to remember about this individual is that he is the head of the United States federal government and that matters. It matters to millions of Americans where a hurricane goes. So when Donald Trump tweeted Alabama will most likely be hit much harder than anticipated about incoming Hurricane Dorian, the Washington Post reports that the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service got a flurry of calls into their office. And why wouldn`t they? The people of Alabama, a vast majority of whom support President Trump fairly believed that the president was warning them that a hurricane was heading towards them. In order to convey accurate information to the people of Alabama so they didn`t start doing things like boarding their windows or evacuating or abandoning their pets, the Birmingham Weather Service office put out a statement strongly contradicting the president in the interest of the citizens because that was the independent truth. And that action started a domino effect that led to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reportedly threatening to fire people at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, a report he denies. NOAA then putting out an unsigned statement supporting the President`s claim undermining its weather experts. Let me think about this. This is a present saying that what the weather is even when that`s not the weather. We`re either a country that has an independent weather service or we are living in the kind of country in which the great leader tells us what the weather is the truth the front of our eyes be damned. It`s one or the other. When you think about the scale the federal government, the whims of the man on top and the incentives that he creates, the possibility for abuse and corruption are so broad even when petty and trivial it`s hard to get your head around it. Yesterday, we learned that the Air Force has ordered an investigation into Airmen staying at Trump`s Scotland hotel on the public dime. The grand scheme of things not a ton of money but why are we paying for airmen to stay at Trump`s hotel? They shouldn`t stay in Trump`s hotel. they shouldn`t be public dollars spent on the President`s businesses end of story. We just saw the Vice President direct public money to the President`s Ireland hotel. The House Oversight Committee is now looking into that. Right now we have no idea how much public money has been spent at Trump properties. The federal government is to operate with some degree of integrity and independence from the winds of the man on top and President Trump is undermining and corroding that at every turn. The core concerns the Founders have of the office of the presidency were abuse of power and corruption. Those are still the core concerns and we have so much evidence of both, everything from obstructing justice, directing public funds into his own pocket. Today, Congress returned from August Recess and the House Judiciary Committee announced it will vote this week on procedure is for an impeachment investigation. The first things the committee says it is investigating are "alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump, his associates, and members of his administration. And joining me now, one of the Congresspeople leading this impeachment inquiry Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a number of the both the Judiciary and Oversight Committees. Congressman, maybe you can explain to us what this vote is and what these procedures mean.

RASKIN: Well, we`re voting on procedures that formalize the impeachment investigation. It gives the chairman of the committee the power to denote a particular hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry and it also gives him the power to say the particular subcommittee hearing is part of the general impeachment inquiry. And other than that, the big part that I took away from it is that after all of the members conduct their traditional five-minute questioning, both the Democrats and the Republicans would have a half-hour more of questioning by staff available. So it formalizes what we`re doing as we enter into a new season here.

HAYES: OK. So that -- so that means there`s going to be a full house on that? Is this right?

RASKIN: No, this is just in the Judiciary Committee.

HAYES: Just in the committee. So the committee is going to vote on this. It`s going to formalize these procedures. Is it your understanding at the conclusion of that vote there will formally in a constitutional sense be an impeachment inquiry underway?

RASKIN: Well, look, the Constitution doesn`t define when an impeachment inquiry is underway.

HAYES: No, I know that, but I`m asking you.

RASKIN: Well, look, I think we`re in it now but I think it`s great that the committee will formalize it with this procedure. But look, we`re being hit on a daily basis inundated with new high crimes and misdemeanors. The stuff that we found out about the Vice President`s trip to Ireland, about the redirection of the you know the Air Force crews to go to the Trump Hotel in Scotland, that`s just amazing stuff. The President has converted the government of the United States into an instrument of self- enrichment. And this is the original sin of the Trump administration. It was the main thing that the framers were trying to prevent. They did not want the government being used as a for-profit enterprise by the President.

HAYES: What is the timeline here? I want to play for you a little bit of your colleague Jerry Nadler who`s the chair of this can be talking about his understanding of the Trump administration`s view of the timeline on this and then get your response to it. Take a listen.

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REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): Well, the President clearly is trying to run out the clock. The President has been -- said he would deny all subpoenas -- possible subpoenas. That was article three of the Nixon impeachment that the President opposed subpoenas, and that Nixon wasn`t foolish enough to say in advances he`s going to oppose all subpoenas. That itself I think is a high-crime and misdemeanor under the Constitution that you`re obstructing the work of Congress in investigating.

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HAYES: How do you get around that and what is the timeline here?

RASKIN: Well, in an ordinary presidential administration, 16 months left to go would be something like very near the end of the you know, fourth quarter, but in Trump time that`s an eternity. Can you imagine the damage that he can inflict on the country in the next 16 months? And I think that more and more of our colleagues have come around to the view that we need to be on a constitutional high alert. We need every tool in the constitutional toolkit on the table. And so we`re going to -- you know, the problem with Trump, of course, is that there are too many impeachable offenses. With Bill Clinton, they basically had one thing on the guy. He lied about sex. With Donald Trump, we`re just overwhelmed with the domestic emoluments clause, the foreign government emoluments clause, the federal election campaign finance violations, and so on.

HAYES: So Byron York is a conservative reporter and pundit who was trying to make the case that because there`s a scope now that`s wide, it includes the look into the President`s involvement in the illegal conspiracy to hide those hush money payments as well as other things, that this is a tacit acknowledgment the Mueller report itself is not sufficient for the beginning of an impeachment inquiry. What`s your response to that?

RASKIN: I mean, I think that`s totally wrong. I mean there were dozens of criminal indictments that came out of the Mueller investigation. There were seven guilty pleas and criminal convictions. And we learned of nine or ten different episodes of presidential obstruction. It`s just that that`s a very narrow snapshot of all of the lawlessness taking place in the Trump administration and it happens to be one that is not the most intuitive to the public. I think that the public understands that the president is essentially a businessman, be it a failed and corrupt businessman, but that`s what he is. And he has turned the government into a for-profit enterprise and he`s eluding the assets of the people. Every time that they go down to Mar-a-Lago, it`s costing the federal taxpayers $75,000 or $100,000 for the FBI, and the Secret Service, and the Department of Defense and so on going right into the coffers of the Trump industry. And that is precisely what the Founders warned us against. And that`s why they said in that case, Congress can`t even approve of it. In the case of foreign government payments, theoretically we could approve of it but I hope within the next few weeks we will formally disapprove of every foreign government payment he`s pocketed.

HAYES: That`s very interesting. Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you so much.

RASKIN: Thanks for having me.

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