MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: "Interview with Rep. Raskin"
Interview
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O`DONNELL: Today`s "New York Times" carried former Senate staffer, Mark Schmitt`s op-ed piece about, quote, "the extreme and unprecedented corruption of Mr. Trump and his allies." And right on cue, Mr. Trump and his allies provide yet another example. The Vice President of the United States visits Ireland and decides to sleep on the west coast of Ireland and travel all the way across the country for his meetings with Irish government officials in the Irish capital of Dublin. Fly all the way across the country for the meetings. Normally, when the Vice President of the United States goes to Dublin, he stays in Dublin, as Joe Biden did at the Phoenix Park Hotel when he was Vice President. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first Irish Catholic President, and he became the first President of the United States to visit Ireland, and he stayed in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. Former President Ulysses S. Grant visited Ireland in 1879 after leaving the White House, and he stayed in the Shelbourne Hotel. Former President Bill Clinton stayed in the Shelbourne Hotel when he went to Ireland in 2010. Michelle Obama stayed in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin with her children when she was first lady. If you glance at the display in the Shelbourne lobby about notable guests who have stayed there, it seems every movie star who has ever been to Dublin stayed at the Shelbourne at some point. But Mike Pence says he and his entourage could not stay at the Shelbourne because they needed a place big enough, quote, "to accommodate the unique footprint that comes with our security detail." How much bigger a footprint is that than the last Vice President`s footprint? The Shelbourne has 265 rooms, but Mike Pence decided to stay at a hotel on the west coast of Ireland owned by Donald Trump that has about 40 fewer rooms. The Vice President`s Chief of Staff told reporters that the choice of the Trump hotel was suggested by President Trump himself. That would be like the President of Ireland deciding to sleep in Princeton, New Jersey while on an official visit to Washington, D.C. Princeton, New Jersey is exactly the same distance from Washington as the Trump hotel is from Dublin, about 180 miles. And it`s not just ridiculous. At least one constitutional scholar believes that this is illegal. Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe tweeted, "Getting Pence and team to stay at the Trump property on Ireland`s west coast and commute daily to and from the meetings on Ireland`s east coast, all to line Trump`s pocket, isn`t just a waste of tax dollars. It violates the Article II Domestic Emoluments Clause." The Domestic Emoluments Clause of the Constitution says "The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them." Professor Tribe argues that the income Donald Trump is receiving at his hotel from the Pence visit, which is paid by the United States Treasury, is an emolument from the United States to Donald Trump. Black`s Law Dictionary defines an emolument as "an advantage, profit, or gain received as a result of one`s employment or one`s holding of office." Today, NBC News is reporting that the House Judiciary Committee plans to hold public hearings on President Trump`s, quote, "alleged role in hush-money payments to two women during the 2016 election, a committee aide familiar with the matter told NBC News." A committee aide said that the committee wants to, quote, "highlight a case in which they believe prosecutors would have enough evidence to charge trump with a crime if not for the Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting President." Joining the discussion now is a Democratic Congressman, Jamie Raskin from Maryland. He`s a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee. Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Congressman Raskin.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Delighted to be with you.
O`DONNELL: I want to start with Professor Tribe`s view of this emoluments situation involving Mike Pence. And let`s - let`s do full disclosure for the audience that you are a former student of Professor Tribe`s at Harvard Law School. You are yourself a constitutional scholar. What do you make of the emolument intersection with Mike Pence staying at Donald Trump`s hotel in Ireland?
RASKIN: Well, this has been the original sin of the Trump presidency. They`ve been using the White House as a money-making instrument for the President and his family and his business. It`s a for-profit enterprise that they`ve got going. And Professor Tribe is right. And I say that not just because I hold him in very high regard and esteem, but the language of the Domestic Emoluments Clause is clear. You`re limited to your salary in office. Look, before the framers wrote the Constitution, it was all monarchy. And all of the kings and princes ran their governments as money-making operations. They were trying to make as much as they could. They wanted to continue to accumulate wealth. Our framers wanted our President to be a servant of the Congress and the people who takes care that the laws are faithfully executed. You don`t go into that in order to make money while you`re in office. You`re limited to your salary. It can`t be increased. It can`t be decreased. And you cannot take other money from the government. Every time they go to Mar-a-Lago, the Secret Service, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the White House officials going are spending 50, 75, $100,000 every weekend. And he spent one out of three days at Mar-a-Lago or another Trump property. Imagine, Lawrence, if the Obamas, rather than spending two weeks out of the year in Martha`s Vineyard, spent four months out of the year at Martha`s Vineyard and everybody who went from the government had a stay at the Michelle and Barack Obama hotel in Martha`s Vineyard. I mean, the Republicans would be staging sit-in strikes demanding impeachment of the President for that rip-off of the taxpayers, and yet that`s what they`re trying to get everybody conditioned to that it`s OK for Trump just to take the taxpayers for a ride every weekend.
O`DONNELL: And we have the Vice President`s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, saying that it wasn`t - he`s asked, did the President ask the Vice President to stay at the property? He says it wasn`t a request, like a command, but I think it was a suggestion. So that`s a suggestion that you pay me money, that you get the United States government to pay me money for your trip to Ireland.
RASKIN: Right. Well, he is both the spender of the government`s money there and the receiver of the government`s money there, as the owner of the Trump hotel. And that`s what`s been going on at the Trump hotel in Washington, where all the foreign governments go and where they also spend a lot of U.S. government money. That`s why I call the Trump hotel the Washington emolument. It should be a stop on the tour buses where they point it out to all the tourists and explain what the emoluments clauses are all about.
O`DONNELL: Congressman, when Michael Cohen`s case became public and the indictment came out and Michael Cohen pled guilty to it, it seemed to me that what we were looking at in the federal indictment was an obvious article of impeachment because the federal indictment said that Michael Cohen committed his crimes in paying off Stormy Daniels and the other woman in order to hide their stories during the campaign as a conspiracy against the United States. And it said that he committed those crimes at the direction of Donald Trump. And that just seemed to me right there as the strongest impeachment case I`ve ever seen, right there made by federal prosecutors. That seems to be what your committee, Judiciary Committee, is now going to bring out in public testimony.
RASKIN: Yes. It`s an open and shut case, and obviously we`ve had to wait for the other federal prosecutors to do their thing with the witnesses and the facts. And now it`s our turn. But look, it`s very clear what happened from Michael Cohen`s testimony, from the documentary evidence like the cancelled checks. The AMI group, the "National Enquirer" newspaper, gave $150,000 to Karen McDougal as hush money for her to remain silent about her affair with the President, which she wanted to talk about. And then Donald Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen $130,000 for money that he had paid to Stephanie Clifford, Stormy Daniels, for her silence about her story about the President. These are illegal corporate contributions, illegal conduit contributions. They are contributions 30 or 40 times above the federal max, and they are also unreported contributions. So if they were committed deliberately, which almost certainly they were, that is with consciousness of guilt and an attempt to circumvent the law, then they are felony crimes, too. So this really is a conspiracy, and the President is at the heart of the conspiracy. And of course, the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for far less. They impeached him for telling one lie about an affair, and here we have multiple campaign finance felonies committed in pursuit of a whole series of lies about affairs.
O`DONNELL: Who was on your witness list for this testimony?
RASKIN: Well, the witness list has not been drawn up yet, but the key players are known. From AMI, Mr. Pecker, and Michael Cohen obviously was involved in this, and the recipients of the hush money payoffs. So that would be a good starting place, but there are other people who were involved in it.
O`DONNELL: Jamie Raskin - Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
RASKIN: Delighted to be with you.
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