House Judiciary chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that his committee will be issuing document requests on Monday to dozens of individuals.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Back in 1974 the House committees were able to get access to the grand jury evidence against Richard Nixon. Can you get that evidence in this case?
REP. JERRY NADLER: Maybe, our lawyers are – we will do everything we can to get that evidence, we’ll do everything we can to get whatever evidence. We are starting this investigation, we will – tomorrow we will be issuing document requests to over 60 different people and individuals from the White House, the – to the Department of Justice, Donald Trump Jr., Alan Weisselberg to begin investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So that would include John Kelly, the former chief of staff, Don McGahn the former White House counsel?
NADLER: I would imagine, I mean I don’t have the list in front of me, but we will be releasing the list tomorrow but over – over 60 entities and people.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How about if Robert Mueller comes back and says definitively we find no collusion by President Trump? Is that a conclusion you’ll accept?
NADLER: Well we’d want to see the evidence behind that and see the validity of that and we can agree to disagree. But this investigation goes far beyond collusion. We’ve seen all the Democratic norms that we depend on for Democratic government attacked by the administration.
We’ve seen attacks on the freedom of the press, the press called the enemy of the people, we’ve seen attacks on the Department of Justice, attacks on the FBI, attacks on – on judges. All of these are very corrosive to liberty and to the proper functioning of government and to our constitutional system.
All this has to be looked at and the facts laid out to the American people.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think the president obstructed justice?
NADLER: Yes, I do. It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice. It’s very clear – 1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a witch hunt, he tried to – he fired – he tried to protect Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired Comey in order to stop the Russian thing, as he told NBC News. He’s threatened – he’s intimidated witnesses. In public.
STEPHANOPOULOS: If that’s the case, then is the decision not to pursue impeachment right now simply political? If you believe he obstructed justice?
NADLER: No. We have to – we have to do the investigations and get all this. We do not now have the evidence all sorted out and everything to do – to do an impeachment. Before you impeach somebody, you have to persuade the American public that it ought to happen. You have to persuade enough of the – of the opposition party voters, Trump voters, that you’re not just trying to …
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s a very high bar.
NADLER: Yeah. It is a very high bar. The United States trying to steal the (inaudible) to reverse the results of the last election. We may or may not get there. But what we have to do is protect the rule of law.
Source: Real Clear Politics
