Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. As President Trump
Speaker 1: is demanding to meet the anonymous whistle blower who complained
Speaker 1: about Trump's request that Ukraine investigate his political opponent, how
Speaker 1: Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on the White House to
Speaker 1: cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, and at the Texas Tribune
Speaker 1: Festival in Austin Saturday, Pelosi said that she decided to
Speaker 1: launch the inquiry into the president's call with Ukraine based
Speaker 1: on the facts. People say, you have taken political risk
Speaker 1: doing that. That doesn't matter. That doesn't matter because we
Speaker 1: cannot have a president of the United States undermining his
Speaker 1: oath of office. Joining me A Brad Moss, a partner
Speaker 1: with the law firm Mark Z. The firm represents the
Speaker 1: whistle blower, but Brad has been walled off from that matter.
Speaker 1: So Brad, President Trump has demanded to meet the whistle
Speaker 1: blower and provide and the people who provided him information.
Speaker 1: Is it possible to complete an impeachment inquiry without exposing
Speaker 1: the identity of the whistle blower? Of course, And the
Speaker 1: president here is confusing what would happen in a criminal
Speaker 1: proceeding which he has been immunized from by virtue of
Speaker 1: a d o J opinion that says a sitting president
Speaker 1: camp be indicted from what happens in the impeachment process.
Speaker 1: There is no sixth Amendment right to confront your user
Speaker 1: in the impeachment process. And this is very much, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a standard for Donald Trump, who you know, likes
Speaker 1: to view himself as a street fighter and a counterpuncher.
Speaker 1: He wants to try to intimidate the individuals the side
Speaker 1: of the individual who came forward this particular whistle blower.
Speaker 1: He also wants to intimidate whoever provided information to the whistleblower,
Speaker 1: something that would be a gross abuse of his authority
Speaker 1: and power, because ultimately those individuals work for the executive branch,
Speaker 1: and he's the head of the executive branch. The president
Speaker 1: is going to have to learn the going to have
Speaker 1: to deal with the fact that by virtue of being president,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make him into an autocrat. He has to
Speaker 1: still comply with certain rules, and he's gonna be dealing
Speaker 1: with a separate branch of government, namely Congress. Members of
Speaker 1: the Intelligence Committee and to other committees have scheduled uh
Speaker 1: potentially pivotal closed or interviews this week with past and
Speaker 1: present administration officials. If part of the impeachment inquiry for
Speaker 1: Democrats is to convince Americans, shouldn't they be holding all
Speaker 1: these hearings in public? So it depends on certain circumstances.
Speaker 1: There are There is context in which I can imagine
Speaker 1: some of this can't be done in public, if for
Speaker 1: no other reason than there are interests of national security.
Speaker 1: They have to be protected that the members theeople who
Speaker 1: will vote on impeachment need to know. But that can't
Speaker 1: be discussed in an open setting where other individuals beyond
Speaker 1: the American public would be able to see it. So
Speaker 1: you think about some of the context of some of
Speaker 1: these conversations the President had with foreign leaders, efforts to
Speaker 1: put certain information onto co word classified systems, and the
Speaker 1: details of how that's done. Those are the kind of
Speaker 1: things that ordinarily you can't get out of a govern
Speaker 1: agency if you were to say, sue for that information
Speaker 1: on the Freedom Information Act. You can see why the
Speaker 1: ANCIS would have problems disclosing that in an open congressional hearing.
Speaker 1: I don't anticipate that to be the rule. I expect
Speaker 1: that to be the exception in these in peace proceedings.
Speaker 1: But there is some some context, some detail that might
Speaker 1: not be allowed to be provided to the public. Now,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi has said there's a cover up of the
Speaker 1: cover up, um. But as far as we've heard, is
Speaker 1: there any indication that President Trump was involved in that
Speaker 1: decision to put the transcript of the call, you know,
Speaker 1: into that secret code word access. So so at the moment,
Speaker 1: we don't know the honest answers. We don't know what
Speaker 1: we don't know. We know that the White House lawyers
Speaker 1: and then apparently National Security Council officials were so concerned
Speaker 1: about that call with the Ukrainians, as well as previous
Speaker 1: calls with other foreign leaders, that they had started making
Speaker 1: this a practice in terms of putting these transcripts, which
Speaker 1: are classified but classified at a low level like a
Speaker 1: secret and putting them in a specialized database that is
Speaker 1: meant for some of the nation's most sensitive uh national
Speaker 1: security secrets. At the Coword Classified level and is largeably
Speaker 1: an abuse of that particular system and the protections that affords.
Speaker 1: Whether we're not the President is aware of it, or
Speaker 1: was part of that discussion or you know, provided even
Speaker 1: implicit guidance on that remains to be seen. But in
Speaker 1: the end, he is still the president. They all work
Speaker 1: for him. He ultimately is responsible for the actions not
Speaker 1: only of himself, but for those beneath him and what
Speaker 1: they had to do to try to cover up what
Speaker 1: he was doing. Now, the Democrats have said that they're
Speaker 1: going to try to streamline this impeachment inquiry, They're going
Speaker 1: to try to move it quickly. They're gonna try to
Speaker 1: keep it on on the point. But you have, for example,
Speaker 1: two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, two senior
Speaker 1: Republican senators, are asking the Justice Department for information about
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's interactions with Ukraine officials and whether Ukraine work
Speaker 1: with Democrats in sixteen to get damaging information on President
Speaker 1: Trump's election campaign. So how difficult is it going to
Speaker 1: be to keep the lines clear for Democrats. We'll sure
Speaker 1: there's going to be a fair amount of counter political
Speaker 1: messaging coming from Senate Republicans to say nothing of the
Speaker 1: White House and its media allies, and you had to
Speaker 1: expect that. But the Senate has no controls roll over
Speaker 1: the initial impeachment process. That falls within the exclusive jurisdiction
Speaker 1: of the House. And so the House is going to
Speaker 1: do with thing. They're going to run their hearings and
Speaker 1: they're going to outline the article's impeachment after that, as
Speaker 1: the assume me as the set a majority. Leader Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell said today, if there are articles impeachment voted on
Speaker 1: and they're approved from the House, the Senate will take
Speaker 1: it up. The extent to which Lindsey Graham and Ron
Speaker 1: Johnson try to run counter hearings ultimately will have no
Speaker 1: impact one way or the other on what articles of
Speaker 1: impeachment get voted out of the House. Just a minute here,
Speaker 1: but Brad mcc Senator McConnell also said that, you know,
Speaker 1: as you said on CNBC, I have no choice but
Speaker 1: to take it up. How long you're on it is
Speaker 1: a whole different matter. Is he signally anything there? Am
Speaker 1: I reading too much into it? I mean, I think
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell is hedging his bets here to trying to
Speaker 1: see how far things go. I don't think he's going
Speaker 1: to try to sacrifice his own political career. He you know,
Speaker 1: his relections on the line. I think we'll have to
Speaker 1: wait as present, on which I'm gonna say, we'll wait
Speaker 1: and see what happens. All right, Thanks so much, Brad.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be doing a lot of waiting in the
Speaker 1: next few months. That's Brad Moss. He's a partner at
Speaker 1: Mark Say. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg