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The Investigation

"Maybe It's a Game of Chicken"

The Investigation

ABC News

News, Politics

3.6739 Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2019

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of "The Investigation," as Democrats in Congress continue their battle with the Trump White House, former Special Counsel to President Clinton, Jane Sherburne joins the podcast, telling Senior Executive Producer and Co-Host Chris Vlasto that when it comes to how the Trump White House is responding to Congress" "Just saying no...was not something in our lexicon." Using her own experience managing the team that responded to an ethics investigation during President Clinton's first term, Sherburne tells "The Investigation" we could be living through a constitutional crisis if the Trump White House is "really serious about stiffing Congress." Sherburne shares her thoughts on impeachment proceedings -- "there's plenty" -- and the big mistake she thinks House Democrats are making. Senior Congressional Correspondent Mary Bruce also updates on all the latest happenings on Capitol Hill.

Follow Kyra on Twitter @kyraphillips

Follow Chris on Twitter @vlasto

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmosk

Follow John on Twitter @santucci


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-- Start Here: The daily 20-minute news podcast from ABC News. http://bit.ly/2SA62eg

-- Powerhouse Politics: Headliner interviews and in-depth looks at the people and events shaping U.S. politics. http://bit.ly/2SsGwr7

-- FiveThirtyEight Politics: Nate Silver and the FiveThirtyEight team cover the latest in politics, tracking the issues and "game-changers" every week. https://53eig.ht/2RF3eb1

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to another episode of The Investigation.

0:07.0

I'm Chris Vlasto, Senior Executive Producer here at ABC News.

0:11.0

I'm joined by the two lead reporters on the Trump investigation, John Santucci and Matt Mosque.

0:16.0

We're going to be talking later to Jane Sherburn, former special counsel to Bill Clinton.

0:22.6

She was in charge of defending the White House during a fierce congressional investigation 20 years ago.

0:28.6

So she's going to shed some insights on that for us.

0:31.6

But before that, we want to get an update from our senior congressional correspondent, Mary Bruce, about what battles lie ahead here on Capitol Hill.

0:40.2

A brand new analysis in the Washington Post shows the White House is blocking 20 separate congressional

0:45.1

investigations by filing lawsuits, stopping AIDS from testifying, refusing dozens of requests for documents.

0:52.2

Stonewalling on a scale the Democrats say amounts to a constitutional

0:56.0

crisis. Mary, Congress is taking this to a whole new level. Let's hear what Adam Schiff had to say

1:01.4

about this over the weekend. Look, we are going to have to consider other remedies like inherent

1:05.7

contempt where if the courts take too long, we use our own judicial process within the Congress.

1:11.4

What do you think, Mary? Are we in a constitutional crisis?

1:14.5

Well, that's certainly what Democratic leaders think. I mean, you have Nancy Pelosi saying

1:18.8

this is a constitutional crisis. You have the chairman of the Judiciary Committee now saying

1:23.5

that's what he thinks we are in. And they say that because they feel that this administration, according to them, is blatantly stonewalling the request for information.

1:33.0

You see that, you know, top to bottom, the president has made a blanketed point of saying that

1:37.6

they're not going to play ball. They're not going to comply with any request for subpoenas,

1:41.3

anyone that they want to talk to, any documents, that's it. And you see this sort of ratcheting up of the tension between congressional Democrats and the White House to the point that you are at a boiling point. The question then is, what are they going to do about it? And I asked the speaker last week, okay, well, if this is a true constitutional crisis, why then aren't we seeing a march to impeachment? Because

2:02.8

Democrats are kind of stuck in some ways. They don't want to go to impeachment, even though you do

2:09.2

have many even members of the Democratic caucus saying that that needs to be done. But they also want to

...

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