Daniel Goldman Calls For A Criminal Investigation Into Trump | MSNBC

we cannot leave the violence of january 6th and its causes uninvestigated the american people deserve the full and open testimony of every person with knowledge of the planning and preparation for january sixth if those responsible are not held accountable and if congress does not act responsibly this will remain a cancer on our constitutional republic undermining the peaceful transfer of power at the heart of our democratic system we will face the threat of more violence in the months to come and another january sixth every four years and get much clearer than that that was republican congresswoman liz cheney displaying her now trademark moral clarity that the vast majority of her republican colleagues seem to lack and warning there in that clip that without accountability for those who incited the insurrection there will be another january sex in the days and months since the january 6 insurrection at which point it was already clear that donald trump had abused his power and betrayed his oath of office by inciting a deadly insurrection we have seen a steady stream of revelations that show trump's campaign saw that trump saw it trump campaigned his own government to toss out overturn the results of an election he clearly lost we see it for what it was a desperate push to cling to power and use the levers of government to do so just a few days ago his final attorney general a man named jeffrey rosen testified before congress for seven hours about a steady pressure campaign waged against him and his team to cajole the justice department into declaring the 2020 election result fraudulent and corrupt all of it has led our next guest to say that the investigation by the january 6th select committee is not enough and then it's time for a criminal investigation into you know who the disgrace twice impeached ex-president donald j trump let's bring into our conversation dan goldman he served as lead counsel for the democrats during trump's first impeachment as well as a former assistant u.s attorney for the southern district of new york lucky for us he's currently an msnbc legal analyst i have thought so much about the two impeachments i covered them i covered them as you know all day both of them for their entireties and i've spent a lot of time wondering if john bolton had come and testified in full view of all the republican members of the senate if the first impeachment might have ended differently that you led as lead counsel and i wondered reading about the seven hours of testimony that mr rosen gave on saturday to the senate judiciary committee the second impeachment might have ended differently but the truth is donald trump was impeached and there were bipartisan votes for conviction in both cases but they came up short you come at this at a different sort of viewpoint as a prosecutor and you think it's time for criminal investigation and possibly prosecution of him explain well i think it's essential to do both i think congress needs to take a very close look at what happened because congress can and should pass laws that provide narrower guard rails on our elected officials so that this can't happen again that's part of the reason why the two voting rights laws are so important to make sure that there isn't voter suppression and not only that that elected officials are not empowered to overturn the will of the people that's one thing but there are many adam schiff has a protect democracy act which has a lot of reforms in the post-trump world but none of them go in those reforms go to what occurred on january 6th and perhaps even more importantly what occurred in the lead-up to january 6th so it's not an either or it's that both need to happen but what is becoming clear is that donald trump was not on the outside looking in while some domestic violent extremists who supported him were concocting this plan to raid the capital no he was at the front of this push and this effort to reverse the election results and what we're starting to see is the drip drip drip of all of his efforts to do it and in particular and perhaps most egregious to date because we will find more but to date is what he tried to do with the department of justice which was to take an independent agency traditionally independent and use it as his political legal arm to undermine the confidence in the election so that he knowing of course that there was no truth to it but so that he could use it for corrupt purposes that requires a deeper criminal investigation into not only donald trump but all those under him it's not enough to go after the oath keepers the three percenters and other domestic violent extremists which is where the january 6th criminal investigation has focused it must continue until it determines what the root causes of january 6 were as well do we know that it isn't happening no it very well could be um and it probably is i would assume it is and a lot of these revelations have come very recently in part because the department of justice determined that jeffrey rosen and five others were not bound by limitations of executive privilege so they could testify so that's all happened within the last two weeks so it's quite possible that the criminal investigation does include this i would caution though that if i were a prosecutor i would not be thrilled for a witness a key witness to be providing testimony to multiple other agencies or departments such as the department of justice ig ig's office or the senate judiciary committee and not that they not that he can't but it's just from a prosecution prosecutor's standpoint you don't want to have so many inconsistent statements that are bound to occur when you have multiple times testifying under oath or not but you know perhaps this is a bigger issue and the senate judiciary needs to hear from him the department of justice needs to analyze its own regulations and how its own employees behave but it's entirely possible that it's ongoing and we just don't know about it that would be the usual course of course but in this day and age of leaks such as the confidential ig investigation and we know that rosen spoke to the ig's office which should be kept confidential the fact that we don't know that it's part of the criminal investigation is a little bit concerning for those who believe there should be a criminal investigation so you have done this um lisa monaco has done this that the deputy attorney general and i and correct me if i'm wrong but all investigations are sort of housed under her right is that the way it works yes she she oversees the day-to-day operations of the department of justice so in office like the one you worked in sdny if they we think it would be more likely that the washington office would be doing this investigation let's take it from the other side dangelman how could they not now be if they're following the evidence if a federal investigation just follows the evidentiary sort of guidelines and takes a criminal investigation where it leads we've seen the defendants say they were there because donald trump told them to go there they the ones who assaulted police said they were there because trump invited them there and the police officers were in their way i mean how how take it from the other how could they not have followed that evidence to donald trump's doorstep well a lot of it is perception and you know what donald trump's intent was is different well i shouldn't say is different but could be different from how someone else interprets what he was doing it's a high bar to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt with admissible evidence his statements on january 6 certainly help but the types of efforts to coerce department of justice officials in advance of january 6 reveal a lot about his intent and so those that type of evidence now starts to move this investigation from a focus on domestic violent extremism which if we're going to get technical with the department of justice would be housed under the national security division a public corruption investigation a criminal investigation would be housed under a different division of the department of justice which is the criminal division and so at some point the public integrity section within the criminal division will need to pair up with the u.s attorney's office in washington d.c which is running the january 6th investigation because at some point this goes beyond national security issues domestic violent extremism and it goes into public corruption and efforts to incite an insurrection and potentially and most seriously uh seditious conspiracy so i i have one more question about intent because we were you know the the proverbial sort of dog chasing his tail and trying to understand why robert mueller never interviewed donald trump but then explaining that robert mueller could never prove intent because he didn't interview donald trump but he never asked for an interview with donald trump so we never understood really why they couldn't answer the question of intent but it was never clear they saw an interview to understand his intent in this case it seems that what is coming out is clear intent just declare the election corrupt and leave the rest to me and my our congressman you've got the whole tape an hour and 30 minutes with ravensburger where he tells him to find 11 780 votes there's still evidence emerging about contacts with other state election officials the intent is is staring all of us in the face isn't it well that's how an ordinary prosecution would uh prove intent it's not usually through uh interviewing a witness or putting them in the grand jury it is usually based on statements made by the defendant to other witnesses which are admissible in court and what we're learning over these last couple weeks is is remarkable we have that recording but a little and you you identified this last week nicole a little uh recognized little tidbit from the washington post is that donald trump called over to the department of justice nearly every day toward the end of december and early january so we're aware of the notes that richard donahue took of one conversation but we don't know everything that donald trump was doing himself we don't know what mark met what conversations mark meadows was having at the behest of donald trump so there's a lot that we don't know that would likely be helpful to prove intent and that's the traditional way of proving intent it's not through grand jury testimony or the prosecutor interviewing the defendant it is from statements made by the putative defendant to other witnesses who would testify to them [Music] foreign

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 660,159

Keywords: Nicolle Wallace

Id: jGytx5Qe_Ec

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/absumo]

If only a lot of people had been saying this from the start and actually acting on it...

We are WAY past time to start this.

Allowing them to just get away with it will prompt them to do it again. Or, someone who is not a feeble moron will get it done. Their entire party has done nothing but lay the ground work for the next one to succeed.