The politics of the battle of presidential power vs. legislative oversight

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The politics of the battle of presidential power vs. legislative oversight

President Trump vows to fight congressional Democrats' subpoenas; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," April 24, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: The subpoena is ridiculous. We have been -- I have been the most transparent president and administration in the history of our country by far. We're fighting all the subpoenas.

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS, D-MD, CHAIRMAN, HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: This administration has done everything in its power and used every means necessary to block the Congress from getting the information that we need to do our job. Not only are they blocking witnesses from coming forward, Joy, but they have not given us one document upon our request.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, HOST: Well, the battle is being waged between the president and Congress about the subpoenas, who is going to testify, really other things in the investigations. The president getting more detailed with the "Washington Post." "There is no reason to go any further, especially in Congress where it's very partisan, obviously very partisan. I don't want people testifying to a party because that is what they're doing if they do this. I allowed my lawyers and all the people to go and testify to Mueller. They testified for so many hours. They have all that information that's been given. I could have taken the absolute opposite route."

We'll start there with our panel, Jason Riley, "Wall Street Journal" columnist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and Charles Lane, opinion writer for "The Washington Post." OK, Jason, thoughts?

JASON RILEY, "WALL STREET JOURNAL" COLUMNIST: I think the president has it right here, Bret. This is not about more transparency or a search for the truth. This is about keeping this political narrative alive for the 2020 campaign. More redactions or testimony from Don McGahn is not going to change anyone's mind. If you believe that the Trump administration was conspiring with Russia to steal the election, an unredacted Mueller report is not going to change your mind. If you believe that Trump wanting to fire Mueller is evidence of an obstruction of justice, Don McGahn's testimony is not going to change your mind. This is political theater, and I think Trump understands that.

BAIER: The theater is ratcheting up, though. Here is Chairman Cummings again on the next moves.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUMMINGS: We will hold a vote of our committee shortly to hold him in contempt, and then we will check with House counsel, Congressional counsel, to see where we go from there. But the fact is that the Republicans really do need to cooperate with us to make sure this president does not trample on the Constitution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: So this battle is going to last a while it seems, Chuck, and potentially get you closer and closer to Election Day.

CHARLES LANE, OPINION WRITER, "WASHINGTON POST": I sort of have a feeling of deja vu watching all of this because it reminds me how the Republicans handled Eric Holder. And that brings me to the point about the partisanship of this, which is of course Congressional oversight is partisan. It always has been and kind of always will be. And the question is, does the president nevertheless have some sort of legal right to resist it?

And what's often happened in the past before things got really partisan was that instead of issuing a subpoena, they'd work something out between the White House and Capitol Hill even across party lines. That thing is all broken down now. There is no good faith whatsoever.

I do think that the Democrats in their own minds feel that this constant investigation is actually the more moderate approach because the alternative is impeachment. And therefore, I don't think there is any way they are going to let go of it.

BAIER: Hillary Clinton is weighing in, a new op-ed in which she says Mueller documented a serious crime against all Americans. Here is how to respond. She goes on saying, Mollie, there should be an independent bipartisan commission. They should have substantive hearings. Thoughts?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": Well, Hillary Clinton is a gift that keeps giving. I think this is a woman who managed to avoid being indicted for breaking the law when James Comey handled her investigation that certain way. And now she thinks that she might be the person to weigh in on what to do about Donald Trump.

I think it's worth taking a step back and remembering that this entire crazy theory that Donald Trump was an agent of Putin was secretly bought and paid for, that was an information campaign secretly bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton. She hired a foreign spy that sourced his information to the Kremlin. This is not a woman who should be talking about Donald Trump and Russia.

Also, I think she might be a little bit worried about how when people start investigating more how this crazy theory about Russia collusion got started that she will be in the hot seat. But this is a woman who should just be thankful that she managed to escape from breaking the law without being indicted. She probably should just take this one out.

BAIER: To your point, talking about that, and Rudy Giuliani reacting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, D-FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There is enough there that any other person who had engaged in those acts would certainly have been indicted.

RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: I have a hard time reacting to that. There is a woman who really obstructed justice. The president didn't delete 33,000 emails. He didn't have somebody smash up telephones, and he didn't have someone wipe out a server and BleachBit it, among the few things that she did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: I guess the big question is, if you look at the Mueller report, what do you take from it that both sides can agree on, that there is a threat from Russia?

RILEY: Yes, at the very least that, that our system is vulnerable to these attacks, particularly though social media, and that they should do something about it before the next election. That should be the priority here.

We've had two years of investigation here by a Special Counsel. This isn't some Republican-controlled Congress whitewashing things. This is a Special Counsel who came to these conclusions. If anything, I think what we need going forward is not more investigation of what has been investigated for the past two years. What we should really be looking at I think is the FBI's decision to start surveilling people and the Trump campaign and so forth.

And the Democrats have a vested interest in going down this route, because a Republican won't always be in the Oval Office. I'd like to know what the criteria is for our intelligence community to start surveilling people and so forth. How did we come to rely on the dossier, a flawed document that they knew was flawed, to go after someone working on the Trump campaign? Those are the questions I think we should be asking going forward.

BAIER: Mollie?

HEMINGWAY: Right. We're being asked to treat Russian meddling as the most catastrophic threat that ever hit this country. Russian meddling is a problem and it has been a problem going back literally 100 years. They like to get involved in our elections. But compare that to what we just experienced, which was this wide-ranging investigation, spying on an opposing party's political campaign, running overseas intelligence assets against an opposing political campaign. That type of thing undermines confidence in our law enforcement institutions, intelligence agencies, and it also is just a threat to political involvement. This type of harassment of people who deign to support a political candidate who the elites don't like is so much more damaging than some Facebook memes and some Twitter trolls, even if we don't want to have those things.

BAIER: That sounds like Jared Kushner and what he said at the "Time 100" even yesterday. It wasn't just a few $100,000 Facebook ads. There were more organized things that Russia was doing were listed in that report.

HEMINGWAY: Hacking emails is very bad. We want to make sure that we don't do that. Which also gets again to this all happened under the Obama administration. You read through the Mueller report and it barely holds anyone in the Obama administration accountable.

LANE: I was going to say about happening under administrations, we have a story now that Mick Mulvaney essentially vetoed an effort by DHS --

BAIER: He denies that, but go ahead.

LANE: Kirstjen Nielsen seems to have thought it was -- she's not denying it -- seems to have thought it was a very serious problem and didnŸ_Tt get any traction with that. Part of the reason, frankly, there is legitimate concern about this is we don't have clear and convincing evidence that the president himself is motivated to take care of this. I hear you guys, but he has been out saying, well, Putin tells me it is not a problem. Putin tells me he didn't do it. I have yet to hear President Trump sort of bang his fist on the table and say I want to make this a national priority and I donŸ_Tt want anybody to --

BAIER: Understanding that he believes it was all ginned up and that it was a part of this political effort and he's trying to push back. But is there some smidgen of legitimate concern about --

HEMINGWAY: I think that if people wanted Russia to be taken seriously they shouldn't have used it as an excuse to taking the election of Donald Trump seriously and dealing with the reality that the American people chose Donald Trump because they liked his policies. If people would have just accepted that reality, we all could have moved past this Russia stuff much more sooner.

LANE: It would help your argument honestly if it was clear the American people had chosen Donald Trump because they liked his policies. And I'm not going into a thing about the Electoral College, but I'm saying he does have the problem of being a minority president. He is not the -- neither was Hillary Clinton to be sure. But he doesn't have that clear --

HEMINGWAY: He was elected according to the way --

LANE: I get it, but he doesn't have that mandate that you described.

BAIER: OK, next up, getting ready for Joe Biden's big announcement, and some attempts at separation in the massive Democratic field.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONNA MCDANIEL, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIR: Joe Biden has been running for president since the 1980s, and he continually loses, and I don't see anything that is going to be different this time.

DONNA BRAZILE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I do believe he will go the distance, and that's because voters know him, they appreciate his leadership.

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Joe Biden is probably the best chance they've got, and he doesn't have a chance.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: Biden's timing actually benefits him because the Democrats seem really desperate to find an alternative to Bernie Sanders.

TRUMP: They're not going to win with the people I see. The only way they can luck out is by constantly going after me on nonsense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: There are a lot of people to see in the Democratic field, one more tomorrow as you look at the list there. Joe Biden is expected to announce his run tomorrow, finally, much-anticipated run. Monmouth out with a poll this week, actually out yesterday. Is it better to nominate to run against Trump a person of color, white candidate, does it matter? Does not matter, 87 percent. Better to run against Trump a female or male candidate. Does not matter, 77 percent. Most people on the ground are telling you, Chuck, that they just desperately need on the Democratic side someone who can beat Donald Trump.

LANE: If you had 20 in the office pool as the number of Democratic candidates, you win.

BAIER: I don’t know, it could be more.

LANE: Never say never. But Biden, I think, is the guy who is for all those it doesn't matter people, because his stock and trade is I'm a substantial person. I've been in politics a long time. I have got the party machinery and I've got the popularity, and I can beat Trump. And there is a strong theory of the Democratic electorate this time around, which is that notwithstanding all the noise about various Medicare for all and free college tuition, what the people really want, they're interested in is somebody who can beat Trump.

And the polls suggest that Biden is a good likelihood to beat Trump. The problem with Joe Biden has always been throughout his career he is his own worst enemy. He makes mistakes, he commits gaffes, he says things that are kind of awkward and silly. And in the past he either wasn't such a serious candidate that it didn't really matter one way or the other. But now that he is the frontrunner, those kinds of mistakes have the possibility to bring him down all by themselves, so he's going to have to watch out for that.

BAIER: Mollie?

HEMINGWAY: I do think that people are getting behind Biden because they think he would be very good to beat President Trump. But a lot of what we know about Biden was while he was under this protective umbrella of President Obama he didnŸ_Tt face a lot of scrutiny because the media weren't particularly interested in going after the Obama administration. He is a frontrunner. He has got a lot of reason for support. But he's actually going to have to fight for this nomination. He is going to have to debate. He's going to have to advance issues. He's going to have to take on things. And so I don't think it will be handed to him on a silver platter like it was with Hillary Clinton four years ago.

BAIER: Jason, he starts this race with this, the big goose egg, when it comes to fundraising, and you have against somebody like Bernie Sanders who has this massive list of really small donors and a big war chest. That's tough to compete with. He is going to be going traditional with bundlers and trying to get money.

RILEY: It could be. But this could be another area where Trump may have broken the mold here. Yes, Obama raised a ton of money and won in 08. Hillary raised a ton of money and lost. In fact, Trump spent half the money Hillary did and won. Probably that was name recognition, but Biden has a ton of name recognition.

I think a bigger challenge for him is going to be how much the party has changed since he left office. It has taken a hard-left turn. And we don't know where Biden is on some of these hot button issues, slavery reparations, impeachment, the Green New Deal, college tuition, free college tuition. He just hasn't declared himself. And he's going to have to speak about those issues in a way that holds onto that progressive base which is ascendant on the left while keeping the moderates happy.

BAIER: Which is a real challenge.

Here's a look at RCP, Real Clear Politics, in Iowa first. That is Joe Biden up over Bernie Sanders, and this is the average of recent polls. Mayor Pete there in third. In New Hampshire it's flipped, Bernie Sanders with the lead in the average of polls, Biden there, and then Mayor Pete in third.

"The New York Times" had an interesting piece about Buttigieg and Senator Sanders. In an interview Mayor Buttigieg said "Mr. Sanders' left-wing proposals were no longer as provocative as in 2016. People were refreshed by the novelty of that boldness and expressed skepticism that a self- described Democratic Socialist in his late 70s could win a general election. I have a hard time seeing the coalition ultimately coming together there." It seems to me, Chuck, that Mayor Pete is striking out, saying I need some separation here from Bernie.

LANE: Mayor Pete is kind of the revelation in this group. He's the one who is kind of, at least early on, catching fire as the person who would emerge from the pack if they don't want to go for either Sanders or Biden.

But I think what we all have to reckon with here is that the rules of this game are different from any that the Democrats have used in previous campaigns, including in 2016. The party regulars, the super delegates have less power. There is this proportional representation rule in the results of all these primaries. And so Biden could win the most delegates and the most votes and yet not come through with a majority for the convention.

And Bernie, on the other hand, is a person who is convinced and his people are convinced that they were ripped off and cheated by the system last time around, and I don't think they're going to go down easy. So a kind of unconventional scenario has this being brokered at the end.

BAIER: The brokered convention. We have a long time to talk about that, I think.

When we come back -- thanks, panel -- an illusion that could save children's lives.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, a creative way to make drivers pump the brakes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's great. It certainly would make me stop.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love it. It looks amazing, exactly how I pictured it and more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: So 10-year-old Isa, a fourth grader at Brooks Elementary School in Medford Massachusetts designed this. Do you see that? Three-dimensional crosswalk with her friend Eric. It gives the illusion that it's raised up off the street, encouraging drivers to stop, slow down right around the school. The city actually plans to add 3-D crosswalks to three other elementary schools by this summer. So there you go, ingenuity.

Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That's it for the “Special Report,” fair, balanced, and still unafraid. "The Story", hosted by Martha MacCallum starts now.

Hi, Martha.

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