Democrats Follow the Money On Trump Document Request

and its potential ties to Russia. The House Judiciary Committee is demanding documents from the White House, as well as the president's company, charity, transition team, inauguration, and twenty sixteen campaign. Joining me is the former U S Attorney for Georgia, Michael Moore. He's now a partner at Pope mclamery. Thanks for joining me. I'm glad to be with What struck you most about the document request? Where do you see

the most danger for President Trump? You know, I felt all along with this case, whether it be through Bob Mueller, whether it be through the Southern District of New York, and now perhaps through some of the House committees, that this is gonna be a case about following the money and so what we're seeing is in fact the Democrats reaching out and closing some of the holes that we've we've had hanging out in this VS. Case for the

last couple of years. I mean, a lot of this could be resolved if we just had the president's tax returns. He refused to do that looks to be like, now the Democrats are going to move forward, they need to know what what money is owed, what interest was deducted, who were creditors, was in fact rushing money and fused through the business or through through the Trump organization. And so those those things to me are probably um what I look forward to be some of the most damning evidence.

There are sweeping requests that cover possible corruption, abusive power, obstruction of justice. The Chairman, Jerry Nadler said, this isn't part of an early impeachment inquiry, but does it look that way? You know, Um, I think impeachment is further down the road. UM. I have a real question on whether or not there's a political appetite it forward and what exactly you know, the Chairman and connection with the Speaker, what decisions they may make about how how to move

that forward. I know there's some maybe newer members of Congress who feel like that's what's immediately what the Democrats ought to do. But I do think that again, that's a political process. The question from will will be I think, through this investigation and through what we learned ultimately from Bob Mueller's report, um, is there evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor, and the Congress will decide those standards, uh, and we'll decide how much proof in fact they have.

I know some people want to say, well, the House will impeach because there's not enough votes in the Senate. I don't know if that's true or not, or I don't know if at some point the Repolis will make a collective decision that the president and and you know, his his his circle uh might be too large of an albatross to have around their necks going into those are Those are big political considerations. But I think that you may see uh some evaluations of that once we

know exactly what evidence Bob Mueller has. What we have now in the public record are pretty significant connections and ties with Russia. UH. We can't get around the idea that there was this Russian meeting. We can't get around the fact that there was an attempt to cover that up. We know that Poland data was shared. We know for some reason Manaford was brought into the campaign and became the bastic of the manager of the campaign, uh without pay.

We know that there was discussions about sanctions. We know that Mike Flynn's testimony is still working, that he's given Moller a lot of information that we don't yet have disclosure of at this point. So I think there are a lot of shoes left to drop, But I can tell you with what's already out there. Um, you know, there's it's it's some pretty damning information against the president. Now.

Democratic leaders say that the all subpoena the special Counsel's report if Attorney General William Barr declines to hand it over, and they'll sue to enforce the subpoena. President Nixon lost his fight over the secret White House tapes in court. Well, this fight go that way? Or do you think that the things have changed in the court since then? You know, I think that obviously there's been a change in the court.

But let me tell you. You know, there's been some discussion about whether or not there would be privileged provisions of the reports that shouldn't come out. Remember that executive privilege was never meant to be a shield to protect people from criminal conduct. Uh. There's a legitimate purpose to have executive privilege, and that is to have deliberative discussions. That's to be able to talk about policy things in private. Um. But it's never it's never meant to be sort of

the cloak of protection against criminal prosecution. And that's that's what it's being used for today. So you've got the question of privilege. You also have the question, now how much under the regulations of the report of motors report might come out under the new Attorney general. It sounded like during this confirmation here and he was not a big fan of just letting the whole thing out, and that he was going to try and to follow that.

And but remember those regulations are sort of the product of this the Keen Star era, when we had you know, these these uh, you know, sort of softcore porn almost uh reports out there, put out with great public fanfare and all the scandalous details, and so there was they were looking for some way, I think to sort of put the reins on that. Um. I think you could

see people subpoena. And I think you know, whether or not there was an enforcement of Bob Mueller subpoena, that would be a question or whether or not he would he would feel like he should come forward. You might find him joining that because he's particularly respect respectful of his role, of his the breadth of his authority. Uh. And I think of the process as a whole. So I don't think you're going to see him out there

on a voluntary tell all stage. UM. But I also think the public has a significant interest in having information about the president, about the administration, about these ties that have been alleged with a foreign government. UM. And you're going to see, I think enormous political pressure for a lot of that information to come out. So you may have some committee hearings, you may have some subpoenas, you may have somebody stand up and read the report from

the floor. You know, of what are the chambers? I mean, who knows at that point. But UM, I do think there's a benefit in getting in getting information out. On the other side of that, UM, I'll tell you that the Justice Department typically as a rule, does not like to drag people through the mud who are not going to be criminally prosecuted. In other words, you might do

an investigation, find there is no evidence. You don't take somebody and just drag them on sort of air all their public dirty laundry out to to for everybody to see if if you're not gonna move forward the case. That hadn't necessarily been the standard that's been followed in recent years. Um, but that's the that's the reasoning behind

that policy. So it's fighting some balance between the public's right to know, the policy of protecting innocent people, the fact that this is a taxpayer fund and investigation, and the ongoing investigations through Congress into the president and his business operations. It will be finding that that that balance and hopefully, you know, cooler heads will will prevail there.

Hopefully we just have about a minute here. There have been reports for months about a large number of sealed criminal indictments on the federal court docket in d C. Speculation that they could be connected to Mueller's inquiry. Knowing what you do about him, do you think that's likely.

I think it's likely. I think that the Special Council's Office is very likely uh U seal indictments again in connection with the idea that there may may have been pardners promised or whether or not they can indict a president, they could always go back, remember and try to charge the president's company, so they could charge his son, and they could charge his son in law, they could charge

his company. At that point, MULA would not have been violating the Office Legal Council's guidance about indicting a sitting president, but would rather be able to talk about the acts of this president as he led the company while at the same time charging people connect with the company who happened to be very close to the president. So I think it's very likely that there are sealed indictments out there that that that we've we've yet to learn about.

Pleasure having you on, hope you'll come back again. That's Michael Moore's former U S attorney for Georgia and he's a partner with Pope mclamery. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg