Lewandowski Defiant at Trump Obstruction Hearing

tied to the potential impeachment of President Trump. Korey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, defiantly refused to answer many questions, stalled by repeatedly asking to see the Muller Report, and demean the process and the Democratic committee members. Here's an exchange

between Democrats Chila Jackson, Lee and Lewandowski. Again, kars when I recognize that the privilege is not mine, but I've been asked by the White House to honest want I'd be happy to answer your question, or you can just have a conversation by yourself, But if you'd like to ask me a question, I'll be happy to answer me to continue, the reason is you don't ask me a question, I don't want to hear my answer to time. This is a House diuditiary, not a House Party joining me

is Brad Moss, a partner at Mark Zade Brad. It was not pretty, but the Democrats did confirm much of what Lewandowski said the Muller report. What's your take on the hearing? Yeah, I mean, look, Korey Lewandowski is a very epitome of Trump style politics. This no holds barred, you know, political counterpunching. UH is very much in line with how the President handles it. You saw that throughout the hearing, what I think ultimately was relevant was important,

and you mentioned this a bit. Was what was confirmed, namely the involvement of Mr Lewandowski as outline of the Vollar Report with respect to one of the acts of obstruction in terms of the order from President Trump to Mr Lewandowski to go to then Attorney General Jeff Sessions order him to limit and narrow the scope of the Mueller investigation and basically dankle his job at him. And

Mr Lewandowski confirmed that those facts. Racker. He disputed some of the details of, you know, certain nuances, but by and large what was in the Mula report on that front. Mr Lewandowski confirmed yesterday in that hearing, the White House Counsel's office notified the committee late Monday that Lewandowski was forbidden from discussing confidential conversations he had with Trump aside from what was already public in the Mueller Report. They

called it executive branch confidentiality interests. What kind of privilege

were they asserting here? Yes, so they're trying to try this theory out that's always been pushed by past White Houses, but it's never been actually challenged in court, which is the idea that a president's communications with non government officials can still be covered under executive privilege, that the White House has an interest in shielding those communications from being compelled to be disclosed to either Congress or to the public.

Now there's you know, long standing president with respect to executive branch officials, if they're that communications with the president been that dates back the Nixon era, but there's never been a case to litigate that question. We come to someone like Mr. Lewandowski, who was a private citizen and never worked in the US government, and so they have pushed forward this view. Mr Lewandowski, of course, was happy to follow the White House's guidance because it meant different things.

He didn't have to disclose um. It remains an unresolved question though, is a legal matter how court would view this in terms of that the legitimacy of that assertion

of privilege. The committee also subpoenaed two other former Trump aids who did work in the White House, former Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn and former Staff Secretary Rob Porter, but they didn't attend after the White House Council notified the Judiciary Committee that they have constitutional immunity from compelled congressional testimony in order to protect the prerogatives of the office of president, going beyond the claim of privilege there,

how can Democrats proceed with this, you know, sort of variation on impeachment hearings if they can't get witnesses to testify. Yeah, so this is a bit of the problem the Democrats have been facing for months now, ever since the Muller report came out, and never since Mr Muller testified, and they want to move forward on this quasi impeachment route.

They were struggling to get people who had uh testified the Mr Muller and provided information that was outline of the report to get to them to come before Congress. And you're seeing some litigation on it. With respect to Don McGann, the former White House counsel, you know, there's pending litigation to compel him to come before to Congress and testify. What you're waiting to see the results of that litigation. I think that will provide a roadmap but guidance.

But as far as the White House is concerned, they're just kind of dragging this out right now. They're happy to let this be, you know, dragged out in the courts and take months, if not years, because by the time it gets to a resolution, it won't matter one way or the other. And so even if this were a traditional impeachment inquiry, if they had drawn up articles of impeachment, these witnesses still wouldn't be allowed to testify.

So again, I mean, what happens then, so yeah, So if so, if the courts ultimately ruled in the government's favor, which I don't think in the end, especially the context of appeachment, I don't think they would. But even if they did, Congress can certainly still utilize the ridden text of the Mole report itself, and they always could do that in the context of impeachment, recommending articles of impeachment.

What they wanted, for purposes of grassroots support from American public was to have those live moments, to have Don McGann talk about what Trump did, to have any Donalds Retiefer staffed Domigan talk about what she took notes on. It was meant to build public momentum, not necessarily for purposes of evidence. So the committee's chair, Jerry Nadler, said that Lewandowski's conduct was completely unacceptable and he's considering holding him in contempt of Congress. Has several of the Democratic

Committee members said he should. So even if he's held in contempt of Congress, if you have h Justusice department that will not go any further on this, what would that really mean to him? Ultimately nothing at all, um, And there is an inherent criminal contempt authority that Congress has technically to start to get arms, can you know, execute an arrest, But that's not going to happen. So and Korey Lewandowski knows this. In the White House knows,

they know that. Ultimately for Natler, this is a lot of huffing and puffing, but nothing's going to come of those contempt citations, which is why now they're debating to what extent he's even going to waste his time with it because nothing is going to transpire that the Just Justice Department isn't going to pursue the case. And this is the unfortunate reality of how the institutions and sort of the customs and norms of how we used to handle these types of matters have really been broken down

over the last few years. Political analysts were criticizing the Democrats for going forward this way, but I wonder what other way can they go forward? About a minute here, yeah, I mean, this is the only route they had. They had to try to build some additional momentum to put a face and video to the text of that for

the page report. They've gotten some progress. I don't know if they're going to be able to pull this off in the end, but you can still expect this will drag on till the end of this year, and we will talk with you more as it does. Thank you so much, Brad. That's Brad Massey is a partner in mark Z. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple podcast, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com. Slash Podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg Ye