We welcome back our resident Constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, who gives us his take on the January 6th hearings, how they compare to the Watergate, and Iran Contra, why the Democrats seem to be holding back, and what the Department of Justice needs to do to live up to its name with regard to the crimes of Donald Trump.
Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.
So where’s this idea they let Pat Cipollone get away with not responding and not explaining, “Well what did Mr. Trump say?” …There is certainly no executive privilege with regard to attorney/client privilege… The client of a government attorney, especially a White House (attorney)…is the United States Constitution. It is not any individual. We do not “Dear Fuhrer” salute the occupant of the White House. That is not your client… Anything that subverts the Constitution is a danger, and you have a duty to disclose what that is.
Bruce Fein
If the smoking gun is in the White House, how can you give the White House the privilege to cover it up? That makes no sense whatsoever. Are you going to say that a criminal suspect can decide, “Well, I’m not going to surrender the murder weapon”? No, you can subpoena the murder weapon here.
Bruce Fein
The Democrats are soft because they have skeletons in the closet that they know they’ve done the same or similar things — maybe not on quite the same magnitude— and they worry, “Well, if we lose the elections to the Republicans in the fall, they’re going to turn these precedents, and they’re coming after us. And we’ve got a lot of skeletons that we want to conceal. So: we go soft on them, they’ll go soft on us.”
Bruce Fein
The press always said, “Hey, criminally prosecuting a former President? That’s never been done before…” What are they talking about? If nobody’s above the law, it’s even more important to go after the top dogs.
Ralph Nader
Investigating Trump