MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Kirsten Gillibrand drops out of Presidential race."

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HAYES: Good evening from New York I`m Chris Hayes. There`s a case to be made that there is a loaded gun embedded in the Constitution, and that loaded gun is the pardon power just sitting there waiting to be abused. It`s a power given solely to the president and it would theoretically allow for all kinds of misuse. For example, what if a really, really violent genuinely fascist president ordered his chief of staff to murder the head of the opposition party on federal property and then pardoned him? What are you going to do? The only constitutional solution is impeachment but if his party controls the Senate and they stick with them. At its most extreme, the pardon power is a way of undoing the entire structure of the rest of the Constitution which is what can make it so dangerous if abused. We`ve seen its surface in impeachment proceedings before in the case of Richard Nixon. Nixon famously dangled pardons in front of the people in front of people who had committed crimes on his behalf as part of the articles of impeachment. And the reason you have to use impeachment to check the pardon power is because there`s literally no other check in the Constitution, not one. It is unreviewable and absolute. If you don`t use the impeachment power to check the pardon power, then the pardon power is absolute. That`s the way the Constitution works. Which brings us to this story in The Washington Post which says President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election, he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars` worth of construction contracts, aggressively seized private land and disregard environmental rules. He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly. This is not the first time Trump has reportedly done something like this. Jake Tapper reported in April that on a trip to the border, Trump told the head of Customs and Border Protection Kevin McALeenan he would grant him a pardon if you were sent to jail for blocking asylum seekers from entering the U.S. in defiance of U.S. law/Tapper also reported on the same trip, the President told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don`t have the capacity, he said. If the judge give you trouble, say sorry judge, I can`t do it. We don`t have the room. The President did not them a pardon but he did encourage them to break the law. But this is now apparently a pattern of behavior for this president. Washington Post has this blockbuster story about how the president is running roughshod over the rule of law in every way to build the border wall that Congress denied him the authority to build and that Mexico was supposed to pay for. Instead, Trump is trying to shake down the system of checks and balances to get his wall built because he thinks it matters to his base. The Post reports when Trump`s aides suggested that some of his orders are illegal or unworkable, "Trump has suggested he would pardon the officials if they would just go ahead, he had said. He has waived off worries about contracting procedures in the use of eminent domain saying take the land." Again, the most damning detail here aside from the corruption which we`ll get to is that he`s telling people as the Washington Post reports don`t worry, I`ll pardon you. And here`s what`s really revealing. When the White House is confronted with this extremely damning account of the president abusing the pardon power, they don`t deny it, no. An anonymous White House official told the Post and said, Trump is joking when he makes such statements about pardons which of course implies he`s making them. So he`s joking about the pardons but not about worrying people to break the law? And then, of course, today the President tweeted it was all fake news that he would give law-breaking aides a pardon. He didn`t address whether or not he told aides to break the law. And of course, this was after the White House had already acknowledged that Trump said he would give out pardons questioning the tone not that he had said it. But it`s not just the pardons. The President of the United States is directing people to ignore or to break the law. Directing someone explicitly to break the law is an impeachable offense full stop. Joining me now Democratic Congressman Al Green of Texas, one of the first members of Congress to call for President Trump`s impeachment and said just last week he will try for the fourth time to impeach the president when Congress returns next month. Do you think directing subordinates to break the law and offering them pardons constitutes a high crime misdemeanor under the Constitution?

REP. AL GREEN (D-TX: Thank you for having me on. Yes, it does constitute an impeachable offense and it can be a high crime or it could be a high misdemeanor. You and I have discussed high misdemeanor before. But here`s what`s important. If you look at Federalist 69, it makes very clear what you have called to our attention about the President`s ability to pardon persons. And Federalist 69 makes it clear that this is the case in all offenses saving impeachment itself. For example, if we the members of the Congress should impeach the vice president, the president cannot pardon the vice president who has been impeached. So Federalist 69 tracks pretty much what you`ve said. But here`s the real concern -- the real concern is this. Will Congress have the will to impeach the president. This President has demonstrated that he disrespects the Congress. He`s demonstrated that he doesn`t believe that there any guardrails. He has so much has said that if he went out on Fifth Avenue and if he shot someone that he would still maintain the support level that he has from his base. But the question becomes now, if he does something dastardly, will des Congress have the courage, the intestinal fortitude to go forward with impeachment? I think the president has called our bluff. He sees us with more bark than bite and he`s willing to do whatever he thinks he can to satiate his base. He has promised them a wall. He will deliver a wall by any means possible.

HAYES: I should note there`s been 135, I believe, members of the Democratic House caucus along with one Independent member who have come out in support of either impeachment or impeachment inquiry. You are obviously one of them. I want to ask you a follow-up question about that, but I want to return to the facts for a moment which is this question. The president`s defenders will often say well, he says a lot of stuff. I mean, you saw this in the Mueller report where he contemplates or orders Don McGahn to fire Mueller and McGahn doesn`t do it. He tells people to do things and everyone says, well, he`s blowing off steam or he`s joking in the case of the pardons. Does it matter to you whether the orders are effectuated? If the president is kind of impotently lawless, if he tries to break the but can`t get subordinates to do it, does that matter from the standpoint of impeachment?

GREEN: Here`s what matters. Is he abusing his power and is he intending for his orders to be carried out? The president is quite clever. He does back off of these things and we haven`t been able to get someone to give us the actual testimony indicating that he intends for this to happen. I understand that these are stories that have been reported, sources that have not been clearly identified, but if you can get the proof positive evidence that this is what he intended, then the carrying -- following through on it is not going to be necessary because he is encouraging the breaking of the law. And the President can`t do this, not in stay in office with a Congress that has the will to follow the Constitution and impeach him.

HAYES: Well, then, my final question for you is something like this, which is again, we`ve kept two instances here reporters uncovering this as things that had allegedly happened. The White House seeming to confirm it though quibbling about the tone, is that something that should be the subject of an impeachment inquiry? Should there be formal investigation into this when Congress returns in the fall?

GREEN: Among the many other things, yes, Congress should make inquiries. We should not allow the president to make these kinds of statements if he`s making them to his subordinates, and then go -- let that go unchallenged. This is what Congress is here for. And we should not allow the belief that the Senate may not find the president guilty and remove him from office to prevent us from doing our job. We have a mandate. We should follow through. And if we follow through, then we`ll find out what the Senate will do. The Senate may have an epiphanous moment and realize that the country is at risk and that the president should act appropriately. By the way, we often talk about how the soul of the country is at risk. Well, the soul of the House of Representatives is at risk. We have not acted as we should have. And if we do not with setting precedents that are going to follow us for the rest of our lives probably because you don`t know what the next president will do. And he will then point to the ineffective Congress that did not take action. We cannot be feckless. We have to be efficacious.

HAYES: All right, Congressman Al Green, thank you very much.

GREEN: Thank you.

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