Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees: Interview With Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY)
Interview
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Well, it was pretty stunning that we were in Manhattan, in my district to talk about State level, local level crime data for one city in this entire country, over which the Judiciary Committee of Congress does not have jurisdiction.
Nearly everything we were talking about today is for the State Legislature or local prosecutors to deal with, not Congress and the elephant in the room was, of course, Donald Trump.
Now the Republicans did not mention Donald Trump once. Why? Because they have been coordinating behind the scenes with him and that is what the impetus for this investigation is, and it is completely improper.
So, they are now scrambling to try to justify this investigation, which was initiated at the direction of Donald Trump. So the Republicans are colluding with Trump to interfere in his ongoing criminal prosecution, and that is why we had this hearing today on something that Congress has no jurisdiction over.
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I don't -- not to my knowledge. I think there was a field hearing in Yuma, Arizona about border security recently, but it's -- no one is stupid enough to think that this is not directly related to an indictment two weeks ago, that Jordan himself has lambasted, as have most of the House Republicans, and they're now trying to do the bidding for Donald Trump and using taxpayer money to do so.
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Well, you raise the salient point right there, which is that New York City is actually sixth lowest in all murders of the top 50 largest cities in this country. So this is not really about crime in Manhattan, and if it were, we'd be focusing on guns because guns are the source of more than 75 percent of murders around the country. Guns are the leading cause of death for children now because of the epidemic of mass shootings around the country.
So if we really wanted to talk criminal justice reform, we'd be talking about common sense gun legislation, and that is, of course, not what the Republicans want to talk about because the NRA doesn't want them to reach common sense gun reform.
But to your question about what a Judge will do, yes, it is incumbent upon a Judge to determine whether or not there is what is called a legitimate legislative purpose for a congressional investigation. And what this lawsuit will bring out is the degree to which Chairman Jordan and others on the House Republicans have coordinated with Donald Trump if they initiated this investigation in order to defend him. And if those communications come out, that that was what prompted this investigation, then it is a completely improper investigation.
And any Judge would have to rule that. So that's what they're scrambling to correct with after the fact justifications and with this field hearing.
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Thank you.
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