July 27, 2019

Judiciary Committee member Rep. Ted Lieu joined Joy Reid this morning to discuss Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress. Rep. Lieu had the opportunity to question Mueller, and he walked the AM Joy audience through how he elicited Mueller's responses and conclusions about Trump committing obstruction of justice. He topped it off with an analogy for the ages, and one that makes it impossible for anyone to use semantics to defend our Criminal-In-Chief.

(Video:)

REP. LIEU: I believe a reasonable person looking at these facts could conclude that all three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice have been met and I would like to ask you, the reason again that you did not indict donald trump is because of olc opinion stating you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?

MUELLER: That is correct. (end video)

REID: He went back later and corrected. That's one thing he went back and did correction on, he said that was not the correct way to say it. "As we say in the report, as I said in the opening, we did not reach determination whether the president committed a crime." But you, as a former prosecutor, sir, do you believe Donald Trump could be indicted for obstruction of justice after he leaves office?

REP. LIEU: Absolutely. And right before I asked those questions, I had Robert Mueller walk through three elements of obstruction of justice. He said yes to the first two, and then with a third element, which was intent, I simply read from report, and his report said there was, quote, substantial evidence, unquote of intent. So all three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice were met, and let me just give you an analogy for basically what happened. It is like Robert Mueller saying, "Here's a piece of bread, I'm putting ham on it, I'm putting on top of it another slice of bread." And we go, "That's a ham sandwich!" He says, "Well, I didn't make determination whether or not it is a ham sandwich because I was instructed I can't call it that." It is still a ham sandwich.

It is a GREAT analogy, but now I am hungry.

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