By Michael Tomasky
The House Judiciary Committee chairman’s legal reasoning has always been precise and unassailable. With Trump now in his sights, the defense of the Constitution finally begins.
Today, it starts getting serious. (click here) House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler is sending out letters to around 60 people in the Trump administration and the president’s general orbit (Don Jr., Allen Weisselberg) seeking documents and other information to “begin investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power,” as he put it on ABC’s This Week.
I’ve known Nadler since 1987, back in my cub reporter days. He was in the New York State Assembly then, and it didn’t take long for me to figure out he was one of the smartest politicians I’d encountered. He knew history, ideas, and the law. I won’t bore you with the details, in part because I’m not sure I remember them all, but there was a little controversy in Greenwich Village politics in those days involving the competition between the two Village Democratic clubs, one pretty left-leaning (and opposed to then-Mayor Ed Koch), the other a pro-Koch club.
Nadler was himself anti-Koch, but he spoke up in defense of the pro-Koch club, which wasn’t sitting very well with me at first, but I remember when I interviewed him about it I put down the phone admitting to myself that his legal reasoning was precise and unassailable. I was impressed with his insistence on due process even when it didn’t lead to the end point that would have been more politically popular with his constituents....
