The house oversight committee has apparently reached a deal with the former
president Donald Trump.
To obtain key financial documents that they've been trying to get their hands on
for literally years.
But what does this mean?
What are they hoping to find in there?
When will we find out what they find in there joining us now
to discuss representative Ro Khanna welcome back to the damage report.
>> What was going to be on good to be on live?
>> Great to have you here.
Great to have you live and with pretty exciting news to discuss today.
So they're gonna get these documents.
I know before the January 6th committee hearing before the MAr A Lago raid.
This was one of the big things that people were staking some of their hopes that
something would be found on Donald Trump.
Do we have any idea what the committee thinks they might find?
Why should people be excited about this development?
>> Well, Michael Colin testified in front of our committee that there was financial
fraud and that's what led to the request for this information.
So we're gonna see whether there was actually a fraud
in the Trump organization.
What interest the president had and
whether that ever conflicted with his official duties.
Whether he was honest and transparent in his financial disclosures.
We've been denied access to his financial record for years.
So it's a big deal that we're finally gonna get them.
>> And at this point do you have any sort of idea about when the committee will
actually have those documents I mean are.
And in terms of the timeline of when they might be able to draw some
conclusions from it.
Is this gonna be one of those things like I see on Tv shows where they back eight
tractor trailers up to the capitol.
And you guys need a team of dozens of interns in 5 years to go through it.
These are slippery people legally.
So do you have any idea when we might know whatever there is to know?
>> Well, they will probably give us way more documents that are relevant.
That's a common tactic.
I'm sure they're gonna slow roll it but
usually given the priority the committee's gonna place on this.
I think in the next few months we should get a lot of what we need.
Of course a lot of this hinges on who controls congress.
[CROSSTALK].
>> That's a good point.
>> It's okay to what degree representative or at what point does it become evidence?
Just the slow rolling of releasing financial records?
At what point does that become something that you can say, look,
if there's nothing to hide then why are you hiding?
>> Well, I think it will become apparent within a couple of weeks the challenges,
the shaming has not worked.
I mean, I don't know how you can further shame Donald Trump for his acolytes.
And so really at this point we just need to get the information and
be as aggressive and having courts hold that the accounting firm accountable for
what they've agreed to.
>> You alluded to just a moment ago that depending on how long this takes and
it seems like it will certainly take more than the two months that will take us to
the midterms.
There are these many different investigations,
a lot of the likelihood that they might find something is gonna be determined by
who maintains control of congress.
So is this something people should be thinking about and
making their political choices going to the midterms based on.
How worried are you about the future of these investigations?
If the Democrats are to falling into the minority.
>> They're gonna stop.
I mean, Kevin McCarthy's gonna, first thing they'll do is stop every single one
of these investigations and they're gonna investigate conspiracies instead.
I mean, you'll have all the hearings be about hunter Biden and as opposed to
what Donald Trump did to compromise our security or financial records.
So the house whoever has the majority, even if it's by one seat get
the committee chairs and those chairs get to determine the agenda.
And it's a big thing that's at stake.
>> How is there any way that we can get you, once you get the documents in hand
to spread some of them on the floor of your office and take a photo of it.
Is there any chance?
>> Well you got the look into my office.
Right now it's probably cleaner than usual, but no documents around.
Certainly nothing sensitive.
I mean, that's the total incomprehensible part of what Trump did in congress.
You have to go to a basement, you got to go to the skiff,
you can't give up your phone.
You give up any electronic device and
you can't ever think of taking a document out of there.
So the idea that the White House people were removing these sensitive
documents is really shocking and concerning.
>> Do you think that is why Trump in lieu of suit jackets often wears kind of large,
ill fitting trench coats?
You can put a lot of stuff in there.
>> Who knows?
At this point, I don't put anything past Trump.
I was reading some articles saying he used to have stacks of paper when campaigning,
not because he would read them just to make himself look important.
So who knows what the motive is.
All I know is having our most sensitive confidential information
lying around with people who come in and
out of Mar-A Lago is harmful to people and put lives at risk.
>> Yeah.
I wanna take it back to the financial documents because,
I think this is one of the avenues of investigation that maybe a lot of
people have sort of forgotten about over the past few months.
May be distracted by the fact that we had the January 6 hearings,
which are gonna resume at some point that we've got the Mar- A Lago raid.
And then even zooming out from that, you got the southern district of New York.
You've got the Fulton County investigation,
you have potentially other investigations inside of the DOJ.
There are so many distinct avenues of investigation into Donald Trump right now.
How do you as a regular person who's following this know what to prioritize or
should we try to focus on everything?
Are any of those more likely to lead to an indictment?
I know that there's so much tradition around this of not one wanting to seem
political, not wanting to charge the president.
Are the financial crimes more likely to bear fruit because they're a little bit
less tied in with like executive privilege.
Or that sort of thing that they might predate his time as president.
How do you tease out all of these different things?
>> I think what the justice department is pursuing is of most legal concern because
they are following the book.
They're very cautious and the fact that they got a warrant search
warrant shows that there's a very serious evidence of wrongdoing.
But the financial information is important, not just in the sense of,
okay, this is something that we need to pay attention to Donald Trump.
But for the steak of our democracy.
I mean to make sure in the future you can't have president's with massive
financial conflicts of interest.
Putting their own business interests in consideration of making national decisions
and what we need to do to tighten up the law.
So that doesn't happen again.
>> That's why also representative.
I think it's so interesting and so smart that you choose often to go on Fox News
for example and bring these points directly to their audience.
I don't understand why anybody would even criticize that.
Why if we're living in a world of such constantly spun disinformation,
the only way to combat it is to directly go and speak to that audience.
Do you ever find that it's effective?
Do you ever find that you can get the host to then at least acknowledge
the logic flow of a point and at least for that 5 minutes make an impact.
>> I get criticized because they say, well I'm giving them a platform.
But look, Fox News is a platform whether I go on or not.
And even though it's rare that a host will say, well wow, you're right.
A lot of times they'll end up thinking okay, he's reasonable.
We understand where he's coming from and
it's not that he's doing something that's harming America.
And I just think showing up whether it's in media,
that we may not be on or whether it's in towns we may not visit.
That's our only shot of trying to persuade people about our point of view.
It's not like I go on Fox News and change my positions.
I still go on there and talking about LGBTQ plus equality or
the right to choose.
It's just that I'm willing to go on to places that may not disagree with.
>> Is it hard than seeing their heads explode after you say things like that.
>> But I will say this that I try to pick some of the more reasonable
host Neil Cavuto John Roberts state of Perino.
So I haven't engaged with folks who are just gonna sensationalize.
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