Political Quotes

“Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk for both the counsel for the President and the House managers. The CHIEF JUSTICE. Senator Schumer's question reads as follows: The House Managers say the President demands absolute immunity. The President's counsel disputes this. Can either of you name a single witness or document to which the President has given access to the House when requested? I believe it is time for counsel for the President to go first. Mr. Counsel PHILBIN. Mr. Chief Justice, I thank you and Minority Leader Schumer for the question. Let me try to be clear and distinguish a couple of things. The House managers have said there was blanket defiance. That is the way they characterized it--that we are not going to give you anything and that that is all we said. It was just a blanket defiance. We are not going to respond. What I have tried to explain several times is that that was not the President's response. There were specifically articulated responses to different requests based on different legal rationales because there were different problems with different subpoenas. One problem is that all of the subpoenas up until October 31 were not validly authorized. So those subpoenas we said we were not going to respond to because they were not validly issued. It was not an assertion of executive privilege. It was not an assertion of absolute immunity. It wasn't anything else. It was the fact that they were not validly authorized.…”