[inaudible conversations] >> coming up in just a few minutes from the texas book festival, look at conservative political leadership in america today, after that former obama administration ambassador to the un samantha power will discuss her new memoir. [inaudible conversations] >> roe v. wade, portion of video library with former republican jason chaffetz on his book power grab, argue that is liberals are trying to undermine the president. >> the oversight committee was founded in 1814, it was there to oversee any and all government expenditures. now, different committee names,

abraham lincoln when he came on the committee, this was his committee assignment when he was in the united states congress. it's interesting, he became known as spotty because he was challenging the president where were the origins of the mexican american war, there's a great history of the committee an what it's been able to do. what's interesting is what changed when i left because the oversight and government reform committee changed and now nancy pelosi, elijah cummings changed the name of the committee, the committee on oversight and reform. see, democrats don't believe that government is the problem, they think it's a solution, government is all good, what you see now are hearings and a press to go after individual and individual corporations, that is not necessarily the purview of the united states congress.

again, the committee is wide, probably the widest birth of any sort of jurisdiction, supreme court case that is we lay out here where oversight, wings were clipped back to try to get him on the straight narrows can look after government, we had hearings, for instance, mylan and pharmaceuticals, the epipen situation, you know, the arma boy where we did call into individual corporations but what we also did was call the fda and health and human services to say, how did this happen. what elijah cummings is doing demanding and sending out subpoenas and directives to go in letters and record amount to look under the books without any evidence of wrongdoing by the way, presupposing the outcome on

fishing expeditions to go into the lives of individuals and if you have proximity to president trump, watch out, that's a prime target, the agreement which nobody has seen light of day between elijah cummings, nadler, adam schiff and i want to say there's a fifth one in about how they will do investigations and how they will do impeachment, this people layed this all out before the 116th congress even started but all premised on the idea that they were going to be essentially the campaign research arm for the democrats, i think that's what they are doing right here right now, there's no justification or evidence to -- to justify a lot of it, they are just literally want to find out what -- what -- let's go figure out then and then figure out what the crime is but, it all start with the idea and the premise that we

don't need government, you need to look at people, individuals, it's kind of scary that the congressional, you know, the branch of government that they would engage in this kind of witch hunt, this kind of power grab, this sort of diving deep, it is scary the abuses of power that is going on there. >> one of the most type profile for example, the confirmation process of justice kavanaugh, you talked about how choreographed it was from the opening scene, maybe you can give us -- >> yeah, we go through, whole books you can write on the kavanaugh situation, but the prework, what we try to focus on is the work that they were doing and the outlines that they had no matter who it was, this is going to be, this was going to be a narrative about a frat boy who was just out of control and gone awry, it's been out there and we remind people about the

press release that was already written with xxx, they just needed to fill in the name, when you see that in some total in retrospect put together in the way we did it in this chapter, it reminded you of how evil and how bad it was and i do think it's almost humorous that the democratic senators, every single one of them had pledge today vote no and complained about the lack of openness and transparency, you still have senator schumer and the others say, this is the trick that they always do, right, they always do this. they ask for things that they know cannot be given to them.

you cannot reveal grand jury material. what nadler does time and time again and they did in kavanaugh situation. i wanted to get ben rhodes to talk about iran deal. they said there's a separation of powers issue and i dropped it. i didn't issue a subpoena, the difference is cummings and nadler will issue a subpoena, see, they don't comply. they don't care because court date will come after, they will create a narrative, you will hear nadler and cummings, we issued 250 subpoenas, they never

responded. most of them are wholly bogus and the court would laugh them out of there, the reason nadler became chairman of judiciary committee he went before his colleagues on the democratic side of the aisle and said i'm better suited to pursue impeachment. come with me i will do impeachment and that's how he beat out bill and became chairman of the committee and that's what he's doing, abusing power. >> one last question for me and we will shift, we will end on a positive note like you do in the book, what looking forward to rei, in this in. >> i want to lay out all of the bad, you come and listened to the meeting and bummed out, it's not the feel-good meeting of the year, try to end on a positive note that the -- this is the greatest country on the face of

the planet. somehow some way the american people figure these things out, understand these issues, we push back on the tenth amendment, the federal government does too many things to too many people, so much of this either shouldn't be done at all or should be the purview of the states somehow we have to get them so much out of this business and i think a lot of those answers will be pushing forward state rights and doing the types of things. >> you can watch the rest of the program or any other book tv program online in our video library, that's at booktv.org. just search jason chaffetz or the title of his book, power grab, at the top of the page.

>> and now for the author discussion live from the texas book festival, here is a conversation about conservative leadership in american politics today. .. >> okay, good. i see thumbs up. all right. welcome to the c-span2 booktv tent, or welcome back if you've been here before. it's really an honor to be here both with respect to texas book festival, which is a great cultural institution of austin and texas, and also c-span2 booktv which is a