easy to spread diseases. >> douglas and catherine with of their bulk salmon wars sunday night at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span q-and-a. you can listen to q-and-a and all podcasts on the free c-span now app. the first guest of the morning with the bipartisan policy center a senior fellow for that organization and also writes columns for the washington examiner in which we eare going to talk about takina look how president or former presidents are investigated. a little bit about the bipartisan policy center for those that are familiar with it. >> a think tank founded about 15 years ago and the idea is to find bipartisan solutions to take the senior republicans and democrats to see if they can work through problems. i worked there on the presidential leadership initiative where i focused on the presidency as an institution finding ways to both bolster and

maintain the respect the american people have. >> so taking a look at the okformer president and how they are investigated what sparked your interest in writing about dthis? >> it's pretty i obvious there s an investigation. i've long said when people ask about my books on the presidency or the articles people say unprecedented this is unprecedented. when people say unprecedented i go and look for a precedent about presidents, so that's my thing. i've decided to see have there been others that have been investigated and we've never had to something like the spectacle like this but we've had investigations that included presidents after they were no longer president. >> i'm sure they've taken different forms compared to what we're seeing today how they've been investigated for certain things. >> some have been posthumous but they have if it happened before that a president or his administration gets investigated after he's no longer in office

and i thought there was the interesting twist. >> in that context you start with ulysses s grant. can you set that up? >> in a somewhat a scandal plagued administration the most famous the scandal that had to do with pricing and he's basically found blameless in that about one of his aides is implicated. grant gives testimony on behalf instead of having to leave his employment in the white house so he kind of escapes free from that one although there's a stain on his presidency and after he is no longer president, the firm that he works for which is a wall street firm goes bankrupt because of the malfeasance of his partner and the partner ends up going to prison. here are two instances the president is subject to investigation and gets off the hook but these investigations were something.

>> we will take a look at other presidents but the idea of getting off the hook or going unscathed, how often does that happen for presidents are looked at post presidency? >> and the recent era of the big independent counsel, it seems the independent counsel is there to find something on the president or the president's administration's which is one of the reasons for the democrats and republicans allow the council to lapse. if there was a sense that once you go to an independent counsel that has to end in some kind of indictment and then you exonerate and that is and how it was done under the independent ticounsel.

ita was looking at a different thing. clinton was guilty of the relationship and lying about it but the american people and congress didn't see fit. they impeached him but they didn'ton convict him so he remas in office for the rest of his presidency but the investigation continued beyond his presidency including a deal where he has to give up the license and another deal where he gives up his ability to practice before the supreme court to stave off further investigations so it's not unusual there are investigations and there is another with quintin on the pardon that is a very questionable pardon that he issues at the end of his administration of the

billionaire whose ex-wife gave a lot of money to the democratic party so it seems very fishy and what happens there is the fbi does launch an investigation and goes on for four years after clinton is no longer president and then the fbi under james comey who originally prosecuted, the fbi if she was a very strange and somewhat unprecedented statement saying we looked into this matter 15 years ago and ended at 11 years ago but we did look into it and people were kind of flummoxed why is this announcement coming out at this time? >> how certain presidents are investigated for certain things. if you want to ask our guest you can call in 202-748-8000 for democrats, 202-748-8001 for republicans and 202-748-8002 for independence. what is the motivating factor to keep investigating even after

someone leaves office? >> that's a great question and it doesn't have any easy answer. on the one hand you would think it is just as if someone commits a crime that person should be prosecuted for the crimene but i think what we've seen in the post-watergate era on both sides of the aisle and the bipartisan policy center there's this case on each side that you have this idea of what is called the criminalization of the politicac differences and there is the sense that we want to get the person on the other side of the aisle and i don't think that it's healthy for democracy or forr our country but that a sene of wanting to get someone on the other side is something we have seen emerge in the last 50 years. >> and watergate was an example of that? >> the president obviously had done the wrong things. nixon had done things he shouldn't have done and tried to cover theme up which was worse and i think they could've resolved the issue if he didn't tryy to engage in the cover-up but i think watergate was kind

of the starting thing for this whole idea that we really got the guys on the other side and maybee other people can and thee is the other side. >> and now we hear about the presidential records act but remind people how that event fostered the action of the presidential records act. >> it's interesting. the presidential records before watergate were the property of the president which kind of sounds odd to us today but it's only after watergate and t the passage of the presidential records act which was in part passed by the post-watergate democratic congress to sort of punish nixon but establish this new regime where now all presidential records with the we property of the united states government and there was a process for taking those documents and looking through

them and now these presidential libraries that didn't always exist before hand so the presidential documents are a different thing. when i was in the white house i served as a george w. bush administration and we had a very strict rules about what we could do. if i took notes in a meeting those notes were not mind to take home. they are sitting there in the library right now with boxes and boxes i don't know if people can decipher my handwriting but they are there in the library and that is where they are supposed to be under the rules created by the presidential records act. >> you talk a lot about history but talk about the modern-day as far as records and looking about these records what do you see as far as compare and contrast? >> the reason i like being a historian as we can look through everything. it does seem like there wasododh classified information that shouldn't have been there. i don't know if the way they went about was quite the right way to do it. i don't know what kind of negotiations were going on between trump and the trump's lawyers handed to the justice

department, but you cannot take ficlassified information with yu and that is against the presidential records act and it is a problem, so i understand why wend have this issue and bil barr who knows more about this, i was pretty adamant over the weekend i'm going to let him speak on the issue of the actual prosecution of justice and keep looking at it from a historical perspective. >> because of your experience when you hear president trump talking about his ability or the way that he went about, what do you think of that argument and what would you think about defense asul far as those who criticize it? >> it's not like he walks around saying i declassify. it's much more complicated than that so i don't think that's it. it also presumes the documents he took with him were classified and he's never saying there is a period in which he had this classification ceremony and then

took the documents. it seems like he was trying to look at some kind of ex post facto classification so i don't think that works. >> in the washington examiner if you want to read it you can talk about it and ask questions. mark in hawaii on the independent line with the bipartisan policy center go ahead. >> i saw a speech the other night from president biden that i had never seen the likes of. the vitriol wasn't there but the accusation was profound. he indicted every trump voter as being potentially violent and knighted i would say throwing down the gauntlet for civil war masquerading and red banners in the background. he basically indicted everybody in america whoho doesn't support him.

and for someone who is covering up his son's criminal behavior in ukraine and china, who is covering up obama's gun trafficking and money laundering from other banks, covering up so many crimes on his side of the aisle -- >> what is the question for the guest? >> what i'm wondering is how do you take this into looks to be like. [inaudible] >> we will leave it there. >> i didn't like the speech. i didn't think it was the right approach. i didn't like the menu, the lighting, and i also didn't like the constellation of what he called the people that denied elections but people that had different political beliefs and would disagree with him on very important national political issues such as abortion rights

and that sort of thing so i don't think that the team handled that speech well and there were indications i was reading in thehe press this morning that he wanted to give the speech and his team was advising against it which speaks well if that is true so i don't think that it was a wise thing to do. i thought it was very notable the "washington post" editorial board which is usually favorable criticized him for that a speech in yesterday's paper so i think there's a bipartisan tdisagreement. >> luke in georgia democrats line, hi. >> go ahead, sir. >> he went to retrieve the stuff stolen from the office. that's what really happened. you talk about make america great again.

to tell me when america is more greater than it is today. >> let me just say in my piece i didn't just to say that it was on the investigation documents. there are multiple investigations going on and that is the impetus of looking into goprevious post presidential investigations. thereig is one in georgia, the w york attorney general tried toat investigate him obviously january 6th hearing there's multiple investigations going on. >> we will talk about january 6. what do you think as far as what they've presented to the public, what do you think of the process? >> i'm curious to see. there were interesting revelations. i do wish they could have worked it out and that there was a more bipartisan investigation.

there are some republicans on the panel but they were not the ones in the republican majority caucus so that harms the investigation and allows people on the other side to say this is no fair. that said there've been interesting and troubling revelations i will continue to watch. >> of the initial desire is to have outside people look at these rather than people in congress. would that have been a better approach do you think? >> i think havingop it in congrs might have been the motivation and i'm not sure what the outside group would have been so i have to reserve judgment until i see what the alternative was. david on the republican line. >> thank you for c-span as always. my comment or it's a question when the fbi investigated

clinton over the mark rich scandal, did the fbi go into the houses, did the fbi tumble everything and go into his private rooms and go through his clothing and hillary's? this wasn't a real investigation as we are seeing today with president trump. this was a sham investigation and who was involved in it, call me. this is terrible. >> okay, david. thank you. >> he raises an interesting point. jim comey is the person that prosecuted, so he has strong feelings on mark rich and his guilt and he was pretty clearly guiltyty and then he is the fbi director who announces that this investigation took place 2001 to

2005. he wasn't fbi director at the time but he was when he announced it and takes place. then later that year he also is the one that announces the letter to congress that's investigating hillary clinton's e-mail scandals so before the trump people hated him, the clinton people hated him as well so he's got this ability to raise against him. >> between the way president trump is being traded into the former secretary of state hillary clinton because of her communications and e-mails do you think there's a fair comparison of the criticisms? >> i think both seem to have mishandled classified information and as someone that worked in the white house and worked with classified information and had a high clearance level i looked is favorably among people that mishandled classified information. >> samantha is next in arizona on the independent line with the bipartisan policy center. go ahead. >> yes, i have one statement. to me it means pro policies of

pre- world war ii that keeps black americans especially of the enslaved, flatlined with the wealth gap, on the wealth gap they flatlined and jamie diamine has admitted this in congress. >> this is from the speech last night if you want to comment anything on that. >> there's disagreements some people think make america great again and howard f c-span to the great podcast everyone should listen about the use of maga, the words make america great again on both sides of the oil when it became a more controversial term but if you

listen to howard's podcast and this all comes from the archival footage to hear bill clinton talking about make america great again and ronald reagan b say me america great again so it's been a phrase in american politics for a long time and only recently it's become super controversial. >> when you write about richard nixon our look at the life investigation you look at the actions of gerald ford. talk about what he did and the impact overall as far as also president ford. >> people often think that the investigation of nixon ended with the pardon, but the truth is the pardon staved off the future and additional investigations that would have happened, and that's the reason he did it. so it's unprecedented. it was every expectation at the time an investigation into nixon would continue. ford thought that those continued investigations would tear apartnt the country and that's the reason he issued the controversial and damaging pardon and some of the aides

including robert hartman who was close to him told him not to do it and he said about why now, why not do it later, why do you have to do it right now and we did it just a few weeks and to the presidency and ford i think correctly thought that this was necessary for the nation to heal and it hurt him, he lost that in 76 to carter and he may have wanted if he hadn't issued the pardon but the nation would have been in a poor situation. >> did he ever express regret about the action? >> not that i am aware of. i think that he defended it and it's been an important part of the legacy. they don't get to know in for much if you look later what each president is known for. president ford is forever known for those words our long national nightmare is over and those were the words he issued when he gave the pardon and i think that reflects well upon him. >> new jersey next on the democrats line. go ahead.

>> i just wanted to make a comment about president biden and what he said about maga voters. i agree wholeheartedly. i think trump has done nothing but divide this nation. i'veei had neighbors threatenede and tell me i should be dead because i'm a democrat. trump campaign for four years demonizing the democratic party. we are not the party of kennedy. we still are not. we are true patriots and what do they do when you argue with them? they bring up riots that happened ined the street. you can't compare people protesting that went violent to the insurrection of the capital threatening the vice president while this president idly stood by and did nothing when police officers were beaten and murdered. >> as far as the investigation do you have a question for the

guest? >> i would like to know why he's not in jail right now. >> as long as it's not you are me. [laughter] these investigations take time. i've seen from andrew mccarthy of the national review that's a smart on these issues and he thinks an indictment is going to come out of all of this so we - will see how the wheels of justice turn before we make some kind of determination. we have a judicial system with rules and laws for a reason. let's see them played out. >> you heard lindsay graham talk about this idea that if that happens. >> let's see what they have. if you look on the first days

you might have said this is outrageous why are they reading a former president and as time goes on you learn more information and may be you will change your opinion so i think if the justice department does d issue an indictment i think that they would have to have a strong case that they made public at the time because this is not just a judicial decision but also a political decision and if they are trying to indict a former president they wouldn't get political support that if but ifthey have something more s than they could. >> ronnie from virginia, i'm sorry washington state republican line. go ahead. >> i'm from the reservation and i am a tribal member. i am calling to say what america great today means to me and it's really simple.e. donald trump explains it thoroughly when he's speaking and if you listen carefully you hear the definition would be to

reinstate the respect between citizens and police and stop stoppedtaking the money away fr, stop the defunding but to fund the police department, support the police department and strengthen our military and stop throwing trillions and billions and millions of dollars to other countries when we need to do our own infrastructure and fix our own country. those sort of things are some of the things on the listth and its a larger list been that about making america great again. >> got your point. the list you have as far as past presidents investigating and teapot dome as it was cold. remind the viewers what that was and the impact. >> it's super interesting. it is in oil leasing scandals of

people were appropriating and making a lot of money off of it and there was an investigation into it. harding died somewhat mysteriously in 1923 before he begins the presidency in 21 so two years into the presidencycy and there were some rumors at the time that perhaps harding's wife had even poison him so that avoid being investigated and implicated. there is noca evidence. he seems to have died of heart trouble but he was relatively young but the investigation continues for years after harding is no longer alive and in 1927 you have a supreme court case that makes the determination congress can compel witnesses to testify and in 29 you have the first cabinet secretary to go to jail as a result of his involvement in the scandal and then the third interesting thing to come out of this is that the bureau ofin investigation at the time it

wasn't yet called the fbi seems to have mishandled the investigation that leads i to a reshuffling and as a result, j edgar hoover becomes the director of the bureau investigations that later become the fbi and he's still the director of the fbi when richard so huge president is implications from the scandal that takes place in the 20s and the investigation that continues after he's no longer alive. >> in the column in the washington examiner website g looking at former presidents o were investigated many on the list including ronald reagan. >> obviously the most famous investigation is the iran contra scandal where the u.s. is negotiating secretly with the iranian government to get some hostages who'd been taken by terrorists in the middle east

and in part they sell arms to the iranians to get the hostages out. they didn't do successfully but the money from the sales are then funneled to nicaragua and the insurgency group fighting. congress had explicitly forbidden the u.s. from appropriating funds for that purposee so they use the dollars that were not appropriated and it becomes a big scandal that blows up in 1986 and reagan is investigated and they eventually find her believe he didn't know the ins and outs were the details of this but there were people within the administration who did know more about it and the investigation is led who becomes one of these independent councils and he continues his investigation beyond the administration into the bush administration and clinton administration and the

controversy is that on the eve of the reelection attemptel in 1992 he issues an indictment of caspar weinberger who is the secretary defense under reagan and this is seen as a black mark againstnd bush and harms bush politically right as he's about to run for reelection and bushy in his campaign chair man are irate for what he's done and later the christmas a day of pardons of those implicated in the iran contra scandal bush was three weeks from leaving the presidency and this creates a lot of republican anger about the council and amend the democrats to join in their anger about the counseling at the clinton administration which leads to the lapse of the council. >> versus the special counsel, what are the large differences? >> it's a great question. my editors at the washington

examiner after they looked at the draft said please explain the difference here so i'm glad you're asking. the council is different in that it has less of a reporting nature or relationship with the department of justice and its independent from the justice and appointed by the attorney general andpe therefore is theoretically responsible in reporting to the attorney general and ultimately to the president so there's one level removed for the council. the problem is that sometimes creates these independents and you don't havees the check where someone can say this investigation has gone too long it's not finding anything. the pursuit of justice isn't about the indictment but whether there's something worthy of inviting. >> from michelle in marylanddi r the guest on the independent line. rngood morning. good morning. a fascinating topic. thank you forng putting it on ad thank you to the guest. when we look at the former

investigations and the outcomes what we have is a conclusion in the past. today we have this issue with trump being so confused by the lies and social media and the set of facts he had documents he shouldn't have had and the government tried to get them back from him for over a year. he gave some over and retained some and they had to search his property too get them. it's a pretty straightforward of facts.wh what i am very disturbed about is as we look at this issue even in the c-span forum as the callers call, there's no fact check and i'm concerned about d that because if we are, we hae

this form and it's totally nonpartisan and you do a good job of presenting issues to all sides you have different issues that are pertaining to republican and democratic over the course of things i think you do a good job but when we present these issues, it's important to retain facts in this presentation. if someone can state facts. >> the long-standing one for us so i will leave it at that. >> i celebrated c-span and think it is terrific. yes, the callers are not fact checked but that's the idea we are hearing from the american people, people on the left and the right, independent and they

are saying what is coming out. then you have the host and the guest and i assume if i say something that's verifiably false if you get to something that i said and correct i will correct you. i don't think it's c-span's job to fact check every caller but you get the sense of what people are thinking. democrats line. >> good morning. i noticed that under president trump, all of our investigative department heads retired when he got into office.

we need to investigate not only the president but also the senate and congress. i've worked for the government for like 45 years and i've had a high security clearance. thanks to president reagan, we had bipartisan walls that were in place that the states were not adhering to like the immigration reform and control act of 1986. that was our border wall where we mandated that if you hire or rent to a person in this country, you had to use e-verify. this is why our country is in the shape that it is in today.

i was glad she mentioned there were some bipartisan achievements including the cleanup of the tax code and the reform act on the tax cuts. it seemed like it was a somewhat different erare and they were helpful in putting the coalitions together. >> can you elaborate on that? >> i'm not sure what the rules of the road should be.

the frequency of investigations is increasing. i'm not sure if they are more criminal or problematic but maybe we have a more investigative culture. a call for some kind of bipartisan rules of the road that are based on precedent, propriety for some level of respect that no one should be above the law and look at what has been done before before creating new precedents is to break the norms. >> we heard of the leader mccarthy and others say taking power in november you're going to see investigations of this white house. doese that concern you?er >> some of the things they've said about the investigation concerned me. i don't mind if there's an appropriate investigation. but, you've heard some of the more marginal republicans saying they are going to end peach

biden. i don't see any reason for impeachment at this point. and i think that you need to go forward carefully. i worked for the republican leadership in the '90s and i think that they have a kind of gung ho approach and they were expecting to gain seats in the midterm election and did quite poorly in large part because they were focused more on investigations than on solutions for the american people. >> sarah from north carolina, you are on. >> caller: good morning. i had ago question about somethg i was reading about how they would do this obstruction case. it says something here about post-watergate.

can you explain that? >> i'm not a lawyer so i can't do everything. there was this additional penalty that was imposed in a later statute and classified alinformation is handled differently. if there d are indeed classified documents that should not have beent there there are multiple statutes which the president can be prosecuted.

>> has there been any instances with something deleterious happening because of careless use of documents, top-secret and such, has there been any incidents? >> i am not aware of any and i think that kind of thing would probably make the papers if that had happened. but that doesn't mean we shouldn't treat the documents carefully. there are some methods that are incredibly private and we shouldn't be sharing that information.be and i'm quite weary of anyone mishandling the documents.

>> i just wanted to ask basically when you say raid on someone, this is after 18 months and after a subpoena was issued. it was more or less a search warrant but the question with that is basically how do you feel about not only the stall tactics but basically the whole gop party not really listening to the subpoenas and that whole power i don't think they have a situation where people can ignore without penalty. you can choose not to appear before the investigative body, you will face legal jeopardy. >> from the bipartisan policy center, the bipartisan policy.org if you want to read

his work. thanks for having me. >> each cage holds up to 100,000 fish so it could contain 1 million or more fish. because of that proximity it's easy to spread disease.

>> child labor experts and advocates testify on child labor laws and requirements on farms. the testimony comes as lawmakers

examine ways to improve safety conditions for youth would that that workon farms around americ. >> today we are meeting to examine workplace detections for child farmworkers. today's hearing represents the third in the series for spotlight workers that are all too often overlooked, neglected and exploited. the hearings have been invented to lift workers up and champion their causes. each day hundreds of thousands many of whom come from low income migrant families risk their health and well-being while working on farms across the country. child farmworkers should be able to rely on the basic workplace protections that are standard. unfortunately, the nation's labor law has left the child workers behind. while