(Getty) Eric Swalwell
California Congressman Eric Swalwell says the president should go ahead and sue him, if that’s what he really wants to do. In a tweet issued Monday afternoon, Swalwell said that he’d beat Donald Trump in court if it ever came to that. Swalwell wrote, “The only person who has been caught lying about Russia is Donald Trump. If he thinks I’ve made a false statement, he can sue me. And I’ll beat him in court.”
Swalwell’s tweet came in response to a report from Axios, which claimed that the White House has sent out a memo to TV producers with a list of guests whom, the administration says, have made “outlandish, false claims” about the Trump administration’s alleged obstruction of justice and alleged ties to Russia while on the air. You can see that memo here, via Axios. The list of guests includes Swalwell, as well as Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senator Adam Schiff, Representative Jerrold Nadler, and DNC chair Tom Perez. It’s not clear why Swalwell believes that he might be targeted in a lawsuit, since the memo doesn’t contain any threat to sue.
The memo charges that the Mueller Report is a complete vindication of the president. The memo reads, in part:
The Special Counsel made no recommendation on obstruction, which is a decision in itself. Using the information provided by Mueller, the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General determined that there was no obstruction….The only way to interpret these conclusions is as a total and complete vindication of President Trump.” The memo continues, “The issuance of these definitive findings comes after two years of Democrat leaders and others lying to the American people by vigorously and repeatedly claiming there was evidence of collusion. They made many of these false claims, without evidence, on your airwaves.”
The memo concludes, “Moving forward, we ask that you employ basic journalistic standards when booking such guests …at a minimum, if those guests do appear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide the evidence which prompted them to make the wild claims in the first place.”