"O’Donnell: ‘Senior Democrats’ might investigate ‘false statements’ to Congress about torture" (with video)

Think Progress with video (00:29):

On The Chris Matthews Show today, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Kelly O’Donnell reported that congressional Democrats were considering “a different way to go at accountability of the so-called torture memos.” “Senior Democrats have told me that they might look at the possibility of were there false statements made to Congress,” said O’Donnell:

O’DONNELL: Senior Democrats have told me that they might look at the possibility of were there false statements made to Congress, was there any perjury, when some of the people involved in policy and legal parts of all of that appeared before Congress a few years ago. Now things have been declassified, compare them and see, is there anything there. A different way to go at accountability of the so-called torture memos.

Watch it:

Though O’Donnell reports that some “senior Democrats” are seeking “a different approach” to investigating the Bush administration’s torture policies, at least one top Democrat is still pushing for a truth commission. In a Boston Globe op-ed today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) writes, “I still believe my proposal for a Commission of Inquiry remains the best way to move forward with a comprehensive, nonpartisan, independent review of what happened.”

Transcript:

MATTHEWS: Kelly?

O’DONNELL: A different approach to the concern about accountability with those interrogation memos. Senior Democrats have told me that they might look at the possibility of were there false statements made to Congress, was there any perjury, when some of the people involved in policy and legal parts of all of that appeared before Congress a few years ago. Now things have been declassified, compare them and see, is there anything there. A different way to go at accountability of the so-called torture memos.

MATTHEWS: And there could be prosecutions then.

O’DONNELL: Well, it’s a crime to give a false statement to Congress.