A battle of attrition: It was a busy day in impeachment politics
In London, President Donald Trump, having been the subject of mockery by fellow world leaders at a major summit, packed up early and left without holding a traditional news conference — but not without firing back at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling him “two-faced.”
In Washington, four law professors testifying before congressional impeachment investigators divided on whether Democrats have the grounds to impeach Trump. The three called by Democrats argued that we’ve learned enough about Trump’s pressure on Ukraine — an effort to get a foreign country to damage a potential 2020 Democratic rival — while the one expert called by Republicans said the inquiry has moved too fast.
And we learned that Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has played a central role in the Ukraine saga, is once again in Ukraine — and, according to his spokeswoman, is there “for the sole purpose of proving his clients innocence.”
It’s a lot.
Here’s CNN’s minute-by-minute account of Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, a first formal step by the lawmakers responsible for voting on articles of impeachment.
Impeachment Watch Podcast: CNN political director David Chalian dissects Wednesday’s hearing with CNN reporter Michael Warren and CNN political commentator Mary Katherine Ham.
The case against Trump: Read a simplified breakdown of the Democrats’ impeachment report.
What did we learn Wednesday? This is a weighty moment
CNN’s Supreme Court expert Joan Biskupic offers this analysis:
Even if their testimony on Wednesday changed not one mind on polarized Capitol Hill, the professors’ explications offered a national television audience a short course in the constitutional provision dictating that a President may be removed from office through House impeachment and Senate conviction for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
The professors divided in their assessments of whether President Donald Trump should be impeached for his dealings with Ukraine. For impeachment were Harvard’s Noah Feldman, Stanford’s Pamela Karlan, and University of North Carolina’s Michael Gerhardt, all invited by the Democratic committee majority. Speaking against a Trump impeachment was George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley, selected by the Republican minority.
Yet all four were united in a message about the weight of the moment: However the US House of Representatives acts on the presidential matter at hand, it will affect America’s constitutional checks and balances for decades to come.
They all also understood they had to make their arguments as accessible as they were urgent. They streamlined their renditions of history and sprinkled their remarks with analogies and pop references. By and large, they avoid legal jargon and long, dense responses.
Here’s the difference between Trump and a king
There were some real constitutional issues on display Wednesday. Republicans largely argued that Trump has the ability to determine how to lead the country as a duly elected executive leader. Democrats largely argued we’re veering away from the ideal of a republic complete with the robust separation of powers — also known as checks and balances — envisioned by the Framers.
“Kings could do no wrong because the king’s word was law,” Stanford professor Pamela Karlan told lawmakers. “Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article 2 does not give him the power to do anything he wants. And I’ll just give you one example that shows you the difference between him and a king, which is the Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the President can name his son Barron, he cannot make him a baron.”
(She later apologized for invoking Trump’s son, after first lady Melania Trump tweeted about it.)
‘Royal we’
Karlan was on fire throughout the hearing, notably tangling with Rep. Tom McClintock of California when he demanded to know who the four legal scholars called to testify had voted for in 2016. She replied that she’s guaranteed the secret ballot just like everyone else.
Karlan also said Trump had seemed to use the “royal we” in asking Zelensky for a favor July 25. “When the President said ‘do us a favor,’ he was using the royal we there. It wasn’t a favor for the United States. He should have said do me a favor because only kings say ‘us’ when they mean ‘me,’ ” she said.
She joins the other women — former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and former National Security Council official Fiona Hill — who have been the standout witnesses of this impeachment proceeding. Worth revisiting: CNN’s Maeve Reston on how women have been unafraid to show anger in this process — and to call out the men questioning them.
Clear your calendar
If the lawmaker questions in the hearing are any indication, the partisan trenches are dug and we’re now locked in this cycle until Christmas, by which time Democrats hope to vote on impeachment.
We can also assume that an impeachment trial will occur in the Senate in January. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a Senate calendar for next year and he left the entire month of January off — because of uncertainty over impeachment, a GOP leadership aide told CNN’s Ted Barrett.
Why not wait? ‘Judges are lazy as hell’
This is all stuck.
The White House is claiming it can, as Trump likes to say, do whatever he wants. Constitutional scholars disagree. The Senate, controlled by Republicans, is unlikely to do anything about it after Democrats impeach him.
What about the courts? Why not just wait to hear what they say on the issue and either force witnesses to comply or excuse them from complying with subpoenas?
Democrats ‘wasted two months’
Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University professor who opposes impeachment, said at the hearing that Democrats might ultimately be able to prove impeachable offenses, but they’ve wasted time.
“We’ve burned two months in this House, two months, that you could have been in court seeking a subpoena for these witnesses. It doesn’t mean you have to wait forever. But you could have gotten an order by now,” he said.
‘Lazy as hell’
A federal judge in DC, for instance, held a first hearing in the case of a former National Security Council official, Charles Kupperman, last month. He didn’t schedule the first hearing in the case until December 10.
“OK, so if this is of the highest importance, consideration of impeachment of the President of the United States, why isn’t this fast-tracked through the federal courts and up to the Supreme Court?” Dana Bash asked Jeffrey Toobin.
“Because judges have life tenure and some of them are lazy as hell,” he said.
They also discussed and cast serious doubt on the idea Democrats could wait to call witnesses like John Bolton, the former national security adviser who has all but begged to testify so long as a judge tells him to, at a Senate trial.
The idea is that Chief Justice John Roberts, as judge of the Senate trial, could allow his testimony. But Republicans could also simply vote against it.
That was then: Turley supported impeaching Clinton
The 25-year-old clips of people weighing in on that case haven’t worn well on anyone in this impeachment season. Turley’s comments in 1998 about the danger of not impeaching a president because it cedes too much power to the presidency did not wear well Wednesday, when he seemed to take the opposite view, that impeachment itself created the bad precedent.
Turley now: “Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad or will it only give an invitation for the madness to follow in every future administration?”
Turley in 1998: Because the Constitution is written to make a penalty less likely in the Senate, it is essential that the House fully perform its detection and accusation role to achieve deterrence under this system. The Senate may then choose to acquit but the standard of conduct for future presidents has not been lowered by the adoption a narrow threshold definition in the House.
What a day for history nerds!
Borrowing from Chris Cillizza’s file on this hearing because I liked the way he brought back Viscount Mordaunt and William Davies:
“Do you love obscure references to American history and our founding fathers? Boy, have we got the hearing for you!
“In the morning session alone, we got MULTIPLE references to William Davie, the 18th Century governor of North Carolina. We got a reference to Viscount John Mordaunt, who was impeached by the British House of Commons in 1666 but quickly pardoned by King Charles II. At one point, one of the witnesses — Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman — postulated that the committee needed to consider what they would say about their rulings if they met James Madison or Alexander Hamilton in the afterlife. So that’s what law professors’ fan fiction looks like!”
Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?
We’re still learning a lot about why Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was calling the Office of Management and Budget, as discovered by the House impeachment inquiry.
But Giuliani isn’t retreating from this story. He’s diving into it.
The New York Times, citing conversations with people familiar with the matter, said the President’s personal attorney went to Budapest, Hungary, on Tuesday to meet with former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko before going to Kiev, Ukraine, on Wednesday to meet with a number of other former prosecutors in the country, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk. Giuliani, a key player in the President’s dealings with Ukraine, traveled to speak with the former prosecutors for a documentary series meant to bolster unproven and debunked claims of corruption at the heart of the probe.
The ex-prosecutors have “all played some role in promoting claims” about former Vice President Joe Biden, former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, the paper said. Those claims have been key to Trump and Giuliani’s efforts to get Ukraine to announce investigations into matters that would benefit the President’s 2020 reelection effort, according to House impeachment investigators.
When CNN’s Dana Bash asked Giuliani about the trip, he responded instead with an answer about records showing he had called the Office of Management and Budget over the summer.
“[I] don’t remember calling OMB and not about military aid never knew anything about it,” he said.
Giuliani also tried to deflect, perhaps toward a new conspiracy theory. “I’m not the fall guy. I have all the evidence any fair prosecutor would need to show a major Pay for Play In Obama administration. Let’s see if we are still a nation of laws.”
More on Giuliani — CNN’s Zachary Cohen reports that phone records released as part of House Democrats’ impeachment report earlier this week reveal calls from Giuliani to a number designated simply as “-1,” which has investigators wondering whose number it is.
The phone logs also show Giuliani called numbers associated with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget during that same time frame, further fueling speculation about who he was talking to and for what purpose.
Back to the beginning on Ukraine
Democrats have long alleged that the only reason the aid to Ukraine was released without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announcing the investigations Trump wanted is that the administration got caught. The whistleblower complaint and more conspired against the effort.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has documented events from 2017 and 2018 that deserve some scrutiny. According to his report:
June 2017 — Giuliani met with Ukrainian then-President Petro Poroshenko and then-Prosecutor General Yurie Lutsenko, who later join an investigation into the black book that previously implicated Paul Manafort, perhaps marginalizing that investigation. By the end of the month Poroshenko gets a short meeting with Trump at the White House.
2017-2018 — In December 2017, Trump decides to sell Javelin missiles to Ukraine. Months later, Ukraine stops cooperating with the Mueller report. The New York Times tied those two events together in a May 2, 2018, story, “Ukraine, Seeking U.S. Missiles, Halted Cooperation With Mueller Investigation.”
Things like this aren’t likely to get much attention by Democrats now that they’re in the impeachment phase of this inquiry and given Trump’s obstruction, but these are interesting elements to take another look at in light of the July 25 Trump-Zelensky phone call.
What’s next?
Nothing further has been scheduled — yet — by the Judiciary Committee. CNN’s Manu Raju and Haley Byrd report that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing her cards close to the vest.
“No, we haven’t made it,” Pelosi claimed to CNN when asked if she had made a decision on impeachment.
On Thursday, CNN will host a town hall with Pelosi, starting at 9 p.m. ET.
What are we doing here?
The President has invited foreign powers to interfere in the US presidential election. Democrats want to impeach him for it. It is a crossroads for the American system of government as the President tries to change what’s acceptable for US politicians. This newsletter will focus on this consequential moment in US history.
Keep track of congressional action with CNN’s Impeachment Tracker. See a timeline of events. And get your full refresher on who’s who in this drama.
