Thursday is the second day of questions from senators to the House impeachment managers and Donald Trump’s defense lawyers. Questions are submitted in writing to be read by Chief Justice John Roberts, with questions alternating between Republican and Democratic senators and answers generally limited to five minutes.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 3:37:46 AM +00:00
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Barbara Morrill
Ongoing coverage can be found here.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:01:48 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Jason Crow looking at the supposed claim that Ukraine was somehow involved in 2016 election hacking. Crow starts off a bit shaky, but finishes strong in making the case that the evidence is that Russia was 100% behind the 2016 hacks, and that giving Trump a win means that Putin and others get the signal they can use propaganda to manipulate the U.S.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:07:57 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
And this question is … I believe the legal term is “stupid.” Also, we’ve been here about a hundred times already. Question is if the House case is so strong, why have witnesses? I think the point here isn’t to ask this question at all, but to simply generate five minutes of dead time so that Philbin can hit a backlog of things he might want to say.
And sure enough, he immediately ignores the question and jumps to claims that a Ukrainian official writing an op-ed and tries to make that the equal of a multi-million dollar effort by the Russian military.
Now Philbin is back to talking about subpoenas and how the Executive has a right to ignore than, and suggesting that if they want Trump to obey a subpoena they could “squeeze programs” and other general silliness.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:15:41 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Blumenthal asks the House team why Trump wanted to “take her out” in connection to Marie Yovanovitch. Schiff makes it clear that it was Rudy who set up Yovanovitch, and the removal of Yovanovitch made it clear that Giuliani was someone they had to deal with. So Yovanovitch was taken out both to clear the way for the investigations, and because it was a demonstration of Rudy’s power.
Schiff uses the back end of his question to address the items that Philbin just raised about the court situation. Which again is an insistence that “Congress must exhaust all rememdies.”
McConnell orders up a five minute break. We should have about an hour and … maybe twenty minutes remaining.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:19:27 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
This five minute recess is very likely not a bathroom break, but related to the decision to be made by Alexander and Murkowski.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:22:23 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
And I apparently forgot to stop my timer during one the breaks, so there are closer to two hours remaining. Sorry about that.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:28:50 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
We’re back, and the Trump team gets the chance to attack the House over not releasing a statement from the intelligence community inspector general, likely because it provides information that might point to the whistleblower.
Again… the whistleblower does not matter one whit. It would not matter a bit if the whistleblower turned out to be Joe Biden. It’s a diversion.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:29:53 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
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Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:36:26 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Question from Manchin and Sinema to the House managers asks if they should have starting an accommodation process with the White House after the passage of 660.
Schiff points out that Trump had already publicly said that he would block all subpoenas, and the White House counsel had already said they would not participate in the process. Schiff says they would have happily entered into negotiation over narrow claims of privilege, but it’s not possible to negotiate with absolute denial.
Schiff again appeals to the Senate that they can set up the process to provide one week for witnesses and documents. The Senate has the sole power on impeachment. This actually has to be appealing for Senators in that it provides a suggested mechanism within Senate control.
It’s unlikely to make the difference, but it’s a good pitch.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:40:37 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Blackburn and Lee, so you know it’s going to be conspira-tastic. And it is. They ask the Trump team to opine on contacts between House staffers and the whistleblower. The whistleblower doesn’t matter. The whistleblower doesn’t matter. Repeat, infinitely.
Philbin is likely to take this time for more freeform complaints, since there’s nothing to say to the question he was asked. Philbin saying that the October 8 letter from Cipollone was an invitation to negotiate … a claim he makes by leaving out 90% of the letter, where Cipollone stated that he would not participate in the impeachment process.
What the letter actually says is that they won’t cooperate under impeachment, and if the House wants anything they have to close down the impeachment. Philbin will never admit this.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:46:02 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
House managers get a chance to kick the “no quid pro quo” but I want this for that phone call from Sondland.
Schiff uses this to again make the case for release of documents. And for a nice run through of the events between Trump’s July 25 phone call and the Sondland phone call. We’re late in the day (figuratively and literally) to be walking through the events again, but Schiff is telling a pretty good short version.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:49:17 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Moran and Crapo question is just a repeat of the statements that Philbin said ten minutes ago about other ways Congress can lean on the White House. This is just another play to give Philbin free time to address anything he wants. There’s nothing here that the Republicans making the request really want to know.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 2:58:05 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Markey asks the House managers about recent reports that Russia has hacked Burisma. Questions how Russia could use any information gained in 2020.
Schiff warns that Russia could hack Burisma, drip out information in hopes of hurting the Bidens, and under the Dershowitz theory that would be fine, and so would be Trump making a deal to hold Ukraine aid explicitly to help Russia. Schiff states that the potential methods Philbin offered for Congress to exert pressure on the White House are completely inadequate to the scale of the threat.
Points out again that Trump made his call to Zelensky one day after Mueller testified … asks what Trump will do one day later if the Senate acquits him.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 3:01:20 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Lindsey sends a letter along with Cruz — and Alexander and Murkowski — which certainly sounds like a final door closing on calling witnesses. And, yep it absolutely is.
The question is, isn’t it true that if Bolton testified there was a quid pro quo and Trump withheld military assistance in return for the investigations … it still wouldn’t be impeachable.
This is absolutely Alexander and Murkowski signalling that they’re buying the Dershowitz defense. It almost doesn’t matter what Philbin says here. In fact, it 100% doesn’t matter what Philbin says here.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 3:07:41 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Schiff responds to the same question just asked, says it’s been a long week, and everyone knows what happened here. Makes it crystal clear that the House is right: Trump extorted Ukraine for sham investigations, and withheld military assistance to get his way.
What Republicans are saying — and not just Alexander and Murkowski — is they’re cool with that. That question from Alexander and Murkowski wasn’t a surrender on some technical issue. That was just a surrender of Senate to Trump.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 3:10:27 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Schiff: “We know what happened here. They don’t want Bolton to testify because they don’t want it on live TV in all its ugly details.”
Roberts cuts him off. Damn. Again, Schiff was just getting cranked up.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 3:15:53 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
And, sigh, now we’re getting more Republicans piling to to swear allegiance. The idea that there might be some last minute revolt from “moderates” is as dead as every other time someone thought that a Republican was going to demonstrate a spine.
Oh, and Trump’s team is now arguing that some rules that Biden suggested around impeachment of judges, which they just got through saying didn’t apply in this case, are now the critical positions. They waited until now to pull out the “Biden rule.” Because it’s nonsense.
Sekulow. Never missing an opportunity to start off the rails and simply wander in the swamp. Now talking about a case he argued before the Supreme Court, which has nothing at all to do with this question. But hell, he could sing at this point. In fact, it might be better.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 3:21:15 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Hakeem Jeffries gets back up to take a question about the Senate’s ability to hear from witnesses, and to set the witnesses it will hear.
Jeffries has done a great job throughout this whole sorry excuse for a trial. Jeffries brings up Gowdy, goes back to the statement on Bengahzi points out the the “noncooperation” in that case included testimony from the NSA, DIA, CIA Director, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That what Gowdy called “noncooperation.”
Jefferies may not appear again in these proceedings. If that was his last time up, he did a fine job.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 3:27:29 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
A question to the House team about the conditioning of aid on the investigations, designed to get Schiff to say they have no direct evidence. Schiff is clearly exhausted, with a lot of the hope knocked out of him at this point.
I have now doubt that Schiff will bring it home, just as he has night after night. But he really has left it all on the field this week. He’s burned the candle at both ends and the middle. Roberts cuts him off.
Purpura talks. I’d forgotten he’s still there. And he starts off by lying by saying that no one ever told Ukraine they needed to do the investigations to get the assistance. Sondland may have not heard Trump make that statement directly, but Sondland absolutely made that assumption to Ukrainian officials at every level.
Apparently it’s now safe to let Purpura say something. Any minute now we may see Pam Bondi.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 3:32:44 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
A collection of Democratic senators make a try at showing how the arguments that have been put forward by the Trump team are a definition of an imperial presidency.
Before addressing that, Schiff starts off by explaining, again, that Purpura was—charitably—completely wrong about the pressure applied to Ukraine and Sondland made it absolutely clear that there would be no money without investigations.
Then Schiff moves over to the question: “Yes, this is not just an imperial president, but a president with absolute power. Mentions the extreme example that was put forward by Senator King and Trump’s team would not say that example was impeachable. Murkowski and Alexander sat there on the King question and saw Trump’s team explain to them just what they were voting for. And they went for that.