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 · 1:58:55 AM +00:00 · Barbara Morrill

Ongoing coverage can be found here.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 12:39:59 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

And we’re back. Grassley follows right on the heels of the Alexander question in giving the Trump team another chance to rant about how the impeachment is nothing more than partisan hatred for Trump. Philbin is taking it, and will kick that can well enough, but I’m surprised this was not a clarion call that summoned Sekulow from the Conspiracy Cave.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 12:42:47 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

If you are just now coming back from dinner and missed Philbin’s response, don’t worry. Not one word of it was new.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 12:47:51 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

VanHollen teams with Klobuchar asks why Team Trump is opposed to letting the Chief Justice say if a proposed witness is relevant, with the Senate having a deciding vote. 

Sekulow says, uh, you know, no. We’re not willing to go with it. The reason here is clear enough—the big club of “We Will Eat Your Time Forever” would taken off the table, and that’s their best weapon to fend off all witnesses.

Schiff defends the constitutionality of the proposed process. Restates that he trusts Roberts to make a ruling on a witnesses as to whether they are there as relevant witnesses, or are just present for retribution. Schiff says it’s not that they don’t think Roberts would be fair, it’s that they “fear he would be fair.” Ties this refusal to the fact that they won’t produce documents or witnesses.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 12:50:58 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Here’s comes another Cruz-missile of smeardom. And frrracckkk we’re not talking about John Kerry’s step-son and someone else, and Burisma, and who the hell cares about this? I can only assume there’s a big “Q” on this somewhere.

Schiff: “The issue is not whether Hunter Biden should or should not have sat on that board.” Points out that Trump doesn’t give a flying fig about how much money Hunter Biden made — and neither does Cruz. It’s all about trying to imply that Joe Biden did something wrong, when what he did was with the cooperation and understanding of not just our allies, but Republican senators.”

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 12:53:28 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

I would pay to watch Ted Cruz and Adam Schiff debate. Cruz smugly thinks that ten minutes of browsing Breitbart gives him all the conspiracy fuel he needs to launch these attacks. Schiff burns him down in seconds.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 12:58:38 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Hakeem Jeffries comes up to take a question about the recent information released on Trump’s actions related to Turkey, looking toward a pattern of behavior. Jeffries moves the topic back to Ukraine, and stays pinned to the subject of corruption. 

Jeffries is doing a sound job, and once again making it clear that Ukraine had already met the corruption challenges that were required in the legislation. But there’s not a lot new to investigate here, and from the way the question was asked, it didn’t seem to suggest they had some new point to illuminate.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:04:58 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Schiff gets a question on why the House “didn’t choose to enforce” subpoenas. He walks through the case with Kupperman, showing that they did request his appearance, then issue a subpoena, then engage in arbitration repeatedly. And the basis for the refusal to obey the subpoena was the same as the McGahn subpoena already being litigated. A reasonable question and a calm response. 

Not clear if it was seriously asked, or if Republicans are just burning time.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:09:25 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

(Sorry, had some fuzz in my feed there and missed part of the question) but the question is about the importance of protecting whistleblower.

Schiff talks to the importance of protecting a whistleblower in the intelligence community, explaining that they cannot go public, and that without them there is no check on misinformation related to intelligence. Talks about the threats Trump has made both directly against the whistleblower, and to others like Marie Yovanovitch. Without a mechanism to protect whistleblowers reporting wrongdoing, wrongdoing will increase. 

Schiff points at Grassley and Burr as “great champions” of whistleblowers.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:12:45 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Blunt and Hawley team up for something likely to be a slam dunk for Team Trump … sure enough, Blunt — whose entire family are lobbyists — sets Trump’s attorneys up to talk about Trump’s heavy duty commitment to making sure taxpayer dollars are “used wisely.”

That’s how we got to a trillion dollar debt this year. All that careful bookkeeping. Cipollone talking about how money to Ukraine should be going to the pockets of American billionairs … oh, wait. Maybe he said highways?

Is it infrastructure week again?

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:13:55 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Team Trump making a ringing call for following precedent and having one standard ... which doesn't include the witnesses that were critical to every other impeachment.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:15:19 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

King asks Trump’s attorneys if it would be okay for Trump to withhold Israel aid until the prime minister comes and fingers Biden as anti-Semitic.

Which is a ridiculous question. Bibi will do that for free.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:16:41 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Philbin isn’t actually going to answer that question, by the way. Except to leave if hanging that they won’t condemn the idea.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:24:05 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Murkowski sending along a question. This might hint at her conversation with Lamar! Her question goes to the statements from Sondland and Johnson on “no quid pro quo” which is in conflict with Bolton. She asks directly “why should this body not call Bolton?”

Philbin starts off with the “the House didn’t,” and the claim that it would set a precedent for the Senate to call witnesses not heard by the House. Which already is the precedent. In every case. Philbin is sticking to the “the House should have done if for you” part of this for a long time. Philbin tries to push the idea that the entire chamber of the Senate has to sit for testimony — which isn’t true, and wasn’t true for the Clinton impeachment. That’s a pretty light use of the We Will Kill Your Schedule hammer I expected. 

That question probably means that Murkowski has made up her mind and will announce some “well, I was convinced by...” But it’s uncertain which side she will fall on.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:27:45 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Whitehouse, et al bring the question back to King’s Israel hypothetical, with Schiff also getting a swing at it. And gives another good possibility related to Turkey and Trump’s ability to show preference to countries where he has property.

Philbin … slowly, grudgingly admits that if Trump forced a foreign leader to come to the United States and lie “that would be wrong.” But holy hell, he still will not say it’s impeachable. That’s genuinely incredible.

Instead, Philbin pivots to attacking Bolton’s book. That was kind of jaw-dropping.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:32:47 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

A question about claims from Shokin made in a Washington Post last June that he was going to investigate Burisma—which ignores that Shokin reversed himself days later in an interview with Bloomberg and admitted that he only made those claims to ingratiate himself with Trump and Giuliani.

The reason that WP article came up at all was because Rudy Giuliani brought that information to the Post. Giuliani was directly responsible for the article that was cited in that question. Neither the WP or the NYT actually followed up on the articles Rudy brought them by going to Ukraine  and asking hard questions. Bloomberg did.

Shokin not only retracted, he has spoken of it in other articles since that point. To get that claim, they have to take a specific article and ignore all others.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:39:52 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

A question from Peters and Cornyn … a strange pairing. Question on how the verdict will change the balance of powers.

Cipollone stands up to say, of course, that acquittal would be great. Super great. And because it’s Cipollone, there’s mention of tearing up ballots, votes, etc. Oh, and Cipollone now turns on the deal Schiff proposed for the trial and says it would screw with executive privilege. Cipollone challenges Schiff over speech and debate rules — stay tuned.

Schiff says he trusts Roberts to make the right decision. Also points out that depositions were taken with just a couple of senators during Clinton impeachment. 

Schiff says if the White House is allowed to determine which subpoenas are valid or invalid, oversight power is “eviscerated.” An acquittal also means buying Trump’s theory of the case, which gives him essentially unlimited power. Roberts cuts him off just when he was ramping up. Drats.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:40:33 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

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Sen. Lamar Alexander just had a Senate page deliver a note to Sen. Mitch McConnell. McConnell let it sit on his lap for a couple minutes, then read it and stuffed it in his suit jacket pocket. McConnell’s face is tough to read. But he didn’t look in Alexander’s direction.

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) January 31, 2020

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:44:20 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Schiff knocks back a claim that Trump is being impeached because he’s ignoring the advice of his advisers. Says that Trump is certainly allowed to disagree with advice, even good advice. Trump is being impeached for acting with a corrupt motive.

Philbin then simply ignores what Schiff just said, tosses a snide remark Schiff’s way, and says that it would have damaged the separation of powers if Trump had given the House what they asked for. Except that’s exactly what both Nixon and Clinton did.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:45:26 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

By the way, Trump legal dudes ... sitting in the Senate and warning them that they might destroy executive privilege isn't a threat. It's an appetizer.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:50:58 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Question to Trump’s team on holding up until the McGahn case is settled, which Trump’s team pretended was moving “swiftly” just yesterday. Now Philbin is aghast at the idea, says McGahn will certainly go to the Supreme Court, there’s no way to wait, Trump deserves to have this over with … that McGahn case could be “hanging over the country for months on end.” Which only shows that Trump’s White House is arguing that they were never going to be answerable in the House.

Schiff shows that the ruling in McGahn against absolute immunity only repeats past rulings … and then the DOJ is arguing that the subpoena can’t be enforced. He agrees with Philbin that it’s headed for the Supreme Court. Again offers to hand the decision to Roberts.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:56:44 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Scott, Hawley, et. al. have a question about … Benghazi! Though it’s hard as hell to know which Benghazi they’re talking about, since there were eight separate Benghazi investigations.

And because we have Sekulow up there, we’re also getting “fast and furious” … where Obama turned over 90,000 pages of documents before going to court over issues of sources and techniques. 

Sekulow is terribly frightened by the idea that the Senate may take Schiff up on his deal. That’s good to see.

Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 1:57:34 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Flipside of the softball that the Trump team got a few minutes ago, now the House team gets to address the consequences of acquitting Trump when it comes to intelligence issues.

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.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:07:54 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Jason Crow gets another chance to talk about the difference between this hold and legitimate holds. Not sure there’s anything left to say here, but maybe they have more to say that Crow didn’t get to in his last, lengthy, step by step response.

Crow does get the chance to mention that multiple parties asked for the aid to be released, but no one got a reason why it wasn’t.

Looks like there are is something less than 4 hours remaining, by the way. 

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:14:08 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Another question involving Cruz and Hawley, this time with Burr and Rubio joining the madness. Let’s here it…

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired a retired foreign spy...” This question actually asks if the Steele Dossier is an impeachable offense.

Hakeem Jeffries steps up to say it’s not applicable.

Heck, let’s say hell yes! Let’s impeach Hillary! She’s out of office? Okay, now we can do Trump.

Jeffries now taking the senators for the string of conspiracy theories. “It’s hard to keep count. This is the Senate. This is America’s greatest political club. This is the world’s greatest deliberative body. And all you offer us is conspiracy theories because you can’t face the facts in this case.”

Surely it will be Sekulow on the other side. And it is. Honestly, I ignored everything he said.

In case anyone needs a reminder: Hillary Clinton hired someone, who hired someone, who hired someone who was working for John McCain, who hired someone ... who was British. Lock her up! Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:19:15 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Philbin now talking about why a document that was demanded is classified, on a conversation between Pence and Zelensky, even though the conversation it records has been subject to public discussion in Jennifer Williams testimony.

Schiff suggests that those who haven’t had the opportunity, and can view classified documents, should read it. Pence has said he wanted to release it, and has made public claims about it, but it remains unreleased. Schiff, who has read the document, is absolutely disdainful here of the idea that this call needed to be classified.

What’s that phrase again? Read the transcript, senators!

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:20:52 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Alexander sends a question, but Cruz is a co-author, which certainly suggests that Lamar! is on team screw-up. And he is. The question is about the votes in Nixon and Clinton impeachments.

Nothing like using the Senate Impeachment trial for something you could answer from Wikipedia.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:25:18 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Lofgren gives this blah question a much better and more detailed answer than it deserves, and does a nice job of pivoting to the idea of getting Bolton in for testimony that can be taken at the same time as the Senate continues its regular business — as it was in the Clinton impeachment.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:28:59 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Schumer directly addresses the “it would take too long” question, giving Schiff and company another chance to explain a plan for getting witnesses in for a week.

Schiff reports that the White House has said that the documents requested have already been collected, so it should take no time to get them over. Schiff acknowledges that it would mean limiting witnesses, suggests that Roberts could arbitrate disputes over witnesses, says that the House side has suggested four witnesses, but is open to negotiation. Schiff mentions that the Trump team has often talked about the need for “reasonable accommodation” and suggests that an agreement could be met.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:34:11 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

McConnell doesn’t feel that the question from Lamar! sufficiently beat up the Democrats, as was the design. So McConnell sends the same back to Philbin so they can get the numbers that they wanted.

And now this Googlable question has been asked twice. 

Philbin is not taking some time to argue that Dershowitz didn’t say what Dershowitz actually said. However, he is not going to tell anyone what Dershowitz actually said. Except to say that Dershowitz said he didn’t mean what he said. Nope … not gonna.

It’s a shame that Dershowitz hasn’t gotten the chance to opine on Dershowitz. But they seem afraid to let him out of his box this evening.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:39:47 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

One more question, then it’s dinner time.

This one comes from Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons, they ask if any of the witnesses the Trump team wants to call have first hand information about Trump’s actions.

The House managers are first. Schiff says he’s not a firsthand witness, and Biden has no knowledge on the subject. The whistleblower has also been explicit that they don’t have firsthand knowledge. But Mulvaney knows. Bolton knows. Why isn’t Trump’s team demanding first hand witnesses who can answer these questions?

Schiff: “Why don’t they want their own people in?”

Sekulow now up there admitting that there’s not a single damn person with knowledge of Trump’s actions that they want to talk to, Sekulow is making the case that John Roberts can’t be part of a fair process. That’s nice.

Dinner time, people. About … three hours remaining.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 11:42:30 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

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Wow, Philbin makes a great point that Nixon-era Republicans and Clinton-era Democrats were willing to look into allegations about their own party's president, while Trump-era Republicans are absolutely not.Great point, Phil. You're crushing this.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) January 30, 2020