The Daily Signal - The House Voted A Year Ago to Impeach Trump. Here’s What You Need to Know About That.

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

Dec. 18 will mark one year since the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump. Looking back, what happened "behind the scenes" of the impeachment proceedings? Fred Lucas, the chief national affairs correspondent for The Daily Signal and author of “Abuse of Power: Inside the Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump,” joins "The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss it. We also cover these stories: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell referred to former Vice President Joe Biden as “president-elect” for the first time on Tuesday.  The Supreme Court voted to protect religious groups on Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by faith-based organizations in New Jersey and Colorado that sought relief from coronavirus restrictions.  After review of Federal Election Commission records, Fox News reported that Facebook and Twitter executives donated tens of thousands of dollars to Biden’s campaign, many of them giving the legal maximum of $2,800.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, December 16th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rousa Del Judis. December 18th marks the one-year anniversary since the House voted to impeach President Donald Trump. How did Democrats set up their crusade to impeach President Trump? My colleague at the Daily Signal, Fred Lucas, the chief national affairs correspondent for the Daily Signal and author of the book, Abuse of Power, inside the three-year campaign to impeach Donald Trump, joins me today on the podcast. to discuss that and more. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review

or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now, on to our top news. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, referred to former Vice President Joe Biden as President-elect for the first time on Tuesday. Speaking on the Senate floor,

McConnell congratulated Biden while also recognizing that many of the Senate. Americans hoped for a different election outcome per Bloomberg quicktakes. Many millions of us had hoped the presidential election would yield a different result. But our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on January the 20th. The electoral college has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden, The president-elect is no stranger to the Senate.

He's devoted himself to public service for many years. I also want to congratulate the vice president-elect, our colleague from California, Senator Harris. Beyond our differences, all Americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice-president elect for the very first time. The Supreme Court voted to protect religious groups on Tuesday in a suit comprised of faith-based organizations in New Jersey and Colorado, that wanted relief from coronavirus restrictions. The Colorado case involved a church that wanted an exemption from the health orders of the state, which the Supreme Court voted in favor of 6 to 3. The New Jersey case, which the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of,

was from a pastor and a rabbi who sued the state over health orders imposed by New Jersey Democrat Governor Phil Murphy and other state officials that put capacity limits on houses of worship. On Thanksgiving Eve, the Supreme Court blocked New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's limits on religious gatherings, and the High Court said that lower courts decide the Colorado and New Jersey cases in line with their New York ruling per the health. After review of the Federal Election Commission records, Fox News reports that Facebook and Twitter executives donated tens of thousands of dollars to Joe Biden's campaign, many giving the legal maximum of $2,800. Aaron Egan, Facebook's vice president of public policy, donated $2,800.000.

$100 to Biden on October 1st. Facebook chief revenue officer David Fisher and their financial officer, David Wenner, and at least four of Facebook's vice presidents all donated the maximum amount to the former vice president. Twitter vice president Matt Dorella donated $2,000 to Biden's campaign in September. Fox reports to have found zero Facebook or Twitter executives who donated to President Donald Trump's campaign. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Fred Lucas on his book, Abusive Power, Inside the Three-Year

Campaign to impeach Donald Trump. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. In the agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by one of my colleagues

at the Daily Signal, Fred Lucas, he's the chief national affairs correspondent for the Daily Signal. Fred, it's great to be with you on the Daily Signal podcast. Thanks for having me on. Well, it's great to have you with us, Fred. So December 18th marks the one-year anniversary since the House voted to impeach President Donald Trump. And Fred, you wrote a book about the impeachment process and all the proceedings called abusive power inside the three-year campaign to impeach Donald Trump. Can you start off, Fred, by just telling us about the book? It really began basically the day after President Trump was elected in November 2016, there was this movement to get rid of him as soon as possible without the benefit of an election,

which we just had. And, but it moves on to tell the story, basically, how the Russia are, emoluments, other things just sort of collapsed. And so this phone call with Ukraine sort of managed to do two things and sort of managed to set up a template for impeachment, but also sort of protect Joe Biden's candidates. Well, can you talk a little bit about first? Before we get to the Ukraine phone call, and I want you to address that. But you had mentioned that before any of this happened, basically the push to impeach Trump started. basically right after the president, President Trump took the oath of office. So can you talk about that and then what led into how the Ukraine phone call was,

basically, as you put it, the template used to impeach the president? Yeah, sure. So one of the big things right after his election is it's explained an abuse of power that Elizabeth Warren sponsored a bill and a lot of her Democratic colleagues actually signed onto it, that essentially said that Trump must divest of all of his business assets, or it would be a high crime or misdemeanor. That was basically, she was trying to set an impeachment trap. He either does this or he will meet the legal qualification for being impeached.

Thelon did not pass, but that's something that Democrats did push for. Once he took office, they began pushing for amoluments that both the... domestic and foreign emoluments that he had to get rid of all his investments and so forth. That pretty well faded, and they concentrated on the Russia investigation. They pounded away at that. Got a special counsel. Mueller came up empty on that in the end, and then that was frustrating for a lot of Democrats. They thought that maybe they could try to cling to that and say that Trump obstructed the investigation somehow.

But then this phone call, Trump almost threw them a bone. It probably wasn't a perfect call as Trump characterized it, but it also was not really a high crime or misdemeanor. But this was something that Democrats were able to cling to. They were able to frame it as a national security issue, and they were able to claim that he was somehow going after the Bidens in a way that was inappropriate, which largely, if you actually look at,

some of the coverage that was out there. There were stories in the Washington Post and the New Yorker and the New York Times Politico about Hunter Biden and his Borezma deal. There was a Washington Post story actually just a couple of days before the July 25th, 2019 phone call. Considering that we know Trump consumes a lot of media, it's almost hard to imagine that in the process of talking to the Ukrainian president, he wouldn't bring up the Hunter Biden issue. But this was turned into some sort of crime. And Democrats at one point, they tried to say it was bribery,

but they couldn't really figure out whether the Ukrainian president was bribing Trump or Trump was bribing Zelensky. Extortion didn't really go anywhere. So they finally settled on two charges, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, neither of which are actual statutory crimes. I say in the book, abuse of power, that probably makes this the weakest presidential impeachment in American history. Well, in the book, Fred, you talk about how California Democrat Adams shifts

pushed Jerry Nadler out of the key spot to lead the impeachment. What did this accomplish? It has traditionally been the Judiciary Committee that handles impeachment. At least going back to the Nixon impeachment hearings, Nixon, of course, resigned before it was impeached, but the Judiciary Committee passed three articles of impeachment. Judiciary handled the Clinton impeachment. So it was assumed that Nadler would handle this. However, Schiff really wanted a piece of this action, and he became more close to Nancy Pelosi. This is according to sources I interviewed for the book, Abuse of Power. And Nancy Pelosi was also not happy with how Nadler handled some of the investigative hearings, particularly the hearing with Mueller. She felt

like he was just rolled in that. Also, Corey Lewandowski, there was a hearing there, and basically that was strike two was enough for Pelosi to want to get rid of Nadler and mostly minimize his role in any impeachment. The Intelligence Committee came, essentially commandeered the impeachment process. They rolled out all the witnesses. They referred a report then to the Judiciary Committee. basically had a couple of days of hearings from a few lawyers, but no one directly involved in the matter. There was a very minimal role, kind of almost a token rule they were throwing Jerry Nadler or Bone. But once it moved into the Senate trial, Pelosi named Schiff as basically the leader of the impeachment managers. Nadler wasn't even really a co-captain. He was just one member among others.

And we saw this play out quite comical scene at one point in which Nadler rushed to the microphone to answer a question during the Senate trial as Schiff kept saying, Jerry, Jerry, trying to get him back to the table. So, I mean, yeah, there was clearly a rivalry between those two. Well, something else you raised in the book that you mentioned very briefly at the beginning of our conversation is that besides the rush of collusion narrative and some of the other narrative, for impeachment. Another reason for impeachment, as you briefly talked about, happened to coincide with the key political interest protecting Joe Biden's candidacy. Can you talk more about this threat and how this came into play? Sure. It was Joe Biden, as I mentioned, there was some coverage already of Hunter Biden's relationship with Burisma, how he's working there for this energy company in Ukraine, having had no experience in energy, no real experience in foreign affairs.

However, this was something that he was making quite a bit of money and cashing in on his father's name here. And it also ties back to this issue with where up to a certain point, some mainstream media outlets were covering the fact that Joe Biden, what he had said about firing the prosecutor or the Ukraine. would not get a certain amount of aid from the Obama administration. The prosecutor was at the time of course looking into Burisma and Hunter Biden. So this reflected poorly on Joe Biden. So it was rather convenient that they were able to shift this narrative of what we turn it around from a Biden scandal to a Trump scandal. Well, another key player in the impeachment proceedings was former FBI Director James Comey,

who was leading the supposed Russia collusion investigation. What is your perspective, Fred of Comey, and how did things change for impeachment when Trump fired him on May 9th, 2017? Well, that was something quite while Democrats were pushing to try to impeach Trump for that. That was one of the many, many rationales. I mentioned emoluments in Russia along the way.

There were multiple rationales throughout the, They at one point, one to impeach him for firing James Comey, claiming that he was obstructing an investigation. At another point, they wanted to impeach him over the various issue on Stormy Daniels, even. And then none of those really captured any level of public support. I wouldn't say that the Ukraine issue really carried that much public support. Democrats work with focus groups to try to develop what would be the best. way to promote the impeachment to the public. And I had a hard time even getting this across to mostly Democratic focus groups at the time. Well, while we all know that Trump was not impeached

by the Senate, what did or did not all those impeachment hearings and efforts accomplish? Well, I will tell you, Trump was not, I mean, it looks, apparently looks as if he lost the election, I think that had a lot more to do with COVID and other issues than anything to do with the impeachment. The impeachment, I think the goal there was to do maximum damage to him going into 2020. But if you look at how this worked out, how it shook out, Trump's approval rating shut up to almost that elusive 50% during the impeachment. The public sort of sided with him during that, didn't really approve of the House impeachment. And if you look, even though Trump lost, apparently, I should say, the House Democrats that voted to impeach him did not do well at all this year. Joe Biden had almost no coattails.

We saw a massive number of Democrats lose house seats. And a lot of those were Democrats who ran in red and took. purple districts claiming that they were going to Washington to get things done and they didn't want to impeach Trump. People sort of remember that promise later on. And when these Democrats running in moderate districts said, we're not going to support the New Deal or defunding police, well, those voters said, well, you said you weren't going to impeach Trump either. And those Democrats lost their seats. So I think it's hard to say that Democrats were winners in this whole process. Well, looking back, friend, now that this is a year behind us, what is your perspective on how

Republicans specifically handled the whole impeachment saga? Well, Republicans pretty well stuck together. Even if you look at the House vote, very partisan, but you did have four Democrats broke on at least one impeachment chart and voted against that. Republican and then once it made it to the Senate, well, Mitt Romney did break with the Republicans, but there were a lot of built-up personal animosity between Trump and Mitt Romney going back away. So I think for the most part,

Mitch McConnell gave a speech on the Senate floor right before the Senate vote, in which he talked about. This was sort of an attack on institutions from the left. And I think a lot of people might have seen it that way because this was really, however you want to look at the Clinton impeachment, a lot of people kind of roll their eyes about that because it had to do with his personal affair. But ultimately, it was about an actual crime, or actual two crimes, urgery and obstruction of justice, going all the

way back to the first presidential judgment, Andrew Johnson. A lot of historians have been dismissive of that. However, that was even about a duly enacted law that violated the Tenure of Office Act. Now, that law was later ruled unconstitutional by the courts, but at the time, it was in effect, and the House Republicans impeached him over it. And of course, the Richard Nixon, that was almost an impeachment. There were clear crimes in that. This is a is really the first and only impeachment of a president did not involve any allegation of an actual crime. You put these very vague statements that are abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. And those are two things that could apply to almost any president.

And that's kind of the real danger going forward when you pose it a danger, I think, to constitutional government when you have these types of, very vague charges that could be supplied by any Congress, any House of the opposite party of the president going forward, because you lowered the bar so much. Well, Fred, what should Democrats and Republicans learn from this whole impeachment saga going into this next year and just in general when it comes to politics, given that so much happened in this effort to impeach Donald Trump? One point I make repeatedly throughout the book, abuse of power, congressional oversight is entirely a credible thing. You should have the legislative branch closely watching the executive branch. And through the course of that, you'll have some probably firebrands on either side,

constantly calling for impeachment. But impeachment is something that really needs to be a last resort. It needs to be that they actually even outlined. the parameters of an impeachment in the book, Abuse of Power, which it should really be when a president demonstrably committed a crime or a series of crimes, or in lieu of an actual crime, it should be something that is somehow a threat to the country. And clearly this phone call with Zelensky, that did not meet any of those standards. Well, Fred, as we wrap up, are there any other topics or points you'd like to touch

as we're just, you know, weeks away from 2021. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess I'd maybe even follow up on that saying going into the next administration, that Congress should be very even aggressive, I think, in terms of congressional oversight of the president and the executive branch. But it should tread carefully when you get into the area of impeachment. And I think it has become almost in some ways too easy because, they realize there's not going to be a removal of a president.

So impeachment is sort of seen as a super censure of sorts. But that could just lead to a lot of problems, super polarization, and things will never get done under that sentence. Ayers, that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find The Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review in a five, start reading on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

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