The Daily - The Latest: But Is It Impeachable?

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

The House Judiciary Committee opened a new phase of the impeachment inquiry by tackling a fundamental constitutional question: What is an impeachable offense? All the witnesses testifying in today’s hearing were in agreement, except one.“The Latest” is a new series on the impeachment inquiry, from the team behind “The Daily.” You can find more information about it here.

It started with a whistleblower's complaint about President Trump's contact with a foreign leader. I had a perfect phone call with the president of Ukraine. Like, I mean perfect. Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. The House Committee on the Judiciary will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recesses of the committee at any time. Mr. Chairman, you're serving the right to object. Objection is noted. It's Julie Davis in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times. The latest is that the House Judiciary Committee has picked up the impeachment inquiry from the Intelligence Committee. The impeachment inquiry has moved back to the House Judiciary Committee.

And as we begin a review of these facts, the president's pattern of behavior becomes clear. And on Wednesday, they brought four constitutional law professors to help them figure out whether President Trump committed an impeachable offense when he pressured Ukraine to open investigations into his political rivals. I will now introduce today's witnesses. And the three witnesses called by Democrats, Noah Feldman from Harvard. Professor Feldman has authored seven books. Pam Carlin from Stanford. She is the co-author of several leading case books. Michael Gerhart from the University of North Carolina. Is the Burton Craig Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence? Say yes, the president's

conduct is impeachable. And not only is it impeachable, they say, but it's exactly the kind of behavior that impeachment was designed for. I'd like to focus the panel on the evidence they considered and the findings in the Intelligence Committee report that the president solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Professor Feldman, did President Trump commit the impeachable high crime and misdemeanor of abuse of power based on that evidence and those findings? Based on that evidence and those findings, the president did commit an impeachable abuse of

office. Professor Carlin, same question. Same answer. They might have slightly different ways of explaining it, but they're all in agreement. And Professor Gerhardt, did President Trump commit the impeachable high crime and misdemeanor of abuse of power? We three are unanimous. Yes. Now the fourth witness, the one called by the Republicans, Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, is the outlier. I respect my colleagues. I know all of them. And I consider them friends. And I certainly respect what they have said today. We have fundamental disagreements. He's a legal scholar, but he's also

politically savvy. He's been around this process before. He knows how to make a legal point, but in a way that's powerful politically. And I'd like to start with the issue of bribery. This statement has been made, not just by these witnesses, but Chairman Schiff and others, that this is a clear case of bribery. It's not.

He's saying, I'm here not as a Republican, but as a scholar. My personal views of President Trump are as irrelevant to my impeachment testimony as they should be to your impeachment vote. Look, I didn't even vote for Trump. I'm not a supporter of President Trump. I'm concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. He says Trump's telephone call with the president of Ukraine was not perfect.

It's actually really troubling. In fact, it might even be impeachable. I believe this impeachment not only fails to satisfy the standard of past impeachments, but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments. But there's just not any evidence of that. He tells the committee, look, if you're impeaching a duly elected president, you've got to be sure every fact is nailed down and every definition of the crime that you're trying to accuse him of is narrow and defensible. And Democrats, he's saying, just have not met that

bar. We are living in the very period described by Alexander Hamilton, a period of agitated passions. I get it. You're mad. The president's mad. My Republican friends are mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My wife is mad.

My kids are mad. Even my dog seems mad. And Luna's a golden doodle and they don't get mad. So we're all mad. Where has that taken us? Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad? Will it only invite an invitation for the madness to follow every future administration? That is why this is wrong. This is interesting because it's not the dominant Republican argument that we've heard so far. They've essentially said that the president hasn't really done anything wrong. And so Turley's view here is not in keeping with that. And while it's not clear whether there's a grand strategy here among Republicans, if they're somehow pivoting to a new

line of argument, it is clear that they had to have known what Turley was going to say. And in some ways, they may be acknowledging at this point that their argument that the president did nothing wrong is not actually going to last them throughout this process, and it's not going to be enough in the eyes of the public. In a way, Turley is kind of giving permission to people who are watching and listening to all this to say, hey, look, I don't like what the president did. It wasn't great, but impeaching him for it is too much.

It's too extreme. That's essentially what he's saying. And in doing that, he's speaking to a certain segment of the public that may be open to the idea this. And they may want to be able to say, you know, when it came down to it, we didn't just wrap the president in a big bear hug and close our eyes and close our ears and ignore all the evidence. We cared about the Constitution. We cared about the process. But we just didn't feel like what Trump did was impeachable.

And that's the latest from Washington. We know the Judiciary Committee is going to have a hearing at some point next week, but we don't know when.