The Daily - The Latest: The Rules

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

House members are preparing for a vote on two articles of impeachment against President Trump, while their counterparts gear up for the next phase: a trial in the Senate. As the impeachment process moves from a Democratic-controlled chamber to one dominated by Republicans, the rules of engagement are changing — and party leaders are battling over who gets to decide them.“The Latest” is a 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 am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment. This week, Democrats are expected to approve two articles of impeachment on a straight party-line vote, setting up a Senate trial early next year. It's Julie Davis in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times. The news from here is all about the rules. The rules committee will come to order.

House Democrats are spending Tuesday figuring out the rules for the impeachment vote Wednesday. There are cameras present, and that means members of Congress are taking the chance to speechify a little bit. You know, when I think back to the founders of this nation, they were particularly concerned about foreign interference in our elections. The rules the House will adopt will give House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a lot of control over how the impeachment vote

plays out Wednesday. No amendments allowed, a set period for debate, equally divided between both sides, no extra time. All this leaves very little room for Republicans to shape the debate ahead of the vote to impeach President Trump for abuse of power and for obstructing Congress. Moments like this call for more than just reflexive partisanship. They require honesty. But the latest is the debate that's been unfolding about the impeachment rules in the U.S. Senate, where the next phase, the trial phase of this whole thing, will happen,

where the actual vote on whether to remove President Trump from office will take place. Things are very different there. Republicans, not Democrats, are in charge, and the question of how this trial will proceed is up in the air. The Democratic leader decided to short-circ circuit the customary and collegial process. There's a fight developing between the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic counterpart, Senator Chuck Schumer, that brings this into focus. He chose to begin by writing me an 11-paragraph letter.

In a letter to McConnell over the weekend, Schumer proposed that the Senate call four witnesses who we know are critical to understanding what went on with this Ukraine affair, but who wouldn't cooperate with the House investigation because President Trump ordered them not to, including his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and his former national security advisor, John Bolton. Look, most people understand what the Democratic leader is really after. And Tuesday, McConnell goes on the Senate floor and basically says no. What House Democrats have assembled appears to be woefully, woefully inadequate to prove what they want to allege. So now the Senate Democratic leader would apparently like our chamber to do House Democrats' homework for them.

The democratically controlled House had their turn. Why would we in the Senate call these witnesses to help Democrats make their case? It's not the Senate's job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get the guilty. We certainly do not need jurors to start brainstorming witnesses, witness lists for the prosecution and demanding to lock them in before we've even heard opening arguments. Outwardly, it may seem that Senator McConnell has all the power, that he can set the rules about what happens in the Senate trial, just like Democrats in the majority in the House set the rules for their inquiry. But it's not that simple. In the Senate, you need consensus to proceed, no objections. And if you want to get past any objections, you need a majority and you need a

vote. And there are a very small number of moderate Republicans, Republicans up for re-election next year who are vulnerable, Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado, plus Republicans who've been willing to buck the president on occasion, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, who could be very influential in this process. These are people who are not necessarily excited about casting a vote to acquit the president anyway, and they don't want to take a bunch of votes where they look like they're being partisan or unfair or not respecting the gravity of the impeachment process. And what that means is that McConnell has to engage with Schumer on some level about the rules of the Senate trial, including the question of what witnesses to call, if any. The preferable path

would have been an in-person conversation, which nonetheless I still hope to pursue. After his floor speech, McConnell took questions from reporters and said, look, I'm not an impartial juror. This is all political, and I'm not going to pretend I'm impartial. This is a political process. There's not anything judicial about it. Impeachment is a political decision. The House made a partisan political decision to impeach. I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate.

I'm not impartial about this at all. Not long after that... I am utterly amazed what Mitch McConnell said. Chuck Schumer stands in the exact same spot and puts the onus right on those moderate Senate Republicans. Mitch McConnell said proudly he is not an impartial juror. I would ask every one of my Republican Senate colleagues, are you impartial jurors or are you like Mitch McConnell, proud not to be one? Are you going to be impartial?

Unlike in the democratically controlled House, where Republicans have had to stand idly by in a lot of ways, while Democrats ran the process the way they wanted to, Democrats in the Senate do have a say. And Senator Schumer seems like he's ready to try to force the issue and make things awkward for moderate Republicans. And you're seeing that at the start of the process right now. So that's the latest from Washington. Next, an impeachment vote Wednesday in the House of Representatives.