The NPR Politics Podcast - Questions of Foreign Interference Continue as Trial Moves Closer to Vote on Witnesses

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

Close to a vote on whether to include witnesses, the White House legal team continued to defend its argument that the president sometimes has authority to ask foreign powers to investigate political rivals in the name of public interest.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, real quick before we start the show, California, we are coming your way for a live show next month on February 19th. We are super excited to finally get to come to Southern California. We will be in Thousand Oaks with KCLU talking about the 2020 race and more. To get your tickets, head over to nprpresents.org. Oh, and if you're in Iowa, we have a show there tomorrow night, Friday night, and there are still a few tickets available. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 7.30 p.m. on January 30th. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress.

The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment. Today, the Senate impeachment trial is continuing with more questions and answers, senators asking questions, the House managers and the president's legal team answering those questions. And in fact, as we tape this, the Q&A is still going on. So things could happen. That's why we do a timestamp. Ayesha, I'm wondering what stood out to you about today? Well, a lot of what the questions seem to be about was getting at this idea of is there a limit to what a president can do to get reelected. Because one of the president's lawyers representing him, Alan Dershowitz, made this argument

that most presidents think their reelection is in the public interest. And therefore, if they take actions to kind of help their reelection, as long as it's not illegal, it's okay. And it really seemed like the senators were probing the limits of how far that argument can go. And at one point there was a question from Senator Susan Collins from Maine, a Republican, and and a few other Republicans, including Senators Crapo, Blunt and Rubio.

And remember, all of the questions are submitted in writing to the chief justice who then reads them aloud. Are there legitimate circumstances under which a president could request a foreign country to investigate a U.S. citizen, including a political rival, who is not under investigation by the U.S. government? If so, what are they and how do they apply to the present case? And in response to this, you got two very different answers. Essentially, you had the White House saying that this was OK. And this is Pat Philbin, Deputy White House Counsel. Yes. If there was a conduct by a U.S. person overseas that potentially violated the law of that country, but didn't violate the law of this country, but there was a national interest in having some information about that and understanding what went on,

then it would be perfectly legitimate to suggest this is something worth looking into. And then, but you had on the other side of that, you had Adam Schiff, Congressman Adam Schiff, saying that that is just a bridge too far. It would be hard for me to contemplate circumstances where that would be appropriate, where it would be appropriate for the president of the United States to seek a political investigation of an opponent. It did feel a little bit like the White House was doing a little bit of cleanup today because a lot of these questions were in response to comments the defense team made last night, which after the first day of questioning ended, many senators, mainly Democrats, came out and said that they found that those, the way that

they said that the president had this very expansive power to seek assistance from foreign governments was radical. Mark Warner's a Democrat from the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee was out there saying it's very clearly a violation of the law. So Philbin in other answers today did attempt to make clear that they did not think it was in all circumstances. It was in narrow circumstances where the president would think it was in the national interest, which is consistent with what the White House argument is, is that President Trump was doing this because he cared about corruption. Yeah. So clearly Philbin was like, and those narrow circumstances involve exactly what happened when President Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate his domestic political rival, Joe Biden. Right. It's not OK in all circumstances. It was OK in this one.

So what themes stood out to you in all of these questions? You know, the topic that they keep coming back to again and again and again, and it's clear why, is this question of witnesses. You know, after the questions conclude, there will be a vote on whether senators want to hear any more witness testimony or subpoena any documents. And obviously, the House managers and the White House team are on very different sides of this equation. And House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has essentially been the main arguer for why witnesses are needed. And I think it's been interesting because I think Democrats are using today to sort of begin their message campaign of what it's going to sound like if they lose that witness vote. Here's Schiff on the floor earlier today. Senator, I think that will feed cynicism about this institution,

that we may disagree on the president's conduct or not, but we can't even get a fair trial. We can't even get a fair shake for the American people. We can't, oh my God, we can't hear what John Bolton has to say. Fair trial. That is a phrase. And the argument is that if a trial doesn't have witnesses, it is inherently unfair. And I think if they lose on that witness vote tomorrow, that is going to be the message from the Democrats is that it doesn't matter what the Senate did. We know he will likely be acquitted, but their argument is going to be it doesn't matter because it wasn't a fair process. And you had Republicans responding to that by especially

the president's team over and over again, emphasizing that they're saying that there were witnesses in the House. There were 17 witnesses and they kept using that number over and over again. And also they kept talking about all the documents and the emails that they had had and that they that there were clips played in the Senate during the opening arguments. Both sides played clips from these witnesses. So they're trying to make the case that they did hear evidence. Right. Oh, and there was a big tit for tat on this question today between Schiff and Jay Sekulow, the president's personal attorney. So does this end? Will it ever be enough? No, it'll only be enough if they got a conviction.

Because that's what it's about. Because let's forget, not forget for a moment, this has been going on in one stage or another for three and a half, three years now. My concern is there's not a, where's the end point in that? So their end point is, well, just give us John Bolton and then, you know, you don't get anybody and or you get or then, you know, you get one and we get one and then that one may lead to somebody else. It's not the way it works. And this has been the White House's argument, too. If you agree to more documents and testimony, this trial has no end date and that the Senate cannot stop being in an impeachment trial until it concludes with either a conviction or acquittal.

All right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, two moments from the Q&A that people will be talking about. Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This from NPR. How do you turn an OK idea into a better one? Check out the How I Built This podcast in my live conversation with Stuart Butterfield, founder of Slack and Flickr, as he explains the art of the pivot. Listen now. And we're back. And very early on in the Q&A today, Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky passed a question up to the chief justice. I have a question to present to the desk for the house manager Schiff and for the president's council. And something surprising happened.

The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted. Question rejected. I mean, you know, the chief justice has read a lot of things that are slightly awkward to hear with his voice attached to them over the last two days. So, Sue, what happened there? So Senator Rand Paul made clear he was going to do this. And what he did was he wrote a question to the chief justice in which he was trying to seek more information about the alleged whistleblower. And in his question, he wrote down a name that has been, in some reports, alleged to be the whistleblower. Circulating a lot in right-wing media.

Yes. But the chief justice declined to say the name in his question. Now, we know that John Roberts was prepared for this, because if you hear that in back and forth, it happened very quickly, very smoothly. And John Roberts had that parliamentary, the presiding officer will not read the question at the ready. He was not taken by surprise in this moment. I think it was a little bit more Senator Rand Paul trying to have a moment versus really trying to shift any dynamic in the trial. So there was one other question that jumped out at me as being especially weird to have coming from the voice of the chief justice. And the question was from Elizabeth in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution? Awkward. She's like, can you please read a question where you ask about your own legitimacy?

Go. And then make Adam Schiff answer the question, which was also awkward. Senator, I would not say that it contributes to a loss of confidence in the chief justice. I think the chief justice has presided admirably. Because Schiff doesn't want to make the chief justice, who could play a big role in this going forward upset, right? Like, so he kind of had to walk a fine line on this. No lawyer ever wants to insult the judge in the case, right? But so this gets to another question about what we might expect in the next day, because there will be a vote on whether witnesses should be called.

And it could be a pretty close vote. It could even be a 50-50 vote. And there's been a lot of questions swirling around for a while now about whether if there was a close vote, whether Chief Justice John Roberts would be the deciding vote. Well, he could be. In the Senate, in an impeachment trial rules, 50-50 votes fail. And the reason why we're floating this as an option is there's 47 Democrats. And so far, there has been only three Republicans who have really flirted with this idea of voting yes on this motion to hear more witnesses. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska,

and Mitt Romney of Utah. And so they need this mythical, magical one other senator to break ranks in order to make that happen. If it is a 50-50 tie, technically, technically, the rules of the chamber would allow the presiding officer, which in this case is John Roberts, to break that tie. So he could rule on the motion before the Senate. And if he said, I think it's in order, then he would be essentially the deciding factor in that coin toss. And everything we know about Chief Justice John Roberts would indicate that he is not someone who wants to be seen as a political figure. He doesn't want to be seen as putting his thumb on the scale. I mean, he has taken some positions in the past, obviously, on the big Obamacare ruling where he did go against

what conservatives wanted, but people thought it was in the name of making it so that the Supreme Court was not looked at as so overtly partisan, right? Yeah, totally. And I think, you know, there's a couple of things. I think the reason why people don't think John Roberts is going to weigh in is he is a member of the judiciary branch presiding over the legislative branch. But the legislative branch knows the rules. The Senate knows a 50-50 tie fails. And the view is that the chief justice is not here to tell the Senate how to do its job. It's just here to be sort of the person who makes sure everything runs smoothly. It's not an activist role. It's like a managerial one. And the other reason we don't think he's going to do it is because, you know, precedent matters.

You hear precedent being brought up all the time. What were the Clinton rules? What were the Nixon rules? Chief justices also look to the precedents past chief justices set. And when William Rehnquist presided over the Clinton impeachment, he tried to engage in the process as little as possible. And Roberts at points in this trial has indicated that he is trying to follow the Rehnquist model. So if that's his guiding light in this, that would indicate that he is deeply uninterested in putting himself right in the middle of the most hotly contested political question in America today. But if he were to do that, it would be the story of the century. You think conservatives were mad about Obamacare? You just wait. It would be it would be epic.

But we're probably going to find out the answer to this by tomorrow night, by the end of the day tomorrow, by the end of the month. Or by the end of very, very early, early Saturday morning for some sad people who have to cover it. So what are we actually expecting for tomorrow? What is the schedule like? Tomorrow they have four more hours of debate. I know you thought that the debate was almost over, but we got at least four more hours. Closing arguments, if you will. But the debate will be on this question of witnesses, four hours exclusively on the motion to whether or not they want to hear more witnesses and evidence. And then the next order of business

is to have that vote. Now, that doesn't sound like that long to you. But if you've been paying attention to Senate trials, time is a very elusive thing up here. So one of the things we don't know is it's possible senators move to go into closed session tomorrow. That is when they literally kick everybody out except themselves, a couple staff and the chief justice, because in a closed deliberation, they could do the thing that they haven't been able to do this whole time is talk to each other. And so if they actually think that they want to have a real sort of family conversation about that final vote before they go to the articles, it might happen in closed session. So that could sort of delay expectations on when we're going to get an answer to this question. But we will be there no matter when. All right, that's a wrap for today. For more impeachment coverage, tune in to Up First tomorrow morning for whatever has happened after we finish taping here tonight. And then we will be back tomorrow night. At some point, we don't know exactly when. It depends on when and if there's a vote. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House.

And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.