The NPR Politics Podcast - Senate Trial Opens With Democrats' Appeal to Remove Trump

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

As the third presidential impeachment trial in the country's history got underway, there was a lot that sounded familiar.House impeachment managers, led by California Democrat Adam Schiff, presented their case against President Trump, based on evidence gathered during the hearings in the House late last year. This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and Justice Department reporter Ryan Lucas. Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. All right. Well, it is currently 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, January 22nd. The impeachment trial of President Trump is still underway as we record this podcast. This afternoon, just around 1 o'clock Eastern time, that trial officially got underway. And today was a chance for Democrats to lay out their case for removing President Trump from office. If there is no objection, the journal of proceedings of the

trial are approved to date. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, is the lead house manager in this trial. And he started his remarks today with a reference to the really long hours yesterday. It was an exhausting day for us, certainly, but we have adrenaline going through our veins, and for those that are required to sit and listen, it is a much more difficult task. And of course, we know our positions. You have the added difficulty of having to weigh the facts and the law. So I want to begin today by thanking you for the conduct of the proceedings yesterday. Adam Schiff was doing a little bit of cleanup for his buddy Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,

who in the early hours of the morning last night, some of us who were still watching, Jerry Nadler had this moment on the floor where he sort of accused the White House team of lying. And he said to senators, if you don't vote for these amendments that we want, you're complicit in a cover up. Pretty provocative language that provoked Chief Justice John Roberts to kind of smack him back down. That was probably tactically a bit of a mistake because we know earlier today a lot of the Senate Republicans, especially the ones Democrats are trying to appeal to right now, were really angry at what Jerry Nadler said. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters that she was offended by it, that she has made very clear that she's trying very hard to be an impartial juror in this case.

And Jerry Nadler, who's trying to win her vote, had only succeeded so far in really making her mad. So a more conciliatory tone today from Adam Schiff. Ryan, he was laying out the structure of the arguments of impeachment. What did he talk about? He talked about a whole host of things. I mean, it was two hours and 20 minutes. We were sitting there listening for quite some time. But he opened with kind of a look at the constitutional concerns of impeachment, when impeachment is proper, when it's necessary. And the way that he broke it down, he was saying that in the case of a president who is using the office of the president for personal gain, this falls squarely

within what the founders argued was conduct that rose to the level of impeachable. At the same time, Schiff laid out the full narrative arc of what we have heard a lot of over the past several months of the president's pressure campaign on Ukraine in order to get Ukraine to announce investigations into Joe Biden and into this conspiracy theory about the 2016 elections and Ukraine's alleged interference in it. He also presented this argument that we've heard a lot, that the president used around $400 million in military aid to Ukraine and a White House visit to the new Ukrainian president to try to leverage the new government in Ukraine to announce these investigations. So that was kind of a refresher for people who have not been following this or have perhaps forgotten in the past 30 days or so

as to what this was all about. At the same point in time, he also tried to get out in front of some of the arguments that we expect to hear from the White House lawyers. One notable one is something that we have heard already from White House counsel, which is, you know, just look at the call. The president refers to the call as perfect. And what Schiff said was, we disagree with the White House reading of the call. We think that there is wrongdoing in that call. But he also said the call did not happen in a vacuum. The call is a data point in a constellation of data points of what

the administration was doing, what the president was doing, what the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was doing to try to push Ukraine into announcing these investigations. These arguments are like the greatest hits of the House impeachment investigation. One of the things you saw the impeachment managers do down the line is call back to some of the most powerful and damning testimony. So they also used videotape of people like Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Fiona Hill, a former national security official, Ambassador of the EU Gordon Sondland, and some of their most provocative soundbites. And a lot of what they were doing, one of the impeachment managers, Val Demings, she's a Democrat from Florida and a former police chief, one of the

few impeachment managers who doesn't have a law degree, but was kind of chosen as a good messenger, was again, making this point over and over using these people's testimony saying all of these actions happened with the direct knowledge of the president. There was no doubt the direction came from the president of the United States. The president was the center of this scheme. And that's the key thing that Democrats have to keep pounding over and over and over again, that all of this testimony leads directly to the president of the United States. There is one rhetorical point that I would like to note, and we heard it from Schiff yesterday,

and it was repeated again today. For a long time over the course of the fall, the way that Democrats talked about what the president, what they say the president was trying to do, they would often say solicit foreign interference in an American election, which was a very wordy and perhaps gangly way of trying to state what they felt the president had done wrong. And they've settled on something in the past couple days that struck me, which is they have boiled it down to the president was trying to cheat. I saw that. And that is something that I think is going to register more with people than the long-winded solicit for an interference in an American election.

I mean, in terms of trying to sell a narrative, it's just a little easier for the public to digest and understand. So there's a reason why we're only hearing from Democrats today. Explain that. So this is the way that the impeachment proceeding will play out, is that the prosecution gets first at bat. And they have three days and up to 24 hours. Democrats are probably likely to take all of it. And there's not much the White House defense team can do about it. Now, they're present on the floor of the Senate. They're there. They're taking notes. They're preparing the rebuttal. But for now, they essentially just have to sit there silently.

They will get their turn in the same amount of time. But that will not start until Saturday and could go into the early part of next week. And Democrats at that point will have to do the same. They'll have to sit there quietly and let the White House team led by Pat Cipollone make their case. Now, they have to sit there quietly as because as this is a Senate trial and not a criminal trial, they are able to come outside the well of the Senate and speak to the cameras. And some of them have, and that's one of the important differences to keep in mind between a Senate trial and a criminal trial. And it's also something that it allows them to kind of continue feeding soundbites to the media. All right, well, we are going to take a quick

break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about the fight over witnesses. Hey, Gene. What's good? You know, we probably shouldn't be friends. Why are you trying to hurt my feelings? I mean, statistically speaking, most adults don't have a single friend of a different race. As it happens, on the next episode of NPR's Code Switch, we're talking about making and maintaining friendships across racial lines.

Listen and subscribe. And we're back. And let's talk about a common theme of the day. It seems like all throughout the day, there was this consistent refrain from Democrats that if the Senate wanted to learn more, you know, they ostensibly could with the addition of witnesses. So what's the backstory here about bringing witnesses or not bringing witnesses to the Senate floor? We have to go back to the House investigation. And remember that Democrats in the House wanted to hear from any number of officials and seek documents. And the White House sort of issued a blanket answer no to all of this. And they were stymied

in that investigation. And the Senate has its own separate power to try again. And the House is trying to, led by Adam Schiff, keep pressure on the senators to use their powers to issue their own subpoenas to try to hear from these witnesses. The names you hear all the time from Democrats that they've focused on are four key players, the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, former national security advisor, John Bolton, and two Trump appointees that work in the White House and the OMB, Michael Dovey and Robert Blair. Not household names, but people that would have direct firsthand knowledge about the decision-making process to withhold the military aid. The Senate has the subpoena power. They could order the testimony of these witnesses.

Complicated by the fact that John Bolton has said if he is subpoenaed, he'd be happy to come talk to the Senate. So you have this competing force of Democrats who have an argument that the public has indicated they're open to. Public polling shows that they're open to this idea of more witnesses. It's pretty simple to understand. If people out there have more information that could clear the president, then they should hear from it, especially if the White House is saying consistently the president hasn't done anything wrong. In fact, what he did was perfect. Could in the White House chief of staff illuminate some of that decision making power? So what's all this talk about a potential witness deal and how, I guess, really potential is it? So there's always been this chatter about if you're going to get a witness deal in the Senate, you need 51 votes, you would need bipartisan buy in. And the idea that Democrats are going to get to call some witnesses that they want means Republicans would have to get a couple of witnesses they want. So in this orbit of who could you possibly be talking to, there's always been some chatter on the Hill. And there was a report in The Washington Post that Democrats tried to shoot down today that said, hey, what if we did offer up somebody like Hunter Biden or Joe Biden? Could we try to bring Republicans to the table with a witness deal?

The Biden family, of course, being at the center of this in many ways because Trump was asking the Ukrainian president to look into their family. So people like Schiff took great pains today to come out and say, we're not doing this. This isn't like some fantasy football trade, as I said yesterday. This isn't we'll offer you this if you'll give us that. We'll offer you a witness that is irrelevant and immaterial, who has no relevant testimony, but a witness that will allow us to smear a presidential candidate. Asma, you've covered the campaign, you've covered Biden. What is his reaction? So earlier today, you know, Biden was campaigning in Iowa and a voter asked him about this.

And Biden definitively said that he will not participate in any sort of witness swap. The reason why I would not make the deal, the bottom line is, this is a constitutional issue and we're not going to turn it into a farce, into some kind of political theater. They're trying to turn it into political theater, but I want no part of being any part of that. You know, Joe Biden wouldn't really have a choice in this matter. If he was subpoenaed by the Senate, he would be pretty compelled to appear, although it's clear that he's sending a message that he's not going to feed the fire in the Democratic Party to think that this is a good idea, if anything, quite the opposite. Is this a politically astute move, though? I mean, it's a really, I think, tricky political move. And we've talked about this,

right, that to some degree, there are even elements within the base of the Democratic Party who would argue that, hey, if Joe Biden and his son have done nothing wrong, why not go to the Senate floor? Why not clear your name? But on the flip side, Joe Biden feels like essentially he just as he says, he doesn't want to contribute to this conversation anyway. He feels like this has already been cleared up. He and his son have done nothing unethical. So he feels like why should they be a part of engaging in a conversation that he just feels like it makes no sense for him to even be a part of at this point. It's almost like showing up would be legitimizing the allegations that Giuliani has

been pushing and that have been largely debunked. I know the White House and the president has teased on and off that they want to hear from the whistleblower, they want to hear from the Bidens. But behind the scenes, Senate Republicans think it's an incredibly risky play to try to call someone like Joe Biden to the floor. He's a former senator. He has many personal to the White House and to the president that having some big witness deal is not a good idea, is very risky because they don't know what these people would say, and that it could, generally speaking, blow up in their faces and be very risky for both the president and a lot of Senate Republicans for which Mitch McConnell is working very hard to protect his majority.

And a lot of the testimony that has come out already has not been particularly beneficial to the White House's cause. And so to your point, I mean, it seems that some of what Mitch McConnell has been saying to President Trump has begun to sunk in a bit. Oh, yeah. I mean, he has met privately with the president of the White House to try to explain his strategy. And the president has been all over the map on witnesses. He's been very out there saying he wants them.

They'll vindicate him. But his most recent comment in Davos today was that he was fine with or without witnesses. He'll go along with whatever the Senate wants to do, which, you know, when is it like Trump to not have an opinion on something? It does tell me that Mitch McConnell in his ear is having an impact. Now, whether he will stay consistent with that line of messaging is anyone's guess. So let's just back up and explain why witnesses are theoretically, strategically not a wise move for the Republicans, why they don't want witnesses. Well, one big reason is if you don't know what someone's going to say, you don't want to call them to the stand. That is certainly the case with John Bolton. That could be the case with Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff as well. So it opens up the door to a whole lot of things that the GOP can't control and doesn't know exactly what it's going to be. Also think back to Mick Mulvaney's press conference from the end of last year in which he said that, yes, there was a quid pro quo, essentially. Mick Mulvaney has not proven himself to be a particularly reliable talker in public for this administration.

And the prospect of putting him on the stand is probably something that Republicans are not eager to see. Okay. So to be clear, witnesses or no witnesses, we don't really have a definitive answer on that at this point anyhow. No, and this is the Democrats' job over the course of the coming days is to continue to make the case and keep the pressure on these handful of potentially malleable Senate Republicans who might want to get a witness deal. I will tell you that my sources that I talked to on the Hill consistently say they have very low expectations that a witness deal would be likely. If there is a witness deal, that would be a bombshell. That would be the outlier. That would be a big surprise in this impeachment trial. It's something we can't rule out,

but it is not something right now that we're expecting. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. As we mentioned, the second day of this impeachment trial is still not over. So we recommend tuning into our sister podcast Up First for an additional dose of impeachment coverage. That podcast will publish at 6 a.m. Eastern Time. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.