The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Legal Team Says Quid Pro Quo In Pursuit Of Reelection Isn't Impeachable

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

The point was made by Alan Dershowitz, one of the president's attorneys: "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."Asked to respond, Impeachment Manager Adam Schiff was incredulous. "All quid pro quos are fine, it's carte blanche?" Schiff asked. "Is that really what we're prepared to say?"The question of whether witnesses will be included in the trail remains open. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Republicans on Tuesday that he didn't have to votes to block witnesses, Democrats still may not have enough support to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton. Bolton reportedly claims in a forthcoming book that President Trump conditioned aid to Ukraine on an investigation that would likely benefit his reelection bid.This episode: White House correspondents Tamara Keith and Franco Ordoñez, and political reporter Tim Mak.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. It is 7.10 p.m. on Wednesday, January 29th. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Franco Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And I'm Tim Meck. I cover Congress. And today, the impeachment trial opened another new chapter. The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment. With Senator Mitch McConnell laying out the rules. Today the Senate will conduct up to eight hours of questions to the parties

delivered in writing to the Chief Justice. As a reminder, the two sides will alternate and answers should be kept to five minutes or less. And that is what they did. The very first question was asked by Senator Susan Collins from Maine. Mr. Chief Justice. The senator is recognized. I send a question to the desk on behalf of myself, Senator Murkowski and Senator Romney. And then, literally, the question on a note card was sent up to Chief Justice John Roberts, who, as with every question asked, read it aloud in the chamber. This is a question for the counsel for the president.

If President Trump had more than one motive for his alleged conduct, such as the pursuit of personal political advantage, rooting out corruption, and the promotion of national interests, how should the Senate consider more than one motive in its assessment of Article I? Tim, these three Republican senators are people we've had our eyes on. Right. All eyes are on Collins, Murkowski, and Romney because they are the folks who have said they're open to this idea of subpoenaing witnesses and documents and prolonging this trial, getting more information here. Now, as for the question, it's obvious that one of the big concerns of these

swing vote senators is that, you know, they're concerned about the powers of the presidency and how expansive the powers of the president should be. So their question, which is a really illuminating one off the top, is about whether or not a personal interest and a public interest, if those two are together, whether there's an issue with the personal motive being part of governmental action. Attorney Philbin, who answered, really gave them an opportunity to kind of decide whether or not they should support the idea of witnesses and in some ways give them an out. And Pat Philbin is in the White House Counsel's Office and part of the president's legal team. If there's both some personal motive, but also a legitimate public interest motive, it can't possibly be an offense.

Because it would be absurd to have the Senate trying to consider, well, was it 48% legitimate interest and 52% personal interest? Or was it the other way? Was it 53% and 40%? You can't divide it that way. I mean, it was interesting because, I mean, basically what he is saying is that if there is kind of mixed interest, even if there's some personal interest and that may not be, you know, that is kind of the crux of this case,

then it is still OK. And the context for this question here is this idea of whether the investigations into Joe Biden and his son are legitimate. And Republicans have argued from the outset that there were legitimate public interest motives to launch those investigations. Democrats have said the president has never been interested in that issue until Joe Biden announced a run for president. Well, and Senator Ted Cruz asked a question of the president's legal team that tried to get them to tease this out a little bit more. And you got an answer from Alan Dershowitz, the emeritus law professor from Harvard. And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment. So is he basically arguing that a president can do almost anything to get reelected?

It's a remarkable view of the president's powers. The idea that if the president were to think his election was in the public interest, he or she could not therefore have a corrupt motive. That if in his or her opinion, the president believes that their reelection would be beneficial to the country, there's no quid pro quo. He says the quid pro quo can't be illegal unless the quo is illegal. And he doesn't see any, there's no illegal quo in his mind. This led immediately to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to have a question of his own, which was delivered by John Roberts, the Chief Justice. Would you please respond to the answer that was just given by the President's counsel? And you can hear a little laughter breaking out in the room. They did that a couple

of times. It was definitely interesting how one side would go to the other and just say, hey, can you please respond to the other side's case? And in this case, the rebuttal came from Adam Schiff, the lead impeachment manager from the House. Is that really what we're prepared to say with respect to this president's conduct or the next? Because if we are, then the next president of the United States can ask for an investigation of you. They can ask for help in their next election from any foreign power. And the argument will be made, nope, Donald Trump was acquitted for doing exactly the same thing.

Therefore, it must not be impeachable. So throughout this day, there were questions asked about every five minutes or 10 minutes or so. And a lot of them were extremely predictable, right? Like you had Democrats asking questions of the House impeachment managers that would sort of lob up a little softball for them to take a swing at. And then the same thing was happening from Republicans or a lot of the Republicans. So were there any surprises in here? Were there were there questions that were asked that you wouldn't expect to be asked? For the first two hours, there was only one, I think just two questions that actually crossed the aisle. Each time it was simply a thing to reinforce each side's arguments. There was no

like let's question. I. I think we all expected a little bit more liveliness. There was a question that came from independent Senator Angus King about the revelation that President Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, says that he believes John Bolton, that is the former national security advisor who has a book. And the question was, should they be heard from? Should their testimony be heard? Yeah. I mean, it was a fascinating moment because it was one of those times where, you know, you really had to question, like, who should be believed? And it was a question

basically put to the senators. Are you going to believe John Bolton and John Kelly, the general, the former chief of staff, or are you going to believe the president? And that question was posed to both sides. And they struggled to answer that. And it was also interesting, Schiff, Chairman Schiff, the leader of the House managers, his answer was, well, it really doesn't matter who you believe, if you believe me or if you believe him, it really doesn't matter who you believe, if you believe me or if you believe him. It's a question of whether you believe John Bolton and whether you think there's reason enough to check his credibility. And if so, why don't we bring him in? And Jay Sekulow, the president, one of the president's private attorneys, then essentially laid out this

idea that, well, if you get Bolton, then we get somebody else. So, of course, if witnesses are called by the House managers through that motion, well, the President's Council would have the opportunity to call witnesses as well, which we would. Yeah, he definitely seems to be saying, like, look, don't get so excited about calling John Bolton and what John Bolton is going to say. But we have some witnesses that we want to call, too, and that may not be so nice for you guys. And the other point that one of President Trump's lawyers made was, you know, if you call Bolton, then we're going to have to challenge it in court. We're going to have to exert privilege.

And this could be a really long, drawn out process that could really bog down the Senate. And this is a nice Senate. You wouldn't want something to happen to it. A very kind Senate. All right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, what to expect from another day of questioning. Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This from NPR. And on our latest episode, how Jimmy Whale started an online encyclopedia as a side project

and watched it grow into one of the biggest sites on the Internet, Wikipedia. Listen now. And we're back. And Tim Mack, you spent a bit of time today in the Senate chamber, and I am just hoping you can tell us what it was like. Well, we're now over a week into this Senate trial. And, you know, there's a real shift in the mood in the chamber today. Senators love to talk. They love to ask questions. They weren't allowed to ask questions verbally, of course, but it seemed they were very excited to get out of

this rhythm that they had to sit and listen and do nothing. So senators engaged in a flurry of activity on the Senate floor, asking questions, having Senate pages run question cue cards between the chief justice desk and their desks. It was a really interesting change in mood because senators really have not had a huge, huge opportunity to get involved directly in this trial. And it was just weird to have these questions coming out of the mouth of Chief Justice John Roberts. Yeah, you just don't hear from him very. I mean, you just you just rarely I mean, sometimes he'll give speeches and stuff. But this is not you know, there's no cameras in the Supreme Court. So it's just fascinating to hear him in action and to see his body movement as he talks and as he holds court over this huge Senate trial. So before we said that there were not a ton of surprises in the questions that were asked,

that they were sort of predictable, but did over the course of the day, some of that break down? And do you have any sense of whether we could see more surprises ahead? Yeah, certainly in the beginning of the day, it was kind of like, you know, very, as you pointed out, like more softball, just kind of setting up each side towards the later in the day, you started to get more interesting questions from senators such as Susan Collins, who was asking her own side even about when Trump started talking about Biden and corruption. Did that happen earlier or later? And I would assume that tomorrow as this thing goes on, we may get more lively as they kind of take more risks and really dig down and poke at each side. Another point I'd make is that these swing vote Republicans aren't the only

senators we're watching. There are some Democratic senators from conservative states that we're keeping a close eye on. For example, Senator Doug Jones, he's a Democrat from conservative states that we're keeping a close eye on. For example, Senator Doug Jones, he's a Democrat from conservative Alabama. He told reporters he won't make up his mind yet on the impeachment articles. And Senator Manchin, who's another Democrat from West Virginia, he said on MSNBC this morning that he thinks Hunter Biden would be fair game as a witness in this trial. Huh. So there is a chance that Democratic unanimity could break, too. Absolutely. We've been so focused on Republican unity that I guess we haven't paid as much attention to whether Democratic unanimity

would see its way to the finish line. Of course, President Trump is watching closely. People like Joe Manchin and Doug Jones, that's for sure. President Trump was tweeting about that earlier today. All right. We are going to leave it there for now. If there are tweets, if there are more questions, tune in to Up First tomorrow morning for everything that happened in the rest of tonight. And then we will be back tomorrow evening. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Franco Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And I'm Tim Mack. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.