PLUGGED IN TRANSCRIPT NOV. 13, 2019 “What is Impeachment”
(COLD OPEN)
On Plugged In…
Impeachment in America.
The process of removing a government official…
or a sitting president from office…
It happens very rarely…
but that is where the United States…
finds itself at this moment in history.
(NANCY PELOSI, HOUSE SPEAKER) “The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
The US Congress Launching public hearings …
To decide whether the president
committed an impeachable offense…
(PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP) "I did nothing wrong"))
How did we get here?
and where are we going?
The answers…
When Plugged in asks…
“What is Impeachment?”
(WELCOME)
Hello and welcome to Plugged in. I'm Greta Van Susteren.
There are only two ways to remove a sitting US president. The first involves the ballot box, where voters decide. It happens every 4 years. And the next presidential election is a year from now. The other is impeachment, conducted by politicians - beginning first in the US House of Representatives, and then in the US Senate.
Facing possible impeachment is where US President Donald Trump finds himself right now.
VOA'S Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on what could be a defining moment of the Trump presidency.
(IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS IN THE US)
((NARRATOR))
Weeks of witness testimony behind closed doors on Capitol Hill – now public…
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff leading the open hearings Democrats hope will show the American people the reasons to impeach President Trump.
First to testify – one of the Democrats’ key witnesses, Ambassador William Taylor.
((Rep. Adam Schiff, House Intelligence Committee Chair))
“Someone who is I think performing another vital service for the country in relating the facts that came to his attention- the very disturbing facts that came to his attention.”
((NARRATOR))
The top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine told House lawmakers it was clear U.S. security assistance to Ukraine was tied to that country’s cooperation in an investigation into Trump’s political rival Joe Biden and his family.
Also testifying this week, State Department official George Kent and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who told lawmakers the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani subverted traditional U.S. foreign policy channels and that Congressionally-approved US aid was linked to Ukraine’s compliance with the president’s personal political interests.
((Rep. Jackie Speier, Democrat))
“This is a very strong case of bribery.”
((NARRATOR))
Republicans focused on defending the substance of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president at the heart of the impeachment investigation.
((Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican))
“I trust the call. I trust President Zelenskiy and President Trump. And I trust the fact that the Ukrainians didn’t know that aid had been held and the Ukrainians did nothing to get it released, when it was released. Those are the fundamental facts, but we got all this, all this, other noise that Mr. Schiff wants to stir up that isn’t fundamentally critical to what actually took place.”
((NARRATOR))
Trump called the House impeachment process unfair.
((President Donald Trump))
“There’s never been a President who’s been so transparent. This is a witch-hunt, at the highest level, and it’s so bad for our country.”
((NARRATOR))
House Democrats are following a similar process used in the impeachments of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
((Elaine Kamrack, Brookings Institution))
“The impeachment process, at this point in time, is like a grand jury process. What they're doing now is they're just gathering evidence. They're going to make charges. And obviously House Republicans will have the chance to rebut the charges.”
((NARRATOR))
Those charges - known as Articles of Impeachment - would almost certainly pass the Democratic-controlled U.S. House. But the resulting trial in the Republican-majority U.S. Senate would likely not be successful – keeping Trump in office through the upcoming 2020 election.
(GRETA with KATHERINE GYPSON)
VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson joins us from Capitol Hill, where this week the House Intelligence Committee is holding its first open hearing on impeachment.
GVS: Hi Katherine, and this has been going on now for about six weeks behind closed doors. We now move to open hearings so all of America, the world can watch. But tell me, you're on Capitol Hill all the time. Does it feel different in the Capitol today?
KG: It feels different today, I will say that because we've had so much anticipation build up with those closed door depositions where all those reporters quite frankly have been waiting outside those closed doors and just scrambling for scraps of information. Now we actually get to see everything out in the open. We actually get to have people talking, sharing their story, filling in the story that we've speculated about, but now we really get to hear the full picture.
GVS: This is a constitutional moment, this is what the constitution allows to happen. But, and maybe I'm a little cynical, but I've said it's more like a play because so many politicians have already made up their minds -- they're not necessarily hearing new facts where they might change their opinion. Is that me being cynical or is that pretty much true?
KG: No, I think you're stating what is a very clear fact up here on Capitol Hill. The Democratic and Republican lawmakers who have been in those closed-door committee hearings have already heard this testimony. We've seen the release of the transcripts, they know what their cases, or in the case of the Republicans what their cases against it. Now it's for the American people to decide. This was is a TV moment so that Americans can watch and learn more about the case and decide whether or not President Trump meets that standard set out of the US Constitution for impeachment, and those are three things: treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors. They'll get to decide whether that happened here.
GVS: The people who are sitting in this hearing room -- the members of Congress, you have the Chairman, who is Chairman Schiff, he's a democrat and then you have a ranking member, a Republican. Is it evenly split or are there several more Democrats than Republicans?
KG: There are a few more Democrats than Republicans, it's about 51 to 47 in terms of the three committees, who have been in those closed doors impeachment investigations on the House Intelligence Committee, it's about even. What will happen is, each side will get to ask questions. The chairman and the ranking member can decide to do that themselves, or they can use the in-house council. It'll be really interesting to see how that plays out in this week, and in next week's impeachment hearings.
GVS: People are very interested in Bill Taylor, and who is he, and why the interest in him?
KG: So he is the, he was the US top diplomat to Ukraine. He was the chargé d'affaires, he was on the ground in Ukraine, and for Democrats he's really a key witness. They want to start out with that key witness, because he will be able to speak to the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, as well as some of the broader issues that Democrats are concerned about, how they say that the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, got involved in subverting traditional US foreign policy channels to benefit the President's personal political interest. That's the case the Democrats are trying to make to the American people.
GVS: What I think is key here, and it may be my background as a lawyer, is even everything Bill Taylor says and what everybody else says, it's not President Trump saying it. The only thing we have worry of President Trump is a memorandum of a transcript. And we have everybody else sort of around him saying that, but not him personally. Is that true or not? Am I wrong in the facts?
KG: Well, what we do have are a couple of people who will be testifying who were in on that phone call, but you are right, there are other people who are testifying to broader issues and who knew of that phone call. So what Democrats are trying to do is paint that larger picture, whereas Republicans are saying all you have to do is go back to that summary of the phone call, look at the summary and it will tell you all you need to know.
GVS: But what's sort of interesting Catherine, is historically with foreign policy, and I think Republicans and Democrats both admit this, is the US has leveraged money with cleaning up corruption. The question I think here is, was it to clean up corruption, or was it to get a political opponent?
KG: That's absolutely right. That's what House Republicans would say and what they've been saying in the past few weeks up here on Capitol Hill, is that President Trump was actually fulfilling something that he ran on a campaign promise to drain the swamp and to address this issue of corruption in Ukraine, that he was always concerned about what the country was doing. What Democrats will say is that this was a clear case of bribery, and you're hearing them use that word a lot more often now. They're saying that this was very clearly President Trump pressuring Ukraine for something that was his own personal political interest.
GVS: Well, if you don't like President Trump it's easy make the jump that he was doing it to get a political opponent. If you do like President Trump, you're under public insight, chances are you'll say that it's a use of what the US has historically done with using it as leverage. And so, how did the two sides, I mean is there any sort of indication of how either side intends to prove its point?
KG: Well what the Democrats hope will happen is that there will be a very clear moment in these hearings this week and into next week, where one of these witnesses will say something very clear that will tell the American people that this was a case of bribery, that this was the president abusing his office. Republicans are hoping for a moment where they can make this point that ultimately Ukraine did get that congressionally approved US aid, that the president ever actually got what he wanted in terms of the political rival. So there really is, there's no fire here. The Democrats are making something out of nothing.
GVS: which is where you see the real difference in this country between the courtroom and law and politics where you get to, the rules are sort of made up as you go along. I mean the law has the rules made in advance and so it's going to be very fascinating to watch this unravel, Katherine.
KG: It sure will, it's all public relations.
GVS: Indeed, well we'll see what happens in the hearings. Thank you very much. Katherine Gypson, VOA Congressional correspondent.
(GRETA)
Impeaching a US president is rare. In 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon was facing impeachment as a result of a politically motivated burglary at the Watergate Hotel in Washington.
The break-in, at the office of the Democratic National committee was a national scandal.
Nixon resigned before the impeachment vote in Congress.
In all, four US presidents have faced impeachment. But only two reached the trial stage, which occurs in the US Senate.
(IMPEACHMENT HISTORY)
In 1868, Andrew Johnson became the first US president to face formal impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.
Johnson became president after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
He immediately clashed with some Republicans on matters related to Reconstruction after the US Civil War.
The US Congress responded by passing a law preventing the president from replacing members of his cabinet without Senate approval. Johnson then fired the Secretary of War, defying the law that he believed unconstitutional.
His own Republican party impeached Johnson in the House of Representatives. He avoided a guilty verdict in his Senate trial by one vote.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton became the second U.S. President to be impeached. Clinton’s presidency was rocked by scandal and legal troubles dating back to the early days of his political career.
A controversial business deal known as Whitewater in addition to accusations of sexual harassment…
cast a shadow over Clinton’s presidency, prompting a special investigation.
During that probe, recordings surfaced of conversations with details of an affair between the President and a former White House intern
(President Bill Clinton)
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman..”
With evidence he lied under oath with the intent of obstructing the investigation, the Republican-led House impeached Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
In the Senate trial, neither count received close to the two-thirds necessary to remove Clinton from office.
(GRETA with Prof SUSAN LOW BLOCH)
The House of Representatives impeaches, then the matter goes to the other side of Capitol Hill to the Senate for trial. To oust a president, two-thirds of the senate must vote for removal.
It is important to note that impeachment is a political process and not a criminal one. And while the two can look alike, they are different, with different rules and procedures.
Susan Low Bloch is an expert on constitutional law. She is a law professor at Georgetown University and the author of numerous articles and books on impeachment and the Constitution. She has also testified before the US Senate on whether a president can be indicted and tried, while still in office.
GVS: Professor Bloch, welcome to Plugged In.
SLB: Nice to be here. Thank you.
GVS: Okay, so this is this is a political process and not a legal one. How do you describe the difference?
SLB: Well this is a legal process, obviously it has rules. And as a result, if you're convicted you're usually sentenced to jail or something. But an impeachment is a political method of getting rid of a president, taking him out of office before the end of his term because he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. There's no punishment, other than removal from office and inability perhaps to serve another term. But he’s still subject to criminal process later on, should the government so desire.
GVS: High crimes and misdemeanors is one part, one reason you get ousted. Another is bribery. Bribery is pretty clear. We all pretty much understand bribery, you try to get someone to do something with some money or something. But what are high crimes and misdemeanors, what does that mean?
SLB: Well, that's a debate. It doesn't have to be necessarily a crime in the law books. If a president just simply played golf all day or watch television all day or just didn't do the president's job, many think that would be an abuse of his office and worth, removing him from the office. It's a political remedy. It's not a judicial as you said, and there's no punishment, it's just this person should not be president of the United States should be removed.
GVS: Hundreds of years ago when the Constitution was drafted and enacted, was impeachment much of a discussion of much of a debate?
SLB: It was an important feature, because one of the things the framers of the Constitution really wanted to make sure is that they didn't have another king. And so they wanted a method, the chosen method of picking a president is by an election and the chosen method of getting rid of them was having the term expire. But if you had someone in office who was abusing the office by treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then it was important to remove that person before the end of the term. So, they hoped it wouldn't be used, but it was, it was an important feature.
GVS: But it certainly hasn't been used much in this country.
SLB: No, we've elected good people who don't commit treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
GVS: You know, it’s sort of interesting though that the other way, of course, a President gets removed from office is a vote. And we have this impeachment almost late in a presidential term because we've already started in this country, the election season. You know, we've got a number of Democrats running for president. Even the President has a couple of challenges within his party, not a great moment, I don't think. But, you know, at some point it's like, here we have the politicians, seeking to remove them, and the opposing party, yet we're about to have, the voters are going to get their chance.
SLB: Well, I agree with you. I think that as the election gets closer, the need to impeach and the ability to impeach is less important and should be dropped. Now we're still a year away so I think it still makes sense to investigate whether Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors. But, yeah, once we get to the election, it’s up to the voters.
GVS: So this is, we're in the House stage. This is the impeachment. If they vote for articles impeachment goes over to the Senate for a trial, and who presides over the trial?
SLB: Over the trial is the Chief Justice of the United States. He comes down…
GVS: From another branch of government?
SLB: Right, exactly. And I think the reason is that, otherwise it would be the Vice President presiding over the Senate, and he would have a conflict of interest. You'd have some loyalty obviously to the President, but also, he would be the one that would take over. So you don't want the Vice President of the United States presiding over the trial. So we have this unusual situation where the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court comes in.
GVS: Are there set rules for the impeachment trial, I mean, the rules for the house, the rules for the house impeachment or rather, they're determined by the majority party - here the Democrats. But when it goes over to the Senate for trial, should that happen, are there set rules or they will be written as they go?
SLB: They won’t be written as they go but they will be written by the senators. I mean, you do that, each house defines its own rules. But there's past precedent. We've had not many trials in the Senate, but a few. And we've had trials in the Senate to impeach judges. So, even though impeaching a president is very unusual, we remove judges that way, so there's precedent.
GVS: All right, so the Democrats run the House where they vote on the Articles of Impeachment, which essentially charging, then it goes over to the Senate for trial, that's run by the Republicans. Now the head of the party over there, Mitch McConnell – Majority Leader, said he's going to have a trial. But does the Constitution require him to have a trial or could he just drop it at that point?
SLB: He should not drop it. The Constitution does require that there be a trial. I don't know what the remedy would be if he just refused. I don't think we'd have judicial review over that. But the Constitution does require a trial and he has said he will do it so I think we don't have to speculate about what happens if he refuses.
GVS: 51 Republicans are in the Senate, and 49 Democrats and it, but it’s the vote to oust the president is much steeper. How much steeper is it?
SLB: You need two thirds, which in this case would be 67 because there are 100 senators.
GVS: So in other words, that the evidence would have to be rather convincing I assume, coming over from the House with the hearings that 20 Republican senators thought, I'm going to defect from my party, Trump is a Republican. I'm going to defect from my party and vote to oust him.
SLB: Sorry, Greta I didn’t get the question.
GVS: Look, you’d have to convince 20 Republicans, basically, to defect from their party.
SLB: That’s right. Removing the President of the United States before an election is a drastic thing. And the Constitution did not want, does not want it to happen often. So they put in a very high bar; the two thirds – 67, and yes it would have to be both parties.
GVS: Thank you very much, Professor Susan Bloch from Georgetown Law Center.
There is a good chance we would not be talking about impeachment had it not been for the so-called whistleblower. As you may recall, a whistleblower - an unknown person, filed a secret complaint in August. The complaint alleges that president Trump asked the president of Ukraine to launch a corruption investigation against the family of a political rival - in exchange for the release of nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.
So what is a whistleblower? Plugged In Producer Mil Arcega takes a look at what whistleblowers do.
(WHAT IS A WHISTLEBLOWER?)
(whistle sound)
(Mil Arcega)
What’s a whistle got to do with impeachment hearings? Well, it’s all about what the whistleblower does. It’s a warning, a public alert - of a purse snatching for example, or a player who violates the rules of the game - or a public official accused of breaking the law.
A whistleblower is sometimes referred to as a leaker, but that’s not entirely accurate.
Both disclose wrongdoing. But whistleblowers disclose information about wrongdoing to statutorily authorized recipients who can verify and launch investigations to protect the public good.
For example - whistleblowers may disclose any law violations, mismanagement, fraud, abuse of authority, or substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.
Whistleblowers may also disclose classified information if they go through secure, designated channels.
Leakers release information to unauthorized recipients such as the media, sometimes including classified information not cleared through protected channels.
Leaks are illegal when the information leaked is protected by privacy laws, which include tax returns, and other classified information. Except when the leaks are made by government officials who can release information to promote policies or to test public opinion.
Unlike leakers, whistleblowers are protected by the US constitution against retaliatory action.
But advocates say US law provides no enforcement, no guarantees if someone chooses to disclose a whistleblower’s identity. For Plugged in – Mil Arcega VOA News.
(GRETA with JIM MALONE)
Some Republican lawmakers have been lobbying to expose the identity of the whistleblower. There are no laws preventing a politician from publicly identifying the whistleblower. So why has it not happened?
Is it that they don’t know the whistleblower’s identity, or another reason?
VOA Senior National Correspondent Jim Malone joins us to discuss the political ramifications of the complaint and what it could mean for the Trump presidency.
GVS: Nice to see you, Jim.
JM: Hi Greta.
GVS: I'm not going to ask you to name him, but does everybody in town know who this whistleblower is?
JM: Apparently quite a few people do.
GVS: So it's no secret other than that nobody is saying it, at least its very few. All right, what are the political ramifications of this?
JM: The impeachment writ large? Look, if I look back in history, first of all, since 1974 this is the third one, so all of a sudden after nearly 200 years of American democracy we only had one impeachment which was Andrew Johnson. Now we've had three in the past 45 years or so. I think it reflects this growing polarized political environment in which we live right now and I do wonder in the future. President Trump is the subject of an impeachment this time. What happens to future presidents now, will the opposition party be very quick to kind of move toward an impeachment if they find things they don't like?
GVS: Is there any indication how the public is feeling? What is that opinion? Because what strikes me so much is that the politicians do seem, you know, committed one way or the other before the hearings even happened. Everyone seems to have made up their minds, but what about the public opinion?
JM: Well they're very closely following public opinion and I think one reason why right now, you're not seeing any republicans break with the President is they're very closely watching what's going on in their home states and congressional districts and so far, Republican voters are generally remaining loyal to President Trump. But here's one thing to know, before this Impeachment Inquiry was announced by House Speaker Pelosi, the support for impeachment and national polls was in the 30s or so, since this has happened just over the past six weeks or so. That number has jumped up to around 50, 51% supporting impeachment and removal of President Trump. That's been a dramatic jump in a few weeks. If you look what happened during Richard Nixon's two years saga, Watergate. It took a long time for the public to kind of turn against the president and Republicans only turned against Nixon at the very end. So, we don't know how this is all going to play out but we're also in a different time, the internet, there's, they're not watching three television networks like they used to. Getting the news kind of from one place so how all this plays out in a fractured political time is what we're going to be watching now that it's in a public phase.
GVS: Well President Trump is coming out with swinging, tweeting things like circus is coming to town, phony show trial, zero due process. So he's coming out swinging it's not like he's going to sit there take it, but the Republicans say that they're not getting the term due process, they're not getting the opportunity to call the witnesses they wanted hearings. So you're going to hear a lot of that.
JM: Yeah, I mean, the house is a very partisan environment because the majority party runs the House. The Senate is a different animal in that there usually has to be some sort of compromise to get things done to pass things, but in the end republicans believe they will have the President's back in the Senate, and it's those Republican senators. If he is impeached by the House, by the Democrats, the Republican senators will decide this, and the democrats have a high bar they need to turn 20 Republican senators against the president. And in this highly polarized environment coming up on the election. There aren't too many signs right now that the Democrats have been able to take this to the level of turning republicans away from Trump, but let's see what happens in these public hearings.
GVS: The Speaker of the House is Nancy Pelosi, a woman who wields enormous amount of power. She's been in Congress for a long time. In the beginning she did not seem to be enthusiastic about the impeachment, about her house having a an impeachment process. Did she change her mind? Or is there a political reason for this?
JM: I think, members of her own party changed her mind, she was reluctant to do this, but it became so overwhelming the urge among House Democrats to move on this. When you had the central allegation here that the President reached out to a foreign leader to help him with his reelection campaign in 2020, and the possibility of holding out military aid. This is the key thing that triggered so many Democrats, not only to look at this as a possible impeachable offense, but also how do you prevent the president from trying to do this again? I mean the president we know him he's, he's pretty strong about focusing on reelection and no holds barred about what he might be able to do to try to win reelection.
GVS: Is it so unusual to withhold foreign aid. If to leverage it, to try to get a country to handle its corruption is that…
JM: It's unusual if you're trying to get a foreign leader to help you intervene in your own election and help your own reelection.
GVS: if you can prove that. So the question is, is it coincidental that former Vice President Biden and his son were in the Ukraine, or is it deliberate that he's going after this because they were there.
JM: Well, right now the Democrats say they believe from the diplomatic witnesses we're going to hear from and military, that Biden was on his mind that he was doing this for purely political ends now the Republicans can test and they say that the President there's no direct conversations that can be cited between the President and his associates ordering this to be done though there is the summary of the phone call.
GVS: Which is a little different to the law and politics because in law I mean, the only thing you have the president doing is the one phone call and it's a memorandum of a phone calls and it’s not even, you know, a precise transcript no one, you know exists on the Ukrainian side but we don't have it, and it's where they mean if they right now I don't see any direct contact between the President and this and Biden. However, if you're in a political environment in a sort of like where there's smoke, there's fire, if all your aides around you are doing it. You know it may it may be different but we're in a political arena.
JM: this is what's important about the public phase, this is about winning over public opinion, Democrats know where they are right now is not high enough to move the needle republicans feel by defending the president arguing process, and making the democrats prove that direct presidential connection, that they have the upper hand they can hold their troops loyal. there are elements of the legal process in this, but this is really a political process through and through.
GVS: And imagine if you are let's say you're a republican and you are in a district and you're going to be up for election next November, and it's a heavy democratic district, and you might be more inclined, not to go along with the President on this one and go along with the, with the democratic side if you want to get reelected and vice versa.
JM: Well the first vote we've already had whether to go ahead with the inquiry and no republicans defected so that's a good sign for President Trump, I think, for Republicans in the Senate who are loyal. There's no way they can envision turning on the president right now, because they would fear the wrath of his supporters themselves.
GVS: It's amazing. Thank you, Jim Malone.
(GOODBYE)
That's all the time we have for today.
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(COLD OPEN)
On Plugged In…
Impeachment in America.
The process of removing a government official…
or a sitting president from office…
It happens very rarely…
but that is where the United States…
finds itself at this moment in history.
(NANCY PELOSI, HOUSE SPEAKER) “The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
The US Congress Launching public hearings …
To decide whether the president
committed an impeachable offense…
(PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP) "I did nothing wrong"))
How did we get here?
and where are we going?
The answers…
When Plugged in asks…
“What is Impeachment?”
(WELCOME)
Hello and welcome to Plugged in. I'm Greta Van Susteren.
There are only two ways to remove a sitting US president. The first involves the ballot box, where voters decide. It happens every 4 years. And the next presidential election is a year from now. The other is impeachment, conducted by politicians - beginning first in the US House of Representatives, and then in the US Senate.
Facing possible impeachment is where US President Donald Trump finds himself right now.
VOA'S Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on what could be a defining moment of the Trump presidency.
(IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS IN THE US)
((NARRATOR))
Weeks of witness testimony behind closed doors on Capitol Hill – now public…
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff leading the open hearings Democrats hope will show the American people the reasons to impeach President Trump.
First to testify – one of the Democrats’ key witnesses, Ambassador William Taylor.
((Rep. Adam Schiff, House Intelligence Committee Chair))
“Someone who is I think performing another vital service for the country in relating the facts that came to his attention- the very disturbing facts that came to his attention.”
((NARRATOR))
The top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine told House lawmakers it was clear U.S. security assistance to Ukraine was tied to that country’s cooperation in an investigation into Trump’s political rival Joe Biden and his family.
Also testifying this week, State Department official George Kent and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who told lawmakers the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani subverted traditional U.S. foreign policy channels and that Congressionally-approved US aid was linked to Ukraine’s compliance with the president’s personal political interests.
((Rep. Jackie Speier, Democrat))
“This is a very strong case of bribery.”
((NARRATOR))
Republicans focused on defending the substance of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president at the heart of the impeachment investigation.
((Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican))
“I trust the call. I trust President Zelenskiy and President Trump. And I trust the fact that the Ukrainians didn’t know that aid had been held and the Ukrainians did nothing to get it released, when it was released. Those are the fundamental facts, but we got all this, all this, other noise that Mr. Schiff wants to stir up that isn’t fundamentally critical to what actually took place.”
((NARRATOR))
Trump called the House impeachment process unfair.
((President Donald Trump))
“There’s never been a President who’s been so transparent. This is a witch-hunt, at the highest level, and it’s so bad for our country.”
((NARRATOR))
House Democrats are following a similar process used in the impeachments of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
((Elaine Kamrack, Brookings Institution))
“The impeachment process, at this point in time, is like a grand jury process. What they're doing now is they're just gathering evidence. They're going to make charges. And obviously House Republicans will have the chance to rebut the charges.”
((NARRATOR))
Those charges - known as Articles of Impeachment - would almost certainly pass the Democratic-controlled U.S. House. But the resulting trial in the Republican-majority U.S. Senate would likely not be successful – keeping Trump in office through the upcoming 2020 election.
(GRETA with KATHERINE GYPSON)
VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson joins us from Capitol Hill, where this week the House Intelligence Committee is holding its first open hearing on impeachment.
GVS: Hi Katherine, and this has been going on now for about six weeks behind closed doors. We now move to open hearings so all of America, the world can watch. But tell me, you're on Capitol Hill all the time. Does it feel different in the Capitol today?
KG: It feels different today, I will say that because we've had so much anticipation build up with those closed door depositions where all those reporters quite frankly have been waiting outside those closed doors and just scrambling for scraps of information. Now we actually get to see everything out in the open. We actually get to have people talking, sharing their story, filling in the story that we've speculated about, but now we really get to hear the full picture.
GVS: This is a constitutional moment, this is what the constitution allows to happen. But, and maybe I'm a little cynical, but I've said it's more like a play because so many politicians have already made up their minds -- they're not necessarily hearing new facts where they might change their opinion. Is that me being cynical or is that pretty much true?
KG: No, I think you're stating what is a very clear fact up here on Capitol Hill. The Democratic and Republican lawmakers who have been in those closed-door committee hearings have already heard this testimony. We've seen the release of the transcripts, they know what their cases, or in the case of the Republicans what their cases against it. Now it's for the American people to decide. This was is a TV moment so that Americans can watch and learn more about the case and decide whether or not President Trump meets that standard set out of the US Constitution for impeachment, and those are three things: treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors. They'll get to decide whether that happened here.
GVS: The people who are sitting in this hearing room -- the members of Congress, you have the Chairman, who is Chairman Schiff, he's a democrat and then you have a ranking member, a Republican. Is it evenly split or are there several more Democrats than Republicans?
KG: There are a few more Democrats than Republicans, it's about 51 to 47 in terms of the three committees, who have been in those closed doors impeachment investigations on the House Intelligence Committee, it's about even. What will happen is, each side will get to ask questions. The chairman and the ranking member can decide to do that themselves, or they can use the in-house council. It'll be really interesting to see how that plays out in this week, and in next week's impeachment hearings.
GVS: People are very interested in Bill Taylor, and who is he, and why the interest in him?
KG: So he is the, he was the US top diplomat to Ukraine. He was the chargé d'affaires, he was on the ground in Ukraine, and for Democrats he's really a key witness. They want to start out with that key witness, because he will be able to speak to the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, as well as some of the broader issues that Democrats are concerned about, how they say that the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, got involved in subverting traditional US foreign policy channels to benefit the President's personal political interest. That's the case the Democrats are trying to make to the American people.
GVS: What I think is key here, and it may be my background as a lawyer, is even everything Bill Taylor says and what everybody else says, it's not President Trump saying it. The only thing we have worry of President Trump is a memorandum of a transcript. And we have everybody else sort of around him saying that, but not him personally. Is that true or not? Am I wrong in the facts?
KG: Well, what we do have are a couple of people who will be testifying who were in on that phone call, but you are right, there are other people who are testifying to broader issues and who knew of that phone call. So what Democrats are trying to do is paint that larger picture, whereas Republicans are saying all you have to do is go back to that summary of the phone call, look at the summary and it will tell you all you need to know.
GVS: But what's sort of interesting Catherine, is historically with foreign policy, and I think Republicans and Democrats both admit this, is the US has leveraged money with cleaning up corruption. The question I think here is, was it to clean up corruption, or was it to get a political opponent?
KG: That's absolutely right. That's what House Republicans would say and what they've been saying in the past few weeks up here on Capitol Hill, is that President Trump was actually fulfilling something that he ran on a campaign promise to drain the swamp and to address this issue of corruption in Ukraine, that he was always concerned about what the country was doing. What Democrats will say is that this was a clear case of bribery, and you're hearing them use that word a lot more often now. They're saying that this was very clearly President Trump pressuring Ukraine for something that was his own personal political interest.
GVS: Well, if you don't like President Trump it's easy make the jump that he was doing it to get a political opponent. If you do like President Trump, you're under public insight, chances are you'll say that it's a use of what the US has historically done with using it as leverage. And so, how did the two sides, I mean is there any sort of indication of how either side intends to prove its point?
KG: Well what the Democrats hope will happen is that there will be a very clear moment in these hearings this week and into next week, where one of these witnesses will say something very clear that will tell the American people that this was a case of bribery, that this was the president abusing his office. Republicans are hoping for a moment where they can make this point that ultimately Ukraine did get that congressionally approved US aid, that the president ever actually got what he wanted in terms of the political rival. So there really is, there's no fire here. The Democrats are making something out of nothing.
GVS: which is where you see the real difference in this country between the courtroom and law and politics where you get to, the rules are sort of made up as you go along. I mean the law has the rules made in advance and so it's going to be very fascinating to watch this unravel, Katherine.
KG: It sure will, it's all public relations.
GVS: Indeed, well we'll see what happens in the hearings. Thank you very much. Katherine Gypson, VOA Congressional correspondent.
(GRETA)
Impeaching a US president is rare. In 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon was facing impeachment as a result of a politically motivated burglary at the Watergate Hotel in Washington.
The break-in, at the office of the Democratic National committee was a national scandal.
Nixon resigned before the impeachment vote in Congress.
In all, four US presidents have faced impeachment. But only two reached the trial stage, which occurs in the US Senate.
(IMPEACHMENT HISTORY)
In 1868, Andrew Johnson became the first US president to face formal impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.
Johnson became president after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
He immediately clashed with some Republicans on matters related to Reconstruction after the US Civil War.
The US Congress responded by passing a law preventing the president from replacing members of his cabinet without Senate approval. Johnson then fired the Secretary of War, defying the law that he believed unconstitutional.
His own Republican party impeached Johnson in the House of Representatives. He avoided a guilty verdict in his Senate trial by one vote.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton became the second U.S. President to be impeached. Clinton’s presidency was rocked by scandal and legal troubles dating back to the early days of his political career.
A controversial business deal known as Whitewater in addition to accusations of sexual harassment…
cast a shadow over Clinton’s presidency, prompting a special investigation.
During that probe, recordings surfaced of conversations with details of an affair between the President and a former White House intern
(President Bill Clinton)
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman..”
With evidence he lied under oath with the intent of obstructing the investigation, the Republican-led House impeached Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
In the Senate trial, neither count received close to the two-thirds necessary to remove Clinton from office.
(GRETA with Prof SUSAN LOW BLOCH)
The House of Representatives impeaches, then the matter goes to the other side of Capitol Hill to the Senate for trial. To oust a president, two-thirds of the senate must vote for removal.
It is important to note that impeachment is a political process and not a criminal one. And while the two can look alike, they are different, with different rules and procedures.
Susan Low Bloch is an expert on constitutional law. She is a law professor at Georgetown University and the author of numerous articles and books on impeachment and the Constitution. She has also testified before the US Senate on whether a president can be indicted and tried, while still in office.
GVS: Professor Bloch, welcome to Plugged In.
SLB: Nice to be here. Thank you.
GVS: Okay, so this is this is a political process and not a legal one. How do you describe the difference?
SLB: Well this is a legal process, obviously it has rules. And as a result, if you're convicted you're usually sentenced to jail or something. But an impeachment is a political method of getting rid of a president, taking him out of office before the end of his term because he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. There's no punishment, other than removal from office and inability perhaps to serve another term. But he’s still subject to criminal process later on, should the government so desire.
GVS: High crimes and misdemeanors is one part, one reason you get ousted. Another is bribery. Bribery is pretty clear. We all pretty much understand bribery, you try to get someone to do something with some money or something. But what are high crimes and misdemeanors, what does that mean?
SLB: Well, that's a debate. It doesn't have to be necessarily a crime in the law books. If a president just simply played golf all day or watch television all day or just didn't do the president's job, many think that would be an abuse of his office and worth, removing him from the office. It's a political remedy. It's not a judicial as you said, and there's no punishment, it's just this person should not be president of the United States should be removed.
GVS: Hundreds of years ago when the Constitution was drafted and enacted, was impeachment much of a discussion of much of a debate?
SLB: It was an important feature, because one of the things the framers of the Constitution really wanted to make sure is that they didn't have another king. And so they wanted a method, the chosen method of picking a president is by an election and the chosen method of getting rid of them was having the term expire. But if you had someone in office who was abusing the office by treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then it was important to remove that person before the end of the term. So, they hoped it wouldn't be used, but it was, it was an important feature.
GVS: But it certainly hasn't been used much in this country.
SLB: No, we've elected good people who don't commit treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
GVS: You know, it’s sort of interesting though that the other way, of course, a President gets removed from office is a vote. And we have this impeachment almost late in a presidential term because we've already started in this country, the election season. You know, we've got a number of Democrats running for president. Even the President has a couple of challenges within his party, not a great moment, I don't think. But, you know, at some point it's like, here we have the politicians, seeking to remove them, and the opposing party, yet we're about to have, the voters are going to get their chance.
SLB: Well, I agree with you. I think that as the election gets closer, the need to impeach and the ability to impeach is less important and should be dropped. Now we're still a year away so I think it still makes sense to investigate whether Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors. But, yeah, once we get to the election, it’s up to the voters.
GVS: So this is, we're in the House stage. This is the impeachment. If they vote for articles impeachment goes over to the Senate for a trial, and who presides over the trial?
SLB: Over the trial is the Chief Justice of the United States. He comes down…
GVS: From another branch of government?
SLB: Right, exactly. And I think the reason is that, otherwise it would be the Vice President presiding over the Senate, and he would have a conflict of interest. You'd have some loyalty obviously to the President, but also, he would be the one that would take over. So you don't want the Vice President of the United States presiding over the trial. So we have this unusual situation where the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court comes in.
GVS: Are there set rules for the impeachment trial, I mean, the rules for the house, the rules for the house impeachment or rather, they're determined by the majority party - here the Democrats. But when it goes over to the Senate for trial, should that happen, are there set rules or they will be written as they go?
SLB: They won’t be written as they go but they will be written by the senators. I mean, you do that, each house defines its own rules. But there's past precedent. We've had not many trials in the Senate, but a few. And we've had trials in the Senate to impeach judges. So, even though impeaching a president is very unusual, we remove judges that way, so there's precedent.
GVS: All right, so the Democrats run the House where they vote on the Articles of Impeachment, which essentially charging, then it goes over to the Senate for trial, that's run by the Republicans. Now the head of the party over there, Mitch McConnell – Majority Leader, said he's going to have a trial. But does the Constitution require him to have a trial or could he just drop it at that point?
SLB: He should not drop it. The Constitution does require that there be a trial. I don't know what the remedy would be if he just refused. I don't think we'd have judicial review over that. But the Constitution does require a trial and he has said he will do it so I think we don't have to speculate about what happens if he refuses.
GVS: 51 Republicans are in the Senate, and 49 Democrats and it, but it’s the vote to oust the president is much steeper. How much steeper is it?
SLB: You need two thirds, which in this case would be 67 because there are 100 senators.
GVS: So in other words, that the evidence would have to be rather convincing I assume, coming over from the House with the hearings that 20 Republican senators thought, I'm going to defect from my party, Trump is a Republican. I'm going to defect from my party and vote to oust him.
SLB: Sorry, Greta I didn’t get the question.
GVS: Look, you’d have to convince 20 Republicans, basically, to defect from their party.
SLB: That’s right. Removing the President of the United States before an election is a drastic thing. And the Constitution did not want, does not want it to happen often. So they put in a very high bar; the two thirds – 67, and yes it would have to be both parties.
GVS: Thank you very much, Professor Susan Bloch from Georgetown Law Center.
There is a good chance we would not be talking about impeachment had it not been for the so-called whistleblower. As you may recall, a whistleblower - an unknown person, filed a secret complaint in August. The complaint alleges that president Trump asked the president of Ukraine to launch a corruption investigation against the family of a political rival - in exchange for the release of nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.
So what is a whistleblower? Plugged In Producer Mil Arcega takes a look at what whistleblowers do.
(WHAT IS A WHISTLEBLOWER?)
(whistle sound)
(Mil Arcega)
What’s a whistle got to do with impeachment hearings? Well, it’s all about what the whistleblower does. It’s a warning, a public alert - of a purse snatching for example, or a player who violates the rules of the game - or a public official accused of breaking the law.
A whistleblower is sometimes referred to as a leaker, but that’s not entirely accurate.
Both disclose wrongdoing. But whistleblowers disclose information about wrongdoing to statutorily authorized recipients who can verify and launch investigations to protect the public good.
For example - whistleblowers may disclose any law violations, mismanagement, fraud, abuse of authority, or substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.
Whistleblowers may also disclose classified information if they go through secure, designated channels.
Leakers release information to unauthorized recipients such as the media, sometimes including classified information not cleared through protected channels.
Leaks are illegal when the information leaked is protected by privacy laws, which include tax returns, and other classified information. Except when the leaks are made by government officials who can release information to promote policies or to test public opinion.
Unlike leakers, whistleblowers are protected by the US constitution against retaliatory action.
But advocates say US law provides no enforcement, no guarantees if someone chooses to disclose a whistleblower’s identity. For Plugged in – Mil Arcega VOA News.
(GRETA with JIM MALONE)
Some Republican lawmakers have been lobbying to expose the identity of the whistleblower. There are no laws preventing a politician from publicly identifying the whistleblower. So why has it not happened?
Is it that they don’t know the whistleblower’s identity, or another reason?
VOA Senior National Correspondent Jim Malone joins us to discuss the political ramifications of the complaint and what it could mean for the Trump presidency.
GVS: Nice to see you, Jim.
JM: Hi Greta.
GVS: I'm not going to ask you to name him, but does everybody in town know who this whistleblower is?
JM: Apparently quite a few people do.
GVS: So it's no secret other than that nobody is saying it, at least its very few. All right, what are the political ramifications of this?
JM: The impeachment writ large? Look, if I look back in history, first of all, since 1974 this is the third one, so all of a sudden after nearly 200 years of American democracy we only had one impeachment which was Andrew Johnson. Now we've had three in the past 45 years or so. I think it reflects this growing polarized political environment in which we live right now and I do wonder in the future. President Trump is the subject of an impeachment this time. What happens to future presidents now, will the opposition party be very quick to kind of move toward an impeachment if they find things they don't like?
GVS: Is there any indication how the public is feeling? What is that opinion? Because what strikes me so much is that the politicians do seem, you know, committed one way or the other before the hearings even happened. Everyone seems to have made up their minds, but what about the public opinion?
JM: Well they're very closely following public opinion and I think one reason why right now, you're not seeing any republicans break with the President is they're very closely watching what's going on in their home states and congressional districts and so far, Republican voters are generally remaining loyal to President Trump. But here's one thing to know, before this Impeachment Inquiry was announced by House Speaker Pelosi, the support for impeachment and national polls was in the 30s or so, since this has happened just over the past six weeks or so. That number has jumped up to around 50, 51% supporting impeachment and removal of President Trump. That's been a dramatic jump in a few weeks. If you look what happened during Richard Nixon's two years saga, Watergate. It took a long time for the public to kind of turn against the president and Republicans only turned against Nixon at the very end. So, we don't know how this is all going to play out but we're also in a different time, the internet, there's, they're not watching three television networks like they used to. Getting the news kind of from one place so how all this plays out in a fractured political time is what we're going to be watching now that it's in a public phase.
GVS: Well President Trump is coming out with swinging, tweeting things like circus is coming to town, phony show trial, zero due process. So he's coming out swinging it's not like he's going to sit there take it, but the Republicans say that they're not getting the term due process, they're not getting the opportunity to call the witnesses they wanted hearings. So you're going to hear a lot of that.
JM: Yeah, I mean, the house is a very partisan environment because the majority party runs the House. The Senate is a different animal in that there usually has to be some sort of compromise to get things done to pass things, but in the end republicans believe they will have the President's back in the Senate, and it's those Republican senators. If he is impeached by the House, by the Democrats, the Republican senators will decide this, and the democrats have a high bar they need to turn 20 Republican senators against the president. And in this highly polarized environment coming up on the election. There aren't too many signs right now that the Democrats have been able to take this to the level of turning republicans away from Trump, but let's see what happens in these public hearings.
GVS: The Speaker of the House is Nancy Pelosi, a woman who wields enormous amount of power. She's been in Congress for a long time. In the beginning she did not seem to be enthusiastic about the impeachment, about her house having a an impeachment process. Did she change her mind? Or is there a political reason for this?
JM: I think, members of her own party changed her mind, she was reluctant to do this, but it became so overwhelming the urge among House Democrats to move on this. When you had the central allegation here that the President reached out to a foreign leader to help him with his reelection campaign in 2020, and the possibility of holding out military aid. This is the key thing that triggered so many Democrats, not only to look at this as a possible impeachable offense, but also how do you prevent the president from trying to do this again? I mean the president we know him he's, he's pretty strong about focusing on reelection and no holds barred about what he might be able to do to try to win reelection.
GVS: Is it so unusual to withhold foreign aid. If to leverage it, to try to get a country to handle its corruption is that…
JM: It's unusual if you're trying to get a foreign leader to help you intervene in your own election and help your own reelection.
GVS: if you can prove that. So the question is, is it coincidental that former Vice President Biden and his son were in the Ukraine, or is it deliberate that he's going after this because they were there.
JM: Well, right now the Democrats say they believe from the diplomatic witnesses we're going to hear from and military, that Biden was on his mind that he was doing this for purely political ends now the Republicans can test and they say that the President there's no direct conversations that can be cited between the President and his associates ordering this to be done though there is the summary of the phone call.
GVS: Which is a little different to the law and politics because in law I mean, the only thing you have the president doing is the one phone call and it's a memorandum of a phone calls and it’s not even, you know, a precise transcript no one, you know exists on the Ukrainian side but we don't have it, and it's where they mean if they right now I don't see any direct contact between the President and this and Biden. However, if you're in a political environment in a sort of like where there's smoke, there's fire, if all your aides around you are doing it. You know it may it may be different but we're in a political arena.
JM: this is what's important about the public phase, this is about winning over public opinion, Democrats know where they are right now is not high enough to move the needle republicans feel by defending the president arguing process, and making the democrats prove that direct presidential connection, that they have the upper hand they can hold their troops loyal. there are elements of the legal process in this, but this is really a political process through and through.
GVS: And imagine if you are let's say you're a republican and you are in a district and you're going to be up for election next November, and it's a heavy democratic district, and you might be more inclined, not to go along with the President on this one and go along with the, with the democratic side if you want to get reelected and vice versa.
JM: Well the first vote we've already had whether to go ahead with the inquiry and no republicans defected so that's a good sign for President Trump, I think, for Republicans in the Senate who are loyal. There's no way they can envision turning on the president right now, because they would fear the wrath of his supporters themselves.
GVS: It's amazing. Thank you, Jim Malone.
(GOODBYE)
That's all the time we have for today.
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