Effort To Expose Whistleblower Fails As Trump Trial Edges On

Speaker 1: 00:00 Today, the Senate moves into its second and perhaps final day of senators asking questions of the house managers and president Trump's legal team. They began on Wednesday with eight hours of questions alternating between Democrats and Republicans today. Another eight hours of senators writing their questions on glorified index cards, which are then read aloud by chief justice John Roberts. A decision on whether to call witnesses will probably come tomorrow. Joining us to talk about all of it is legal analyst Dan Eaton and Dan, welcome. Thank you. Good to be with you in what today differ at all from yesterday with the back and forth questioning by the senators. Thought really what uh, what's interesting about, uh, what happened, uh, yesterday is that, uh, the, uh, Democrats and the Republicans alternated question. So often when, uh, a, an answer was given to one side's question, uh, that, uh, the other side didn't like that they asked the other side to, uh, they asked the other side's lawyers to respond to that. Speaker 1: 00:59 Now understand the lawyers only had five minutes. So some of what the lawyer said sometimes, uh, was, uh, taken out of context perhaps or, or was easy to misunderstand. And what are some of the standout moments to you from yesterday's questioning? Well, the stand out moments obviously were some of the questions that, uh, focused on, uh, what the president said. Why did he say it? There was the obvious standout moment where a Senator Ted Cruz, the Republican of Texas a ask whether as a matter of law, a quid pro quo for political favors could be considered an impeachable offense, which led, uh, Alan Dershowitz, the president's lawyer to say no. Under no circumstances could a, a, a quid pro quo for the purposes of furthering a president's desire to be reelected, a basically a political interest if it was any part of the consideration, be considered an impeachable quid pro quo. Speaker 1: 01:51 And, you know, chief justice Roberts actually did more than read the questions out when it came to the question from Senator Rand Paul, right? Yeah. Rand Paul, of course, is the Republican from, uh, Kentucky. And, uh, what ran Paul's question, uh, wanted to do, uh, was to, uh, ask, uh, that V a whistleblower be named. That was one of the issues that the question had in it. Uh, the alleged whistleblowers name chief justice Roberts had made it clear that he was not going to, uh, give a question, uh, that, uh, identified the still at least officially on named a whistleblower that led to these impeachment proceedings. And you mentioned Dershowitz. What's your take on the argument he made that as long as the president thinks it's in the country's best interest, uh, he can pretty much do whatever he wants in regard to his campaign for reelection. Speaker 1: 02:44 His argument, Jade was actually a little more nuanced than that, but not much. What he said was that it is not a quid pro quo impeachable offense if the president, uh, asked for a favor, uh, in the interest of securing his, uh, reelection, which is a, uh, political, uh, interest that the president given his broad sweep of power over foreign policy, uh, and his right to conduct politics in the name of foreign policy, uh, can do. Uh, the problem is there's really no limiting principle to what professor Dershowitz said because it wouldn't be limited of course, to a president seeking reelection. What if this happened in a president's second term when he wasn't eligible for reelection? It could a president engaged in the same kind of behavior on the argument that it is in his interest, uh, to keep and maintain office through the end of his second term or in the national interest for him to keep and maintain office through the end of the second term. Speaker 2: 03:42 Hmm. And you know, I suppose it's different from Senator to Senator, but generally, how much do you think you can read into a senator's thinking from the text of their question? Well Speaker 1: 03:54 gives you some sense of at least, Oh, what, uh, they are concerned about. For example, you had the Collins Murkowski question about, uh, whether, uh, the, uh, information from Bolton's unpublished book had been reviewed by, uh, by, uh, the president and the president's lawyer responded that no one, uh, outside of the, uh, NSA had reviewed the entire transcript. But that still begs the question about whether other information or other warnings about what was in the transcript, uh, were, uh, disseminated to those outside of the national security council. And that was a question that was left unanswered. But it's just there are some serious concerns and Mitt Romney's question about, uh, the exact date, uh, that the president did. Certain things suggest that there is some concern that maybe all the information is not out there, but ultimately this is all going to come down to a, whether a four or more Republican senators think there is a need for, uh, further witnesses or document. Speaker 2: 04:52 Hmm. And what can we expect tomorrow from the Senate? Speaker 1: 04:55 Tomorrow was a big day because of course, today is just the rest of the, uh, senatorial, uh, questioning. Tomorrow we will actually learn, uh, whether a majority of the Senate wants, uh, additional, uh, witnesses and documents. If the answer is no, you can expect that there will be a quick, uh, vote on, uh, acquittal or conviction. But there, there's no question that the president ultimately B will be acquitted even if there are more witnesses. Uh, the only question is whether that happens tomorrow or sometime next month. Speaker 2: 05:27 So will we know what the senators will be basing their decisions on tomorrow? Speaker 1: 05:33 For some of them we will because they will say so they will make a statement before the United States Senate on the floor. But the interesting thing is they, unlike judges don't have to explain the reasoning for their decisions, jurors generally don't honor their absent as special verdict form a is to explain why they're reaching the decision they are reaching. And that's going to be the interesting thing. That's why when you hear talk about Dershowitz arguments about the abuse of power and quid pro quo never being an impeachable offense, that doesn't necessarily mean that that is what ultimately will drive the vote on whether to equip the president of United States of the articles of impeachment under which he is going trial of right now. Hmm. And there are still two Republican senators who are undecided. Correct. It's not entirely clear. I guess you would have to look at the count of a Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader of Kentucky, who is a famously, uh, great, uh, vote counter. Uh, I think you would have to look at his card to see where his caucus actually is. And if it's only two Republican senators that are interested in witnesses, there will be no witnesses. And you can expect a very Swift acquittal of the president, uh, tomorrow, just in time for his state of the union address. Next week I have been speaking with legal analysts, Stan Eaton and Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Good to be with you. Jade.