Impeachment trial - day 1

[T]he first proper day of the trial extended past midnight into Wednesday morning. In seven consecutive votes split precisely along party lines, the Senate voted down Democratic proposals to subpoena testimony from four potential witnesses and documents from multiple government agencies. Four additional votes defeated proposals to ease the admission of documents and testimony and to relax related time restrictions.

Democrats fruitlessly called for testimony and documents from the former national security adviser John Bolton; the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney; Mulvaney’s aide Robert Blair; the budget official Michael Duffey; the White House; the state department; the defense department; and the budget office relevant to an alleged scheme by Trump to twist the powers of the presidency to extract personal political favors from Ukraine.

Each of the proposed subpoenas was defeated by a 53-47 vote. Only one procedural amendment garnered a single Republican vote, from Susan Collins of Maine.

  Guardian

She must have felt obligated since she's cried wolf so many times about "maybe" she would be a moderate Republican.  The motion was to extend the amount of time allowed for responses to motions, which currently stands at two hours.

Republicans did vote in a closed-door lunch to extend opening arguments from two to three days and allow House evidence to be included in the trial record.  Collins was one who objected to the original provisions, because they didn't closely follow the Clinton impeachment model that McConnell said they would.

Trump’s defense team struck a combative posture, expressing outrage at what they said was unfair treatment of the president and accusing the House of an attack on democracy. “They’re not here to steal one election, they’re here to steal two elections,” said Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel. “They won’t tell you that. They don’t have the guts to say it directly. But that’s exactly what they’re here to do.”

[...]

The supreme court’s chief justice, John Roberts, gaveled the trial to order shortly after 1pm.

[...]

Over the next 12 hours, Roberts stepped out of a strictly procedural role only once, after the manager Jerry Nadler accused any senator who voted against hearing from Bolton of casting a “treacherous vote” and Cipollone demanded that Nadler apologize to Trump and his family.

Admonishing both sides, Roberts noted that Senate rules and tradition required civil discourse. “I do think that those addressing the Senate should remember where they are,” he said.

The opposing legal teams, seated in a cramped arrangement at tables stacked with paper at the base of the Senate rostrum, struck an immediate contrast in style and substance.

While Trump’s team attacked the conduct of the impeachment process in the House and resuscitated a call for more information about the whistleblower whose complaint launched the process, the Democrats appealed to the 100 senators before them.

[...]

As the hours wore on, certain rhythms and incongruities in the trial emerged. While the House managers used almost all of their allotted debate time, liberally deploying video clips drawn from public hearings last month, Trump’s defense team used only a fraction of its time, repeating a blanket defense of the president’s conduct and rarely referring to previous testimony in the case.

To debate various proposed subpoenas, Schiff deployed one of the other seven managers to make a scripted case and then, after Trump’s team had spoken, rose to deliver impromptu rebuttals.

That's Schiff's super power. He's brilliant at it. He has all the facts and figures in his head ready at a moment's notice. He also sees every attack point in the opposition's arguments.

After the deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin said the Democratic request for new witnesses amounted to an admission that they were unprepared for trial, Schiff pounced, calling on Trump’s former national security adviser and current acting chief of staff to appear.

“We’re ready,” Schiff said. “The House calls John Bolton. The House calls Mick Mulvaney. Let’s get this trial started, shall we.

“We are ready to present our case. We are ready to call witnesses. The question is, will you let us?”

[...]

Pounding the lectern, Jay Sekulow, a personal lawyer for Trump and talk-radio host, blazed through a series of conservative talking points and conspiracy theories ranging in focus from the special counsel Robert Mueller to the former attorney general Eric Holder.

“This isn’t a legal defense,” tweeted Kate Brannen, editorial director of the Just Security website. “It’s the equivalent of impeachment jazz hands.”

They have no defense. So they just recycle all the GOP talking points. It won't cost them. The outcome is foregone.

If Democrats are to secure additional witnesses, they will need at least four Republicans to back them. A handful of moderates, including Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, have indicated that they could support an effort to call witnesses – but only on the timeline outlined in a proposal advanced by McConnell.

Additional? How about any? That handful will diminish when the time comes, and if they get within one vote, there's always Democrat Joe Manchin to defect to the GOP side.*

President Trump said Wednesday that he would let the GOP-controlled Senate decide whether his impeachment trial should include witness testimony.


[...]

“I would rather go the long way. I would rather interview Bolton. I would rather interview a lot of people,” Trump said at a news conference at the end of a two-day appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“The problem with John is that it’s a national security problem,” the president continued, indicating executive privilege would apply to Bolton's testimony. “He knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. what happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive and I have to deal on behalf of the country?”

  The Hill

It may not be the most transparent presidency in history, but he is definitely the most transparent president.

“I did get to see some of it. It’s a hoax. It’s a total hoax,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I think the team was really good. The facts are all on our side.”

  The Hill

And the interviewer didn't crack up? The facts are all on the Dems' side, and his team was crap. Fortunately for him, they don't have to be good.

After arguing in court for months that federal judges should stay miles away from disputes between Congress and the White House — for fear that they become political actors in a divisive impeachment probe — the president’s lawyers spent the first working day of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial arguing the exact opposite, and suggesting that those who disagree are hostile to the Constitution.

“The president’s opponents, in their rush to impeach, have refused to wait for judicial review,” said Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal lawyer, who is working alongside White House counsel Pat Cipollone on the president’s impeachment defense. Sekulow also echoed law professor Jonathan Turley, who recently warned against “making a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts.”

[...]

But that argument is in direct conflict with the Trump Justice Department’s own forceful arguments — some as recently as this month — that allowing courts to step into such battles between Congress and the White House would be an affront to the separation of powers. On Jan. 3, a Justice Department attorney fighting the House’s impeachment inquiry said “unelected” judges should not be “refereeing” such disputes. DOJ attorney Hashim Mooppan argued that the court should steer clear of “a purely political dispute.”

[...]

“Other lawyers — maybe not the ones at this table, but other lawyers for the president — are in the courts saying the exact opposite of what they’re telling you today,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead impeachment manager, said in response to the claims during Tuesday’s session of the trial. “They’re saying you cannot enforce congressional subpoenas. You can’t do it.”

  Politico

Inconsistency is the hallmark of the Trump cabal.

“It risks politicizing the court and undermining public confidence in the court,” Mooppan said.

Already there.

A federal appeals court panel could decide any day whether the House can legally force McGahn to testify, while the president continues to assert that he is “immune” from speaking to lawmakers. House lawyers have indicated that they would seek to make immediate use of potential testimony from McGahn — a star witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — in the impeachment trial, to show what they say is a pattern of efforts by Trump to obstruct investigations into his conduct.

Such an effort, though, is likely to fail.

[...]

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), one of the House’s seven impeachment managers, [...] said federal courts had already litigated those issues, going as far back as Watergate.

“The House and the Senate should not be required to litigate U.S. v. Nixon back to the Supreme Court and down again for it to be good law,” she said, referring to the landmark case that upheld Congress’ right to obtain information from the executive branch. “It is good law. The president has not complied with those requirements to the detriment of the truth.”

[...]

Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), another impeachment manager, said Trump should not “hide all the evidence while disingenuously insisting on lawsuits that he doesn't actually think we can file — ones that he knows won't be resolved until after the election.”

President Trump’s impeachment managers made little secret Tuesday that they’d rather put House Democrats on trial than Trump. They repeatedly alleged mistreatment of Trump in his impeachment rather than dwelling upon the evidence against him.

But in one instance, one of them badly overreached.

Appearing shortly after 6 p.m. on the Senate floor, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Jay Sekulow offered an indignant rebuke of the Democrats’ impeachment managers. What he was so incensed about: that they had allegedly referred to “lawyer lawsuits” in prosecuting the case against Trump.

“And by the way — lawyer lawsuits?” Sekulow began. “Lawyer lawsuits? We’re talking about the impeachment of a president of the United States, duly elected, and the members — the managers are complaining about lawyer lawsuits? The Constitution allows lawyer lawsuits. It’s disrespecting the Constitution of the United States to even say that in this chamber — lawyer lawsuits.”

[...]

There was one problem: Sekulow was referring to a quote that doesn’t appear to exist. He appeared to have badly misunderstood what one of the Democratic impeachment managers said.

Shortly prior, Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) laid out her case against Trump. In the course of it, she referred to “FOIA lawsuits” — not “lawyer lawsuits” — referring to the Freedom of Information Act.

  WaPo

He's not used to hearing black people talk.

And it wasn’t just one wayward acronym that could explain the misunderstanding; Demings’s remarks repeatedly referenced the law.

Or actually listening to them.

What’s even more remarkable about the flap is that the White House actually stood by Sekulow’s allegation. Asked about the remark by reporters later in the night, White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland reportedly walked away, only to return a while later — apparently after checking? — and suggest that Sekulow had not erred.

“When you read the transcript, it says ‘lawyer lawsuit,’ ” he said.

It’s not clear to what transcript Ueland is referring, but the Federal Document Clearing House transcript includes no references to “lawyer lawsuits” besides Sekulow’s. And video of Demings’s remarks are clear that she did, in fact, say “FOIA lawsuits” both times.

[...]

It might seem like a small point in the grand scheme of things, even if you set aside Sekulow’s demonstrative and indignant response to something that doesn’t appear to have actually been said. But if anything, the White House’s remarkable double-down would seem to speak volumes about its strategy here — and its devotion to the facts.

At least in doubling down, they are very consistent.

Trump added that Bolton left his White House on negative terms last September and “you don’t like people testifying when they didn’t leave on good terms.”

Trump also said he would like to have Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Energy Secretary Rick Perry testify in the Senate impeachment trial, but that executive privilege would also apply to their testimony for national security reasons.

He added that he’d “love” to have acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney appear, though there was “not much he could add” beyond an interview Mulvaney did with Fox News’s Chris Wallace in October.

  The Hill

Then why block him?

But, as the House managers said, more information will come out.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) late Tuesday released a cache of nearly 200 documents related to officials’ efforts to withhold military aid to Ukraine.

The documents — which were released just before midnight in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by American Oversight, a watchdog group — featured a host of communications between senior White House official Michael Duffey and other OMB aides, including Mark Sandy and Paul Denaro. Emails from OMB Acting Director Russell Vought are also included in the documents.

The records, which are heavily redacted, include a flurry of emails between officials in late June after the Washington Examiner published a story about the Defense Department’s plans to send $250 million in security aid to Ukraine.

  The Hill

I bet they are heavily redacted.

"Despite the Trump Administration’s obstruction and the rhetoric at the trial, the public can now see even more evidence of the president’s corrupt scheme as it unfolded in real-time," Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said in a statement. "The volume of material released, and the volume of material still secreted away only highlights how much the administration has withheld from the House, the Senate, and the American public.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Susan Collins : Senate tattletale.

* UPDATE:  1/25:  Make that two: Manchin and Doug Jones.