Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion On Threats To U.S. Political System 20240713

Vice president , good afternoon. I like to welcome you to our if it on impeachment and foreign interdependence in Election Security in 2020. It is been several weeks since Speaker Pelosi honestly impeachment inquiry. Testimonies from a number of administrative officials and simply will be moving to public hearings. At the same time, as we head into the 2020 elections, there is concern about foreign interference in the security of our election infrastructure. The concern about hacking veterans or station databases and la discord and spreading disinformation. You should have copies of the constitution at each of your seats. So if there is anything that comes up during the course of this conversation where you need refer to that legal document, create feel free to do so. Dale was given to these issues, we have four distinguished experts. Senior fellow of government studies at brookings, he writes a column for the wall street journal as the author of anti parlor ism and populist threat to liberal democracy. Another senior fellow at brookings, and the author of exceptions to the role. In the politics of filibuster limitations in the u. S. Senate. Elaine kumar is the senior fellow in governance studies and director of our center for effective Public Management and is weak author of primary politics about the nominating process in the United States. And then a senior fellow and government studies at brookings and editorinchief of law fear. Also the coauthor susan hennessey, a forthcoming book entitled i am making the presidency donald trump his, more on the most powerful. So i want to start with bill. His paid a lot of attention to Public Opinion aspects of impeachment. There are three recent National Surveys they came out and they basically all shared 49 percent of the American Public want trump impeached and removed from office. But then bill wrote a post just a few days ago talking about how support for removal drops in some of the scream states. Seville, where are we know and what should people be looking for. Will funny you should ask, [laughter] let me just take two or three minutes to summarize the state of Public Opinion on these questions. There is to begin, the majority support for the congressional inquiry into the president s conduct. It is averaging in the low to mid 50s. If you look at most of the surveys. As you said, when it comes to actually impeaching and removing the president , the country is almost exactly down the middle. In support and oppositions both in the mid to high 40s depending on exactly which survey and that you look at. And interestingly, if you look at change in Public Opinions, on this question most of it occurred in the first week to ten days after the initial revelation. On september 23rd, and it has been quite staple since then. Additional information of the American People received, has brought moved them one way or another much. There are very short and intensifying partisan emissions. I just took a look at the latest average of polls on this issue and corrected for cole paul quality. This would 538. Com does. And it shared an 84 percent of democrats in favor of impeaching and removing the president. Only 11 percent of republican endorsing that disposition and independence stood up 45. Demographically you see the expected ratio ethnic and gender divisions minor americans, on the balance are opposed to impeaching and removing the president. Africanamericans are strongly in favor of it. Latino and americans, are in favor but must not muscle strongly than africanamericans and monday more women than men in favor of removing him from office. You mentioned geography. There was a very interesting New York Times college bowl that came out a week ago that took a look at the scream state and found the public sentiment in those days was opposed in the majority of those voters were opposed to impeaching and removing the president. Thats important because those scream states will be the key to present trumps either successful or failed to for reelection in 2020. What should you look for. In the weeks ahead. Number one, look for some significant change in President Trumps job approval. As a very common question in the survey researchers ask. Do you approve or disapprove of the job the president asked is doing. Here hot off the press from the nbc and wall street journal survey, brother results. In july of 2019, 45 percent of americans approved of the job that donald trump is doing as president. In september, a week before the manner broke wide open, 45 percent of americans approved of the job. Donald trump is doing as president. And is of us week according to the wall street journal, yes, 4d job that the president is doing. There is a concept in investing known as the market discount which is the measure of how much the market is already taken into account good or bad news, and what this tells me is that this news hasnt really changed subtle expectations among American People very much. Theyre already understood that he was fully capable of his conduct. And they come drone the expected conclusions from them. Second thing to look for, opinion among the republican rank and file. That hasnt changed very much either. Its up a few Percentage Points but as i indicated from a very low base to a very low total of just 11 percent right now and monday surveys have it in single digits. Third thing to look for, a break in the ranks of the republican elected officials at the national loophole. As you probably saw on the vault to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry, not a single republican member of the house of representatives voted in favor. Not one. Now obviously, the critical battlegrounds will be the senate and here i just note for the record and my colleagues may have a different view of the matter, we havent heard a peep on this question from the five senators in the most contested races, often colorado, not from tom in north carolina, not from susan in maine, not from martha in arizona, and not from jodi in iowa. Not people. And what about the very prominent Senior Republicans who have elected to retire in 2020. Not a peep from pat roberts, pretty from mike, not a peep from alexander, and nothing as far as i know from Johnny Isaacson either. So it is possible, but there will be a huge shift in response to the public hearings and brother information such that 20 republican senators, the number need it to remove president from office, will choose to go in that direction but as of the current and right now, the size of the are few and far between. Soon i you. So it looks like the house will remove to a public hearing and today we saw the release of the first two transcripts were likely to see more customer on the rest of the week ago. Tell us of these hearings will unfold in the house. What the rules will look like and how it will lay the groundwork for impeachment. Thank you. Rarely in the house, is where andy is stage of gathering of evidence by the house. And removing into a stage of the focus on the presentation presentation and consideration of that. So examine the best of several weeks, the series of depositions conducted by the House Intelligence Committee and ricky has the house of Oversight Committees. The stage has been obviously the subject of much republican inc. Theres been a lot of questions about his mood behind closed doors. It is worth remembering that in that particularly the clinton impeachment, the last comparison case we have, then investigative work, gathering of the evidence was largely done by hr and came to the house of representatives in hundreds of boxes and we start to deal with the set different set of ethics here. We are negative that process. This bill mentioned, to the transcripts of the depositions werent released this morning there is a list of individuals that is committed to conducting the select that would like to hear from. Increasingly, unlikely that they will get compliance from those individuals. Individuals they have yet to hear from from who they would like to. Generally in the set category who they are more closely alondra with those. We did have the series of witnesses who the committee wanted to hear from and they were not necessarily closely alondra with the president. They were more wheeling to resubscribe agreement to cooperate. Once these series of depositions are complete, will move to one or more sierra series. Open hearings in the house of intelligence in committee. He agreed to last week, procedural parameters for what we do next. I dont know how monday with there will be. There will be one or more. A couple of features of those that are worth noting, start with longer than usual periods of questioning, controlled by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the Ranking Member of to 45 minutes per side. It is much longer and certainly the usual five minutes. And even longer than the extended. Whence already provided. But the chairman and the Ranking Member can choose to yield back time to staff simply as well macy staff conduct that initial. A questioning. Once those hearings are complete, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee will again, working with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committee will write a report on the materials that has been gathered and the brother investigative materials that have been collected by house committees will then be transferred to the Judiciary Committee which has jurisdiction over president ial impeachment. They Judiciary Committee will then have its own series of hearings and will start with an initial presentation of evidence on the president his council will actually be able to ask questions during that as well as members of the committee themselves and maybe the presentation of additional evidence may be additional witnesses and these are all things that are provided for again in the house adopted last week. We dont exactly know how they will shake out in the Judiciary Committee will also have the stronger questioning. Where there will be the opportunity for more questions and perhaps the most interesting thing that we might see particularly in the judiciary portion of this is this possibility that judiciary chair will be able to prevent the President Trump with exercising the due process and afforded to him on these new procedures if the president quote unlawfully refuses to make witnesses available or produces documents so again we dont know exactly what that means or what the document will look like when it is clear that the house is prepared for additional obstruction of the part of the executive branch. And that they are at least attempting to stop some procedures to use leverage, again its hard to know exactly how that will shake out. I do say that we will continue to see a lot of process or need it to complain about how this is unfolding from republicans. We see at lot about that so far going back to goleta that the white House Counsel sent to the hill indicating the president will not be cooperating with the impeachment inquiry. So certainly there is the potential for more kind of conflict. We have now, a better sense of what we might expect, that will happen procedurally over the next several weeks. See written about the history of impeachment, we need to know about the enberg johnson and bill Clinton Fenton had impeachment efforts and how they might affect the current. Start with Andrew Johnson that was the very first impeachment. Interesting thing about that was how momentous the issues were in 1868, because the union had just won the civil war and yet was the question we do do with the southern states. When abolished slavery but we havent guarantee the rights of the full citizen ship rights of africanamericans. Some issues we do go back and you read much of this, which ive been doing lately, issues of just momentous. Andrew johnson also was a kind of accidental president because he became president when lincoln was assassinated. Have been a democrat but he been a pro Union Democrat which means that lincoln sort of thought and you can see that this was part of lake is an instructional idea. Lets have a kind of bipartisan ticket. However, the Republican Party never liked him very much. As Republican Party that if he shared republican president over these big issues. Now one of the things that comes up in the polling and Public Opinion, is that a lot of americans would rather deal with the president through the election process that through the impeachment process. In Andrew Johnson beach conviction by one vote in the senate. The timing is really interesting here. The articles of impeachment were voted on in may of 1868, the Republican Convention convened in chicago in may of 19 or 1868, from may 20th to may 26. In the unanimously nominated former general ulysses s brett. So basically, they knew they were going to get rid of this guy. The Republican Party had no intention of re nominating them. He thought he might get nominated by the democrats. Weve god like less than ten those on the democratic side. Its a wife, we see some of the themes in Public Opinion. Which is okay, we dont have to acquit him, we dont have to convicted because guess what, the voters in his own party is going to. In the nixon impeachment is more or less, a classic in terms of the weighting of the matters there was clearly obstruction of justice. We tend to forget however is that lots and lots of people went to jail. And it took a long time. It took until august 1974 for the smoking gun tape to his finger the president himself. So nixon hung on and hung on and hung on until the tape. And it was a matter of days and nixon resigned intercourse with a take him out, the Republican Party and senator goldwater leading the delegation walked into the oval office and said we dont have the votes to prevent your impeachment and we dont have the votes to prevent your conviction in the senate. And he was gone. I say we need to be aware of just how quickly things can change. Finally the impeachment of bill clinton, was looking a little bit like this one and that the Impeachment Vote was just absolutely a partisan vote. The senate however, there were some republicans who sided with the democrats and of course he was not convicted. He was acquitted. The interesting thing there, while there were two articles of impeachment was on frederick one was on obstruction of justice but the fact of the matter is, nobody considered this a constitutional issue. High crimes and misdemeanors. Added to the very substance of it, was the fact Newt Gingrich was speaker of the house when the articles were voted in the fall of 1998, on january 3rd 1999, he was having an affair with a woman 20 years younger than himself while he was still married. So guess what, that sort of took the year of the republican balloon so to speak. And we then went to, congressman Bob Livingston was acting speaker i was fully intending to run for speaker until guess what, it was revealed to have been engaged in extramarital affair at 300 members of the housework. All of a sudden, this issue simply went away. And bill clinton was not convicted. He was acquitted. Actually went on very high approval Approval Ratings and nobody expected him to pick up democratic seats in the 1998 interim elections. Switch one of these things tells us a little bit about whats coming. We can certainly cross marital infidelity off of the list of impeachable offenses. Now when we got. They also in all established as molly talked about, their presidencies now. And in the senate. In one of the chief justice of the Supreme Court essentially turns the senate into state judicial five. When the trial begins. I do have some president and some interesting both politics and legal precedents. You come up with a terrific title trump is running out of defenses unless we get another one, trumps tantrums will make impeachment huawei. And of the week and President Trump tweeted, 75 times about impeachment. Seems to be on his mind to some extent right now he seems fixated on uncovering the identity of those who bore how should we evaluate what trump is doing in regard to impeachment right now. Auto answered this question actually with references. Loophole dated that bill started with because i say you cant entirely understand the strategy of the president s impeachment defense that went out reference to that data. I say thats actually the ultimate defense. The president is driven for distinct defenses the. Sometimes in a kind of and discern launch of all four or two of the 43 of the four, sometimes discreetly. They are the following. The first is denial, the second is character assassination, the third is process complaints, and the fourth his prerogative. In solis tech through those individually. I say each has mostly failed which brings us to the fifth and real defense. So the first one is just denial of facts. And when the president started out by staying, started no quid pro quo, the call was perfect. Various iterations of qaeda factual flames. All of which i suppose the call is perfect, is the matter of opinion. But there was no quick pro photo and sort of all of the factual defenses of all basically been proven to be untrue. And they are certainly fading away against the impressive quantity of witnesses who have come forward and testified. The second one which darrell, you alluded to just before particularly directive, the whistleblower but is also directed at the human scum, and the individuals who have given testimony and this is the defense that has in general i say works pretty well for the president. In the past he has managed to make a lot of people believe that the fundamental problem with the russia investigation and found it was a bunch of tests between an fbi agent and an fbi lawyer right. And he made jim cumming, and to a billing in the eyes of a very large number of people so this is actually is pretty substantial tool and his arsenal and it is interesting to me that it does not seem to be working in this context so the whistleblower has of course not been outed in the animated he is actually an interesting feature here. And when fox news and some of the president s defenders went after Lieutenant Colonel amendments last week, even liz cheney had a kind of repudiate that and see that this was unacceptable. So there is a dynamic bear that if sort of attack the attackers thing is maybe working a little bit less well than it had been in the past. And the third is process objections and spending a lot of time on this. This is the reasonably effective strategy with respect to people who have already dont want to believe it. And there Something Else to talk about. I dont see a lot of evidence that is persuasive to anybody on the margins. The evidence of that is the data the bill cited about the degree to which people who are not pre committed invited to the approval of the presence performance to be supporting the impeachment process. Relatively few of them seem to be put up by a shifty chef or flames of and do secrecy. I say those complaints will fade further in relevance as more and more of the transcripts are released. And more and more of the hearings take place in public with reasonable time for people to ask questions and raise the concern. And that brings me to the final and i say the real defense which is search and this is the fine thing for the president to do. When the president says i have the absolute right just the ukrainians to investigate collection. When he is really singing, is i dare you to see this is unacceptable. That is i say the real defense. And as the president approval and the support for the impeachment process kind of approaches the president s disapproval numbers, i say we get the actual test of that defense which is whether as bill describes, that 40 some percent and symbols, it is as low as 38 and simples is as high as 44 and 45. But whether that low 40 average, stays, that is an acceptance i say of this matter defense. In that it is trump does these things. If you start seeing cracks in that, that is the surest sign that the president is defenses not working. As long as that number holds, the president strategy is ultimate Defense Strategy which is to hold enough they support this politically impossible or dangerous for republican elected officials to break with him, will be an effective Defense Strategy irrespective of how ridiculous the arguments may sound to any or all of you. So i can ask you put in your propping up for a minute and basically respond to ben just in terms of kissing on the pulling looks now, and you cant know historically what compared to nixon and clinton. Moving forward, what if anything as changing the current dynamics is the current dynamic likely to see, be consistent. Youve invited me to make a full of myself on national television. [laughter] if i didnt work for you, i would refuse to answered the question. [laughter] there is no executive privilege [laughter] peon. [laughter] mighty judgment, for what its worth, is that what comes out during the public phase of the hearings, would have to add quite significantly to the public his baseline knowledge in order to move the needle significantly. To what extent will the American People be glued to television the public hearings the way elaine and i were in our graduate student days during the water crate, there is one question. Are americans interested enough to enough of them believe that they can gain Additional Information in his on the public phase of the hearings to tune in and reserve judgment. I dont answered that question but that would be one really interesting indicator that is to see the ratings for the hearings, whether they start high and stay high whether they start high and go down sharply over whether they start low and never budge. That is one thing to look for. It is possible i suppose that something as earthshaking as the smoking gun tapes would emerge. I wouldnt bet on it. But obviously no one can rule out that possibility. My own view for what it is worth is that the extraordinary increase in partisan polarization that is occurred in the past generation, is going to limit the response of the American People taken as a whole to Additional Information to the extent that that Additional Information contradicts their overall worldview and their overall view of the president. Through a period when the Political Parties were much less polarized than they are now. When on the two critical articles of impeachment between a third and 40 of the republicans and the house Judiciary Committee voted for them. I would bet money against that in todays house Judiciary Committee. My over under number of republican supporting any articles of impeachment in the house is zero. And im ready to be corrected by a real congressional expert but just for the record, thats my estimate. The long and the short of it is, i can imagine a big change but i think the odds are against it. Molly, if the house votes to impeach trump as many people expect, the articles in pp impeachment will go to the senate. Tell us how that part of the process will work and also what is your sense in terms of majority leader macconnell and how he will lead the process and the senate . I think when we think about the stage of the process where we moved from the house to the senate its important to delineate the things we know and the things we dont know. We know that the Current Senate rules for conducting an impeachment trial are phrased in pretty mandatory terms in terms of the senate needing to have one. Theres lots of the senates impeachment rules are littered with the word shall. Like there are times for things to happen but we also know that the senate can waive or alter those rules. To change them formerly would require two thirds votes but they have the ability to change specific parts of them are set specific parts of them aside with fewer votes than that. We also know that just as the constitution doesnt specifically prescribe a lot of whats happened in the house around impeachment inquiry when the house voted last week to approve certain procedures for the impeachment inquiry they wouldnt required to do so under the constitution or the institution of the house. The constitution similarly does not require certain aspects of an impeachment trial much beyond the chief justice must preside senators have to take an oath at the start and two thirds is required to convict. We know that under the Current Senate impeachment rules the chief Justice John Roberts will be presiding and will rule on questions of evidence and motions those will be subject to appeals from the full senate like most things that happen in the senate. There are some things we know, what we dont know is a lot of the details of how exactly this will play out. And to bills point about the real rise in present polarization even since the late 90s. There are some important parts of what happened during the clinton impeachment trial that were made by the senate on a unanimous basis. Basically in january of 1999 when the senate was trying to decide how they were going to proceed with the trial senators locked and dashiell sat all hundred senators down and said we are going to figure out a way to do this in a way that is respectful of the senate and the senates traditions. They came to a unanimous agreement on some of the very specific procedural questions. The idea of that happening in the Current Senate is pretty hard for me to fathom. Theres a lot of the details that really i think will remain to be filled in. On this question of majority leader macconnell specifically, i think also to a point that bill made earlier about the republican senators who have yet to hear from. Both senators who are in close reelection races in 2020 and some Senate Republicans are retiring, i think to me where they stand to be most influential absent some big seachange that would lead folks to vote for conviction is behindthescenes before the impeachment trial would start negotiations with leader macconnell about what is important to them to a process to look like. What does the trial need to look like in the senate for them to feel like the senate is fulfilling its responsibilities as part of this process . I think there are a number of different ways that can play out and i dont know how exactly will. But to the extent i think we are going to see some of these kinds of republicans that bill mentioned earlier play a big role in what happened its going to be in the process of working with macconnell and then macconnell working with minority leader schumer to figure out what will the very detail oriented parts of this look like. You mentioned the crucial role of the courts in the nixon impeachment. We of course remember the famous lawsuit involving the release of the white house tapes and they ruled that the tapes should be released and that produced the smoking gun tapes. Right now there are current lawsuits involving the principle of executive privilege. We know that there have been a number of Administration Officials who refused to testify before the house. Unrelated to the impeachment. But we just had a new York Appellate Court that ruled that trump must release eight years of tax returns. The question i have is, on the trump impeachment, how do you see the role of the court unfolding . Either on the impeachment front or is it not going to take place within the next one or two months and therefore not be relevant or what is your expectation in terms of the role of the courts going into next years election . Thats a great question. The one difference is that trump has already admitted to having the phone call he thinks is perfect. Ben is absolutely right, this will be fought on the appropriateness of that phone call and whether people think its appropriate or not. With nixon it was a long flaw getting to nixon and the courts were critical. I dont see the Supreme Court having as big an impact on this impeachment trial as it did on the nixon trial. However, theres another court involved and thats the Southern District of new york as gerald mentioned they just today, we had rulings they should release abtrump has released his tax returns. The reason i think thats important is it goes back to the question bill answered. What if anything would break loose the public . And of course one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Trump Campaign and presidency has been his actual financial status. Nobody in new york where i lived for many years can nobody in new york city can figure out where this guys money come from. Not really. Honestly. Nobody can. If the finances in fact reveal something surprising, that could be the sort of thing that would move some of this Public Opinion. It would also, if you go back and think about a crime, crimes always need motives. There needs to be a motive for wrongdoing. If you look at trumps history with russia and of course the ukraine thing is only a part of a bigger history with russia. On the one hand you could say yes, president s have the right to change American Foreign policy and bring it in a different direction. On the other hand, this has been such a strange way of going about changing american policy that we have all been wondering for some years now whether or not there is something going on between trump and russia. One of the things that could break that loose is the tax returns finally coming to life. Molly mentioned the role of chief Justice Robert in presiding over the senate trial. Ben, i know you are a longtime observer of the court, what do you think roberts will be like as a presiding officer of this trial . Thats a really interesting question. Nobody seeks to be on the Supreme Court or seeks to be the chief justice so that he can preside at the Senate Impeachment trial of the president. If youre john roberts and you are really trying in a polarized environment to keep the court somewhat insulated from the political fray, having to go into the senate and sit there while people throw food at each other is a kind of a mortification of the flesh that im sure hes not looking for. Im also confident that in his dignified institutionalist kind of hat wearing way he would walk to do impeccably. Remember this is the guy who when he flubbed a word in Barack Obamas inauguration he went to the white house the next day to do the oath of office a second time. To make sure they had gotten literally every word of it correct. So its actually a bit of a challenge i think. How do you preside at a senate trial that is going to be as ugly and as bitter as this one in an environment that is quite toxic involving a highly toxic personality. And not grossly stain the institution that you represent. Heres the other thing. Bill ron abfound a locked into a quite novel solution to the problem which was that the debtor majority leader and minority leader i believe it was cspan. Org and tom daschle is that right . Quite to everyones surprise went into the back room and came up with a very detailed list of procedures and answers to all questions that they each presented to their caucuses and the result was the entire trial proceeded on the basis of unanimous consent. All the questions were kind of resolved that way. I think you can pretty safely say, the result was that rehnquist presided but really didnt do anything. Which was i think fine with him, he kind of sat there laconically in his robes and looked dignified. That was the end of it. I think we can pretty safely predict that that is not going to happen here. And that the two sides are not going to agree on a great deal and that means john roberts at least in the first instance is going to have to issue a letter rulings. I think that actually makes the problem worse that he will be initially deciding the answers to a bunch of questions, subject, i believe, i think the rule is the presiding officer rules and then can be overruled by a vote of the senate. You could really imagine a situation in which roberts upsets everybody and there are serial roberts rulings and then serial rulings to vote to overrule these judgments. I think its going to be a difficult situation for the chief justice. Judging also with respect to the toxicity you can really imagine the president tweeting bio at him for every ruling that goes against him. I dont think thats sort of a attractive moment if you imagine those tweets. Thats not an attractive moment for comedy between the branches or for that sort of relationship between the executive branch of the courts institutionally. I think its an interesting question and we will learn a great deal about john roberts and his very famous Political Savvy by how he navigates the situation. On that point, remembering the kavanaugh hearings i believe trump was actually calling it in advice to the nominee as during various breaks and wondering if trump would do the same thing with chief justice. One would hope the chief justice wouldnt take the office. [laughter] bill, looking to the future, how do you think this impeachment effort will affect the 2020 election. How does impeachment compare to other issues such as the state of the economy, cultural issues, immigration, trade war and International Affairs . Another call for a prediction. Thanks boss. No particular order, on the one hand when you listen to the reports from the field about what the Democratic Candidates for hearing as they go around the early states, they are all saying that they are not getting a lot of questions about impeachment. They are getting a lot of questions about healthcare and a bunch on guns and other things that democratic primary voters are passionate about but they sounded surprised that they havent gotten more questions or more demands on impeachment. Hot is it possible that even among democrats this issue has a somewhat lower priority and will have less of influence on the outcome of the election then many people inside the beltway suppose . We are focused on this issue to an extent that is not typical of the American People as a whole. We should keep an essential fact in mind and that is if the president is impeached by the house but not removed by the senate, he will be the first president in American History to be running for reelection with that sequence of events in the backdrop. Richard nixon was in his second term. Bill clinton was in his second term. Andrew johnson wasnt going anywhere. Couldnt get nominated. Exactly. There has been a lively analytical debate with surprising people taking surprising sides on the question of whether the impeachment but nonconviction of bill clinton turned out to be a decisive disadvantage for al gore in the year 2000 because gore was in effect running for bill clintons third term although he refused to admit that fact and we can continue our 20 year debate about this. Some people argue that but for the clinton affair, gore would have been holick did fairly easily. Others, including a lot of Political Science modelers say that the division in the popular vote was almost exactly what would have been predicted in the absence of that. The one reasonably contemporary example from which we might draw some lessons yields no clear lessons. It is also the case that assuming even a relatively slow timetable, the senate trial will be over by early to mid february. I cant see it stretching out a lot longer than that. Certainly by the end of february. Which means there will be between eight and nine months between the end of trial and the actual vote. There are times for not only passions to cool, they wont cool, but they will simply be displaced onto other objects and areas of contention. Thats another reason to believe that it may not turn out to be decisive. I go back to the point with which i began. Donald trump is what the late tom wolfe wouldve called a man in full. And who he is, for better and for worse is so much a matter of public inspection and Public Knowledge that i wonder how much even this cataclysmic event is going to add to that. It is possible that a house impeachment on party lines, a Senate Acquittal on party lines will change a lot of peoples mind but my hunch is that it wont. Molly, how do you think impeachment will affect the Senate Elections . We know that mcconnell has a very narrow majority at this point and is several people have mentioned there are a number of vulnerable publicans that are up. A few very noble democrats as well. Do you think it will be decisive one way or another . Its a good question. I tended to agree with bills analysis of the effects on the president ial race. I will also remind folks that increasingly the outcomes of senate and house elections in president ial years are correlated with what happens in the state in the president ial race. In 2016, for example, it was the First Time Since we started popularly electing senators at the beginning of the 20th century that there were no seats with the Senate Election where the Electoral College vote went to the president ial candidate of one party and the senate seat was won by a candidate of the other party. They said that peoples voting behavior is correlated in that split tickets anymore. I think a lot of bills and analysis of whats happening at the president ial level will filter down to the senate. Thats not to say that there arent some senate races i think this could matter. Its worth remembering that the senators who are up for reelection in some of these close republican states half the no taking different approaches to navigating the political challenges that are presented. Bill mentioned, that bill tillis before who in general has continued to attach to the right in north carolina. Then you have folks like Susan Collins in maine who has actually staked out somewhat more moderate voting record in the senate this session in part to bolster her credentials in the independent. It will be difficult for some of these senators to exactly navigate these particular waters but at the end of the day a lot of whats going to happen for them and their races going to be about what happened to the president ial race. That were the case, then cory gardner and Susan Collins would both be toast because donald trump is going to mac when any of those states. I think and particularly in the case of collins thats why we have seen her not so much on the impeachment question specifically but other things meant to differentiate herself. And then colorado has been trending blue more or less since gardner was elected six years ago. The democrats top taking control of the senate. Its not impossible but its tricky because they also have to do things like defend the dell jones seat in alabama. Elaine, youve written on threats to the integrity of the 2020 election in terms of hacking into Voter Registration databases. Using social media to suicide all the discord. Spreading disinformation to facebook and twitter. What are the greatest threats that you worry about as we head into 2020 . Darrell has written about these too and darrell and i have an ebook coming up from brookings soon on this topic. I look at this through two different ways. On the question of the count itself and protecting the actual voting day information from hacking etc. Theres been quite a lot of movement in the state. More than half the states now have paper ballots and they have some protocols for whats called risk limiting audits which can be done right after the election. They have been working hard. Congress appropriated 380 million last time around too late for the 2018 elections but a lot of states have that money and after a lot of groaning and delays they actually appropriated more money for this cycle. On the one hand i think that there has been a huge amount of progress since 2016 on the count itself. What i think is more problematic is the more generic issue of disinformation and what i would call digital voter suppression. He here i think the russians, chinese, iranian, everybody in this mix have gotten more and more sophisticated. I think that the platforms like facebook have not been able to catch up with this and have not really filled anybody with confidence that they can control this or weed out the bad actors. I would applaud twitter for getting out of the political ad business altogether, which they did but i think they are in the disinformation we really are just constantly playing catchup. Years ago when i was in the government we worked on drug interdiction etc. Of course what you learn about all these things is that the minute you find out a loophole someplace, the minute you find out where drugs are getting in, guess what, they just go to another place. Its a constant thing. This is what we are facing when it comes to disinformation. The one hope i have is that the voters themselves would get increasingly sophisticated and skeptical. About the stuff they are seeing online. I dont know that there is any way we can judge that at this point but it is frankly, given how quickly campaigns move, its probably our only hope because i dont have much hope that the disinformation part of election interference can be countered by the fbi but with normal legal means. It moves too quickly. It comes and disappears into thin air. Im hoping that the voters will be appropriately skeptical. One last question for ben and then we will open the floor to any questions or comments from the audience. Tomorrow the roger stone trial begins. You have noted another context that some of the reductions that we saw in the Mueller Report was based on evidence that apparently prosecutors wanted to present in the stone trial. Are there any surprises that you think would change the current political dynamic coming out of that trial . The way youve asked the question the answer is no. The surprises are unlikely to change the current dynamic. That said, i do think there are things we are going to learn in the presentation of evidence in this trial. There are reductions in the Mueller Report that appear to relate to the roger stone trial that involve the president very personally receiving information about wikileaks. Theres a particular scene in which he is in a car driving to the airport and he is told about a pending wikileaks release. Most of the sentences around this are redacted i think because of the roger stone case so i think we are going to learn some interesting stuff about knocked the hacking of the emails but the interactions between Trauma Campaign folks and wikileaks folks about the distribution of those emails directly or indirectly. Will it make a difference to anybody . Surely not. The people who are concerned about this as bill describes, this discount has already been paid, people know exactly what they think of donald trump. An information handling and wikileaks and the emails and the 2016 election. I dont think shortly roger stone standing up and saying yes i did it i colluded, in fact, including that i dont think its going to change the way a lot of people think about it. Lets open the floor to questions right up front theres a gentleman with questions. Theres a microphone coming over. If you can give us your name and organization. My name is peter goc. I like somebody to address the issue of how the courts can be used to play this thing out beyond the point where it makes much difference. Youve had two decisions of threejudge panels at the Circuit Court the losing side look probably appeal to the full circuit and the losing side at that level would probably appeal to the Supreme Court. The nixon tapes case took about 90 days to go from start to finish and wondering what the scenario would be in this particular instance. Thank you. I got bad news for you. Which is litigation is flawed. It is not a process that is designed to mediate realtime political disputes between the legislature and the executive branch. It will not play that role efficiently. Thats the bad news. Heres the good news. It might have useful role to play anyway. The reason its two fold the first is that this process is dragging on so not addressing it efficiently doesnt necessarily mean not addressing it at all. The second is that its really important to establish some law in this area so that its not possible in the future to be quite as defiant as the Current Administration is being of congressional subpoenas. One of the problems traditionally the way some of you are old enough to remember when the presidency was a little bit more normal in the way the president s and congress resolve these issues was not to litigation it was through kind of the combination of threats of litigation and threats of withholding legislative consent to a judicial nominee or executive nominee or withholding and appropriations request. Some leverage within the normal four corners of the separation of powers. The result was that immense numbers of these disputes got resolved every president ial term without actually a lot of formal lobbying created. You have a traditional legislative branch were looking at these questions at a traditional executive branch we have looking at these questions that are doctrinally very related to one another and resolved by the push and pull of politics. It doesnt work anymore because now you have one side that says we will not negotiate over at all. Will simply defile the subpoenas. That forces you to go to court and one thing about going to court is that it does actually make law. If you find out that don mcgann cannot simply refuse to show up, which is by the way i will do a prediction, the courts are not going to say its fine for don mcgann to just refuse to show up. But the day that there is an authoritative judicial finding on that, its much harder for the next person to do that. Its important for that reason and then finally, there is this one other thing that can speed things up significantly. Which is that unlike Appellate Court to which you have an appeal as of right, you litigate that the District Court level and then you have a right to appeal to the dc circuit of the Second Circuit but the Supreme Court you dont have a right to appeal. They have discretionary review overall these cases. Everybody is assuming that the Supreme Court is going to hear all these cases and im very confident that will not happen. They might hear one of them but the larger posture of the Supreme Court is very likely to be to let the Appellate Court to be the final word on some of this. Which one will rise to the level of the senate court . Thats a level of prediction that abchickens [laughter] for example. Let me give you an example of one that i think is probably the other direction. Im not sure if i were a justice that i would be particularly interested in hearing one of these malls are cases over the president s tax returns. I would wait for a situation in which there is some sort of meaningful division in the lower courts where there is a real live question that requires you get involved. The bad news is its going to be slow, the good news is, its going to accelerate. I would agree with bens diagnosis of the difficulty on the part of congress abusing the courts as a means to advancing congressional oversight goals in the short term. We knew that before this episode. What i would add is that i think one of the major consequences of the shift in the focus to what happened with the ukrainians is that it opened up a different and new set of witnesses from whom congress has been able to get information because they do not have advantage before. The same incentives as don mcgann does to align himself with the president. On one level, again, i agree with ben on a macro about why these fights matter quite a bit. In terms of advancing the narrative of where weve ended up some of these court fights are less important than if we didnt have this new set of facts that you could come out over the past eight weeks. Over here theres a gentleman with a question. I have a comment and a question. The comment is for the two of you at least. Al gore lost the election because he ran away from eight years of peace and prosperity. Thats my view. The question is, assuming im donald trump and im looking at all this and i know that nothing thats happened before now is affected by base, popularity, my rating and my Approval Rating as president. And i say to myself, six months of this enables me to attack the democrats because im going to be acquitted in the senate. Six months of this enables me to attack the democrats for wasting congresss time and the peoples time on impeachment when they could be working on helping me build the wall, doing all the things that a lot of americans who dont like trump care about. Can you comment on that . I will be happy to comment on that. You just stated my worst fear the fear that has led me on numerous occasions to write publicly about why i thought that from a political standpoint moving to a full formal impeachment process would be a mistake for democrats. I have not changed my view of that matter. What the net political effect is going to be, i cant tell you. But i am afraid that democrats who think that this will be a deep political process for them are fooling themselves. The information that has come out in the past week about attitudes of the swing states is only fortified me in that judgment. On the isle. I have a question about ukraine in this process. Mr. Trump almost every day says that it was a perfect call with zelinski repeated many times there was no pressure on him. What is the possible good reaction for ukraine aband about question about what could possibly go wrong . Can ukraine become again with or without its will and influencer in u. S. Domestic politics. Is a great question. What could go wrong. Many things. [laughter] lots of things can go wrong. I suspect lots of us have a view on this question. Let me just offer a few thoughts at random. What we have learned in the past couple weeks suggest that there is an important piece of what we call the back story and that is President Trumps deep antipathy ukraine that was born of the struggles in 2016 aided and abetted by some of his aides such as his former Campaign Manager paul manafort. Trying to shift the blame from russia to ukraine for efforts to undermine mr. Trumps campaign. As a result of this ukraines new president has found himself in an almost impossible situation. Thats the bad news. The good news, and we saw this at work in a very practical and effective way in september is that the congress of the United States both democrats and republicans is much more sympathetic to ukraine and much less sympathetic to russia than the president is. They made it clear to the white house that having authorized the military assistance for ukraine having appropriated the funds that the white house had better release those funds to ukraine. It just took a few days of bipartisan outrage and pressure to get almost 400 billion release. I think in the battle for Public Opinion ukraine enjoys a very significant advantage over russia, most americans are aware of the fact that russias sea used crimea that russian back forces have initiated and continued an assault against the unity and territorial integrity in the don bass. Theres not a lot of sympathy for the russian side of the story. I think of mr. Zelinski is smart he will make sure that there is a steady stream of senior officials talking with Senior Republicans and senior democrats. Perhaps not worrying so much about the white house, frankly, i dont think its anything that president zelinski can do to overcome President Trumps antipathy to his country. I say that with deep regret. Also near the back. Two procedural questions. Might the presiding justice have the authority to rule that the vote is confidential and secondly, is the required number to convict two thirds of the senate or two thirds of those present . On the second question i believe its two thirds of those present. Two thirds of the senate itself. There are relatively few Senate Procedures that apply to senators chosen and sworn as a poster child, etc. Does present and voting. On the question of could the chief justice rule that the vote would be secret as been articulated earlier and i mentioned as well, the chief justice questions have to be put before the chief justice. He doesnt get to decide what the questions that he rules on and emotions are. The question of whether the vote could be abunder the existing rules many of the deliberations will be secret, thats the kind of default position but the question of whether the vote itself could be secret runs into one of the few Senate Procedural questions thats prescribed in the constitution itself, which allows a fifth of the senate to force a recorded vote. I dont really see a possibility of the vote ending up secret putting aside things that folks ethic like mitt romney said if the vote was secret it would be a different story. I just have one small thing to add which is that in the clinton impeachment senator Arlen Specter voted he didnt vote yay or nay, he voted not proved. And then rehnquist had to rule that that meant not guilty. So you can imagine some senators were voting abstain, doing a variety of things and then chief Justice Roberts had to decide how to count that vote. At the end of the day i dont think the ultimate outcome of this whole episode is going to come down to it. This particular questions but. Its something to note that there are things out there. And of course there is the question which bill brought up some weeks ago in the wall street journal piece which is infinite impeachment if a vote to convict or acquit, if a vote to convict fails with there be a central boat. The centerboard and the senate is 50 one as opposed to an Impeachment Vote. The other question then is where they moved from and that wow to a central vote. The reason i think thats important to keep in mind is that weve talked to a lot of politics and Public Opinion but there is another issue here which is congress has to decide do they want to lay down some markers about how president s can behave . Do they want to give up this much and let this president behavior on this issue establish a precedent for future president s. That is a bigger issue, its not likely to be an issue that the public will give much guidance on. Yet i think its the kind of issue that could result in maybe a profile in courage here or there in the senate an unexpected vote. As i remarked a couple days ago, there is a reason why the profiles occurred in such a short book. [laughter] you can see bill and i have been back and forth a lot. [laughter]. [indiscernable] i would like to know how you see the role of Artificial Intelligence in securing the election 2020. The role of what . Artificial intelligence. Am not sure i see the relevance of that in terms of how the election is going to play out. Certainly in terms of sowing disinformation, ain box did play a role in disseminating false narratives and i would expect a continuation of that strategy going forward. Its hard to prove the election is caused by things like that. I personally dont think the 2016 election was decided on issues like that and i dont think the 2020 election will be decided on that basis either. Let me add my Worst Nightmare to the answer. Many of you have been probably following the development of whats called defects which is an application of Artificial Intelligence to especially to especially video recordings that comes increasingly easy to manufacture videos of public figures saying things they never said and becomes harder and harder to detect the fake. My nightmare about 2020 is that there will be a proliferation of such video interventions into our president ial campaign and as the old saying goes, the y can make it halfway around the world before the truth gets out a bed. Theres a microphone coming up behind you. My name is Valerie Michelle naito im a student in washington Diversity Communications Public Relations major along with the Honors College double major. Youre hired thank you very much. I have a question specifically for mr. Bill. He mentioned that the dynamics can change with the ratings changing in Television Journalism. We hear a lot about fake news right now and we have Television Journalism being judged on all sides. How can we apply Robinson Media and media video series to the reliability or credibility of the information to the public . Will the juice of the drama be what swings the public toward one way or the other way of the impeachment and that 44 percent . Thank you for that question. The microphone was a little fuzzy, im not sure that i heard the full question. Could you just in one or two sentences restate the heart of the question. I know you prepared a question but see if you can speak straight into the microphone so that i can hear it. Thank you. Im not as young as you are. [laughter] what im asking is, will the public, their opinion, that 45 percent, with the Television Journalism and the video media believes theory, will that swing that vote . Will that change . Will the juice of the drama, the pessimism thats already in society toward trusting television for trusting News Networks will that be something that swing the vote especially with President Trump saying everything about fake news . Obviously im not sure but here are a couple of sobering thoughts. First of all, there was a survey that i found the survey results i saw last week and if i were back in my office i could come up with the accurate citation for you. I found it deeply disturbing and americans were asked do you think that what President Trump has done is simply good usual who do most politicians behave this way . Six in 10 said that most politicians behave this way. This pervasive cynicism about political conduct i think is one of the things that is perversely shoring up the president s approval because a lot of people who think that he is guilty as charged think that its business as usual and therefore doesnt rise to the level of something that a president should be removed from office four. The second discouraging note is that people have divided up based on the news outlets they find trustworthy and credible. Bitmaps almost perfectly under partisan references and so disturbingly few americans over the next year are going to turn to new sources they can disagree with resources of Additional Information. That suggests to me that there is much more likely to be reinforced in their current views than they are to have those views changed. The only thing that could change that is something that occurs in a neutral medium like cspan which is trusted across the board and that would have to be simply watching public hearings and saying oh my god i didnt know it was this bad. Are you just sucking up to cspan because their broadcasting . [laughter] ive been on cspan four times in the past week. Sucking up to them is not something i feel necessary. [laughter] we like cspan. Heres a question theres a microphone coming down right here. And jonathan beatty. It was mentioned earlier the Party Divides are much deeper now than they were in the past. However, if we listen to some of the news recently especially with the crisis going on in syria between the kurds and the turks we have seen people from both sides of the political spectrum agree that President Trumps actions were deplorable. Do you think this could lead to possible cross party teamwork during the impeachment hearings . No. Partisanship is not perfect. Even perfect partisanship is not perfect. It is, however, remarkably pervasive and i think the striking thing about the syria withdrawal announcement is that it came in the midst of the ukraine matter. It offended the president s base including key members of both houses of congress and it affected their relationship with the ongoing ukraine scandal not at all. You actually picked an example that we have a kind of weirdly controlled test of. If this were a situation where they have to defend him over here but then he pierces the bubble the air goes out of the balloon and it has crosspollination affect with willingness to consider an impeachment process seriously, surely whats happened over the last three weeks would have been the place where we saw that. And we didnt see it at all. I think we have time for one more question. If the senate vote not to impeach the president , what in your view will be the longterm impact and consequence on the Republican Party and its popularity and on the democratic party. That was a great closing question. I think that very shortly after that we will have an answer to that because we will have an election. I think a boat, which is likely at this point not to convict him then i think all the action will turn instantly to the 2020 elections and we will see. We will see if as bill fears there is damage to the democrats or things simply go on in the president , this is a president who is unique in many aspects but one particularly relevant, he has never passed 50 in approval. There is a lopsided aspect to this because of course california is skews the whole country because its gotten so big and so favorable to democrats and trump is not even, he so hostile to california he doesnt want to give them money for the wildfires out there. This is an odd situation. The fact of the matter is we will see in 2020 if theres a democratic elected i do believe as is molly said another said the democrats will take the house. And then i think theres going to be a real selfexamination in the Republican Party. The demographics are not good. They have their highest levels of support and trump passes highest levels of approval among people 65 and older and theyve consistently not done well in the younger portion of the population with the people in the middle splitting 5050. If in fact this plays out and trump loses in the democrats take the senate and keep the house, then i think there is a real turning point in the Republican Party. But bear this in mind, american Political Parties dont tend to die. They just tend to kind of they just morph into Something Else. I think there will be a Republican Party around, it will just probably look different if this happens. This sounds like you are the chair this sounds like a good exit question for all of us. Let me just offer some concluding reflections. I think whats at stake is the future of the Republican Party but more than the future of the Republican Party here is something for all of us to think about. The American Republic is now in its 230th year. In the first hundred 84 years of our existence we had one incident of impeachment. In the last 46 years weve had three. Is this telling of something . My fear is that it is. Weve had an unusual number of president s elected during this period with less than a majority of the popular vote. We had two president s who taken office with less than a plurality of the popular vote and when you pile that on top of the extraordinary increase in polarization that occurred during this period, i think it would be over the top to talk about a legitimation crisis. But i do think that this is pointing to deep systemic problems that all americans, republicans, democrats, independents and the leaders thereof are going to have to think about very seriously in the years ahead. Im not sure how long we can go on this way without risking serious damage to the entire constitutional order, not just one political party. On that note i want to thank bill and elaine, molly and ben for sharing your views and thank you for your great questions. [applause] [inaudible background conversations]. At then acting director of the National Counterterrorism center are preventing tourist attacks. The house will be in order. For 40 years, cspan has provided america unfiltered coverage of congress. The white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy event from washington, d. C. And around the country. See you can make up your own mind. Crated by cable in 1979. Cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan your unfiltered view of government. Follow the house impeachment inquiry and the ministration response on cspan with unfiltered coverage live on tv or the radio up or online. Watch primetime air on cspan or stream any time on demand at cspan. Org impeachment. Earlier this week the Supreme Court all arguments in kansas versus grover a Police Traffic stop in the fourth a moment productions against surges. The Supreme Court has told you next year to issue a decision in