Transcripts For CSPAN2 Impeachment Discussion With Law Professors 20240713

Extensive fieldwork on the creation of privacy and post soviet ukraine is the basis for her current work on property and al arche. Teaching and other jurisdictional, property theory, diplomacy, property law and the law of four. Working with ukraine on ukrainian issues for 25 years started before she became a legal scholar. During her time which included a two or of duty at the u. S. Embassy. He is the executive editor of above the law. A frequent commentator. We are looking forward to a very exciting panel with divergent views and takes on the impeachment process. Our first panelist will be from the professor. Constitutionally sufficient charges. Greetings to everyone in washington. I am frank. Circumstances are such that unfortunately i could not be with you in washington today. The organizers of this panel were kind enough to submit this short film in lieu of a personal appearance. Here are some thoughts on impeachment. Sometime in the next few weeks the effort to impeach and remove donald trump as president of the United States will fail. An absence of constitutionally sufficient charges. Abuse of power has been the most elemental of Impeachable Offenses since parliament invented impeachment. Complete refusal to cooperate with in impeachment and great must be impeachable if congress is not to be rendered. Lawlessness and personal ambition. Nor will the failure to remove donald trump be warranted evidence. The evidence is overwhelming with or without the additional testimony and documents that are being sought by democrats in the senate. The most charitable view of anyone that tells you otherwise is they have not bothered to examine facts or they are in a desperate state of denial. More likely explanation is they are lying. Either because they lied on tv or their current or some hope for future job depends on it. There is one intellectually honest course that this president may pursue. Production of all relevant evidence. Having examined it carefully argue that trumps conduct regarding ukraine was deeply wrong and never to be repeated insufficient standing alone to merit conviction and removal. The truth is, trump is is a pathological narcissist. Fragile and vicious. He cannot tolerate criticism in any form. First, mr. Trump has made a connection with the grievances for about 30 populations. Second, trump and the right wing media are so intertwined that any target is savaged by the information outlets most frequented. Those folks make up much of the republican base. Republican legislatures are now so terrified of trump and his loyalist that they will not insist on the constitutional prerogative of their own body to discover all the facts about his behavior. They will not use the only honest argument against impeachment because that would require admitting the leader made a mistake. A president who has been immunized against investigation and criticism is no longer a president , but a king. What we are witnessing here is the generation of the struggle at the rise of the impeachment in britain. The rule of the one against the emerging idea of the east supremacy of law. Impeachment was invented in 1376 to get the English Parliament a weapon to weapon to counter the will to absolute power. It played a central role in the 1600s. The theory was the source of all law was the royal will. Lawyers and judges in parliament insisted to the contrary that the sources of law are reason and nature. The positive and act minutes of the legislature. When james the first and later his son charles insisted to strike on absolute, parliament impeached the ministers over that policy. Impeachment proves insufficient to dismay charles of his divine right to personal rule, civil war followed. Cromwell commonwealth arose. Americas founder wanted no kings. They crafted a constitutional government. They expected it to be weak and naturally subordinate for the legislature. They were wise enough to recognize that a corrupt president may arise and endanger Constitutional Order. They created an array of constitutional power on two kinds. The institutional controls of our tri part government and two mechanisms for removal. The framers impeachment is kind of a curious construction. Limited the punishments narrowly to mere removal and potential future disqualification. That should have made conviction easy. Also opposing the two thirds majority in the senate. Making conviction darn near impossible. In the past, impeachment has worked both through check as it did for Andrew Johnson and two forced advocation which it did for president nixon. Nonetheless, impeachment has a fatal weakness. Designed designed to protect the Constitutional Order against an executive. It turns out, impeachment can only work so long the Constitutional Order remains strong. If the principles and institutions check the president by other means are degraded, impeachment will fail. English parliamentarians acted at great personal risk to impeach ministers who sought kingship. Those lawmakers denied that any Single Person whether elevated by birth or circumstance should hold unquestionable authority in any state. They believe that lawmaking power must be shared among governmental institutions. By contrast, one half, the current American Congress is in the grip of a faction that has no theory of government other than a will of power. I dont insist that democrats would inevitably stand on constitutional principle to oppose him. All i can say is republicans today have shrunk from that challenge. Constitutional paralysis is augmented by the capture of federal law enforcement. Now headed by a man who is precisely the president ial authority is paramount. To gather, he and trump vetted by media institutions are constantly assaulting the independence and the pursuit of troop truth. Perhaps the most distressing feature to me of both congress and lawenforcement is the aggressive indifference of fact and truth itself. The rule of law requires not only rational transparent processes for making wall, but a commitment commitment to unearthing all relative facts and to applying loss to them once found. The distinguishing feature of the current impeachment controversy is not that the senate nominated by the president s party will acquit him. In some ways, that is not even terribly surprising. Unlike any of the three previous residential impeachment, the president s party will actively avoid or just openly lie about undeniable facts. Beginning to care about facts only when their exposure disadvantages the political opposition. If the truth becomes whatever the Supreme Leader desires it to be, law it self is dead and american constitutionalism is at risk of dying with it. The impeachment of donald trump will fail. At least its success is measured by conviction and removal of office. The implications are pretty dire but not inevitable. After all, the preferred remedy for misconduct was elected world the defeat weird if you believe as i do that trump represent a genuine threat to republican government, a genuine threat to a discipline in which we are all involved, the pursuit of law an, then you should look past the dying throws at the impeachment drama over the next few weeks and focus like a laser on november 2020. The the task of convincing the american electorate of which american constitution stands. Thanks. Thank you all for being here today. My name is monica. Can you all hear me . Not very well. Okay. Okay. My name is monica. I am a professor of law at st. Louis university. Formerly a member of the Diplomatic Service of the United States. My task today will be to give a little bit of back ground about how some of these events and persons may be interpreted or look in the ukrainian context from a ukrainian point of view. I cannot pretend to give a ukrainian point of view exactly. I have worked for 25 years. I havent talked to and interviewed hundreds of people including parliamentarians and judges and prosecutors. I will try my best. I would like to start, i am going to cover two things today. One will be be a historical background. One will be a bit of persona. Some of the figures that have appeared on our side of the impeachment drama and the reputational weight that some of these people carry in ukraine. If you were ukrainian, what would a name mean to you . Now giuliani. Covering Historical Context and figures that our current. Ukraine became an independent state after the dissolution of the soviet union in 1991. Two facts or features of that that i wanted to emphasize to you. One is that the russian imperial project, imperial russia or the soviet context, for those that are interested in the context conceptually ukraine was the keystone state. An empire or a jurisdiction beyond russia that had its capital in moscow did not make much sense. When ukraine withdrew from the soviet project, that had specific implications for russians within russia. The second thing that i wanted to emphasize to you about was independence for ukraine. Coming without a war. It was not a shot fired. It was one of the places that was actually the most peaceful during the process of the dissolution of the soviet union. For ukrainians, there was not a renunciation of the past the way there might be in romania or not a process of kicking people out of public life. Forbidding them from Holding Public office because of past associations. A much different orientation from the past in a much different rejection of socialism than in some other parts of central and eastern europe. A Firm Commitment to political independence. Also including some of the populations. Two parts of independence. For Russia Ukraine and ukraine a commitment to independence without renouncing its path has led to certain things that carry into the present. The take of ukraine, the commitment in part i would argue comes from the experience of chernobyl. Northern ukraine and the explosion in 1986. I exposed to ukrainians betrayal of trust. By the soviet governments. Leading to a kind of national consciousness. The next to point out is 1996. The passing of the postsoviet constitution. The constitution switched from the soviet system is argument over whether in the soviet system there were two branches are one branch. There certainly were not three branches. In the ukrainian constitution of 1996, parliamentarians drafted the constitution and decided they would have three branches. The feature about in some respects would be familiar to us. Familiar names of the branches. The system within the constitution i would argue, it could not be characterized as checks and balances, as much as balances very robustly with fewer checks. Second feature of the ukrainian constitution was the legalization of private property rights. The constitutional commitment to private Property Ownership depended on subsequent implementing legislation. There was one wave of privatization of socialist government owned property that was industrial privatization. Secondly agricultural privatization. Much to the surprise of people like myself, people who had served in the United States government, advocating to ukraine private Property Ownership, instead of achieving the market democracy that president clintons National Security advisor can promise, if you privatize property you will get robust markets for the democracy. Market democracy. What we saw in ukraine was results. Some places very democratic, but impoverished. In some places, more prosperity, but less the mocker see. Listing the introduction of private property rates. A mixed system of some commitments to a market economy. Commitment to reforms. The possibility of oligarchy. Connection with creation of private property. Not something we have seen in the apparatus. Hunting ukrainian today. Our president says ukraine is completely corrupt. And allegoric or powers that contend with citizen democracy for a voice in the public sphere and accountability and transparency. Finally, the last part of the historical background i want to bring to your attention, starting in 2004 that i call i call the period of three revolutions. The first one being the orange revolution in 2004 that started with manipulation of the president ial election. And what you will see is, in this slide, the president ial candidate. This is before the introduction of smart phones. Before social media was as much of a venue for electoral manipulation. Everything from oldstyle to directors at the university convening student bodies to say they would have their scholarships canceled if they did not vote for the favored candidate. Up to and including the poisoning of the candidate before and after his poisoning. We see above him the photograph on the left for the president trying to anoint a successor in the middle of president putin of russia who is an ally. They are jointly chosen successor. Yana cove which will revisit our story. Election manipulated and there is a citizen uprising as account is going on against the obvious manipulation of the election. That uprising was referred to as the orange revolution. Political resolution of this crisis of street protest was twofold. He wins a presidency that was, in some ways, did doomed to failure. Accordingly, his popularity ratings crashed after he takes the presidency and upon the next president ial election in 2010 his opponent is elected in a free and fair election. The villain of 2004 becomes the president in 2010. Interpol man for it. [laughter] after the 2004 orange revolution and the electoral defeat before the 2010 election paul manofwar was hired for millions of dollars, as we all now no, as a political consultant or as they would call him a political technologist serving dirt yana kovic paid his administration became famous in ukrainian terms for the level of corruption engaged in and as an example i will draw to your attention a minister of Natural Resources and im sorry, majeski was someone that we now know as the head of maries mom and maries mom he cofounded after 2010 after yana cobit got elected to the presidency hes head of maries mama and head of Natural Resources for ukraine which includes the ability to give oil and gas permits and his companys oil and gas company did very well under the yana cobit regime. This administration increasingly alarmed the ukrainians public and political opposition because of the levels of corruption that were being engaged in in the administration and starting on sarcoma november 22 for 15 years ukraine had pursued a agenda a policy of european integration that transcended the administration. There were a pro european integration policy and yanachovic spend the first three years of his presidency negotiating a roadmap, a set of steps by which ukraine would become eligible for membership in the e you. That agreement was due to be signed at the end of november in 2013 and roughly seven days before yanachovic was to go to lithuania to sign the agreement he made a short trip to moscow and came back to ukraine and announced a uturn on european immigration policy. He announced it was no longer ukraines decision that he would find the european integration roadmap agreement and this uturn led to a series of tweets that led to few students coming out to protest which was met by a Police Crackdown which was then met by this several hundred thousand people that came out to protest that might have been ambivalent about european integration but were committed against Police Brutality. So, this became known as the name where the protest happen and ukraine said it started out as a movement for European Values and became known as a revolution of dignity. Movement to concrete motivations and to oppose policy reversal about european immigration and second to oppose Police Brutality and third to oppose the corruption of the yanachovic regime. What we see and not revolution of dignity was an increasingly escalated sponsored by the authorities until the movement started at the end of november in 2013 and by february of 2014 live fire is being used against the demonstrators and we see triage units being set up in that ukrainian science of st. Michaels cathedral and the protesters are being killed and 100 plus protesters were killed the president s party has enough people who have left or announced they will not stand for this and they will not stand with him and imagined members of parliament or members of legislator saying the president has gone too far. [laughter] they will not stand with him anymore. After he had enough sections he signed in operation agreement with happily opposition to deescalate the crisis and then probably the president yanachovic fled for russia in the middle of the night. We have an abdication or whatever you call it when an elected president leaves the country which was immediately followed by an external crisis. Annexation of crimea and you see there were the famous little green men one of the invaders from crimea and a town by Town Takeover of southeast ukraine of which the origins of the war in southeastern ukraine have yet to be fully studied and what we have since the revolution of dignity in 2014 we have a continuing external crisis and the human cost of the war in southeastern ukraine for which the ukrainians were seeking u. S. Support either in the actual support or the symbolic support is a war that continues to this day 13000 plus People Killed at least 1. 4 million internally displaced and economic effects but meanwhile the relationship with the eu took a turn for the better and this is the post yanachovic government and they now have have the agreements signed in what remains to be seen while the next casualty of this war be ukraines relationship with the United States. Lastly i like to bring to your attention a few figures from the ukrainian so that gives you some sense of how the situation looks to ukraine or to ukrainians that have now had five and a half years of external crisis after the revolution against the president that was putins favorite candidate. A few dramatic and we can go into this more in questionandanswer about [inaudible] whos the chief of Security Services under president accused in the murder of journalist who was beheaded after criticizing the president and his beheaded body was found in the woods. [inaudible] who is linked on audio tapes to ordering the hits against that journalist is the father of the guy of the member of parliament that Rudy Giuliani met with on december five of this year and another if you are a ukrainian nuc Rudy Giuliani has met with you know who his father is and you know that murders that his father has been accused of. With yanachovic we have paul manofwar and we also have the maries mama cofounder after the yanachovic and we have and to prosecutors general the top one dismissed after the anticorruption protesters from the revolution of Dignity Movement thought that [inaudible] had not been doing enough to fight corruption. We have who is a businessman whose business very well under the administration because of his relationships with and hes currently someone to whom money has been given to, the two clients who do work for giulia giuliani, i dont understand the attorneyclient relationships when the clients work for the attorney but in any case we can pay and some of that money has come from. Those are a few of the people from a ukrainian point of view have popped up in the u. S. News much to their surprise and finally have the new president zielinski elected last april who finds himself in a Surprising Group of political forces. One last thought i wanted to leave you with that in july of 2014 when the crimea had just been annexed and the war in the southeast had just started and you may remember the malaysian airliner that was fine from the netherlands and was shot down by russian heavy artillery and fell to the earth and all passengers and crew perished. Ukrainians response to that was to europe that we have literally been dying to become part of europe. Youve been ignoring us. Maybe now you will Pay Attention because he see its not that far away. Its not that disconnected. I would submit to you that the trump impeachment problems may be the United States version of the m817. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you all for being here. I want to thank my co okun iser, monica, and my fellow panelists and thank my thinker especially for encouraging me at the kind of lastminute to help organize this hot topic. It is so hot that even i the hour the news seems to change grade i was just doing the verboten thing of checking my phone to see my twitter feed to see if there was anything happening today and i will be updating as we go. Normally folks i ask you to turn off your phone but i will ask would you turn on your phone but silenced the ringer and honestly, if something happens, breaking news wise, at any time, raise your hand and interrupt or if you have more self restraint than i do wait till the q a time. If we had an hour or three this would be my roadmap for these marks. I hope to lead up to the path to where we are and how this process began for impeachment and where we are now and analyze the position Speaker Pelosi faces right now and what the next steps might be in the senate and wildcards and then finally to actually focus on my area of expertise which is whitecollar crime. I think i will mostly focus on that last area in light of what appeasement expert franca said earlier and for those of you who maybe did not hear this i get to the river spoiler alert, he said impeachable removal will fail. His advice was if you are concerned, go out and vote. There was another mechanism though, assuming that impeachment will lives forever but trump is not removed through a conviction in the senate we also have the whole body of white collar criminal enforcement to consider. Of course we can expect that the current attorney general will still stick with the office of Legal Counsel guidance that a sitting president cannot be indicted and we competing much assume that whoever that should the president not be reelected that he will be sure to get a pardon at least at the federal level from all crimes from thenpresident pence but there are plenty of other folks who fight in dykmans. I will not name specific people because i dont want to face a defamation lawsuit however, however i do want to walk through some of the obvious criminal offenses. In part i got the idea to focus on this area not just because of my interest because on this panel we might not have what als might like in terms of Viewpoint Diversity so i thought i might want to take the side or the perspective of one of the president s most mount attorneys so that would be, you might no, americas mayor Rudy Giuliani in just two days ago at mara lago president s private club that he uses to attract unlawful emoluments from both the in violation of both the domestic clause and foreign clause on new years eve he was asked by a reporter would you testify in the trial meaning the Senate Impeachment trial and giuliani said i would show you the clip but it would eat up too much of my time to mature it but he said yes, i would give lectures and summations and then he said he would do what he would do best and he like to try the case. He said he would want to prosecute it and yet his client is the defendant here so thats a bit weird. Then he went on to say hed do it as a [inaudible] case we will talk about whether we could actually bring a rico case here against, spoiler alert, i dont think this could be a rico case against the enterprise including the president and i will tell you why but i have other crimes you should consider including bribery, criminal campaign of violence violation, objection justice, conspiracy and maybe even more. Okay. Lets skip over the impeachment. How we got to where we are and some of these facts will be important because the same facts that give rise to the Impeachable Offenses also give rise to various federal crimes. I should say i did not we do skip over the fact that there could be a state criminal offenses that could be brought against the president even perhaps the sitting president and im not sure that would survive or would survive in the courts but after hes no longer in office certainly there is no one other than a governor with specific state who could pardon him. I will focus on federal crimes. There really are five phases to her we got here. First is what i call the hot craft summer. Next there is this whistleblower phase then we have when the president was caught in confessing and next phase four is when the impeachment officially launched. Phase five is the hearings and in the House Intelligence Committee as well as judiciary and the vote and now we are in this unknown purgatory until we find out what happened. Its not our purgatory. It feels heavenly but for some its a little bit of purgatory until the trial happens in the senate. Starting with the summer i think the key moment when many of us probably realize that the election of 2020 was already going to be compromised was when donald trump on air told George Stephanopoulos that he would be happy to repeat what happened in 2016 which is to listen to, he did not say solicit, but to listen to a Foreign Government who wanted or foreign official who wanted dirt on one of his opponents. Someone said we have information on your opponent and i think i would want to hear that. Oh, as i will note in a moment i received an immediate rebuke the following day from eleanor chair of the the sec who made absolutely clear in a very terse memo that would violate the law. When we got to talking about whether the requisite mental state, whether he had theres no question that if he was told that was considered a problem under Campaign Finance laws and we can talk about that in a minute but that was june 12. In june 18 when the department of defense announced there was 250,000,060 funny that was going to ukraine in this importantly followed a statement that ukraine from the department of defense they cant have taken substantial action to make Institutional Reforms for the purpose of decreasing corruption. It was very clear that the funding was being released on the permit of defense was supposed to be confident that ukraine has improved and good except this money and there was 141 million swiss weekly from the state farm. When this is announced President Trump asked about it and its almost as if he had been not paying attention to what was going on and he asked about this and the next day is when he asked about it and will they need who was acting chief of staff his aid robert blair reaches out to at omb and said we need to hold it up. We then have mulvaney emailing player a week later still pushing sane did we ever find out about the money for ukraine whether we can hold it back . Then we find out because of security getting this is a combination from the New York Times article and getting these rejected emails blair responds expect congress to become unhinged and duffy who is from omb sends an email to mccusker at the department of defense and sets the process of the interagency battle between those who are trip appointees, duffy and the career professional and controller dod who she says we cant you have Legal Authority and is concerned about withholding the money. In the month of july is when when we have the interactions between and mulvaney who we heard about in the House Intelligence Committee testimony and the highlights here are in early july is a famous meeting or Eu Ambassador tells nick mullaney or mulvaney said at this white house meeting that it would happen if he agreed its the president of ukraine would agree to investigate bereavement witches code for invest getting the bidens. This is when fiona hill told her its a drug deal and he did not want any part of it. We then have taylor learning ambassador bill taylor who was the acting ambassador in ukraine learns about this hold for the first time and this is when it seems like these different threads come together. Rudy giuliani, trumps personal attorney meets with ambassador voelker and they make it clear that it was important if the zelinski wanted to say he would have to help in the investigation. Now we lead up to the most important dates. On july 24 is when we have six hours of testimony from robert mueller. During this testimony hes talking about the report and special counsel people out in march and said the russian government interfered in our election and in sweeping and systematic fashion but regarding the instruction of justice he said we decided we would not make a decision to whether the president committed a crime but yet the report to which he referred set out several instances where there was substantial evidence of obstruction of justice and at the hearing mueller said objection of justice strikes at the core of the governments effort to find the truth and to hold wrongdoers accountable. Fresh off this testimony the next morning donald trump has the now infamous phone call that was perfect with president zelinski. What is interesting and i know he made even if you follow this in detail what is interesting is so much pressure was on that call. Its not just the call. That morning we have voelker asking and aid in says heard from white house assuming president z and i like how they use codes. President z convinces trump he will investigate get to the bottom of what happened and in 2016 so that would be trying to get to the bottom of what happen because theres nothing to get to the bottom of meaning trying to pump up this false claim that the ukrainian billionaire and i cant believe im saying this off assuming he does this it will be fine. There is a pre call prep. Then the phone call happens and during this call donald trump after zelinski mentions how desperate they are to get this aid and they are excited to get these weapons trump says i need you to do us a favor though. Then he begins to speak about crowd strike which is code for that conspiracy of the surfer and the bidens and the 90 minutes after the call we have duffy who works over at omb, hes in charge of or looks over at omb and emails instructed to hold the aid and given the sensitive nature of the rest i appreciate you keeping that information closely held to those who need to know. I will fastforward and you know the next thing is the whistleblower filed his complaint and then somehow despite the fact that the ig passes it on to the acting dni in the acting dni does not follow the law and actually passes it along and fastforward because i dont have three hours and i want to talk about these criminal claims. Do you have possible rivalry under 201 and i say yes even in light of the most recent Supreme Court decision, mcdonald versus United States involving the governor of virginia where he was ultimately acquitted for bribery under the dash but it also construed 201. What bribery requires is that in this case you have a public official and that could include a president directly or indirectly demanding or seeking what we see that he saw directly was and it would be something of value and we talk about that in a moment in exchange for being influenced to perform an official act in here are the official act would be releasing this funding to ukraine. Now, there is why i say the official act wasnt setting up the meeting at the white house because remember what trump was demanding was that zelinski announced publicly on cnn there would be an investigation into charisma, the bidens and into the server but this is what they wanted. In order to get a meeting at the white house with trump as well as the funding released they needed to i will have to take a couple four minutes. Im stealing it from ellie. Is that okay . In order to get the meeting at the white house and get the funding released the whole thing together all depended upon announcing the fact they were doing this investigation. The reason why i dont mention the meeting at the white house is because the mcdonald decision made fear that setting up meetings and things of that nature would not constitute an official act. Im focused on getting the funding released as the official act in question there. What about Campaign Finance same issue comes up there on we go back here. Im bribery you need a thing of value. There might be some question as to whether announcing an investigation on television how could that be a thing of value i think we can monetize it pretty clearly that it was 391 lane dollars but its easy to see that i would just argue and furthermore when you come to honor the bribery statutes and intangibles have been considered things of value so its not dash when theres arguably campaignfinance violation but in this case its unlawful to take anything of value from a foreign national, including a person or country here again i believe its a thing of value that the announcement of the investigation and this is intended to help the campaign. We have the lindas desolate skis opinion arguably i think based on trump was told by the sec he shouldnt be doing Something Like this and once hes in the 25000dollar range hes in a felony and and add conspiracy to commit any of these underlined crimes and they were not successful even though the bribery the mere solicitation but i will jump forward and obstruction of justice and i shouldnt say avidly but we dont a time for that and im way over my time but i last want to say about ricoh is the reason why you cannot bring a ricoh case there could be a ricoh enterprise which is pretty easy to define and a person or association whether incorporated or not but the problem with ricoh is you need this enterprise engaged in the practice of racketeering and when i think about what went on here fit into the definition of what a racketeering activity is and in this statute and the problem is i dont see a pattern in light of a subpoena court cae that you need to show up a relationship between which i thank you can hear but there is no continuity. I dont think there would be after trump was out of office a further threat of this. Furthermore, the department of justice in the 26 teen manual says rico should only be used in cases where it meets a specific specialpurpose and i dont think that would apply here. Im sorry to say even if Rudy Giuliani would like to be a rico case against donald trump in connection with criminal enterprise i think that will fail and you can quote me. Thank you so much. Climax. [applause] all right. What do republicans do with this information . Besides sticking their hands and fingers in their ear and say we got neil gores itch us alone. What they do and this is what i want to talk about but they do is something i feel that as lawyers and as professors certainly anybody who is even been through two years of law school taking a two Trial Advocacy clinic we have a response ability to expose what the rebellions are doing their doing what you do when you have a dog of a client. They are using all of the tricks check number one of a dog of a client and witnesses against that dog of a client so what do do . You tarnish the credibility of the witnesses. We see this all the time from the republicans but they go after maria get up on it as if she some pms crazy bad person who had a bad day and that is why she had to get out of the ukraine. Thats a lie. Thats not fair. We have to tell people that is not fair and we tell people thats a trick. They go after alexander, decorated veteran acting like he has some ax to grind and thats a line in a trick and we can tell people exactly what they are doing. The witness credibility game is again one of the most basic things you learn in any clinic when you have a client who has been witness doing bad things. That is trick number one. Check number two, motion practice but everyone in his room and im sure if you are anything like me has spent some time in the last six months watching a television hearing republicans talk about hearsay and putting your fist through the television screen. Its not applicable here at all and we get its a fancy sounding lawyer word and it makes nonlawyers be like hearsay, i heard about that on law and order once paid hearsay is not applicable and we all know why. Its not a real trial. There is that. Hearsay is a rule that deals with witnesses are made unavailable which is interesting because only way reasons arent available in the situation is because donald trump is objecting justice. I dont think it applies there and secondly they are like 15000 exceptions to the hearsay rules but i have to learn many about them to pass the damn bar. Any number of exceptions would apply here, not the least of which is criminal conspirators are not subjected to the hearsay rule but we have a response bodhi to every time a republican makes this bad argument to challenge them in our professional capacity but they do not know what they are talking about. The third trick and anybody who is at least ten years old in 1994 is familiar with this one and it all comes down to this check. You have all this criminality in all these bad facts and you try to reduce it to one simple thing that if it doesnt go the prosecutions way its allegedly all the defendant needs to get off. Anybody who is ten years old in 1994 moses because we all saw it. If the glove dont fit, you must acquit. That was the Johnny Cochrans strategy. They had oj, no pun intended, dead to rights. They had him on the dna evidence. They had him on motive. They had him evidence out the was ooh but Johnny Cochran was able to convince a jury of largely dumb people that there was one critical piece of evidence that if it was not produced meant that oj was framed. This was the glove. How the prosecutors let oj try on the glove is still beyond me but more power to them. They made it all about the glove. In this case they have republicans trying to make it about quid pro quo. As if you cannot commit a crime unless you say they are committing a crime during the commission of the crime. I did not muggy. I just took all your money. I never said im muggy and you. That is the republic and argument. It is sad and faulty and illogical and it is wrong and it is dangerous and we know better than most people. Youve got to remember the Legal Community is so small. There max form the thousand of us on im kind people who have some. Im counting paralegals, im counting people who took the prelaw but ended up going into different fields. 400 of thousand of us in the entire country. We have a response ability to tell the general public what is going on in this effort to reduce this entire case to whether or not trump admitted to doing the crime while doing the crime is faulty and we can explain to people why. That is kind of criminal aspect i want to talk about. I can forgive is not the right word because im not a forgiving man but i can understand the Republican House judiciary lawyer because like i said he has a dog of a client one of the most important things that lawyers do is defend guilty people to the best of their ability. That is an honorable profession and i can at least understand the position that he is in. But if you are a constitutional law professor and if you were going to make your career going on television being a constitutional law professor and if you will expect yourself to be a respected constitutional law professor and if you happen to work at George Washington university while you do it and without say names, then i do not forgive. The arguments made by the constitutional law tv lawyers for donald trump are pathetic, hypocritical and again, dangerous. Their main argument, without naming names, is that yeah, some of this is bad but does it rise to the level of an Impeachable Offense . I dont think so but this is nothing like 1998 when we impeach the president over an extramarital affair. The hypocrisy there offends me. There is nothing about what is happening to donald trump that even in the same ballpark of the i dont want to use his word of the effort to impeach bill clinton for something. Clinton to his enduring discredit gave them something to get him on. To compare when you look at these same people and how they came out in favor of bill clintons impeachment on constitutional grounds because of perjury whereas they will not come out for donald trump impeachment on constitutional grounds it is just disgusting to me. Donald trump did he commit perjury . No, he wont testify. Is there any doubt that its him under oath for five minutes he would not make it through the first three without lying about something . Thats not a perjury trap. Obviously donald trump has committed crimes, high crimes and misdemeanors beyond which are beyond what we have seen from any other president in our history and the argument that somehow they do not rise to the level of impeachment is dealt with simply by saying if not him then who . If you do not impeach a president for this and let me be clear if you do not remove a president for this most likely wont then what is the point of that in the constitution at all . You will never get a clear case of obstruction and you will never get a clear case of abuse of power and the reason why bribery is one of two things they put into the constitution as an Impeachable Offense is because they were terrified of it. When we got free i dont want to go too much into the weeds here but if not like we one thoroughly sewer because we whupped glenns asis. Thats what happened. England felt like all right colonists you won this round. We will economically dominate you. We dont need to physically dominate you. The founders knew it. They put bribery into the constitution one thing they were worried about was that our president s being bought by foreign powers. Thats exactly what we are seeing today and the thought that this crime that goes to the structure of our democracy is not as important as the affair. Again, its not something that i think is forgivable in terms of intellectual honor. Again, as lawyers and as professors as professionals we have a job to knock down this argument wherever we see it and from whoever we see it and even if there our friend and our colleagues and people that we have had a drink with and we, you know, generally like and i had people who have been to my childrens birthday parties but i now spend most my time warning people that they are being bad right now. Its not easy and fun but it is necessary given the moment we are in. The last thing i want to say and this is just for the liberals in the room. You will even see what i did just there. I made a bit of an original argument for impeachment. In general i caution liberals, do not take that debate. Original is him is a problematic doctrine on so many levels and it cannot help you here. I know why we do it. I know why i just did it. They talk and they when you finally have look, right here, hamilton, what is up . It feels like that will shut them down but original is him is not intellectually honest but its just about how do we make publicans win today. Using an originalist argument gives credence to the entire philosophy. Yet, it does not change any mind because they are not in it for changing they are not in it for the philosophy but in it for the winning. When you use this argument and give it intellectual credence in hopes that you will change a mind who are just doing their work for them and carrying their waterfront appeared this reason you have to go to a regionalism to justify impeachment we have current law about bribery and its right there and we have that law and statute as we understand it in modern times and thats enough. Thats more than enough. We have things about abuse of power that have been developed and are based on precedent that we have brought with us into modern times and we have standards about objection of justice and all of that is enough and i dont need to know what Alexander Hamilton said or what James Madison said but i care about what lynn man miranda cares and what hamilton said. Intellectual consistency even as we zealously advocate on these times. Thats what i got. [applause] thank you to all our panelists. Before i give the panelists an opportunity to respond because its presentations i wanted to make an announcement about there is a signup sheet in the back for the cle attendance. Lets give our panelists another round of applause and then i will [applause] evh hurt each others presentations and franks presentation so do you have any comments or questions you would like to ask of each other . Is there any way to win . Do you think there is any way this guy actually gets removed for the crimes he has committed in plain sight . [inaudible conversations] i have a comment for ellie. Its a comment and a question. Im happy i did not quote hamilton federal 65 because i have to say i disagree on this idea, dont yell at me. You cant make originalist arguments if you are a progressive. I think that constitutional and statutory interpretation i think it helps to be able to say not only is, not only to these actions happened to give rise to several federal crimes now and that should and i like that argument should be enough to say that these are high crimes and misdemeanors and abuse of Office Especially if the president knows that they cant be held to account in a criminal court that that should be enough but i also think that its also nice that just so happens that the number one fear that the founders had related to foreign corruption of the president both in terms of the emoluments clause which should have been included in the articles, and also due to not just quid pro quo, bribery but also other kinds of abuses of office that would make them beholden to a foreign power and make us wonder whether they were doing things to benefit themselves because of the foreign power was pain then. Im not someone who thanks that it can entirely reject that but im also not a constitutional law scholar at all and im more of i think an instrumentalist and i believe you use whatever tools you have two legal tools you have to deal with someone whos incredibly corrupt. I, that from two different ways. Did you ever see lord of the rings . I told you i like lord of the flies. [laughter] the weapon of the enemy cannot be used for good. I believe original is him is one of the worst things that is happening and it is, i believe, it is a fortune cookie. Its a ouija board the rebel begins pullout to advance the republican agenda and only the republican agenda and they pretend its a real thing does greater damage. On level a i think original is him is one of those things that is so dangerous that divina any oxygen causes more harm than good. We could also say a law degree in english language and money are people empower and play to their benefits maybe we should mind. The second way i could add it is i totally agree with you that as arguments go for this particular use its a particularly strong one. These are one of the few places where we do have original understanding of why the constitution was written that way and it was written in this particular clause of the constitution without artifice to stop precisely people like donald trump. On the one hand i totally agree its a good argument and so why wouldnt you use it . The way i comment that after though is why are you using it . Like i said you are not actually convincing anybody with that argument. There is nobody who is against impeachment who can be turned to impeachment because of federal 65 . In fact, there is no there is no one against impeachment that could be turned towards impeachment because impeachment is no longer a legal or even political issue but its a social issue like donald trump is your king. He is on your white supremacist team and either you will go with that or you will not. I dont know that originalist argument, while it is a good one, is actually effective in changing anybodys mind who hasnt already made their mind up about it. Can you hear me . Do i need to turn this on . Just to respond to your question or i think i heard two questions. One is doing when and the other is does he get removed . I will separate those out and reframe who we are. Again, if i can speak from the ukrainian experience and that is not only because of the current impeachment problems which i will explain my point of view in a second but in ukraine there have been a couple of ways of Holding Leaders Accountable and one yanachovic, the president who fled the country in the middle of the night, still resides in russia was convicted of treason or has been an accomplice to treason in absentia. Because he issued an invitation for russian officials to have interference that was the piece of evidence that led to his conviction. There are ways of Holding People accountable. Another way ukrainians have held those in Authority Accountable has been through citizen activism. If i can say regardless of who we are, if we can take the current moment as a point of having been energized regardless of which side of the political spectrum one is on im a believer and often democracy to think that an energized public and a public whose attendant has become focused and whose energies are mobilized may be a win for all of us in the long run and let me again try to expand who i mean by us. What if donald trump is not an aberration. What if donald trump is not an anomaly and what if there are structural features that are changing economically and politically that are changing how democracy might work in an age of buyer for katie wealth and giant wealth gaps. What if this is the beginning then we dont win if we got him removed. We went if we figure out how to have an active citizenry that is vigilant and cares. That is what i envy in ukraine. That is something we can learn from them. Thank you so very much. From my panelists thank you for those insightful comments and discussion. We have about 25 minutes or meeting so i will take questions from the audience and there are mics set up in or i guess just one mic in the center aisle did speak loudly and line up in the center for your questions. I certainly want to thank the panelists. And from Georgia State and a question for monica who very helpfully has tried to sort of give us some insight of how people in the ukraine would look at whats going on. What i wonder is either can you imagine discussions going on in ukraine that are linking president putin to giulianis activities or are there, in fact, actual discussions going on in ukraine that giulianis activities are a Russian Campaign paid for by russia . The question was about are there discussions in ukraine that would link giulianis activities to moscow or to putin and what we know to the extent we can follow the money so far giuliani has received payments from a couple of sources that had been reported in the press and one is whos photograph i showed or he has paid who then have given money to giuliani. Hes also been hired by the mayor of the city in ukraine called and if you dont know the name of that city i would ask you to bookmark that. He was hired to be a cybersecurity expert by the city of over a year before the telephone call tween President Trump and president the linsky. He secured another relationship with an oligarchy relationship and the mayor is called so we have two oligarchy figures that seem to be theres an intermediary that has remitted payments to giuliani to the extent that the president has reported not it and there are oligarchs in either of those figures that are remitting payments to giuliani have any discoverable publicly known source of that kind of money but standing right behind him are oligarchic billionaires who do. Both of those networks also have close ties to russia. Not every oligarchy in ukraine has close ties to russia. Giuliani could have clients who had ties to someone else and to the extent that we know so far to the extent i know of there is not a direct link but there is one link removed. In the ukrainian setting for one person or one phase can stand for an idea or structure if you were to see the people that giuliani received money from the inference would be its two links removed from people who have crossborder business interests at least. Thats the best i can do without saying something i dont know. Steve with the university of memphis. Excellent comments all around but ive been enthralled the whole time and is a great panel. I wanted to ask the panelists to develop a point that she did not have time to get to witches Nancy Pelosis dilemma the timing of sending it over. Presumably the idea here shes got some small bit of leverage and playing with the timing of kicking off the impeachment trial and she can try to parlay that into getting concessions on witnesses and trial procedures and things like that. My question is anything you want to say about that id be interested in hearing but my specific question is how much leverage does he really have . Could not Mitch Mcconnell just decide im not waiting anymore and im convening a trial and im saying hes been impeached and i dont care if there are house managers named or not but im Going Forward and im taking back control and taking away your leverage and what are we thinking about those arguments . Thank you for your question. Fortunately, five minutes before this panel Mitch Mcconnell said hes not going to independently begin in appeasement trial and said we will go about her business were not in a hurry good but that wouldve been one of the questions and without getting into much of the weeds of the different paths she might have an incredible strategists the biggest challenge seems to be something that allie is evolving which is the illogical nonsense arguments that are being made against her for waiting of it. First of all, the house isnt even back in session yet but should she wait for a bit and there are good reasons that i can talk about in a moment for her to do it we are hearing from folks that well, this is disingenuous and people are saying it trump is so dangerous why wouldnt you why wouldnt wresting the articles over to the senate and get him out of office faster well, therefore shes a hypocrite but thats the dumbest argument ive ever heard. If you have some insane rush it over so were going to automatically have an mcconnell said we will just dismiss this and it will be over that would not get him out of office but she is day by date we are having breaking news and new arguments which i can talk about so does suggest if you the fastest way to get him out of office is not to immediately send but its not to have the conviction and have him acquitted and then wait till november and the election but it would be to wait a little bit more because there may be more evidence there will be more pressure on the publicans to have a real hearing maybe they will vote to remove him so several developments are just today about one hour or two ago the court ruled that the information he has in his colonel trial can now be cell phone evidence can now be handed over to congress. That is huge. This morning there were two hearings in federal court and its hard to keep track but one was another dumb mechanic should be required to testify and a part of that hearing and i did not get to some things but i did not get to watch all these things at once but my understanding is one of the big deals about mccanns hearing is representing the judge asked someone to speak on behalf of essentially force bigger pelosi and answer the question that is it possible that another article would be filed and in a roundabout way this person said yes. Its not even a game for leverage and quite legitimately there could be information coming forward that could open up further hearings in the house and also encourage you needed just about five republicans to vote on rules in the senate that would allow witnesses so there is no reason for her to monday morning send those over, i think. Again, its a disingenuous argument to say shes been a phony by not rushing because thats how fast and every time you hear that i dont even know anymore. Im a little more polite and maybe im not reserved but im more of a coward than ellie so when people say stuff like that i cringe and say have you thought that through or if its on twitter i block them and thats it. Could i ask quickly because i agree with jen in terms of strategy and agree with terms of what pelosi is doing and i will just publicly say i was highly critical of pelosi during the Mueller Investigation and i have learned to shut my mouth when it comes to Speaker Pelosi. She apparently understands what she is doing and she is very smart and i am very down. She is very powerful and i am very small. Okay. That said. Im not criticizing but i dont love the argument legally because it is basically the same argument that mcconnell used to block merrick garland. He goes to the fact that we are so far beyond the rule of law in this country that i dont think people have seen it. We are now in a state where its not a question of whether or not the constitution says you can do something or not. That is in the past. We are simply in a state where does the constitution specifically prevent you from doing something. A. And b, is there anyone with a gun that will come in and stop you because right now bill barr has basically control of the guns. Domestically speaking, bill barr is the enforcement guy. Lets go im all for it in a kind of a mafioso way. Ill bring a gun to other gunfight. Legally were in a terrible time, and this is an indication of just how terrible things are, where very simple legal issues are now the subject of parlimentary gamesmanship. Another question. Ly, larry from Oklahoma City university. I was in an office at on 10th and pennsylvania the night of the saturday night massacre. I wasnt involved in it; so, with that in mind, on election eve in 2016, i predicted donald trump would not serve out his term and Im Still Holding to that prediction pause of what general because of what jennifer just say said. If we say we what we should say to people who make invalid arguments will it make any defense. Monica says we need civil uprising. Want to know where the people are who organized the womens march the day after the inauguration, people in the street made a difference in the 60s and 7s and can make a difference now. But who is taking the lead and, just for curiosity, i wonder if anyone with an opposing view regarding the merits the impeachment process with President Trump was invited to be on the panel, and declined. I do think it makes a difference. I think that i do think it makes a difference. Im a big believe never social ostracism if people had spoken up against Brett Kavanaugh when show showed up, like what in the knew about al length kozinski, might not ben on the Supreme Court. If people had showed up and told the throughout another bill barr and irancontra and his willing ins to crede secondtive power he night be an attorney general. We are far too nice no our perceived colleagues and far too reliant or expectant of them to follow kind of basic industry standards when at least the Republican Party part of it has shown for a while now, that they are willing to throw all of those norms and all of that genteelness out of the window if they have a chance to win. So, i do think it would make a difference and its the even if it wouldnt make a difference its one of he the only tools left in the shed and one of the only tools left in the shed have what tried yet. We have not tried living in the world where piece people are socially as extra size ostracized and not invited to the party. They ostracize us. I didnt get my invitation to Federalist Society this year. Did it get to in my spam foaler . I folder. We have not tried it on the other side and might still do something. Just to respond to your question, i want to make a distinction between citizen activism and citizen uprising, and i think that for me, seeing it when ukrainians have taken to the streets and several intermediate revolutions that fridayleed and the last one in 2013 were surprised when it didnt. It didnt not because more people came out for the original cause to in fav of european integration but after the police cracked down, that poured excel ran on the protesters and they went from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand and somebody who teaches law in saint louis, very close to ferguson, im envious of a citizenry who does not tolerate Police Brutality. That led to a regime fall in ukraine and we have citizens killed and i dont see a regime fall even in my city government. So, theres moments ukrainians have taken to the streets and i would say and every context is different. Might be moments when taking to the streets is in a demonstration is effective tool in the out context but looking at the ukrainian experience, there are other tools people have used, such as students left the protests to go to a park next door because they failed to say what if we win . We might john co rich, what done country do we want to live in and started writing legislation, law students in a park, and took it to the parliament and got these things in place. One over to prosecutors that showed up in our impeachment story was forced out of office because he wasnt aggressively prosecuting yanukovych era corruption enough, and who was leading the charge and trying to getmer corruption prosecutions . The student protesters and other protesters who are no longer in the streets. They were in think tanks and writing letters and pressing their parliamentary representatives and theyre pressing the executive branch and were being active citizens. So i want to make a distinction between activism and uprising, and really concentrate on the activism part and having an active village lent vigilant country that cared about the country regardless of party or how it feels but trump or these action or his conduct now but just bird dogging and making sure this is a country they want to live in and that they try to act accordingly. So thats how i want to respond. Where the people from the womens march . At least one of them. Is running for president. Im from the university of pennsylvania. One suggestion id like to give as an answer to the question about how this can change is going back to history, seems seems to me that what changed in watergate was Public Opinion if right now we dont have Public Opinion changing and i dont know if panelists think there are ways to try to inflows that but id like to raise a general question. Im at the Warden School and have my responsibility for the current problem but im a lawyer. Where are the lawyers . Many other countries monica maybe you comment didnt when somebody like this happened and the rule of law is in peril which most people in the room probably agree with. The lawyers get active and do something. If i look through the book, theres like more Federalist Society announcements than there are panels like this one, and then one question would be how come everyone at this conference you would get a lot of signatures dont sign a letter saying the senate should have an actual trial that is a trial that lawyers understand to be what a trial is. It would help if the law professors the country, only 400,000 lawyers but we have a responsibility as a state to say something. Were in washington, dc in and these nice pictures of the Supreme Court. The rule of law is at stake. How pout we have a march somewhere. That would be really radical to say, hey, the law professor, myth make the washington post, a bunch of law professors instead of sitting around talking about mope being it the fuel our and moaning and crying in beers and actually said something do and try to influence Public Opinion so we buying too something but the problem. Can i just i want to say one thing quickly. I think generally lawyers have shown up pretty good during this administration, especially when it comes to people who need legal services. So, when the kids in cages, lawyers are the ones who have again in there. When the muslim ban came down, lawyers at jfk. So i think there i write for im happy to be critical but the profession. It was nate silver, 57 of perps believe President Trump committed an Impeachable Offense. In term offed organizing marches, having organized a march, nationwide you cant just i dont think the optics would be good if 20 of us did a best march. Actually show that only 20 of 4 hon thousand lawyers care but i do love the idea of organizing a letter for the Legal Academy and i think maybe it makes sense to work with an organization because it may be acf, might be interested in doing that. [inaudible question] that letter was about not about the trial. That letter was about grounds for impeachment. Wasnt about having a fair process in the senate issue dont think. This will be real quick and its just a comment but i hope its a helpful one. I im roger citroen from law school. Had to audible and put impeachment into the syllabus, and the thing that i became obsessed with while teaching on article 2, was the accountability aspect. I thought it was remarkable that the administration with the transcript, they turn something over, and here we are, and so i think that theres so much we can take from what you have done today, an outstanding panel. The Public Service announcement is that on the Administrative Law list sing theres a casebook by professor shane, who cao authors. One thing they did sort of unfolding in the fall, they said well make the chapter in our separation of powers case book on impeachment available. All you have to do is click on the link. Its chapter 6. But it made it so easy to teach and it really maked it an easy civics lesson for all of us as we head there has to be a trial sometime presumably. I want to make sure its the shane and the coauthor, separation of power case book and its available for free. Thank you so much. I think one of the things that is shown is how weak some of our laws how weak some of our norms are. How much we are reliant on norms and not laws and i would hope that one of the thing that happens led by legal academic ya after which is is over, if we all survive this, is that there is an accounting of laws that need to either be changed or written for the first time. Like something as simple as, yeah, if running for president you have stow your tax. The kind of thing i remember when i first realized that there wasnt actually a law requiring that, blew my mine. Thought, well, of course, somebody bothered to write that down. Needs to be an buyer code that basically deals with all of the rules that trump had broken, and strengthening them and making them rules as opposed to mere norms. I saw one more question so well take this question and then give an opportunity to panelists to respond to that question and give final remarks. I want to follow up on one question earlier didnt hear an answer. Im curious, were there pro trump people invited and turned it down . Turn that over to monica. Thank you for the question. I paulize when i was answering before, i realized later he hadnt gotten to it. I was the one putting the hot topics panel call came out, but this was i went to say the middle of october maybe, and so i was thinking, its not often that somebody who one of my primary Research Interests is in the comparative law fields. Not often that its so intersections with domestic law topics in a way that is obvious to anyone but me, and so i jumped at the opportuniti. I knew that jennifers an expert in white collar time and on the impeachment process and i reached out to her, and we reached out to legal scholars who are specialists on impeachment. So i was really grateful to frank bowman for having contributed as a legal historian, and i want to take a moment to plug his book which just came out last year, on impeachment. So, we were looking for scholars and we also approached george conway, who is interested in participating but the timing didnt work out. So we were looking at within the Scholarly Community and also more broadly, and tee timing being so close to the holidays was difficult for more than one person. But i am extremely greatful for my panelis and our moderator who took the time to put thoughts together and make it to d. C. And im also this is my final comment. Very grateful to all of you for coming and for your interest and for your engagement and i find it extremely encouraging. Thank you. I want to end on a hopeful note. I guess starting out negative and then maybe a new hopeful. One of the arguments that the only the best argument that the president could make to defend his actions was that he really genuinely was interested in corruption, in ukraine. And theres so many reasons why that doesnt seem credible and id like to remind folks theres a video from cnbc from 2012 when wasnt even candidate trump about when the apprentice trump was complaining about a law that got in his way and should be abolish which was the foreign corrupt practices act. So this is not somebody who has someone who wanted to just like to open up the libel laws and the prescribery laws it. But on a positive note there have been hearings where bipartisan hearings and the senate, trying to crack down on Money Laundering and theres legislation, i think passed the house to try to get to stem the use of Anonymous Shell Companies in Money Laundering and this is happening nationwide. So theres hopefully the we can see trump is a symptom and not some larger problem and it seems like folks are interested in tackling that. One final comment. In october i thought i was going to be talking about how the media was messing up the impeachment story. So ill close on that. This goes back to my point about how in the Legal Profession we have a responsible to do this work. Like the level of understanding about these concepts, terms, whatever, is really low out there and i think sometimes with our professional knowledge bases, we forget how low it is out there. Like how poorly people understand the law. I think we forget how complicated it seems to people. We forget how ennationallorred peopleby simple jargon. They think that its a magic word when its when its were using it as shorthand. And so, again, everybody in their own capacity in this world, with social media,er is the own broadcaster. Every one of you touches so many nonlawyers or has the opportunity to touch so many nonlawyers who more than you know have no clue what is going on and so if you could just use your voice, to be advocates of the truth, of the legal truth, you dont even have to take a side, if you just spend some time telling your family what hearsay means youre making a difference. If you spend time explaining why we have bribery statutes and why thats important. Like you will be doing your part. You will be putting that education and professional experience to use that is desperately needed right now. Thanks to our panelists. Thank you everybody for your patients. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] the impeachment of President Trump. Continue to follow the process on cspan leading to a senate trial. Live unfiltered coverage on cspan, on demand, and his on the free cspan radio app. We have more from campaign 2020 today with President Trump, heat holding a Campaign Rally no evangelicals in miami. Watch at 5 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Then litter its 2020 democratical candidate, amy klobuchar. Saturday on American History tv, on cspan3, at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on the civil war, scholar Timothy Smith explores the 1863 battle of champion hill. Only one way out. In fact one of grant residents the three divisions is cut off and so peopler continue fumbles to pick black riff bridge and beaten there and the Confederate Army is devastated. At 8 p. M. On lectures in history, seth jacobs. Johnson became president exactly a year before the next president ial election, which meant he had to start running for Office Almost immediately. The area in which he knew he was weakest, the area in which a republican opponent would be able to score the most points against him was in foreign policy. Sunday on real america, the 1985 Allstar Party for ronald dutch regan. We honor the only man from our community who ended up living in public housing. By the way, dutch, you have a lot of friended here tonight the White House Press corps who will be served their favorite meal, leak soup. And beginning at 5 30, threepart program lacking at the House Judiciary Committee debate, house floor debate and the Senate Impeachment trial of president bill clinton. Explore in the nations pass on cspan3. Today the beginning of the second session of the 116th 116th congress, Mitch Mcconnell opened the session by talking but the killing of an iranian general in iraq by u. S. Forces. He went on to talk at length but the impeachment of President Trump