Page 34 - Second Question News Today

Back and not make a lot of rulings but just kind of defer to the agreement that the senate makes. but if as hillary suggested if you dont have an agreement between the majority and the minority then the first question becomes, does the chief justice want to play the role of like more of a judge, right? where people are making motions and hes ruling on them. or does he want to force the senate to make its own decisions? which case he can just refer stuff to them. second question, and this is the ...

Lee ann on the hill for us today. thank you so much. lets go to our panel. nile, the hill white house columnis columnist. thank you all four, and nile, so the messaging we heard on the sunday, if youre on the left, youre saying the right is not listening. if youre on the right, the left is not listening. is there any way that chairman nadler can move this more toward the middle of the aisle, the middle of the space and say no, we actually are trying to do something that is fair and going down th...

Impeachment trial perhaps into an investigation of joe biden and burisma and ukraine meddling in things that arent center here that dont even exist, and the democrats will lose control of the factual narratives. thats one reason to maybe pass articles of impeachment but not hand the story over to people who have denied basic elements of it. >> and one part of the elements that might be introduced if you hold the articles, as you wait for a potential trial, is that theres a question of what feder...

Expand the house record. >> senators. moderate decisions being made. ben, is this mitch mcconnells trial or is this the chief justices trial? >> that is a super interesting question. and i think what we learned in the clinton trial was two important things. one is that when the majority and the minority get together and make a decision about rules the chief justice becomes pretty irrelevant and thats what happened. and the second thing we learned was that chief justice william rehnquist wanted t...

Politically. what about this other report from durham? >> well, this certainly elevates the hype around the durham report. if the attorney general says that basically hes not convinced that horowitz was able to answer a fundamental question about the russia investigation, that leaves the durham investigation which is sort of i think people inside lot of questions about what the predicate is, and what this federal prosecutor is operating on. theres no timeline for the completion of that report. a...

The asking of witnesses both sides wanting different people, ben, how will that happen? >> well, the magic number is 51, because as an initial matter, if one side wants to call a witness, the chief justice if he wants to, but only if he wants to, can rule on things like the relevance of the witnesss testimony, but all judgments by the chief justice are subject to being overwritten, overridden by a vote of a majority of the senate. and so the key question and this is the key question about a lot ...

So look. you can dismiss the charges on a 51 vote majority. and so, i think the first really big question is do republicans have the votes to do that? or, are there republican senators who might vote to acquit at the end of the day? but are actually going to want to see a trial. if youre a republican senator, for example, corey gardner who has to face a difficult election in the fall, do you really want to go, you know, face a general election electorate having basically not been willing to hear...

Methodical and is going to take his time and get things done the right way. >> its not clear hell produce a report. hes conducting a review. there may be criminal charges and low lying issues, but theres no obligation for him at the end of the day to produce a report, certainly not one for the public. it may happen, but it may not. >> the question is will it appear to be neutral? thats the question, david. >> well, you know, well see. i mean, it looks like the ig report is going to be a big swin...

Is no possibility of finding what nile was saying may not exist, the middle ground. >> well, theres one more inflection point for pelosi. i do believe the judiciary committee will proceed and pass articles of impeachment, but whether or not they make it to the floor before the end of the year, that is certainly an open question. and its true. there isnt a middle on whether or not the president should be removed from office. the country is about split evenly on that question. however, approximate...

>> specifically the attorney general has said to some of his allies he doesnt believe michael horowitz, that he believes michael horowitz studied too narrow a set of questions to answer the question about whether there was a legal basis to open the russia investigation. the inspector general is expected to find there was a legal basis for this. any failure by bar to fully embrace the findings of the report could lead to criticism that hes acting more like the lawyer. this is the criticism doggin...