You should have copies of the constitution at each of your seats. So if theres anything that comes up during the course of the conversation where you need to refer to that legal document, feel free to do so. [laughter] think aboutp us these issues we have for distinguished experts. Senior fellows a at brookings, writes a column for the wall street journal and is the author of antipluralism, the populist threat to liberal democracy. Molly reynolds is a senior fellow at brookings and is the author of exceptions to the role, the politics of filibuster limitations in the u. S. Senate. Elaine kamarck is a senior author of a book about a Senior Process on nominating and the United States. Is a seniortes fellow at brookings and is a coauthor of a forthcoming book entitled on making the presidency, Donald Trumps war on the most powerful office. Host i want to start with bill. He has paid a lot of attention to the Public Opinion aspects of impeachment. There were three recent National Surveys that came out, nbc, abc and fox news. They all showed 49 of the American Public want trump impeached and removed from office. Then bill wrote a post a few days ago talking about how support for removal drops in some of the swing states. Bill, where are we now and what should people be watching for . Funny you should ask. [laughter] let me just take two or three minutes to summarize the state of Public Opinion on these questions. Is, to begin, majority support for the congressional inquiry into the president conduct. It is averaging in the low to mid 50s if you look at most of the surveys. Toyou said, when it comes actually in teaching and removing the president , the country is split almost down the. Interestingly, if you look at change in Public Opinion, on this question, most of it occurred in the first week to 10 days after the initial revelation on september 23. And as been quite stable since then. Additional information that the American People have received has not moved them one way or another very much. There are very sharp and intensifying partisan divisions on this question. I just took a look at the latest issue, of polls on this corrected for paul quality quality. For poll it showed 84 of democrats in favor of removing and impeaching the president. Only 11 of republicans endorsing that position. An independent stood at 45 . See thehically, you expected racial, ethnic and gender divisions. White americans, on balance, are opposed to impeaching and removing the president. Africanamericans are strongly in favor of it. Latino latina americans in favor , but much less strongly than afghan americans. And many more women than men in favor of removing him from office. You mentioned geography. Interestingvery New York Times poll that came out a week ago that took a look at six key swing states and found public sentiment in those , a majoritypposed of those voters were opposed to impeaching and removing the president. That is important because those tong states will be the key President Trumps either successful or failed bid for reelection in 2020. For in the you look weeks ahead . Number one, look for significant change in President Trumps job approval. There is a very common question that survey researchers ask, do you approve or disapprove of the job that president x is doing as president . Here, hot off the press from the and bc and wall street journal survey are the results. Of 2019, 45 of americans approved of the job that donald trump was doing as president. September, week before the matter broke wide open, 45 of americans approved of the job that donald trump was doing as president. , accordingast week to nbc in the wall street journal, yes 45 of americans approved the job the president was doing. There is a concept in investing known as the market discount, which is a measure of how much of the market has already taken into account in our bad news. And what this tells me is that this news has not really changed settled expectations among the American People very much. They already understood that he was fully capable of this conduct. And they have drawn the expected conclusion from that. For,d thing to look opinion among the republican rank and file. That has not changed very much either. It is up a few percentage points. But as i indicated from a very low base to a very low total of just 11 now, and many sermons have it in single digits. The third thing to look for, a republicane ranks of elected officials at the national level. Boatu probably saw on the touthorize vote authorize a formal impeachment inquiry, not a single republican member of the house of representatives voted in favor. Not one. Obviously, the crackle battleground will be the senate. Battlegroundl will be the senate. And here, we have not heard a people on this question from the five senators in the most tough, contested races. Not from gardiner in colorado or thom tillis in North Carolina or Susan Collins in maine or Martha Mcsally in arizona or joni ernst in iowa. Not a peep. What about the very prominent Senior Republicans who have elected to retire in 2020 . Not a people from pat roberts nor mike enzi, nor lamar alexander, and nothing as far as i know from Johnny Isakson either. It is possible that there will be a huge shift in response to the public hearings and other information, such that 20 republican senators, the number needed to remove a president from office, which is to vote in that direction. But as others of the current, as of right now, the signs of that are few and far between. Host ok, thank you. Molly, it looks like the how soon will move to public hearings. Today we saw the release of the first two transcripts. We are likely to see more tomorrow and the rest of the week. Tell us how these hearings will unfold in the house, what the rules will look like, and how they will lay groundwork for articles of impeachment. Molly ok. So, where we are in the house in the process is ending the stage of gathering of evidence by the house and moving into the stage that will focus on the presentation and consideration of that evidence. Have seen over the past several weeks a series of depositions conducted by the House Intelligence Committee working with the House Foreign Affairs and the House Oversight committees. That state has been the subject of much republican angst. There has been a lot of discussions about the fact that it has been behind closed doors i think it is worth remembering in particularly the clinton impeachment, the last comparison case we have, that kind of investigative work, the gathering of the evidence was largely done by ken starr and came to the house of representatives in hundreds of boxes. We are dealing with a different set of circumstances here. We are nearing the head we are nearing the end of that process. Two depositions were released this morning. There is a list of individuals these committees would still like to hear from. I think it is increasingly unlikely they will get compliance from those individuals. The individuals they have yet to hear from who they would like to generally fall into the category of folks whose incentives are more closely aligns with those of the president. We did have the series of witnesses whose committees wanted to hear from whose incentives were not necessarily closely aligned with the president. So were more willing to reach some kind of agreement to cooperate. Once this series of depositions to onelete, we will move or more hearings, open hearings, in the House Intelligence Committee. The resolution the house agreed to last week that set out some procedural parameters for where we go next, provided for these hearings. Do not know how many there will be. There will be one or more. A couple features of those that are worth noting, they will start with a longer than usual. Of questioning controlled by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the Ranking Member , up to 45 minutes per side. Thenis much longer certainly the usual five minutes on and even longer an extended periods already provided for in house rules. Both the chairman and Ranking Member can choose to yield back time to staff, so we may well see staff counsel conduct that initial. Of questioning. Period ofitial questioning. Once those are complete, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee will work with the chairs of the intelligence and oversight many to write a report on material. Athered and the other investigative materials that have been collected will be transferred to the Judiciary Committee which has jurisdiction over president ial impeachment. The Judiciary Committee will then have its own series of hearings. They will start with an initial presentation of evidence. The president s council will be able to ask questions during that as well as members of the committee themselves. There may be the presentation of additional evidence. There may be additional witnesses. These are all things that are provided for in the procedures of the house adopted last week. They willnow how shake out. The Judiciary Committee will also have this longer questioning. , where there will be an opportunity for more questions longer questioning period. We may also see the possibility that the Judiciary Committee preventll be able to the president s counsel from exercising some of the Due Process Rights afforded to him under these new procedures if quote unlawfully refuses to make witnesses available or produces documents. Again, we do not know exactly what that means our exact they what that would look like. But it is clear that the house is preparing for additional obstruction on the part of the executive branch. And that they are at least up someng to set procedures that would allow them to exert leverage. Again, it is hard to know exactly how that will shake out. I do think that we will continue to see a lot of process oriented, plates about how this process oriented complaints about how this is unfolding by republicans. We see this going back to the letter i white House Counsel sent the hell indicating the president would not be cooperating with the appeasement inquiry. There are certainly potential for a fair amount more conflict and angst. But we have now a better sense of what we might expect is likely to happen procedurally over the next several weeks. Elaine, you have written about the history of impeachment what do we need to know about the andrew johnson, Richard Nixon and bill clinton impeachments and how they might inform the current effort. Elaine lets start with andrew johnson, the first impeachment. The interesting thing about that was how momentous the issues were. In 1868. Because the union had just won the civil war. And yet there was the question, what do you do at the southern states. We had abolished slavery but we had not guaranteed the rights of full Citizenship Rights of africanamericans. So the issues when you go back and read much of this, which i have been doing lately, the issues are momentous. Andrew johnson all was a kind of accidental president , because he became president when lincoln was assassinated or he had been a democrat but he had been a prounion democrat. Which means that lincoln thought ok, and you can see this was part of lincolns reconstruction idea, lets put a bipartisan ticket. However the Republican Party never liked him very much. And it was what the Republican Party that impeached a republican president over these big issues. 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 than through the impeachment process. Convictionjohnson be by one vote in the senate. But the timing is interesting. The articles of impeachment were voted on in may of 1868. The Republican Convention convened in chicago in may of they unanimously unanimously nominated former general youth lessees s grant on the first ballot. So date unanimously nominated Ulysses Grant on the first ballot. Johnson got less than 10 votes on the democratic side. We see in themes in Public Opinion. We do not have to convict him because, guess what, the butters and his own party is going to. And his own party is going to. The voters and his own party is going to. Impeachment, there is clearly obstruction of justice. Impeachment weon forget there is clearly in the next impeachment there is clearly obstruction of justice. We forget that lots and lots of people went to jail. It took until 1974 for the smoking gun taped to finger the president himself. The nixon hung on and hung on and hung on until that tape and it was a matter of days. And nixon resigned. Once the tape came out, the Republican Party, goldwater leading the delegation walked into the oval office and said, we do not have the votes to prevent your impeachment, we do not have the votes to prevent your conviction in the senate. And he was gone. So i think 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 in that the Impeachment Vote was just absolutely bipartisan vote. In the senate, however, there were some republicans who cited the democrats. And of course, he was not convicted, he was acquitted. ,he interesting thing there there were two articles of impeachment, one on perjury, one on obstruction of justice. But the fact of the matter is, nobody considered this a constitutional issue. Rising to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. The substance of it, was the fact that Newt Gingrich who was speaker of the house when the articles were voted in resigned on1998, january 3, 1999, because he was having an affair with a woman 23 years younger than himself while he was still married. What . That sort of took the air out of the republican balloon, so to speak. Congressman Bob Livingston was the acting speaker. He was fully intending to run for speaker until, guess what . He was revealed to have been engaged in an extramarital affair. At three other members of the housework. Members ofe other the house were. And all of a sudden this issue went away. Bill clinton was acquitted and went on to have very high approval ratings. And he went on to pick up democratic seats in the 1998 democratic midterm elections. Each one of these things tells us a little but about what is coming. We can certainly cross marital ofidelity off the list impeachable offenses. That one we have got. Have all established precedents. Their presence in the house and precedents in the senate. And we know that the chief justice of the Supreme Court essentially turns the senate into a judicial body. When this trial begins. Ando have some precedent some interesting politics and legal precedents. So,ben, you have off third a trick article author. Nd article for the atlantic over the weekend President Trump tweeted 75 times about impeachment, so it seems to be on his mind to some extent. Right now the president seems fixated on uncovering the identity of the whistleblower. How should we evaluate what trump is doing now if we go to impeachment . Benjamin i want to answer this question with some of the poll data that bill started with. Understand cannot the strategy of the president s impeachment defense that reference to that poll data. I think that is the ultimate defense. Has driven four defenses and a sometimes indiscernible the launch of all four abouternible melange four. The first is denial. The second is character assassination. The third is process complaints. And the fourths prerogative. Go through this individually. Each has mostly failed. Which brings us to the fifth and real defense. The first one is denial of the facts. When the president started out by saying, no quid pro quo, the call was perfect, various iterations of factual claims, i suppose the call is perfect as a matter of opinion. But that there was no quid pro quo, the factual defensive have all proven to be untrue. They are certainly fading away against the impressive quantity of witnesses that of comport intensified. That have come forward and testified. The second was particularly directed at the whistleblower andalso at the human scum the individuals who have given testimony. This is a defense that has, in general, works pretty well for the president. Tothe past he has managed make a lot of people believe that the fundamental problem with the restaurant fundamental problems found in the russia investigation where a bunch of messages by fbi agents. He made james comey into a a billion villian in the eyes of many people. This is a substantial tool in his arsenal. It is interesting that it does not seem to be working in this context. Has, of course, not been outed. The whistleblower has not been outed. And the anonymity is an interesting feature here. And when fox news and some of the president s defenders one after Lieutenant Colonel ven men week, even liz cheney had to repudiate that and say this was not acceptable. There is a dynamic there that the sort of attack the attackers thing is maybe working less weed to well than it had been in the past. The third is process objections. They are spending a lot of time on this. Is, i think, a recently effect