Paul welcome. Great to see you. Thank you for having me. Paul lets take this legal question starts with the assertion of alleged crimes starts with bribery. What you think of chairmanships definition of bribery . I suppose he is right if you accept the gerald ford famous definition of an Impeachable Offense that is whatever the majority of the members of the house of representatives decide what it is. You know, thats a political judgment and ignores history in the constitution. Lets start with the constitutional language which is where we should start. A president or any public official cannot be impeached unless a determination is made by the impeaching authority which would be the house that treason, bribery of other high crimes or misdemeanor has been committed but the only one. Paul the only one defined as treason so bribery they are now using bribery all the time. But that can be untethered from what the founders understood bribery to beat which was at least common law bribery and the founders were not unmindful of the fact that they were writing a constitution which had a congress which had the authority to pass laws including a federal bribery statute. Paul we have a current bribery statute. Does what the president did on the evidence so far qualify as bribery under that statute . Whoever, being a public official, corruptly demands or seeks personally anything of value in return for being influenced in the performance of an official acrid thats the bribery statute. Paul why does this not qualify . Ship says it does. In the context of what they allege is an illegal Foreign Campaign contribution, that being the benefit drive to donald trump personally of the announcement in a press conference of investigations in ukraine regarding the 2016 election charisma in the bidens. The department of justice has already opined through the Criminal Division and the office of Public Integrity that something as nebulous as an investigation is not of sufficient concrete value to constitute something of value under the federal Campaign Laws and the argument similarly under the federal federal bribery statement for second problem is adam schiff has tried to tie initially based upon the testimony to what the ask was for and that was according to him and the witnesses not much more than a meeting at the white house. If its a meeting and you heard the piece that you ran from adam schiff he is trying to make the argument to the American People that a mere meeting at the white house is sufficient to constitute an official act. Answer to that question is wrong. The Supreme Court in the decision which involved the former governor of the commonwealth of virginia, bob mcdonald set a meeting without it does not constitute as an official act. What about the delivery of military aid that the claim that it was withheld in order to extort this as a quid pro quo act . That there are other position but thats more difficult when you look at what the testimony was because the best you got from ambassador and fiona hill and several others is essentially that they presumed or assumed or it was implied that there was a linkage between investigations and Foreign Military assistance. You dont think thats been proved . Presumed, assumed and applied is not worth much more than what you think which is thats not proof that a crime was committed. Paul if the president said to somebody look we will not give you guys aid unless i see them investigate joe and hunter biden, would that be in your view, something that could qualify as potentially a criminal act . That potentially would be so. Thats the difference between an actual demand as opposed to what was expressed here in the call and also the benefit of the exculpatory information that we got from the investor or the president said listen, i dont want anything from ukraine but i want the president of ukraine to do what he said and he ran on which was to root out corruption. Paul he especially said i dont want quid pro quo according to the ambassador. Correct. Thats not insignificant for the second thing is the Lieutenant Colonel testified i as a military officer when im in a chain of command when the president asks or makes a request i assume thats an order. Thats true in connection with being a military people in the chain of command but last i checked president zelinski was not in the military chain of command of the United States. Equating a request with a demand which would be what was required in order to prove an explicit quid pro quo that would constitute corrupt intent thats not the same thing. I think they fall well short of the mark. Paul we have a little time left. Theyre moving to be putting together an article of impeachment on obstruction of congress because the president is saying john bolton and others cant testify. Paul, i think thats the weakest in this not just its one thing that bob rae says is the weakest but history says thats the weakest. We lived through other president ial impeachments and in the nixon case as well as the case involving former president bill clinton you can make that contention but its a weak one. Why is it weak . Because there are legit reasons for president on the basis of privilege to withhold information from congress peered where does that privilege derived . It derives from separation of powers. Thats a battle between the branches and the executive branch and legislate a branch. There are reasons why a president because of the sanctity of conversations and confidentiality necessary to do your job why he would want to protect those conversations from being disclosed to another branch of government. To try to turn that into abuse of office or contempt of congress is ridiculous because the question is whether those claims are legitimate and the only place to ultimately settle that is before a court and the democrats have decided to forgo that. Paul they decided not to contest Albert Roberts ray, thank you. We appreciate it peered when we come back the testimony of a massacre now seen as the linchpin of the democratic case fact is, every Insurance Company hopes you drive safely. But allstate helps you. With drivewise. Feedback that helps you drive safer. And that can lower your cost now that you know the truth. Are you in good hands . I am totally blind. And non24 can make me show up too early. Or too late. Or make me feel like im not really there. 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Rudy giuliani on it ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States. We all understood if we refused to work with mr. Giuliani we would lose a very important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and ukraine. We followed the president s orders. Paul u. S. Ambassador to the European Union was the Main Attraction at this weeks public hearing. He testified on wednesday that the president instructed him to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani as giuliani pressured ukraine to public he announced investigations into the 2016 election and the Energy Company charisma. Was of the blockbuster testimony the president s critics claim . Lets ask Deputy Editor of the an Editorial Board member, kyle peterson. Damn, what did we learn that was new this week . I dont think we learned anything else that was substantively new here at all. We just listen to Gordon Sunderland described about how they all understood there was a Second Channel involving Rudy Giuliani and this is fundamentally what investors taylor said in their testimony last week. Paul it was clear long ago even in the phone call that trump was wanted this investigation. Yeah, as it was made clear in the interview with bob ray, former independent counsel, the democrats are arguing that somewhere in the center of this there is something that qualifies as bribery or extortion. I dont think weve heard anything in any of the testimony that establishes that smoking gun for the president and democrats. Its these shown insinuations that the president was pressuring people and used Rudy Giuliani to pressure them and i would say one final thing, and all the reporting about this when they finally say what do we get today in the testimony, what they got was pressure for the ukrainians to announce an investigation, rather than undertake in a mastication. That will be a crucial distinction when he gets to the trial in the senate. Paul one big issue is whether the president was justified in seeking it ukraine to ask for an investigation of hunter and joe biden to dig in to what happened in 2016. Do you think that was justified . Look, a lot of people are trying to figure out what the scope of this demand was. That is what is so interesting about the test money in general is that a lot of people were making a lot of assumptions about what donald trump wanted. And why this was being held. He seemed to have an overall sour impression of ukraine and corruption. If he was calling broadly for corruption investigation or calling broadly even for an investigation into what has become symbolic for ukraine corruption thats not a problem but you do wish if the demand was specifically for joe and hudson biden thats more problematic but is it a crime . No. It stinks but is it a crime . I dont think so. Paul what about that ukraine meddled in the 2016 election . There seems to be two stories here. One that the ukrainians hacked the dnc computers and i dont think theres any evidence for that even though trump seems to think that should have been investigated. On the other hand there is evidence from the ukrainian courts that a couple of ukrainian officials at least in 2016 to try to bring information to the democrats that ultimately was used against paul manna fort, thes former campaign chair. Yeah, and we know that there was a dnc contractor, this chill lupa, who was out there working with ukrainian officials to bring dirt about donald trump and ukrainian officials were on the record criticizing donald trump. Theres a legitimate basis for people looking into what ukraines role was in 2016. There are more than one country operating in our election. Paul in addition to russia but what about the quid pro quo issue, kyle, that Gordon Sondland stated flatly. In his understanding there was a quid pro quo and they said i presumed there was one. Was that a proven case . On the aide, i dont think it is. Thats one of the gaps democrats are trying to close. What the exact circumstances of that were in my President Trump held it up and why he ultimately released it so one thing we got this week also was a letter from ron johnson, senator ron johnson describing his conversations with the president about ukraine and he painted a different story. He talks about several of these meetings where it comes up in the president is skeptical for policy reasons and says why are we giving this aid and why doesnt europe pitch and so that complicates the factors and then the fact that we have not heard from anyone who has directly been in conversation with the president on why the aide was held up. Paul with you then say in addition to policy reasons, the president had personal peak going back to 2016 . For sure but he seems to be obsessed that russia did not meddle in the election for the question is what he did with that aid and how directly he told or did not tell his advisers that that was joe biden was the reason for holding it up. Paul dan, after two weeks will this change any minds on capitol hill or for that matter many minds . Yeah, it might change some democratic mines in a house on the question of whether they vote for or against because the polling needle has not moved. If it had moved at all is moved more in the president s favor so i think some of these democrats and toss up seats may decide they dont want to vote for impeachment. Paul when we come back, the centrists strike back. Democrats gather this week for their fifth president ial debates. Growing competition people talking for every dollar you spend at a Small Business, an average of 67 cents stays local. Shop small and watch it add up. Small business saturday by American Express is november 30th. 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Ends saturday paul as ten democratic president ial candidates took the stage at the fifth president ial debate in atlanta the battle for the middle was clearly on display with joe biden, cory booker and amy clover shark making their case to moderate democrat voters. They criticized far left ideas like the wealth tax, medicare for all and free college tuition. Heres the challenge. We democrats need to fight for just taxation system but as i travel around the country we democrats have to talk about how to grow wealth as well. The fact is right now the vast majority of democrats do not support medicare for all. It could not pass the United States senate right now with democrats. It could not pass the house. I think we have navigation as a party to be yes, fiscally responsible, yes, think big but we have peoples backs and are honest with him about what we can pay for. Paul kim, as you look at those comments what you make of it . Is this the sense that maybe we get the rise of the centrist democrats, at least against the what had been the ascendancy of sanders and warren . I actually think what this is is people heeding Barack Obamas advice this week to calm down a bit and if you go back and look at the shift between the first debates in which everyone was chasing after Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to get to the progressive left, lets decriminalize everything and get rid of the entire fossil fuel sector and lets give everyone free everything. You are now seen the candidates in a smaller field more willing to realize this problem are not winning ideas with the American Public or even with a big sector of democratic primary voters were not on the progressive left. They are finding their footing and more forcefully pushing back and realizing that a positive Camp