a. current affairs. hi i'm steve clements and i have a question the trial to remove president trump has begun but how does it end let's get to the bottom line. for only the 3rd time in the history of america the president of the united states will face trial by the legislative branch of government according to democrats what's at stake is the rule of law and the future of democracy according to many republicans who hold the majority of the u.s. senate this is a wasteful and divisive charade or to quote president trump a hoax now as the senate turns into a big courtroom the big question is does the president have the right to push other countries in this case ukraine to do his bidding wait a minute every president does that sort of thing the real question is whether it is an abuse of power to push a foreign country to investigate his political rival and did president donald trump wipe out the power of congress by blocking evidence in testimony during the impeachment investigation last year so what's next in the drama of 100 senators and the chief justice of the supreme court all presiding over all this will this trial just go through the motions or should we expect some surprises along the way fortunately we have 3 people in the room who have all the answers jason miller co-host of the daily podcast war room impeachment and former spokesman for the 2016 trump campaign hillary herd contributor for the lawfare blog who is wrapping up her law degree at harvard university good luck with that and finally richard goodstein an attorney and a democratic strategist here in washington d.c. thank you so much for being here i'm sure it's going to be a fun show and i'm sure we would like to go on for hours on this topic but we've got some limited time today but jason i want to just to have you help us set the stage because i know that you have been one of the people calling this impeachment process somewhat of a farce somewhat inappropriate but set the stage for the history of this moment and do you find it a historic moment yourself well it's a historic moment that i think ultimately on the political side will be good for president but i think this is too. terrible for the country and i think for the what it sets up for impeachment in the years going forward so far international friends i think what's important to realize is there's a 0 percent chance the president trump is going to be removed from office and what we're seeing here with impeachment is just as some of the founders with madison hamilton wrote that whatever party controls whichever house of congress ultimately leads to where the votes are going to be the only bipartisan vote that there has been in this process has been against these 2 articles of impeachment so i'm one who's very much believe that this is an impeachment witch hunt as i've called as president trump has called it and i'm actually one from the republican side who supports president trump who would like to see a more robust a thorough trial because i don't think the democrats will stop with this impeachment effort i think they're going to continue with other impeachment efforts in the future and it's only till we go through and truly snuff out and flush out all of these arguments in really the foreign policy disagreement that started this there were never going to reach some kind of consensus and it's got no part of this jason as a trial and part of it as a comment on what redline for the president the united states should not go across and i know you know the president i know that you've been around him and you've seen this and i think part of the question that people have who are just thoughtful knowledgeable may not know every bit of the you know the legal game going on but they worry that the president i think may not know that there are lines you shouldn't cross that may not you know the level of impeaching him and removing from office but are there red lines that people of your of you believe exist on the president or can the president virtually do anything well i wouldn't say that but i would say that for all of the rhetoric and the things have gone back and forth unity and substance really been the 2 messages that we've seen for president unity and keep in republicans together in that substance as far as go through and read the transcript take a look at it in fact the 2 best fact witnesses i believe for president trump are ukrainian presidents alinsky and his foreign minister who both have said that there was no quid pro quo or any of that and for again for all of the allegations that have been thrown out there things like extortion and things like bribery some pretty scurrilous. charges against president trump those are left on the cutting room floor over in the house of representatives those are in these articles of impeachment and so the bottom line from the pro trump side is that there is no crime here there's nothing at all improper with what president trump did in this richard is her crime here when you look at the the facts that i've laid out and i'm just listening to jason very carefully one of the interesting things about this particular case an episode of the call is that much of our knowledge of it has come through other republicans other members of the president's team not just the whistleblower but any number of people who said this was not there is in your mind do you think the president competed committed impeachable offenses here do you believe there's a crime so i don't think there's any question yes and my sources again are republicans the government accounting office just just last week said that what the president did was against the law and i would ask this notion this is one of the bigger mystery rections this oh the constitution doesn't list this as a sort of crime is crazy if you talk to every constitutional scholar let me you know jason says this is bad for the country let me tell you what i think the public thinks is bad for the country the public thinks it's bad for the country if the president could put the arm on a foreign leader and say hey do me this favor before i relinquish this aid instead of the fact that your people being killed on the front lines i'm going to hold back until you do me this favor the favor is not actually launching an investigation into it's merely announcing an investigation so this notion that he was trying to root out corruption somebody who is surrounded by people who are now in jail during this campaign the notion that he who never heard to talk about corruption anywhere else on the planet would somehow rather that he was trying to root out corruption in ukraine is fanciful and farcical. and yet people could say with a straight face so that trump a. i can hear it go yeah i believe that it's nonsense when again all he wanted was an announcement and the good thing is joe biden's actually benefiting the very person he was trying to her is benefiting he alone is in iowa you do know that there are a lot of americans who see it the other way i mean one of the fascinating is to watch in the polling every week on this shift you know one week it's 51 percent of americans want to see the president impeached and convicted and removed from office and now this week it's the other way around this week there was a new gallup poll that shows just today that 51 percent of americans are are do not want to see the president convicted and impeached and removed and so you've got this kind of interesting slide back and forth in the middle i'm often wondering whether people of great passion and conviction can understand why there are people out there who don't agree with you well that's kind of almost a philosophical question right but i would point to the c.n.n. poll this morning 51 percent said yes they favor conviction and removal 45 percent no which means there are people who voted for donald trump here who actually think he should be removed from office that's and 69 percent of the people in that poll said there should be witnesses at 48 percent of republicans said yes on witnesses $44.00 nos so the public i think over time nancy pelosi played this just right the fact that we've had this passage of time since the house impeached has all worked to the benefit of the position that the house managers are trying to hit all right about law you know you know i said as a journalist myself i could imagine anything that would probably get fewer readers but now you have a hot spot right you're writing about law how would your north stars in sort of telling the story of what equities matter in a in an impeachment of a president what are the pieces that we should be looking at as we watch this we're all going to see this you know 100 senators sitting up there i've sat on the senate floor before it's a solemn and interesting place you feel the power of the history of the united states there in everything with this is. serious deal the chief justice of the united states so as you write about this what are the pieces you look for yeah well i think to answer that question we have to also think about what are the legal questions that are distractions and i think in the context of impeachment there's been a common argument that there needs to be a crime committed in order to impeach a president of the united states that was featured very prominently in the president's trial memorandum over the weekend and the fact is that of all the impeachment to the united states history there's been 20 altogether one 3rd of them involved no criminal offense at all and 2nd of all of trump's own legal team there appears to be some disagreement about some about this very question so dershowitz over the weekend has been on t.v. alan dershowitz literature as if he who was also commented on the clinton impeachment before and made the comment that there need not be a crime writer needs to be a proprietor it's of corruption and other issues but now what is he saying right so he's one of the recent additions and he sort of had to walk back some of his comments over the weekend because some people took him to be saying what trump has been saying that there doesn't need to be that that needs to be a criminal offense committed and dershowitz has actually had to walk back and say actually no that isn't really the case because he's written that before and that's been best among the constitutional law scholars is the predominant view and what's somewhat odd i would argue about the trump trial memorandum is that they say it has always been true in the case of presidential impeachments they try to draw this distinction from judges who've been impeached right but the fact is that even president johnson the 11th article of impeachment against president johnson was for yelling at congress for being rude to congress and that was certainly not an indicted offense at the time and it's not an individual offense now so what are the other distractions that you see out there because one of the other topics that come a lot is the issue of witnesses yeah well so i think that there are right now 2 competing philosophies about what the job of the senate is we have on the republican side this argument put forward most prominently perhaps by marco rubio who's saying you know it's the job of the senate to review the house's homework we're going to give it a grade a is removal and then after is acquittal and that's all we're going to do we're mostly. an appellate court if you will and then you have democrats on the other hand saying sure our review our work with 600 pages is pretty significant but we also think that you should do some of your own investigating you have the powers at your disposal to compel witnesses you have the powers at your disposal to subpoena documents and you should do that especially in this case when you have individuals like john bolton who is a former and national security adviser to the president who is saying that he knows something new and especially in this case when looking at all prior impeachments the senate has always called witnesses so this this appears to be the tension between the 2 the idea of how much investigating isn't it going to do is that that is really its proper role and to the extent that it it is proper world who should be you know you oppose the witnesses are you opposed to these witnesses being called later in the trial level par in os john bolton who you know who said he would be willing to testify and is that a distraction as you see it from the argument about the kind of quarter action that the impeachment trial is taking well not at all in the restate what i said in the opening there's 0 percent chance that president trump is removed here right and so really what this becomes is where the political pressure is going to be put in speaker pelosi and now into chuck schumer and senate democrats go and delay this process to create more political pain for president trump i take a counterintuitive approach on this are you seeing more pain from this because it seems to me that early on the president kept saying impeach me impeach me i dare you to impeach me and nancy. the speaker was basically saying no no we're trying to delay. the speaker nancy pelosi is trying to sort of delay this process from beginning because i think she had concerns about how this would play in a big section of the country just talking politics for a minute to be hitting the president egg them on politically speaking this is motivated his base and so going into the 2018 elections where democrats were at a 10 out of 10 in motivational intensity right republicans were way off were maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10 now republicans have caught up and they're motivated in the selection but let me go to the trial issue on which are a bit of a counterintuitive approach. this ultimately started with was a foreign policy disagreement with this so-called whistleblower who didn't like the public policy direction of where president trump was go east trying to tip over the apple cart and reset the world order and take a different perspective people forget ukraine just recently was the number one most corrupt country in the entire world they've improved now they're up to number 3 in even in that language that congress votes on every year it's called the national defense authorization act there's language in there this says all u.s. aid going to ukraine should be tied to their improvements on anti-corruption efforts but let me go to the trial from our because this is different from what most republicans are saying i think we absolutely have to have a full trial bring in all these witnesses and so when we talk about the witnesses let's bring in love parness let's bring in president alinsky from ukraine he said there's no quid pro quo he didn't feel any pressure he can skype you know we have pretty good technology now so i'm not expecting him to fly over here let's bring in the foreign minister let's bring in adam schiff is one of the house impeachment managers who i think is actually a fact witness in this and you know what i'm absolutely fine if book deal bolton john bolton who by the way is drumming this up because you know bolton wants to sell well do you think john bolton i'm not worried about bolton being a witness i'm not worried about anybody being a witness because i don't think the president trumped anything wrong but until we get to this root cause until we bring in the whistleblower to hold them publicly accountable for starting this entire impeachment mess which by the way the whistle blower act does not grant you anonymity no way shape or form it's in cases of waste or fraud to make sure that somebody doesn't get fired just what i mean by gender stassi gender so you and only you know when you got out as members and they're like as possible mayor in a giuliani and. and we've heard a lot from in the last few days very well as a lot of the media you know is starting to get out a few cases assassinating i can't wait to the musical on broadway comes out with these various characters it will be our view but does this not give you and many of the people that agree with your perspective some pause that when you when you think it's a different foreign policy or not but you know clearly the biden piece of this was important to biden was on the board a british male a lot of people both democrats and republicans said hey there's something not right in denmark on this but i think at the same time how do you square the giuliani role . i think mayor giuliani mean look the evidence that's been put forward actually vindicate him in this effort to be exculpatory you take a look at the left part miscommunications really is telling presidents linsky communicate a message to president alinsky to quit being a boy be a man go and split your ties with the oligarchs crack down on corruption so i think the evidence is actually good for steve jenner so my point that i think that we have to get to the bottom of these foreign policy disagreements that if a president is elected the united states they should have people around them who grew with their world view what they're trying to do but all that evidence all the lieutenant colonel vin min whistleblower and whistleblower to they've all disappeared and now it's simply about process which i thought house democrats didn't care about process richard if i may 2 things 1st if the whistle blew blow or fell off the face of the earth and every word that whistleblower wrote disappeared it would have 0 bearing on what the house did and what the senate trial should entail. we all know that the whistle blower was not a 1st hand witness other than listening into the call and we have this so-called transcript of the call. and this whole notion of a public policy distinction steve is a myth it's a joke because we every stitch of evidence points to one thing all the donald trump wanted was an announcement of an investigation there was 0 evidence 0 that he wanted an actual investigation all he wanted from people who were involved including his own ambassador hand-picked said oh all he wanted was an announcement so this talk about that it was a public policy difference is really sorry i joke it's just untrue it's baseless there's no evidence to support it i think just to add 2 more facts on the table that could affect your calculus about what should happen next the 1st is that in that the call with the president in the transcript that we have the word corruption which is presumably the trump argument for why he was calling selenski is. used at all. and so i think to find out whether there is any plausibility behind this defense that the president was really seeking to root out corruption in ukraine we would need to speak with the closer and closer advisors to the president and unfortunately the president has said that for national security security reasons none of those individuals can speak to congress and so i think it would be great to your argument that wouldn't would it be wonderful to have everyone under the sun with any connection to the story testify before the senate have a real trial but the fact of the matter is that the present united states has refused to let any one of his close associates those best placed to actually tell us whether we're going to have to reduce question because i think as we watch this drama unfold one of the questions i've had we've had so many people preposition their views before evidence have been provided we have mitch mcconnell i was with senator lindsey graham recently and lindsey graham calls me you know call me biased by you know i've already made my decision i don't want to hear or see the evidence and there's been a lot made of the fact that this violates the oath that these 100 senators took with the chief justice of the united states to remain unbiased to do this is this i mean i probably agree with jason that that you're not going to see the removal of office but what either what what's being strengthen democracy by this process or what's being weakened when they see the kind of characters and statements come out that are so disrespectful fundamentally a part of the process where when you have to swear before the country that you're going to do it with marshal justice in the trial of the president which as republicans admit is an incredibly significant commitment and incredibly significant event to be happening the 3rd time in american history that i would have to think that making that oath you're also pledging not to put your own political calculations at the forefront of course every senator speaking is thinking about reelection republicans are thinking about that democrats are thinking about that but i think there's an argument inherent in the oath that you're supposed to extend beyond you're supposed to look at the facts that you have . and they said that you don't have facts to find out a way to get them that's why the senate has the power to compel witnesses and to subpoena documents jason if you were the spokes person involved in this advising people would you are you are you comfortable with what you've heard senators on both sides have come out and pre-position themselves on on this process so i think i have a much different take than many of the senators in that i want to get to the bottom of this because i do not think this will be the last impeachment push for president trump i think we've already seen this from court filings this isn't just adjacent speculation house democrats are to go and file things in court filing saying that they are going to be pursuing additional impeachment efforts or in the process of that whether it's having to do with executive privilege and with don graham going back to the russian hoax or even currently with the whole impeachment which or in the future i would be surprised if democrats went after president trump for the solomonic strike and the all the issues there that he's going to with trying to keep america safe so i don't think this is ever going to end in a moment when we saw some of these witnesses come forward there was this compelling narrative of our policy and so we'd see this from whether it be hillary would see this from van men or we'd see this from several the folks who came through and testified there's a for many in the national security space there's a belief that there's what president trump believes on policy and then there's our policy u.s. policy the traditional policy of the last 102030 years that's really at the crux of this current impeachment debate is a lot of folks don't think the president should have the right to pursue his foreign policy the way that he wants to so politically speaking again i think this will boost president trump but i think it's the fact that it's basically whoever has more seats in the senate just like whoever had more seats in the house will determine if this is a real impeachment or not i think is bad for the country it's exactly like i said earlier what madison hamilton were worried about richard when you heard the names ken starr and alan dershowitz and other members of the legal team announced what went through your mind for the audience ken starr of course. these are celebrity attorneys and they both have been brought on alan dershowitz somewhat reluctantly it seemed at the beginning but these are these are 2 people who were involved and commenting and played direct role in clinton's impeachment 20 years ago and now are tasked with sort of arguing the opposite of what they argued with clinton i've just sort of interested in your take a look. ken starr robert ray who succeeded him have been brought on over the past several months supposedly it's like independent voices giving history and commentary and i think they've been revealed to be political hacks which is what we knew ken starr to be frankly back during the monica lewinsky time the way he kind of took her aside and practically put her under arrest because he would she wouldn't basically disclose what he wanted her disclose right which didn't actually comport with what the truth was so i actually think in an odd look bill clinton ended up with that impeachment trial at 70 percent approval after the impeachment trial and donald trump doesn't think donald trump today is at $43.00 and he's been kind of in the low forty's the whole time with an economy that's doing those numbers well impervious to the impeachment they've been there at that level for a long time whether there's been impeached. that's true it hasn't hurt him but the economy certainly hasn't helped him and i would just wonder though there will not be any witnesses let's not kid ourselves because there's nobody who has anything exculpatory that helps donald trump and i guarantee you i would bet my reputation and whatever i'm worth that there will be no just because they can. just just richard would you find president we can do strength and you believe in this i think he will be weakened because his base is is there the people who voted for him in 2016 and abandon republicans in droves in 2018 were suburban largely well educated women they will look at this and be nauseated as they have been all along by. grabbing people by the crotch and so forth this will be more of that 6 and they don't that's not going to get jason both strengthened or weakened the president as a result of this impeachment trial i think it's really his base is going to be more fired up and much more motivated as we go into the presidential year but i think this does step on a lot of his great recent successes the phase one of the china deal u.s. m.c.a. the north america trade agreement redo that they did i think it does step on that and again i think it's bad for the country overall because it's showing just how little this entire process has become and let's not kid ourselves whoever is the next president republican or democrat probably going to get impeached this is now setting up the new normal of where impeachment is basically just a turn of phrase by political opponents thank you hilary final word i try to avoid making political predictions but one thing seems clear and that is the the legal arguments that the trump team has put forward are ambitious original and a stretch in some ways and so the trump administration is asking his fellow republicans to come along with him for that sort of far out legal ride and to defend a policy decision perhaps that is not so clearly about policy and so by asking that it's not clear in the long term how this will impact the republican party is a big ask well thank you i thought a thoughtful conversation on this topic would be impossible we've had it and i want to thank my panel i'd like to thank you all for being with us republican strategist jason miller lawfare blog contributor hilary heard and democratic strategist richard goodstein thank you all very much for i thought what a fantastic discussion we've got to come back and see how this plays out over time so thanks very much if you think you. so what's the bottom line whether people celebrate the irreverent and pig nation style a president or just can't stand him putting a president on trial is a hugely serious moment this is not a hoax and it's not a charade it's possible to find the president's behavior awful but still not enough to convict him and remove him from office some like jason miller on my panel argue that everything trump did was inside the line of the president's power and was just a day but others about half of the u.s. voting population believe that he is guilty of impeachable offenses and should be removed i don't see any surprises ahead president trump is likely to remain president for a while at least until the 2020 election and even after if he's reelected but this historic trial is a lesson in democracy we are seeing a branch of government fight back against the president who doesn't want to be controlled or constrained we are seeing checks and balances in play and that is a good thing and that's the bottom line. capturing a moment in time. snapshots of all the lives. of the stories. provided tips into someone else's one. day it was due date for. inspiring documentaries from impassioned filmmakers. like the witness on al-jazeera. the film navigating dangerous rapids from the time we departed through the time we finished or scared to the fish and dicing with death. i'm afraid of falling i'm afraid of dying but if i don't go by coughing my family meet the man who go to the extreme just to make a living cot you have to be at school or swim or otherwise and surf and risking it all vietnam on al-jazeera. this is al jazeera. hello i'm stan grant this is the news hour live from doha coming up in the next 60 minutes trying to chart a way out of lebanon's crippling crisis the new cabinet meets for the 1st time the protests are hitting back to the streets. world health organization considers whether to clear a global emergency over the coronavirus that's already killed 17 people in china donald trump announces plans to add more countries to the u.s. travel ban list before heading home to his impeachment trial. you see what's going on in the world a country has to be safe so we have a very strong travel ban and we'll.