Managers, run a 10minute debate and then vote. Why is it that the house votes on impeachment managers and then you see that procession on your full screen happening after 5 00 p. M. Eastern time, that procession of the house managers from the house to the senate. Why does that happen . Guest taking the last point first, i dont know that a procession is entirely necessary but it does emphasize the solemnity of theo cakes and also theres a tradition here that goes back literally centuries because this whole idea of having house managers, that is to say representatives in the lower house presenting the case for the impeachment in impeachment in the upper house goes back to British Parliament and thats exactly what happened in those days, the house managers would proceed from the Lower Chamber to Upper Chamber with the articles of impeachment in hand and knock on the door and be admitted formally to have the that the impeachment articles are received and read and so forth and so on. So some of it is just tradition and ceremony, which emphasizes the solemnity of the occasion and i think given our current political environment is not a bad thing. As to whether or why the house votes on the identity of the managers, i suppose they might not have to but after all, this is a representative body which is governed by the will of the majority, and the people who go over it must be remembered. The house managers are representing the house of representatives as a institution, although as it turns out in this case, theyll all be democrats. They need not be. They, as i say, are representing the house of representatives not any one party and therefore the house of representatives could and should approve the people who will represent it over in the trial. Host in 1999 we saw the high profile procession occur with 13 house managers carrying over the articles of impeachment against president clinton at the time. Why were there 13 . Is it necessary to have that many . And what is their role in the senate . Guest theres no necessary number. There could be as few as one or two. But again, their job is to be prosecutors. Thats what they do. Their job is to represent the house of representatives, present the case in favor of the articles of impeachment in the senate. So i would suspect the number might be smaller in this case but theres no way to know. In some respects, having too many could be unwielding because what youre creating here is a trial team. You dont want so darn many people on it theyre getting in each others way. Host what role how did they break up the work in 1999 and do you think that that how does that help them present their case in a senate trial . Guest honestly, i dont remember exactly who did what jobs in 1999. But i think some managers were certainly more prominent than others in terms of what the jobs that they took, whether or not they were really more or less involved in questioning or making arguments, making public speeches and so forth. And others were more in the background. This relates, i suppose, to the controversy that has sort of swirled around this process over the last four weeks. Youll recall, of course, that after the house vote to impeach mr. Trump, there was a period in which Speaker Pelosi said shed hold off transmitting the articles and identification of the managers pending at the very least some better sense of how the senate was going to conduct its trial. To some made sense degree because depending on whether or not youre going to have a trial thats heavy with witnesses and the necessity for examining and exoksing crossexamining witnesses and whether youll have a trial about extended legal arguments, that might drive the kind of person youd pick. Because some people are going to be better at just making speeches and others, and relatively few people, frankly, few people in congress, will be very good at questioning witnesses. Thats a professional skill that only lawyers have and frankly, lots of lawyers arent very good at it. Host what are your thoughts about the other sigh of side of this case, the defense team for President Trump . We read in the papers this morning it would include the white house lawyer, his personal lawyer, along with puties, Patrick Philbin as well as the president wants Allan Dershowitz on his team as well. Your thoughts . Guest the lawyers you mentioned excluding dershowitz, are likely to be competent representatives including mr. Sekulow is very interesting because it appears at some extent, at least in a regular court trial he might actually be a witness because he may have been involved in some of the Communications Concerning ukraine and other matters. And i think in an ordinary trial it would be an odd choice to make. But theyre all competent lawyers with the exception of mr. Dershowitz who frankly even in his heyday was never a trial lawyer. He was at most a behind the scenes appellate lawyer or trial strategist and these days hes become something of a carkechur of himself. Caracter chur of caricature of himself and mr. Trump would like him to be there as part of the trial seem. Trial scene. Host whats the format of a senate trial . Guest i dont think we know. All we know is after the formalities, the identification of the managers and the procession, there will be some additional formalities, the senators themselves will have to be sworn in, the chief justice will take an oath to preside. The articles will be read, so forth and so on. What happens after that is very much up in the air, i think. My best guess is that sometime either at the end of 24 week or beginning of next, senator mcconnell is likely to present for the consideration of the senate a sort of governing resolution that will cover some of the details of how the trial will be conducted. That after all is what he and Speaker Pelosi have been jousting about the last few weeks. Certainly at this point it does not appear there will be anything like what happened in clinton, which is to say an agreement between the two parties, unanimous agreement on how things should be conducted, rather i think mr. Mcconnell will produce some resolution that will be approved by a Party Line Vote of republicans. Advanced at least the notice of whats likely to be in that resolution proves to be the case, what its probably going to say is that there will be a period which will probably turn out to be several days on each side in which the house managers and president s counsel will present when a trial would be Opening Statements and then and only then will be a vote by the senators as to whether or not to hear live witnesses or try to secure additional evidence or exhibits. Thats a weird way to proceed, as anybody who has even watched a trial will realize barr its essentially saying to the lawyers, ok, we want you to give your Opening Statements but well not tell you whether or not youll be able to call witnesses and frankly, were not even going to tell you what evidence ultimately will be admissible. And its quite peculiar but think thats what will happen. Host the Senate Majority leader says he has the votes to pass a senate rule package that looks like what youre describing and says theyre going on precedent from the 1999 clinton trial where the house impeachment managers and the clinton defense team each had 24 hours to make their case. The senators were then allowed 16 hours to question, a vote was held to dismiss. If the case wasnt dismissed, then they voted on having witnesses. Why did they do that then . Guest the thing to understand is in the clinton case there was universal agreement there would be at least depositions taken of the three witnesses. Mainly those are witnesses that had already been heard from either in the grand jury or other forums, threw was universal agreement that would occur. The other thing radically different is clinton was tried on what lawyers would call stipulated facts, by the time the case moved from the house to senate there wasnt any serious doubt what the facts were. Everybody knew what president clinton had done. They knew hed had sex with an intern and they knew he lied about it. The only question was its constitutional consequence. Will the fact as we know amount to an Impeachable Offense. This is quite different, though i think the facts that emerged from the House Intelligence Committee and Judiciary Committee are quite clear with respect to mr. Trumps impeachable misconduct. Nonetheless a critical defense being raised by mr. Trump and his team and republicans who support him is the notion that mehow or another somehow or another there is an absence of direct evidence that he in fact gave commands that ukraine be extorted. Of course the direct proof of that point would come from the people in the white house, nick mulvaney, john bolton who mr. Trump has refused to permit to testify. The very people that the Democratic Senators would like to call. So whats different between now and then is then all the facts were really quite well known before the thing got to the senate. In this case, the republicans themselves, mr. Trump himself, will argue there are factual gaps. Therefore it seems at least a little peculiar that the republicans are likely to insist there are factual gaps and at the same time resist filling them with the exspeed enzi of calling witnesses to do it. Host lets get to calls. Rebecca in michigan, republican caller, youre up first. Caller good morning. Yes, i do have a statement as far as the impeachment goes. Pelosi is supposed to be the middleman between the republicans and dems, and all ive seen is that she has gotten into this tightrope, a noose around her neck to where its her bullying along with the democrats with no matter what President Trump does, they are going to find fault in it. And these are issues ive been seeing since even before he was put into office. I voted for obama for two terms that i did not like where our country was going so i said ok, we need a change. I knew he was a businessman. I knew he did not have any political or any aspirations as far as that in his history of schooling or anything like that. Hes just a businessman and was voted in it. I dont like his tweets but i intend voting for him again because i do see changes. Host ok. Rebecca, ill leave it there. Frank bowman, is this just politics . Guest impeachments are always political in the large sense because when the framers put impeachment into the constitution, they intended in the end it be a political judgment about whether or not the president had behaved in a way that made him unsuited for office, that made his continuance in office dangerous to constitutional values, angerous so the republic itself. Beyond that the caller makes a point which is a common theme Many Republican speeches. That is the democrats have been critical of President Trump and indeed have talked about impeaching him from practically the time he took office and therefore the current proceedings can be discounted as part of a long Running Campaign against him. Its true the democrats have been very critical of President Trump in the beginning and some of the more intempered ones began suggesting impeaching him practically from the first day he took office which is of course rather simply, but it doesnt change the current circumstance up substance and doesnt change the fact the house of representatives has decided on some particular occasions and for some particular reasons the president has engaged in conduct that violates our an itutional values, is abuse an abuse of power, is of one of the types thats traditionally been found impeachable and moreover in the second article of impeachment is that he has improperly refused to cooperate with the houses investigation of that behavior. So whatever criticisms democrats have made in the past and however, frankly, hasty and intemperate some of them may have been at the beginning, we are where we are. The question that confirms the senate is not whether democrats have opposed him from the outset the question is whether he did what hes charged with doing and whether it is sufficiently serious to merit his removal. Host by the way, the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, will be making the announcement of public managers before cameras at 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. Well have coverage of that on cspan 3 on our website cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan radio app. Seal be announcing at 10 00 a. M. In a News Conference who the house managers will be for the impeachment trial in the senate. Frank bowman, this from lloyd in new jersey who is wondering, how does the senate trial enforce a subpoena, he asks if john bolton refuses to testify. John bolton said hes willing to testify but lets take the question and change it to nick mulvaney. Guest its an interesting question adged at the end of the day, if Somebody Just refuses to testify, theres only a couple things that either house can do. One, they could consider that person to be in contempt of the senate and could try to refer the case then for criminal prosecution. But that has to be given to the Justice Department and its unclear this Justice Department would actually take the job and they can decline and have sometimes in the past and can file a similar lawsuit for civil contempt but would take heaven knows how many ages or they could actually hold the person who refused to show up direct contempt and in fact send the sergeant in arms of the senate in this case to go arrest the person and confine them in the basement until such time as they decide to comply. I dont know how practical the last alternative is. There really is a fourth alternative and that is one i think that explains a great deal about the standoff between Speaker Pelosi and the Senate Republicans. The other possibility, if somebody simply refuses to testify based particularly on some direction from President Trump that they not testify, then thats a pretty direct defiance of the power of the senate given to it by the constitution to try impeachments. And that in and of itself would be an Impeachable Offense and that after all is the basis of the second article of impeachment mr. Trump is now facing. Heres the tricky bit for republicans and one of the reasons i think they dont want to authorize subpoenas. If they do authorize subpoenas for white house insiders and those people show up, i think the odds are pretty darn good what white house insiders are going to say wont be good for mr. Trump. But otherwise if they had exonerating information i think they would rely on it they would come. The other possibility is the Senate Issues a subpoena, the white house witnesses refuse to show up and that would blow a great big hole in the basic republican line with respect to the second article of impeachment and a great bill hogue in trumps defense, with his basic line with regard to the second article of impeachment is well, i didnt have to allow my people to come and testify in the house because what was going on in the house was a partisan witchhunt and im entitled to ignore that. Truth is hes not. The house, whether controlled by republicans or democrats is half of a coequal government and as president has to comply with subpoenas from them. But more importantly if the Senate Issues a subpoena and white house people refuse to show up, then how does mr. Trump explain his resistance from a subpoena coming from a body thats actually controlled by members of his own party. I think Senate Republicans are desperate to avoid the dilemma of subpoenas created in that case. Either subpoenas are honored and bad testimony from trump comes forward or subpoenas are denied or resi john sopko thursday morning, nebraska congressman Jeff Fortenberry joins us to discuss border wall funding and trade policy. Then democratic congresswoman will be with us to talk about wisconsin as a campaign 2020 hannah brown state. Live washington journal, at 7 00 a. M. Eastern thursday morning. Join the discussion. Willmorrow house managers the impeachment articles into the senate chamber. Then Supreme CourtJustice John Roberts will be sworn in to preside over the trial, and all 100 senators will take of this at jurors. Senate historian spoke about the of taken by senators during the 1999 clinton impeachment trial. At this time i will administer the oath to all the senators in the chamber. Will all senators now stand and raise your right hand . Do you solemnly swear in all things pertaining to the impeachment of William Jefferson clinton, president of the united states, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws, so help you god . The clerk will call the names and record the responses. Every member of the senate takes an oath when they take office. Why is there a special oath for this . The constitution requires it spells outf, the oath the president takes. The oath the Congress Takes is the note congress has written. There is a sense this is something different, it is not a legislative day. Over this, andng the chief justice presides. This is to remind everyone this is not the daily political business in the senate. It is a trial, and they are in a sense senatorjurors. They are both. They have to keep that in mind, and this is one way to impress that on them. The impeachment of President Trump, watch unfiltered coverage of the senate trial on cspan , follows as it happens the process on demand at cspan. Org impeachment. John sopko, special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction testified before the House Foreign Affairs committee, outlining the findings and recommendations of recent agency reports, focusing on Lessons Learned from u. S. Reconstruction efforts in afghanistan