Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion On Threats To U.S. Political System 20240713

Impeachment inquiry and theres been testimony from a number of and ministries and officials and soon we will be moving to public hearings. At the same time as we head into the 2020 election there is concern about foreign interference in the security of our election infrastructure. There is a concern about hacking voter registers and databases, sowing societal discord and spreading disinformation. You should have copies of the constitution at each of your seats so if theres anything that comes up during the course of this conversation or you need to refer to that legal documents, feel free to do so. To help us think about these issues we have for distinguished experts. He writes a column for the wall street journal and is the author of type realism, a populace that to liberal democracy. Molly reynolds is a senior fellow and government studies in brookings and is the author of exceptions to the rule and the politics that filibuster limitations in the u. S. Senate. Elaine is a senior fellow on government studies and director of our center for effective Public Management and author of primary politics about the nominating process in the united states. [inaudible] and editorinchief of the coauthor with Susan Hennessey of a forthcoming book entitled on making the presidency, donald trump swore on the most powerful office. I want to start with bill. Bill has paid a lot of attention to the Public Opinion aspects of impeachment and there were three recent National Surveys that came out and they basically all showed 49 of the America Public want trump impeached and removed from office. But then bill wrote a post a few of his ago talking about how support for removal drops into some of the swing states. Bill, where are we now and what should people be watching for . Funny you should ask. [laughter] let me take two or three minutes to summarize the state of Public Opinion on these questions. There is to begin a majority support for the congressional inquiry into the president s conduct and it is averaging in the low to mid 50s if you look at most of the surveys. As you said when it comes to actually impeaching and removing the president the country is split almost exactly down the middle with support and opposition both in the mid to high 40s depending on exactly which a survey that you look at. Interestingly, if you look at change in Public Opinion on this question most of it occurred in the first week to ten days after the initial revelation on september 21 23 and has been quite stable since then. Additional information that the america people have received has not moved them one way or the other very much. There are very sharp and intensifying partisan divisions on this question. I just took a look at the latest average of polls on this issue corrected for poll quality that is what 538. Com does and it showed 84 of democrats in favor of impeaching and moving the president but only 11 of republicans endorsing that decision and independence stood at 45. Demographically you see the expected racial ethnic and gender divisions. You know, white americans are opposed to impeaching and removing the president but africanamericans are strongly in favor of it and latinos are in favor but much less strongly than African Americans and many more women then men in favor of removing him from office. You mentioned geography, darrell. There was a very interesting New York Times Siena College poll that came out a week ago that took a look at the six key swing states and found that public sentiment in those states was opposed. The majority of those voters were opposed to impeaching and removing the president. That is important because those swing states will be the key to President Trumps either successful or failed bid for reelection in 2020. What should you look for in the weeks ahead . Number one. Look for some significant change in President Trumps job approval. Theres a common question that survey reachers servers ask. Do you approve or disapprove of the job the president asked is doing . And here hot off the press from nbc and wall street journal survey are the results. In july of 201945 of americans approved of the job that donald trump is doing as president. In september a week before the matter broke wide open 45 of americans approved of the job that donald trump was doing as president. As of last week according to nbc wall street journal yes, 45 of americans approved job the president was doing. There is a concept in investing known as the market discount which is a measure of how much the market has taken into account, good or bad news and what this tells me is that this news hasnt really changed expectations among American People. They already understood that he was fully capable of this conduct and they have drawn the expected conclusion from that. Second, opinion among the republican rank and file that has not changed much either and up a two Percentage Points but as i indicated from a very low base to a very low total of just 11 right now and many surveys havent in single digits. Third thing to look for is a break in the ranks of republican elected officials that is at the national level. As you probably saw on the vote to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry, not a single republican member of the house of representatives voted in favor, not one. Obviously, the critical battlegrounds will be the senate and here i note for the record and my colleagues may have a different view of the matter we have not heard a peep on this question from the five senators in the most softly contested races, not from Corey Gardner in colorado, tom tillis in North Carolina, not from Susan Collins in the main, not from Martha Mcnally in arizona and not from joni ernst in iowa. Not a peep. What about the very prominent Senior Republicans who have elected to retire in 2020 . Not a peep from pat roberts, not a peep from [inaudible] am not a peep from Lamar Alexander and nothing, as far as i know from Johnny Isakson either. It is possible 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 the president from office would choose to vote in that direction but as of the current, as of right now, the signs are few and far between. Molly, looks like the house will move to public hearings and today we saw the release of the first two transcripts. We are likely to see more as tomorrow and the rest of the week on gold but tell us how these hearings will unfold in the house and what the rules will look like and how they will lay the groundwork for articles of impeachment. Where we are in the house is where ending the stage of gathering of evidence by the house and moving into a stage that will focus on presentation and consideration of that evidence. Weve seen over the past several weeks a series of depositions conducted by the house Intelligence Committee, working with the House Foreign Affairs and oversight committees. That stage has been the subject of much public and angst and there has been a lot of questions about the fact that its been behind closed doors and is worth remembering that in particular the clinton impeachment the last comparison case that we had is that investigative work of gathering of the evidence was largely done by ken starr and came to the house of representatives in hundreds of boxes and dealing with a different set of circumstances and were nearing the end of that process. Two of the transcripts were released this morning and there is a list of individuals that these committees that have been ducking these depositions would like to hear from. Its increasingly unlikely they will get compliance from those individuals and 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 aligned and we do have this series of witnesses who Committee Want to hear from whose incentives are not necessarily closely aligned so we are more willing to reach an agreement to cooperate. Once these series of depositions is complete as bill mentioned, we will move to one or more hearings and 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 we dont know how many there will be but there will be one or more and a couple features of those that are worth noting they will start with a longer than usual periods of questioning with controlled by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the Ranking Member of 245 minutes aside and that is much longer than certainly the usual five minutes in longer than the extended periods already provided on the house rules. Both the chairman and Ranking Member can choose to yield back time to staff so we may see staff counsel conduct that initial time of questioning and once those hearings are complete the chairman of the house Intelligence Committee will again working with the chairs of the Foreign Affairs committee will write a report on the material gathered and that is the other investigative materials that have been collected by house committees 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 and will start with an initial presentation of evidence and the president s counsel elected to ask questions during that as well as members of the committee themselves and there may be the presentation of additional evidence and may be additional witnesses and these are all things that provided for again in the procedures the house adopted last week and we dont exactly know how they will shake out but the Judiciary Committee will have a longer questioning time where they will be the opportunity for more questions and perhaps the most interesting thing that we might see procedurally in the portion of this is this possibility that the Judiciary Committee chair will be able to prevent the president s counsel from exercising some of the Due Process Rights afforded to him under the new procedures if the president quotes, unlawfully refuses to make witnesses available or produce documents. Again we dont know what that means or what that will look like but it is clear that the house is prepared to additional obstruction on the part of these exec at a branch and that they are attempting to set up procedures that would allow them to exert leverage. Again, its hard to know exactly how that will shake out and i do think we will continue to see a lot of process oriented complaints about how this is unfolding from above begins and weve said that so far going back to the letter that the white House Counsel sent to the hill indicating that the president will not be cooperating with the impeachment inquiry. There is certainly a potential for a fair amount more of angst and we now have a better sense of what we might expect if that happened procedurally over the next several weeks. Elaine, youve written about impeachments what we need to know about the Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, the clinton impeachment efforts and how might they inform the Current Situation . Lets start with Andrew Johnson. That was the first impeachment. The interesting thing about that was how momentous the issues were. This was 1868 and the union had just won the civil war and get theres a question of what to do with the other states. We had abolished slavery we have not guaranteed the right for the full Citizenship Rights of africanamericans and these issues when you go back and read much of this which ive been doing these issues are momentous Andrew Johnson also was a kind of accidental president because he was became president when lincoln was assassinated and had been a democrat but had been a prounion democrat which means that lincoln thought okay, you could see this was part of lincolns reconstruction idea lets have a bipartisan ticket. However his Publican Party never liked him very much and it was there public and party that impeached a republican president over these big issues. One of the things that comes up in the polling in Public Opinion is a lot of americans would rather deal with the president through the election process then to the impeachment process. Andrew johnson beat conviction by one vote in the senate but the timing is interesting here. The articles of impeachment were voted on in may of 1868 and the row publican convention convened in chicago in may of 1868 and from a 2026. They unanimously nominated former general Ulysses S Grant on the first ballot. Basically, they knew they would get rid of this guy. The rePublican Party had no intention of re nominating him and he thought he might get nominated by the democrats and got less than ten votes on the democratic side we see Public Opinion and we dont have two convict him because the voters and his own party will but the nixon impeachment is a more or less a classic but in terms of the weightiness of the matter there was clearly obstruction of justice and what we tend to forget is that lots and lots of people went to jail it took a long time. It took until august of 19744 the smoking gun tape to finger the president himself. Nixon hung on and hung on until that date and then it was a matter of days. Nixon resigned and of course once the tapes came out the rePublican Party, goldwater, leading the delegation walked into the oval office and said we dont have the votes to prevent your impeachment for the votes to prevent your conviction in the senate. It was gone. I think we need to be aware of just how quickly things can change. Finally, the impeachment of bill clinton was looking like this one and that the Impeachment Vote was absolutely a partisan vote. In the senate, however, there were real begins who sided with the democrats and of course he was not convicted but acquitted. The interesting thing there which there were two articles of impeachment and one was on perjury and on obstruction of justice but the fact of the matter is nobody considered this a constitutional issue. They were not rising to the high level of crimes and misdemeanors but added to the substance of it was the fact that Newt Gingrich who was speaker of the house when the articles were voted in the fall of 1998 resigned on january 3, 1999 because he was having an affair with a woman 23 years younger than himself while he was no marriage. Asked what . That took the air out of the republican balloon, so to speak. We then went to then congressman Bob Livingston was the acting speaker and was fully intended to run for speaker until guess what he was revealed to have been engaged in an extramarital affair and three other members of the housework. [laughter] all of a sudden this issue simply went away and bill clinton was not convicted but acquitted and actually went on to have fairly high Approval Ratings and do something no one excited to do which was to pick up democratic seats in the 1998 midterm election. Each one of these things tells us a little bit about what is coming. We can certainly cross marital infidelity off the list of impeachable offenses. That one weve got but we may also they both established as molly talked about there are precedents is now. President says in the house and president 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. As we do have some president and interesting politics and legal precedent. Then, youve coauthored a traffic article entitled trump is running out of defenses last week you had another one, trumps tantrums wont make impeachment go away. Over the weekend President Trump tweeted 75 times about impeachment so it seems to be on his mind to some extent. [laughter] right now hes fixated on covering the identity of the whistleblower so how should we evaluate what turf is doing in regard to impeachment . I want to answer this question with reference to the poll data that bill started with because you cant entirely understand the strategy of the president impeachment defense without reference to that poll data because that is the ultimate defense. The president has test driven four distinct defenses in sometimes a kind of indiscernible [inaudible] of all two of the four or three of the four sometimes discreetly and they are the following. The first is denial and the second is character assassination and the third is process compliance and forth is prerogative. Lets check through those individually. Each has mostly failed which brings us to the fifth and real defense. The first is denial of the facts. When the president started out by saying no quid pro quo the call was perfect and there is iterations of factual claims all of which i suppose the call is perfect is a matter of opinion but there was no quid pro quo but the factual defense have all basically proven to be untrue and it certainly fading away against the impressive quantity of witnesses who have come forward and testified. The second one which darrell you alluded to just before i particularly directed at the whistleblower but also directed at the human scone never jumpers and the individuals who have given testimony. This is a defense that has in general worked pretty well for the president. In the past hes managed to make a lot of people believe the fundamental problem with the russia invest found in the Russian Investigation were a bunch of text between an fbi agent and the fbi lawyer and he made jim call me into a villain in the eyes of a very large number of people and so this isa pretty substantial tool in his arsenal and its interesting to me it does not seem to be working in this context. But the whistleblower has not been outed and the anonymity is an interesting feature here. When fox news and some of the president s defenders went out or after the colonel last week even liz cheney had to repudiate that and say this was unacceptable. There is a dynamic there that the attackers are working less well than it had to in the past and the third is process and this is they are spending time on this and this is a reasonably effective strategy with respect to people who already dont want to believe it and want something to talk about but i dont see a lot of evidence that it is persuasive to anyone on the margins and the evidence of that is the data that bill excited about the degree to which people are not pre committed by dint of approval of the president S Performance to be supporting the impeachment process relatively few of them seem to be put off by shifty shift or claims of undue secrecy. Those complaints will fade further in relevance as more and more of the transcripts are released and more and more of the hearings take place in public with reasonable time for people to ask questions and raise the concern. That brings me to the final and i think the real defense which is an assertion that this is all a fine thing for the president to do. When the president says i have the absolute right to ask the ukrainians to investigate corruption what he is really sane, i dare you to say its unacceptable not as i think the real defense and as the president the support for the impeachment process approaches the president s disapproval numbers i think we get the actual test of that defense which is whether, as bill described, that 40 some odd in some polls, some as low as 38 and some as high as ready four, 45 what whether that low 40s average stays and that is an acceptance of this latter defense that is fine if trump does these things. If you start seeing cracks in that that is the surest sign that the president s defense is not working. As long as that number holds the president s strategy and ultimate Defense Strategy which is to hold enough base support that it is politically impossible or dangerous for republican elected officials to break with him and will be an effective Defense Strategy irrespective of how ridiculous the arguments may sound to any or all of you. Bill, if i could put ask you to put on your profit hat and respond to an event you seen halt the looks now and we know historically what current pulling looks to what we saw with nixon and clinton but moving forward what, if anything, has a probability of changing the current dynamic. Or is it likely to stay pretty consistent . Youve invited me to make a fool of myself on National Television off mac if i did not work for you i would refuse to answer it. [laughter] no executive privilege in this panel. No, im talking about [inaudible] my judgment, for what it is worth, is that what comes out during the public phase of the hearings would have to add quite significantly to the publics baseline knowledge in order to move the needle significantly. And go down sharply over whether they start well and never judge. Thats one thing to look for. It is possible i suppose something as earthshaking as the smoking gun tapes would urge, i wouldnt bet on it but obviously no one can rule out that possibility. My own view for what its worth is that the extraordinary increase in the polarization that has occurred in the last generation is going to limit the response of the American People taken as a whole to Additional Information to the extent that Additional Information contradicts their overall worldview of the president. We tend to forget the opinion of Richard Nixon and support for his impeachment and removal which began at 19 in may 1973 and ended at 57 at the end of july of 1974. That was during the period and the Political Parties were much more polarized than they are n now. The two critical arguments of impeachment between the third and 40 of the republicans in the house Judiciary Committee voted for them. I would bet money against that. My number of republicans supporting any articles of impeachment in the house is zero. Im ready to be corrected by an expert, but just for the record that is my estimate. So, the long and short of it is i can imagine a big change, but i think the odds are against it. If the house votes to impeach trump, the articles will go to the senate so tell us how that part of the process will work and then also what is your sense in terms of the majority leader and how he will lead the process in the south . When we think about the process in the house and the senate is important to delineate the things we know and things we dont know the current rules for conducting the trial are phrased in mandatory terms. The rules are littered with the word shall see also know the senate can waive or alter the rules to change them and it would require a two thirds vote, but they have the ability to change a specific parts or set them aside with fewer votes than that. We also know that just as the constitution doesnt specifically prescribed a lot of what needs to happen so when the house voted last week to approve certain procedures they were not required to do so under the constitution or the rules of the house. So if that is the case, those do not similarly require certain aspects of an impeachment trial much beyond the chief justice must preside and senators have to take an oath at the start. We know that under the Current Senate impeachment rules, the chief justice will be presiding and will rule on the questions of evidence in the subject to appeal from the senate like most things. What we dont know is a lot of the details of how exactly this will play out and the point that he was just making about the rise in polarization there are some important parts of what happened during the impeachment trial that were made by the senate on the unanimous basis so basically in january of 1999 when the senate was trying to decide how to proceed with the trial, they said all 100 senators down and said we are good to figure out how to do this in a way that is respectful of the senate and the Senate Traditions and they came to a unanimous agreement on the procedural questions. The idea of that in the Current Senate to be filled in on the question of the majority leader specifically, i think to the point bill made earlier about the senators behalf yet to hear from that are in close reelection races and some Senate Republicans that are retiring thing to me where they stand to be most influential absinthe the big change to vote for conviction. What does the trial need to look like if you like th to feel liks fulfilling its responsibility as a part of the process. And i think there are a number of ways that can play out but i dont know how it will. To the extent we may see some of these republicans that bill mentioned earlier played a role in what happens its going to be in the process of working with mcconnell and then working with the minority leader to figure out what wealth of detailed parts of this look like. You mentioned the nixon impeachment. We of course remember the famous lawsuit involving the tapes and they ruled they should be released and that produced the smoking gun tapes. Right now there are current lawsuits involving the principle of executive privilege and we know thereve been a number of Administration Officials have refused to testify before the house unrelated to the impeachment but we have a court that ruled trump must release eight years of tax returns so the question i have on the trump impeachment how do you see the role of the court unfolding either one on the impeachment front or is it not going to take place in the next one or two months and therefore not be relevant, or what is your expectation going into next years election . That is a great question. They are admitted to having the phone call and hes absolutely right this will be sold on the appropriateness of the phone call and whether people think its appropriate or not. If nixon it was a long spot getting to nixon and it was critical. I dont see the Supreme Court having as big an impact on the impeachment trial. They have to release the tax returns and the reason i think thats important is i if it goek to the question bill answered. What if anything would break loose the public, and of course one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Trump Campaign and presidency has been his actual financial status. Nobody in new york where i lived for many years can figure out where his money comes from. The finances in fact revealed something surprising. That could be the sort of thing that would move the public payment. Of course this ukrainian thing is only part of a bigger history with russia. On the one hand you could say they have the right to change American Foreign policy and bring it in a different direction. On the other hand, this has been a strange way of going back to changing the policy that we have all been wondering for some years now with their and there is something going on and what break that loses the tax returns finally coming to life. Mentioning the role of chief Justice Roberts would you think he will be like as a trial officer saiso that he can provide ate senate and trial. For john roberts, you try in a polarized environment to keep the courts somewhat insulated from the political fray. Having to go into the senate and sit there while people threw food at each other is a kind of mortification i ensure he is not looking forward to. Im also confident that in his dignified institution of this kind of way he would want to do impeccably so remember this is the guy that when he flubbed a word in Barack Obamas inauguration, he went to the white house the next day to do the oath of office a second time, to make sure that they had gotten literally every word of it correct. How do you preside at a senate trial that is going to be as ugly and as bitter as this one in an environment that is quite toxic involving a highly toxic personality. And not to grossly sta too grose institution that you represent. Heres the other thing, bill rehnquist the president ial debate coprocessor walked into a novel solution to the problem which was then majority leader and minority leader i believe that it was trent lott and tom daschle they went in a back room and came up with a very detailed list of procedures and answers to all that they presented to the caucuses and the result is that the entire tryout proceeded on the basis of unanimous consent. All of the questions were kind of resolved in that way. You can pretty safely say they presided that really didnt do anything which was i think fine with him. I think you can pretty safely predict that that is not going to happen here and that the two sides are not going to agree on a great deal and that means john roberts at least in the first instance will have to issue a lot of ruling. So i think that actually makes the problem worse that he will be initially deciding the answers to a bunch of questions subject i believe, correct me if im wrong but i believe the word is the presiding officer rules and then can be overruled by the vote of the senate. You can imagine a situation in which roberts kind of upsets everybody in the rulings and then devote for the judgments i think it is going to be a difficult situation for the chief justice honestly, and i judging also begin with respect to the toxicity, you can really imagine the president doing this for every ruling that goes against. So that isnt a sort of attractive moment if you imagine those it isnt an attractive moment for comedy between the branches or for the sort of relationship between the executive branch and the courts institutionally. So it is an interesting question and we will learn a great deal about john roberts and his famous Political Savvy about how he navigates the situation. And on that point, we remember during the hearings i think trump is actually calling advice to the nominee answering the various breaks. Just wondering if trump would do the same thing with the justice. How does impeachment compared to other issues such as the state of the economy, cultural issues from immigration of trade war and International Affairs . [laughter] another call for prediction. Thanks, boss. Let me just in no particular order, on the one hand and when you listen to the reports about what the Democratic Candidates are hearing as they go around the early states they are all saying they are not getting a lot of questions about impeachment. They sounded surprised that they havent gotten more questions or demands on impeachment. So, is it possible that even among democrats this issue has a lower priority and will have less of an influence on the outcome van many people in the beltway suppose. I mean, we are focused on this issue to an extent tha this is typical of the American People as a whole. But, we should keep the essential fact in mind, and that is if the president is impeached by the house but not by the rules of the senate, he will be the first president in American History to be running for the reelection with the sequence of events in the backdrop. Richard nixon was in the second term, bill clinton was in his second term. Andrew johnson wasnt going anywhere. There has been a widely analytical debate with people taking surprising side of the question of whether the impeachment that the non conviction turned out to be a decisive disadvantage for al gore in the year 2000 because in effect he was running for this third term although he refused to admit that fact and we can continue the debate about this. Some people argue that but for the clinton affair, gore would have been elected fairly easily. Others including a lot of Political Science models say that the division in the popular vote was almost exactly what would have been predicted in the absence of that and so the reasonable example for which we draw some lessons yield no clear lessons. It is also the case that assuming even a relatively slow turntable, the senate trial will be over by early to mid february. I cannot see it stretching out much longer then that certainly by the end of february, which means that there will be between eight to nine months by the end of the trial and the actual vote. There are times for not only passions to cool, they will simplwouldsimply be displaced ur objects and areas. That is another reason to believe that it may not turn out to be decisive. And i go back to the point with which i began. Donald trump is what the late tom wolfe would have called a man in full and who he is for better or worse is a matter of public inspection and Public Knowledge that i wonder how much even this cataclysmic event is going to add to that. It is possible that a house impeachment on the party lines and at the acquittal on the party lines will change a lot of peoples minds but my hunch is that it wont. How do you think it will affect the senate we know that mcconnell has a very narrow majority at this point and several people have mentioned that there are a number of republicans that are up and democrats as well. Do you think it will be decisive one way or another . It is it is a good question. I tend to agree with bills analysis of the effect on the president ial race and i would also remind folks that increasingly the outcomes of the Senate Elections are correlated with what happens in the state in the president ial race. Where it is a total college goes to the president ial candidate of one party in a senate seat was when i see other parties or to the extent people, voting behavior is correlated in that they dont split tickets anymore. A lot of the adults in what is happening and the president ial level both filtered out of the senate. Thats not to say there are not some senate races where this could matter. It is worth remembering that the senators are up for the reelection in some of these states, you know, theyve taken different approaches to navigating the political challenges that are presented to them. We mentioned senator tillis before who in general continue to talk to the right in North Carolina and then you have folks that have a more moderate voting record in the senate this session and in part for the credentials and the independents, so it will be difficult for some of the senators to navigate these particular waters but at the end of the day what is going to happen for them in that race is going to be about what happens to the president ial race. If that were the case, cory gardner and susan collin collinh both the toast because donald trump isnt going to win any of those. Susan collins i think that is why we havent seen her on the impeachment questions but other things that are meant to differentiate herself. Then colorado has been trending more or less. The democrats path to taking control of the senate isnt impossible but its tricky in part because they also have to do things like defend the seat in alabama. You have written on the threats to the integrity of the election in terms of the Voter Registration databases and using social media to the discord spreading disinformation through facebook and twitter. What are the greatest threats you worry about as we head into 2020 . We have an ebook coming out on the topic soon. For the actual voting day information theres been quite a lot of movement in the state. More than half the states now have paper ballots and some protocols for the risk limiting that can be done after the election. Congress appropriated money last time around. After a lot of groaning and a delay, the appropriated more money for the cycle. So im the one hand, i think that there has been a huge amount of progress since 2016 on the account itself. What i think is more problematic is the generic issue of the disinformation and what i would call digital voter suppression. Here the russians, chinese, iranian, everybody in this day have gotten more and more sophisticated. I think that the platforms like facebook have not been able to catch up with this and have bought filled anybody with confidence that they can control this or beat out the bad actors. I would applaud twitter for getting out of this altogether, which they did. But i think in the disinformation, we are constantly playing catchup. Years ago when i was in the government, we worked on drug interdiction etc. And of course what you learn about all these things is the minute that you find out a loophole someplace and where drugs are getting in, guess what, they go to another place. Its just a constant things. This is what we are facing when it comes to the disinformation. The hope i have is that the voters themselves would get increasingly sophisticated and skeptical about the stuff they are seeing on mine. I dont know if there is any way we can judge that at this point but given how quickly the campaigns move, it is probably our only hope because i dont have much hope that the disinformation part of the interference can be countered by the fbi normal legal means. It comes and then disappears into thin air. Im hoping the voters will be appropriately skeptical. One last question then well open uwewill open up for any qus or comments from the audience. Tomorrow the trial begins in a noted some of the reactions that we saw in that report was based on evidence but apparently the prosecutors wanted to present in the trial. Are there any surprises that you think would change the current political dynamic coming out of the trial packs the way you asked the question, the answer is no the surprises are unlikely to change the current dynamic. That said, there are things we are going to learn in the presentation of evidence. There are reductions in the report that appeared to relate to the roger stone trial that dont involve the president personally receiving information about wiki leaks and those in particular the scenes which hes driving to the airport and he is told about a pending release and this is most of the sentences around this are redacted they think because of the roger stone case. We are going to learn some interesting stuff about not the hacking of the emails, but the interactions between the Trump Campaign foe about the distribution of the emails directly or indirectly. Well if the they get differenceo anybody, surely not. The people who are concerned about this as bill described, the discount has already been people know exactly what they think of donald trump and information handling the emails in the 2016 election and i dont think short of roger stone standing up and saying yes, i get it i dont think it is going to change the way that a lot of people think about this. Lets open up the floor to questions right up front there is a gentle man with a question and a microphone coming over if you can give your name and organization please. I would like somebody to address the issue of how the chords can be used to play this out beyond the point it makes much difference in other words if i have two decisions threejudge panels that the Circuit Court, the losing side would probably appeal to the circuit into the losing side of that level would appeal to the Supreme Court. The nixon tapes case took about 90 days to go from start to finish. Im wondering what the scenario would be in this particular instance. Thank you. Ive got bad news for you which is litigation is slow and it is not a process that is designed to mediate realtime political disputes between the legislature and executive branch and it will not play that role efficiently. Thats the bad news. Heres the good news. It might have a useful role to play anyway and the reason is twofold. The process is dragging on for not addressing efficiently doesnt necessarily mean not addressing it at all. In a second, it is important to establish some law in this area so that it is impossible from the future to be quite as in ast administration as being of congressional subpoenas. One of the problems traditionally the way i guess some of you are old enough to remember when the presidency was a little bit more normal [laughter] the way the presidency and congress resolved the issues wasnt through litigation through the combination of the threats of litigation and threats of withholding legislative consent to the judicial nominee or executive nominee or withholding an appropriation request or some leverage within the normal four corners of the separation of powers. So the result was immense numbers of disputes got resolved every president ial term without a lot of formal wall being created so you have a branch where looking at these questions and a traditional executive branch looking at the questions that are very dimly related to one another and the results with the kind of push and pull of politics. That doesnt work anymore because now you have one site that says we wont negotiate over it at all. We are going to defy all of the subpoenas. That forces you to go to court and one thing about going to court is that it does actually make small. If you find out on madame cannot simply refuse to show up, which is by the way i will do a prediction, the courts are not going to say its fine to just refuse to show up. But the data that there is a authoritative judicial finding on that it is much harder for the next person to view that so it is important for that reason. And then finally, there is one other thing that can speed things up significantly, which is that unlike an Appellate Court to which you have the appeal, you litigate at the District Court level and then have the right to appeal to the dc circuit at the second, but the Supreme Court you dont have the right to appeal to. They have discretionary review over all these cases and everybody is assuming that the Supreme Court is going to hear all these cases and im very confident that that will not happen. They may hear one of them, but the larger foster of the Supreme Court is very likely to let the Appellate Courts be the final word on some of this stuff. That is a level of prediction i dont get into. [laughter] let me give you an example of one i think is probably the other direction. I am not sure if i were a justice that i would be particularly interested in hearing one of these cases over the president s tax returns. I would wait for a situation in which there is some sort of meaningful position in the lower court where there is a real life question that requires you to get involved. The bad news is that it is going to be slow. The good news is that it is going to accelerate. I would agree with the diagnosis that the difficulty on the part of Congress Accusing the court as the means for advancing congressional oversight roles in the short term we knew that before this episode. So what i would add is one of the major consequences of the shift in the focus to what happened with the ukrainians is that it opened up a different and new set of witnesses from congress because they do not have the same incentives to align himself with the president and so on one level and again i agree on the kind of macro level about why the fights matter quite a bit but in terms of advancing the narrative of where weve ended up, some of the the court cites are less important than they would have been if we didnt have this new set, for the past eight we. Over here there is a gentle man with a question. I have a comment and question. The comment is for the two of you at least. Al gore lost the election because he ran away from eight years of peace and prosperity that is my view. The question is assume i am donald trump and im looking at all of this and i know nothing has happened beforthat has happs affected my popularity, my rating and Approval Rating as president. I say to myself six months of this enables me to attack the democrats because im going to be acquitted in the senate. Six months enables me to attack them from wasting the congress is time and the peoples time on impeachment when they could be working on helping me build the wall and doing all the things a lot of americans who dont like trump care about. Can you comment on that and i will give it to any member of the panel. I would be happy to comment on that. You stated my worst fear come to fear that hathe fear that has ln numerous occasions to write publicly about why i thought this from a political standpoint moving to a full formal impeachment process would be a mistake for democrats. I havent changed my view of the matter. No matter what the next political effect is going to be, i cant tell you if. But i am afraid that democrats think that this will be a big political plus for them are fooling themselves and the information that has come out in the past week about attitudes in the swing states only fortified that judgment. Yes, on the ideal there is a Woman Holding her hand up. Thank you. I have a question about ukraine in this process. Mr. Trump almost every day says [inaudible] there was no pressure on him. So, what is the possible reaction for ukraine in this process to save relationships with a Strategic Partner in the question about prediction, what could possibly go wrong . Can ukraine become again with or withoutcome and influence are in the domestic politics . Great question. What can go wrong. Many things. [laughter] i suspect lots of us have a view on this question. So, let me just offer a few thoughts at random. What weve learned just in the past couple of suggest that there is an important piece of what we call the back story and that is the deep antipathy to ukraine that was born of the struggles in 2016, aided and abetted by some of his aides and former Campaign Manager paul manafort, blaming, trying to shift the blame from russia to ukraine for efforts to undermine the campaign, and as a result of this the new president has found himself in an almost impossible situation. Thats the bad news. The good news, and we saw this in a very practical and effective way in september is that the congress of the united states, both democrats and republicans in much more sympathetic to ukraine and much less sympathetic to russia than the president so they made it clear to the white house having authorized the military assistance for ukraine, having appropriated the funds that the white house better release those two ukraine and it took a few days of bipartisan outrage and pressure to get almost 400 million released. I think in the battle for Public Opinion, ukraine enjoys a very significant advantage over russia. Most americans are aware of the fact russia sees crimea and the forces have initiated and continued an assault against the unity and territorial integrity, and theres not a lot of sympathy for the russian side of the story. I think that if mr. Zelinsky is smart, hell make sure there is a steady stream of senior officials talking with Senior Republicans and democrats and perhaps not worrying so much about the white house. Frankly i dont think theres anything that he can do to overcome President Trumps antipathy. I say that with a deep regret. To procedural questions. The presiding justice might have the authority to rule the vote is confidential and second, is the required number to convict two thirds of the senate or two thirds of the votes present . The second question i believe is two thirds of those present in the senate itself. There are relatively few Senate Procedures that apply to those chosen and sworn. On the question of could the chief justice rule in that the vote would be secret that articulated earlier and i mention as well the chief justice questions have to be put before the chief justice. He doesnt get to sort of decide the questions he rules on and what emotions are. The question whether the vote could be under the existing rule, many of the deliberations will be secret but is a kind of default position. The question of whether the vote itself could be secret runs into one of the few questions prescribed in the constitution itself which allows one fifth of the senate to force a recorded vote. I dont see a possibility putting aside things if it was secret it would be a different story. I have one small thing to add which is senator Arlen Specter didnt vote yes or no but not proven and so you can imagine some senators are voting on a variety of things and then chief justice will have to decide how to account for that vote. At the end of the day i dont think that the ultimate outcome is going to come down on this and of course there is the question bill brought up some weeks ago in the wall street journal piece which is if it is a vote to convict or acquit sales would there be a censure vote for which its 50 plus one as opposed to an Impeachment Vote so the other question is then would they move from that vote to a censure vote and the reason i think that is important to keep in mind is weve talked about of public politics and opinion but there is another issue here which is congress has to decide who they want to lay down some markers about how president s can behave. Do they want to give up this much and let this president s behavior on this issue establish a precedent for future president s and that is a bigger issue that isnt likely to be an issue that the public will give much guidance on. And yet i think it is the kind of issue that would result in a profile in courage here or there in the senate and unexpected votes. As i remarked a couple of days ago there is a reason why high profile of courage is such a great book such a short book. [laughter] you can see we have been back and forth on this a lot. [laughter] near the back. Im the ceo of the developed and end they would like to know how you see the role of active intelligence. The role of Artificial Intelligence. Im not sure i see the relevance of that in terms of how the election is going to play out. In terms of disinformation and ai it did play a role in disseminating false narratives and i would expect a continuation of that strategy going forward, but its hard to prove the election is caused by things like that. I dont think the 2016 e. Election was decided on things like that or that the 2020 will be decided on that basis either. Let me add my Worst Nightmare to that answer. Many of you have probably been following the development of what are called deep fakes which is an application Artificial Intelligence to especially video recording such that it becomes increasingly easy to manufacture videos of public figures saying things that they never said andt becomes harder and harder to detect. My nightmare about 2020 is that there will be a proliferation of such video interventions into the president ial campaign and as the old saying goes, the lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth gets out of bed. Is a microphone coming up right from behind you. My name is valerie and im a student at washington, Communications Public relations nature along with college double major. I have a question specifically for mr. Bell. He mentioned the dynamic can change with the ratings changing in Television Journalism. We hear a lot about fake news right now and we have Television Journalism judged on all sides. How can we apply the media video theories of the reliability or credibility of the information to the public or the use of the drama is that which would swing them one way or the other way towards the impeachment in that 45 . Thank you for the question. The microphone was a little fuzzy. Im not sure that i heard the full question. Could you just in one or two sentences restate the heart of the question . I know you prepared a question that see if you can speak straight into the microphone so that i can hear it. Im not as young as you are. What im asking is will the public, that 45 opinion, with Television Journalism and the video series will not swing the vote or change, while the use of the drama and pessimism thats already in society towards trusting television, trusting News Networks will that be something that swings the vote especially with President Trump saying everything about fake news . Obviously im not sure, but here are a couple of sobering thoughts. First of all, there was a survey result i saw last week and if i were back in my office i could come up with the accurate citation for you. As i said i found it deeply disturbing. Americans were asked do you think with President Trump has done is unusual or do most politicians behave this way. Six out of ten said most behave this way and this pervasive cynicism about the conduct is one of the things that you are shoring up the president s approval because a lot of people who think that he is quote unquote guilty as charged think it is business as usual or doesnt rise to the level of something the president should be removed from office for. The second sort of discouraging note is that people have divided up based on news outlets they find trustworthy and credible and that maps on the partisan preferences into so disturbingly, few americans over the next year will turn to sources they dont agree with for Additional Information but this suggests to me they are much more likely to be reinforced in the current view than they are to have them changed. The only thing that can change that is something that occurs in a neutral medium like cspan which is trusted across the board and that would have to be simply watching public hearings and saying i didnt know that it was this bad. Are you just sucking up to them because they are broadcasting . Ive been on a four times in the past week. Sucking up to them isnt something i feel necessary. Right here is a question. Theres a microphone coming. It was mentioned earlier Party Divides our deeper now than they were in the past. However if we listen to the news recently especially with the crisis going on between the kurdish and the turks, we have seen people from both sides of the political spectrum agree that the actions were deplorab deplorable. Do you think that this could lead to possible cross party teamwork during the impeachment . No. Thank you. [laughter] you ask yes or no and get a yes or no answer. Partisanship isnt perfect even perfect partisanship is not perfect. It is however remarkably pervasive and the striking thing about the withdrawal announcement is that it came in the midst of the ukraine matter and defended the president s base including the key members of both houses of congress and it affected their relationship with the ongoing scandal not at all. You actually picked an example that we have a kind of beardslee control cast of. So if this were a situation where okay they have to defend him over here but then he pierces the bubble from the air goes out of the balloon and it has a kind of cross pollination effect with willingness to consider the impeachment process seriously, surely what has happened over the last three weeks would have been the place we solve that and we didnt see it at all. I think we have time for one more question if you can get the microphone over to him. Its said to vote not to impeach the president. What in your view will be the longterm impact and consequence on the rePublican Party and its popularity and on the Democratic Party . That is a great closing question here. I think that very shortly after that we will have an answer because we will have an election. The vote which is more than likely at this point not to convict him, then i think actual they will turn to the 2020 elections and we will see if there is damage to the democrats or if things simply go on. This is a preceden president ths unique in many aspects but one particularly relevant. Hes never passed 50 approval. There is a lopsided aspect of this because of course california is skewered in the whole country because its gotten so big and favorable to the democrats and trump is so hostile to california he doesnt even want to get money for the wildfires out there so this is an odd situation. But the fact of the matter is we will see in 2020 if there is a democrat elected, i do believe the democrats will take the house and then i think that there will be a selfexamination and the rePublican Party. They have their highest levels of support and trump has the highest level of approval among people 65 and older. They have consistently not done well in the younger portion of the population with the people in the middle kind of splitting 50 50. So, if in fact this plays out and trump loses and the democrats take the senate, then i think there is a turning point in the rePublican Party, but bear this in mind, the Political Parties dont tend to die. They just tend to kind of morphed into something else. So i think there will be a rePublican Party around, it will just probably look different if this happens. This sounds like a good question for all of us. And let me just offer some concluding reflections. I think what is at stake is the future of the rePublican Party but more than the future of the rePublican Party, heres something for all of us to think about. The American Republic is now in its 230th year. In the first 184 years of our existence, we had one incident of impeachment. In the last 46 years, we have had three. Is this telling us something . My fear is that it is. We have had an unusual number of president s elected during this period with less than a majority of the popular vote. Weve had two president s that have taken office with less than a plurality of the popular vote and when you pile that on top of the extraordinary increase in polarization that occurred during this period, i think that it would be over the top to talk about a legitimation crisis but this is pointing to deep systemic problems that all americans, republicans, democrats and independents and the leaders thereof are going to have to think about very seriously in the years ahead. Im not sure how long we can go on this way without risking serious damage to the entire constitutional order, not just one political party. On that note, i want to thank bill and elaine, mal molly and n for sharing your views and thank you for your quick questions. Ask [applause] [inaudible conversations]. Cspan campaign 2020 team is traveling across the country visiting states of the 2020 president ial race asking voters what issues they want to be addressed during the campaign. Something i want them to address is a clearcut answer in discovering what options are visible to prevent these disasters from happening. My question i have for the canada, how are you going to combat the rising prices and drugs and healthcare. To make sure theyre focusing on criminal Justice System and how we can free ability to in the community and Law Enforcement and the incarceration rates, how can we help those who are attacked by the heroin epidemic and focus those on poverty. Its also really important to focus on health and in delinquency. I feel voices from the campaign to, part of the battleground states to herto her. At 2 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan, fbi director christopher joins other intel officials on domestic threats. On cspan2, the senate is back at 10 00 a. M. Eastern to consider judicial nominations for the u. S. Court of federal claims at the ninth Circuit Court of appeals. And on cspan3, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee takes a look at Cyber Threats and preventing data breaches. That gets underway at 2 30 p. M. Eastern. Next, a look at legislative proposal related to Outdoor Recreational use of federal land. Officials from the u. S. For service and impair your Department Going Outdoor Recreation industry representatives to testify on the impact of Outdoor Recreation on local economies and efforts to streamline the permitting process of use of public lands. The Senate Hearing is just over 90 minutes. [inaudible conversations] good morning, everyone, the committee will come to order. Happy halloween. Happy world series, everybody stayed up late watching the game. Kind of exciting