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

Next, a discussion on trends to the u. S. Political system. Topics include the impeachment inquiry, President Trumps use of social media and the role of the courts. From the Brookings Institution this is 90 minutes. [inaudible] i would like to welcome me to our forum on impeachment, foreign interference and Election Security and 2020. It has been several weeks since Speaker Pelosi launched the impeachment inquiry. Theres been testimony from a number of Administration Officials and soon we will be moving to public hearings. At the same time as we head into the 2020th election, there is concern about foreign i interference in the security of our election infrastructure. There is a concern about Voter Registrationon databases, sewing societal discord, and spreading disinformation. You should have copies of the constitution at each of your seat, s so if theres anything that comes up during the course of this conversation where you need to refer to the legal document, feel free to do so. To s help us think about these issues we have four distinguish experts, billav galston is the senior fellow of governance studies at brookings. He writes a column for the wall street journal and is the author of antipluralism, a populist populist threat to liberal democracy. Molly reynolds is a senior fellow at brookings and she is the author of exceptions to the rule, the politics of filibuster limitations in u. S. Senate. Elaine kamarck is a senior fellow in governance studies and director of our center for effective Public Management and is the author of primary politics about the nominating process in the United States. And then witt is is a senior fellow at brookings, and editorinchief. Hes also the coauthor with Susan Hennessy of a a forthcomg book entitled unmaking the presidency, Donald Trumps war 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. They were three recent National Surveys that came out, nbc, ac and fox news, and basically all showed 49 of the American Public what trumpf impeached and removed from office. Then bill wrote a post a few days agohe talking about how support for removal drops in some of the swing states. Bill, where are we now and what should people be watching for . Well, funny you should ask, darrell. [laughing] let me just take two or three minuteses to summarize the state of Public Opinion on these questions. There is, to begin, majorities for the congressional inquiry into the president s conduct. Its averaging in the low to mid 50s, if you look at most of the surveys. As you said, when it comes to actuallyve impeaching and removg the president , the country is split almost exactly down the middle with support and opposition both in the midto high 40s, depending on exactly which survey that you look at. Interestingly, if you look l at change in Public Opinionni on ts question, most of it occurred in the first weekqu to ten days afr the initial revelation on september 23, and has been quite stable since then. Additional information that the American People have received has not moved them one way or another very much. There are very sharp and intensifying partisan divisions on this question. I just took a look at the latest average of polls on this issue, corrected for paul quality. Thats what 538. Com does, and it showed 84 of democrats in favor of impeaching and removing the president. Only 11 of republicans endorsing that position, and independents stood at 45. Demographically, you see the expected racial, ethnic and gender divisions. You know, white americans on balance are opposed to impeaching and removing the president. Africanamericans are strongly in favor of it. Latinos in favor but much less strongly than africanamericans, and many more women than men in favor of removing him from office. You mention geography, darrell. There was a very interesting New York Times siena collegege paula 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, a majority of those voters were opposed to impeaching and removing the president. Thats 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 very common question that survey researchers ask. Do you approve or disapprove of the job that president x is doing as president . And hear high off the press from nbc and wall street journal survey are f the results. In july of 2019, 45 of americans approved of the job that donald trump was 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. And as of last week, according to nbc wall street journal, yes, or 5 of americans approved of the job the president was doing. Theres a concept in investing known as the market discount which is a measure of how much the market has already taken into account, gorder bad news. And what this tells me is that this news hasnt really changed settled expectations among the American People very much. They have already understood that he was fully capable of this conduct, and they have drawn the expected conclusion from that. Second thing to look for, opinion among the republican rankandfile. That hasnt changed very much either. Its up a few percentage points, but as i indicated from a very low base to a very low total of just 11 right now, and many surveys have it in single digits. Third thing to look for, a break in the ranks of republican elected officials at the national level. As you probably saw on the vote to authorize a formal impeachmentt inquiry, not a single republican member of the house of representatives voted inin favor, not one. Now obviously the critical battleground would be the senate, and here i just note for the record, and my colleagues may have a different view of the matter, we havent heard a peep on this question from the five senators in the mostly toughly contested races, not from cory gardner, colorado. Not from thom tillis in North Carolina. Not from Susan Collins in maine. Notot from Martha Mcsally in arizona, and not from joni ernst in iowa. Not a peep. And what about that very prominent Senior Republicans who have elected to retire in 2020 . Not a peep from pat roberts. Not a peep from mike enzi. Not a peep from laura alexander, and nothing as far as i know from Johnny Isakson either. So it is possible that the would 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, which used to vote in that direction. But as of the current, as of right now, the signs of that are few and far between. Okay, thank you. Molly, looks like the house sn will move to public hearings, today we saw the release of the first two transcripts. We are likely to seewo more as tomorrow and the rest of the week unfold, but tell us how the six will unfold in the house. What the rulesin look like and w they will lay the groundwork for articles of impeachment. Great. Where we are in the house in the process, kind of ending the stage of gathering of evidence by the house and moving into a stage that will focus on the presentation and consideration of thatoc evidence. So weve seen over the past several weeks a series of depositions conducted by the house Intelligence Committee, working with the House Foreign Affairs and the House Oversight committees. That stage has been the subject of much republican angst. Theres been a lot of discussions about the fact its been behind closed doors. I think its worth remembering that in particular the clinton impeachment, the last comparison case that wee have, that kind of investigative work, that gathering of the evidence was largely done by ken starr and came to thenc house of representatives in hundreds of boxes. We are dealing with a different set of circumstances here and we are nearing the end of that process as darrell mention, two of the transcripts of depositions were released this morning. There is a list of individuals thatat these committees have ben conducting these depositions would still like to hear from. I think its increasingly unlikely that they willro get compliance from those individuals. The individuals they have yet to hear from who they would like to generally fall into the category of folks whose incentives are more closely aligned with those of the president. We do have a series of witnesses whose committee wanted to hear from, whose incentives were not necessarily closely allied with the president s so we are more willing to reach some kind of an agreement to cooperate. Once these series of depositions is complete, as darrell mentioned, we will move to one or more hearings, open hearings in the house Intelligence Committee. The resolution that the house agreed to last week that set out some procedural parameters for when we s go next provided for e hearing spirit we dont know how many there will be, but they would be one or more. A couple features of those that are worth noting. They will start with a longer than usual. Of questioning controlled by the chairman of Intelligence Committee and the Ranking Member, up to 45co minutes per side. Thats much longer than certainly the usual five minutes and even longer bad the extended periods that were already provided for in the house rule. Both the chairman and the Ranking Member can choose to yield back time to staff. So we made will see staff counsel thatha an initial period of questioning. Once those hearings are complete, the chairman of house Intelligence Committee with again working with the chairs of the Foreign Affairs oversight committees will write a report on the material that has been gathered. That, and other investigative materials that have been collected by house committees will then be transferred to the Judiciary Committee which hased jurisdiction over president ial impeachment. There may be additional witnesses. These are all provided for. With the rules the house adopted we dont know how they will shake out. The committee will also have this longer questioning period where there will be the opportunity for more questions. Perhaps the most interesting thing that we might see procedurally in the Judiciary Committee is this possibility that the Judiciary Committee chair will be able to prevent the president s council from exercising some of the Due Process Rights afforded to him under these new procedures if the president unlawfully refuses to make witnesses available or produces documents so again, we dont know exactly what that means or what exactly it will look like but its clear that the house is, democrats are prepared for additional obstruction on the part of the executive branch and they are at least attempting to set up some procedures that would allow them to get her leverage. Again the courts know exactly how that will shake out. I do think we will continue to see a lot of process oriented complaints about how this is unfolding from republicans. Weve seen a lot of that so far going back to the letter that the white House Counsel sent to the hill indicating that the president would not be cooperating with the impeachment inquiry. Gso theres certainly potential or a fair amount more conflict and angst but we have now a better sense of what we might expect to happen procedurally over the next couple of weeks elaine, youve written about the history of impeachment so what do we need to know about the , johnson and nixon impeachment effort and how might they informed the current effort . Lets start with Andrew Johnson, that was the first impeachment and the interesting thing about that was how moment is the issue were. In 1868. The union had just won the civil war and yet there was the question what do you do with the Southern States . We had abolished slavery but we hadnt guaranteed rights to full citizenship of africanamericans so the issues they are when you go back and read much of this which ive beendoing lately, the issues are just momentous. Andrew johnson also was a kind of accidental president because he became president when lincoln was assassinated. He had been a democrat but he had been a prounion democrat which means lincoln sort of thought okay, you can see this was part of lincolns reconstruction idea. Lets have a kind of bipartisan ticket. However, the Republican Party never liked him very much and it was the Republican Party that impeached a republican president over these big issues. Now, one of the things that comes up in the polling and in Public Opinion is that a lot of americans would rather deal with the president through the election process and through the impeachment process and 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 1968. The Republican Convention convened in chicago in may of 1868. From may 20 to may 26 and they unanimously nominated former general Ulysses S Grant on the first ballot. So basically they knew they were going to get rid of this guy. The Republican Party had no intention ofrenominating him. He thought he might get nominated by the democrats, he got less than 10 votes on the democratic side in some way we see some of the themes pin Public Opinion is okay, we dont have to acquit him. We dont have to convict him because the voters and his own party is going to. The nixon impeachment is more or less a classic, but in terms of theweightiness of the matters, there was clearly instruction of justice. What we can however is that t lots and lots of people went to jail. And it took a long time. It took until august of 1974 for the smoking gun take to sing the president himself. So nixon hung on and hung on until that date. And then it was a matter of days. And nixon resigned and of course once the case came out , the Republican Party goldwater leading senator goldwater leading the delegation walked into the oval office and said we dont have the votes to prevent your impeachment, we dont have the votes to prevent your conviction in the senate. And it was gone. So i think we need to be aware of just quickly things can change. I believe impeachment of bill clinton. Was looking a little bit like this one in that the Impeachment Vote was just absolutely a partisan vote. In the senate however were some republicans who sided with the democrats and of course he was not convicted. He was acquitted. The interesting thing there which , there were two articles of impeachment, one on perjury, one on obstruction of justice but the fact of the matter is nobody considered this a constitutional issue. The rising to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Added to dethe just the very substance of it was the fact that Newt Gingrich was speaker of the house when the articles were noted 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 still married. So guess what, that sort of took the air out of the republican balloon, so to speak. We then went to then speaker, congressman Bob Livingston was the acting speaker. And he was fully intending to run for speaker until guess what, he was known to have been engaged in an extramarital affair three other members of the house were. So all of a sudden, this issue simply went away. And bill clinton was not convicted. He was acquitted and actually went on to have fairly high Approval Ratings and do something no one expected him to do which was democratic seat in the 1998 midterm elections so each one of these things tells us a little bit about whats coming. We can certainly cross marital infidelity off the list of impeachable offenses. One we got. But we also, they also the other, they both established as molly talked about there are precedents now. There are precedents in the house, theres precedent in the senate and we know that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is essentially turns the judicial body. This trial begins. So as we do have some precedent and some interesting both politics and legal precedents. So then, you coauthored a terrific article for the atlantic entitled trump is running out of defenses and last week you had another one, trumps tantrums impeachment go away. Over the weekend President Trump tweeted 75 times about impeachment. So it seems to be on hismind to some extent. Right now the president seems excited on uncovering the identity of the whistleblower how should we evaluate what trump is doing in regard to impeachment . I want to answer this question with reference to r some of the poll data that bill started with because i think you cant entirely understand the strategies of the president impeachment defense without reference to that whole day out because i think thats the ultimate defense. The president has signed touched or driven tor the distinct defenses in some time in a kind of indiscernible launch of all four were two of the four or three of the four. It sometimes discreetly. The are the following. The first is denial, the second is character assassination. The third is process complaints and the fourth is prerogative. And so lets throw those individually. I think each has mostly failed which brings us to the real defense. So the first one is just denial of the facts and when the president started out by saying no quid pro quo, the call was perfect. Various iterations of actual claims. All of which i suppose that the call is for is a matter of opinion. But that there was no quid pro quo and the sort of actual defenses of all basically proven to be untrue and they are 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 is particularly directed at the whistleblower but its also bdirected at the humans, never trump and the individuals given testimony. And this is a defense that has in general i think works pretty well when thepresident. In the past hes managed to make a lot of people believe that the fundamental problem with the russia investigation , found in the russia investigation were a bunch of text between that fbi agents and an fbi lawyer. And he made jim call me into a villain in the eyes of a very large number of people so this is actually a pretty substantial tool in his arsenal and it is interesting to me that itdoes not seem to be working in this context. So the whistleblower has of course not been outed and the anonymity is actually an interesting feature here. And when fox news and some of the president s defenders went after Lieutenant Colonel benjamin last week, even list cheney had to kind of repudiate that and say that this was unacceptable. So theres a dynamic they are the sort amof attack the attacker is maybe working a little bit less well than it had been in the past. The third is process objections and dishes, their spending a lot of time on this. This is i think a reasonably effective friday with respect to people who already dont want to believe it and want Something Else to talk about but i dont see a lot of evidence that its persuasive to anybody on the margins. And the evidence of that is the bdata that bill cited about the degree to which people who are not recommitted by of approval of the president S Performance to besupporting the impeachment process. Atrelatively few of them seem to be put off by 50 schiff or claims of undue secrecy and those complaints will fade further as more and more of the transcripts are released and more and more of the hearings take place with reasonable time for people to ask questions and raise their concern and 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. And when the president says i have the absolute right to ask the ukrainians to investigate corruption, what hes really saying is i dare hyou to say that this is unacceptable. That is i think the real defense. And as the president , the support for the impeachment process kind of approaches the president sdisapproval numbers , i think we get the actual test of that event which is weather as bill describes 40 some odd present in some holes its about as 38 and in some is as high as 44, 45 but whether that low 40s average stays. That is an acceptance i think 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 is politically impossible or dangerous for republican elected officials to break with him will be an effective Defense Strategy irrespective of how ridiculous the arguments may sound to any or all of you. Bill, if i can ask you to put on your profit and respond to just in terms of you seen how the polling looks now. We know historically with trump how it looks compared to what we saw with next and the clintons. Moving forward, what if anything has the probability of changing the current dynamic likely to stay pretty consistent . You invited me to make a fool of myself on national television. As if i didnt work for you. I refuse to answer the question. Theres no executive privilege. Im talking about beyond. My judgments for what its worth is that what comes out during the public face of the hearing would have to add quite significantly to the publics baseline knowledge in order to move the needle significantly. And so to what extent will the American People be glued to television for the public hearings the way elaine and i were in our graduate student days during the watergate hearings. Theres one question. Our americans interested enough, do enough of them believe that they can gain Additional Information and insight from the public face of the hearings to tune in and reserve judgment . I dont know the answer to that but that would be one really interesting indicator, that is to say the ratings and whether they start i stay high , whether they start high and go down sharply or whether they start low and never bunch. Thats one thing to look for. It is possible i suppose that something as earthshaking as the smoking gun takes would emerge. 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 partisan polarization that has occurred in the past generation is going to limit our response of the American People taken as a whole to Additional Information to the extent that Additional Information contradicts their overall worldview and their overall view of the president. We tend to forget opinion about richard nixon. Support for his impeachment and approval which began 19 percent in may 1973 and at 57 percent at the end of july of 1974. But that was during a time when the Political Parties were much less polarized than we are now. When on to the two critical articles of impeachment, between a third and 40 ti percent of the republicans in the house Judiciary Committee voted for them. I would bet money against that in todays house Judiciary Committee. Over under number of republicans supporting any article of impeachment announces zero area and im ready to be corrected by a real congressional expert, but just for the record, thats my estimate. And so the long and short of it is i can imagine a big change, but i think the odds areagainst it. Molly, if the house votes to impeach trump as many people expect, the articles of impeachment will go to the senate so tell us how that part of the process will work and also whats your sense in terms of majority leader mcconnell and how he will lead the process in the senate. I think when we think about this data that process from the house to the senate, its important to delineate the things that we know and the things we dont know and theres a fair amount i would put in these categories. So we know that the Current Senate rules for conducting an impeachment trial arc phrase in pretty mandatory firms in terms of the senate needing to have one. Lots of the sites impeachment rules have a the word shout and there are times when things happen but we also know the senate can waive or alter those rules. To change them formally with the choir two thirds vote but they have the ability to change the second part or set specific questions on the side with you or votes than that. We also know that just as the constitution doesnt specifically prescribe a lot of what needs to happen in the house and in that impeachment inquiry, when the house voted last week to approve certain procedures for the impeachment inquiry they were not required to do so under the constitution or the rules so as that the case, the constitution similarly does not require certain aspects of an much beyond trial the chief justice must reside , senators have to take an oath at the start and that two thirds is required to convict. We know that under the Current Senate impeachment rules, the chief Justice John Roberts will be presiding and the rule on questions of evidence, those will be subject to appeals from the full senate. Like most things happening in the senate so theres something that we know, what we dont know is a lot of the details on how exactly this will play out and to build point, he was just making about the real rise in limitations, even since the late 90s, theres the important parts of what happened during the impeachment trial that were made by the senate on a unanimous space though basically in january bof 1999, when the senate was tryingto decide how they were going to proceed , senators lots and daschle sat all hundred senators down and said were going 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 some of the very specific procedural questions. The idea of that happening in the current is hard to fathom. So theres a lot of the details that really i think will remain to be filled in. On this questionof majority leader mcconnell , i think to also to point that bill made earlier about these republican senators we have yet to your prompt so both csenators who are in close reelection races in 2020 and some Senate Republicans are retiring. Which made me where they stand to be most influential absence some agency change that would lead folks to vote for conviction is in behind the scenes before the impeachment trial would start , negotiations with later mcconnell about what is important to them to a process. What does the trial need to look like to feel like the senate is fulfilling its responsibilities as part of this and i think there are a number of ways for that play out tand i dont know how it will but to the extent that we may see some of these kinds of republicans that bill mentioned earlier play a big role in what happens, its going to be in this process of working with mcconnell and mcconnell working with majority leader schumer to find out what will be detail oriented process look like quite so elaine, you mentioned the crucial role of the court in the nixon impeachment so we of course remember the famous one involving the release of the white house tapes and they ruled that the case should be released and that it is the smoking gun takes. Right now there are current lawsuits involving the principle of executive privilege. We know there have been a number of Administration Officials have refused to testify before thehouse. Unrelated to the impeachment, that we just had a new York Appellate Court ruled that trump must release years of tax returns so on the trunk impeachment, how do you see the role of the courts unfolding mark either one on theimpeachment front or is it not going to take place within lets say the next one or two months and therefore not be relevant. Or what is your expectation in terms of the role that the court intonext years election . Thats a great question. One of course difference is that trump has already admitted to having the phone call. He thinks its perfect. Ben is absolutely right, this will be fought on the appropriateness of that phone call andwhether people think its appropriate or not. With nixon it was a long slog getting to nixon and the courts were critical. I dont see the Supreme Court having as big an impact on this impeachment trial as it did on the nixon trial. However, theres another court involved and that the Southern District of new york. As gerald mentioned they just today again weve had rollings that they should release, that trump has to release his tax returns. The reason i think thats important is it goes back to the question billy answered. What if anything would break loose the public can mark and of course one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Trump Campaign and the presidency has been his actual financial defense. Nobody in new york where i lived for many years, nobody in new york city can figure out where this guys money comes from. Nobody can. So if the finances in fact revealed something surprising , that could be the sort of thing that would move some of this Public Opinion. It would also if you go back and think about the crime. Crimes always need motives. There needs to be a motive for wrongdoing. And if you look at trumps history with russia, and of course this ukraine thing is only part of a bigger history withrussia , on the one hand you could say yes, president s have the right to change american foreignpolicy and bring it in a different direction. On the other hand this is been such a strange way of knowing about changing american policy we have all been wondering for some years now whether or not there is something going on there between trump and russia. And one of the things that could break that loose is the tax return finally coming to light. Molly mentioned the role that chief Justice Roberts in presiding over the senate trial. Then, i know you were a longtime observer of the courts. What you think roberts will be like as a presiding officer of this trial. A really interesting question. Nobody seeks to be on the Supreme Court or seeks to be the chief justice. So that he can preside in an impeachment trial. And you know, for john roberts and youre trying in a polarized environment to keep the court, somewhat insulated from the political e fray. Having to go into the senate and sit there while people throw to each other is a kind of a mortification of the flesh. Im sure he is not lookingfor. And im also confident that in his dignified institutionalist kind of wearing way, he would want to do impeccably so remember, this is the guywho wendy loved 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 lthey had gotten literally every word of it corrects. And so its actually a bit of a challenge i think. How do you preside at a senate trial thats going to be as ugly and as bitter as this one in an environment that is quite toxic involving lets face it, a highly toxic personality. And not grossly stain the institution that you represent . And heres the other thing, so bill rehnquist, his predecessor in the quiet ce impeachment found or locked into a quite novel solution to this veproblem was that the then majority leader and minority leader, i believe it was trent lott and tom daschle, is thatright . Quite to everyones surprise when in a back room and came up with a very detailed list of procedures and answers to all questions they each presented to their offices and the result was that the entire trial proceeded on the basis of unanimous consent. All the questions were kind of resolved that way. I think you can pretty safely say and the result was that rehnquist resided but didnt doanything. Which was i think fine with him. He sat there laconically in his robes andlooked dignified and that was the end of it. I think we can safely predict that is not going to happen prhere and thats the two sides s are not goingto agree on a great deal. John roberts at least in the first instance is going to have to issue a lot of rulings. And 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 molly, correct me if im wrong but i think the rule is the presiding officer rules and can be overruled by a vote of the senate. So you can imagine a situation in which roberts upsets everybody and there are a kind of serial roberts rulings and then serial rulings to vote to overrule these judgments but i think its going to be a difficult situation for the chief justice honestly and also again with respect to the toxicity, you can imagine the president tweeting bile at him for every ruling that goes against him. So i dont think thats a attractive moment if you imagine those please. Thats not an attractive moment for comedy between the branches or for the sort of relationship between the executive branch and the court institutionally so its a really interesting question and we will learn a great deal about john roberts and his very famous Political Savvy by having counties s situation. On that pointwe remember during the capital hearings , i believe so was calling in advice the nominee during various brakes and i was wondering if trumpwould do the same thing with the chief justice. One would hope that chief justice would take those calls. Bill, looking to the future how do you think this effort will affect the 20 20 election. How does impeachment compare to other issues such as the state of theeconomy, cultural issues, immigration, trade war and international affairs. Another call for predictions, xbox. Let me just in no particular order, on the one hand , when you listen to the reports from the field, about what the Democratic Candidates arguing as they go around the early states, theyre all saying that theyre not getting a lot of questions about impeachment. Theyre getting a lot of questions about healthcare funds on guns and a bunch of other things that democratic primary voters are passionate about what they sounded surprise that they happens more questions or more demands on impeachment. So is it possible that even among democrats, this issue has a somewhat lower priority and we will have less meaningless on the outcome of the election inside the beltway suppose. We are focused on this issue be to an extent that is not typical of the American People. As a whole. , but we should be an essential fact in mind that is if the president is impeached by the house not removed by the senate, he will be the first president in American History to be running for reelection with that sequence of events in the backdrop. Richard nixon was in his second term, bill clinton was in his second term. Andrew johnson wasnt going anywhere. Couldnt get nominated. Exactly. Now, there has been a lively analytical debate with surprising people taking surprising sides, all on the question of whether the impeachment that nonconviction of bill clinton turned out to be a decisive disadvantage for al gore in the year 2000 because gore was in effect running for bill clinton third term, although he refused to admit that fact and elaine and i can continue our 20 year debate on it. And some people argue that but for the clinton affair, or would have been, we would have been elected fairly easily. Others including a lot of dipolitical science modelers say that the division of the popular vote was almost exactly what would have been predicted in the absence of that, so the one reasonably contemporary example from which we might draw some lessons yields 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. Icant see it stretching out a lot longer than that. No only by the end of february which means that there will be between eight and nine months between the end of the trial and the actual votes. There are times for not only passions to cool, well, they wont cool but they will simply be displaced onto other objects and areas of contention. And thats another reason to believe that it may not turn out to be decisive. And i go back to the fact with which i began. Donald trump is what the late tom wolfe would have called a man in all. And who he is for better and for worse is so much a matter of public inspection and Public Knowledge that i wonder how much even this cataclysmic event is going to add to that. And it is possible that our house impeachment on the party lines, the Senate Acquittal on party lines will change a lot of peoples minds but t my hunch is it wont. So molly, how do you think impeachment will affect the Senate Elections really we know mcconnell has a very narrow majority at this point and as civil mentioned, there are a number of vulnerable republicans are up, a number of vulnerable democrats as well. You think it will bedecisive one way or another . Its a good question. I tend to agree with bills analysis of the effects on the president ial race. I will also remind folks that increasingly, the outcomes of senate and house elections in president ial years are correlated with what happens in the state in the president ial race so in 2016 for example it was the first time we started popularly electing senators the beginning of the 20th century there were no seats with the Senate Election where the Electoral College votes went to a president ial candidate of one party and in the senate seat was won by a candidate on the other party. So to the extent that peoples voting behavior is excuse me, correlated, that they dont split tickets anymore, a lot of that build on whats happening at the president ial level will filter down to the senate. Thats not to say that art some senate races where this could matter. I its worth remembering that senators, the senators who are up for reelection in some of these republican states, you know, they have taken different approaches to navigating the political challenges that are presented to them. So bill mentioned something on tillis before in general has continued to tack to the right in North Carolina and you have folks senator collins in maine who had as actually take out a somewhat more moderate voting record in part i think to bolster her credentials so i think it will be difficult for some of these senators to navigate these particular waters but at the end of the day a lot of going to happen for them and their races is going to be about what happens in the president ial race. If that were the case then scory gardner and Susan Collins both the toast is donald trump isnt going to ngwin either of those states. Particularly in the case of collins thats why weve seen her not so much on the impeachment question critically but the otherthing that armenta did reaching themselves. Then its colorado tacking blue were less area to this question six years ago. Its all, the democrats passed taking control of the senate, its not a possible one but its a tricky one because of say as darrell mentioned having to do with defending alabama. Elaine, youve written on threats to the integrity of the 20 20election. In terms of hacking into Voter Registration databases. Using social media so societal discord. Writing this information through facebook and twitter. What are the greatest threats that you worry about as we head into 2020. General has written about these two and darrell and i have an ebook coming up from brookings soon on this topic. I think its, look at this in two different ways. On the question of the account itself area and protecting the actual voting day information from hacking etc. , theres been quite a lot of movement in the states , more than half the states now have paper ballots and they have some protocol for whats called risk limiting audits which can be done right after the election. So theyve been working hard. The congress operated 380 million last time around, too late for the 2018 elections but a lot of states have that money and after a lot of groaning and delays, they actually appropriated more money for this cycle. On the one hand, i think that theres been a huge amount of progress since 2016. On the account itself. What i think is more problematic is the more generic issue of disinformation and what i would call digital voter suppression. I think the russians, the chinese, the iranians, everybody that is in this mix have gotten more and more sophisticated. I think that the platforms like facebook have not been able to catch up with this and have not really held anybody with confidence that they can control this or they can we out the bad actors. I would applaud twitter for just getting out of the political ad business altogether which they did. But i think theyre in the disinformation we really are just constantly playing catchup. Years ago when i was in the government we worked on drug interdiction and what you learn about all these things is that the minute you find out a loophole, someplace, the minute youfind out where drugs are getting in. What . You go to another place. Its just a thing and i think this is what were facing on, when it comes to disinformation. The one hope i have is that the voters themselves would get increasingly sophisticated and skeptical. About the stuff theyre seeing online. I dont know that theres any way we can judge that at this point, butit is frankly given how quickly campaigns move , probably our only hope because i dont have much hope that t the disinformation parts of election interference can be countered by the fbi, by legal, through normal legal means. It moves too quickly. It comes and then disappears into thin air. So im hoping the voters will be appropriatelyskeptical. One last question for ben and then we will open to the floor to questions from the audience. Tomorrow the roger stone trial begins. You noted in other contexts some of the reactions we saw in the mueller reports was based on evidence that apparently prosecutors wanted to present in the stone trial. Are there any surprises that you think would change the current clinical dynamic coming out of that trial t . The way you asked the question the answer is no. The surprises are unlikely to change the current dynamic. That said, i do think there are things we are going to learn in the presentation of evidence in this trial, so there are red actions in the mueller reports that appear to relate to theroger stone trial. That involves the president very personally receiving information about wikileaks and theres a particular scene in which hes in the car driving to the airport i think and hes told about a pending wikileaks release and most of the sentences around this are redacted i think because of the roger stone case so i think were going to learn some cainteresting stuff about not acting of the emails, but the interactions between Trump Campaign folds and wikileaks holds about the distribution of those emails rectally or indirectly. Will it make a difference to anybody . Surely not. I mean, the people who are concerned about this as bill describes, this discount has ibalready been, people know exactly what they think of donald trump and information handling and wikileaks and the emails in the 2016 election and i dont think short of roger stone ending up and saying yes, i did. I colluded, in fact including that, i dont think its going to change the way a lot ofpeople think about it. Lets open the floor to questions. Right up front, gatheres a gentleman withquestions. Theres a microphone coming over and if you can give us your name and organization. My name is peter cook and id like somebody to address the question of how the courts can be used play this thing out beyond the point where it makes much difference. In other words you had to decisions of threejudge panel at the circuit court. The losing side will probably appeal to the full circuit and then the losing side at that level would probably 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. Go ahead. Ive got bad news for you which is litigation is flawed and it is not a process that is designed to mediate realtime political disputes between the legislature and the executive branch and it will not play that role efficiently. Thats the bad news. Heres the good news. It might have a useful roleto play anyway. And the reason is twofold. The first is that this process is dragging on so not addressing it efficiently doesnt necessarily mean not addressing it at all. The second is it is really, really important to establish them law in this area so that it is not possible in the future to be quite as defiance as the Current Administration is being of congressional subpoenas and one of the problems in a traditionally the way i guess some of you are old enough to remember when the presidency was alittle bit more normal , and the way the president s and congress resolve these issues was not through litigation. It was through a combination of threat of litigation and threats of withholding legislative consent to a judicial nominee for an executive nominee or withholding and appropriations request or some leverage within the normal four corners of the separation of powers. So the results was an immense numbers of these disputes resolve every president ial term without actually a lot of formal law being created so you have a traditional legislative branch where looking at these questions in a traditional executive branch we are looking at these questions that are trying to eat dimly related to one another and their resolve by the kind of push and pull of politics area it doesnt work anymore because now you have one side doesnt want to negotiate over it all thats going to defy all the subpoenas area that forces you to go to court and one thing about going to court is that it does actually makelaw. So if you find out that don began 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 for don began to refuse to show up but the day that theres an authoritative judicial finding on that, its much harder for the next person to do that reedit so its important for that reason and then finally there is this one other thing that can can screw things up significantly. Which is that unlike an Appellate Court to which you have to appeal as a right, you litigate at the District Court level and then you have a right to appeal to the dc circuit but the Supreme Court you dont have a right to appeal to. They had discretionary review ieover all these cases so everybodys assuming that the Supreme Court is going to hear all these cases and im very confident that will not happen. They may hear one of them, but the larger posture of the Supreme Court is likely to be to let the Appellate Court to be the final word on some of this stuff. Which one will rise to the level . At a level of prediction that i dont kick in. For example, let me give you an example of one that i think is probably the other direction. I think it is, im not sure if i were a justice that i would be particularly interested in hearing one of these cases over the president stax returns. I would wait for a situation in which there is some sort of meaningful division in the lower court where theres a real live question that requires youget involved. So the good news, the bad news is it going to be slow the good news is it is going to accelerate. So i would agree with bens diagnosis of the difficulty on the part of congress of using courts to as a means for advancing congressional cycles in the shortterm. To do that before this episode. What i would add is that i think that one of the major consequences of the ship in the focus to what happens with the ukrainians is that it opened up a different new set of witnesses. The moon congress been able to get information because they do not have as i answer before the same incentives as don mcgann does to align himself with thepresident. So on one level, and i again agree with ben on whitey speights matter quite a bit but in terms of the dancing narrative of kind of where we ended up, some of these court bites are less important than they would have been if we didnt havethis new set of access over the past eight weeks. Over here, theres a gentleman with a question. Eric kershaw and i have a comment in the question. , is for the two of you, al gore lost the election because he ran away from years of disparity, thats my view but the question is assume im donald trump and im looking at all this and i know that nothing has happened before nothat has affected my face. My popularity, my rating and my Approval Rating of president and 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 of this and he told me to attack the democrats are wasting the time and the peoples time on impeachment when they could be working on helping me build the wall, doing all the things that a lot of americans who dont like trump care about. Ntcan you comment on that ill give it any member of the panel. You just stated my worst year. The fear that has led me on numerous occasions to write publicly about why i thought from a political standpoint moving to a full formal impeachment process would be a mistakefor democrats. I have not changed my view on thatmatter. And whether, what the net politicaleffect is going to be , i cant tell you reedit but i am a free that democrats who think that this will be a big political trump for them are fooling themselves. The information come out in the past we about attitudes in the swing istates is only fortified me in thatjudgment. On the island. Theres awoman with her hand up. I have a question about ukraine in this process. Ocmister trump almost every day says that its a perfect wall and Mister Zielinski repeated many times there were no pressure for him. So what is the possible reaction for ukraine in this process to save groups bipartisan relationships for the soviet partners and a little question about prediction, what could possibly go wrong for mark can ukraine become again with or without an influencer in domestic politics mark. Its a great question, what can go wrong . Many things. I suspect lots of us havea view on this question. Let me just offer a few thoughts at random. What we learn just in the past couple of weeks suggests that there is an important piece of what we call the back story that is President Trumps the antipathy toward ukraine that was born of the struggles in 2016 aided and abetted by some of his aides such as his former campaign de manager paul manafort, trying to ship the blame from russia to ukraine for efforts to undermine mister trumps campaign. And as a result of this, ukraines new president has found himself in an almost impossible situation. The zombie the white house. Thats the bad news. The good news, and we saw this at work in a practical and effective way in september is that the congress of the United States both democrats and republicans are much more sympathetic to ukraine much less sympathetic to russia than the president is. So they made it clear to the white house that having authorized the military assistance for ukraine, having appropriated the funds that the white house had better release those funds and it just took a few days of bipartisan outrage and pressure to get almost 400 million released. And i think in the battle for Public Opinion, ukraine enjoys a very significant advantage over russia. Most americans are aware of the fact that russia sees crimea. That russian backed forces have initiated an assault against the unityand territorial integrity of the ukraine. And theres not a lot of sympathy for the russian side of the story. So i think if Mister Zelensky is smart, so make sure theres a steady stream of officials talking to Senior Republicans and senior democrats and perhaps not worrying so much about the white house. Frankly i dont think theres anything that president zelensky can do to overcome President Trumps antipathy to his country and i say that with deep regret. Near the back please. Bill are known. 2 procedural questions. Might be presiding justice how the ability to rule confidentially and is the required number two convict two thirds of thesenate or two thirds of those present . Youre getting the early in the week here. In the secondquestion i believe it is twothirds of those present. Two thirds of the senate itself. There are relatively few Senate Procedures that apply to senators on the floor as opposed to senators voting. On the question of could do chief justice rule that the vote would be secret, thats been articulated earlier and i mention that the chief justice questions have to be put before the chief justice. He doesnt get to decide what questions that he rules on and the motions are. The question of whether the vote could be under the existing rules many of the deliberations will be secret, thats the default position but the question of whether the vote itself would be f secret runs into one of the few Senate Procedural questions thats prescribed in the constitution itself which allows a 1 5 of the senate to force a recorded vote. I dont see a possibility of the vote and the secret, putting aside things that folks like, i think if the vote was secret it would be a different story. I have one small thing to add which is in the clinton impeachment senator arlen specter. Chief Justice Roberts will have to decide how to count that vo vote. At thee end of the day i dont think the ultimate outcome of this whole episode will come down to a particular question but it something to note that there are things out there. There is the question which bill brought up some weeks ago in a wall street journal piece which is ifl a vote to convict failed would there be a censure vote . A censure vote in the senate is 50 plus one in as opposed to an Impeachment Vote. The other question would then be with a move from that vote to a censure vote and the reason i think its important to keep in mind is that we talked politics and publicio opinion but there s another issue here is that congress has to decide do they want to lay down markers about how president s can behave . Do they want to give up this much and let this president behavior on this issue establish a precedent for future president s andnt that is a biggr issue and not likely to be an issue that the public will give much guidance on. Yet, this is the kind of issue that could result in a profile encourage here or there in the senate. Of while, as i remarked a couple of ago theres a reason all the profiles and courage is such a short book. [laughter] you can see bill and i have been back and forth about this a lot. In the back. Good evening. Im the ceo of a research and develop it from pakistan. I would like to know how you see the role of Artificial Intelligence in securing the election 2020 . Thank you. The role of what now . Artificial intelligence. Im not sure i see the relevance how that of how the election will play out. In terms of sowing disinformation, ai and botts 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 i dont think the 2016 was decided on issues like that and i dont think the 2020 election will be that bases either. Let me add my Worst Nightmare to that answer. Many of you have been following the development of a deep fake switches an application of Artificial Intelligence to especially video recordings such that it becomes increasingly easy to manufacture videos of public figures saying things they never said and it becomes harder and harder to detect the fake. T my nightmare about 2020 is that there will be a proliferation of such po interventions into our president ial campaign and as the old saying goes, the y can make it halfway around the world before the truth gets out of fed. Over here there is a questi question. There is a microphone coming up behind you. Hello, im valerie, student at washington university, a Communications Public Relations Major along with Honors College double major. Okay. You are hired. [laughter] i have a question specifically for bill. He mentioned that dynamic can change with the ratings and changing in Television Journalism and we hear about fake news and we have Television Journalism being judged on all sides so how can we apply robinsons media and flash media video to the reliability or credibility of the information to the public . Will the juice of the drama be what swings a public towards one way or the other way of the impeachment and that 45 . Thank you. The microphone was a little fuzzy so im not sure i heard the full question but could you in one or two sentences state the question. I know you prepared a question but see if you can speak straight into the microphone so i can hear it. Im not as young as you are. [laughter] what i am asking is will the public in their opinion and that 45 with the Television Journalism in the video media series will that swing that vote and will that change will the juice of the drama the pessimism that is already in society for trusting television and for trusting News Networks will that be something that swings the vote t with President Trump sayg everything about fake news . Obviously, im not sure. Here are a couple of sobering thoughts. First of all, there was a survey that i found a survey result i thought last week and if i were back in my office i could come up with a accurate citation for you. As i said i found it deeply disturbing and americans were asked well, do you think what President Trump has done is something unusual or do most politicians behave this way . Six in ten said most politicians behave this way in this pervasive cynicism about political conduct i think is one things that perversely shoring up the president s approval because a lot of people who think that he is quote unquote, guilty as charged, think its business as usual and therefore does not rise to the level of something the president should be removed from office four. The second discouraging note is that people have divided up based on the news outlets they find trustworthy and credible. That maps almost perfectly on partisan preferences and soan disturbingly few americans over the next year will turn to new sources they disagree with for sources of Additional Information but that suggests to me that they are much more likely to be reinforced in their current views than they are to have those views changed. The only thing that could change that is that something that occurs in a neutral medium like cspan which is trumpeted across the board and that would have to be simply watching public hearings and saying oh my god, i did not know it was this bad spirit are you sucking up to cspan because they are broadcasting this . Off mac. Ive been on cspan four times in the last week it is not something i feel is necessary after mac. We like cspan. Right here is a question. Hello, jonathan. It was mentioned earlier that Party Divides are much deeperw now than they were in the past however if we listen to the news especially with the crisis going on in syria between the kurds and the turks we have seen people from both sides of the local spectrum agree President Trumps actions were deplorable. Do you think this could lead to possible cross party teamwork during the impeachment hearings . No. [laughter] you ask a yes or no question you get a yes or no answer. Look, so, part of partisanship is not perfect, even perfect partisanship is not perfect. It is however remarkably pervasive and i think the striking thing about r the syria withdrawal announcement is that it came in the midst of the ukraine manner and it offended the president s face, including key members of both houses of congress and affected their relationship with the ongoing ukraine scandal not at all. You actually picked an example that we have a weirdly controlled text of. If this were a situation where they have to defend him over here but it pierces the bubble in the air goes out of the blue and it has some cross pollination of fact with willingness to consider an impeachment process seriously, surely what happened over the last three weeks would have been saw that. Where we we did not see it at all. I think we have time for one more question. Gentlemen, if you could get the microphone over to him. [inaudible] if the senate votes not to impeach what in your view will be the longterm impact and consequence on the Republican Party and its popularity and on the Democratic Party . Great closing question here. I think that very shortly after that we will have an answer to that because we have an election. An i think if they vote, which is most likely at this point, not to convict him then i think the action will turn instantly to the 2020 election and we will see. We will see if as bill fears there is damage to the democrats or if things go on and the president s look, this is a president who is unique in many aspects but one particularly relevant. He has never passed 50 in approval. There is a lopsided aspect to this because, of course, california is skews the whole country because its gotten so big and so favorable to the democrats and trump is not even he so hostile to california he does not want to give them money for the wildfires out there. This is an odd situation but the fact of the matter is we will see in 2020 if there is a democrat elected i believe that we will democrats will take the house and then i think there will be a real selfexamination in the Republican Party. Their demographics are not good in they have their highest levels of support and trump has his highest levels of approval among people 65 and older. They have consistently not done well in the younger portion of the population with the middle, people in the middle splitting 50 50. If in fact, if in fact, trump atloses and the democrats take e senate and keep the house then i think there is a turning point in the republic and party but bear this in mind. American Political Parties dont tend to die. They just morph into Something Else. I think there will be a Republican Party around but it will look different if this happens. This sounds like you are the chair but this sounds like a good exit question. Let me just offer some concluding i think what is at stake is a feature of the Republican Party but more than the future of the republic and party here is 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 had. Right . We leave this discussion on threats to the u. S. Political system to go live to capitol hill with the senate returning from their party lunches. Lied to the senate. The mandatoy quorum call has bfn waived. The been waived. The question is of the debate of david austin tapp, of kentucky, to be judge of the United States federal court. The yeas and nays have been