Those of you who want to find it later you can go to our page, i think, and we will upload it on youtube, is that correct . Again, i am sharon, founding director of the institute of Public Policies and history which is housed here at the university of the district of columbia. We will launch in january of last year by mayor bowser and president ronald mason. We have sort of the same focus as do other institute in politics except for a very strong focus as well on the history of this city and by so doing the history of this country because unlike most other cities we are entirely a creature of the politics of creating a new nation and for those of you who saw the musical, hamilton, there is a song in it that says in the room where it happened and we are what happened. Washington dc. While we have topics that are contemporary interests we always try to grill down on that topic to talk about if its the historical origins and that certainly is true for the compelling topic of tonight. We will talk this evening about the anatomy of an impeachment and we couldnt have a better panel than what we have this evening. We have with us this evening and i will call upon them individually but just as an introduction and very they really dont need an introduction but Michael Steele. [applause] even though he is here in washington dc got that thunderous applause. [laughter] msnbc political analyst and we are honored that he is cochair of our Senior Advisor committee here at the institute of politics and history and then we have another individual who is wellknown to anyone who has covered this topic and that is congressman jamie raskin. [applause] there are a few personalities who have had such a defining role on this issue and of this moment then congressman jamie raskin. We will come back to congressman raskin. We also have, as well, karen who is [applause] karen is also a cochair of the institute of politics, policy and History Advisory Committee and karen is one of the few people who have actually dealt with impeachment up close and personal because she was deputy chief of staff to president William Jefferson clinton during his impeachment. I know she played a pivotal role because i saw it on television. [laughter] but karen also said that time she has been involved with [inaudible] and we will ask her about that tonight. We culminate this great panel with an exceptional, professor of law from Georgetown Law Center also well known to us, professor paul butler. [applause] professor butler, you see him regularly as a legal analyst as well and contributor on msnbc as well as npr. His area is particularly criminal law and has relevant to the topics tonight. I guess i should sit down in keeping with the cameras. I think we will begin with Michael Steele and ask him in that the impeachment process as we know it right now is over as such what do you think the applications are for the 2020 election . Do think it will have any reoccurring impact on the democratic primary process and conceivably in the general election . I think the outcome there is little bit of lets wait and see what actually happens. We are still assessing how the American People largely speaking have processed this and how they have internalized it and what they think of it. The polling certainly in the last stages of the trial particularly on the question of witnesses showed that 75 of American People wanted that process to continue and they wanted to hear from people who may have something germane to offer with respect to what the president said, the president did, the relationship between the white house and some of the other players in the state department, for example. Secretary pompeo, how that played out. We dont know whether the arguments that were made and i think very effectively made by the democrats managers, democratic managers was one that the people had taken in and now will begin to process in the elections fear or the democratic side in the primary i think we have seen it hit its stride and crested and now they have moved onto other things so the candidates have moved beyond impeachment and whether or not the voters will ultimately remains to be seen. Harassment raskin, as i pointed out earlier i thank you really helped define the significance of this Division Within the constitution, the urgency of the house looking at this provision and what i do want to ask however, Speaker Pelosi is always been perceived as the ultimate strategists and i mean that in the most complementary way and she almost never does anything unless she knows that she has the votes and she consistently stated she would not do this unless there was a bipartisan support for it and yet she moved she joined the Party Leadership insane we need to move forward. Was it because of the evidence was so alarming or was it because the Democratic Caucus was becoming rancorous or why did she move forward . Thank you for having me. If i remember her quote precisely it was Something Like the evidence would have to be overwhelming in the case would have to be compelling and the sport would have to be bipartisan. I think we got overwhelming evidence and we had a very compelling case and i guess it was bipartisan strictly speaking until justin got excluded from the Republican Caucus but he did say that when he read the Mueller Report he found that the evidence inescapably led to impeachment and i was even before ukraine. At the point at which the whistleblower came forward to describe the basic contours of that ukraine is shakedown and there were lots of republicans in the land who were saying this was intolerable and they couldnt abide anymore of the fiction that the president was lawabiding. I think this was the moment which everybody saw that we had a president who is essentially ungovernable and lawless in his conduct and essentially an cordial bull. There was really no going back. What else could we do . The ukraine episode provided a pretty echo of what we saw described in the Mueller Report about the open invitation to russia and russia are you listening, come on and in more than 100 readings that were documented between the Trauma Campaign and russian emissaries but what was different about the ukraine episode was that it was taking place in real time and not just a high crime and misdemeanor obviously but a crime in progress. Rudy giuliani was over there in ukraine still trying to shake them down for the information that they wanted to prove that it was not russia but rather ukraine that had engaged in the sweeping Systematic Campaign to mass with the president ial campaign in 2016 but i think the pressure built up in the Democratic Caucus or it was overwhelming and there was really no decent way of turning back and saying the president was engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors for the real challenge was to figure out what to charge them with. Do we go big or broad with everything we knew about him including the nine, ten episodes of obstruction of justice that were detailed in the Mueller Report as well as the Campaign Finance violations involved with the payoffs. As well as the repeated continuing violations of the foreign domestic calls or do we stick with what we had whistleblower information on which was the ukraine shakedown and then the subsequent effort to shut down any cooperation with congress and i think ultimately what prevailed was a sense that this was discrete and definable in the evidence was overwhelming and it didnt require us going out to try to get more and more evidence about these things when the administration was purely involved in an embargo of information and refusing to turn over everything that we were asking for. Karen, i know that you were there with president clinton but i would like to move on to another topic or area where you have developed expertise and have expertise since leaving president clinton and that is the ukraine. How is it that this great drama played so much of it played out in the ukraine, a country with most americans are not that familiar and yet we find the president indirectly improved involved with this. Giuliani is certainly involved and biden is indirectly involved with it so what is it about ukraine and i know you were there battling on the other side of amanda fort in a few occasions so could you elaborate on its significance . Sure, thank you for the invitation to be here. I think where the stars all lined up probably against ukraine is we have to go back to President Trump been quite upset before he was president that his Campaign Chair had been called out, if you will, because of his activities with the former president of ukraine and from that very moment President Trump blamed ukraine. Individuals who thought they would do better if the ambassador was out of office and this Russian Secret Service wanting to create and push out the narrative of ukraine, not us, so then you have a brandnew president who really, really needs the United States and for somebody like President Trump, at least what ive observed, that is too much to walk away from and he has also leveraged the United States and was going to exercise left to get the narrative restored and regenerated and would also fill in his black was hunter biden being on the board and Vice President biden calling for the removal of a shokin. None of these accusations are factual in fact when shokin left the subsequent prosecutor general brought cases against burisma and shokin never did. They laid dormant for years but those facts did not matter and didnt even want an investigation. But you have a lot of activity in a country that is known for conspiracy theories, known for payments being made lets just say not all that legal activity and a new president of the United States backing. We have with the two articles of impeachment did you see any of what was presented by the house what could have been perceived as a criminal offense, and do you think it might have had more power, and a followup to that do you think that President Trump has exposure upon [inaudible] thank you for that gracious introduction but now in the words of jayz, allow me to reintroduce myself. [laughter] my name is paul butler and i was a prosecutor right here in the district and Representative Government and criminal court and during the time i learned something. The allegations he was charged the articles were about abuse of congress, abuse of office and the obstruction of congress. The standard for impeachment under the constitution is high crimes and misdemeanors. Now as a prosecutor, you are familiar with the ideas of misdemeanors as less than a year and we understand it is written down. When the constitution was written, statutory crimes did not exist. Misdemeanors were different from what they are now and in fact the term high crimes and misdemeanors was a term of art that referred to th abuse of puc trust and so while it was not required that there be any a lie between specific statutory crimes and what presiden both pp was accused of doing, in fact those linkages do exist. If you look at the statutes of extortion, they map quite well too i need you to do me a favor. As karen suggested, ukraine was in an extremely vulnerable position. They are asked for with russia. Without the United States assistance, their survival as a nation state is in jeopardy. When you look at the record, President Trump made clear that military assistance was contingent on political favor. If the United States was to provide military assistance to ukraine, they need t needed to t the investigation and by start the investigation, i mean announce it. President trump actually didnt want an investigation in good faith because that would have proven how ludicrous the conspiracy theories were about the email server and all that so all he wanted was the announcement to do the same kind of damage to the campaign but the fbi directors announcement had done. I talked to the congressman before the panel and he brought up what we should really be talking about and that is to put it in context everybody was available february 18 which is the day after president s day and here we are there are a few holidays we have up until the fourth of july that underscores the significance of the country and president s day and is designed to celebrate George Washington. As well as president Abraham Lincoln with whom wouldnt have been kept as United States of america and theyve got a Great Program now on the History Channel about president George Washington and when you observe his career, for that matter almost any of the founding fathers, they were obsessed with creating a country where there wouldnt be any authoritarian power. They were obsessed with this. There wouldnt be another king george 3. And when you look at the constitution, every opportunity they had, they checkmate a branch of government. So, you may have article one you can legislate, the article to says i can be so it were in article two you may be able to read the commanderinchief that article one says i am the one who must declare war. Each is to checkmate and the abuse of power. To be an authoritarian persona, where do we go from here. Weve given it our best shot. We can talk about the third branch of government, but where are we, congressman, but we can begin with you. This is crucia this is crucial to the Current Crisis that we are in. Lets start with this. We had a revolution against the monarchy. The critical words of the constitution is we the people to form a more perfect union, establish justice and provide for the common defense for the welfare and deserve the blessings of liberty and ordain and establish what the constitution of the United States and that one actionpacked sentence is the whole preamble but it defines the american experience. Its popular government against the monarchical government. They got their power from god and they told us so. Our framers said we are not going to accept things. The dogma that we have the equal branches and we dont accept that. Kobe was not a word. The sovereign power of the people to create and watch the country loaded immediately through the preamble constitution and article 12 that point you get 37 paragraphs to play outhatlay out all of the pe peoples representatives. The power to declare war and regulate commerce internationally and domestically and raise taxes and here in the district of Columbia Power over and on and on. We have four sections and the Fourth Section is all about the impeachment. What is the main job of the president , to be commanderinchief not of the country. To execute those that have been adopted by the peoples representatives like the Supreme Court to pronounce what the law actually is as the chief justice put it in maryland but you see we are a Representative Democracy under a constitutional form of government. And this impeachment is a necessary episode of reassertion of the sovereign power of the people through congress against a runaway imperial executive and donald trump is a cartoon manifestation of the process that has been taking place through many powers and declaration of unilateral force and so on. The ukraine episode is all about the stealing of democracy, bringing foreign powers to tax payer money and leverage and bringing the foreign powers to get the Foreign Government to sabotage the campaign of president ial rival. Somebody thats running against the president. If we allow that to happen than weve given up democracy. Do you think that america is inclined to move in that direction because from where i sit, it appears americans are drawn to the authoritarian figure. Are we drawn to that personality that they have a a following. Youve said a lot thats very important. I agree with the congressman said, but i do think that the branches of government are equal in the sense that as you noted there are appropriate checks and between, so that is sort of establishing the relationship we have a lot of work to do but we can veto that work. You can do that gets to it, youve got to work to get the numbers to override the veto. It acts as a check on legislative and executive and i think twodoor question where we find ourselves now for me i was so happy to hear you start where you did. Its all in the same bucket, we the people. My approach to all of this very simply and very straight up we are where we are right now because this is where you want us to be and we will be here for however long you want us to be so all the hand wringing and noisemaking and all that, you can end it. Buwith everything youve known d everything youve seen is that 49 approval in the United States of america tonight. The number is 45 . She won with 47. How hard is it going to be so we are where we are so we can sit there and talk about a Representative Government and this gentleman here is representing the people but at the end of the day, we are the government. They dont exist unless we say they do. She doesnt have the charm of the people of maryland and his district say he does. He doesnt get to make himself or keep a job. For all again congress is lower because what you are going to do your going to elect the vast majority of them this november. Recognized the power you have asked the people and ask what you are willing to put up with because. My 401 k is great. You can rationalize and make whatever excuse you want. The president s behavior reminds me of is imagining your neighborhood your child is a bully and beaten up every other kid, calling them names to parents in the neighborhood come to you and say youve got to do something about your kid and your response is he brings home straight as and gets good grades. We did not have that here so yes it is we the people and the Leadership Matters and the failure of leadership in the United States senate should have never, never happened. It was all about risk nothing, collaborate with the white house, get him off and move on to win. The facts didnt matter. In the institution of the senate and the role of the senate it didnt matter to the majority leader, because if it hadnt mattered, he would have handled the situation quite differently. We would have the u. S. Attorneys pursuing, but is there a role for the courts in a runaway situation for the department of justice memo says you cannot indict a president but in the watergate proceedings ended with sustained by the courts so what is your thinking about whether it is ever appropriate or would it be appropriate for a president to be criminally indicted and criminally implicated and have the courts play a role in the process . First i want to say im still kind of tripping because michael said he got a tax break. My accountant told me i dont make enough money to qualify for the trump tax break so i need to find out who negotiates your contract with cable tv. During the impeachment of bill clinton, chief Justice Roberts who summed up his role or chief Justice Rehnquist by saying that during the trial scene did nothing and he did it perfectly and with regards to the future of the president of the United States that is a fairly accurate description of the role of court so there was some thought that if the investigation uncovered criminality. An unindicted coconspirator or there might be an indictment that was held until after he left office. But we know that neither of those happened because Robert Mueller put in his report that he didnt think he had the authority to do that because of department policies. Its not the law its the policy preferences and the people that ran the Justice Department at the time. Is it likely to be overturned, who knows. One question would be what the president sanders or warren or biden or any of the Democratic Candidates with their attorney general do an independent investigation and consider whether to bring charges against any of the folks involved in the scandals with regards to ukraine and russia i think that would be problematic for any president coming in and it would look like retaliations which might be easier for them not to do that and for that reason i think you actually understated the risk to the country as a result of this moment. I made arguments and hearings about something legal scholars call specific deterrence. What that means is i told the judge your honor, we need to sentence this person to a term of years so that he learns that there are consequences for his actions. In truth i have misgivings about young black men i sent to prison for minor crimes on the basis of that kind of argument. So, when there are consequences for actions they learn when there are not consequences for actions. When people say President Trump didnt learn anything from the impeachment, dont believe the hype. He learned that he can get away with anything. When it comes to the room that he has from the mistress, hes a quick study. It seems so long ago but it was just this past summer when finally come of the special, thl dealer testified before the United States congress, and remember that the report going to be released, was he going to discuss it in any way and finally he actually appeared before congress. After that day but in my mind he kind of crashed and burned and didnt make the report. It seemed to be that impeachment was the remedy. It was clear the president wasnt going to be impeached for what he tried to do with russia and other weapons be any other kind of consequences for the president with regards to the russian scandal. The very next day President Trump picked up the phone or and said i need you to give me a favodo me a favorthough. So, he learned and when the senate failed to remove him from office that very week he fired not just Lieutenant Colonel vindman, but his twin brother. President trump apparently Still Believes in something called blood guilt. The next week, again, he went after the prosecutors in the v. Roger stone case. They said he has the authority to direct the political prosecution by the department of justice and claimed that he hasnt done it yet but he can if he wants to. What will he do not just next week but what will he do if the people dont rise up and he is reelected . Im going to ask one more question and i would urge you to stand here by the microphone so we can hear you and respond to your questions. You talked about leadership in the senate and while that was a moment in American History, it appears there was still a level of Common Ground we have in this country. We have so it would appear a very, very polarized country. We know theres one world where people watch fox and another they watch cnn or msnbc and we just dont seem to find that shared Common Ground. And if you dont have that Common Ground, how do we get to where the congressman raskins is talking about the people perceive ourselves to have a shared interest enough that we rise up together. Do you think, congressman, let me start with you, do you think that there is a way to find that Common Ground today . Stanek accepting the difficulty we are in because we have to be honest about what happened in the senate and i agree completely about this. We had the republican majority in the senate with the honorable exception of mitt romney at least with response to the first account behaving not like disinterested as members of a religious cult and the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham said he wasnt interested in the facts or the evidence. He clearly wasnt interested in the wall but of the identity of the defendant and carl butler on the jury nullification, this is jury nullification and its not the kind of episodic jury nullification you find with some progressive juries and its oldfashioned white jury nullification when somebody is prosecuted for the crime against citizens. So that is a very serious problem when one party has gone off the rails that sharply and thats deeply that there is grounds for a lot of hope. The first thing i want to say is the division and polarization that we see in America Today is a strategy. You can read a book about it because i just did over the weekend, but the subtitle is Cambridge Analytic and the plot to break america and its written by Christopher Whiteley who is the whistleblower from Cambridge Analytic and he told the story of steve cannon, the russians team and how they used for the first time in American History all of the data facebook has about you and me and everybody on the states used the data to figure out the psyche of america and then to figure out how to win the Electoral College to use thacollegeto use that ina way. But in a more sinister fashion, to inject poison into the bloodstream of america through facebook and twitter and the social media. They went out looking for what they called the dark triad of the psychological an and this i, narcissism, machiavelli a. These three emotional currents they said would be the key to driving a wedge through the heart of america by creating ethnic racial religious partisan conflict, finding of fault lines that were preexisting in the country and that exacerbated them and claiming them to the point where you get what we have seen in america over the next several years which is klansman and neonazis marching even without masks on their face in the great cities of the country. People showing up with assault weapons in churches and synagogues and boards and movie theaters around the country. So, why is that something that could be good news . I dont think we are a racist country were antisemitic, i dont think we are a misogynistic country. I think that there has been an activation of the most violently unstable people from the country and weve got to figure out how to deal with it, that we can restore the momentum of democratic cohesion in progress in america tocqueville said its either always expanding and growing or its shrinking and contracting. We have been shrinking and contracting. That is what we have seen with american politicians making deals with Foreign Governments and foreign powers to interfere in the elections. Its what we have seen with Citizens United and Voter Suppression and so on. Weve got to move in the other direction. What does that mean . At who is left out in america and who is left out in the impeachment trial in the senate lacks the people in washington, d. C. Were left out. There were not two senators there. That is a scandal in 2020. The people in puerto rico were not represented in the senate. That is a scandal in 2020. We have had two popular vote losers in the last five elections take office because of the weakness of this artifact called the Electoral College. We need to get to a National Popular vote for the president of the United States. The Electoral College is a threat to democracy. So, weve got to get the engines of democracy moving again to bring and everybody that is left out. The senate is a Flawed Institution where the vast majority of the people are represented by senators that voted to convict the minority of the people represented by the other senators, but they voted to acquit. At the least lets get everybody in the senate including people in washington, d. C. And porter rico. Lets pass statehood, that is the true state solution dc and puerto rico with steel with a Electoral College and create a constitutional amendment on the right to vote so we dont continue the remind us we are driven off of google creating an unfair election in that state. If i could pick up on where he left off and saved it is nothing worse than these expectations and reality of what you just described, i can call you with a significant portion of the population in this country hurt when he said it was like thats the problem. So thats what weve got to get. How people here and perceive and read americas that are out there because right now we are all creating our own. My tribe is bigger than your tribe. Instead of saying we are the linkage we can begin to move to a level of Common Ground to address some of these issues its not like we havent done this before. We forget in the midst of the impeachment, bill clinton and Newt Gingrich reformed welfare, balance the nations budget, got a whole host of things done on behalf of the country, so whats different, why couldnt barack obama due to and why can donald trump do that with Chuck Schumer or nancy pelosi . So theres Something Else we have to get to that kind of goes back to how we want to go about beginning to address these issues. When you talk about some of the systemic issues that touch on impeachment and move the narrative, this conversation started a long time ago. These issues have been here a long time. A significant portion of the country felt their concerncounts havent been addressed for a long time long before donald trump showed up. The ultimate showman knew how to do the pt barnum thing and turned it into a reality tv moment. So people connect to. When asked the question why supporting donald trump and she said because hes just like me. And if you dont understand why, you will never get to any of the things you talked about. Because we have to understand why someone sees these things the way they see them and when they hear themselves being called the portal debate could. If you dont understand why he did that and why that was a sb 11, that was a big deal but he did and his. You need to understand this not in the conventional way we are not in the conventional moment. Weve long left kansas. We are not there anymore. We are in the space for asymmetrical politics of the quintessential player calling the place so the democrats looking to november need to ask not just who can beat trump but who can beat him in an asymmetrical way and isnt afraid to step out there. There are ways in which you have some people whove already done this, watch what nancy pelosi has done. Shes the only player in the town right now that can get under his skin on a consistent basis. She knows how. That image of her standing in the cabinet room looking down at him and all the men sitting there like this she knows how to make the moment and now youve got to translate that to begin to address those issues for a lot of people out there who feel their expectations have been met. Very good points. Im going to ask the audience since they are sitting here in the district of columbia, i think that we have to talk about race and make it a part of the text and not the subtext. The reality is donald trump has won the white vote so in november the majority of white votes are going to vote for donald trump and in fact that is true for every republican candidate since the election of John Kennedy White people have voted majority for the republican candidate and so while its true trump is exceptional in some ways, his overtly racist rhetoric and corruption if you look at his policycommittee is not that different from any other republican. Other republican president s would have been happy to nominate justices gorsuch and kavanagh. All others are behind building the wall. Another fundamental question to kind of piggyback off of what michael and congressmen have said is where do black people go but to be safe . What does it mean with regards to the president as corrupt and racist as donald trump is a majority of white people are going to vote for him in november. How should people of color understand that. What we did about th with the wd streamers during the impeachment hearing. Before you go to the audience i want to add one more thing which is we tend to look at this as 2016 and 2020 and we are ignoring what happened in 17, 18 and 19 because we the people have said a lot in the three years. State legislatures have changed. Many seats in the house have changed. Many gubernatorial races have happened in the power structure has changed. We the people have the number and especially women. You are absolutely right. And its all about how much of a majority because there are still some of us that are not following that trend especially women and i just dont think we can just say 2016 and 2020 hes going to play the same game and weve got to respond to that. No, we cannot ignore the three years that have happened and what people have said in those three years and what people have changed in those three years because it is significant. It is a very powerful point. We are going to call on the audience. Over the recent decades, congress delegated an enormous amount of authority and to give an example that is the ability to change tariffs move them up and down. To what extent is congress may be starting to get ready to pull back some of the power or stop granting additional power to the executive branch and lowered. Its going on right now. For the first time after the assassination and iran to say weve not declared war or given to and unless we are attacked by iran but president s cannot initiate action without congressional action. Precisely reclaiming the powers that have been given away and you are right with respect to trade an Emergency Powers and authority all of a sudden during the Trump Administration sees things are looking like dangerous concessions and to the branch so we are in the process of trying to reallocate and im hoping its something that happens on a bipartisan basis. I want to add one quick thing to what karen and paul ended on. Its true obviously there is a racial dimension to the politics now but its also true for very beat trump by 3 million votes in 2016. Not in the community but when you add up americans, 3 million votes in 2018 when we reclaimed the house of representatives to 352200 we beat them by 9 million across the country and all these kids turning 18 registering to vote are not registering for donald trump nor are the new americans were just ring to vote. Its a question whether we can defend the integrity and get all of the votes cast and protected that is our job. That is. Then we can move on to continue with the other reforms that we need to make democracy real in the 21st century and i am not oblivious to the cultural politics. I am aware weve got to play at that level and deal with the problems in the country including the fact that their 700,000 people in the city who are not represented in congress. That is unacceptable in a democracy in the 21st century. We are the only nation where the residents of the capital city are disenfranchised if you disenfranchise people in paris, he would have another french revolution on your hand, so we have to reclaim that level of political vision in the 2020 this is going to be the year of Perfect Vision in politics. I like that. My name is mike smith, im a local businessman. You spoke about the consequences of your actions and i was interested in your opinion about the possible consequences trump could experience other jurisdictions say new york and possibly florida. A lot of people understand the power is exclusive to federal crimes and is no if he were to be charged by a state prosecutor with a state crime president of trump wouldnt have the authority so one of the things going on with regards to corruption is that they are local criminal investigations, so there would be a constitutional issue for the president to be invited invited. We dont know where the Supreme Court would end up on that. We know that theyve passed the court with justices that share their view about the power so there isnt a reason to be real optimistic if that happened, but you dont know. So the president , if possible could be charged while in office and an easier case would be if he is charged after he leaves office. If theres any number of things he could be charged with including violating state tax laws she wouldnt be able to use the presidency to defend himself. Thank you for being here tonight. Paul manafort was a bad actor when he took over the campaign in 2016, 2015 and they changed the platform to include language more favorable to ukraine all the way back then. The events that led up to the impeachment were largely about a coverup for the act to give plausible deniability and draw attention away from that. So other than saying bold words through needed to through can talk about through simply through able of these narrow things that the republicans seem to be able to take down deliberately. Thank you for the question. The question is not only important but its a urgent urgt because it relates to this election, too. We know putin and his team have come back at us so its about not just the loss of integrity f the 2016 election but the 2020 election. One thing that happened and its going to take historians to sort it out but one thing that i know happened because i was there in the committee as the attorney general confiscated the report for three and a half weeks. She held onto it and deliberately misled the public about its content costing not to but one letter of protest on how he was deceiving the public essentially, and misleading people about what it said. And then to pull the war over everybodys eyes and remember the day before easter and passover hes got to be republican of the year for what he did for donald trump. He wasnt acting like attorney general of the United States but theyve robotically repeat the words no obstruction, no collusion. Collusion he starts by saying we dont look at the question of collusion isnt a legal concept except in the trust field and there was evidence of collusion in the vernacular more than 100 between people with various adversaries and then with obstruction there was overwhelming evidence and they got them on drug ring and we couldnt recover from that so. Honest, decent, wonderful Civil Servant republicans, democrats come in on purpose in coming forward to talk about with the president have done that was in realtime so lets do that before he can pull the war over everybodys lives and that is the genesis of the impeachment so that is what he dragged the Foreign Government into sabotage and sneer joe biden and joe biden campaign. This is a story that is coming out in a lot of different ways with media and books and bite us talking about it. Your voting choices are very clear you can vote d. For democracy or are for russia. I told parents tell your kids everything you need to know about voting is everything you need to know about driving if you want to go forward you put it in d and if you want to go backwards, that in r. [laughter] i will let that one go. If i could they will dovetai i n the end of. Your question goes to the heart of what i think as we started the conversation about how the American People will process this and it will speak to how good a job the democrats did in making the case said that this sort of a mixed result at this point. That is how the American People looked at this thing and its to instruct th that process and further confuse the narrative so i think now, and this is one thing i do give nancy pelosi credit for was putting in place impeachment managers who are not just competent in the capacity to complete the case, but were effective in playing out the coordinates as americans the outrageousness of it all. When adam schiff in his closing even as a partisan i said that was good. So what i think the backend story with nancy data by putting in place thats narrative now can be unpacked by whoever the democratic nominee is and when it comes to the broad question about what impeachment was and what the president has done and there is rhetoric they can rely on to make that case because it struck such a chord. Im going to ask another question tha that part of what t question spoke to is what congressman raskin talked about in this book and that is its not just americans playing anymore. We are dealing with outside parties. If i could add to that, its not just russia. Authoritarianism, racism, fascism are on the march all over the world. Weve got putin and russia, turkey, the philippines, the homicidal crown prince of saudi arabia, that was Donald Trumps first visit as president of saudi arabia. North korea, china, the future of democracy as lincoln talked about on the cattle they did coke battlefield bold government are equal in the through the that isnt a rhetorical question, its a serious question suite got to look at we have a lot of organic threats and that is where the struggle has been with the disenfranchisement. Right now it works for one party not necessarily for the other. Im a candidate here and i am in the Homeland Security program. My question revolves around narratives in regards to the past four years. My question is how do we go about getting combating misinformation as it applies and do you believe there is a process in which the government can source us better or providee for people who dont have access to information or only are accessing information that is inherently biased in that particular ideology . I will give one word, facebook. At the end of the day if you dont see the responsibility to check your own operation if not allow people to freely engage in the misinformation and disinformation tactics, it makes it harder which requires routine and my team and the house and the senate to get in front of this and begin to put in place the czechs on this process. Because you know what the issues are. We know as you just outlined what they are doing so the question becomes from that side hell do we begin to put up the required fences and walls to prevent those folks from really infecting our political discourse with a lot of disinformation. On the other side of the, weve got to take greater responsibility for the information we take him in other words dont believe everything you read and see. If you get an email notice Hillary Clinton is running a child pornography ring outside of a pizza parlor in washington, d. C. , you may want to ask yourself is that really true. It is exactly right, our opponents are already engaging, the stuff you can probably tell if you could legally that weve already stopped in this process but theres a whole lot more and it does not help that were sitting there taking it all in and spewing it back out and it does not help when the leader of the free world is one of the biggest perpetrators of fostering and pushing out these kinds of narratives, let me pick up on that point, the opposite of that disinformation is evident, what is it that the senate rejected in the impeachment trial, evidence, they did not want witnesses they did not want facts. That means the large part of the population that just get propaganda, Conspiracy Theory and so on. That is the public side of the responsibility. We have got to redouble our commitment to facts and evidence and the truth and different no other reason in our politics because the fate of our species is at stake with Climate Change and we have an ideology and machinery of climate denial is on which is all based on fake news, propaganda, disinformation and its going to impair our ability to take the actions that we need in order to save ourselves. Mayor, i just want to add because it seems like we shy away from it, it should be regulated the government, the federal communication act holds commercial stations, commercial venues, responsible for what is on the airwaves and it used to be there certain things that you cannot say, the words you cannot say in what we have become, talk shop to let it all happen because it benefits political candidates and we need to regulate, if facebook does not want to take responsibility then lets have a Regulatory Framework that just like we made television stations and radio stations and Public Utilities take responsibility and make sure there is a Public Benefit, we should be damn sure there is a Public Benefit right now because there is right now a public harm that we are talking about these issues but the fact that analytic, i read the same book, its scary as hell, can manipulate the data so you actually believe that something is going on at a pizza station. You actually believe that because several other people saying yes and this is what i know, that is criminal. Call it for what it is and the government should take responsibility and hold those private entities who are making a fortune but harming the public. We should not allow entities beyond the public. The government should step in. Important concerns about the role of new technology and social media and spreading falsehood and i also agree about the power of stories, at the same time there is a lot of really important social science that you could sum up as helping us understand, people dont believe what they want to believe and to that extent, the problem is not so much getting the right story, is getting people to listen and so when trump says no collusion, no obstruction, when he says its a witchhunt, there is plenty of facts out there right now the dispute that. But the problem is not that people dont get the facts, the problems that the facts dont matter. Thank you all. Good evening my name is joss. My followup question to the rest of the panel, how fearful should we be, if you look at President Trump who is never been held accountable for anything throughout his life, lets say the American Public rise up and we vote him out, hes alluded to the multiple times of not giving up power, should we be worried about President Trump doubling down and refusing to conceive the race . Thank you. Thank you for the great question. [applause] i dont think it was a mistake to impeach the president for one minute, i think we had absolutely no choice in terms of his high crime and misdemeanor against the democracy. But your question seems to suggest maybe we should have gone broader and that i happen to agree with, i think there were Campaign Finance violations which were far more serious than anything bill clinton was ever accused of. They impeach bill clinton for low crimes and misdemeanors. These were high crimes and misdemeanors in the campaignfinance field with hundreds of thousands of dollars being laundered and spent as conduit contribution and expenditures all being concealed and so on. There is also repeated and continuing violations of the foreign and domestic clauses. The monument clauses go right to the heart of our constitution, they say the president , none of us and federal office in article one section nine clause eight without the consent of congress receive a present and a monument an officer titled, any kind, whatever from foreign princes, kings and states, this president has collected millions of dollars from saudi arabia, turkey, philippines and so on, and fact he is admitted, he paid 350,000 to the u. S. Government for what he described a profits with business hes done with a Foreign Government, a couple problems, of course he doesnt show the accounting which means you have to take Donald Trumps word, secondly the constitution does not say you could take profits from Foreign Government is says you cannot take a mean payment of any kind and you cannot take any of it without the consent of congress and he never came to congress. Abraham lincoln came to congress when he got elephant antlers that he loved in the middle of the civil war, he comes to congress is going to keep these and they say youre doing a great job but you cannot keep those, turn them over to the department. Every president has abided by the clauses but not donald trump. I think this president is a oneman crime, its a problem figuring out what exactly to charge them with and when when they are dragging their feet and rejecting all of the subpoenas and demand for information. I do think the one problem with ukraine episode is to make it look like its some kind of unique eccentric episode when in fact its been the whole heart, the sum and substance of the Trump Administration, we have never seen and are lifetime and administration is corrupt and this criminal as a Trump Administration. With regard to what happens if the president does not leave office, sometimes we have the parade of portables, we speculate about something that are already going on, with regard to attorney general barr, now some people have warned if things go in the same direction, will have political investigations and prosecutions, my friends, we have political investigation and prosecution right now under attorney general barr, we dont think that we have evidence that President Trump has the military in his command as they would disobey the rule of law. So the day after inauguration or the date of inauguration of a democratic president , if trump does not leave the white house the new president should dial 911 and called the metropolitan police who should arrest the president , the former president for trespass. They should remove him from the white house. The only scenario by which that would not happen is if trump in fact has the military or significant other Law Enforcement apparatus in his command so then there is a fight. Thankfully there is no evidence at that point. I am kathy, retire now but spent 42 years on the hill, im not only are you right in everything that we know publicly but the senate, the judiciary Homeland Security and finance committee is continuing the investigation of former appointees in the state department and in various departments asking questions about ukraine in meetings and so on, there is a whole side joke going on in the senate right now and nobody is stopping it. We keep going back to we the people and it is our power to change it and what should we do again this is a point that i keep emphasizing, there is such a lack of leadership on the one hand for the republicans also there is not a platform for true leaders that are trying to make a difference in the way youre talking about or other managers that you refer to. They had one moment during impeachment, you hear that, it happens over a couple of days, the media is forced to give it a platform and then thats it, we will not hear from the managers ever again, if somebody in the campaign uses those words but part of the problem that i see is a leaders like congressman raskin and others who want to protect and put a framework out there for employees, the media is not giving them a platform to do that. There is not a counter narrative, the democrats will win when we have a nominee have the space of a counter narrative, right now its a oneman tweet show. Every single newspaper that you can get your hands on there is a paragraph here in the paragraph there that says we need to do something about this and we need to do something about that. But the media is not allowing the voice of the people in the true leaders in congress to be heard in the only way once the campaign happens in earnest, we will have as that speak to this or speak to that but were not really having a policy debate about what can happen, we are saturated by one persons voice. Since michael and i spend a lot of time on innocent bc in the congressman is quite frequently there as well. The media is fox news but also cnn, the media is also the Internet Sources in the media is also msnbc. Again i dont want us to underestimate what were up against in terms of the future of our democracy. It is not that the information, the facts, the truth is not out there for people to discover. It is out there, it is presented 24 7, its just many people do not want to know. Let me say this, i have 70000 federal workers and tens and thousands of more retirees that are represent in the eighth Congressional District in Frederick County and Carroll County in montgomery county, this issue is really important to me and i talked to federal workers all the time about this, it is not new, it goes back to the beginning of the administration where they have a crackdown on climate scientist and they shut down the government and theres a war on federal Government Health Insurance Benefits and salary and so on. But it has reached a fever pitch with the president s recent rampage retaliation against people he perceived to be his political enemy including colonel vindman who is a decorated war hero who served our country who responded to a subpoena, came and testified truthfully and then gets bounced out of his job at the national picardy council sent back to the military where the president said he cannot promise where there will not be military disappointment against him. This is Banana Republic stuff. We have got to demand, not just that democrats speak out about it but republican speak out about it and were obviously not going to get anything from the Banana Republicans, the ones who follow trump and walk the plank with him every day, but this is very scary to be in a situation where you have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who cowed and intimidated and doing their work and being able to testify about criminality, i was very disappointed in senator Chuck Grassley from iowa whos been a champion of the whistleblowers and nowhere to be found to stand up to the whistleblowers against all of the threats and the constant efforts out the original ukraine whistleblower. That person could be exposed to more hatred and more threats and et cetera. Its a real problem, there are unions for the federal workers in the federal workers have allies but its going to be very important for people to stand up for them just like standing up to the press is an obligation of citizenship, the media is not the enemy of the people, the media are the peoples best friend in terms of getting the truth out. Jefferson said if you asked me too choose between having a government without a newspaper or newspaper without a government i would not hesitate a moment to choose the lather, we have to remember that freedom of the press is essential to our ability to get the information that we need to govern ourselves. The last question for this panel. I think senator grassley did not support because my question is how do we get a congress that votes on whats right and not vote to save the job, and would term limitation help us. Do we need a guy spending 20, 30, 40 years and that applies to local elections as well. When i was county chairman in prince georges spearheaded and led the effort to put in place term limits on our local offices and ive kind of come around a little bit more on that because thats not the beall and endall, that does not necessarily solve all of your problems if youre still electing stupid people. So all you have done is turned down the term from four or five terms to two, they are still stupid. So again you got a look at who your electing. You gotta check what the congressman does. Not just every two years when he is asking for your vote, im just saying take any congressman. Take any political leader, i know the former elected official that i was accountable every single day to the voters and that weighed heavily, i remember having a conversation with the governor and we were talking about doing the job and i said my view is very straightforward and im going to do the job as its a last opportunity to do it. Which means i have to do it with the mindset that there is not a second term or third term or fourth term. That was my energy and thats what motivated me and i think a lot of that was brought about by talking to people who kind of looked at and basically saying you republican in maryland so you only get one shot, you better get it right. But the reality, we have got to take it comes back to us, we can dance around all day long and put it out there with a whole lot of other things, at the end of the day you put them in office. Theyre in office for 30 years because you put them in there for 30 years. You have a new generation of voters, and elected officials. Who have a different mindset, we will see if theres a different outcome but until they establish their political power in the system where they get to actually sway the way the election goes because right now you still have a high propensity of older voters who really do set the course of a lot of these elections around the country, you have to check who your put them in space, if you dont want the bad congresswoman or the bad congressman or the bad senator or governor, its not complicated, go to the polls and vote for the other person. That gets the partisanship. Because now we have been told that a republican cant vote for a democrat and the democrat cant vote for republican and we cant cross out, and all this other stuff but you and i know better. As i have said ive had success as a republican in maryland and thats because i made my case to the people in my Community Later bought what i was saying or they did not, they supported it or they did not, how do i get democrats to vote term limits on themselves, on the Political Leadership they have been elected. I made the argument, how did i get them to vote down tax increases, i made the argument, you make the case and so a lot of this resorts and how elected officials come at you but most important we how do you then respond in return, if you sit back and wait every two years for the letter that says reelect me, you dont ask them to account before that, you are more than likely going to reelect them and everything that is happening over 90 of your colleagues will get reelected this november. So that is not really changing much of anything, when you have the blimp in 2010 and in 2018 where you have a wholesale change, thats what you need to look at, what was going on in those cycles, that motivated and animated those voters in such a way that they turned out the bad leaders. The bad leadership. We will make an observation and will close out the panel and asking each of our panelists to make an easy observation about the 2020 election. That is my question . I think what michael just demonstrated is a twoway street, because you are a leader, he has been a leader and again, i dont just think its all on us, it is also the responsibility of those in leadership to do what theyre supposed to do, we had many good republicans and democrats who have demonstrated that, i may disagree with republicans on policy but there is very very good Republican Leaders in one sense its not that complicated but in another sense its very, very complicated because theres a lot of money in elections and theres a lot you can buy with ads and leave behind and you can convince people that the issues that they most care about you have actually done something about it. Unless youre an honest leader that believes in democracy and you actually do what you said you were going to do and then you tell the people that as opposed to thinking fundamentally that people are too busy or too stupid and i can convince them of anything as long as they put enough money behind it, thats the biggest destruction in our system right now. This is been an extraordinary panel, i will ask them to close out since we began the conversation with we the people, what do they think we the people might do in 2020, will the people say okay will reelected president and if not what democrat likely to defeat the president ,. That is easy. Karen and going to begin with you. I am the ultimate optimist i think more people voted in 2018 which was a Midterm Election since 1914 so the people fired up and i operate from the premise that if you give people enough time and enough information and access to the information, they will always vote in their best interest and they will do the right thing. I think if i were on President Trumps team i would be very worried in a statebystate number because we still have the Electoral College and some of the key states that he has to win, hes not doing so well in, Hillary Clinton, the democrat won by over 3 million votes and is congressman raskin said there were 9 million more votes for the democrats in 2018. I think that matters, people have taken this seriously, hes not an unknown as he was in 2016, it depends on who will be on the ballot, i have no idea who will be on the ballot for the democrat and i dont want to hesitate or venture or gas but i do think if we are about the issues and if we are about holding him accountable for what he has done and more importantly for what he has not done, i think the democrats candidate will do well and i think we will have a democratic president. What are your thoughts . With regard to what the president will do i think we should take him at his work, i think he has already called china and asked for their help in getting reelected. I think hes on the phone with putin, i think is on the phone with any number of the enemies and allies to see what they can do to support his reelection since the Republicancontrolled Senate has sent them the message that that is perfectly all right. Im also concerned if what karen said is true, i think it is true, im concerned what that means, what karen said people vote their interests, 43 is the magic number, if a democratic gets 43 then she wins. It is unrealistic and historically unprecedented to expect more than that. I am concerned about that, 53 of white folks who should understand that we have a person in office who is basically a stooge of Vladimir Putin and not just that, but a racist, misogynist and a person who puts his own interest above the interest of the United States and 43 of white people will vote for him. Im going ask you and congressman raskin to close and operat. A virtually free of the n is not until november, get busy. [laughter] unlike these guys, im not a practicing academic expert so im not in the prognosis business, im a political representative and organizing business and to my mind, we go out in the Democratic Party every two in four years and say this is the most important election in our lifetime, forget that, this is the most important election of our lifetime. There is nothing like it in terms of the future of the country and whats at stake. It is not a question of who he is, we know who he is, the question of who we are. Who are weak, are we going to be able to call on the political muscle memory of the American People to remember we are the country that led the world in fighting fascism and we had no confusion about which side we should be on. When they were marching in the streets of europe and in america, we knew exactly which side we should be on, our party was the party that took on the racist in our own ranks in order to side with the Civil Rights Movement and passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights act in 1965 and its a party of the Womens Movement and the environmental movement, is a party that gave us the Clean Air Act and the clean water act and the party of the human rights movement, we are the party of the movements. Of our lifetime. Do we surrender all of that order we recapture it, to be translated to the new century and connect with all these wonderful young people who are getting energized and created the movement after parkland for gun safety and are so energized and activated about Climate Change. That is our historical assignment and we get to leave the banditry in the high crimson mr. Meaner behind us. That is up to us, i hope it doesnt sound too partisan, maybe it does but let me say this about partisanship, because in response to the last questi question, first of all partisanship is a good thing, healthy Democratic Society thats because of the First Amendment that people can form their own parties and associations and can speak and talk. The alternative is a oneparty dictatorship. Which some people would like, we see that around the world, its a healthy thing down parties articulating programs and mobilizing voters giving people a signal as to what the candidates stand for, at the same time i feel strongly as an elected official once we get elected we gotta remember the great president s have said in the past, George Washington said we have to remember the word party comes from the french word party. Its a part of the whole, we get in and we gotta serve the whole, you get in and call my office, maryland you have a problem getting your va benefits or medicare medicaid, we dont ask if your democrat or republican or independent we ask if you live in a Congressional District those are the only people were allowed to serve and then we work for you and fight for you regardless of what your party is, thats a mentality we bring to the legislative process when i introduced the resolution to make the era happen last week to get it to the floor i was not doing that for the Democratic Women in america or the democratic men i was doing it for everybody because i think the era is an important step forward for our country constitutionally for us to do. I was trained to think about the whole and everybody. Were at a time where we have to be strong partisan but when we get in we have to remember we are serving the common good for everyone, the government must be the instrument of the Public Interest for everybody, not specific groups that capture political power but all of the people. That is our assignment. [applause] so ladies and gentlemen if you were confused or dispirited by this ruling painful prosperou pe call impeachment weve heard passion, enlightenment and Clear Thinking from these wonderful wonderful leaders, we the people still prevail. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]o hours 15 minutes. Thank you everybody for joining us this morning over coffee. The opening session of the policy conference, i am
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