brett: the democrats will argue that put out all of these transcripts after these closed-door hearings and now is the open hearing for republicans will be able to cross-examine these witnesses. you are saying because republican witnesses are not allowed that it changes the entire process. when he was conducting his depositions, the republicans really were not allowed to answer questions. they just kind of sat there. but what he was doing was managing the information that came out. this was not classified, it was held in a classified proceeding and what he s doing is is feeding the american people one side of the impeachment argument that the so-called resistance has been trying to do ever since donald trump was elected in november of 2016. brett: a little aggressive to call it stall and ask, isn t it? i don t think so.
cofounder of axios, mike allen. good morning to you. good morning. thanks for having me in the house yesterday. we love having you on set as always. talk to us about the one big thing today. the axios one big thing is the republicans new impeachment argument. axios obtained an 18-page staff memo that went to the committee members who are going to be at the open hearing tomorrow making the republican case. and there s a key phrase in that memo. and that is the president s state of mind. so this memo argues that you need to understand the context of the president s state of mind when he was talk together ukrainian president. why does this matter? this matters because republicans are not going to context the mount tac mountain of facts out there with lots of corroborated facts. if they can make their argument about the president s state of mind and whether or not something seis impeachable that
on fox news, where there are lawyers who work for furtash. i want to clear, everyone has a right to a lawyer and lawyers sometimes innocently represent several people in a similar case and they have common facts so it could save time. but these webs could spell trouble for trump s impeachment argument because they raise other questions about nonlegal matters like whether people are hiding behind lawyers to do other dirty work or whether foreign actors are throwing money around to influence u.s. foreign policy and whether donald trump s pension for people to donate their work for him from paul manafort to giuliani creates new risks. it is one thing for someone to volunteer and another if people volunteer for one client in order to sell access and make money from other clients. and i think i offer to this is something unique. i m a lawyer who knows the
the camera, and then take it public. that would be a better process, would it not? but they re going to argue that impeachment is fundamentally different because impeachment has the fundamental implication of affecting an election. we go to the polls, we elect people. the impeachment argument would be that has to happen in public because the voters, the people going to the polls, need to have confidence in the results and also the process. it s a key point because the republicans are making the argument we re now a year away from a presidential election, let the voters decide. any impeachment is about reversing the election. that s what the republicans were trying to do when they were impeaching bill clinton. that s what the congress was doing when they were impeaching richard nixon. that is inevitably what you re doing, reversing the last election. but the timing of this one, it is an interesting point, and it s clear today that as the republicans now realize a lot of
president to speak. . there is the tkpapbg of eight. the congressional leaders on either side of the aisle, as well as, you know, the heads of the intelligence committees and the fact that schiff wasn t told this would be happening is blatantly political. they are clearly saying because we don t agree what you are doing in terms of impeachment, we don t trust you, we will not tell you about these actual things you have oversight over. which is not really the best strategy when the argument is you are blocking congress from doing their jobs to continue to block congress from doing their jobs and be nontransparent about the executive branch. i don t know how that will work out in terms of your impeachment argument. in the absence of trust, this currency in washington, d.c.