there, it s okay for the republican party to insist donald trump be treated fairly. a lot of senators are going to tell you, since i may be a juror, i don t want to comment on substance but i m hoping we can get most republicans comment on the idea that the impeachment proceedings as currently constituted in the house are unfair and dangerous. reporter: didn t house republicans use closed-door depositions prior to public hearings during the clinton impeachment? why was it okay then? in october of 1998, we authorized impeachment as a body with 31 members saying do an inquiry. somewhere behind closed doors. the inquiry itself became very public. we had the hearing to start it off. the president participated in the very meaningful way. what s missing is the house
here we arguably have bribery, solicitation of foreign election aid. i think this is a delay tactic by rudy giuliani. i think his goal is to get this in court, slow it down. i think adam schiff s hardball approach will be smart and necessary if he follows through on it. one viewer asks, how long does the impeachment process take? there is no formal specific timing requirement on impeachment. in contrast to criminal trials which have specific deadlines. but the bill clinton impeachment provides i think a helpful timeline. the house initiated its impeachment inquiry of bill clinton in october of 1998. the house formally impeached clinton in december of 98 and the senate tried and acquitted clinton january and february of 99. big difference here. we are only one year out from an election cycle. the time pressure is even more intense now. schiff understands that. he said we re moving
a very smart lawyer, word on this. unless they have a duly appointed both by the house of representatives, they do not have subpoena power. of course, the only letters that have been sent demanding documents are just that. they are letters, correspondence, not subpoenas because as andy mccarthy pointed out, the democrats lack subpoena power without the vote. martha: juan, i ve asked you this question a couple of times. why, if there is such a constitutional crisis, then do with the way it has been done in the past? we have the numbers are richard nixon part of the number that richard nixon got when he was going through this process, it was an overwhelming number of republicans and democrats. they all believe that it was the time to go through the process. there is the clinton number in october of 1998, 258-176 members of the house are presented as, representing the people all across america, said yes, please go forward. please do this process. that is the will of the people. why do
to conservative. in congress these representatives make up a lot more, which shouldn t be so surprising why they re backing up trump so much. what else do you understand about the inquiry right now? i think there are a few other things. talking about trump and the ukraine, this might be why the impeachment inquiry is polling higher. do you think that phone call was essentially improper or wrong? what do we see? we see 48 and 50% say yes. they believe it s improper in the cnn poll and the quinn pipi poll. we have it in black and white here. this is evidence people have which is very different in some cases than the mueller investigation. how does this compare to past impeachments we see? i think this is rather important. let s compare trump to other presidents at similar points who faced an impeachment inquiry or impeachment and removal. what we see is right now in the polls, 54% say yes to the impeachment inquiry, versus clinton at this point october of 1998 only 45% said yes.
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