she s got people around her who understand the constitution, who understand the gravity of the situation. the last point i make right now is when i sat through that clinton impeachment it was it was horrible. i as a democrat, obviously, i was so disappointed and so upset. you know, trent lott and tom daschle worked hand in glove. and they, guess what, what had witnesses. and those were three witnesses and they took depositions, and their testimony was used in the trial. so nancy what she s doing here, speaker pelosi, what she s doing here is she s shining the spotlight where it needs to go now, and that s on mitch mcconnell who calls himself the grim reaper. but he better step up to the plate and stop playing party politics. let me go to the same question to professor feldman. right or wrong she says i m not sending over the documents.
take, this kind of process, before the senate trial were to begin? well, it s a political determination that s going on now. theoretically the house could hold these articles of impeachment forever, but that s not politically possible. so they will be transmitted at some point once there is some understanding of what the rules of the game will be. and then once they re received by the senate, the trial really can begin imminently. right after its receipt, there s no need for there to be any delay. there s no procedures that have to be undertaken. so real quickly, when you said forever, you ve heard the argument that s been made by some who say if it takes too long, then that kind of undermines the house vote of impeachment, thereby the president hasn t really been impeached if those articles are never transmitted to the senate. any truth to that? well, professor feldman s point, and he s the author of that article, says that until such time as the articles are
transmitted to the senate, they re not really perfected. so theoretically if they re never sent over, there never is the formal possibility of a determination as to liability for those articles of impeachment. i think that they probably stand as an article of impeachment, but there is no trial and, therefore, there can be no closure of the matter. noah feldman was a harvard law professor who was called by the democrats who testified, you know, on the legal merits of impeachment. okay. so senate majority leader mitch mcconnell says he is coordinating with the white house counsel. white house counsel pat cipollone visited the senate for a walk-through of the chamber. right. has any violation of the senate oath of office in your view taken place? no, not on the walk-through itself. i think that cipollone is allowed to go to the chamber.
these are impeachment articles, not advisory articles or anything like that. with all due respect to professor feldman, the argument makes no sense and i think is going nowhere. let s talk about your book, shall we? impeach: the case against donald trump. if a senator about to hear the case picked up your book, what should they take from it? i think one central thing, which is the rule of law is blindfolded. i do this at the beginning of my first-year law student classes. i say you ve all got biases. just pretend the position s reversed, and here it s real simple. if you re republican, pretend that president obama did all the things that president trump was accused of. would you say, oh, it s okay to cheat in the 2020 election with the help of a foreign government, that that s something you could just look past? it s okay to say, i m going to thumb my nose at the congress and not give a single witness, a
much as president trump. and, you know, you got to behave fairly. and i sure hope he does because that s what his oath to our grant document is all about. harvard professor noah feldman, he was a witness for house democrats. he says this, and i quote. he says if the articles are not transmitted, trump could legitimately say that he wasn t truly impeached at all. does that argument hold water with you, neal? no. i mean i don t know what they re drinking in cambridge, but that argument makes no sense whatsoever. it s not text actually grounded. it s not historically grounded. it s semantic and i think ultimately goes nowhere. we ve had this debate and over the last week our eyes have been glued to the television. i don t think congress was just staring at their naval and say this is some academic exercise. uh- uh-uh. this is a very solemn decision taken to impeach the president.