that is different. barbara and joyce, i ll try to get you in here in the last couple minutes that we have. i m wondering how much does public opinion play in all of this in this legal sphere? and i bring that unbecause there a new washington post poll that shows the partisan dividei. 82% of democrats say he should be impeached and removed whereas republican, 82% say he shouldn t be impeach and removed from office. how much should public opinion play in the legal sphere and the impeachment sphere that we re talking about now? joyce. well, as mya correctly points out, this is a political process. it is a judicial process in political clothing. and it will have aspects of both of those systems as it goes forward. but ultimately the american people through their senators are the jurors who will decide whether or not the president
here is what happened during clinton and they got all these rights and therefore we have to keep doing that. two things. one, they didn t as you said, they did not have the process that is currently laid out by house democrats. what is really happening here is impeachment is a process where the constitution leaves the rules too the house arul rules to the house and senate. house on the investigation and determining whether to vote, and senate on the trial and whether or not to acquit or convict. and every single time even in the clinton inquiry folks said yeah, were making it up as they went along. the context sort of determines what the rules are. and in this case, they are giving president trump many more opportunities to have what i worry might be more of a public circus than a fact finding inquiry because under richard nixon, he had a white house
do him a favor though, and investigate his 2020 political opponent joe biden. we know this and much, much more because of more than 100 hours of testimony behind closed doors with 13 witnesses who have essentially corroborated the whistleblower s account of the call and established that quid pro quo did in fact take place. the evidence the house has collected so far falls under the three abcs of impeachment. abuse of power. donald trump using the office of the presidency for personal gain. betrayal, trump betraying national security interests. and corruption, trump s attempt to get ukraine to corrupt our election. and with public hearings coming up, at least some of the testimony will be on live tv and america will hear the case for impeaching donald trump. joining me now is michael mcfaul, former u.s. ambassador to russia. ambassador, thank you very much for being here this morning.
facts, the house committees have had to step into that role. the prooemt proce prooech prooemt proce impeachment proceedings will come in the weeks ahead when they take a vote on articles of prooem impeachment. so this should help the country understand how fair democrats are being. i think that that is important for the country to pull together as this process goes forward. and that is a good point. barbara, what is your view on this? i think that although as mya says the house has no requirement to offer any of these due process rights, i think the house is also recognizing that this is a political process as well and so appearances matter. we ve seen republicans complaining about lack of due process and all of these things
the right thing based on how the wrong people will react or respond or how they will threaten to react or respond. the congress and this is the democrats and the republicans need to continue to move forward on the right path doing the right thing, holding a criminal president accountable, if that s what the evidence shows. and i don t want to say consequences be damned, but you can t decline to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. and that gets to, you know, something i ve been saying to friends when talking about this, and that is, if you don t move you meaning democrats in congress if you don t move on impeachment in this case with this president, then any president coming after him will have free range to do whatever. chairman steele, i want to show you, there was a tweet from