defense and that congress had authorized, whether that was going to be given to the ukrainians were not if they didn t promise to have these investigations. notice that for most of the morning schiff and the democrat council, goldman, are pushing very, very hard to show that the defense a. the reason i think they are doing that is they know as well as everybody knows that nobody is impeaching a president of the united states over denying a visit to the white house. now, in point of fact, if you go by schiff s theory, denying the visit to the white house, the visit the white house, it s an official act. according to schiff s theory, there would be enough to impeach the president because of the technical violation of the bribery statute. i think we all know a technical violation of the bribery statute is not going to do the trick. if he s wrong about that, that
is if making out a technical violation of the bribery statute is not enough to trigger impeachment, that begs the question what is enough? ken starr s point is, how many republicans vote for democrats as of today can access what he was concluding. none of them vote with the democrats if i m right, that what bribery means in the impeachment because it is a power purchasing the presidency so that the president conducts e united states in the interests of the foreign power instead of in the interest of the american people, which we don t have anything close to at this point. we will break to martha. heard from the president of the president president, and in the middle of the all the skills or from his personal attorney cover to giuliani. we did. he was the focus of what we watch this morning in a big way.
constitution treason and bribery as the main things. other high crimes you could debate. but those were defined because treason and bribery is how you sell off the government and lose control of it to the highest bidder, be it a foreign adversary or really wealthy people who have other interests in mind. that was really damning in that sense. jason, it s also i know schiff spent some time today taking people through, taking sondland and then coming out and explaining to the public how all of the requirements for the bribery statute have been met. but make it easier for people. it s clear abuse of power. and i think what sondland was describing was having been conducted by the regular policy channel, the president with the knowledge of the vice president with the secretary of state being briefed with rudy giuliani being in the middle of all of it was something that, and congressman maloney did an artful job of getting him to say this out loud and in the room. he was doing this for t
treason only applies to enemies who we are actually at war with. what the framers were concerned about was a foreign power essentially purchasing the president. so relying on treason doesn t cover all of that. what they were talking about their tend to fill that gap is bribery, and the idea of very specifically that they were talking about or worrying about was the possibility that a foreign power would essentially by the president so the president of the united states pursued the foreign powers interests rather than the american people s interest. the bribery statute, on the other hand, enacted in 1962, talks about a lot of lesser crimes than that. for example, the thing the democrats are honing in on here which is that you don t even have to have a completed bride. you make what they characterize as a corrupt demand, that is enough for liability under the
you heard representative jordan and others yesterday making a big point about the fact that the aid was eventually released. the meeting took place. but the bribery statute makes it a crime to solicit a bribe even if the bribe isn t actually paid and that s a point that should be emphasized all the time. it s such an important point you make. it s not pre-judging what the evidence will show, but you re defining the terms which is how a lot of court cases work and how an impeachment process is going to work. we heard a lot about people saying if he didn t pull off the whole plot, does that make him innocent? the answer was no. we were discussing whether governors would go to jail for this. trying to sell the vacant senate seat in illinois where he was governor and he had that power and barack obama vacated his seat to become president. that seat ultimately was not effectively sold because the investigation stopped i can t goi vich from doing it. that s right and that s a