Day 8 of Trump’s Trial: Ask Me Anything

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/trump-impeachment-trial.html

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After fidgeting their way through six days of opening arguments in the impeachment trial of President Trump, rank-and-file senators were at last allowed to participate, as Wednesday kicked off up to 16 hours of question-and-answer time spread over two days.

Roughly speaking, this was the impeachment version of a cross-examination, minus the drama and edge of a regular trial. Impeachment Q. & A.s are designed to avoid direct confrontation. Senators submit questions for counsel in writing, on small tan cards that are handed to Chief Justice John Roberts to read aloud. The only time the senators speak is when informing the chief justice that they’re “sending a question to the desk.”

As such, Wednesday’s proceedings must have been frustrating for lawmakers. On the one hand, they were getting to ask questions. On the other, they weren’t allowed to pose the questions themselves, thus eliminating the opportunity for showboating. This is a little like forbidding your dog to bark at squirrels. It goes against the laws of nature.

The chief justice, by contrast, was at last getting to do something other than gavel the sessions open and closed and try not to hoot at some of the outlandish legal arguments that have been floated this past week. Back and forth he went with the questions — serving up one from the Republicans, then one from the Democrats — round after round.

The proceedings most likely frustrated many viewers as well. In classic congressional fashion, most of the inquiries were focused less on extracting information than on setting up the questioner’s preferred team to score points in support of its case. To this end, the bulk of questions by Democratic senators went to the House managers, and most of those from Republicans were aimed at the president’s team.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat from California, lobbed this softball to the prosecution: “The president’s counsel stated that ‘there is simply no evidence anywhere that President Trump ever linked security assistance to any investigations.’ Is that true?”

This was followed by an equally loaded query from Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. The House managers were claiming that Mr. Trump’s actions “contravened” American foreign policy, Mr. Lee observed to the defense. “Isn’t it the president’s place, certainly more than the place of career civil servants, to conduct foreign policy?”

I’ll give you two guesses as to the answer.

A little later, Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, asked the House managers if they would “care to correct the record on any falsehoods or mischaracterizations in the White House’s opening arguments?”

There were some startling moments. Asked if it even really mattered if there had been a quid pro quo in Mr. Trump’s handling of Ukraine, Alan Dershowitz, a celebrity lawyer on the defense team, floated a radical claim: If a president believes his re-election to be in the national interest, whatever he does to advance that goal is A-O.K.

Talk about a precedent everyone will live to regret.

Unsurprisingly, the day’s hot line of questioning arose from revelations about a forthcoming book by John Bolton, the former national security adviser. Things have been tense around the Senate since Sunday, when The Times reported that, in his book, Mr. Bolton writes that Mr. Trump told him directly that the release of security aid for Ukraine was tied to Ukraine’s announcing investigations of Democrats sought by the president.

On Wednesday, many of the Democrats’ questions aimed to give House managers an opening to stress the need to hear from Mr. Bolton and other key witnesses.

Even when a query didn’t directly refer to witnesses, House managers frequently ended their response with a variation on: And if you have any questions about this, Mr. Bolton is just a subpoena away.

Expect to hear this refrain again on Thursday — no matter what the questions.

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