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The New Yorker Radio Hour
The March Toward Impeachment
00:08:01
It’s been a busy week, and it’s only Tuesday. The chair of the House Judiciary Committee unveiled two articles of impeachment against the President, which are nearly certain to be adopted by the House of Representatives. The same day, Congressional Democrats threw their support behind Trump’s renegotiation of NAFTA. Isaac Chotiner, who writes the Q. & A. column, calls the New Yorker’s Washington correspondent Susan Glasser to talk about the reaction in the capital to the fast-moving impeachment process and about the House leadership’s decision to focus on a small number of charges—abuse of power and obstruction of Congress—when so many were potentially on the table. “There’s nothing in there about a violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause,” Glasser says. “And there’s nothing at all about the Mueller report, which found ten alleged acts of obstruction of justice on the part of the President with no other remedy except for Congressional action.” But it is no coincidence t...
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Isaac Chotiner, a staff writer at the New Yorker, and this is a special edition of the New Yorker Radio Hour.
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B
A president who declares himself above accountability, above the American people, and above Congress's power of impeachment, which is meant to protect against threats to our democratic institutions, is a president who sees himself as. As above the law.
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A
This morning, House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Trump. So I wanted to call up the New Yorker's Washington correspondent, Susan Glasser to discuss the goings on in the Capitol.
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C
Hi, how are you, Isaac?
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A
I'm all right. So tell me, what has the mood been like on Capitol Hill today?
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C
You know, I mean, it's one of those epic days of the Trump presidency that, you know, seems like a week or a month, but it's just one day. You have the House Democrats marching toward impeachment, unveiling the two articles of impeachment against the president. They'll be voted on in the House Judiciary Committee. Then just one hour later, you have this major legislative breakthrough as well on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying she's made a deal and there are enough votes to move forward with the rebranded U. S. Mexico, Canada trade agreement as well.
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A
So I want to turn to the trade agreement in a second. But first, there are two articles of impeachment against the president, one for abuse of power, the other for obstruction of Congress. Congress, of course, has been trying to investigate the abuse of power. Is it fair to characterize these articles as particularly narrow in focus? I know there'd been a debate sort of before impeachment really got going, about how narrowly any potential impeachment case should focus on President Trump's apparent misdeeds about Ukraine and how much they should focus on his general abuse of office. So how would you characterize what Nadler is unveiling today?
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C
Yeah, you know, it's very interesting. They're both very narrow in their essentially focus to the very current proximate investigation of the Ukraine matter, and yet their language, of course, is incredibly sweeping at the same time. Right. They talk about abusive power rather than focusing on any particular kind of statutory type misdeed like bribery on the president's part. They talk about obstruction of Congress in a very sweeping terms, but there's nothing in there about violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause, for example, enriching himself from foreign powers. And there's nothing at all about the Mueller report, which found 10 alleged acts of obstruction of justice on the part of the president with no other remedy except for congressional action. So they're basically taking a pass on that.
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A
So Democrats are now moving ahead. They have not interviewed Mike Pompeo under oath or John Bolton or Mick Mulvaney or Rudy Giuliani. They're, they're moving pretty fast, I think it's fair to say. What do you think of the calculation that they've made in going forward and trying to speed this process up so it doesn't drag on for a very long time, which I guess would happen if the court cases about whether these guys should have to testify were to drag out. What do you think about that decision, both substantively and politically?
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C
Yeah, it's a very significant decision historically in terms of this impeachment and one that will be second guess forever in terms of the politics. This is colliding with the election year. So, you know, the fact that now there appears all but certain that there will be a Senate trial and there are multiple senators running for president who will be forced to sit there through the course of this trial and not campaign in the immediate run up to Iowa and New Hampshire is a fascinating dynamic as well. But just your point about not calling key witnesses, it gets to something that's, that's sort of frustrating and essential about this impeachment. On the one hand, they've amassed a remarkable amount of information, a short amount of time, all of which more or less tends to confirm the basic facts of the case. And yet by stopping people like the national security adviser, John Bolton, not forcing him to testify, he was an internal dissenter, according to the testimony of his own aides who did comply with subpoenas and come forward, John Bolton is calling this a drug deal. John Bolton is sending his aides to the lawyers. He's so worried about what's going on. How can we not hear from him? It does seem like an incomplete investigation.
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A
Do you think that these decisions are being made by Pelosi sort of on her own, or do you think that she's taking the temperature of her most vulnerable members? Do you have some sense of how, how the decision making is being made about the speed with which this has been happening?
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C
Well, look, she's very attuned to what it takes for her members to deliver a 218 vote majority on any given thing. And I think that's part of why we see this connection today between moving forward with impeachment and moving forward with the U.S. canada, Mexico free trade deal, which is something that her vulnerable frontline members, they call them the sort of 31 or so democratic members who are elected in, in districts that went for Trump. So, you know, those people want to show legislative action and that they're not just being caught up in some sort of vendetta against the president. And I think it reflects a Pelosi political calculation about how best to satisfy their concerns. But make no mistake, she is running this impeachment. When I recently asked a member of the Judiciary Committee, well, who's going to be the House managers, you know, how will that be picked for a Senate trial? And I said, you know, what's the role of Pelosi? And he just laughed at me and he said, that's a rhetorical question. Right? He's in charge of everything.
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A
I wanted to ask you last question about the Republican strategy, which there's been sort of a lot of attempts to muddy the waters and to say first that this was unacceptable but not impeachment worthy to then essentially defend the underlying conduct. And as we move towards what seems like it will be an impeachment in the House and then a trial in the Senate, there's been talk that Mitch McConnell is essentially setting some sort of a trap for Joe Biden, whose son was obviously involved in this and that essentially a Republican led trial is the fear among Democrats in the Senate will turn into kind of an attack on Joe Biden and his son's business dealings. Is that what you see this trial devolving into in the Senate, or do you think Republicans have a different strategy?
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C
Well, it's a good question. Obviously, nobody's really fully revealed their hand yet, Isaac. You know, that's a threat coming from the White House. We're going to call Hunter Biden, we're going to call Joe Biden, we're going to make it all about them. We're going to make it about all the conspiracy theories that you heard from Devin Nunez, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, earlier in this process. I'm a little bit dubious that that's actually going to happen. And here's why. You need 20 Republican senators to vote to convict the president in a Senate trial, but you only need a majority in the Senate to set the rules for the trial. And so in a way, the vote of Mitt Romney and other folks like Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins become more important when it comes to what kind of a trial we're going to see than whether it's going to change the outcome, if you know what I mean. And so there are definitely three or more Republican senators who are not going to go along with making it into a Donald Trump orchestrated circus in the Senate.
- [07:38]
A
Susan Glasser is the Washington correspondent for the magazine, and she writes Letter from Trump's Washington, which you can find@newyorker.com at least once a week. Susan, thank you so much for joining us.
- [07:47]
C
Oh, thank you for having me.