A hearing, a major report on the FBI, and how they converged.
Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. Today we’re looking at another hearing, a major report on the Russia investigation, and how the two converged. |
- The House Judiciary Committee held a daylong impeachment hearing that was largely a summary of evidence that followers of the inquiry would be familiar with, as staff lawyers for the Intelligence Committee presented their dueling reports on the investigation.
- Democratic committee lawyers used the hearing as a way to make opening arguments for impeachment articles. “The evidence is overwhelming,” said Barry Berke, a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee. The facts assembled in recent weeks were “uncontradicted” and “cannot be disputed,” he added.
- A Republican staff lawyer said that Democrats were “obsessed with impeaching President Trump” and merely looking for a new way to do it. Steve Castor, the lawyer, said there was “simply no clear evidence” that Mr. Trump had “malicious intent in withholding a meeting or security assistance.”
- Staff lawyers cross-examined each other for the first time, which led to a lot of tension. Republican lawmakers bitterly complained when Mr. Berke, who appeared at a witness table at the start of the hearing to deliver his argument against Mr. Trump, later climbed onto the dais and led the cross-examination of Mr. Castor, an unusual move that Democratic rules allowed for.
- Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, denied requests for Republican witnesses. Republicans have asked for two in particular: Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and the anonymous whistle-blower.
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The other Washington news |
Today was a big news day in Washington. In addition to the hearing, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a much-anticipated report on the investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign, which found the F.B.I. had sufficient reason to open the inquiry. |
I asked my colleague Amy Fiscus, our national security editor, about some revealing connections between that report and the impeachment inquiry. |
Amy, what was the inspector general doing? |
The I.G. exists to investigate allegations of abuse, mistreatment and other failures at the Justice Department. He was asked to investigate certain aspects of the origins of the Russia investigation, which Mr. Trump and his allies have long attacked as problematic. He focused on a wiretap application into Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, which he found serious problems with, even if it was ultimately a minor aspect of a sprawling investigation. |
Do you see any parallels between how Republicans criticized the Russia investigation and how they’ve been attacking the impeachment inquiry? |
Mr. Trump’s allies have used a version of the same defense in both cases: The investigators are out to sabotage him, and they’ll use anything they can. The parts of the I.G. report favorable to Mr. Trump are another weapon of sorts. His allies can hold it up and say, “Just like these F.B.I. investigators made mistakes — and therefore shouldn’t have been investigating at all — the same goes for the impeachment investigators.” |
You saw that today when Representative Doug Collins, the top Republican on the committee, accused Democrats of trying to bring Mr. Trump down from the beginning. Another Republican, Representative Kelly Armstrong, asked to enter the I.G. report into the Congressional Record. |
Republicans see the witnesses in the impeachment inquiry and the officials running the Russia investigation as part of a broad plot by Mr. Trump’s “deep state” enemies. They can use the I.G. report to continue to tie all of this together during the impeachment inquiry. |
Republicans have portrayed the Page wiretap application as proof of an anti-Trump conspiracy, much in the same way that they have seized on relatively smaller elements of the Ukraine scandal — like the D.N.C. contractor they believe facilitated Ukrainian election meddling — to weave together this counternarrative that Mr. Trump’s political enemies were the real problem. |
Rudy Giuliani’s latest Ukraine gambit |
Rudy Giuliani appeared this morning on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and promised that he would release his own kind of counter-report — “the Giuliani investigation,” as the hosts put it — to the Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry. Jason Miller, one of the hosts, said it would “turn the institution on its head.” |
Mr. Giuliani’s version of events was at least partly a result of a trip he took last week to Budapest and Kyiv, where he talked to former Ukrainian prosecutors who have been roundly denounced as corrupt. |
Daniel Goldman, a Democratic staff lawyer, brought Mr. Giuliani’s promised report up at the hearing today, saying it was part of Mr. Giuliani’s attempts to “pursue these false allegations meant to tarnish Vice President Biden.” Referring to Mr. Giuliani’s trip last week, and Mr. Trump’s promotion of it, Mr. Goldman said the president was making a “persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election.” |
Yesterday, The Times published a fascinating account of how Mr. Giuliani brought his client, Mr. Trump, to the brink of impeachment. |
What else we’re following |
- Where can you find the impeachment inquiry when there isn’t a hearing? And is there free food? According to my colleagues, Democratic lawmakers and staff members are working out of cold, cramped spaces littered with empty soda cans, pie left over from Thanksgiving and boxes filled with files from past impeachments. The House Judiciary Committee could unveil articles of impeachment as early as tomorrow, and is likely to vote on them by week’s end.
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