The Moderates’ Impeachment Moment

[0] From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavarro.

[1] This is the Daily.

[2] Today, the Senate votes to adopt the rules that will govern the rest of the impeachment trial.

[3] Julie Davis, on why they were not the rules that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had originally wanted.

[4] It's Wednesday, January 22nd.

[5] The Senate will come to order.

[6] The chaplain, Dr. Black, will open the Senate with prayer.

[7] So on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opens the Senate for this first day of the official impeachment trial.

[8] The Senate's process will draw a sharp contrast with the unfair and precedent -breaking inquiry that was carried on by the House of Representatives.

[9] He has spent weeks decrying the House impeachment inquiry as completely partisan and unfair.

[10] Finally, some fairness.

[11] On every point, our straightforward resolution will bring the clarity and fairness that everyone deserves.

[12] And he's essentially saying this is our chance to show that we can do our duty as senators.

[13] And today's vote will contain some answers.

[14] Today we're going to find out whether that's possible.

[15] Democratic leader.

[16] Now, before I begin.

[17] And then Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, gets up to make his speech.

[18] The McConnell rules seem to be designed by President Trump for President Trump.

[19] And it's like they're on different planets.

[20] He essentially says Mitch McConnell is pushing for this process that's completely unfair.

[21] There's nothing fair about this.

[22] It's completely skewed toward President Trump and what he wants to see in this trial, which Schumer says is basically a cover -up.

[23] If the president is so confident in his case, if leader McConnell is so confident the president did nothing wrong, why don't they want the case to be presented in broad daylight?

[24] On something as important as impeachment, the McConnell resolution is nothing short of a national disgrace.

[25] This will go down, this resolution, as one of the darker moments in the Senate history, perhaps one of even the darkest.

[26] What exactly are these two men?

[27] really bickering over here.

[28] Well, for some time now, there has been this behind -the -scenes debate about what the rules were going to look like.

[29] Mitch McConnell has repeatedly said...

[30] The structure for this impeachment trial should track with the structure of the Clinton trial.

[31] We have a precedent here.

[32] Don't worry, this is going to be modeled on exactly the same rules that were adopted unanimously in 1999 when Bill Clinton's impeachers.

[33] trial was about to begin.

[34] And Democrats have essentially been waiting to see what that looks like.

[35] Is that actually going to be the case?

[36] And for a long time now, we have expected to see a copy of this resolution, and it's not materializing.

[37] Leader McConnell has still not come up with his proposal.

[38] That's unheard of.

[39] And as the senators are debating these rules and Schumer is demanding to see what Senator McConnell is going to propose, comes the deadline on Saturday evening for the White House to make its first filing in the impeachment trial, and the president's lawyers lay out basically what they're going to argue in this trial.

[40] They call on the Senate to swiftly reject these impeachment charges.

[41] That's a quote from the filing, and it quit the president because the charges themselves are without foundation and, in fact, would weaken the office of the presidency if the Senate agreed to remove him for these charges.

[42] The president's legal team, Alan Dershowitz, Professor Emeris at Harvard Law School, also the author of The New Book, Guilt by Association.

[43] Professor Dershowitz, thank you for joining us.

[44] Thank you.

[45] It's your position that President Trump should not be impeached, even if all the evidence and arguments laid out by the House are accepted as fact.

[46] That's right.

[47] Number one, they say, the vote was to impeach on abuse of power, which is not within the constitutional criteria for impeachment and obstruction of Congress.

[48] The impeachment charges do not actually allege any violation of a law.

[49] There's no crime here.

[50] Abuse of power, they say, in the way that House Democrats have framed it, is essentially criminalizing the president doing his job.

[51] Number two, they say all of the findings that came forth in the House impeachment inquiry.

[52] The whole inquiry itself is essentially fruits of a poison tree.

[53] The Democrats had a political vendetta against President Trump.

[54] and decided to impeach him at all costs.

[55] And so anything that was uncovered, anything they unearthed in this inquiry is by definition illegitimate and can't really be considered as part of an impeachment proceeding that it's not really a constitutional thing because of the way Democrats conducted the inquiry.

[56] And so shortly after the president's legal team files its brief, Senator McConnell finally comes out with this draft of the resolution that he's going to offer to govern the procedures for the trial.

[57] For the rules.

[58] For the rules, exactly.

[59] And it looks a lot like the kinds of ground rules that the president's team would want based on what they've said in their filing.

[60] What do you mean?

[61] Well, remember, Mitch McConnell kept saying...

[62] Essentially the same, very similar...