President Trump Impeached By The House In Historic Rebuke

Speaker 1: 00:00 Joining us to talk more about this historic moment is Dan Eaton legal analyst and partner at seltzer Caplan McMahon Vita. Dan, welcome. Thank you very much. They could be with you. So now that the house has voted to impeach the president, what happens now? Well, it's interesting because the constitution says the house house has sole power of impeachment, but then the Senate has the sole power of trials. So really now it moves now to the Senate for a trial, however that's going to be constituted, uh, by the United States Senate. And we just heard San Diego, Congresswoman Susan Davis say a speaker Pelosi should consider holding onto the articles until there are some clear guidelines about how the trial will be handled in the Senate. What does the constitution say about this process? Is that clearly laid out? Your question is exactly the right one because it's not clearly laid out. Speaker 1: 00:50 There is nothing in the constitution about this weird period of time between when the house votes a impeachment by a simple majority. And when the Senate takes up trial of those articles of impeachment, there has been some talk about whether the articles have to be formally submitted. And certainly if this religious lation of course the house has to transfer its work to the Senate for the Senate to be able to take it up. It's not entirely clear that the same process works in a impeachment. What we are talking about here are procedures of the two houses and it's not entirely clear, uh, that, uh, under the Senate's own procedural manual of that it is proper for it to take up, uh, the articles impeachment until they're, uh, they're turned over by the house. That said, it's not entirely clear that speaker Pelosi has the leverage that she appears to be exerting, uh, to, uh, bolster, uh, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer's case, uh, that there be a, a fuller hearing on this in the form of the trial before the United States Senate. Speaker 1: 01:51 Uh, what kind of leverage might she be able to gain? It's not a clear, entirely clear that she is going to gain any kind of leverage because at some point a Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, might just say, we're going to proceed. Now the house had the sole power of impeachment. The Senate has the sole power of trial. We're going to call the chief justice to preside over the trial and we're going to proceed, uh, whether you take any further action house having had your say or not, you know, this is just the third time a us president has been impeached. How does Trump's impeachment compare to others? Well, it's very hard to say because of course in the law of business we deal with precedent all the time. But if this has an improvisational quality to it, it's because they are sort of making this up as they go along. Speaker 1: 02:40 There is actually a Senate rule book, uh, as to, uh, when the Senate is sitting, uh, for impeachment. And, uh, in that, uh, rule book, it does prescribe the oath that is constitutional required that is to the constitution says that the senators sit under oath or affirmation. The Senate manual actually prescribes what that oath is and what it requires the Senate, each Senator to do is to quote, do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws. So help you God close quote. But beyond that, uh, the, uh, there is very little guidance as to how this matter goes forward, whether they are going to be witnesses, how they're present. Uh, Taishan will go, uh, when you talk about comparing it, we'll only know how to compare the two when we see what actually happens. Uh, now, uh, you can talk about the substance of the charges and how they differ, uh, between what Clinton was accused of and what president Trump is accused of. Speaker 1: 03:37 But that ends up being more of a political conversation than a legal one. What do you make of how the impeachment proceeding has unfolded over the last several weeks? I mean, what are some of your big legal takeaways? Well, the big legal takeaways is that the house certainly is taken quite a bit of time and heard from a lot of, uh, witnesses in creating a record. But the, the biggest takeaway is that there doesn't seem to be this broad consensus, uh, as to, uh, the, uh, need for impeachment, uh, that would suggest any possibility at all of the Senate actually voting, uh, to, uh, convict and remove a president Trump from office understand that the house, uh, in, uh, creating the record and ultimately voting on an article of impeachment only had to have a simple majority. The Senate. There has to be a two thirds majority. And the reason for that is to establish that there is something approaching a broad national consensus before our president is removed from office. Speaker 1: 04:35 The problem here, I guess when you look at the big picture is that, uh, the parties, uh, and I mean that in the political sense, the political parties are simply not operating from the same view of what seems to be an undisputed, uh, shared set of facts. And that's what's making this such a weird proceeding because it really is though we're dealing with alternative universes here as to the facts and as to whether those facts rise to the level of, uh, high crimes and misdemeanors sufficient to warrant the removal of the president of United States. You know, the Republicans contend that the article about abuse of power, it's vague and doesn't fall under the high crimes and misdemeanors provision. Do they have a point there? The problem is what does, uh, what does high crimes and misdemeanors mean? Uh, there really is no clear definition of that. Speaker 1: 05:27 Now there is some discussion about it in the Federalist papers and how what we're really talking about is, uh, a public offense and, and in the debates, the constitutional debates and so forth. But, uh, the fact is that what a high crime and misdemeanor is for purposes of being sufficient to impeach and then remove the president is really subject to the ultimate considered judgment off the senators. And in the case of impeachment, the members of the house that ultimately vote on these questions. What else will you be looking out for? Is this all moves forward. I want to see whether the Senate actually, uh, seeks to, uh, shortcut this whole process by, uh, moving to dismiss of the articles each meant almost as soon as they, uh, almost as soon as the Senate receives it or whether they will have what they had in the Clinton case. Speaker 1: 06:18 Whether you have presentations by the, uh, house managers who ultimately have the burden of proof as it were. Uh, and then the president's own lawyers and whether they are going to be any witnesses. The reason this is going to be so fascinating from a civic engagement standpoint is that we are dealing with uncharted territories and we are always going to be dealing with uncharted territory when we are dealing with impeachment because there have been so few of them. Historically, I have been speaking with legal analysts, Dan Eaton. Dan, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, Jade. Good to be with you.