--:-- [Discussion begins with Andrew Prokop, Vox, speaking to Sean Rameswaram]
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Do me a favor and walk me through the last 24 hours in impeachment because it feels like they've been a very big 24 hours.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andrew Prokop, Vox, do me a favor and walk me through the last 24 hours in impeachment because it feels like they've been a very big 24 hours.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Tuesday afternoon is when Representative Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, finally released his report on all of his findings in the impeachment inquiry so far.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This report chronicles a scheme by the president of the United States to coerce an ally, Ukraine, that is at war with an adversary, Russia, into doing the president's political dirty work.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There is some new stuff in that they got a hold of phone records for, it seems, Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they often cite these phone records to fill in the timeline of key events and what happened.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But the big picture is that this is Schiff's attempt to weave it all together.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It involves a scheme in which Donald Trump withheld official acts, a White House meeting, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military assistance in order to compel that power to deliver two investigations that he believed would assist his reelection campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And his narrative is divided into two parts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The first is what he calls misconduct, which are the basic facts of the Ukraine scandal itself.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The second part that Schiff focuses on is obstruction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I want to underscore also the seriousness of this misconduct.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The president instructed witnesses not to appear.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president used his office in his bully pulpit to try to intimidate witnesses.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: If the Congress allows a president to so fully and blankedly obstruct the work of Congress, even involving an impeachment investigation into the president's own misconduct, then we are begging for more of the same.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this moment was a passing of the baton, so to speak, because Schiff is kind of closing out his own committee's work.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He says he's still going to do a little bit, but the main action is now shifting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because the main action is now shifting to the House Judiciary Committee under Jerry Nadler.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Which brings us to today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does the Judiciary Committee differ from the House Intelligence Committee where we've been spending so much time recently?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There's a bunch of brawlers sometimes on the Judiciary Committee.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it should get much more feisty, I would say, than the Intel Committee was.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So this is the committee chaired by Representative Jerry Nadler of New York.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it will be their job to actually draw up the articles of impeachment based on Schiff and the Intelligence Committee's findings.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And one interesting thing about this transition is that there's a bit of trepidation about it from Democrats because Nadler's Judiciary Committee has had some high-profile hearings already this year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the general consensus is they haven't gone that well for Democrats.
--:-- [Discussion continues with a hearing from the Judiciary Committee]
--:-- Jerry Nadler: This committee has voted to impeach two presidents for obstructing justice.
--:-- Doug Collins: There are no set facts here.
--:-- Jerry Nadler: In fact, they're not anything that presents an impeachment here.
--:-- Doug Collins: So the interesting thing that I come to with most everybody here is this may be a new time, a new place, and we may be all scrubbed up and looking pretty for impeachment.
--:-- Jerry Nadler: But this is not an impeachment.
--:-- Doug Collins: This is just a simple railroad job.
--:-- [Discussion continues with the hearing from the Judiciary Committee]
--:-- Jerry Nadler: The motion to table is agreed to.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Andrew, let's talk about the Democrats, their timeline, their strategy, the upshot of the entire inquiry and process here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's start with the timeline.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So we don't really know what comes immediately next with the Judiciary Committee, but what comes next in the Democrats' process?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's still no official timetable for moving to an impeachment vote.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That said, the Democratic caucus met this morning and the impression that some members got coming out of that hearing, they told NBC News, was that there would be a vote on articles of impeachment before Congress leaves for the holidays on December 20th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so soon.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What's the strategy?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the strategy is interesting here and is worth a little unpacking because there is no deadline here.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There is no reason necessarily why they couldn't continue investigating.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are clearly gaps remaining in the factual record and witnesses who haven't testified.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There's also been some talk that the Judiciary Committee might not only stick to Ukraine for the impeachment articles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're considering doing one article of impeachment based on the Mueller report as well.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But what is very clearly in the minds of a lot of Democrats is that they feel they have to do this quickly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Adam Schiff said, you know, we view this as urgent.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: We have another. Nancy Pelosi said, we cannot be at the mercy of the courts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Representative Val Demings of Florida said, wouldn't it be a great Christmas gift for it to all wrap up by Christmas?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think what you're hearing in all of that is this shared assumption that it would be bad for Democrats to have this impeachment inquiry unresolved and continuing late into 2020, which, of course, is an election year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are the Republicans going to let them wrap it up quickly?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: If they see this strategy pretty transparently, could they stall in order to prolong the process?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think that's likely because President Trump also wants this over with.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: By all accounts, he does not like being impeached and he wants this to be dispensed with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the Senate, I think what was spoken of most recently is perhaps a trial of two weeks or so.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And all signs currently suggest he will be acquitted rather easily.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So really moving ahead with a vote also means moving ahead to the failure of the impeachment effort.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And that probably brings us to the third thing I wanted to ask you about, which is the upshot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Clearly, the Democrats are behind this idea.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Clearly, the Democrats will impeach Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Clearly, the Republicans will acquit.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So if we already know this path ahead, what do Democrats, Republicans, even the president stand to lose and gain here?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think to understand the calculations that are at play here, you got to keep in mind that on one side there are the political interests of President Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And on the other side there are the political interests of the House Democratic majority.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it is possible that both of those could be best served by a short impeachment inquiry.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And the reason for that is the map of the House of Representatives.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For Nancy Pelosi to keep her majority, she needs to reelect a bunch of Democrats in districts that voted for Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Trump won roughly 230 or so congressional districts and Clinton won around 205.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And remember, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by two percentage points over Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So compared to public opinion generally, the House map, like the Senate, like the Electoral College, is skewed somewhat in Republicans' favor and in Trump's favor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's really the political interests of these Democrats in districts that voted for Trump that are driving Nancy Pelosi's calculus.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: All year, these Democrats generally resisted moving to impeachment because, you know, if Trump is popular in your district, impeachment is basically the biggest high-profile way to say, I think Donald Trump is really bad and he should not be president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And these members generally think that being bipartisan, being moderate is the best path to victory.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And they haven't been feeling particularly comfortable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was an article in Politico recently that some of these vulnerable Democrats have been spooked and watching in horror as pro-Trump groups have bombarded their districts with anti-impeachment ads.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: This is not a comfortable place for them to be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it seems that this is the political calculation behind wrapping up impeachment quickly.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Are there risks for the Democrats to wrap this up so quickly?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Perhaps push back from the party's more progressive members and others who would like to hear more witnesses called or expand the inquiry beyond Ukraine?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think there will inevitably be critics who will say when impeachment does fail, as we expect in the Senate, who will say, well, it could have succeeded if it was done differently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Democrats should have spent more time on it.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They should have broadened it out from Ukraine, from the Mueller report.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Look into other stuff. Look into Trump's corruption with his business.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Look into sexual assault allegations against him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Look into policy matters like family separation and all these other potential topics that certain people have wanted to impeach Trump over.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think the counterargument to all this is that Pelosi's calculations regarding public opinion and impeachment have looked pretty good so far.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because if you look at the way the polls have shifted, it is true that as impeachment supporters stress, support for impeachment has increased during the inquiry.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But voters' approval of Trump has not changed very much at all during this impeachment inquiry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So basically the people who dislike Trump already have moved to favor impeaching him.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But the people who continue to like Trump haven't changed their minds for many of this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this crucial polarization and continued support from the Republican base voters is why Republicans are standing behind Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Is why they're going to vote to acquit Trump, even though the facts may look pretty bad for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the only discernible change since this whole thing started is that more people who already disapproved of the president are on board with impeachment.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: In the grand calculus of things, does that mean this was worthwhile for Democrats?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe all Democrats achieved here is a symbolic reprimand of Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And maybe that was worth doing because, you know, what else were they supposed to do once they learned of this really apparently egregious effort to interfere with the 2020 election by smearing Joe Biden?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Were they just supposed to let it slide, do nothing just because the Republican acquittal seemed certain in the Senate?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There is some value in a symbolic reprimand.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is embarrassing for Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He did not want to be impeached.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He will likely be only the third president in history to meet that fate.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But as symbolically effective as it may be, what it will not produce is a real substantive change in who is the president of the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's still going to be Donald Trump when this whole thing wraps up, unless there's some sort of earthquake that there are no signs of so far.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Andrew Prokop is a senior correspondent at Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram for him, and this is Obviously... Ukraine. Ukraine Explained.
