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This video compiles separate debates between Trump lawyers and House Dem managers in replying to senators during the second question-and-answer day of the Senate impeachment trial.
Chief Justice read the question: “The question from Senator Reed and the other senators is for both parties, beginning with the house managers. It has been reported that President Trump does not pay Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, for his services. Can you explain who has paid for Rudy Giuliani’s legal fees, international travel, and other expenses in his capacity as President Trump’s attorney and representative?”
Adam Schiff answered: “What Rudy Giuliani was engaged in by his own admission has nothing to do with policy. It has nothing to do with policy and let me mention one other thing about this scheme that Giuliani was orchestrating and the consequence of the argument that they would make that quid pro quos are just fine.”
Jay Sekulow answered: “Came out of the manager’s mouth, ‘Open for business.’ I’ll tell you who is open for business. You know who is open for business? When the vice president of the United States, who is charged by the then president of the United States with developing policies to avoid and assist in removing corruption from Ukraine and his son was on the board of a company that was under investigation for Ukraine and your concerned about what Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer was doing when he was over trying to determine what was going on in Ukraine.”
Chief Justice read another question: “On July 26, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee hired one of those individuals, Sean Misko. The report further describes relationships between Misko, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, and an individual alleged as the whistleblower. Why did your committee hire Sean Misko the day after the phone call between President Trump and Zelensky? And what role has he played throughout your committee’s investigation?”
Adam Schiff answered: “First of all, there’ve been a lot of attacks on my staff. As I said when this issue came up earlier, I’m appalled at some of the smearing of the professional people that work for the Intelligence Committee…”
Jay Sekulow answered: “Mr. Schiff put the whistleblower issue front and center with his own words during the course of their investigation. He talked about the whistleblower testifying.”
The original clips contained more than 37 minutes of video, this compressed version is only 30 minutes after removal of silences and pauses.
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Chief Justice:
The question from Senator Johnson and the other senators for both parties.
Recent reporting described to NSC staff holdovers from the Obama administration attending an all hands meeting of NSC staff held about two weeks into the Trump administration, and talking loudly enough to be overheard saying, “We need to do everything we can to take out the president.”
On July 26, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee hired one of those individuals, Sean Misko. The report further describes relationships between Misko, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, and an individual alleged as the whistleblower. Why did your committee hire Sean Misko the day after the phone call between President Trump and Zelensky? And what role has he played throughout your committee’s investigation?
Chief Justice:
The House will begin.
Adam Schiff:
First of all, there’ve been a lot of attacks on my staff. As I said when this issue came up earlier, I’m appalled at some of the smearing of the professional people that work for the Intelligence Committee.
Now this question refers to allegations in a newspaper article which are circulating smears on my staff, and asked me to respond to those smears. I will not dignify those smears on my staff by giving them any credence whatsoever. Nor will I share any information that I believe could or could not lead to the identification of the whistleblower.
I want to be very clear about something. Members of this body used to care about the protection of whistleblower identities. They didn’t use to gratuitously attack members of committee staff. But now they do. Now they do. Now they’ll take an unsubstantiated repress article, and use it to smear my staff. I think that’s disgraceful. I think it’s disgraceful.
Whistleblowers are a unique and vital resource for the intelligence community. Why? Because unlike other whistleblowers who can go public with their information, whistleblowers in the intelligence community cannot, because it deals with classified information. They must come to a committee. They must talk to the staff of that committee or to the inspector general. That is what they’re supposed to do. Our system relies upon it. When you jeopardize a whistleblower by trying to out them this way, then you are threatening not just this whistleblower, but the entire system.
Now, the president would like that. Nothing better than that. I’m sure the president is applauding this question, because he wants his pound of flesh. He wants to punish anyone that has the courage to stand up to him.
Well, I can’t tell you who the whistleblower is, because I don’t know. But I can tell you who the whistleblower should be. It should be every one of us. Every one of us should be willing to blow the whistle on presidential misconduct. If it weren’t for this whistleblower, we wouldn’t know about this misconduct. That might be just as well for this president, but it would not be good for this country.
Adam Schiff:
I worry that future people that see wrongdoing are going to watch how this person has been treated, the threats against this person’s life, and they’re going to say, “Why stick my neck out? Is my name going to be dragged through the mud?” Will people join our staff if they know that their names are going to be dragged through the mud?
Chief Justice:
Thank you, Mr. Manager.
Jay Sekulow:
Senate, there’s two responses that I’d like to get to. One, with regard to the issue of witnesses and in this case, the whistleblower.
Mr. Schiff put the whistleblower issue front and center with his own words during the course of their investigation. He talked about the whistleblower testifying.
Retribution is what is prohibited under the statute against a whistleblower. That’s what sort of whistleblower statute protects, that there’s no retribution. In other words, I am not going to be fired for blowing the whistle.
But this idea that there’s complete anonymity, and I’m not saying that we should disclose the individual’s name. You handle that in executive session or any way you’d want. But we can’t just say it’s not a relevant inquiry to know who on the staff that conducted the primary investigation here was in communication with that whistleblower, especially after Mr. Schiff denied that he or his staff initially had even had any conversations with the whistleblower.
It goes back to the whole witness issue. I want to go to that for just 30 seconds here. It seems to me that the discussion for witnesses… I heard what Mr. Schiff said about the 30… We’ll do depositions in a week. Democratic leaders said, “I could have any witnesses I want yesterday.” I’ve got it in the transcript.
You couldn’t get all the witnesses you’d want in a week. You couldn’t get the discovery done in a week. But if in fact they believe that they presented this overwhelming case that they have, all… They talk about subterfuge and smokescreens. The smokescreen here is that they used 13 of their 17 witnesses to try to prove their case, and we were able to use those very witnesses to undercut that case. So I think we just have to keep that in perspective.
Jay Sekulow: Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.
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Chief Justice:
The question from Senator Reed and the other senators is for both parties, beginning with the house managers. It has been reported that President Trump does not pay Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, for his services. Can you explain who has paid for Rudy Giuliani’s legal fees, international travel, and other expenses in his capacity as President Trump’s attorney and representative?
Adam Schiff:
The short answer to the question is, I don’t know who’s paying Rudy Giuliani’s fees and if he is not being paid by the president to conduct this domestic political errand for which he has devoted so much time, if other clients are paying and subsidizing his work in that respect, it raises profound questions, questions that we can’t answer at this point, but there are some answers that we do know. As he has acknowledged, he’s not there doing foreign policy. So when counsel for the president says, “This is a policy dispute. You can impeach a president over policy.”
What Rudy Giuliani was engaged in by his own admission has nothing to do with policy. It has nothing to do with policy and let me mention one other thing about this scheme that Giuliani was orchestrating and the consequence of the argument that they would make that quid pro quos are just fine. Let’s say Rudy Giuliani does another errand for the president, this time an errand in China, and he says to the Chinese, “We will give you a favorable deal with respect to Chinese farmers as opposed to American farmers. We will betray the American farmer in the trade deal, but here’s what we want. The quid pro quo is we want you to do an investigation of the Bidens. You know the one, the one the president’s been calling for.”
They would say that’s okay. They would say that’s a quid pro quo to help his reelection. He can betray the American farmer, that’s okay. That’s their argument. Where does that argument lead us? That’s exactly the kind of domestic, corrupt, political errand that Rudy Giuliani was doing gratis without payment, at least not payment apparently from the president. So who’s paying the freight for it?
Adam Schiff:
Well, I don’t know who’s directly paying the freight for it, but I can tell you the whole country is paying the freight for it because there are leaders around the world who are watching this and they’re saying, “The American presidency is open for business. This president wants our help and if we help him, he will be grateful. He will be grateful.” Is that the kind of message we want to send to the rest of the world? That’s the result of normalizing lawlessness of the kind that Rudy Giuliani was engaged in.
Chief Justice: Thank you. I’m sorry your time has expired. Counsel?
Jay Sekulow:
Came out of the manager’s mouth, “Open for business.” I’ll tell you who is open for business. You know who is open for business? When the vice president of the United States, who is charged by the then president of the United States with developing policies to avoid and assist in removing corruption from Ukraine and his son was on the board of a company that was under investigation for Ukraine and your concerned about what Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer was doing when he was over trying to determine what was going on in Ukraine.
By the way, it’s a little bit interesting to me, and my colleague the deputy white house counsel referred to this. It’s a little bit ironic to me that you’re going to be questioning conversations with foreign governments about investigations when three of you, three members of the Senate, Senator Menendez, Senator Leahy and Senator Durbin sent a letter that read something quickly like this. These were… They wrote the letter to the prosecutor general of Ukraine.
Jay Sekulow:
They said they’re advocates, talking about the Congressman. They’re strong advocates for robust and close relationship with Ukraine and we believe that our cooperation should extend to such legal matters regardless of politics and their concern was ongoing investigations and whether the Mueller team was getting appropriate responses from Ukraine regarding investigations of what? The president of the United States and you’re asking about whether foreign investigations are appropriate? I think it answers itself.
Chief Justice: Thank you, counsel
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Debates between Trump lawyers and House Dem managers in Senate impeachment trial (Jan 30, 2020) https://t.co/TGJwewHaRV
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