After dozens of House Republicans demanded access to a secure facility in the Capitol on Wednesday where House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schꦉiff (D-Calif.) was preparing to depose a Pentagon official, Democrats expressed outrage at the breach of protocol. “They’re doing this because this is what the♔ guilty do,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) “Innocent people follow the rules of the House.”
Well, people engaged in impaꦦrtial investigations aimed at finding the truth don’t violate every precedent and standard of due process set during previous impeachments.
Contrast today’s inquiry with the Nixon impeachment. As American Enterprise Institute President Robert Doar has pointed out, the Nixon inquiry was a model of bipartisan cooperation. The Democratic chairman 💃then of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Peter Rodino (NJ), assembled a unified staff (including Doar’s father, John, a Republican whom Rodino ��appointed as special counsel). The full House voted on authorizing the inquiry.
The minority was given joint subpoena power. The president’s counsel was allowed to be present during depositio🦄ns, given access to all of the documents and materials presented to the committee, allowed to cross-examine witnesses and even permitted to call witnesses of his own. Most important, the committee did not leak or release selective documents cherry-picked to make the president look bad.
The same was true during the Clinton impeachment inquiry. As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich explained, Rep😼ublicans “adopted every single rule that Rodino had used in 1973.” Yet today, Rodino’s party is systematically undermining every principle of fairness and due process.
Take this week’s testimony by acting Ambassador William Taylor, who alleged that President Trump made US aid contingent on “investigations.” He was deposed inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility in the Capitol, a room designed to protect the government’s most highly classified 💙information. Cellphones are not permitted inside a SCIF. Yet somehow what appear to be cellphone photos leaked to the news media.
But the full transcript of his deposition — including his answers to questions from Republicans challenging his accusations — remains under lock and key. The president’s counsel is not allowed to see it, much less be present at ꦓthe deposition to cross-examine.
ꦕSo, Democrats are leaking derogatory information about the president, while restricting public access to potentially exculpatory information, all while denying him the right to see or challenge testimony against him.
Moreover, they are abusing the system to do it. One of the charges Democrats have leveled against Trump is that the White House improperly put the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian president on a special server used to protᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚect highly classified information. Yet Democrats are doing the very same thing, conducting impeachment depositions inside a SCIF, improperly using a classified system to restrict access to nonclassified information. Talk about hypocrisy.
Let’s be clea🐷r: There is nothing wrong with holdingꦛ hearings behind closed doors as long as there is due process. But secrecy and fairness go hand in hand. One without the other is corrupt.
The partisan nature of the Democrats’ inquiry will backfire in a number of ways. For one thing, it allows Republicans to make the case that the process is unfair. If the facts are on the Democrats’ side, they h🉐ave nothing to fear from transparency and due process. Second, their partisan behavior has given the president justification to refuse to cooperate with the investigation.
And finally, it has made it easier for congressional Republicans to rally around the presid🅘ent. Right now, Republicans are more torn about Trump’s Syria policy than they are about his impeachment inquiry. By failing to show even a modicum of fairness, Democrats have turned impeachment into a game of shirts vs. skins.
The Democrats’ conduct shows they are not serious, and the entire impeachment inquiry is a blatantly political exercise. Given the requirement of a supermajority in the Senate to remove the president, it is impossible for one party to remove the president of another party from office without buy-in from the other side. Yet Democrats are making no effort to win overও Republicans. And that means they’ll have a hard time getting buy-in from the American people.
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