Viewers watching the question-and-answer interval of the trial on tv will discover a protracted pause that follows every time a senator tells Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that they’ve a query they’d like answered. The reason being easy: It’s being hand-delivered by a (in all probability) harried teenager.
Unable beneath the Senate guidelines to ask their questions themselves, senators slip their written question to a web page, one of many navy-suit-wearing excessive schoolers within the chamber, who then briskly walks the notecard to the entrance of the room, the place Chief Justice Roberts reads it aloud.
That’s simpler mentioned than completed for pages who obtain a query from senators on the outskirts of the ground. The lengthy tables the impeachment managers and White Home protection staff sit at have considerably blocked the entry from senators’ desk to the dais the place Justice Roberts is, forcing many pages to stroll across the complete room to move alongside the notecard.
The set-up has left a few of the Senate pages (who started their program within the final week) frantically fast-walking the questions as much as the dais — to the obvious amusement of some senators who might be noticed grinning at their efforts.
If actions taken by a president — or any politician — are to some extent inherently political, then the place ought to senators draw the road between permissible political actions and impeachable political actions?
That was the bipartisan query from Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, and Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, who addressed a recurring theme on many senators’ minds.
Patrick Philbin, a deputy White Home counsel, mentioned making an attempt to discern a politician’s motive “could be very harmful.”
“There’s at all times some eye to the following election, and it finally ends up turning into a typical so malleable that in actuality actually is an alternative to a coverage distinction: If we don’t like a coverage distinction, we attribute it to a nasty motive,” he mentioned.
Consultant Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead Democratic Home supervisor, countered that impeachment is the suitable “political punishment for a political crime” involving corrupt exercise.
“If we go down that highway” of ignoring a corrupt motive, Mr. Schiff mentioned, “there is no such thing as a restrict to what this or some other president can do.”
In an effort to rebuff arguments that calling witnesses would lengthen the trial, Consultant Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the lead Home impeachment supervisor, recommended limiting the depositions of witnesses to at least one week.
It was the identical size of time used throughout the Clinton impeachment trial in 1999, he mentioned, and the Senate, because it did then, may return to its common legislative enterprise for that week.
“Is that an excessive amount of to ask within the identify of equity — that we comply with the Clinton mannequin, that we take one week?” he requested. “Are we actually pushed by the timing of the State of the Union, ought to that be a guideline? Can’t we take one week to listen to from these witnesses?”
“I feel we will,” Mr. Schiff concluded. “I feel we should always. I feel we should,”
Senator Susan Collins of Maine requested a key query on Thursday: Was there a correct method to ask the Ukrainians to research?
The query underscored an vital level that the Ukrainians themselves raised over the summer time to American officers. If the US needed Ukraine to start a prison investigation into the actions of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., or into Burisma, the fuel firm that employed Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was there a correct method to do it?
Consultant Adam B. Schiff, the lead Home supervisor, famous that beneath the mutual authorized help treaty between the 2 international locations, the Justice Division can request Ukraine’s assist with investigations. However on this case, he mentioned, the division mentioned it was fully at nighttime about President Trump’s request that Ukraine examine his suspicions that Mr. Biden tried to guard his son by pressuring Ukraine to fireside a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. A number of officers testified within the Home inquiry that these suspicions had been fully unfounded, and Mr. Schiff mentioned he couldn’t conceive circumstances beneath which such a request would have been justified, even when it had come from the Justice Division.
The dearth of an official request troubled the Ukrainians, in addition to some key American officers. Final August, Andriy Yermak, a high aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, requested whether or not the Justice Division was requesting a Burisma investigation. Kurt D. Volker, the American envoy to Ukraine, testified that the…