Trump Impeachment Fury

the president. I pray for the president. She may pray, but she prays for the opposite. But I doubt she prays it all. And these are vicious people. Joining me is National Security attorney Brad moss, a partner Mark Zaide. Susan Collins and other senators said that, you know, President Trump has learned his lesson after the impeachment, but what does his speech today tell you? Well, the view of Susan Collins and Marco Roumio and Lamar Alexander was all

based more on aspiration than anything else. They're hoping that he said the president would take something that they would have, you know, learned a lesson like you would expect the child to learn a lesson after he get slapped on the wrist, and hoping that having gone through this, the president would you know, understand how he had crossed the line.

The speech or whatever we're the celebration, whatever we're calling it, that transpired today um in the White House was clearly an indication that as far as the President is concerned, there was no lesson to be learned other than he can get away with it so long as his party will back him and cover things for him. He made no apologies for what he did. He still believes he did nothing wrong. He still believes it was a perfect call. He still believes he should be allowed to do this.

And you know, as we're seeing already in reporting his indications that the efforts, both the private ones through rooted Giuliani and then the ones not going through the Senate, are going to ramp back up, and they're going to continue doing exactly what they're doing to dig up dirt on the bidens and try to press foreign parties to

provide that information in exchange for official favors. In addition, he offered a new defense, saying that he had to do it basically because there was a treaty signed with Ukraine about corruption. So this was something that even his attorneys didn't bring up. Yes, so he's referencing a mutual legal assistance treaty that had been signed. And this was a lot of various Republican and conservative operatives had mentioned this in passing on Twitter over the last few months.

Here was the problem that was designed for existing US government investigations if there was, you know, an ongoing investigation the FBI was looking into potential crimes committed by Hunter Biden, that there was a treaty to elate to enable a mechanism to enable the two countries to exchange information. Obviously, there is no such investigation. The FBI has not investigated, is not investigating, or otherwise having indicted either Hunter Biden

or Joe Biden for anything. This was a private scheme being run through Rudy Giuliani, using the connection to the President as the basis to state that absent these investigations being announced, the aid was going to be cut and they were using certain players like Ambassador Sonlin to do it. And of course it all goes without saying that if there was something here, there would be official investigations by

the U. S. Government. There are no official investigations. And that's why the Trump lawyers and the you know in the Senatorial never bother bringing this up because they didn't go through any of the official channels that the assistance that the Mutual Systems Treaty considers and contemplates, and that wasn't anything that they ever invoked. This was a private scheme.

I read today that the Treasury Department has handed over Hunter Biden's tax records to a command I'm not sure if it was the tax records or if it was travel records from the Secret Service. Wasn't quite sure. I wasn't quite clear what would turned over. But either way, whatever that is, it's amazing how suddenly the executive branch is able to turn over information to Congress, is willing

to provide it in a timely fashion. In complete contrast with what we saw over the last few months as this impeach investigation ramped up and led up, led to the ultimate impeachment in the House and then the acquittal in the Senate. All of those categorical refuses to cooperate, all the insistence that no one should be allowed to talk to Congress. Something went out the window now that it is something that helps the president in supports the

president's political agenda. So yeah, it's rank hypocrisy. Mitt Romney made history by being the only Senator to vote to impeach a president of his own party, and today President Trump has set his sights, it seems for Mitt Romney, and I wonder if he'll be ostracized in Washington by the Republicans, even though John McCain when he gave that

thumbs down vote on Obamacare, was not ostracized. I don't think that Mitt Romney will be completely ostracized by the party for the most part, in the sense that he's not gonna be expelled from the you know, Republican caucus and the setting. He's not going to be pushed out of the Republican Party in general. He's going to be isolated a little bit in terms of some things. There's going to be unending vitriol from the White House against him. He's not gonna get any assistance from them on any

of his projects. The Trump family will almost certainly try to help any primary challenge that might be launched against Romney in the future if he runs for re election in a few years. But Mitch McConnell's not going to do anything that jeopardized that seat in Utah. He needs his majority and that was that's one of the critical seats, and he's not going to run any risk. But this is again, this is what we live with in the era of Trump. In this cult of personality, you do

not dissent, you do not question dear leader. You must at all times be loyal, even if he's not loyal to you. And it's a rather distressing way to see the Party of Lincoln go in the sense that they are now just unwilling to ever question this cult of personality that has taken over them. How Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was one of the subjects of President Trump's ire today, says that she'd done her part to be respectful to him. But now I feel very liberated. I feel that I've

extended every possible courtesy. I've shown every level of respect. I say to my members all the time, there's no such thing as an eternal animosity. I've been talking to Brad Moss about the President's reaction to his acquittal. So, Brad, the question is whether some of the senators in those swing states will be punished at the ballot box for voting to acquit Trump or whether by the time November

comes it will all be forgotten. So, assuming there's nothing more to come in this particular contact between now and November, I think Susan Collins is in serious trouble. I think Corey Gardner is in serious trouble, and I think Tom

Tillis in North Carolina isn't serious trouble now. To be sure, all three were facing very serious challenges regardless, and I think for part of for part of the reason they chose to vote the way they did was a political calculation that they would rather risk angering you know, independence and Democrats who likely we're never going to vote for them anyways, and keep the loyalty of the president, keep

the President's support, which they'll need to secure reelection. Uh, then going out on a lamb, voting to convict failing, and then having to deal with an angry you know, Republican base and an angry White House. So for them, their only hope was to basically be political opportunists, you know, trying to claim that, oh, we hope he'll learn from this, but very much be political opportunists and hold onto power.

Simply by you know, covering their eyes and covering their ears and hoping they don't hear anything or see anything. What was surprising to me, in addition to Mitt Romney's vote, what was surprising to me was that the Democratic senators all voted in favor of convicting Trump. And I mean there seemed to be some that are taking a risk by doing that. Yeah, And so the ones who are here probably thinking of so. One would obviously be um Mansion out in West Virginia, which is obviously now become

a very deeply read state. Um at least, you know, in terms of how they vote for president that ironically has a significant base of registered Democrats, but Democrats who usually tend to actually vote for Republican presidential candidates. Um Mansion is rather popular out there. Presumably if he chooses to run again, this will be a problem for him, but it's unclear that it would be one that would

truly stop him from winning. He has his own base of popularity out there long before Donald Trump had presumably will still have it now in the aftermatho Donald Trump. The other one, the other senator who might be in trouble, is going to be Um Senator Cinema out in Arizona. But with one thing she has going for her is that the demographics of Arizona have been changing. We saw that with how the you know, her recent election, you know, a Democrat winning in Arizona and not been something that

had happened a long time. You've been seeing those demographics change. And so part of her calculation, no doubt, from a political context, was if I don't vote to convict, do I depress my own base and cause problems for myself including a possible primary challenge when I'm up for re elections. So I'm sure that was part of it. But in the end, you would hope for most of these senators on both sides of the you would hope that they took their oaths seriously and that they were trying to

render impartial justice. And unfortunately, in the context of some of these senators, they chose to take what I would view as the political route to save themselves in November

rather than actually render an impartial verdict. And now attention turns back to the House to see whether or not some of the chairs of House committees are going to restart their investigations into President Trump and one of the big things on the line is of course, whether or not the House Judiciary Chair will subpoena John Bolton to testify, and then whether or not Bolton will comply if subpoenaed. So Bolton is obviously, you know, the big shiny object.

His book is supposed to come out in March. We're still waiting to see if that's actually going to happen. There's been no word yet on the final review Review approval um through the National Security Council that has to sign off on whether or not this classfied information in

his book. Um, but yeah, I think you you can expect to some extent there's going to be a slew of remaining on investigations that will continue on to sort of flesh out the record, not the purpose of an additional impeachment, but soon Sure the public has everything it needs in the run up to November, and I expect that there'll be a supplemental report coming out of various House chairs um in the run up to November of here's the additional information that we were not able to

get in time for the impeachment investigation and for the Senate trial. That the White House did everything it could to keep from you. Here's what we've been able to collect there. If your ongoing investigations, you the American voter, you render your own decision whether or not this matters to you. You get to make that ultimate call. And what's your take on whether or not Bolton will testify?

If so, that as six to four thousand questions, So you would assume that he will because he said publicly he would. But that was the context of a Senate trial. Well, that's no longer an issue. The Senate trial is over. The president was acquitted. So does does John bolt do John Gon Bolton back down now as he say, well, there's no reason, no longer reason for me to come testify. You can buy my book and read it there. I'm

sure he might make that argument. He might rely on some of the defenses he otherwise was going to swear off in the Senate trial. Will have to wait and see, as Donald Trump would say, to find out what John Bolton actually does. If a subpoena is issue, You've a litigated cases I believe where there were questions from the National Security Agency about a book being published. So in this case, is there anything Bolton can do to speed

up the process. If he's not getting back from the n s A. What he needs to in order to make changes to the book and to get it moving. Is there anything he can do, So what he's able to do right now, he's able to file lawsuit if you wanted to um under the First Amendment, claiming undue delay, claiming that the review process has been unduly delayed and it's depriving him of the ability to publish unclassified information

that is protected by the First Amendment. And to be clear, the case law driving from a Supreme Court case in the eighties make very clear the government may not censor the speech of former government employees in terms of unclassified information. It doesn't matter if it was executive privilege issues any

of that. The only thing the government can censor in these books of former employees is properly classified information, and the employees have the ability to sue to challenge that, but they have to go through this process and if the government is, you know, drawing it out, there is a means to simply bring the suit early claim undue delayed, which usually just gets the government to finally finish up their decision process, at which point the person can choose

whether or not they want to continue with the challenge or if they're satisfied with what they got out of the review. Thanks for being on Bloomberg Law Brad, that's Brad Mall's apartment marks A. I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg