What’s Next in the Impeachment Inquiry?

On Wednesday. Sonland said President Trump effectively directed him to brok her a quid pro quo with Ukraine to investigate a political rival. Secretary Perry, Ambassador Vulker, and I worked with Mr Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the President of the United States, joining me as former federal Prosecutor Elie Hohenig of Lowenstein Sandler. How important was Ambassador soun lands testimony. I think the Ambassador

Sam scored some important points for the Democrats. I do not think, however, that he ended up giving what a lot of people were calling a John Dean moment. When all is said and done, I think he incrementally moved the ball on a couple of key respects number one. I think the most important single line of his testimony was everyone was in the loop. I think there's been a lot of circumstantial evidence of that. I think common

sense tells you that, but he laid it out. Pompeo knew what was going on, Mulvaney knew what was going on, Bolton knew what was going on, And to some extent you can infer from what he said, even the Vice president knew what was going on. And he's backed up by a lot of that with emails and documents that he had. So I thought that was such an important point. And the other important thing is he puts the word investigations in the President's mouth. He says the President talked

about investigations on at least one occasion. So that's direct evidence of what, again is fairly apparent from the remainder of the evidence, but that the President had this interest in the investigation of Barisma and the election Mary. He admitted that he never personally discussed with Trump the idea that either military aid or a White House meeting was conditioned on Ukraine conducting investigations. Does that hurt the Democrats case? It does to an extent. I think it's a fair

line of cross examination. I thought the Republicans did a good job of pointing out that sort of missing link. That said, I think the Republicans have oversold it. The fact that the President never said, hey, Gordon, I want to explicitly link AID, you know, with a White House meeting with investigations does not mean there's no case there.

And I think this is a bit of a logical and legal fallacy that Republicans have been pursuing, this idea of magic words that unless the President said the magic words, unless he said out loud, this is a quid pro quoe, this is bribery, this is a crime, this is an abusive power. There's nothing impeachable. I mean, that's not the way the real world works. From doing trials, that's not

the way you build a case, a criminal case. You build it piece by piece, block by block, You put all the evidence together, and you argue to the read. That's the common sense. Reasonable inference is whatever you want your conclusion to be. So the Republicans, I think, are doing some strategic goal post shifting and trying to make it almost an impossible standard for Democrats to reach. Speaking

about keywords. During the Muller investigation, President Trump kept saying no collusion over and over, and in the impeachment inquiry, he's saying no quid pro quo. And he seemed to have started that way back in a conversation that Sunlin texted Ambassador Taylor about are the Democrats falling into a trap by continually bringing out that there was a quid pro quo. It's definitely strategic by Donald Trump, and I think the Democrats are doing a better job of avoiding

that trap. So I think the trap is exactly what you said, Jude, which is this vague term that sounds legalistic but really is not collusion in the Mueller case. And now quid pro qoil. I mean, those are both words you might use in law school, but they're not technical terms of art that lawyers would use that are

in the statute books. And I think the beauty of that approach for Donald Trump and for the Republicans is the definition is a morphous enough that you can always shift it a little bit and said, well that that's not collusion. That's not what we meant by collusion, that's

not what a quid pro quo is. I think Adam Schiff has been very careful and very conscious of that and has tried to choose more direct, more relatable words like he has used bribery, he has used extortion, he has used quite simply abuse of power, which I think are easier to understand and better serve the democratic purposes. But you have the the verbiage and terminology is really important here. Now that the hearings are over, the Democrats

will be drafting articles of impeachment. Do you think we'll see words like bribery and extortion. It's an interesting strategic decision that Democrats have to make. I do think we will see a broadly phrased article of impeachment for abuse of power or conspiracy or the like, because you want to when you're drafting up whether it's an invite in a criminal case or articles of impeachment, you want to

paint broadly enough to capture all the relevant conduct. I think that the interesting call they have to make is do they list out specific criminal or criminal style offenses. If they do that, I think that the two lead ones would be bribery and extortion, which are sort of the flip sides of the same coin. Think of bribery as I will give you this illicit benefit if you give me that illicit benefit, and extortion is I will harm you in this way if you do not give

me that illicit benefit. So there's not a whole lot of difference between them. There's also a separate federal crime of soliciting foreign election aid. The beauty of that for Democrats, it's not even a two way street. It's a crime simply to ask, So you can say it doesn't matter if it's a quid pro quot, it doesn't matter if there's an exchange. So long as the president tried to get help in his election campaign from a foreign national,

that would satisfy that statute as well. So I think you're gonna see that type of articles impeachment, and I think we've seen during the hearings this week Democrats are likely going to seek an article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress, for blocking the witnesses, for blocking documents. They made a big deal about that and during the solent testimony how important the documents were that are being withheld

from Congress. Do you think the Democrats were right or wrong in deciding that when witnesses like Ambassador Bolton refused to testify. They weren't going to court to try to force them to testify because that would hold up the proceedings. It's a great question. I think that Democrats did the right thing by proceeding with hearings because they looked at what happened to Jerry Nadler, and I think they learned

their lesson. Adam Schiff learned his lesson because look, Nadler chased down these blockades in courts and they're still in the courts. That Don McGann's hearing is still going on. So I think they avoided getting slow played to death like Jerry Nadler did. Now, I guess the separate question is could they have done both? Could they have done these very expedited hearings, which they did, I give them a lot of credit, but also been in the courts

and also seeking expedited rulings in the court. I think part of that maybe just simply an issue of personnel. Do they have enough bodies to do this? I mean, these hearings, I'm sure are all consuming for the lawyers who are doing them, and to be in court at the same time might just be more personnel than they have on hand. So yeah, I think you could fairly second guess them, for well, why not do your hearings and go to court and fight for Bolton, Mulvaney Pompeo.

But they made a strategic decision to keep it simple, and I think they've made a calculation that they have enough between Taylor and Salmon and Ken and Fiona Hill and Maria Vanovitch and the other witnesses we've seen this week, coupled with remember the transcript, I mean, the transcript is and should always remain Exhibit A. Finally, is this going to make a difference? Is it going to change people's opinions about whether to impeach the president or not? Is

it going to change any Republican minds? So I break down into two parts. I do not see any indication right now that any Republican members of Congress are ready to jump ship and vote either to impeach in the House or to convict in the Senate. That said, I think the stronger case the Democrats build, and I think they've done a really commendable job of building the case in the House, the harder it gets for Republicans to defend,

the more the American public understands. This is real. This, this conduct was problematic and harmful, and that could exact the political poll on Republicans and ultimately to an extent, I think you're if you're Democrats, you're talking to the history books. I think you want history to record this as a fair and just proceeding and something that was worthwhile and that merited the severe remedy of impeachment. Thanks Ellie, that's Ellie Honig of Lowenstein Sandler. Thanks for listening to

the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg