Republicans' Secret Impeachment Weapon

Michael Knowles. I am joined by the Senator himself, clearly a glutton for punishment, not sleeping at all this week, going straight from the impeachment trial to the studio, right back to the Capitol. Well, Michael, I'm thrilled that it's at least eleven PM and not three in the morning like it was last night. This is an early night. It's been twenty two hours now the impeachment trial, and we've still got a distance to go. But but we're

making progress. You know what I want to do before we get into what happened today, because I think some significant things happened today. We're twenty two hours in. I think the vast majority of Americans have completely tuned out this impeachment. They are simply not paying attention. What is it that the House Democrats are accusing President Trump? Of having done what is at the core of this whole impeachment trial. So the House Democrats voted out two articles

of impeachment. The first one is something they're calling abusive power. The second one they're calling obstruction of Congress. Neither one of those is a crime. Neither one of those I believe is an impeachable offense. But what do those refer to specifically? So abusive powers where they focused most of their time, And what they're arguing is that the president delayed military aid to Ukraine. Now, Ukraine, as a country in Europe, used to be part of the Soviet Union,

broke off. It's now separate democracy, it's a friend, it's an ally. Remember back in twenty fourteen when Obama was president, Russia invaded Ukraine invaded what's what's called Crimea, and Russian and Ukraine have been in real tension. The Ukrainians don't like that. The Russians have had a bad history of riding in with tanks and invading their country, and so

we've given them military aid. And what the Democrats are arguing is the President delayed that military aid in exchange for asking Ukraine to launch two investigations, one an investigation into whether Ukraine had interfered in the twenty sixteen presidential election, the election between Trump and Hillary. Okay, and two an investigation into Barisma, which is a Ukrainian natural gas company that on whose board Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son sat. They'd paid Biden a whole lot of money and it

was not for his expertise in Ukrainian natural gas. Well, that is certainly true, right, So this is what people referred to as the quid pro quo. Yes, that Trump was withholding military aid and he wasn't going to release the aid until they launched an investigation into the bidens because he is afraid that he's going to run against Joe Biden twenty twenty. And they've spent almost every minute of the last twenty two hours trying to prove those

two points. Okay, here's the problem. Number one, temporarily delaying military aid is not illegal, and it's not an impeachable offense. Presidents have done that over and over and over again all sorts of foreign aid. You see temporary delays that are put into place. But number two, asking a foreign country to engage in an investigation is not illegal on its face. And it's not an impeachable offense that that's what there's And in fact, the President admits he asked

Ukraine to engage in these investigations. So it's it's really kind of stunning. They're standing up there arguing over and over again the President wanted Ukraine to investigate, and Trump has said on live TV over and over again, yes, I wanted Ukraine to investigate. We've seen the transcript from this phone call with the President of Ukraine right this

was released. I know most people's eyes glaze over when when everyone gets into the weeds over what he did with Ukraine and is that impeachable and on and on and on. But I think we all basically agree on the facts of the case, which is they withheld the AID, then they release the aid. President Trump did ask for an investigation by Ukraine into this corruption. And I guess what doesn't make sense to me is they impeach the president for this except Ukraine got the AID and we

never got an investigation into the corruption. Well, and it's even you're right on both of those points, but but but even more broadly so, so it's the narrative from the House Democrats has changed. You remember there was for a couple of months we were hearing over and over again the phrase quit pro quo. Right, quit pro quo is a sort of phrase. Look, most people don't know quit pro quo means. It's a Latin phrase. It sounds

kind of scary. Quit pro quos are not illegal. This would surprise anyone who's turning on the six o'clock news, because the media we're breathlessly saying, oh my god, this may have been a quid pro quo. So Quid pro quo is Latin for an exchange of something of value for something else of value. It means literally, this for that right, I give you this, you give me that. You know, it would take a Yale graduate to to really dive down on the Latin transfer. You know what

it is. It's my Roman heritage, that's where it comes from. But look, quid pro quos in foreign policy, we do every single day that they're not only not illegal, that's it's the bread and butter of foreign policy. I'll give you an example. Nicholas Maduro is the dictator of Venezuela. Right now, we have sanctions, economic sanctions in place against Venezuela. We have said if if Maduro steps down, we'll lift those sanctions. That's a quid pro quo. It's out and

it's open. We're lifting sanctions if Maduro steps down. You look at Obama's a rand nuclear deal. That was a quid pro quo. Obama gave over one hundred billion dollars to Iran in exchange for a promise not to develop nuclear weapons. Now that's a promise they weren't keeping, and they use the money to try to kill Americans. But that was a quick pro quote, right, So all of this focus on was this a quid pro quote misses

the point. The question is whether it was done with corrupt intent, and that all comes down to whether these investigations, whether the President had a valid reason to ask U Crane to engage in these investigations and to withhold the aid either or both. But the real peace. If the President had a valid reason, the legitimate reason to ask U Crane to engage in the investigations, then everything the House is saying, everything the House Democrats are saying, is nonsense.

And what is interesting now two days into it is they've devoted virtually every moment to trying to prove that he asked for the investigations, which he admits, which we already know this is something which we and almost zero to proving that asking for the investigations was illegitimate or inappropriate. Well, this is what I want to get to. So you've now had to sit through twenty two hours of this because there were three groups here, right There's there were

the House Democrats. They're being led by Adam Schiff and they're the people who are pushing impeachment. There's President Trump's legal team, the White House Counsel and his lawyer, and they're the ones defending the president. Then there's the jury because this is a trial, and this is a special jury because the jury is you, guys, the senators are the jury in the impeachment trial. You've been listening to this,

and let me correct you briefly and something. Yes, the senators of the jury, but oddly enough we're also the judges. And it's a strange dynamic under the Constitution. The hundred senators decide every question of law and every question of fact. And it's not a jury like you know, if you turn on Law and Order, it's not a jury like that you think about it. A jury is not supposed to know anything about the case. Is not supposed to know. The defendant is not supposed to know the prosecutor is

not supposed to have conversations in this case senators. Look, Senators deal with the president, deal with the president all the time. The Framers knew that when the Constitution gave impeachment to the Senate, they knew fully well senators would be dealing with players, would be involved, would be speaking to the public. And so actually, I will point out that the President did tweet out this very podcast today,

so obviously there is some relationships. Sure, But you know, it's interesting when Bill Clinton had an impeachment trial, there was actually an objection. So one of the people in the trial referred to the senators as jurors, and they raise an objection and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who's the Chief Justice, sustain the objection and said, you're right, you're

not jurors, your senators. And it's a different responsibility under the country because it's because not to get even more complicated here, but there is a fourth role, which is that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, head of the Supreme Court, is presiding over impeachment, but he's not quite a normal judge, and the jury is not quite a normal jury. And that is because an impeachment trial

is unlike other kinds of trials very much so. Now you've spent twenty two hours listening to these two arguments from the House Democrats. And let me say, by the way, to lock a hundred senators in a room and to prevent all of them from speaking. Look, I gotta say, every one of us is suffering DTS. There's a reason I'm launching a damn podcast in the middle of this. I can't not talk for that long. It's so about

medical treatments. Well, you know, they used to say that the most dangerous place in Washington, DC was between Chuck Schumer and a television camera. Now I think have we actually don't know, because no one's ever survived that experience. It's true, we need more investigation. I'm actually thinking, having watched the House Democrats case for impeachment, I think the most dangerous place might be between Adam Schiff and a camera,

because he's the one leading that case. And I just want to hear your thoughts on how each side is presenting their case. The House Democrats pushing impeachment, the White House lawyers defending the president. So yesterday we had procedural fights all day long. Half the time was the House Democrats, half the time was President Trump's lawyers. I thought they both did fine. I thought they both presented their case.

When you and I talk last night, I shared my views that I think I think the White House lawyers need to focus less on process and more on substance, more on demonstrating why the president is innocent, why the conduct that he admits to is not illegal, is not inappropriate, and is perfectly legitimate and justified for a president to investigate corruption and to ask a foreign government to investigate corruption. That they need to make more of the affirmative case.

So you've argued a lot of high profile cases. So what you're saying is maybe we're missing a little bit of the thirty thousand foot view. We're missing a little bit of the big picture from the White House. You can get lost in the weeds, and it's easy to do it, and I don't want that to happen to the American people. They just see a lot of bickering that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The underlying If you want to understand this, case, in one sentence,

can the president investigate corruption? Yes or no? Okay? And the Democrats are saying, no, you can't investigate corruption. That he couldn't ask Ukraine to investigate Barisma, this natural gas company because Joe Biden, his son was making millions of dollars from him, and that is nuts. That's not a very good argument. Any president has the authority to investigate corruption, but has the responsibility to investigate corruption, And so I think we need to be talking more about the substance.

So today though President Trump's lawyers didn't get to talk at all, so we're an opening argument. Day was all day long, nothing but House Democrats the Adam shifts show. That's not easy to say three times. By the way, there's some slips that come in there sometimes. But they were presenting their case, and as I said, it's all focused on proving things that everyone agrees to. How did

they do in the sense of the political theater. Do you think, if you're just judging this from the effectiveness of their objectives, that the House Democrats are making a good argument? Look, I think for I think most partisans stayed where they are. In other words, if you hate President Trump and think he's the embodiment of evil. You probably thought today was a wonderful day because it featured ten hours of House Democrats describing how horrible Donald Trump is.

If you think, if you think the President has done a good job and we've gotten good results, and you're tired of House Democrats just attacking the president all day long, then today was really hard to listen to. And it was made worse by the fact that it was incredibly repetitive. So yesterday, when we were having procedural arguments, the House Democrats basically gave their opening argument right, and then today

they turned around and gave the same thing. So they keep making the same points and playing the same clips and reading the same quotes over and over and over again. And we've got two more days of opening arguments. We're gonna spend all day long tomorrow, all day long the next day with them making them. Did anything new happen in terms of the Democrats case, I think the single biggest thing and I think I think the House Democrats made a strategic mistake, which is they opened the door

to Hunter Biden testify. Now here's why Adam Schiff got up and he argued in his opening argument. He based their whole case on the proposition that the two investigations that the President asked for were sham investigations. I want to read you a little bit from what Adam Schiff said.

He said he said that he the President wanted Ukraine to launch investigations quote that were completely without merit, that were sham investigations that he later says, the allegations are untrue and they've quote been widely debunked patent lee false. So that's the central question, that these investigations are untrue. Now, let's take Barisma, which is the most important of the investigation. Okay, Barisma, big natural gas company, has had major problems with corruption.

Tomorrow when we talk, we're gonna talk a little bit more about the evidence on Barisma that that the White House lawyers have laid out and the media doesn't want to talk about. I want to drill down. We'll do it tomorrow because it's going to take a lot of time, but I want to drill down into Barisma and Hunter Biden. Yes. To me, that seems like the whole heart of this impeachment question. It is the whole ball of wax. Now

the Democrats look in the House. House Republicans wanted to call Hunter Biden as a witness, and Adam Schiff said no, said we're not allowing you. And it was interesting yesterday Adam Schiff said, if you have a trial and don't allow the defendant to put on evidence of innocence, it's not a fair trial, right, And it was you know, it was all I could do not to laugh out loud, because that's what they did in the House, because they base their whole case on arguing that asking for an

investigation into Barisma is false and completely without merit. It raises not just as relevant, but but as central to the defense. Okay, what evidence was there that this was real corruption that needed to be investigated? And even beyond I mean, because I think when you get into this Ukrainian company and this relative of Joe Biden, it's easy

to get lost in it. I just wonder, if you're investigating the question of whether Trump should or should not have asked for this investigation, whether that's an impeachable offense, perhaps the most important person to talk to and get testimony from would be Hunter Biden to ask him. And by the way, I don't know as a fact that

it was corrupt. There's a lot of indication that it could well have been, but the House Democrats have had zero interest in asking, and they run around with their hair on fire if you even suggest that anyone would ask, much less ask Joe Biden. You know, hey, Joe, why why was your son getting paid a million bucks a year by a gas company? We didn't know anything about gas? I mean, I mean, this is not subtle and sophisticated, right, But if the House Democrats are going to stop that,

they do not want Hunter Biden to testify. Obviously, Joe Biden is right now the front runner in the twenty twenty Democratic presidential race, so they really don't want Hunter Biden to testify last time I checked. Although I do have to say I kind of wonder if Bernie and Elizabeth Warred and klobuch Are are secretly rooting rooting for Joe and Hunter to testified, but they haven't indicated that

they have not yet. However, they could give a little support to their Republican colleagues, because last time I checked, it is your political party that controls the Senate. So can the Republicans in the Senate make Hunter Biden testify before the Senate. Absolutely, it takes fifty one votes, fifty one Republicans, we can call Hunter Biden. Now, the way

it works actually is the parties call the witnesses. So what it would mean, as President Trump's lawyers, if they want to call Hunter Biden, I've been saying for months, we ought to call Hunter Biden. Why. Look the prosecutors the House Democrats, they had seventeen witnesses in the House. They built the prosecution side in what was basically a kangaroo court where you say only prosecution witnesses, and we

don't allow the White House to call witnesses. So you've got seventeen witnesses for the anti Trump pro impeachment side, and you've got zero witnesses. The president had not been able to call a single witness. Now, if the president could call one, I'm pretty sure it would be Hunter Biden. If the president could call too, it might be Hunter Biden and the so called whistleblower. If you could call three, my guess is Joe Biden might be number three on that.

We can call those witnesses or any others, and it just takes fifty one votes. We have fifty three Republicans. So if you simply have Republicans saying, you know what, we want to have a fair trial. One side has had all their witnesses. The other side, the defendant, the accused, has had zero witnesses. That's not fair. So is it going to happen? I mean, is the White House going to call Hunter Biden to testify? So it's up in

the air. The fight we had yesterday as we adopted basically the same scheduling order the Clinton impeachment trial had, which is we'll go through opening arguments and questions from senators first, and then we'll decide whether additional witnesses are needed. And so the House Democrats they want to call a bunch of additional witnesses. The big one they're focusing on is John Bolton. John Bolton was the National security advisor

to President Trump. They think they're going to get some dirt on Trump out of John bull that that is their big focus. Next week, the Senator is going to vote whether we're going to have additional witnesses or not. And it's going to make a big difference because you know, one of the things you and I were talking about a little earlier is how long is this thing going to last, I really want to know that because I don't live in Washington, DC, so I got to make

some plans. Well, the vote next week on witnesses will make a massive difference. Okay. If fifty one Senators vote next week we don't need any more witnesses, We've got all the evidence we need, then the trial will end next week, we'll move to final judgment, and if and when that happens, the president will be acquitted because because the House Democrats haven't proven their case. Okay. On the other hand, if fifty one senators vote that we do

need additional witnesses, then it's Katie bar the door. Then this thing could easily last weeks or even months. You could see six, seven, eight, nine weeks, because if you go down in additional witnesses, you're you're opening the door to litigation, to assertion of privileges, to all sorts of delays. We could be sitting here here months from now with the impeachment trial still going on if we call additional witness But if you call additional witnesses, then we might

finally hear from Hunter Biden. Now my question on this though, is and by the way, if we do call additional witnesses. I'm very confident we'll call Hunter Biden. But if you call Hunter Biden, or rather if the White House calls it Hunter Biden to testify before the Senate, can't Hunter Biden just say I don't want to answer your questions. I plead the fifth and I'm not gonna I'm not going to say anything, so he can and if we call Hunter Biden, he will almost certainly plead the fifth.

Now here's the interesting thing. There's a federal statue that gives the Senate the authority to grant him what's called transactional immunity, which means we can force him to testify. Now, he can't be prosecuted for anything he testifies to, Okay, but you can find out, you can get his testimony, and that's something the Senate can do, grant him immunity.

And I got to say that idea. You want to talk about something to terrify forty seven Democrats in the Senate, It is the fact that the Senate could grant Hunter Biden immunity and hear his testimony about whether, in fact, there was corruption from Joe Biden. And let's be clear, this is not about lac Hunter Biden. It's a guy who's led a troubled life. This is not about him. This is the question about whether his dad abused his power. So, in other words, I just want to be very clear

about this. Hunter Biden could be called to testify and he could say I don't want to testify. I plead the fifth And if he's going to be held responsible for anything he did, then it ends there. However, the Senate can give him immunity so he won't be held responsible for any crimes he commits. And no reporter in Washington knows this or understands this. But the Senate can force Hunter Biden to testify. You can, and I'll give an example. Take a criminal case. This is something prosecutors

do all the time. Let's say you have a criminal case and you have, say, you know, some drug dealers that that that you're investigating, and you've got say a low level guy, a drug dealer. You'll see prosecutors that will give that drug dealer immunity to flip on the higher ups and to make them testify. Give them immunity to flip on the higher ups. It's the same basic principle. Immunity is not always a good thing, because it means you can be forced to testify or be put in

jail if you don't. That is a lot of leverage. I have to tell you, Senator, I have not heard that anywhere else. I had no idea that the Senate could make unter Biden testament. What reporters don't want to talk about it. Reporters don't want to talk about barism at all. They don't want to talk about the evidence of corruption that I mean, I mean, they're that and

in fact, you know it's even funnier than that. So the Joe Biden campaign is sending out angry letters to media reporters saying, whenever you mentioned the allegations of corruption, you must state on air these are false and have been disproven. In what other instance are so called reporters becoming an advocate? Look, I don't know if there was corruption or not. I do know that there's prima facia evidence something, and I know one way to find out.

At a minimum. The House Democrats don't even want to ask the questions, and we ought to ask the questions. Now are we going to have additional witnesses? I don't know. Next week when we vote on it. All, forty seven Democrats will vote yes. The question is are there going to be four Republicans that vote yes? Maybe? I think I could name a few Republicans who might be likely too. There are three who have spoken publicly about being open to it. It's not clear if there's a fourth. It's

not clear if those three will vote right. If we have additional witnesses, We're going on for a long time. But that means we may get John Bolton in, but we're gonna get Hunter Biden. We may get other witnesses too. This is the best argument I've heard so far for dragging this thing onward. Obviously, we've got a whole lot

more to get to. We will be getting into Hunter Biden, Bizma and corruption in Ukraine specifically tomorrow, because I know pretty much nothing about it and you know pretty much everything about it. So I want to I want to hear that. Obviously, people need to subscribe and leave a five star review. Please to this show. It is Verdict with Ted Cruz and we are now up on Apple podcasts. We are on YouTube or on Spotify. We are everywhere

you get your podcasts. One thing we want we want to do in these shows because there is so much to cover. Is take your questions from the mail bags. So we have a few of these today that came out after our first episode. In just our remaining one or two minutes here, let's try to get through a couple of them, all right, from timmy Senator Cruise, who fell asleep? Twenty two hours of testimony? Who fell asleep? So there's been some reporting that accused Jim Rish of

falling asleep. I didn't see that. I got to admit it. Points I kind of feel like all of us fell asleep. Did you mean it was? I didn't formally not off, I will say so Jim's defense and his press spokesperson said he was closing his eyes and listening contemplatively. I you know, I've tried that with Heidi at home. I'm not sure that the story always that's not a great excuse, no, but but I gotta admit last night, so I will say, when we were there at two in the morning, I

was asking Chuck Grassley. Yeah, you know, Iowa farmer, eighty six years old. Chuck is an early bird. And I asked Chuck last night, I said, all right, what time do you get up each morning, and Chuck said four Now. He said he didn't get it. I didn't ask him what time he got up to day, but he said, I won't get up at four am. When he was there at two. He was still at the senator for it. But Buddy, it was you know, look, we met, we

stayed awake. I'm not sure much of America did. But but the hundred senators by and large name that almost sounds like you're pleading the fifth This brings up the immunity arguments. I don't We'll have to get into that tomorrow. La final question from Carl do you think senator that they will try to impeach President Trump again if this one fails. I think they'll certainly be Democrats that want to.

They could easily. I don't think Pelosi wants to. So one of the interesting things you look, a year ago, Pelosi was saying, don't impeach Trump. A partisan impeachment doesn't work. I think Pelosi thinks impeachment. I think she thought it was going to backfire. I think she thinks it's backfired now. And basically the far left that hates Trump dragged her into doing this. So I was having a conversation with one of the other Republican senators today, he was saying,

why are they doing this now? Why didn't they do this in June or July? And that was my comment to him, is I think Pelosi thinks this is a political loser and she wants to get it over with. So will the extreme left one will try to impeach Trump over and over and over again. Yes, but I'd be surprised if the House goes out in this road. It didn't even occur to me that they could try to impeach him again. I mean, I guess there have been a whole bunch of excuses for impeachment since the beginning.

Six out of seven of the House Democrat impeachment managers actual supported impeachment before we knew anything about the current excuse to impeach. A lot of these Democrats called for impeaching Trump within days of his being elected, before he'd been sworn in. So this has nothing to do with Ukraine. This has to do with Trump derangement, center right, and

that's going to continue regardless. And yet somewhere at the heart of all this that nobody's talking about in the press are not covering, is this incident, this corruption in Ukraine, the question of Beisma, the question of Hunter Biden, we will have to get into. By the way, the Obama administration wouldn't investigate it. The Obama Justice Department wouldn't investigate it.

There was no accountability. And I got to say, when I'm back home in Texas, the frustration about folks in the prior administration who abused power and were never held accountable. That frustration is massive, and and and and it still needs to be dealt. Are they going to be held

accountable from the past administration book? I hope so they haven't been so far, and and and they need to be Law needs to be enforced fairly, regardless of party, Which means the whole democratic argument that just because Joe brock Biden as vice president you can't investigate when there's enormous evidence of corruption, that that's a pretty bogus argument. It's a pretty weak argument. I think hopefully we'll be

able to just dismantle it tomorrow night. We've got to We've got to get you ready to go back on the hill and listen to another ten hours of impeachment debate in this trial. Senator, thank you as always Seemanyanna. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. We'll see tomorrow. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations,

and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help their Publican Party across the nation.