Trump on Trial (Again)

mid air in this country. Nothing is changing. I have to tell you, when we started this show, it was because the first I'm going to start singing, I got you, babe. It's just going to keep on and on. When we first started, I had no idea really what was at play in that first impeachment trial, and that to me seems clear cut compared to this second sort of impeachment trial. I guess the biggest question on people's minds is is this even an impeachment trial? Because obviously Trump is not

the president anymore. You were there all day, we are we are doing exactly what we did a year ago. We were here in the middle of the night. You've just left the capital. Now, I will say it is much more humane. So so when we started this last year, I think it was two thirty seven in the morning when we started this, it's now, what is it, ten twelve pm? Much more recent. I you know, that's positively civilized. Does that tell you something about the seriousness of this

impeachment trial? Yes, luck, To be honest, both sides are dialing it in. Okay. The end result of this is is preordained that this trial, as Shakespeare put it, is full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Senator, you know, I'm not the most literary guy in the world. I thought that was William Faulkner who said that I was. I was reading a tweet from Andream Mitchell on NBC. She seemed to want to make fun of you and attribute that quote to Faulkner. It really was a pretty

stunning exchange. So this happened a little over an hour ago, and I guess Andrew Mitchell decided that she was going to upbraid me and demonstrate her intellectual superiority and better learnedness. And you know, apparently she does not. Ironically, I didn't know this. She has a degree in English literature, American literature. Well, that would explain and so and so Faulkner she knows. But but but apparently Macbeth she does not know. She

does not. I think actually there is something in this exchange that tells us a lot about the whole impeachment trial, which was this this combination not just of ignorance but also arrogance to correct someone who's using the correct quote. Well, life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Wow, and one would think

not only ABC. Jennifer Rubin at Washington Post chimed in, agreeing with Andrew Mitchell, it really is kind of amazing that between NBC and the Washington Post nobody has actually read Macbeth. I'll tell you, Senator, if you spend as much time in the media and around journalists as I do, not surprising at all, Absolutely not surprising. Well, and you know, I will say, nothing is better than when Ernest Hemingway wrote, is this a dagger? I see before me the handle

towards my hand. Come, let me clutch THEE. I have THEE not and yet I see THEE still. I thought that was JK. Rowling because I don't know. I said, we could go through the whole literary canon. You know, this does, though, this issue of ignorance and arrogance, It does bring me back to the question of the trial, because I'll confess to ignorance here. I don't get it. I don't know. Is this thing constitutional? Is it unconstitutional? Is the Senate have the right to hold the trial?

Can there be an impeachment trial of an ex president? What you were there all day? What's going on? So those are really important questions, and we actually address those questions yesterday. So the trial itself started today. Yesterday we had essentially a pre trial motion, okay, and an argument about whether the Senate even has jurisdiction to consider this matter. And what's it hard in the argument is is that

Donald J. Trump is no longer the president. And so the argument that the Trump legal campaign made is that the Senate doesn't have the jurisdiction to try a former officeholder, right, that jurisdiction only extends to current office holders, and once he left the White House, the Senate could no longer have an impeachment trial. So this has been my understanding of it. But you know, I didn't go to law school, and I'm no constitutional expert. Well, and you know, it's interesting.

The constitutional question is actually very close. It is a difficult question. It's not a question I had examined until till we were faced with it. And I got to say, as I looked at it, I actually think the better argument, on the substance and on the merits it is that the Senate does have the jurisdiction to try a former officeholder. Okay, that being said, I don't believe the jurisdiction is mandatory. I don't think we have to take it, and so

I don't think we should take it. Let me walk through that, because those are some complicated legal Conscis Wells, and I want to point out generally speaking, you've heard people it's it's binary. They'll say, either the Senate has no jurisdiction here, this is a force of a trial. Or the Senate not only has jurisdiction, but we have to do it. It's our constitutional responsibility to throw Trump in the gulag. And you, as far as I can tell, this is a unique legal take. Hey, yeah, it may

well be. Although actually Mike Lee, by colleague, he and I are very close to agreement on this. We've talked about this a lot. Mike is a serious legal scholar, clerk for Justice Sam Alito on the Supreme Court. Mike and I have spent many, many hours talking about this issue, and his view and mine are very very close on this. Let me start on just the threshold question. Do you have jurisdiction? So if you look at the constitutional text, you can take arguments from the text on both sides.

So the Constitution says the House shall have the sole power of impeachment and the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. Interestingly, those are the only two places in the Constitution you find the word soul power. And so it's just impeachments. House is entirely in charge of impeachments, the Senate is entirely in charge of trying impeachment.

Nobody else has power. Right And actually, even on this point, I think it's worth clearing up because because we use these terms in a loose way, Trump has already been impeached shrecked twice, correct, because that the House voted they impeached him, he was in office both times. Then there's the trial. He's been acquitted once during the first episodes of verdict. And now the question is will he be acquitted or convicted? And this is one of the things

most misunderstood just in sort of general Marlans. But to be impeached, think of it like in the criminal context, to be indicted, like if the grand jury indictes you, it means they bring charges against you. If you're indicted for running over somebody's dog, doesn't mean you're convicted, it means you're charged with it. And then when you have a trial, if you're convicted, is when you're found guilty. So the House impeaches, which is to bring the charges,

and the Senate conducts the trial. Now, there are a couple of textual arguments that were raised as to why former officeholders do not fall into the impeachment power. One is that another portion of the Constitution refers to the president rather than a president, right and Donald J. Trump right now is not the president. There's only one the president in any moment in history. Today, Joseph Biden is

the president. Trump is a former president. That's a textual argument that is used to say, well, he's not the president, so he's not subject to impeachment. What that as it actually says, though, is when the president is impeached, the Chief Justice shall preside. Because Trump isn't the president, the Chief Justice is not presiding. Right. There is another provision that says that when the president is impeached and convicted,

he shall be removed. It uses the word shall. Yeah, so the argument is made, well, shall, but he can't be If he can't be removed, that means you can't remove an X officeholder. Look, that's a real argument. That's a substantive argument. On the flip side, As we said, he's not the president, he is a former president. If you look at the history, as you examine it at the time the Constitution was written, it turns out the question of what's called late impeachment was actually a topic

of discussion. Can former officeholders be impeached? If you look to British common law, and the Framers were very familiar with British common law, and often when you're interpreting US constitutional provisions, you look to what where did it come from under British law, because many of the concepts the Framers took from British law. And there were two very

notable British impeachments. One was in seventeen twenty five, and that was Lord Chancellor Macaelesfield who was impeached for public corruption. It's very well known impeachment. Now, yeah, I knew all about it. I was, you know, I talked about it. You know, is there a day you don't talk about the Michaelsfield impeachment. Well, Michaelsfield was impeached after he left office. A second impeachment was the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Now

Warren Hastings was the Governor General of India. Interestingly enough, his impeachment began in seventeen eighty seven. So literally, while the Framers were in Constitution Hall in Philadelphia and in the debates of the Constitution, they discuss the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Now Hastings likewise was no longer the Governor General, and yet nonetheless he was impeaching. By the way, do you know who led the charge to impeach Hastings? Who

someone you're a big fan of? Would this be Edmund Edmund Burke, a great considered the founder of modern conservative philosophy. Very it's actually very important context for how these Framers are thinking about that. So they're literally talking about at the Constitutional Convention the impeachment of an out of office officeholder. And by the way, right after the founding eighteen oh six in Great Britain, Lord Melville was impeached as well,

so very shortly thereafter. So you've got a fair amount of history with British common law, and then you look at US history. The first impeachment we have was of Senator Blunt of Tennessee, and he was impeached. He was actually impeached because he tried to essentially sell Florida and Louisiana away from the US, and and he was impeached. He was thrown out of the Senate. The guy was crooked. This is like when someone says, you know, if you believe that I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you,

he tried to sell. He tried to sell a bridge. And so there was a big debate during the Blunt impeachment. So Blunt was impeached, the House brought charges, the Senate expelled him because he was a senator, and then there was a big debate on jurisdiction. There were two arguments on jurisdiction, One that the Senate couldn't impeach him, because he was a senator, and that impeachment didn't apply to members of Congress. It only applied to members of the

executive branch or the judicial branch Okay. And then secondly, an argument that was given was he couldn't be impeached because he was no longer in office, or he couldn't be tried. Rather, the Senate ended up voting by a vote of fourteen to eleven that the Senate did not have jurisdiction over Blunt Okay. That has both arguments were presented,

so it's not necessarily conclusive. But the predominant arguments that were raised was that he was a enitor, and so it was a comment about what kind of job he

had rather than being a former office holder. One other major president eighteen seventy six, Secretary of War, William Belknap, now Belknap resigned, was crooked, was caught in corruption, was impeached, and the Senate actually had two weeks of debate over whether a former officeholder could be impeach because Nap argued, I'm out of office, you can't impeach, And the Senate ended up voting thirty seven to twenty nine in favor of jurisdiction in favor of saying we can try a

former officeholder. So as I look at this the textual language of the Constitution, there's some ambiguity, but the grant of power to the Senate is really broad. The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. That's a very broad power. Given the history of British common law in American history, I think the better constitutional argument is, yes, you can try a former officeholder. And let me give an example. Imagine we discovered we found evidence that a

former president had sold American nuclear secrets to the Chinese government. Yea, that they were guilty of treason and bribery both, and the evidence was conclusive. And by the way, treason and bribery are both mentioned explicitly in the Constitution as grounds for impeachment. I think in those circumstances, the House would conclude overwhelmingly it had jurisdiction to impeach them. The Senate would conclude overwhelmingly it had jurisdiction to try them, even

though they were a former officer. Right, So I concluded. I wrote an op ed last night laying out these arguments as to why I think the right constitutional argument. It's close, but I think the right argument is, yes, we have jurisdiction over a former officeholder. I think you've actually managed to change my mind on this in this discussion, because I was leaning very much text of the Constitution certainly made it seem to me as though Senate doesn't

have jurisdiction. But when you factor in British common law, when you factor in these other debates that were happening at the time, that is a compelling argument. And yet, and yet, so yesterday I voted against jurisdiction. Yes, And the reason for that is, generally speaking, there are two kinds of jurisdiction, mandatory jurisdiction and discretionary jurisdiction. Okay, Mandatory jurisdiction means you must take the case if you have the authority to take it. You must take the case

and you have no choice. Discretionary jurisdiction is you have the authority to take the case, but you can choose whether or not to hear it. And the easiest example is the US Supreme Court. The vast majority of the US Supreme Court's docket is discretionary jurisdiction. We heard a lot about this during the election. Right, there were these cases that the Court didn't take. The Court didn't take.

You were actually slated to argue one of the the Court said, no, thank you, we don't want to hear it. In any given year, the Supreme Court will get about eight thousand what are called petitions for sirtiori, which are requests for the Court to exercise its discretionary jurisdiction to hear a case. Ye, out of those eight thousand, the court, here's about one percent. It here's about eighty out of those eight thousand, so seventy nine hundred. It says, go

jump in a lake. Right, as I look at the Constitution, there's nothing in the Constitution that says we have mandatory jurisdiction the Senate has to take a case. It says the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. It's up to the Senate. The Senate makes those determinations. And so what I argued to my colleagues, and actually at lunch today, I made this argument to all of my colleagues that, for what it's worth, here's my thinking

that in this case, we should not exercise jurisdiction. We shouldn't take up the case and the reasons we shouldn't take it up. Our number one, the House had zero due process. Yeah, they considered it for seven days. They heard no witnesses, they held they held no hearings, they examined no evidence. This was a political impeachment. It seems as though they're sort of changing their arguments. Maybe we'll

get into that a little bit on just what happened today. Yeah, but yeah, it just it seems it seemed like a shallow process in the House. And I don't think the Senate is obliged. Look this precedent. You know, this has also been called a snap impeachment, where they just vote out an impeachment because we hate the guy. I don't think the Senate has any obligation if the House engages

in a sham proceeding to conduct a full trial. I think we are perfectly justified in saying we are declining to exercise jurisdiction over this because it doesn't meet the threshold of a credible, real serious impeachment right. Secondly, on the merits, I think there is no serious argument that this meets the legal threshold for impeachment. There's only one count that the House alleges, which is incitement insurrection, incitement to to riot and violence. Now there clearly was riot.

There was a terrorist attack on the Capitol. It was horrific, and you know today, so we went through eight hours of the House Manager's arguments and they did an effective job. Let me start by saying that they look Democrats have a lot of trial lawyers, and they had some trial lawyers today that were good storytellers who were emotional. I mean, they got up, they walked through, they were well organized, and it was We watched a lot of videos today.

They seemed to rely a lot on these very charged videos that drove evoke a lot of emotions, and it was powerful. It was horrified. I mean there were a lot of moments in the Senate where you could hear a pin drop because you're watching this and it's horrific. It's horrific seeing violent criminals and terrorists assaulting, beating police officers, loudly proclaimed their desire to carry out murder and succeeding in murdering one police officer and injuring over a hundred.

I mean, it was all of us, and I think all of the country who watched today was horrified. At what happened, and that this was a grotesque terrorist attack carried out by violent criminals who should be fully prosecuted and spend a long, long time in jail, I think is unequivocal. Sure, but the emotional effect of the videos and even the stories that these impeachment managers were saying, it's not the same thing as an argument that the

president committed an impeachable offense. Well, and ninety plus percent of the time of the house managers today was on how horrific the attack was and if we were impeaching you know, the guy with Viking horns that were beating people up, Sign me up? Where do I vote? Right? But at the end of the day, incitement. The standard for incitement is it has to be a very direct call for violence. And if you look at what the president said the president and listen the president's rhetoric at times,

I think is overheated. I wish some of the things he says, some of the things he tweeted, I wish he didn't say and tweet. But if you look at what he actually said at the speech on January sixth, the Democrats are making a big deal of well, he kept saying fight. You need to fight, like hell yeah.

Let me tell you. If we take every person who has ever said you gotta fight, you gotta fight like how you gotta win, We gotta take our country back, you would literally be prosecuting every single political candidate in America for incitement. Like I guarantee you of all the all fifty Democratic senators, every single one, and if you've ever given a stump speech, if you ran for seventh grade class, President, I'm willing. I'm willing to Batmichael. You

stood up and said we gotta fight. Yes, I did, and I won my race. Darn it there, because it's effective political rhetoric and everybody does. It is ubiquitous. It is commonplace language to say fight. In this case, President Trump said peacefully. He explicitly said peacefully. It was not a call to violence. And where the House Manager's argument falls apart is whatever standard. They haven't really articulated a

standard for incitement. Maybe they'll do that tomorrow, but they haven't even tried to say, this is how you distinguish ordinary political speech or even hot rhetoric, I mean, from truly criminal incitement. Any standard they would articulate right after this trial, we better start moving forward against Nancy Pelosi, at Maxine Waters and Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton for them, Hillary Clinton, Kamala harrisy Booker. Look you look at Nancy

Pelosi called police officers Nazis. Yeah, there's some rich irony. Now all these Democrats are defending police officers given a year of vilifying cops and saying abolish the police and acab their motto, all cops are bastards is what that stands for. And these are now the defenders of law enforcement. I mean it. You know, if God were still in the business of throwing lightning bolts, some Democrats might have

been struck down. Right. You look at Chuck Schumer who went to the steps of the Supreme Court, called out two Supreme Court justices by name and says, you have unleashed the whirlwind and you will pay the price. He threatened them directly. Now look that if what Trump said is incitement, what Schumer said is inside. Well. Maxine Waters said when you see Republicans in public, go up, get in their face, or started confrontation, she explicitly urged violence.

And I'll tell you Kamala Harris, who the media is right now in the midst of beatifying Kamala Harris when we had violent riots, and we had for a year riots across this country. City's being burned, mostly peaceful police cars. CNN apologizing for him, like crazy police cars being firebomb police officers being murdered, and these Democrats who are now high and mighty, we're apologizing for celebrating, encouraging Kamala Harris raised bail money, yeah, to bail out not the peaceful protesters,

the violent criminals. So it was literally after they had committed acts of violence, she was raising money to bail them out. Now, the truthful matter, the truthful assessment of it is none of this is incitement. But there is no coherent standard that says what Trump said his incitement and what Kamalin Schumer said is not. You can't have it. You can't have The only people guilty are the ones politically I dislike. And that's really what the Democrats are.

This is the issue because I don't think any Republicans out there are really saying we need to kick Corey book or out of the center because you know, he said something one time, but they're actually believe in free speech. Even don't speech you have a right right to it. But if we're going to take this unprecedented action impeach a former president now a private citizen in Florida for this language where he said maybe it was overblown at times, but he did say at the moment, be peaceful, don't

be violent. If we're going to do that, why on earth are we letting Nancy Pelosi off the hook? Hillary Clinton, Maximars all these people. Because this is not a legal argument, it's not a constitutional argument, and it's not a principled argument. There's a reason why ninety percent of what they did today was emotional. It was just designed to have you go, oh my god, this was horrible. Yeah, and it was horrible.

It was a terrorist attack. Now there is a difference, which is that you and I and most people on the right unequivocally condemned this violence. It's bad. And let me be clear, whoever is responsible for killing officer sick Nick, assuming it was deliberate. I think those facts are still being investigated, But assuming it was deliberate, I'd execute for

murdering police officer as far as I'm concerned. If that's deliberate and not, maybe the facts come out that they was somehow accidental, in which case it wouldn't fall under capital punishment. You'd instead prosecute them and put them away for a long time. But you and I are perfectly happy to unequivocally condemned the violence. The difference with the Democrats is most of the Democrats still haven't condemned the violence and rioting of BLM of Antifa. When they agree

politically with someone, violence somehow doesn't count. So the Democrats seem to not have any coherence standard here, and the Republicans seem not particularly interested in this. I know there were a handful of Republicans who seemed GungHo on the impeachment trial, but most seem really uninterested. I think there was a report that some Republican senators were like reading books today, gazing off in the distance. Yeah. Look, to

be honest, that's a little bit of gotcha journalism. It was okay, so when you were in the room, you saw Yeah, so I was in the room. We were all sitting at our desks. Most senators were at their desks the entire time. People would occasionally get up and go to the restroom. Look at the median age and the senators about ninety seven, so people have to go to the restroom. You know, you would also have so periodically you would get up and go in the cloak room.

It's something we talked about in the last impeachment trial. Yeah, there were multiple times during the trial when I went back in the cloak room. I went back to talk with Lindsey Graham, went back to talk with Rand Paul, I went back to talk with John Kennedy. I don't want to ask for tales out of school here, but I do can you give us anything of what was

going on? You know, I don't necessarily want to get into it because a lot of what I was talking with them about was strategy for the next couple of days, about where the arguments are going, what are the responses.

Although look, a lot of what we were talking about is some of what we're saying here, which is the double standard that that that by any measure, um, you know, Lindsay was pointing out that that I guess one of the people who was bailed out from this fund that Kamala raised money for went out and committed violence and yet another riot and injured somebody else. So, I mean, it was it was not you know, not just once

but twice. Yeah. Um, and so we were talking about we're going to have probably on Saturday, four hours of questioning. Remember the first impeachment trial, we had centator questions and so a lot of what I was talking with Lindsay and John and Rand about is what sort of questions to ask you. But there's a fair amount of that strategizing that goes on just off of the just off

of the floor in the cloak room. Now. I know some reports are I mean, you have to take it with a grain of salt because it's the left wing media, but that the House Impeachment managing. They're doing a great job. As you say, it was emotionally persuasive, if not logically all that persuasive. So how long is this going to go? Is there any chance that the Democrats succeed? Or is this full of sound and fury signifying nothing? So stop quoting Funer. So I don't think it will go much longer.

I think we are likely to be done Saturday night. Yeah, So what's currently scheduled. The House managers have two days sixteen hours to present their case, so we're one day into it. Yeah, they have tomorrow we'll go I guess as we'll wrap up eight or nine o'clock tomorrow night, and then Trump's lawyers have sixteen hours over two days to present their case. I think it's quite likely Trump's

lawyers will not take the whole sixteen hours. I think virtually every senator thinks they should not take the whole sixteen hours. When that is completed, there will be a vote on whether we should call a aditional witnesses now right now. My understanding is the Democratic senators don't want additional witnesses, so everyone expects that vote to be now. Remember we had a big fight and the last one about calling witnesses, right right, But is the idea here,

what's the point? What would be the point of additional witnesses? I think so, And I think also I think a lot of the Democratic senators wish they weren't there that this impeachment. Look, if you're a Democrat, your guy just won the White House, you've got a new administration, you're getting new Democratic cabinet members, you've got a Democratic majority in the House, and you just got a Democratic majority in the Senate. So they're a bunch of Democratic senators

who suddenly are committee chairman. They have gavels. They want to get onto the business to destroying the country and and by the way, that is what they're going to be doing, right, But they are eager to pass their radical agenda. Yeah, and this is just sort of an impediment. There's a waste of time for that. I think they're frustrated. It was really the House Democrats that drove this. They're

so the House Democrats are just consumed with hatred for Trump. Yeah, and so I think the Senate Democrats felt like they didn't have much of a choice. They had to go through with it. I don't get the sense Biden's very

happy about this. I mean, you know, look, if you were you know, we were in week three of the Knowles presidency, I don't know that you would be all that interested in impeaching former President Ben Shapiro would be like, well, you know, in that specific case maybe, but but of course, if you if you get in there, you say, especially if someone like Joe Biden has been running for president since nineteen eighty eight, right, it's been a long time.

This guy knows what he wants to do. He wants to wield the power, and he's got to hold up to keep talking about the guy that he just booted out of the White House. The way, you know, Biden was accused of plagiarism too, just like Andrew Mitchell accused me. So maybe that augurs well for future future political endeavors. But look, Biden wants to get on with it. I think there are a lot So my sense of the Democrats, they don't want to see witnesses. We don't want to

see witnesses. I think we'll vote on that. I think witnesses will they will not be called, and then we'll have four hours of questioning. And the way the questioning works is it alternates Democrat republican, Democrat Republican. Under the agreement, if we seeded back our time, you just have four

hours of democratic questioning. So I don't think we'll do that. Yeah, I think if we could actually give back our time, we might, but given that we'd just be giving it to the Democrats, I think we're unlikely to do that, right, And then my guess is at the end of that, which will be probably Sunday evening or Saturday evening, I think we'll vote, and to cut to the ending, Donald Trump will be acquitted. You're confident there's no it is to convict Trump takes sixty seven votes, There's not going

to be sixty seven votes. There's gonna be fifty five votes to convict him. And I'd say plus or minus two, okay, So it could be as high as fifty seven, as low as fifty three. It ain't getting close to sixty seven. Yeah, And we actually saw a proxy of that. We've had two votes now on the jurisdictional question. The first vote there were fifty five votes on jurisdiction. Actually, the second vote there were fifty six. And I think those are

proxies for where the final vote is going to be. Well, presumably, if you're one of the forty five senators who said the Senate doesn't have jurisdiction here, can't imagine you're going to vote to convict, right, you're saying the whole trials of Farus, one would certainly think so. Yeah, but who knows. I mean that's why I say plus minus two. I mean you could have one or two who changed their mind. You know, you look at the first vote we had

was a procedural vote on the jurisdictional question. Right at the outset that there were forty five the vote yesterday, they were forty four. Bill Cassidy, Republican from Louisiana, who sits next to me on the floor, he changed his vote. And the reason he changed his vote he thought the Trump lawyers did terribly. You know, Bill's kind of an

interesting guy, Bills a doctor. He's listening to the two sides and he just said, well, gosh, you know, the Democratic lawyers did a much better job than than the Republican lawyers. And he said, so I'm going to vote for them. This is something that surprised me the first time we did this, you know, a year ago, which is that it does matter what arguments people are making in the room. You know, these are these are real

people in the room. They're responding in real time. Maybe in this case it's not going to be enough to change the outcome, but it does matter. It does matter, and it matters probably more for those without legal training and a deep constitutional background. Bill's a very talented doctor. If we were having a couple of people arguing about the right medical procedure to do, I wouldn't know anything. I guess I'd have to depend on whoever presented the

best argument. If I were asked to judge, yeah, right, how to treat some disease or injury. I'd have to listen to the like the size and go. I don't know what that guy sounds like. He knows what he's talking about, particularly with those look for for people who have a lot of experience in these issues. Frankly, the arguments of the lawyers, you listen to them. But I'm spending time studying the text of the Constitution, the history. I'm assessing the arguments on my own. And so this

is not a debate tournament. You're You're not filling out a ballot for who gave the best speech. You're trying to reach the right conclusion, right, And so I felt very comfortable with the conclusion how I voted yesterday, which is no jurisdiction. Otherwise, I said, not that we don't have the authority, but that we shouldn't exercise jurisdiction. And I'm very comfortable that on Saturday or whenever we vote, that I'll vote not guilty. And I think there will

be the president will be acquitted. I think one were as always over time, but one important mail back question. But before we do that, I do have to tell you kind of a funny thing that happened at the end. Okay, so we are almost completely done, and in fact, Jamie Raskin, the lead Democrat House impeaching manager, stands up and says, okay, we're done for the day. We can wrap up, and everyone's relieved because they finished a little bit early tonight.

They went, they didn't go quite as long as they had told us they would. And as we're getting ready to leave, Mike Lee stands up and he raises an objection. So in the course of the Democratic House Manager's presentation, they talked about on January sixth, right as the Capitol riot was beginning, that President Trump called Mike Lee's cell phone and he was looking for Tommy Tubberville, the new senator from Alabama, and apparently the White House had the

wrong number. So like Trump calls and says Tommy, and as they relayed, Mike said, no, no, it's not Tommy, it's Mike. Leave. But here, let me give you Tommy. It's so brought the phone over and put Tuberville on the phone with Trump, and so they relay that those events, but the Democratic House Manager also describes some things that he says. Mike Lee said and I guess this came from some newspaper article about what Mike said contemporaneously at

the time. So Mike got up and raised an objection and said, I asked for this to be stricken from the record because I didn't say that it's a lie, it's false, there's no evidence of it, and I asked it would be stricken from the record. Now this is where so everyone's kind of confused and not sure, And this is where some of the dynamics you gotta understand. Normally, the presiding officer would be the chief Justice who is

prepared to make rulings and has legal training. Because the Chief Justice is not there because Donald Trump is not the president today, the presiding officer is Pat Lahey. Now, Pat lay He is the President pro tem. He's the most senior, most centered her in the majority. Now, by the way, he is also a partisan Democrat who's already

said that that Trump should be convicted. So pause for a moment to think about what kind of fair and impartial judges that who's a juror in the case and has already stated before it starts that he wants the defendant convicted. The whole things even more ridiculous actually than already does. It is a big talk top circus. So lay He is kind of confused and he's not sure what to do. So the Senate Parliamentarian sits right in front of lay and look, Pat's not a spring chicken

President pro tem never is. Definition. They are the most senior senator in the majority, and so they're typically in their high ad s Senate Parliamentarian and we've talked about her quite a bit on verdict as well. She hands lay He a piece of paper that she's written that says, under the agreement for the trial, the House managers are not required to limit their arguments to the record, so the I rule your objection out of order. Now, Mike is like, what are you talking about. I'm not saying

that it's not in the record. I'm saying it's false. I'm saying they said something about me that's a total lie and there's no evidence of and and lay He is just kind of confused, dazed, and so he reads the same ruling again, which is just the pretyight piece of paper the parliamentarians handed it. At that point, Mike stands up and says, I appeal the ruling of the chair, which is, at any point a senator can appeal the ruling of the chair and it goes to a vote

to the body and lay. He's kind of moving forward. The parliamentarians like, all right, fine, asked for the yas and days, which is you have to have sufficient senators raise their hand and second it. Yeah, and if there's enough seconds, then you have a roll call vote and everyone votes and we all second it, and they start the role call vote. Now Chuck Schumer is looking at this going, wait, oh crap, this is a problem, and it's a problem on a couple of fronts. Number one,

just on the merits. It's a little bit ridiculous that you've got a senator who you're saying a House member came and said something totally false about me and it should be out of the record. That's pretty messed up, right by the way, Joe Mansion, a Democrat, stands up and says, well, what was false about it? And so it's chaos on the floor. But Mansion's concern, like, you know, look, no senator wants House members to come into proceeding and just say stuff about libel on the record. So on

the substance, Schumer recognizes it's a problem. Not only that if we have a vote lay, he's going to have to vote. Yeah, House a pat going to vote on whether to overrule his own ruling. And it really does underscore how asinine it is to have a partisan Democrat presiding over this impeach the judge right. Not only that if it ends up being a party line vote, that all the d's vote one way and all the urs vote the other way, that's a fifty fifty vote. So

maybe they have to call Kamala Harris. You have the presidence president to break the time. So it was it was chaos and they're just going ahead with the vote, and Schumer, to his credit, and you won't hear me off and praise Schumer, but I will say Schumer stepped in the way a majority leader like if they don't like what's going on, they stand up and say, I suggest the absence of a quorum, which is sort of

magic words that pause everything. It's just like hitting pause, right, okay, and the clerk starts calling the role just if they're to see if there's a quorum. By the way, everyone's in the room, like everyone knows, yes, there's no one disappeared in the There are a hundred senators in the room, but when you suggest the absence of a quorum, it like freezes everything. And so Schumer goes over to the house managers. He's like, guys, this is stupid. Come on,

why are you doing this? Look like I mean, he's talking to the to the House Democrats and do you care about this? And they're like, no, we don't care about it. So then he goes talk to Mike, and Mike's Matt. I love Mike, but he's emotionally He's like, they said something about me that's false and I wanted about that in the wreck. I understand that. Yeah, And Schumer do his credit, says all right, I'll tell you what. He tells the house managers you withdraw it, and Mike,

will you withdraw your objection? Mike says all right, and so they get up and they have Jamie raskin lead. House managers say we withdraw it, and so Mike withdraws its objections. So that's how the night ended. And it's funny. Mike was still pissed and I'm like, Mike, you won. Like they surrendered, They withdrew it and took it out and and Franklin I was telling one of the Democratic senators after I said, look, Schumer was really smart to do that. That was the right thing to do. Clever guy,

no question. But so that's just a bit of huh. It was the night, you know, people were kind of it woke everyone up and startled everyone because it was a bit of drama and chaos that no one knew what would happen. And then it got resolved. And it's a sort of it's a minor issue, I mean relatively that some journalists live and some house impeachment manager live. Mike Lee was upset about it, but it raises all

of these major issues about the nature of this impeachment trial. Well, and it does, and it also shows, you know, things seems so ordered and structured. It was chaotic. Yeah, like nobody knew there. So when Mike appealed the ruling of the chair and the clerk starts calling you know, miss bald, when mister Barrasso starts calling the names, you know, Schumer gets up and goes, what was the ruling of the chair? Like we didn't know what we were voting on, Like

how do you vote yes or no? If usually things are more orderly, but it was truly chaotic where no one even knew whether to vote yes or no because we didn't know what the chair had ruled and what we were like, what yes or no means? You know it. I think it's a good symbol of the of the entire impeachment trial. Yeah, I also have to say, this may be the first episode where you have changed my

opinion about something from the beginning to the end of it. So, because we've been dealing with these very intricate, sophisticated issues and arguments, I want to end, even though we're way over time, I want to end on what I consider to be a much more important question. You're spending what eight hours it a clip or more in these kind of long proceedings from Brian, how's the food in the

Senate cafeteria crappy? So it's actually normally quite good in normal times we have lunch together, the Republican senators have lunch together Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and the food's quite decent. Thursdays, a different Republican senator hosts it, and so you bring in and often you'll fly in food from your home state. So I've flown in barbecue and Mexican food, and you host it and you normally give a goodie bag of treats to your other senators and you'll give, you know,

all sorts of stuff. I've given people shiner back, we give each other lots of liquor. It's interesting that I've given salsa and things from Bucky's and you kind of from your state. You get up and bring them stuff Tuesday and Wednesday that the Senate food is usually quite good that we eat. Because of COVID, we're eating all prepackaged stuff and so like for lunch today, I had well and I'm also trying to do kind of keto. I'm trying to avoid cars. We're all trying to do keto.

You know, we hear it's supposed to work, and it's hard. And so I come in and the choices are really like I got a salad, which I hate salad. I feel like it was the food that you I know, I tell Heidi all the animals I eat or vegetarian. And then they had like this sort of shrimp salad sandwich that was like packaged, and to be honest, it was almost like what you'd see and like a grocery like a gas station. Yeah, and since I'm doing keto, I just scraped this shrimp stuff off the like, didn't

eat the bread. So it was I will be glad when COVID is over and meals can return to some semblance of normals. Senator, of all the stories that I expected to hear today about this awful, just disgusting impeachment trial, I didn't realize the food would really it would be as grotesque it would match in So for dinner tonight, because we did have a dinner break, they had something

where you could order some stuff. I actually had a guy on my staff go down to Union Station and get a cheese steak with no bread, just cheese steak on a bed a lettuce and so just chopped up beef and cheese and that that was my dinner, which we went to Union Station to get that, frankly sounds more exciting. It was good. Then the entire impeachment trial you really have, that you've really really explained it to me,

makes me. It makes me actually long for this impeachment trial to continue, because I wanted to stave off whatever kind of crazy legislation the Democrats want to push on us. Well, it's coming and there's going to be a lot to talk about. But but we did get a chance to do quite a bit of loggeek stuff and I know it's well, you always enjoy doing it because you know all this stuff, and I always enjoy it because I don't know any of it, so it's pretty helpful to me.

But there will be there will be a whole lot more once this silly season is over, and that will have probably far greater consequences for the country. We'll have to wait until then. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. 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 the Republican Party across the nation.