Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. After a number of days dominated by the findings of the Democratic-led investigation, Wednesday brought an unconventional Republican response.
[Sign up to get the Impeachment Briefing in your email inbox every weeknight.]
What happened today
-
About two dozen Republican members of Congress stormed the secure office suite where a Pentagon official was preparing to testify in the impeachment investigation, pushing past Capitol Police officers and chanting, “Let us in!”
-
The lawmakers said they were protesting the private nature of the proceedings, which have been closed to the public but open to members of both parties who sit on the three committees conducting the inquiry. The standoff stretched into the afternoon, as protesting Republicans ordered pizzas for the throng of reporters assembled to witness the spectacle.
-
Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, had been called to discuss what she knew about the withholding of nearly $400 million in security aid for Ukraine. Her testimony started more than five hours late.
‘Let us in!’
I asked my colleagues Sheryl Stolberg and Carl Hulse about the wildly different messages we got today from House and Senate Republicans.
Sheryl, you watched the Republicans storm the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) where witnesses are being interviewed. What was it like?
SHERYL: I was in the bowels of the Capitol complex, where a few dozen Republicans had come down en masse to a podium to denounce the Democrats’ inquiry as a Soviet-style process. Then, all of a sudden, they just turned around, their backs to us, and stormed this secure office suite where their colleagues were preparing to interview another witness. They marched forward, shouting, some holding their cellphones up — a breach of policy in this classified area — as they barged past the closed doors.
Soon after, Republicans and Democrats started coming out and giving us these very similar accounts, basically describing a sit-in — although some were actually standing. The sergeant-at-arms, the chief law enforcement officer in the Capitol, showed up. It was wild.
Carl, it was much calmer on the Senate side, where we heard a different take from a top Republican: The No. 2 Senate Republican, John Thune, was asked about Bill Taylor’s explosive testimony and said, “The picture coming out of it, based on the reporting we’ve seen, is — yeah, I would say is not a good one.”
CARL: Mr. Thune’s comments show you that there’s at least a certain segment of Senate Republicans alarmed by this. He’s an independent guy. But the caucus is divided, and without a cohesive strategy. You have some senators who won’t break with President Trump no matter what, some who are keeping an eye on it, and then some embattled 2020 incumbents who have to play it safe. Mitch McConnell wants to let the senators do their own thing.
What’s going on with the Republicans?
The drama in the basement of the Capitol today revealed some intraparty friction over how to handle the impeachment investigation. I asked Julie Davis, our congressional editor, to explain.
Julie, what was today’s madness about?
It was an attempt to deflect attention from what have been really damaging depositions and testimony from witnesses so far. When you can’t beat them on the substance, Republicans figure, you criticize the process. This is kind of an answer to that, but it isn’t part of a concerted strategy. They’re having a lot of difficulty figuring one out.
There are already Republicans sitting on these committees conducting the impeachment investigation who had to confront their colleagues as they stormed in.
There is a division among Republicans in the House, between those who take this inquiry seriously — not willing to concede that Mr. Trump did anything wrong but nonetheless have said they’re open to the inquiry — and those who do not take the inquiry seriously at all, consider it illegitimate and don’t think they have to engage on the substance because they’re so convinced the process is broken. That’s what you saw today.
What do the Republicans who have admitted that damning material has come out but don’t want to go further than that do?
There’s this safe island they’re clinging to. Right now, because they’re all closed depositions, it’s possible to suggest to the public that maybe what Democrats say they’re hearing, what we’re reporting is said, hasn’t actually been said. As long as they can cling to that, they feel like they have a leg to stand on.
Did today change the tactics Democrats have to use to conduct the investigation?
The Democrats have made a strategic decision not unlike the decisions Republicans made in the past, when they were in control of the House and carrying out very sensitive investigations. If they want to drill down on the facts and get the most reliable possible account, they have to do it privately.
But I do think today’s spectacle underscores for them what was already pretty clear — that they have a limited amount of time to do the closed-door, preliminary fact-finding before they really need to present a compelling case in public hearings, or else they risk missing their chance to win the public argument.
What else we’re reading
-
Top Ukrainian officials were told in early August about the delay of $391 million in U.S. security assistance. That undercuts a chief argument the Trump administration has used recently — that there could not have been any quid pro quo because the Ukrainians did not know the assistance had been blocked.
-
Two of Rudy Giuliani’s business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, pleaded not guilty to charges that they had made illegal campaign contributions. Mr. Parnas’s lawyer tied the case to Mr. Trump, saying that some evidence in the case could be subject to executive privilege.
-
Senior White House officials feared that a National Security Council staffer they viewed as a partisan was using a back channel to carry documents about Ukraine to Mr. Trump.
-
Impeachment in the classroom: At Chalmette High School in Louisiana, history students studied the process, read the whistle-blower’s report, and then made their case for or against removing the president.
-
Matthew Whitaker, the former acting attorney general, said late last night on Fox News that Democrats did not have a case for impeachment, since “abuse of power is not a crime.”
The Impeachment Briefing is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every weeknight.