This week, both the Democrats and Republicans on the impeachment committees release their reports on the hearings for their handoff to the Judiciary Committee. I know it’s a lot to read, but if you didn’t watch the hearings, you should at least read both executive summaries and conclusions. And if you don’t have time for that, read through the tables of contents. You’ll get the gist, if not the full story.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending December 8…

General Happenings:

1. In an interview, Ukraine President Zelensky says he’s learned not to trust anyone at all, and he’s lowered his expectations with both Russia in terms of the peace talks and the U.S. in terms of support.

• • He says Ukraine doesn’t stand a chance against Russia without the support of the U.S.
  • Trump is continually indicating to other countries that Ukraine is corrupt, which makes Zelensky concerned about future support.
  • He says he and Trump never discussed the hold on military aid, but he does question the fairness of it.
  • Kurt Volker was trying to get the U.S. to play a larger role in the peace process.
  • Zelensky doesn’t want Ukraine to be seen as just a pawn in the global game. They won’t be used as a bargaining chip.

2. House Democrats consider adding the items of obstruction listed in Mueller’s report to their articles of impeachment.
3. In a tweet, Trump praises Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) for defending Trump on Meet the Press by pushing the debunked theories about Ukrainian officials meddling in the 2016 elections to help Clinton.

• • Kennedy brings up a court ruling in Ukraine that said releasing the black ledger constituted interference, but neglects to mention that the ruling has since been overturned.
  • He also says he got some of his information from the Financial Times, but no one at FT can figure out what he’s talking about.
  • Kennedy says he missed the Senate intelligence briefing where officials warned Senators that this was all Russian propaganda and that Russia has been engaged in a years-long campaign to frame Ukraine as being responsible for election meddling in 2016. With intelligence agencies warning that Russia will step up their efforts in 2020, we are screwed if an entire party believes Russian propaganda.

4. Nancy Pelosi calls for the House to draw up articles of impeachment.

• • During the Judiciary Committee hearing, House Democrats indicate three areas of impeachment: abuse of power and bribery, obstruction of Congress, and obstruction of justice. This indicates they might be including Robert Mueller’s findings of obstruction into the impeachment articles.

5. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) says that Ukraine meets the standard for election meddling that people first held Russia to. By that, he means that Russia preferred Trump, and Ukraine preferred Clinton.

• • That’s muddying the waters a bit because he doesn’t compare what Russia actually did to what Ukraine actually did (probably because they aren’t comparable).

• • Burr refuses to directly answer whether what Ukraine did could be considered meddling.
  • Also, most foreign leaders had a preference for one over the other. Were they all meddling?

6. The White House disputes some of the calls recorded in the call logs and listed in the impeachment report, but those came directly from the provider, so it’s not clear what they’re disputing.
7. Nancy Pelosi dresses down a reporter who asks if she hates Trump. The essence of it all is that no, she doesn’t. She has policy disagreements with him, but impeachment is a separate thing about the constitution and violations of the oath of office.

• • Trump then describes her response has her having a nervous fit.
  • Kevin McCarthy backtracks three times when asked about whether he thinks Pelosi hates Trump, as he often claims.

8. Trump frequently used an unsecured cell phone to have discussions with Giuliani and others involved in the Ukraine affair.
9. 500 legal experts sign on to a letter saying Trump committed impeachment offenses. They write: “Put simply, if a President cheats in his effort at re-election, trusting the democratic process to serve as a check through that election is no remedy at all. That is what impeachment is for.”

Democrat Majority Report:

The Democrats’ report tries to lay out the evidence for their assertions that Trump abused the power of his office by orchestrating a pressure campaign to get Ukraine President Zelensky to open investigations into a potential 2020 election rival and into theories that Ukraine meddled in our 2016 elections. In return, Trump would give Zelensky a White House meeting, and he later withheld military aid on those conditions as well.

Here are some highlights. Again, if you’ve been watching the hearings, there won’t be much that’s new here.

1. The report says Trump “placed his own personal and political interests” ahead of U.S. national interests, “subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential re-election campaign.”
2. Trump tried to hide his actions from Congress and the public by blocking subpoenas for documents and witnesses. He also tried to intimidate witnesses, some while they were actually testifying.
3. The report alleges that:

• • Trump forced out U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
  • He put four people in charge of Ukraine affairs: Rudy Giuliani, Rick Perry, Kurt Volker, and Gordon Sondland.
  • He froze military aid to Ukraine against the advice of state and foreign officials and over their objections. Democrats say the release was conditioned on an announcement of the investigations.
  • A White House meeting between Trump and Ukraine was conditioned on a public announcement of the investigations, which Democrats say constitutes using the power of the office to pressure a foreign government to interfere in our elections for his own benefit.

4. Democrats say the call was improper. After Zelensky brought up military aid, Trump responded by asking for a favor. Here are the relevant passages:

Zelensky: I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

Trump: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike …” (This is about his notion that there’s a physical DNC server somewhere in Ukraine.)

And then later, Trump adds: “The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

5. The call is only a part of the pressure campaign, which was actually months long and started with the previous Ukraine president.
6. The scheme undermined our own national security, as well as Ukraine’s.
7. The Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Energy, Acting Chief of Staff, and others all knew about the campaign. This jibes with Gordon Sondland’s testimony.
8. Along with all the other testimony, Mick Mulvaney, Acting Chief of Staff and head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), admitted on television that military aid was tied to the public announcement of investigations into the Bidens and said we should all just get over it.
9. The testimony was very consistent across all witnesses and showed very little discrepancy. It also corroborated the whistleblower complaint for the most part.
10. The investigation is still ongoing because of the White House’s and State Department’s lack of response to subpoenas.
11. The report gives reasons for not waiting for the 2020 elections to decide this issue.

• • If this is all true, the president of the United States solicited foreign interference in the 2020 elections, so how can we be assured of a free and fair election?
  • Future presidents have to know they can’t get away with this kind of abuse of power.
  • Trump saw first hand the damage foreign interference did to the country in 2016, yet he continues to invite it. Even as this investigation was getting underway, Trump invited China to open investigations that would interfere in our 2020 elections. So it’s not like he’s learned from any of this.

12. The report includes new call-log evidence showing calls Giuliani had with the White House, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Devin Nunes, Sean Hannity, and Lev Parnas. The calls with administration officials happened while Giuliani was smearing Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
13. Call logs also show phone calls between Devin Nunes and Lev Parnas, which might explain why Nunes has been pushing Ukraine conspiracy theories so hard during the hearings.
14. Pete Sessions, who was a Representative for Texas at the time, sent Mike Pompeo a letter claiming that Yovanovitch was disparaging Trump. This was reported by John Solomon, and Trump, Donald Trump Jr, and Rudy Giuliani amplified the message on social media.
15. Call logs show that journalist John Solomon was also in contact with Lev Parnas.
16. There’s a lack of call logs supporting the phone call Gordon Sondland testified to where he says Trump told him there was no quid pro quo (but then went on to ask for the announcement of the investigations). That doesn’t mean the call didn’t happen, but now it’s in question.

Republican Minority Report:

Republicans try to get out ahead of the majority report on impeachment hearings and issue their own report the day before. Here are some highlights. It’s mostly what they’ve been saying all along, including debunked conspiracy theories and ignored evidence. IMO, these just get in the way of their arguments that actually do have merit. I’m not correcting the debunked claims in their report; I’m just letting you know what they said.

1. The Democrats are just trying to undo the will of 63 million Americans and overturn an election. They’ve already introduced four articles of impeachment since Trump was elected.
2. None of the witnesses “testified to having evidence of bribery, extortion, or any high crime or misdemeanor.”
3. The evidence doesn’t support the allegations of obstruction of justice from the White House.
4. The “do us a favor though…” part of the call doesn’t indicate a quid pro quo.
5. Trump thinks Ukraine is corrupt.
6. They dismiss the pressure for investigations by saying the call summary only mentions the Bidens in passing. Here’s the passage:

“The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

7. Trump extended an invitation to Zelensky for a White House meeting three times.
8. Trump and Zelensky met at the UN General Assembly, so they did have the requested meeting.
9. Ukrainian officials didn’t know anything about the hold in military aid until the media published a story about it in August.
10. There was nothing improper about the call. National Security Council leadership didn’t see the call as improper.
11. Trump just wanted the rest of Europe to help shoulder the burden.
12. Ukrainian officials were pro-Hillary and anti-Trump in the 2016 elections.
13. The op-ed written by the Ukraine Ambassador to the U.S. in response to Trump saying Putin wouldn’t go into Ukraine was an attack against Trump.
14. Trump only released aid after Zelensky proved his anti-corruption chops. Zelensky didn’t even announce investigations.
15. We should take Ukrainian officials at their word when they say there was no pressure, that they were feeling good.
16. Also, even if Trump pressured him, it wouldn’t be improper.
17. Trump gave Ukraine javelin missiles—way better than the night goggles and blankets Obama gave them.
18. The Democrat’s accusations are based on speculation.
19. According to this report, Republicans have no regard for our long-serving diplomatic and foreign officials, calling them “unelected bureaucrats.”
20. There was nothing illicit about having a shadow policy with Ukraine run by Volker, Perry, Sondland, and Giuliani.
21. There’s nothing wrong with asking for an investigation into the Bidens.
22. They accuse Democrats of not being transparent, of deception, and of selective leaking.
23. The private hearings weren’t fair, the public hearings weren’t fair, and it wasn’t fair that Trump couldn’t defend himself.
24. A DNC operative worked with Ukrainian officials to dig up dirt on Trump in the 2016 elections.

House Judiciary Committee Hearing:

1. Four constitutional scholars testify before the House Judiciary Committee—three called by the Democratic majority (Noah Feldman, Michael Gerhardt, and Pamela Karlan), and one by the Republican minority (Jonathon Turley). The purpose here is not to question the facts of the case; the purpose is to learn about the constitutional law surrounding impeachment and how the facts learned so far fit into that framework.
2. Trump and his lawyers were invited to participate, but they decline, accusing Nadler of purposely scheduling the hearing while Trump is at the NATO leaders meeting. I doubt they expected Trump to appear, but his lawyers could have shown up.
3. The three called by Democrats say that by pressuring Ukraine for political gain, Trump clearly committed impeachable offenses.
4. Feldman spells out that the impeachable offenses include withholding military aid and a White House meeting (which still hasn’t happened, by the way) as leverage for political favors, as well as soliciting foreign assistance (which Trump did on the phone call). Specifically, Trump “corruptly” solicited “Zelensky to announce investigations of his political rivals in order to gain personal advantage, including in the 2020 presidential election.”
5. Gerhardt says Trump committed several impeachable acts and that his actions were worse than Richard Nixon in Watergate. He also warns that Trump will continue this behavior if left unchecked.
6. Karlan says that strong-arming a foreign leader in that way is not politics as usual by any historical standards.
7. Turley says that the process shouldn’t be rushed and that more evidence is needed, but doesn’t dispute that asking a foreign government to interfere in our elections is impeachable.

• • He compares this to Clinton’s impeachment hearings, which lasted 72 days. This one’s lasted that long as well.
  • He puts forth the size of the documentation against Clinton during his impeachment. Remember that Clinton had been investigated for more than five years before his impeachment.
  • If the White House were to comply with all subpoenas, the evidence in this case would also be more sizable.

8. Turley does agree that if the quid pro quo can be proven, then it is indeed impeachable. He never says there’s no impeachable offense here.
9. Turley was also a constitutional scholar witness for Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings.
10. Karlan takes Representative Doug Collins (R-GA) to task for accusing the scholars of failing to have knowledge of any of the facts. She responds that she read the transcript of every single fact witness, because that’s what lawyers do.
11. Karlan also catches flack for saying, “The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility. While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.” She later apologizes for the remark.
12. Feldman argues that the essential definition of high crimes and misdemeanors is abuse of office. He also says that it’s OK to ask a foreign power for something for the benefit of the United States, but not for your own personal or political benefit.
13. Gerhardt warns that if left unchecked, Trump will continue his pattern of soliciting foreign interference (off the top of my head, he’s asked Russia, pressured Ukraine, and said China should do it, too).
14. Questioners from each party focus on the witness that their party called up. That’s too bad, because we would’ve had a much more robust discussion had they mixed it up.
15. Several Republican lawmakers accuse the three scholars called by Republicans of having an anti-Trump bias (as they do with every expert that doesn’t agree with them). Tom McClintock even asks them to raise their hands if they voted for Trump. We all have a right to a private ballot, and when no one raises their hand, one of the lawyers reminds McClintock that this shouldn’t be misconstrued as an answer.
16. The scholars had an interesting discussion on what constitutes bribery, some arguing the definition should be narrow and some arguing that for impeachment purposes the definition is broader than other federal statutes. Karlan argues that the framers of the constitution would consider what Trump did to be bribery, but Turley argues that Trump did not commit federal crimes (a Republican staff lawyer helpfully suggests his actions could be misdemeanors).
17. Lest you think the hearings weren’t filled with partisan fighting, it started within the first hour, with Republicans interrupting the proceedings with motions designed to delay the proceedings (we were told the day before that this would happen). They also called on Adam Schiff, who is not a relevant witness in this particular hearing, to testify.
18. Throughout the hearing, Representative Doug Collins (R-GA) squeezes a stress ball. I don’t think it was working…

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani… And Now Nunes:

1. Nunes, the top Republican on the impeachment committee, appears in the majority report. Nunes has been having multiple conversations with Giuliani this whole time.
2. Prosecutors say the House Judiciary Committee is likely to issue a superseding indictment against Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and charges could be added or changed soon.
3. Ever unaware of optics, Giuliani travels to Kyiv and Budapest to meet with former Ukrainian prosecutors about a documentary series that he thinks will exonerate Trump in the impeachment case.

• • All three of the prosecutors he met with have faced allegations of corruption.
  • It was Giuliani’s initial interactions with this cast of characters that set the wheels in motion for impeachment.
  • The documentary will be aired on OAN, so he’s just preaching to the choir.