Congress Begins Public Impeachment Hearings

By Aaron Silverman, '21Wednesday, Nov. 13, saw the first public Congressional hearing related to the impeachment effort against President Trump. On Friday, another took place, and many more hearings are scheduled to take place in the coming weeks. Though it has been nearly two months since Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the start of the impeachment inquiry, all of the impeachment-related testimonies and depositions until now have occurred behind closed doors in private Congressional hearings.The beginning of public hearings marks a significant escalation of the impeachment effort, and a presage for an impeachment vote, which Congressional Democrats hope to accomplish by Christmas-time. These hearings are a historic landmark; it is only the third time in American history that public impeachment hearings against a president have been held, following those against Nixon in 1974 and Clinton in 1998.The Wednesday hearing featured testimonies from two State Department officials, Bill Taylor, acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department. The Friday hearing saw testimony from Marie Yovanovich, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.The testimonies included a number of significant revelations. For example, Taylor testified that his subordinate overheard a phone conversation between the president and a State Department official, in which Trump asked about “the investigations” in Ukraine – a likely allusion to the quid pro quo at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. At another point, Taylor spoke about “regular” and “highly irregular” channels of Ukraine policy – one spearheaded in the usual manner, by the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine, and the irregular one spearheaded by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and at odds with the official Ukraine policy.Despite their historic nature, the hearings were, by most accounts, not very climactic. The revelations were not the smoking gun that the Democrats had hoped to get in the hearing. In order to sway a wavering public that impeachment is the right course of action, Democrats wanted the hearings to prove beyond any doubt that there was malfeasance on the President’s part, and that the malfeasance is impeachable. Most observers agree that the testimonies so far have not achieved such an outcome. Taylor even stumbled at one point under the tough questioning of Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, a man seen as a firebrand voice against impeachment.This week’s testimonies were just the start of what will be many weeks of public impeachment hearings, and what the outcome will be is not a foregone conclusion. The hearings can go either way – a victory for the Democrats by proving beyond any doubt to the American public that the President must be impeached, or a victory for the Republicans and the President by discrediting the testimonies of the Democrats’ witnesses. In any event, the next few weeks will likely see much partisan fighting and political hysteria in Washington.Sources:https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/impeachment-hearings-highlights-most-revealing-moments-today-2019-11-13/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/us/politics/impeachment-hearings.htmlhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/first-day-of-televised-impeachment-hearings-draws-13-1-million-viewers-11573762430https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/plenty-substance-little-drama-first-day-impeachment-hearings-n1081926https://www.npr.org/2019/11/14/779074889/7-moments-that-stood-out-from-the-1st-day-of-the-trump-impeachment-hearings