request.[1] At the markup of articles of impeachment, a point of order was made against consideration of the articles for the Chairman's failure to schedule a minority hearing day. Instead of acknowledging his violation of the Rules, the Chairman ruled against the point of order, depriving Minority Members of their right to a minority day of hearings.
Such a blatant, intentional, and impactful violation of the Rules during consideration of a matter as course-altering as articles of impeachment has never occurred in the history of the House of Representatives.
The staff "presentation" hearing held on Monday, December 9, 2019, could only be described as a bizarre, made-for-TV divergence from the precedent set during the impeachments of Presidents Nixon and Clinton. Staff presentations in 1974 and 1998 occurred as a means to assist Members of the Committee in sorting through dense volumes of evidence. The December 9 hearing was set up by the Majority as a means to functionally replace the participation of Members of Congress with paid, outside consultants, not to advise them.
To begin, an outside consultant to the Majority, Barry Berke, was permitted to make a presentation to the Committee without being sworn in or questioned by Members of the Committee.[2] He was later permitted forty-five minutes to cross-examine the Minority staff member (after said staffer had been sworn in) that had earlier presented the counter argument to his "presentation," which was in fact just thirty minutes of opinion.
This aspect of the hearing comported with the procedures of H. Res. 660, but we question any application of the Rules that would permit a private consultant to use Committee proceedings to cross examine a career staff member for forty-five minutes but only allow the majority of Menmbers on the Committee five minutes to ask questions.
Future staff presentations of evidence during impeachment inquiries should be just that presentations of evidence compiled and reviewed by the Committee. Instead, this Majority chose to prioritize TV ratings over meaningful Member participation and a greater understanding of the facts.
H. Res. 660 provided that the Ranking Member could request that the Chairman subpoena witnesses. While H. Res. 660 provides no time constraints on such a request, the Chairman sent a letter requiring that the Ranking Member submit any such requests by December 6, 2019.[3] Despite the unjustifiably short time constraint, the Ranking Member sent a list of witnesses to the Chairman by the deadline. On Monday December 9, the Chairman rejected all of the Ranking Member's requests without justification beyond the Chairman's
- ↑ The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee, Hearing Before the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 116th Cong. 13 (2019).
- ↑ Id. at 74-5.
- ↑ Letter from the Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, H. Comm. on the Judiciary, to the Honorable Doug Collins, Ranking Member, H. Comm. on the Judiciary (Nov. 29, 2019). 4
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