democracynow--2020-01-23--Trump Brags About Withholding Evidence as Democratic Impeachment Managers Lay Out Case in the Senate

During the opening day of oral arguments in the impeachment trial , President Trump was accused of abusing his office @ @ @ @ @ ” House impeachment managers spent about eight hours on Wednesday laying out their case for @ @ @ @ @ removed from office .
The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached Trump @ @ @ @ @ aid to Ukraine as part of an effort to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate @ @ @ @ @ , Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden .
While the impeachment trial was taking place in @ @ @ @ @ was across the Atlantic at the World Economic Forum in Davos , where he tweeted @ @ @ @ @ dismissed the impeachment trial as a hoax .
Trump also appeared to boast about having @ @ @ @ @ process , saying , “ We have all the material ; they don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ more on the historic impeachment trial , we speak with Dahlia Lithwick , senior editor @ @ @ @ @ Slate.com .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: In the first day of oral arguments in the historic impeachment trial of President Trump, Democratic lawmakers accused the president of abusing his power to “cheat an election.” House impeachment managers spent eight hours Wednesday laying out their case for why President Trump should be removed from office. Democrats will continue to argue their case today and tomorrow. The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached Trump for withholding congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine as part of an effort to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Trump’s political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, the lead impeachment manager, outlined the case against President Trump.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF: A president has a right to hold a call with a foreign leader, yes. And he has a right to decide the time and location of a meeting with that leader, yes. And he has a right to withhold funding to that leader, should the law be followed and the purpose be just. But he does not, under our laws and under our Constitution, have a right to use the powers of his office to corruptly solicit foreign aid, prohibited foreign aid, in his re-election. He does not. He does not have the right to withhold official presidential acts to secure that assistance, and he certainly does not have the right to undermine our elections and place our security at risk for his own personal benefit. No president, Republican or Democrat, can be permitted to do that.
AMY GOODMAN: The House Intelligence chair and lead house manager, Congressman Adam Schiff, went on to warn that President Trump’s actions put the country on what he described as the “road towards tyranny.”
REP. ADAM SCHIFF: When a leader takes the reins of the highest office in our land and uses that awesome power to solicit the help of a foreign country to gain an unfair advantage in our free and fair elections, we all, Democrats and Republicans alike, must ask ourselves whether our loyalty is to our party or whether it is to our Constitution. If we say that we will align ourselves with that leader, allowing our sense of duty to be usurped by an absolute executive, that is not democracy. It is not even factionalism. It is a step on the road towards tyranny.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: While the impeachment trial was taking place in the Senate, President Trump was across the Atlantic at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he tweeted more than 140 times — a new record for him as president. At a press conference in Davos, Trump dismissed the impeachment trial as a hoax.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re doing very well. I got to watch enough. I thought our team did a very good job. But honestly, we have all the material; they don’t have the material.
AMY GOODMAN: After President Trump spoke, one of the House impeachment managers, Val Demings, tweeted, “The second article of impeachment was for obstruction of Congress: covering up witnesses and documents from the American people. This morning the President not only confessed to it, he bragged about it,” she tweeted.
We’re joined now by Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate.com, where she’s their senior legal correspondent and Supreme Court reporter.
Dahlia, it’s great to have you back. Talk about the significance of what Trump admitted yesterday, and then, overall, talk about this opening day of oral arguments in the Senate.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: Yeah, it’s such an amazing moment, Amy, where you actually have the reason that everything is playing out as it is in the Senate is because of that second charge, that obstruction charge. So, the reason we don’t have witnesses testifying for the first impeachment trial in history, the reason we don’t have the documents that were sought, including some documents that now really are owed, all of that is because the White House utterly and completely obstructed the inquiry in the House. And so, to have the president then crowing about it overseas — you know, “We have everything; they have nothing” — it really is like quite an astonishing moment we’re in.
And then, you know, I think the response, the Republicans have been kind of coordinating their talking point. And their response to all of the events of the last two days in the Senate is to say, “This is boring. We’re not seeing anything new.” So, it’s quite an amazing piece of brazenness.
I think, overwhelmingly, what you’re seeing is what I think we all expected, which is brick-by-brick laying out of the case. Everything that was established in the House impeachment investigation, everything that was established in the Lev Parnas document dump for last week is simply being laid out very, very systematically by one impeachment manager after another. And they’re just trying to reconstruct and assemble the story of these two articles, both the abuse of power that you described and the obstruction. And they’re doing it over these three long eight-hour days in the Senate, with the hopes that senators who are hearing it for the very first time, some of them, might be moved.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Dahlia, if you can tell us what that is, for the very first time? If you can, in a nutshell, tell us what they are alleging and what they have charged the president with, elaborating on those articles of impeachment?
DAHLIA LITHWICK: I mean, in a nutshell, the two articles are, one, this use — abuse of presidential power, the quid pro quo that Adam Schiff was talking about right there, where both a visit for Zelensky and aid to Ukraine were withheld by this president and Mick Mulvaney pending a promise that the president of Ukraine would go on television and announce that he was opening an investigation into Hunter Biden, Burisma and Joe Biden. And that promise, that almost amounts to bribery, withholding of desperately sought aid by Ukraine in exchange for just political oppo research to benefit the president in the 2020 election — that’s the first.
And as Val Demings said in that tweet, the second is obstruction of Congress. This is an unprecedented moment. Even Nixon agreed to work with Congress when they investigated him for impeachment. Even Clinton extensively cooperated with the House impeachment. This is the first time we’ve seen a White House absolutely say, “We will not cooperate with any part of this. We want nothing to do with it. No witness may testify.” So that’s the second article, is obstruction of Congress, in effect, saying, “Come and get it.” And that is not how impeachment is meant to happen. So, the second article is the withholding of any, any possibility that congressional oversight could happen.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go back to President Trump speaking in Davos.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I would rather go the long way. I would rather interview Bolton. I would rather interview a lot of people. The problem with John is that it’s a national security problem. You know, you can’t have somebody who’s at national security. And if you think about it, John, he knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive, and then I have to deal on behalf of the country? It’s going to be very hard. It’s going to make the job very hard.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that’s Trump speaking in Davos, Dahlia. So, could you talk about why — you’ve written about this — why Republicans are arguing that they can’t vote just yet on witnesses, and Trump in fact saying that he would like to hear from John Bolton and many others, and yet it would be a national security threat to do so?
DAHLIA LITHWICK: I would step back for one second and just flag that this is the same Donald Trump who said, “I will not let any of these people testify before the House, because the House process is compromised. It’s a witch hunt. But I will be happy to have them testify in the Senate.” Here we are at the Senate, and now they are also being — you know, the argument is, “Well, we have a problem. You know, we have to assert immunity. We have to assert privilege.” So, it’s part of the very, very consistent bait and switch, where there is a promise that “We are going to accommodate you down the road, we want this information to come out,” and then, once the context changes and presumably now they can come forward and testify, we’re told, “Oh, now there’s a new rationale for why he can’t testify in the Senate.”
I mean, I think that the constitutional claim that’s being made, and has been made throughout, which is absolute immunity, that no one who has ever served as an adviser to the president can be called to testify, certainly it’s an argument. It has never prevailed. It has never been seen as a legitimate constitutional claim to bar people from coming forward. Moreover, if you’re going to claim that certain things are privileged, the witness has to come forward and assert the privilege. So, we’re not even having that. We’re not even having witnesses come forward and say, “Well, I can talk about this, but not about this, and I have to stop here.” Even that hasn’t happened. We’re just getting an absolute blackout.
And so, for the president to say, “Oh, you know, I wish they could, but my hands are tied because of the law,” is another piece of kind of bait-and-switchery that we’ve been seeing all along. The endgame is going to be: find a reason to say at the end of the day, “We can’t have any witnesses, so you may as well vote to have no witnesses, because this whole thing was a hoax.”
AMY GOODMAN: And you also have, of course, President Trump saying, “I would love to go before the Senate,” just as he said he would of course speak to Robert Mueller, in the end not doing so and only answering written questions, or at least his lawyers answering those questions.
I wanted to go to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who said during a campaign stop in Iowa Wednesday that he would not participate in a witness swap as part of the Senate impeachment trial, Biden’s comments coming in response to a voter’s question. According to reports, Biden said, quote, “The reason I would not make the deal, the bottom line is, this is a constitutional issue. We’re not going to turn it into a farce or to some kind of political theater. They’re trying to do that. I want no part of that. I’m not going to play his game. The Senate job is now to try him. My job is to beat him.”
So, if you can talk about this issue of, what, that Senator Ted Cruz called a witness reciprocity, trading one — or, reciprocal witnesses, the whole issue of either Biden or his son, Hunter Biden, having to testify if Bolton does? And also, are Democrats putting all their eggs in one basket to get Bolton there? Who knows actually what the former national security adviser would say? Some say that Trump assassinated Soleimani for him, as a kind of bone to throw to this Iran hawk, Bolton, who, right after the assassination, tweeted, “This is what we’ve been working on for a long time.”
DAHLIA LITHWICK: I mean, I think, as to the reciprocity, maybe the best way to think about it, Amy, is to think about what we saw in the House during the House impeachment process, which was not a sort of sober consideration of these claims about Ukraine, a sober consideration of whether the president abused his power, but a whole lot of clown show about Hunter Biden and Burisma and counter — very, very much roundly debunked counterconspiracy claims about how, “Oh, it wasn’t Russia who intervened in the 2016 election. In fact, it was Ukraine.” All of that was being surfaced every day. And I think that Mitch McConnell has been really clear that that was not going to happen in the Senate, that the Senate was not going to be a place where a whole bunch of lunatic-fringe debunked conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden and Burisma were going to be played out again. And one of the reasons that Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, who have been put on the president’s defense team but are not speaking in the well of the Senate, is that Mitch McConnell does not want this to turn into a circus. He wants it to be a sober, narrow consideration of these two articles. And I think when Ted Cruz was floating this reciprocity deal, it was very much sounding in the key of “Let’s just open the doors and bring in the clowns. Let’s really have this turn into a circus.” That’s not in Joe Biden’s interest, for the reasons you just heard. I don’t think it’s in Mitch McConnell’s interest, either, to have this be a place where every single wacky conspiracy theory that has ever appeared on Fox News is going to be surfaced. And so I think it was in both sides’ interests, in some ways, to shut it down.
As to the question of the Democrat witnesses, look, they want John Bolton, they want Mick Mulvaney, they want two advisers. They have not asked for everybody who was a material witness in this. But it does go to, I think, a really interesting problem the Democrats do have, because they’re simultaneously claiming, “Look, this is an open-and-shut case. It was made in the House. We have enough documentary evidence, we have enough witness testimony to end this right now. It’s clear he did it,” and also, “We want more.” And I think that, in some ways, those two arguments work against each other. Do you need more witnesses, or do you not? And what we’re seeing happening now is Adam Schiff and the other impeachment managers doing their level best to say, “OK, we’ll go with door number one. We have enough, and we’re going to show video for the next three days making the case.” But I think it is also true that they have said, and they have said all along, “If you don’t give us Mick Mulvaney, if you don’t give us John Bolton, we only know a part of the story. We know a small part of the story.” And I think, in some sense, at the end of the day, it’s an attempt to refute the Republican talking point, which is, none of these witnesses were in the room, it’s all hearsay. They want to have people who were in the room where it happened. And to be denied that and then told, “You don’t have any firsthand witnesses,” feels like a trap to them.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Dahlia, we’re about to have Tim Robbins on, the director and actor, and I wanted to go to the issue of the framing of the Senate, this whole issue that no longer can the cameras be in the Senate, but that the Republicans are determining the frame of what we are seeing. C-SPAN can’t even do this, and they all have to take the Republicans’ frame of this trial, which is only looking forward. You cannot generally see the senators. The significance of this? And, of course, you’re a longtime Chief Justice Roberts watcher. You’re a Supreme Court reporter. You know, here you have the chief justice who’s presiding over the Senate trial.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: Just on the media question, I mean, you know better than anyone what it means to have media limitations on a consequential hearing like this. It’s not just that the cameras have been removed from the room. It’s that reporters cannot engage in walk-and-talks and do the kinds of things that they should be allowed to do in the halls of the Senate. I sit on the steering committee for the Reporters Committee of the Freedom of the Press, and it is really unconscionable, the lack of press access that we’re having and that that’s dressed up as a security problem.
On the issue of John Roberts, look, he’s done exactly what you and I have talked about in the shows prior to this: He has tried as much as possible to fade back into the bushes, to be a potted plant. He had one brief moment on Tuesday night where he rebuked both sides for intemperate speech. But I think anyone who thought that John Roberts was going to leap into —
AMY GOODMAN: And brought the word “pettifogging” back.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: “Pettifogging” back in style, but also, really, I think, tried to do some both-sideism to take control of the optics. I don’t think we’re going to see a John Roberts who is eager to rush in and make rulings and be a tiebreaker. He really, I think, is waiting this out and hoping it goes away.
AMY GOODMAN: Dahlia Lithwick, we want to thank you for being with us, senior editor at Slate.com, where she’s senior legal correspondent and Supreme Court reporter.
When we come back, President Trump moves to expand his travel ban to seven more countries. We’ll speak with the Oscar-winning actor Tim Robbins about his new play on immigration. It’s called The New Colossus. It’s traveling the country. Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-01-23--Headlines for January 23, 2020

Headlines for January 23, 2020

In the first day of oral arguments in the historic impeachment trial of President Trump , Democratic lawmakers accused the president of abusing his power to cheat an election .
The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached Trump for withholding congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine as part of an effort to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Trump ’ s political rival , Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden .
This is Democratic Congressmember Adam Schiff , the lead impeachment manager .
Rep. Adam Schiff : “ If President Trump is not held to account , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future congresses and generations of Americans that the personal interests of the president can fairly take precedent over those of the nation .
The domestic effects of this descent from democracy will be a weakened trust in the integrity of our elections and the rule of law and a steady decline of the spread of democratic values throughout the world.
” While the impeachment trial was taking place in the Senate , President Trump was across the Atlantic at the World Economic Forum in Davos , where he dismissed the impeachment trial as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White House has withheld documents and other information from Democratic lawmakers .
President Donald Trump : “ We ’ re doing very well .
I got to watch enough .
I thought our team did a very good job .
But honestly , we have all the material ; they don ’ t have the material .
”

In the first day of oral arguments in the historic impeachment trial of President Trump, Democratic lawmakers accused the president of abusing his power to cheat an election. The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached Trump for withholding congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine as part of an effort to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Trump’s political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. This is Democratic Congressmember Adam Schiff, the lead impeachment manager.
Rep. Adam Schiff: “If President Trump is not held to account, we send the message to future presidents, future congresses and generations of Americans that the personal interests of the president can fairly take precedent over those of the nation. The domestic effects of this descent from democracy will be a weakened trust in the integrity of our elections and the rule of law and a steady decline of the spread of democratic values throughout the world.”
While the impeachment trial was taking place in the Senate, President Trump was across the Atlantic at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he dismissed the impeachment trial as a hoax and bragged about how the White House has withheld documents and other information from Democratic lawmakers.


democracynow--2020-01-22--Criminalizing Reporting: Glenn Greenwald Faces Cybercrime Complaint After Exposing Scandal in Brazil

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Well , we end today ’ s show in Brazil , where federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald in connection to a major investigation he spearheaded exposing misconduct among federal prosecutors and a former judge .
Called “ The Secret Brazil Archive , ” the series of articles published in The Intercept and The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to offer new and damning insight into the sweeping anti-corruption campaign that brought down former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and paved the way for the election of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro .
The investigation used previously undisclosed private chats , audio recordings , videos and other information , provided by an anonymous , source to expose the wrongdoing of top officials , including current Justice Minister Sérgio Moro , who oversaw the anti-corruption crusade known as “ Operation Car Wash. ” AMY GOODMAN : On Tuesday , a justice minister filed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he , quote , “ directly assisted , encouraged and guided ” individuals who allegedly accessed online chats related to Operation Car Wash. A judge will now decide whether to press charges against Glenn .
The move has sparked international outrage at what many are condemning as an attack on the free press in Brazil .
In a statement , The Intercept said , quote , “ The Bolsonaro government has repeatedly made it clear that it does not believe in basic press freedoms , ” unquote .
And Glenn Greenwald posted a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the criminal complaint .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , for more , we go to Rio de Janeiro , Brazil , where we ’ re joined by Andrew Fishman , the managing editor of The Intercept Brasil , reporter for The Intercept .
We welcome you to Democracy Now !
Bolsonaro ’ s congressman son Eduardo tweeted , “ Glenn Greenwald always said he loved Brazil and wanted to get know the country in depth .
Who knows ?
Maybe he ’ ll even get to know prison.
” Tell us how serious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ criminal complaint in Brazil ?
ANDREW FISHMAN : Well , this is obviously a very troubling situation .
It ’ s serious because this is the Public Ministry .
This is not a joke that ’ s happening here .
The complaint is that Glenn allegedly participated in a criminal hack of telephones of senior officials in the Brazilian government , in the Public Ministry .
That ’ s obviously not true .
He acted as a journalist .
The alleged hack happened before anyone at The Intercept had any knowledge of what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that came to us , an anonymous source , and presented us with very important information .
And we , our team at The Intercept Brasil , which is , you know , 20-odd Brazilian journalists , along with Glenn and myself , have spent eight months working on 95 original stories that have revealed very serious wrongdoing and abuses by Judge — then-Judge Sérgio Moro , who ’ s now the justice minister , and the team of prosecutors that ran the Operation Car Wash anti-corruption investigation .
And it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our — these last eight months reporting on and exposing that the Public Ministry was willing to bend the rules to go against the standards that they needed to follow , to follow their own political purposes and make prosecutions based on a lack of evidence or faulty evidence or distorting the evidence , and in response to that , what they ’ ve done is made a criminal complaint against Glenn based on the distortion of the evidence for their own personal and political interests .
So , it ’ s very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brazilian society has overwhelmingly been to condemn this action by the prosecutor .
There has been an injunction by one of the Supreme Court ministers against any investigation into Glenn .
And they claim that they didn ’ t investigate , but they ’ re still filing this complaint .
And so , when he comes back from — when this minister comes back from vacation , it ’ s very likely that — he signaled that he might try to challenge it or bring this down .
But now it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decide whether or not he ’ s going to accept the charges or not , in which case Glenn would become officially a defendant in this case .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Andrew , what about this original Federal Police investigation that concluded in December and found that there had been no crime committed by Glenn Greenwald specifically ?
How can the prosecutors then move forward ?
There ’ s already been an investigation that reached a different conclusion .
ANDREW FISHMAN : Juan , exactly .
That ’ s a key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many months doing an investigation into the alleged hacking .
And they concluded , in their statement , which they released in December , that they saw no indication of any crimes committed by Glenn .
And they went out of their way to say that , in fact , he was very cautious and careful to make sure to distance himself from any criminal activity .
That was the conclusion of the Federal Police investigation .
And then it went to the prosecutor at the Public Ministry .
He decided to entirely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exact same evidence .
There ’ s no new evidence in this case .
He looked at the exact same evidence and said — decided to go ahead and file these charges against Glenn , which is exactly why you can see that everyone is up in arms about this decision .
There ’ s no basis for it .
It ’ s a complete distortion of the evidence .
It ’ s a 1,200-word conversation in which the alleged hackers are speaking to Glenn and saying , “ We are not sure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to — do you want us to go for more evidence ?
” And he says , “ Listen , I ’ m a journalist .
I can ’ t direct you .
I need to be very clear about that .
But we have the — we have everything saved here , and so it ’ s up to you to decide what you want to do , but I don ’ t see any reason why you need to save the evidence.
” And the reason why he says that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the conversation , is because he has the constitutional authority and the professional responsibility to defend his sources , to protect his sources .
And that ’ s all that he was doing .
And that ’ s what — legal analysts have looked at this chat , have said that ’ s exactly what he was doing .
That ’ s the conclusion of the Federal Police , as well .
But this prosecutor decided to take things in his own hands .
He ’ s a very reactionary and activist prosecutor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trouble .
And the administrative — the counsel within the Public Ministry is already looking into opening an investigation into the prosecutor .
AMY GOODMAN : Now , what Glenn and The Intercept Brasil exposed , Operation Car Wash , of course , ultimately led to the imprisonment of the — Operation Car Wash led to the imprisonment of the former president , Lula , who has since been released from prison , and his imprisonment prevented him from running for president .
And he was clearly the front-runner , ahead of Bolsonaro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So , if you could address the significance of this ?
And also , of course , Glenn is an American citizen .
Has the Trump administration , a close ally of Bolsonaro — Bolsonaro is called “ the Trump of the Amazon ” — has Trump and the White House weighed in ?
ANDREW FISHMAN : I haven ’ t seen anything from Trump or the White House yet .
Yeah , this is very , very — this is very , very serious .
It ’ s a clear indication that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s happening in Brazil , which is similar to what ’ s happening in the United States , which is that there ’ s no longer any respect for the freedom of the press within the administration , and there ’ s many people that are following his lead , just like in the United States Trump sets the tone , and others follow suit .
And that ’ s what ’ s happening here , as well .
It ’ s a very troubling situation .
And even if this accusation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s still — it ’ s a sign that Brazilian democracy is evermore fragile .
And it ’ s something that all journalists need to be wary about , because the next journalist to be subjected to this sort of intimidation maybe won ’ t have the same fame and international platform and resources that Glenn has .
And that ’ s a very important thing that we need to be paying attention to .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , we want to thank you so much for being with us , Andrew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brasil , talking about what ’ s happened to Glenn Greenwald .
A criminal complaint has been filed against him by the Brazilian government .
We ’ ll follow details and let you know .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we end today’s show in Brazil, where federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald in connection to a major investigation he spearheaded exposing misconduct among federal prosecutors and a former judge. Called “The Secret Brazil Archive,” the series of articles published in The Intercept and The Intercept Brasil used a trove of documents to offer new and damning insight into the sweeping anti-corruption campaign that brought down former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and paved the way for the election of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. The investigation used previously undisclosed private chats, audio recordings, videos and other information, provided by an anonymous, source to expose the wrongdoing of top officials, including current Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, who oversaw the anti-corruption crusade known as “Operation Car Wash.”
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, a justice minister filed a denunciation of Glenn Greenwald, claiming he, quote, “directly assisted, encouraged and guided” individuals who allegedly accessed online chats related to Operation Car Wash. A judge will now decide whether to press charges against Glenn. The move has sparked international outrage at what many are condemning as an attack on the free press in Brazil. In a statement, The Intercept said, quote, “The Bolsonaro government has repeatedly made it clear that it does not believe in basic press freedoms,” unquote. And Glenn Greenwald posted a brief video on Twitter Tuesday responding to the criminal complaint.
GLENN GREENWALD: A few facts about this criminal charge. First is that, as you probably know, the Bolsonaro government, President Bolsonaro, multiple members of his government, simply don’t believe in a free press. They don’t believe in press freedom. They don’t even believe in democracy. They’ve repeatedly and explicitly praised the military dictatorship that ruled the country until 1985 as a superior form of government. And this is all about ushering in that level of repression.
Secondly, the prosecutor who brought the charges just a couple of months ago unsuccessfully tried to bring similar charges against the head of the Brazilian Bar Association, who criticized Minister Sérgio Moro, and he tried to claim that that criticism constituted a crime in Brazil. And it was rejected by the courts. He’s obviously somebody abusing his prosecutorial power to punish the political enemies of the Bolsonaro government.
Third, the police — the Federal Police conducted a comprehensive investigation of our reporting, of our sources, and concluded, in a report published just a couple of months ago, that everything shows that I never committed any crime; much to the contrary, I always exercised what they called the highest level of professionalism, caution and responsibility in ensuring that I was doing my work as a journalist and never got anywhere near a crime.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we go to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where we’re joined by Andrew Fishman, the managing editor of The Intercept Brasil, reporter for The Intercept.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! Bolsonaro’s congressman son Eduardo tweeted, “Glenn Greenwald always said he loved Brazil and wanted to get know the country in depth. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even get to know prison.” Tell us how serious this situation is. What is a criminal complaint in Brazil?
ANDREW FISHMAN: Well, this is obviously a very troubling situation. It’s serious because this is the Public Ministry. This is not a joke that’s happening here. The complaint is that Glenn allegedly participated in a criminal hack of telephones of senior officials in the Brazilian government, in the Public Ministry. That’s obviously not true. He acted as a journalist. The alleged hack happened before anyone at The Intercept had any knowledge of what was happening. We had a source that came to us, an anonymous source, and presented us with very important information. And we, our team at The Intercept Brasil, which is, you know, 20-odd Brazilian journalists, along with Glenn and myself, have spent eight months working on 95 original stories that have revealed very serious wrongdoing and abuses by Judge — then-Judge Sérgio Moro, who’s now the justice minister, and the team of prosecutors that ran the Operation Car Wash anti-corruption investigation. And it’s very ironic that we spent all of our — these last eight months reporting on and exposing that the Public Ministry was willing to bend the rules to go against the standards that they needed to follow, to follow their own political purposes and make prosecutions based on a lack of evidence or faulty evidence or distorting the evidence, and in response to that, what they’ve done is made a criminal complaint against Glenn based on the distortion of the evidence for their own personal and political interests. So, it’s very troubling.
But the general response in Brazilian society has overwhelmingly been to condemn this action by the prosecutor. There has been an injunction by one of the Supreme Court ministers against any investigation into Glenn. And they claim that they didn’t investigate, but they’re still filing this complaint. And so, when he comes back from — when this minister comes back from vacation, it’s very likely that — he signaled that he might try to challenge it or bring this down. But now it’s up to a judge in Brasília to decide whether or not he’s going to accept the charges or not, in which case Glenn would become officially a defendant in this case.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Andrew, what about this original Federal Police investigation that concluded in December and found that there had been no crime committed by Glenn Greenwald specifically? How can the prosecutors then move forward? There’s already been an investigation that reached a different conclusion.
ANDREW FISHMAN: Juan, exactly. That’s a key issue here. The Federal Police spent many months doing an investigation into the alleged hacking. And they concluded, in their statement, which they released in December, that they saw no indication of any crimes committed by Glenn. And they went out of their way to say that, in fact, he was very cautious and careful to make sure to distance himself from any criminal activity. That was the conclusion of the Federal Police investigation. And then it went to the prosecutor at the Public Ministry. He decided to entirely ignore that conclusion. He evaluated the exact same evidence. There’s no new evidence in this case. He looked at the exact same evidence and said — decided to go ahead and file these charges against Glenn, which is exactly why you can see that everyone is up in arms about this decision. There’s no basis for it. It’s a complete distortion of the evidence.
It’s a 1,200-word conversation in which the alleged hackers are speaking to Glenn and saying, “We are not sure what to do here. Do we need to — do you want us to go for more evidence?” And he says, “Listen, I’m a journalist. I can’t direct you. I need to be very clear about that. But we have the — we have everything saved here, and so it’s up to you to decide what you want to do, but I don’t see any reason why you need to save the evidence.” And the reason why he says that, and he makes it clear in the conversation, is because he has the constitutional authority and the professional responsibility to defend his sources, to protect his sources. And that’s all that he was doing. And that’s what — legal analysts have looked at this chat, have said that’s exactly what he was doing. That’s the conclusion of the Federal Police, as well. But this prosecutor decided to take things in his own hands. He’s a very reactionary and activist prosecutor. He’s already been in trouble. And the administrative — the counsel within the Public Ministry is already looking into opening an investigation into the prosecutor.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, what Glenn and The Intercept Brasil exposed, Operation Car Wash, of course, ultimately led to the imprisonment of the — Operation Car Wash led to the imprisonment of the former president, Lula, who has since been released from prison, and his imprisonment prevented him from running for president. And he was clearly the front-runner, ahead of Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro very threatened by Lula. So, if you could address the significance of this? And also, of course, Glenn is an American citizen. Has the Trump administration, a close ally of Bolsonaro — Bolsonaro is called “the Trump of the Amazon” — has Trump and the White House weighed in?
ANDREW FISHMAN: I haven’t seen anything from Trump or the White House yet. Yeah, this is very, very — this is very, very serious. It’s a clear indication that the Bolsonaro — the Bolsonaro wave that’s happening in Brazil, which is similar to what’s happening in the United States, which is that there’s no longer any respect for the freedom of the press within the administration, and there’s many people that are following his lead, just like in the United States Trump sets the tone, and others follow suit. And that’s what’s happening here, as well. It’s a very troubling situation. And even if this accusation is to be rejected, it’s still — it’s a sign that Brazilian democracy is evermore fragile. And it’s something that all journalists need to be wary about, because the next journalist to be subjected to this sort of intimidation maybe won’t have the same fame and international platform and resources that Glenn has. And that’s a very important thing that we need to be paying attention to.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Andrew Fishman, managing editor of The Intercept Brasil, talking about what’s happened to Glenn Greenwald. A criminal complaint has been filed against him by the Brazilian government. We’ll follow details and let you know.


democracynow--2020-01-22--A Torturer Meets His Victims: CIA Psychologist Defends Brutal Methods at Guantánamo Military Hearing

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : We ’ re going to turn to another trial right now .
This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
Guantánamo .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Well , on Tuesday , the psychologist identified as the “ architect ” of the CIA ’ s torture program testified for the first time at the military court at Guantánamo Bay .
James Mitchell was in the courtroom for a pretrial hearing for five 9/11 suspects who had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enhanced interrogation techniques.
” Mitchell and his partner , Dr. Bruce Jessen , were paid $ 81 million to help design the CIA ’ s torture methods , including some of the most abusive tactics .
The pair had no prior experience in interrogation .
AMY GOODMAN : So , on Tuesday , Dr. Mitchell reportedly told defense lawyers he only came to Guantánamo to testify in person before the families of the 9/11 victims , and at one point told the torture survivors , the prisoners , quote — I mean , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men he tortured — “ You folks have been saying untrue and malicious things about me and Dr. Jessen for years.
” In 2014 , Dr. Mitchell confirmed he personally waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed , who was waterboarded 183 times in March of 2003 .
Mitchell told Vice News , “ Yes , I waterboarded KSM .
I was part of a larger team that waterboarded a small number of detainees.
” Dr. Mitchell also reportedly waterboarded Abu Zubaydah at a secret CIA black site in Thailand .
Well , earlier this month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Guantánamo by donning orange jumpsuits and lining up in front of the White House .
They later held a mock funeral at Trump International Hotel for those who died at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo .
For more , we ’ re going back to Baher Azmy , the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights .
I mean , this is an incredible scene in Guantánamo , where you have the torturer and the men he tortured .
BAHER AZMY : Yeah , I think , at least in that way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ form of accountability , because , at a fundamental level , Mitchell and his partner , Jessen , have not faced real accountability for the war crimes they generated .
And another soft form of accountability was the civil lawsuit brought by victims of his program , in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU , that resulted in undisclosed damages .
But I think , you know , it ’ s interesting that we ’ re talking about these two trials together — military commissions and the Senate trial — because they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trials .
The military commissions process was generated instead of a traditional Article III criminal trial , in order to suppress the truth , as is the Senate version of the trial , in order to repress accountability for war crimes and , in the Senate trial , repress accountability for an abuse of power .
So , this is — like the Senate trial , there are small possibilities , small windows , to pull out information .
But , more fundamentally , we have to ask bigger questions about the CIA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involvement , as well .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And what are your hopes in terms of new information coming out of this trial in terms — and of the aggressiveness of the prosecutors — I mean , the defense attorneys , in being able to get new information out on this ?
BAHER AZMY : Well , I think , just sort of most concretely , the defense lawyers want to prevent their clients from being executed , which is the very purpose of these trials .
And then I think they seek @ @ @ @ @ @ @ despite having been interrogated again by the FBI , the so-called clean teams in 2007 or 2009 , their clients are still suffering the effects of torture , and also to find more information about FBI involvement with CIA interrogations prior .
But there are other things that can be done .
These individuals can be prosecuted for war crimes , Mitchell and Jessen .
There is a Senate select report on torture that is yet to be declassified .
This is , you know , a small piece of accountability .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ needs to be done .
AMY GOODMAN : Explain .
I mean , this was such a major issue for years .
The American Psychological Association , their whole leadership was toppled because they were participating with the CIA in this torture program .
And Dr. James Mitchell was a psychologist who participated in this , what they called EIT , enhanced interrogation technique , which was outright torture .
BAHER AZMY : Outright torture indeed .
I mean , he reverse-engineered psychological principles designed to help people .
BAHER AZMY : Well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. officers were subjected to in order to resist torture .
And he took concepts , psychological concepts , like learned helplessness , that were developed to understand the behavior of animals who were subject to repeated controlling and coercion , and engineered them to induce , in the CIA ’ s words , debility , despair and dread in detainees , so they became helpless upon their interrogators and would confess — in many cases , obviously , falsely .
AMY GOODMAN : And soldiers were trained in it , right ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
BAHER AZMY : Right , right .
That ’ s the acronym , yeah .
AMY GOODMAN : But then they reverse-engineered it to do this to prisoners .
BAHER AZMY : Yes .
And SERE was designed , emerging out of the Korean War , because U.S. soldiers were subjected to severe forms of psychological and physical torture by their captors , the sort of Chinese communists .
And so , these techniques were designed to instill resistance in U.S. soldiers , should they be subject to this again .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a training for defense , but to deploy them on human beings and destroy them .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And the five men who are on trial , they were screened off from the rest of the courtroom , weren ’ t they ?
As the description I ’ ve read .
What is the possibility of the information that they gave being deemed inadmissible because as a result of their torture ?
BAHER AZMY : Yeah , that ’ s what they ’ re seeking , both to exclude their so-called clean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because they ’ re a product of the trauma from the original torture , and also as a possibility to reduce their sentence and avoid the death penalty , because they were subject to these horrendous war crimes systematically .
AMY GOODMAN : Will they also be questioned about their tactics in black sites , including the one in Thailand ?
That particular secret prison in Thailand for a time was run by , what , the current CIA director , Gina Haspel .
BAHER AZMY : That ’ s right , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it remains to be seen how much of this information will — that the defense lawyers will be able to ask , and then how much of it will be permitted to be public as opposed to being kept classified .
AMY GOODMAN : President Obama promised that men like James Mitchell would not be prosecuted .
Do you ever see them in the dock being questioned ?
BAHER AZMY : Well , I mean , I think the — as we know from other countries , these sort of forms of accountability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And it requires pressure from a lot of places , including transparency around the program and the release of the Senate torture report , I think new leadership in the CIA , for sure , and in the Senate and the House and in the White House .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , I want to thank you , Baher Azmy , legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights , as well as Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights .
When we come back , we go to Brazil .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ had a criminal complaint filed against him .
Will he be indicted ?
Will he go to prison ?
Stay with us .
AMY GOODMAN : “ Gemini ” by the jazz saxophonist and composer Jimmy Heath , who died Sunday at the age of 93 .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to turn to another trial right now. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Guantánamo.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, on Tuesday, the psychologist identified as the “architect” of the CIA’s torture program testified for the first time at the military court at Guantánamo Bay. James Mitchell was in the courtroom for a pretrial hearing for five 9/11 suspects who had been subject to torture, euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Mitchell and his partner, Dr. Bruce Jessen, were paid $81 million to help design the CIA’s torture methods, including some of the most abusive tactics. The pair had no prior experience in interrogation.
AMY GOODMAN: So, on Tuesday, Dr. Mitchell reportedly told defense lawyers he only came to Guantánamo to testify in person before the families of the 9/11 victims, and at one point told the torture survivors, the prisoners, quote — I mean, he was sitting right next to the men he tortured — “You folks have been saying untrue and malicious things about me and Dr. Jessen for years.”
In 2014, Dr. Mitchell confirmed he personally waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times in March of 2003. Mitchell told Vice News, “Yes, I waterboarded KSM. I was part of a larger team that waterboarded a small number of detainees.” Dr. Mitchell also reportedly waterboarded Abu Zubaydah at a secret CIA black site in Thailand.
Well, earlier this month, protesters marked the 18th anniversary of Guantánamo by donning orange jumpsuits and lining up in front of the White House. They later held a mock funeral at Trump International Hotel for those who died at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo.
For more, we’re going back to Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. I mean, this is an incredible scene in Guantánamo, where you have the torturer and the men he tortured.
BAHER AZMY: Yeah, I think, at least in that way, this is a kind of soft form of accountability, because, at a fundamental level, Mitchell and his partner, Jessen, have not faced real accountability for the war crimes they generated. And another soft form of accountability was the civil lawsuit brought by victims of his program, in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, that resulted in undisclosed damages.
But I think, you know, it’s interesting that we’re talking about these two trials together — military commissions and the Senate trial — because they are, in a sense, both show trials. The military commissions process was generated instead of a traditional Article III criminal trial, in order to suppress the truth, as is the Senate version of the trial, in order to repress accountability for war crimes and, in the Senate trial, repress accountability for an abuse of power. So, this is — like the Senate trial, there are small possibilities, small windows, to pull out information. But, more fundamentally, we have to ask bigger questions about the CIA torture program and the FBI’s involvement, as well.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what are your hopes in terms of new information coming out of this trial in terms — and of the aggressiveness of the prosecutors — I mean, the defense attorneys, in being able to get new information out on this?
BAHER AZMY: Well, I think, just sort of most concretely, the defense lawyers want to prevent their clients from being executed, which is the very purpose of these trials. And then I think they seek to learn more information about how, despite having been interrogated again by the FBI, the so-called clean teams in 2007 or 2009, their clients are still suffering the effects of torture, and also to find more information about FBI involvement with CIA interrogations prior. But there are other things that can be done. These individuals can be prosecuted for war crimes, Mitchell and Jessen. There is a Senate select report on torture that is yet to be declassified. This is, you know, a small piece of accountability. But as I said before, much more needs to be done.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain. I mean, this was such a major issue for years. The American Psychological Association, their whole leadership was toppled because they were participating with the CIA in this torture program. And Dr. James Mitchell was a psychologist who participated in this, what they called EIT, enhanced interrogation technique, which was outright torture.
BAHER AZMY: Outright torture indeed. I mean, he reverse-engineered psychological principles designed to help people.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what SERE was.
BAHER AZMY: Well, SERE is a training program that U.S. officers were subjected to in order to resist torture. And he took concepts, psychological concepts, like learned helplessness, that were developed to understand the behavior of animals who were subject to repeated controlling and coercion, and engineered them to induce, in the CIA’s words, debility, despair and dread in detainees, so they became helpless upon their interrogators and would confess — in many cases, obviously, falsely.
AMY GOODMAN: And soldiers were trained in it, right? Survival, evasion, resistance and escape.
BAHER AZMY: Right, right. That’s the acronym, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: But then they reverse-engineered it to do this to prisoners.
BAHER AZMY: Yes. And SERE was designed, emerging out of the Korean War, because U.S. soldiers were subjected to severe forms of psychological and physical torture by their captors, the sort of Chinese communists. And so, these techniques were designed to instill resistance in U.S. soldiers, should they be subject to this again. But the CIA used these techniques not as a training for defense, but to deploy them on human beings and destroy them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the five men who are on trial, they were screened off from the rest of the courtroom, weren’t they? As the description I’ve read. What is the possibility of the information that they gave being deemed inadmissible because as a result of their torture?
BAHER AZMY: Yeah, that’s what they’re seeking, both to exclude their so-called clean confessions that were done after CIA torture, because they’re a product of the trauma from the original torture, and also as a possibility to reduce their sentence and avoid the death penalty, because they were subject to these horrendous war crimes systematically.
AMY GOODMAN: Will they also be questioned about their tactics in black sites, including the one in Thailand? That particular secret prison in Thailand for a time was run by, what, the current CIA director, Gina Haspel.
BAHER AZMY: That’s right, yeah. And, I mean, it remains to be seen how much of this information will — that the defense lawyers will be able to ask, and then how much of it will be permitted to be public as opposed to being kept classified.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama promised that men like James Mitchell would not be prosecuted. Do you ever see them in the dock being questioned?
BAHER AZMY: Well, I mean, I think the — as we know from other countries, these sort of forms of accountability often take an incredibly long time. And it requires pressure from a lot of places, including transparency around the program and the release of the Senate torture report, I think new leadership in the CIA, for sure, and in the Senate and the House and in the White House.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, as well as Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
When we come back, we go to Brazil. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald has had a criminal complaint filed against him. Will he be indicted? Will he go to prison? Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Gemini” by the jazz saxophonist and composer Jimmy Heath, who died Sunday at the age of 93.


democracynow--2020-01-22--"The Senate Voted for a Cover-Up": GOP Senators Tilt Impeachment Trial in Trump's Favor

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : On the opening day of just the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history , the Senate approved the rules for the trial of President Trump in a party-line vote .
The vote came after a nearly 13-hour marathon session .
During the opening day of the trial , Republican senators rejected 11 amendments from Democrats to subpoena documents and witnesses , including former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is House impeachment manager Adam Schiff , the chair of the House Intelligence Committee .
REP. ADAM SCHIFF : The American people want a fair trial .
They want to believe their system of government is still capable of rising to the occasion .
They want to believe that we can rise above party and do what ’ s best for the country .
But a great many Americans don ’ t believe that will happen .
Let ’ s prove them wrong .
Let ’ s prove them wrong .
How ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ not by conviction alone .
By convicting him if the House proves its case , and only if the House proves its case , but by letting the House prove its case , by letting the House call witnesses , by letting the House obtain documents , by letting the House decide how to present its own case , and not deciding it for us — in sum , by agreeing to a fair trial .
AMY GOODMAN : We ’ re joined by Vince Warren and Baher Azmy Baher Azmy , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center for Constitutional Rights .
Vince , you were following this all through yesterday , commenting and on television .
The center is the Center for Constitutional Rights .
The significance of what took place , with the rules that were laid out yesterday ?
VINCE WARREN : Well , it ’ s essentially that the Senate voted for a cover-up , that the issue that ’ s here is whether there ’ s going to be enough information for the House to be able to prove its case .
They ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not creating arguments .
This is the information that they need to get .
And essentially , the Senate voted to delay that decision .
Why that ’ s important is because we have to remember that the reason why the House doesn ’ t have the information that they need — they don ’ t have the documents , they don ’ t have the witnesses — is largely because the Trump administration refused to allow them to get that information .
And Adam Schiff was making the case , essentially , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ twice .
Number one , he shouldn ’ t benefit by not giving the information that ’ s necessary to find out what happened , and , number two , that the Senate should not allow that to move forward by refusing to make that information available , when they very easily could .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And the whole issue of very few Republicans breaking ranks with Mitch McConnell in terms of any changes to the original proposed rules ?
VINCE WARREN : Yeah .
You know , these are party-line votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a reason .
Essentially , the Republicans are in lockstep with the president .
And it ’ s one thing to be lockstep with him policy-wise , which is problematic enough from my perspective , but what they ’ re also doing is that they ’ re gaming the system to ensure that there is no chance for the American public to understand in detail what actually happened and what this president did .
So , essentially , what they ’ re doing is they ’ re strangulating the trial process , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by taking these party-line votes that refuse , in every manner possible , to generate information for the American public and for us to take a look at to determine whether or not the president violated his constitutional oath .
AMY GOODMAN : So , let ’ s talk about the schedule , very quickly , Baher Azmy , as they fought over it .
That seems to be the extent of a little bit of a roiling of some of the Republicans , even the most conservative Trump supporters .
Now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days of the House managers presenting their case .
And , of course , Senate Majority Leader McConnell got his way when yesterday the trial went 'til , what , 1:51 in the morning .
Who exactly was watching ?
They 're also controlling the framing of this , the actual TV frame .
C-SPAN can ’ t go in .
The networks can ’ t go in .
The picture of who we are looking at is determined by the Republican leadership .
You have CBS , ABC dropping out quickly soon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fact this is historic .
They felt it wasn ’ t good TV .
But so you have the House managers for three days , and they extended it from — McConnell agreed to extend it from two .
Then Trump ’ s lawyers for three days ?
BAHER AZMY : Yeah , and then there will be 16 hours of questioning .
But the deep problem with this performative thing that McConnell has created , which is functionally a show trial on behalf of McConnell ’ s client , the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is no evidence available of the kind that you would have to have in a trial .
And I think the House managers made a very persuasive case that the Senate ’ s job is to try the president , having been impeached .
And a trial , we all know , includes the production of evidence , not just to adjudicate guilt or innocence in a particular case , but also to preserve accountability against a constitutional office of the president of the United States for an abuse of power and to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the next election , because part of the abuse of power is , as Adam Schiff put it , using his office to cheat in an election .
And we need information not just about what he has done that has abused his office , but what he intends to do in the next election .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : I wanted to ask you about some press reports that are indicating that , behind the scenes , key Senate Democrats are actually entertaining the idea of calling the Republicans ’ bluff on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to testify possibly in exchange for getting John Bolton to actually appear and be questioned .
BAHER AZMY : Yeah .
I mean , I ’ m sort of skeptical of the kind of moderate Republican bluff that we ’ ll ask for witnesses after .
I mean , at this point , they ’ re saying it ’ s too soon to ask for witnesses .
And after the show trial will be over , they ’ ll say it ’ s too late And I think this is just potentially click @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because to suggest that Hunter Biden is in any way relevant to the question that ’ s before the Senate — what the president did — is absurd .
And I would hate to see any Democrats agreeing to that proposition .
VINCE WARREN : I agree with that .
In fact , you know , when you talk about problematic quid pro quos , that ’ s a problematic quid pro quo .
As Baher said , these are not equivalent witnesses .
And at some level , we shouldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they shouldn ’ t be in a negotiation with the defense team in order to be able to get the witnesses that they want , that the information that they need is for the purposes of prosecuting this president .
The defense can call whoever they like , but they shouldn ’ t be in this negotiation period creating false equivalencies between the two .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On the opening day of just the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, the Senate approved the rules for the trial of President Trump in a party-line vote. The vote came after a nearly 13-hour marathon session. During the opening day of the trial, Republican senators rejected 11 amendments from Democrats to subpoena documents and witnesses, including former national security adviser John Bolton. This is House impeachment manager Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF: The American people want a fair trial. They want to believe their system of government is still capable of rising to the occasion. They want to believe that we can rise above party and do what’s best for the country. But a great many Americans don’t believe that will happen. Let’s prove them wrong. Let’s prove them wrong. How? By convicting the president? No, not by conviction alone. By convicting him if the House proves its case, and only if the House proves its case, but by letting the House prove its case, by letting the House call witnesses, by letting the House obtain documents, by letting the House decide how to present its own case, and not deciding it for us — in sum, by agreeing to a fair trial.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Vince Warren and Baher Azmy Baher Azmy, the executive director and legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Vince, you were following this all through yesterday, commenting and on television. The center is the Center for Constitutional Rights. The significance of what took place, with the rules that were laid out yesterday?
VINCE WARREN: Well, it’s essentially that the Senate voted for a cover-up, that the issue that’s here is whether there’s going to be enough information for the House to be able to prove its case. They’re not manufacturing information. They’re not creating arguments. This is the information that they need to get. And essentially, the Senate voted to delay that decision.
Why that’s important is because we have to remember that the reason why the House doesn’t have the information that they need — they don’t have the documents, they don’t have the witnesses — is largely because the Trump administration refused to allow them to get that information. And Adam Schiff was making the case, essentially, that the president shouldn’t benefit twice. Number one, he shouldn’t benefit by not giving the information that’s necessary to find out what happened, and, number two, that the Senate should not allow that to move forward by refusing to make that information available, when they very easily could.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the whole issue of very few Republicans breaking ranks with Mitch McConnell in terms of any changes to the original proposed rules?
VINCE WARREN: Yeah. You know, these are party-line votes, and they’re party-line votes for a reason. Essentially, the Republicans are in lockstep with the president. And it’s one thing to be lockstep with him policy-wise, which is problematic enough from my perspective, but what they’re also doing is that they’re gaming the system to ensure that there is no chance for the American public to understand in detail what actually happened and what this president did. So, essentially, what they’re doing is they’re strangulating the trial process, they’re strangulating the impeachment process, by taking these party-line votes that refuse, in every manner possible, to generate information for the American public and for us to take a look at to determine whether or not the president violated his constitutional oath.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about the schedule, very quickly, Baher Azmy, as they fought over it. That seems to be the extent of a little bit of a roiling of some of the Republicans, even the most conservative Trump supporters. Now they’re going to do three days of the House managers presenting their case. And, of course, Senate Majority Leader McConnell got his way when yesterday the trial went 'til, what, 1:51 in the morning. Who exactly was watching? They're also controlling the framing of this, the actual TV frame. C-SPAN can’t go in. The networks can’t go in. The picture of who we are looking at is determined by the Republican leadership. You have CBS, ABC dropping out quickly soon after the impeachment trial began, despite the fact this is historic. They felt it wasn’t good TV. But so you have the House managers for three days, and they extended it from — McConnell agreed to extend it from two. Then Trump’s lawyers for three days?
BAHER AZMY: Yeah, and then there will be 16 hours of questioning. But the deep problem with this performative thing that McConnell has created, which is functionally a show trial on behalf of McConnell’s client, the president of the United States, is there is no evidence available of the kind that you would have to have in a trial. And I think the House managers made a very persuasive case that the Senate’s job is to try the president, having been impeached. And a trial, we all know, includes the production of evidence, not just to adjudicate guilt or innocence in a particular case, but also to preserve accountability against a constitutional office of the president of the United States for an abuse of power and to learn what he intends to do possibly in the next election, because part of the abuse of power is, as Adam Schiff put it, using his office to cheat in an election. And we need information not just about what he has done that has abused his office, but what he intends to do in the next election.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about some press reports that are indicating that, behind the scenes, key Senate Democrats are actually entertaining the idea of calling the Republicans’ bluff on their own witnesses by allowing Hunter Biden to testify possibly in exchange for getting John Bolton to actually appear and be questioned.
BAHER AZMY: Yeah. I mean, I’m sort of skeptical of the kind of moderate Republican bluff that we’ll ask for witnesses after. I mean, at this point, they’re saying it’s too soon to ask for witnesses. And after the show trial will be over, they’ll say it’s too late And I think this is just potentially click bait for Fox News and the right, because to suggest that Hunter Biden is in any way relevant to the question that’s before the Senate — what the president did — is absurd. And I would hate to see any Democrats agreeing to that proposition.
VINCE WARREN: I agree with that. In fact, you know, when you talk about problematic quid pro quos, that’s a problematic quid pro quo. As Baher said, these are not equivalent witnesses. And at some level, we shouldn’t be in a negotiation — or, they shouldn’t be in a negotiation with the defense team in order to be able to get the witnesses that they want, that the information that they need is for the purposes of prosecuting this president. The defense can call whoever they like, but they shouldn’t be in this negotiation period creating false equivalencies between the two.


democracynow--2020-01-22--"Andrew Johnson Was a Lot Like Trump": Echoes of 1868 in Trump's Impeachment Trial

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : On the opening day of just the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history , the Senate approved the rules for the trial of President Trump in a party-line vote .
The vote came after a marathon 13-hour session .
Under the rules , each side will be given 24 hours over a three-day period for opening arguments .
Senators also agreed to automatically admit evidence from the House inquiry into the trial record .
The Senate trial comes a month after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden .
Since the House vote to impeach Trump , more evidence has come to light about the administration ’ s actions , but it remains unclear if any of this evidence will be presented to the Senate .
Just before midnight , the Office of Management and Budget released nearly 200 pages of heavily redacted records related to the Trump administration ’ s handling of aid to Ukraine .
AMY GOODMAN : During the opening day of the trial , Republican senators rejected 11 amendments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including former national security adviser John Bolton .
Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke earlier on Tuesday , laying out the Democratic case for impeachment .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Democrats repeatedly accused the Republican leadership of orchestrating a cover-up by blocking witnesses at this stage in the trial .
This is Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler , one of the House impeachment managers .
AMY GOODMAN : After Trump ’ s lawyer , Sekulow , and the House manager , Nadler , went at it , Chief Justice John Roberts admonished them , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should remember where they are , ” and talked about a word that was used a century ago , in 1905 , called “ pettifogging.
” Well , so we thought we ’ d go to a historian .
Yes , we go to Manisha Sinha , professor of American history at the University of Connecticut .
She has closely studied the presidency of Andrew Johnson , who became the first president to be impeached , in 1868 .
She is the author of The Slave ’ s Cause : A History of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an opinion piece for The New York Times headlined “ Donald Trump , Meet Your Precursor.
” Well , you know , because this is only the third time in U.S. history that there has been a Senate impeachment trial , it ’ s really relevant , Professor Sinha , to look at what you ’ re talking about .
Compare .
Tell us about Andrew Johnson and why you think President Trump follows in his footsteps .
MANISHA SINHA : Well , Andrew Johnson was a lot like Trump .
He was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He was known to ignore the powers of Congress .
He was also known to use this idea of executive privilege to an unprecedented degree , to interfere in the program of Reconstruction in the South immediately after the Civil War , which would have given freed people basic civil and political rights .
So both in terms of thinking that the presidency allows its occupant to pretty much do anything he wants and also in terms of really endangering national ideals , national interests , and in flouting the rule of law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And in terms of his actual trial , could you talk about the length of it and the whole issue of witnesses and evidence , compared to this rush to verdict that the Senate Republicans wish to impose or are attempting to impose on this trial ?
MANISHA SINHA : Absolutely .
So , Johnson ’ s trial lasted a long time .
Witnesses were called .
House managers , led by the wonderful Thaddeus Stevens , a leading radical Republican in Congress , and by John Bingham , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Amendment , that guaranteed national birthright citizenship — and these men had enough time to lay out the case in detail .
There were many more articles of impeachment against Johnson — 11 articles , to be exact .
The first nine had to deal with his violation of the Tenure of Office Act .
But the last two were quite similar to the articles against Trump .
They accused him of abuse of power , of interfering with an investigation in Congress .
So , in that sense , you know , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a more fair process , a process that involved evidence and witnesses .
What is happening with Trump ’ s impeachment is actually quite unprecedented .
Even in the Clinton impeachment case , we had evidence and witnesses .
So , I think it is important to say that this is not just a matter of form and civil discourse .
This is also a matter of the rule of law and justice in the republic .
And it ’ s quite frightening to think that we are going through this in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is being charged with having committed some serious crimes against the Constitution and the republic .
AMY GOODMAN : Professor Sinha , if you can talk about the context of when this took place , after the Civil War ?
What we haven ’ t talked about yet is the animus , the racial hatred that motivated Johnson , and the comparisons to Trump .
But lay out that period and how he was trying to continue the disenfranchisement of black people and of freed slaves , freed enslaved people .
MANISHA SINHA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there is some misconception , advocated even by Mike Pence in a recent op-ed , that Johnson was simply continuing President Lincoln ’ s policies towards the South .
What Johnson did was basically endanger the result of the Civil War , which was emancipation .
He allowed Southern state governments to pretty much issue Black Codes that would put black people back to as close a state to slavery as possible .
There was racial terrorism , “ outrages , ” as they called it then , against a freed people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ murdered .
In one case , Johnson personally intervened to make sure the man responsible for it would get off scot-free .
And he kept interfering in the Reconstruction plans of Congress .
Now , under President Lincoln , the federal government had established the Freedmen ’ s Bureau to oversee this transition from slavery to freedom in the South .
When that bill to extend the life of the bureau came before Johnson , he vetoed it .
There was another bill , the civil rights law , which — the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States history , to ensure the protection of the persons and property of freed people , who were being attacked with impunity by former Confederates and Southern elites .
Both cases , Johnson vetoed those laws .
And he was , in a way , really guided by this idea that the United States should remain what he called a white man ’ s country .
And that kind of very crude racism guided Johnson .
This notion that if you would extend some of even the most basic citizenship rights to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taking away rights from whites , that ’ s a very pernicious logic that has motivated racists in this country since then .
And in that sense , I would say that if you look at the scene immediately after the Civil War in the South , the Republicans in Congress had no choice but to intervene and to rein in Johnson in his very sort of destructive way of completely undermining the results of a very hard-fought war , which was basically emancipation and the end of slavery .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convicted , by just one vote , because the Senate needed a two-thirds majority to remove him , correct ?
MANISHA SINHA : Yes .
Johnson came very close to being convicted .
There was seven Republicans , moderates , who voted to let Johnson go scot-free , if he promised not to interfere in Reconstruction again .
And they were given that assurance .
But one of those votes belonged to Edmund Ross , a senator from Kansas , extremely corrupt , who had bought his way , literally , into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was put in John F. Kennedy ’ s book Profiles in Courage as a courageous man who voted his conscience .
Now , we know that book was probably ghostwritten , but it went out under JFK ’ s name .
And I think part of it may be to appease Dixiecrats at that time .
But it has lent a very — it has sort of propagated a false view of history , especially the history of Reconstruction .
Unfortunately , Mike Pence , in that editorial in The Wall Street @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up on this theme that Edmund Ross was a profile in courage .
We know now , through the work of historians like David Stewart , who has written on the impeachment of Johnson , that in fact Edmund Ross was bribed for his vote .
So he was not a profile in courage ; he was a profile in corruption .
And for the Republican Party today to bring up both , you know , a defense of Johnson and portray Ross as an honorable person is astounding for the party of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stevens and the radical Republicans who led the charge for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson .
AMY GOODMAN : Which takes us to Donald Trump ’ s lawyer Pat Cipollone speaking yesterday in the impeachment trial .
He incorrectly stated no president had ever been impeached in an election year .
AMY GOODMAN : Professor Manisha Sinha , in fact , that ’ s not true .
Right ?
Talk about 1868 .
MANISHA SINHA : Yes .
So , Johnson is impeached in 1868 , the year of a presidential election .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to put it politely , when he made that statement .
I will let constitutional lawyers talk about his lack of understanding of the Constitution , because the impeachment , of course , is not meant to overthrow an election .
It is meant as a check on a corrupt president , and it is in the Constitution .
But historically , too , he is wrong .
There was , like in the case of Trump , a momentum growing to impeach Johnson because of the ways in which he flouted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which he flouted democratic governance and the separation of powers between Congress and the president .
But it was his firing of Lincoln ’ s secretary of war , Edwin Stanton , who was overseeing Reconstruction in the South , that finally led to his impeachment .
That was the smoking gun .
And that proceeding took place in 1868 , a presidential election year .
And in fact , Johnson is impeached in 1868 .
He is also tried in the Senate in 1868 .
So , Mr. Cipollone — and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many errors , both of law and the Constitution , but as a historian , I was astounded that he could brazenly make that statement , which was completely wrong .
AMY GOODMAN : And , of course , then President Johnson went on to lose the November election to Ulysses Grant .
Manisha Sinha , I want to thank you for being with us , professor of American history at the University of Connecticut , author of The Slave ’ s Cause : A History of Abolition .
And we ’ ll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York Times headlined “ Donald Trump , Meet Your Precursor.
” This is Democracy Now !
When we come back , more on impeachment .
And then we go to another trial , this one that ’ s taking place on Guantánamo .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On the opening day of just the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, the Senate approved the rules for the trial of President Trump in a party-line vote. The vote came after a marathon 13-hour session. Under the rules, each side will be given 24 hours over a three-day period for opening arguments. Senators also agreed to automatically admit evidence from the House inquiry into the trial record.
The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached the president for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. Since the House vote to impeach Trump, more evidence has come to light about the administration’s actions, but it remains unclear if any of this evidence will be presented to the Senate. Just before midnight, the Office of Management and Budget released nearly 200 pages of heavily redacted records related to the Trump administration’s handling of aid to Ukraine.
AMY GOODMAN: During the opening day of the trial, Republican senators rejected 11 amendments from Democrats to subpoena documents and witnesses, including former national security adviser John Bolton. Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke earlier on Tuesday, laying out the Democratic case for impeachment.
MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: President Trump is accused of coercing a foreign leader into interfering in our elections to benefit himself, and then doing everything in his power to cover it up. If proved, the president’s actions are crimes against democracy itself. It’s hard to imagine a greater subversion of our democracy than for powers outside our borders to determine the elections from within. For a foreign country to attempt such a thing on its own is bad enough. For an American president to deliberately solicit such a thing, to blackmail a foreign country with military assistance to help him win an election, is unimaginably worse. I can’t imagine any other president doing this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Democrats repeatedly accused the Republican leadership of orchestrating a cover-up by blocking witnesses at this stage in the trial. This is Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler, one of the House impeachment managers.
REP. JERROLD NADLER: Ambassador Bolton has made clear that he is ready, willing and able to testify about everything he witnessed. But President Trump does not want you to hear from Ambassador Bolton. And the reason has nothing to do with executive privilege or this other nonsense. And the reason has nothing to do with national security. If the president cared about national security, he would not have blocked military assistance to a vulnerable strategic ally in the attempt to secure a personal political favor for himself. No, the president does not want you to hear from Ambassador Bolton, because the president does not want the American people to hear firsthand testimony about the misconduct at the heart of this trial.
The question is whether the Senate will be complicit in the president’s crimes by covering them up. Any senator who votes against Ambassador Bolton’s testimony or any relevant testimony shows that he or she wants to be part of the cover-up. What other possible reason is there to prohibit a relevant witness from testifying here? Unfortunately, so far, I’ve seen every Republican senator has shown that they want to be part of the cover-up by voting against every document and witness proposed.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, responded to Judiciary chair, House manager, Congressman Jerry Nadler.
JAY SEKULOW: Mr. Chief Justice, members of the Senate, Chairman Nadler talked about treacherous. At about 12:10 a.m., January 22nd, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, at this body, on the floor of this Senate, said “executive privilege and other nonsense.” Now, think about that for a moment, “executive privilege and other nonsense.” Mr. Nadler, it is not nonsense. These are privileges recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States. And to shred the Constitution on the floor of the Senate, to serve what purpose? The Senate is not on trial. The Constitution doesn’t allow what just took place.
AMY GOODMAN: After Trump’s lawyer, Sekulow, and the House manager, Nadler, went at it, Chief Justice John Roberts admonished them, saying, “Those addressing the Senate should remember where they are,” and talked about a word that was used a century ago, in 1905, called “pettifogging.”
Well, so we thought we’d go to a historian. Yes, we go to Manisha Sinha, professor of American history at the University of Connecticut. She has closely studied the presidency of Andrew Johnson, who became the first president to be impeached, in 1868. She is the author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. In November, she wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times headlined “Donald Trump, Meet Your Precursor.”
Well, you know, because this is only the third time in U.S. history that there has been a Senate impeachment trial, it’s really relevant, Professor Sinha, to look at what you’re talking about. Compare. Tell us about Andrew Johnson and why you think President Trump follows in his footsteps.
MANISHA SINHA: Well, Andrew Johnson was a lot like Trump. He was known to rile up racial divisions. He was known to ignore the powers of Congress. He was also known to use this idea of executive privilege to an unprecedented degree, to interfere in the program of Reconstruction in the South immediately after the Civil War, which would have given freed people basic civil and political rights. So both in terms of thinking that the presidency allows its occupant to pretty much do anything he wants and also in terms of really endangering national ideals, national interests, and in flouting the rule of law, Johnson was a lot like Trump.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of his actual trial, could you talk about the length of it and the whole issue of witnesses and evidence, compared to this rush to verdict that the Senate Republicans wish to impose or are attempting to impose on this trial?
MANISHA SINHA: Absolutely. So, Johnson’s trial lasted a long time. Witnesses were called. House managers, led by the wonderful Thaddeus Stevens, a leading radical Republican in Congress, and by John Bingham, who was the author of the 14th Amendment, that guaranteed national birthright citizenship — and these men had enough time to lay out the case in detail. There were many more articles of impeachment against Johnson — 11 articles, to be exact. The first nine had to deal with his violation of the Tenure of Office Act. But the last two were quite similar to the articles against Trump. They accused him of abuse of power, of interfering with an investigation in Congress. So, in that sense, you know, Johnson actually went through a larger, a more fair process, a process that involved evidence and witnesses.
What is happening with Trump’s impeachment is actually quite unprecedented. Even in the Clinton impeachment case, we had evidence and witnesses. So, I think it is important to say that this is not just a matter of form and civil discourse. This is also a matter of the rule of law and justice in the republic. And it’s quite frightening to think that we are going through this in a very rushed manner, when the president is being charged with having committed some serious crimes against the Constitution and the republic.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Sinha, if you can talk about the context of when this took place, after the Civil War? What we haven’t talked about yet is the animus, the racial hatred that motivated Johnson, and the comparisons to Trump. But lay out that period and how he was trying to continue the disenfranchisement of black people and of freed slaves, freed enslaved people.
MANISHA SINHA: Yes, absolutely. You know, there is some misconception, advocated even by Mike Pence in a recent op-ed, that Johnson was simply continuing President Lincoln’s policies towards the South. What Johnson did was basically endanger the result of the Civil War, which was emancipation. He allowed Southern state governments to pretty much issue Black Codes that would put black people back to as close a state to slavery as possible. There was racial terrorism, “outrages,” as they called it then, against a freed people throughout the South. People were being murdered. In one case, Johnson personally intervened to make sure the man responsible for it would get off scot-free. And he kept interfering in the Reconstruction plans of Congress.
Now, under President Lincoln, the federal government had established the Freedmen’s Bureau to oversee this transition from slavery to freedom in the South. When that bill to extend the life of the bureau came before Johnson, he vetoed it. There was another bill, the civil rights law, which — the first civil rights law ever passed in United States history, to ensure the protection of the persons and property of freed people, who were being attacked with impunity by former Confederates and Southern elites. Both cases, Johnson vetoed those laws.
And he was, in a way, really guided by this idea that the United States should remain what he called a white man’s country. And that kind of very crude racism guided Johnson. This notion that if you would extend some of even the most basic citizenship rights to the formerly enslaved, that you were somehow taking away rights from whites, that’s a very pernicious logic that has motivated racists in this country since then. And in that sense, I would say that if you look at the scene immediately after the Civil War in the South, the Republicans in Congress had no choice but to intervene and to rein in Johnson in his very sort of destructive way of completely undermining the results of a very hard-fought war, which was basically emancipation and the end of slavery.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, ultimately, he was not convicted, by just one vote, because the Senate needed a two-thirds majority to remove him, correct?
MANISHA SINHA: Yes. Johnson came very close to being convicted. There was seven Republicans, moderates, who voted to let Johnson go scot-free, if he promised not to interfere in Reconstruction again. And they were given that assurance. But one of those votes belonged to Edmund Ross, a senator from Kansas, extremely corrupt, who had bought his way, literally, into the Senate through bribery. And unfortunately, he was put in John F. Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage as a courageous man who voted his conscience. Now, we know that book was probably ghostwritten, but it went out under JFK’s name. And I think part of it may be to appease Dixiecrats at that time. But it has lent a very — it has sort of propagated a false view of history, especially the history of Reconstruction.
Unfortunately, Mike Pence, in that editorial in The Wall Street Journal that I referred to, picks up on this theme that Edmund Ross was a profile in courage. We know now, through the work of historians like David Stewart, who has written on the impeachment of Johnson, that in fact Edmund Ross was bribed for his vote. So he was not a profile in courage; he was a profile in corruption. And for the Republican Party today to bring up both, you know, a defense of Johnson and portray Ross as an honorable person is astounding for the party of Lincoln, for the party of Thaddeus Stevens and the radical Republicans who led the charge for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
AMY GOODMAN: Which takes us to Donald Trump’s lawyer Pat Cipollone speaking yesterday in the impeachment trial. He incorrectly stated no president had ever been impeached in an election year.
PAT CIPOLLONE: They’re not here to steal one election. They’re here to steal two elections. It’s buried in the small print of their ridiculous articles of impeachment. They want to remove the President Trump from the ballot. They won’t tell you that. They don’t have the guts to say it directly, but that’s exactly what they’re here to do. They’re asking the Senate to attack one of the most sacred rights we have as American — Americans: the right to choose our president. In an election year, it’s never been done before.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Manisha Sinha, in fact, that’s not true. Right? Talk about 1868.
MANISHA SINHA: Yes. So, Johnson is impeached in 1868, the year of a presidential election. So, Mr. Cipollone was obviously inaccurate, to put it politely, when he made that statement. I will let constitutional lawyers talk about his lack of understanding of the Constitution, because the impeachment, of course, is not meant to overthrow an election. It is meant as a check on a corrupt president, and it is in the Constitution.
But historically, too, he is wrong. There was, like in the case of Trump, a momentum growing to impeach Johnson because of the ways in which he flouted the rule of law, the way in which he flouted democratic governance and the separation of powers between Congress and the president. But it was his firing of Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, who was overseeing Reconstruction in the South, that finally led to his impeachment. That was the smoking gun. And that proceeding took place in 1868, a presidential election year. And in fact, Johnson is impeached in 1868. He is also tried in the Senate in 1868. So, Mr. Cipollone — and, you know, there were so many errors, both of law and the Constitution, but as a historian, I was astounded that he could brazenly make that statement, which was completely wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, then President Johnson went on to lose the November election to Ulysses Grant. Manisha Sinha, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of American history at the University of Connecticut, author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. And we’ll link to your piece in The New York Times headlined “Donald Trump, Meet Your Precursor.”
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, more on impeachment. And then we go to another trial, this one that’s taking place on Guantánamo. Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-01-22--Headlines for January 22, 2020

Headlines for January 22, 2020

On the opening day of just the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history , the Senate approved the rules for the trial of President Trump in a party-line vote , following a nearly 13-hour marathon session .
Republican senators rejected 11 amendments from Democrats to subpoena documents and witnesses , including former national security adviser John Bolton .
Democrats repeatedly accused the Republican leadership of orchestrating a cover-up by blocking witnesses at this stage in the trial .
This is House impeachment manager Jerry Nadler .
Rep. Jerrold Nadler : “ Ambassador Bolton has made clear that he is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about everything he witnessed .
But President Trump does not want you to hear from Ambassador Bolton .
And the reason has nothing to do with executive privilege or this other nonsense .
And the reason has nothing to do with national security .
If the president cared about national security , he would not have blocked military assistance to a vulnerable strategic ally in the attempt to secure a personal political favor for himself .
No , the president does not want you to hear from Ambassador Bolton , because the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hear firsthand testimony about the misconduct at the heart of this trial.
” The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached Trump for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden .
Since the House vote to impeach Trump , more evidence has come to light about the Trump administration ’ s actions , but it remains unclear if any of this evidence will be presented to the Senate .
Just before midnight , the Office of Management and Budget released nearly 200 pages of heavily redacted records related to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aid to Ukraine .

On the opening day of just the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, the Senate approved the rules for the trial of President Trump in a party-line vote, following a nearly 13-hour marathon session. Republican senators rejected 11 amendments from Democrats to subpoena documents and witnesses, including former national security adviser John Bolton. Democrats repeatedly accused the Republican leadership of orchestrating a cover-up by blocking witnesses at this stage in the trial. This is House impeachment manager Jerry Nadler.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler: “Ambassador Bolton has made clear that he is ready, willing and able to testify about everything he witnessed. But President Trump does not want you to hear from Ambassador Bolton. And the reason has nothing to do with executive privilege or this other nonsense. And the reason has nothing to do with national security. If the president cared about national security, he would not have blocked military assistance to a vulnerable strategic ally in the attempt to secure a personal political favor for himself. No, the president does not want you to hear from Ambassador Bolton, because the president does not want the American people to hear firsthand testimony about the misconduct at the heart of this trial.”
The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached Trump for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. Since the House vote to impeach Trump, more evidence has come to light about the Trump administration’s actions, but it remains unclear if any of this evidence will be presented to the Senate. Just before midnight, the Office of Management and Budget released nearly 200 pages of heavily redacted records related to the Trump administration’s handling of aid to Ukraine.