democracynow--2020-01-30--"Coded Bias": New Film Looks at Fight Against Racial Bias in Facial Recognition & AI Technology

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The War and Peace Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Nermeen Shaikh .
And we ’ re broadcasting from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City , Utah , from Park City TV , where a new film looks at the racial and gender prejudice baked into artificial intelligence technology , like facial recognition .
The film is called Coded Bias .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Earlier this month , Cambridge , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , joining a growing number of cities in the U.S. , including San Francisco , that have outlawed the artificial intelligence software , citing flawed technology .
AMY GOODMAN : A recent study found facial recognition identified African-American and Asian faces incorrectly 10 to 100 times more than white faces .
The study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found a photo database used by law enforcement incorrectly identified Native Americans at the highest rates .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : The danger of flawed artificial intelligence and its increasing omnipresence in daily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ film Coded Bias .
The film begins with Joy Buolamwini , a researcher at the MIT Media Lab , who discovers that most facial recognition software does not recognize darker-skinned or female faces when she has to wear a white mask to be recognized by a robot she herself is programming .
She goes on to reveal that artificial intelligence is not in fact a neutral scientific tool , but instead reflects the biases and inequalities of wider society .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Joy Buolamwini testifying before Congress in May .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Buolamwini , who now joins us here in Park City at the Sundance Film Festival , along with Shalini Kantayya , the director of the film Coded Bias , that ’ s premiered here at the film festival .
We welcome you both to Democracy Now !
So , take it from there , Joy .
I mean , how did you end up testifying before Congress ?
And take us on your journey , from MIT , discovering that your face is one that would be recognized so many fewer times when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I mean , maybe that ’ s protection .
Who knows ?
JOY BUOLAMWINI : Absolutely .
So , my journey started as a grad student .
I was working on an art project that used face detection technology , and I found that it didn ’ t detect my face that well , until I put on a white mask .
And so , it was that white mask experience that led to questioning : Well , how do computers see in the first place ?
How is artificial intelligence being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t being detected in this context , is it just me or other people ?
AMY GOODMAN : Can you also step back ?
What even does artificial intelligence mean ?
What does AI mean ?
JOY BUOLAMWINI : Sure .
So , AI is about giving machines what we perceive to be somewhat intelligent from a human perspective .
So , this can be around perceiving the world , so computer vision , giving computers eyes .
It can be voice recognition .
It can also be about communication .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Or think about talking to Siri or Alexa .
And then , another component to artificial intelligence is about discernment or making judgments .
And this can become really dangerous , if you ’ re deciding how risky somebody is or if they should be hired or fired , because these decisions can impact people ’ s lives in a material way .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well , can you talk about the origins of artificial intelligence ?
You go over it a bit in the film Coded Bias .
JOY BUOLAMWINI : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job of really taking it all the way back to Dartmouth , where you had a group of who I affectionately call “ pale males ” coming together to decide what intelligence might look like .
And here you ’ re saying , “ If you could play chess well , that ’ s something that looks like intelligence.
” The thing also about artificial intelligence is what it is changes .
So , as machines get better at specific kinds of tasks , you might say , “ Oh , that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s a moving line .
AMY GOODMAN : So , Shalini , why don ’ t you talk about how you came up with the idea for Coded Bias , Joy a central figure , of course , of this film , and take the history further ?
SHALINI KANTAYYA : Well , basically , I was sort of like a science fiction fanatic .
And so I like reading about technology and imagining the future .
And I think so much of what we think about artificial intelligence comes from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the stuff of Blade Runner and The Terminator .
And then , when I started sort of reading and listening to TED Talks by Joy and another mathematician named Cathy O ’ Neil , other women like Meredith Broussard and Zeynep Tufekci , I realized that artificial intelligence was something entirely different in the now .
It was becoming a gatekeeper , making automated decisions about who gets hired , who gets healthcare and who gets into college .
And when I discovered Joy ’ s work , I was just captivated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the disruptors .
AMY GOODMAN : So , let ’ s go to a clip from your remarkable film , Coded Bias .
This shows police in London stopping a young black teen .
AMY GOODMAN : So , that ’ s a clip from Coded Bias .
Joy Buolamwini , explain further what took place here , the misidentification , the identification .
Some might perversely say it ’ s better for this technology to fail , so that people can ’ t be identified , but this is the opposite case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you were saying earlier maybe not being identified is a good thing .
But then there are the misidentifications that have a real-world impact .
So , in the clip and in the film , you actually see the work of Big Brother Watch U.K. And in this particular scenario , Big Brother Watch U.K. was able to track what was going on in London .
And one of the things they showed in their study , “ Face Off , ” was you had false positive match rates of over 90 % @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here , but they also had reports where more than 2,400 innocent people were mismatched .
So it ’ s not just a case of , “ Oh , you ’ re not detected.
” That might be sometimes .
But you could be misidentified as somebody you ’ re not , and the consequences can be grave .
AMY GOODMAN : And we ’ re playing this clip at a time when The New York Times reports London ’ s Police Department — London ’ s Police Department said it would begin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with video cameras as they walk the streets , adopting a level of surveillance that is rare outside China , the technology London deploying goes beyond many of the facial recognition systems used elsewhere , which match a photo against a database .
The new technology uses software that can immediately identify people on a police watchlist as soon as they ’ re filmed on a video camera , Joy .
JOY BUOLAMWINI : And I think you might need to say “ attempt to identify , ” because oftentimes the claims that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t necessarily match up to the reality .
Earlier you spoke about the National Institute of Standards and Technology study .
They studied more than 189 algorithms from 99 different companies .
And so , this is the majority of the facial recognition technology that ’ s out there — racial bias , gender bias , age bias , as well .
So , if you have a face , you have a place in this conversation , and we all need to be concerned .
So I think it ’ s highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know have significant flaws , that we already know can be abused .
It ’ s commonsense to place a moratorium until we ’ re at a better place .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well , Shalini , another place that you profile in the documentary is China .
And you speak to this woman at some length .
So , a couple of questions .
First , how did you get access ?
And your response to the fact that she actually supported the credit — what is it ?
The social credit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could explain what that is , how it works there and what your sense is of the kind of support that this system has in China ?
And then , Joy , along the same lines as what you were talking about earlier , in places like China , where the artificial intelligence and facial recognition , the technology is developed there , is there a similar bias ?
And if so , what is it ?
But first , Shalini .
SHALINI KANTAYYA : Well , I got access through a local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feel that this woman kind of gave us insight into this social credit system that is coming up in China , to sort of where they ’ re using facial recognition in tandem with the social credit system .
So , if you — basically , they ’ re tracking you , they ’ re watching you , they ’ re surveilling you , and they ’ re scoring you .
And not only what you do impacts your score , but what your friends do impact your score .
And this young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ featured in the film , says that , you know , in fact , we don ’ t have to trust our own senses anymore , that we can rely on this sort of social credit score to actually have integrity in who we trust and who we don ’ t trust .
And I think , in the film , you know , we sort of want to think , “ Oh , that ’ s sort of a galaxy far , far away from the U.S. ” But in the making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kinds of parallels of that type of scoring that ’ s happening here in the U.S. and in other places around the world .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Explain how you see that it ’ s comparable or could be .
SHALINI KANTAYYA : Well , as Amy Webb says so poignantly in the film , we ’ re all being scored all the time , from our Uber scores to our Facebook likes .
All of that information is being tracked and analyzed all of the time .
And so we ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And so , that kind of tracking can impact how much we pay for insurance , what kind of opportunities are shown to us online .
And so , very much it becomes sort of an algorithmic determinism .
JOY BUOLAMWINI : So , to the question of how are the systems working in China , in our first study , called “ Gender Shades , ” we looked at IBM , Microsoft , but we also looked at Face++ , a billion-dollar tech startup in China .
And we found similar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , overall , when they ’ ve done studies on AI systems developed in China , they tend to work better on Chinese faces , right ?
And those developed in Western nations tend to work better on Western faces , as well .
One thing I did want to bring up related to China and data collection is this data colonialism that we ’ re starting to see .
So you have reports of Chinese companies going to African nations , providing facial recognition or surveillance technologies in exchange for something very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ citizens .
So , now , parallel to what we had with the slave trade — right ?
— where you ’ re extracting bodies , now you ’ re extracting digital bodies in service of a global trade , because even when you talk about what ’ s going on in London , they ’ re using technology from a company called NEC that ’ s based in Japan .
And so you have to really think about the global context for how these technologies spread around the world .
SHALINI KANTAYYA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , China has unfettered access to data .
It has now been mandated that if you want to access the internet in China , you must submit to facial recognition .
So , that is the basis for which they ’ re building this kind of scoring system .
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to go to another clip from Coded Bias .
This is the author of the book Algorithms of Oppression .
AMY GOODMAN : That ’ s Safiya Noble .
And I want to go to another clip now of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Philadelphia who was subjected to a recidivism risk algorithm , which judges and probation officers use to calculate the risk of a person reoffending .
The scoring system was investigated and found to be racially biased .
This is LaTonya Myers and her lawyer , Mark Houldin .
AMY GOODMAN : Shalini Kantayya is director of Coded Bias , that clip , those clips we just played .
Shalini , as we wrap up , what about regulation ?
SHALINI KANTAYYA : These algorithms are impacting all of us in the most — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need legislation .
We need meaningful legislation around algorithms .
AMY GOODMAN : And the explanation of algorithms , in just 20 seconds , Joy , for us nonscientists ?
JOY BUOLAMWINI : Yes .
So , Algorithms are essentially processes that are meant to come to give or solve a particular task .
So , when we talk about AI , we ’ re talking about systems that can perceive the world , that can communicate and , most importantly , make determinations .
And these determinations impact our lives .
AMY @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thank you so much for being with us .
Joy Buolamwini is researcher at the MIT Media Lab and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League .
We ’ re going to link to her speeches and her congressional testimony at democracynow.org .
And Shalini Kantayya is director of the new film , that ’ s just premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival , called Coded Bias .
And that does it for our broadcast .
On Friday at 2 p.m. , I ’ ll be speaking here in Park City , Utah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dolly ’ s Bookstore about impeachment and elections .
Next Tuesday , February 4th , I ’ ll be in Washington , D.C. , just before the State of the Union .
I ’ ll be interviewing Lonnie Bunch , founding director of the Smithsonian ’ s National Museum of African American History and Culture , at 6:00 at Busboys and Poets in Washington , D.C. And next Friday , February 7th , at noon , Nermeen Shaikh will be moderating a panel with the Squad at Howard University .
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pressley , the four congressmembers , will be with Nermeen at Howard University at noon , February 7th .
You can go to all details at democracynow.org .
Also , Democracy Now !
we ’ ll be broadcasting the Senate impeachment trial at democracynow.org .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Nermeen Shaikh .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. And we’re broadcasting from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, from Park City TV, where a new film looks at the racial and gender prejudice baked into artificial intelligence technology, like facial recognition. The film is called Coded Bias.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Earlier this month, Cambridge, Massachusetts, voted to ban facial recognition, joining a growing number of cities in the U.S., including San Francisco, that have outlawed the artificial intelligence software, citing flawed technology.
AMY GOODMAN: A recent study found facial recognition identified African-American and Asian faces incorrectly 10 to 100 times more than white faces. The study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found a photo database used by law enforcement incorrectly identified Native Americans at the highest rates.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The danger of flawed artificial intelligence and its increasing omnipresence in daily life is the focus of the new film Coded Bias. The film begins with Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, who discovers that most facial recognition software does not recognize darker-skinned or female faces when she has to wear a white mask to be recognized by a robot she herself is programming. She goes on to reveal that artificial intelligence is not in fact a neutral scientific tool, but instead reflects the biases and inequalities of wider society.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Joy Buolamwini testifying before Congress in May.
JOY BUOLAMWINI: I’m an algorithmic bias researcher based at MIT, and I’ve conducted studies that show some of the largest recorded racial and skin-type biases in AI systems sold by companies like IBM, Microsoft and Amazon. You’ve already heard facial recognition and related technologies have some flaws. In one test I ran, Amazon recognition even failed on the face of Oprah Winfrey, labeling her male. Personally, I’ve had to resort to literally wearing a white mask to have my face detected by some of this technology. Coding in white face is the last thing I expected to be doing at MIT, an American epicenter of innovation.
Now, given the use of this technology for mass surveillance, not having my face detected could be seen as a benefit. But besides being employed for dispensing toilet paper, in China the technology is being used to track Uyghur Muslim minorities. Beyond being abused, there are many ways for this technology to fail. Among the most pressing are misidentifications that can lead to false arrest and accusations. … Mistaken identity is more than an inconvenience and can lead to grave consequences.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Joy Buolamwini, who now joins us here in Park City at the Sundance Film Festival, along with Shalini Kantayya, the director of the film Coded Bias, that’s premiered here at the film festival.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! So, take it from there, Joy. I mean, how did you end up testifying before Congress? And take us on your journey, from MIT, discovering that your face is one that would be recognized so many fewer times when artificial intelligence technology is used than others. I mean, maybe that’s protection. Who knows?
JOY BUOLAMWINI: Absolutely. So, my journey started as a grad student. I was working on an art project that used face detection technology, and I found that it didn’t detect my face that well, until I put on a white mask. And so, it was that white mask experience that led to questioning: Well, how do computers see in the first place? How is artificial intelligence being used? And if my face isn’t being detected in this context, is it just me or other people?
AMY GOODMAN: Can you also step back? What even does artificial intelligence mean? What does AI mean?
JOY BUOLAMWINI: Sure. So, AI is about giving machines what we perceive to be somewhat intelligent from a human perspective. So, this can be around perceiving the world, so computer vision, giving computers eyes. It can be voice recognition. It can also be about communication. So, think about chatbots, right? Or think about talking to Siri or Alexa. And then, another component to artificial intelligence is about discernment or making judgments. And this can become really dangerous, if you’re deciding how risky somebody is or if they should be hired or fired, because these decisions can impact people’s lives in a material way.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, can you talk about the origins of artificial intelligence? You go over it a bit in the film Coded Bias.
JOY BUOLAMWINI: Yes. And Shalini does a great job of really taking it all the way back to Dartmouth, where you had a group of who I affectionately call “pale males” coming together to decide what intelligence might look like. And here you’re saying, “If you could play chess well, that’s something that looks like intelligence.” The thing also about artificial intelligence is what it is changes. So, as machines get better at specific kinds of tasks, you might say, “Oh, that’s not truly intelligence.” So, it’s a moving line.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Shalini, why don’t you talk about how you came up with the idea for Coded Bias, Joy a central figure, of course, of this film, and take the history further?
SHALINI KANTAYYA: Well, basically, I was sort of like a science fiction fanatic. And so I like reading about technology and imagining the future. And I think so much of what we think about artificial intelligence comes from science fiction. It’s sort of the stuff of Blade Runner and The Terminator. And then, when I started sort of reading and listening to TED Talks by Joy and another mathematician named Cathy O’Neil, other women like Meredith Broussard and Zeynep Tufekci, I realized that artificial intelligence was something entirely different in the now. It was becoming a gatekeeper, making automated decisions about who gets hired, who gets healthcare and who gets into college. And when I discovered Joy’s work, I was just captivated by this young woman who was disrupting the disruptors.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go to a clip from your remarkable film, Coded Bias. This shows police in London stopping a young black teen.
SILKIE: Tell me what’s happening.
GRIFF FERRIS: This young black kid’s in school uniform, got stopped as a result of a match. Took him down that street just to one side and like very thoroughly searched him. It was all plainclothes officers, as well. It was four plainclothes officers who stopped him. Fingerprinted him after about like maybe 10, 15 minutes of searching and checking his details and fingerprinting him. And they came back and said it’s not him.
Excuse me. I work for a human rights campaigning organization. We’re campaigning against facial recognition technology. We’re campaigning against facial — we’re called Big Brother Watch. We’re a human rights campaigning organization. We’re campaigning against this technology here today. And then you’ve just been stopped because of that. They misidentified you. And these are our details here.
He was a bit shaken. His friends were there. They couldn’t believe what had happened to them.
Yeah, yeah. You’ve been misidentified by their systems And they’ve stopped you and used that as justification to stop and search you.
But this is an innocent, young 14-year-old child who’s been stopped by the police as a result of a facial recognition misidentification.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s a clip from Coded Bias. Joy Buolamwini, explain further what took place here, the misidentification, the identification. Some might perversely say it’s better for this technology to fail, so that people can’t be identified, but this is the opposite case.
JOY BUOLAMWINI: Absolutely. So you were saying earlier maybe not being identified is a good thing. But then there are the misidentifications that have a real-world impact. So, in the clip and in the film, you actually see the work of Big Brother Watch U.K. And in this particular scenario, Big Brother Watch U.K. was able to track what was going on in London. And one of the things they showed in their study, “Face Off,” was you had false positive match rates of over 90%. So you see this one example here, but they also had reports where more than 2,400 innocent people were mismatched. So it’s not just a case of, “Oh, you’re not detected.” That might be sometimes. But you could be misidentified as somebody you’re not, and the consequences can be grave.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re playing this clip at a time when The New York Times reports London’s Police Department — London’s Police Department said it would begin using facial recognition to spot criminal suspects with video cameras as they walk the streets, adopting a level of surveillance that is rare outside China, the technology London deploying goes beyond many of the facial recognition systems used elsewhere, which match a photo against a database. The new technology uses software that can immediately identify people on a police watchlist as soon as they’re filmed on a video camera, Joy.
JOY BUOLAMWINI: And I think you might need to say “attempt to identify,” because oftentimes the claims that are made about these technologies don’t necessarily match up to the reality. Earlier you spoke about the National Institute of Standards and Technology study. They studied more than 189 algorithms from 99 different companies. And so, this is the majority of the facial recognition technology that’s out there — racial bias, gender bias, age bias, as well. So, if you have a face, you have a place in this conversation, and we all need to be concerned. So I think it’s highly irresponsible to deploy technologies that we already know have significant flaws, that we already know can be abused. It’s commonsense to place a moratorium until we’re at a better place.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Shalini, another place that you profile in the documentary is China. And you speak to this woman at some length. So, a couple of questions. First, how did you get access? And your response to the fact that she actually supported the credit — what is it? The social credit system?
SHALINI KANTAYYA: Absolutely.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: If you could explain what that is, how it works there and what your sense is of the kind of support that this system has in China? And then, Joy, along the same lines as what you were talking about earlier, in places like China, where the artificial intelligence and facial recognition, the technology is developed there, is there a similar bias? And if so, what is it? But first, Shalini.
SHALINI KANTAYYA: Well, I got access through a local production company in China. And I feel that this woman kind of gave us insight into this social credit system that is coming up in China, to sort of where they’re using facial recognition in tandem with the social credit system. So, if you — basically, they’re tracking you, they’re watching you, they’re surveilling you, and they’re scoring you. And not only what you do impacts your score, but what your friends do impact your score. And this young woman, who I — who is featured in the film, says that, you know, in fact, we don’t have to trust our own senses anymore, that we can rely on this sort of social credit score to actually have integrity in who we trust and who we don’t trust. And I think, in the film, you know, we sort of want to think, “Oh, that’s sort of a galaxy far, far away from the U.S.” But in the making of this film, I saw all kinds of parallels of that type of scoring that’s happening here in the U.S. and in other places around the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Explain how you see that it’s comparable or could be.
SHALINI KANTAYYA: Well, as Amy Webb says so poignantly in the film, we’re all being scored all the time, from our Uber scores to our Facebook likes. All of that information is being tracked and analyzed all of the time. And so we’re all being rated all of the time. And so, that kind of tracking can impact how much we pay for insurance, what kind of opportunities are shown to us online. And so, very much it becomes sort of an algorithmic determinism.
AMY GOODMAN: And Joy?
JOY BUOLAMWINI: So, to the question of how are the systems working in China, in our first study, called “Gender Shades,” we looked at IBM, Microsoft, but we also looked at Face++, a billion-dollar tech startup in China. And we found similar racial bias and gender bias. But, overall, when they’ve done studies on AI systems developed in China, they tend to work better on Chinese faces, right? And those developed in Western nations tend to work better on Western faces, as well.
One thing I did want to bring up related to China and data collection is this data colonialism that we’re starting to see. So you have reports of Chinese companies going to African nations, providing facial recognition or surveillance technologies in exchange for something very precious, the biometric data of the citizens. So, now, parallel to what we had with the slave trade — right? — where you’re extracting bodies, now you’re extracting digital bodies in service of a global trade, because even when you talk about what’s going on in London, they’re using technology from a company called NEC that’s based in Japan. And so you have to really think about the global context for how these technologies spread around the world.
SHALINI KANTAYYA: And just to add to that, China has unfettered access to data. It has now been mandated that if you want to access the internet in China, you must submit to facial recognition. So, that is the basis for which they’re building this kind of scoring system.
AMY GOODMAN: Shalini, as we wrap up, what about regulation?
SHALINI KANTAYYA: These algorithms are impacting all of us in the most — in our civil rights, and we need legislation. We need meaningful legislation around algorithms.
AMY GOODMAN: And the explanation of algorithms, in just 20 seconds, Joy, for us nonscientists?
JOY BUOLAMWINI: Yes. So, Algorithms are essentially processes that are meant to come to give or solve a particular task. So, when we talk about AI, we’re talking about systems that can perceive the world, that can communicate and, most importantly, make determinations. And these determinations impact our lives.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Joy Buolamwini is researcher at the MIT Media Lab and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. We’re going to link to her speeches and her congressional testimony at democracynow.org. And Shalini Kantayya is director of the new film, that’s just premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival, called Coded Bias.
And that does it for our broadcast. On Friday at 2 p.m., I’ll be speaking here in Park City, Utah, at the museum right next to Dolly’s Bookstore about impeachment and elections. Next Tuesday, February 4th, I’ll be in Washington, D.C., just before the State of the Union. I’ll be interviewing Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, at 6:00 at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.
And next Friday, February 7th, at noon, Nermeen Shaikh will be moderating a panel with the Squad at Howard University. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, the four congressmembers, will be with Nermeen at Howard University at noon, February 7th. You can go to all details at democracynow.org.
Also, Democracy Now! we’ll be broadcasting the Senate impeachment trial at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.


democracynow--2020-01-30--Ex-Solicitor General: Alan Dershowitz Is Wrong. Trump Is Not Above the Law & Should Be Impeached

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : President Trump ’ s legal team offered an extraordinary new defense during the president ’ s impeachment trial on Wednesday .
Attorney Alan Dershowitz said that a sitting president could take any action to boost his re-election chances if he felt his re-election was in the public interest .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Dershowitz ’ s claim came during a portion of the trial where senators were given a chance to submit written questions to Trump ’ s legal team and the House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today .
The impeachment trial could end as soon as Friday if the Senate Republican leadership succeed in blocking Democrats from calling any witnesses .
AMY GOODMAN : Democrats are hoping to secure enough votes to get Trump ’ s former national security adviser John Bolton to testify .
Bolton has written a forthcoming book that Trump personally told him he wanted to maintain a freeze on military aid to Ukraine until Ukraine turned over materials related to his political rival , former Vice President Joe Biden .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : The White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bolton ’ s book , claiming it contains classified information .
On Wednesday , Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer submitted a question about whether there can be a fair Senate trial without key eyewitnesses , such as John Bolton .
This is House impeachment manager Adam Schiff .
AMY GOODMAN : White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin disagreed on the question about calling witnesses .
AMY GOODMAN : In a moment , we will go to Washington , D.C. , where we ’ ll be joined by Neal Katyal , former acting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He ’ s a professor at Georgetown and author of the book Impeach : The Case Against Donald Trump .
In a minute .
AMY GOODMAN : “ Take It High Now ” by the Soul Rebels .
This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The War and Peace Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Nermeen Shaikh .
And we ’ re joined in Washington , D.C. , by Neal Katyal , former acting U.S. solicitor general in the Obama administration , Supreme Court lawyer and Georgetown University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the author of the book Impeach : The Case Against Donald Trump .
Welcome to Democracy Now !
, Neal Katyal .
We want to go right to , well , that explosive claim by President Trump ’ s lawyer Alan Dershowitz , his claim of executive power that says a sitting president can take any action to boost his re-election chances if he feels his re-election is in the public interest .
If you could start off by weighing in on that , and then talk about the significance of what happened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ period of 16 hours of the senators asking questions , through the Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts , who ’ s presiding over the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump ?
NEAL KATYAL : OK .
So , Amy , thanks .
It ’ s great to be on your show .
And with respect to what you were saying about Professor Dershowitz , you called it a “ claim ” by Professor Dershowitz .
I think the technical legal word is a “ joke.
” That is , nobody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ centuries , agrees with Dershowitz .
And you can ’ t like chalk them all up as biased politically or something like that .
You can go back decades ; you ’ ll never find a serious scholar saying anything like what he said yesterday .
And that ’ s for a very simple reason : Impeachment is the people ’ s check against an abusive president .
It was laced into our Constitution by our Founders .
And the idea that a president can simply say , “ Oh , I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , therefore I can do whatever I want , ” is stupid .
I mean , it ’ s just a ridiculous argument .
It would mean , for example , that President Nixon , when ordering the Watergate break-in of the DNC headquarters , didn ’ t commit an impeachable offense .
It would mean that a president could use the Army to go threaten Democrats who voted for Democratic candidates instead of voting for him .
It could even mean that the president could shoot his opponent and say , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is in the national interest , so I can do whatever I want.
” You know , this is not even good — this is not even bad constitutional lawyering ; it ’ s atrocious constitutional lawyering .
And , you know , I ’ d say one more point about this .
This lawyer , Dershowitz , is hired by the president , so he is going out there and advocating what the president wants him to advocate .
And any president who has these views has to be removed .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why you have impeachment in there , because he doesn ’ t believe in the rule of law .
He thinks that he ’ s above it , as long as his motivations for re-election are pure and he ’ s in the national interest .
And our Founders , the whole idea — you go back to The Federalist Papers , Federalist 51 — men aren ’ t angels .
That ’ s why government is necessary .
That ’ s why the double security of checks and balances is necessary , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being destroyed in this moment by the president ’ s arguments .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well , Neal Katyal , could you also talk about how Trump ’ s legal team , more generally , has been dealing specifically with Bolton ’ s book revelations , which are quite explosive ?
First they ignored them , then said they ’ re inadmissible , then Dershowitz saying it doesn ’ t matter if they ’ re true or not because it would not , quote , “ rise to the level of an abuse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ NEAL KATYAL : Yeah .
So let me first back up , so all your listeners and watchers know what ’ s going on .
So , Article 1 of the presidential impeachment articles says that the president abused power .
It essentially says that he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by trying to coerce a foreign government to announce an investigation into his chief political rival , Joe Biden .
Now , the president has said , “ Oh , no , I was just fighting corruption , and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do , and that ’ s why I withheld the aid , ” which has always been a kind of ludicrous argument on its facts , because he can ’ t name a single other place in the world where he actually cared about corruption .
And in response , for example , yesterday to Senator Collins ’ s question , his lawyers couldn ’ t come up with any explanation of how Trump only magically cared about corruption after Biden entered the presidential race and not before .
So it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did is destroy it , because Bolton , according to The New York Times ’ revelations about his book , say that ’ s not why Trump did it .
He wasn ’ t trying to fight corruption ; he was doing it for his political campaign .
So that ’ s why the Bolton testimony is so important .
And that ’ s why Trump is so scared , scared to daylights , that Bolton will testify or , frankly , that anyone in the executive branch will testify , which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every executive branch employee .
So , what Trump ’ s lawyers are doing — to get to your question — is they ’ re trying , basically , a game of misdirection .
They ’ re like , “ Look over here .
Look at what the House did wrong .
Look over there .
Look at what the Democrats did wrong .
And this and that.
” But at the end , the central thing is this , and this is what I hope the House managers today focus on , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all , zero evidence , to exonerate him .
The House managers , by contrast , have produced over a dozen witnesses that all point the finger directly at Trump .
The transcript itself points a finger directly at Trump .
He has no evidence to the contrary , because he ’ s afraid to put any evidence in the record , any witness , any document .
And in a world in which you ’ ve got evidence on one side and nothing on the other , except a lawyer ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — Trump ’ s lawyers yesterday , I don ’ t think this is , frankly , very close .
And it would be a grave , grave disservice to try and acquit the president on the basis of this record .
It would be obviously in contravention of their oath to do impartial justice .
AMY GOODMAN : On Wednesday , Chief Justice John Roberts read a question submitted by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia .
This is Chief Justice Roberts , followed by , well , Trump attorney Alan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that was Alan Dershowitz responding to Senator Manchin ’ s question , read through the Supreme Court Justice John Roberts .
Neal Katyal , if you can talk about the substance of the question and answer ?
And then let ’ s talk a little about Chief Justice Roberts and how much he can bring his justice experience , how much he can weigh in .
It ’ s so unusual , what is taking place right now , chief justice of the United States presiding over the Senate impeachment trial of President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I ’ m not going to impugn Professor Dershowitz ’ s motives or anything like that .
I don ’ t know .
Only he knows what ’ s in his head .
But I ’ d like to hear about what sources he actually studied , because , as I was saying a moment ago , no responsible constitutional scholar — not just now , but for the last two centuries — says anything like what he said yesterday .
I mean , the only scholar that I suppose he could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who said it back in 1977 to David Frost .
But , really , no serious scholar says so , and for good reason .
You know , there ’ s lots of stuff that ’ s impeachable but that isn ’ t a crime .
You know , just take the example : Suppose the president is really upset at Justin Trudeau for dissing him at a global conference , and so the president decides to nuke Canada .
That is not a crime .
There ’ s no criminal law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s obviously impeachable .
Or to take an example that might be a little bit closer to reality , suppose Putin decides to invade Boston and New York tomorrow , and the president doesn ’ t put up a defense .
That is , again , not a crime , but it ’ s obviously impeachable behavior .
And so , you know , crimes have never been the standard , which is as I think Senator Manchin said in his question .
They ’ ve never been the standard , both before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second part of your question had to do with the role of the chief justice .
And , you know , I ’ m fortunate I ’ ve argued 41 cases before our chief justice .
You know , he ’ s far more conservative than I am , but he ’ s always fair .
I disagree with some of the rulings , but they ’ re based on a sense of law and a sense of justice .
And I think Americans should be glad that he ’ s presiding over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Representative Schiff did something which I ’ ve been expecting for a while , which is to say , “ Look , we think this whole witness question should be decided by the chief justice.
” As I wrote about it in The New York Times , I think there ’ s a easy case , that the chief justice can decide whether or not witnesses can be subpoenaed .
There ’ s a harder question about whether it requires 51 senators to overrule him or two-thirds of the Senate to overrule him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bunch of debate about that .
But I don ’ t think there ’ s any serious debate that the chief justice , in the first instance , can authorize the subpoenas of these witnesses .
And John Roberts is a real judge , who ’ s presided over so many cases .
He knows that you can ’ t have a trial without witnesses .
There ’ s no such thing .
And so , I think that Representative Schiff did the right thing yesterday in saying he ’ s going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chief justice ’ s hands .
And I hope the Republicans do the same thing .
I mean , I think all Americans should have faith in this chief justice .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well , on Wednesday , the first question came from Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine , Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah .
They ’ re the Republicans considered most open to voting in favor of allowing witnesses .
They asked Trump ’ s legal defense team to explain if Trump was culpable if he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attorney Patrick Philbin responding .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : So , Neal Katyal , could you respond to that ?
NEAL KATYAL : Yeah .
I think the most central thing is that the president , if he thinks it ’ s 52 % or 48 % or even 90 % or whatever in the public interest , he ’ s got to come out and testify and say so .
Right now there ’ s witness after witness who ’ s testified , under oath , in the Congress , that the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get political points and to get an investigation announced , not even the substance in a real investigation , but just one announced , against Joe Biden by the Ukrainian government .
So if the president really believes he had mixed motives , he ’ s got to have the guts to go and tell that to the American people , and in particular to the Senate of the United States .
Until that , it ’ s just a bunch of lawyer talk and is wholly unpersuasive .
AMY GOODMAN : Can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witnesses ?
If the Democrats get Bolton , the Republicans get Joe Biden , Hunter Biden .
They get someone for each one that the Democrats get .
Talk about the significance of this .
What is a material witness ?
And ultimately , who decides ?
NEAL KATYAL : Well , it ’ s very frustrating , because , you know , I think the Democrats and the House managers have really approached this from the standpoint of trying to get a search for the truth , treating the Senate as , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to get witnesses who are relevant and material , meaning that they have information that ’ s pertinent to the allegations against them .
And the senators , the Republican senators , by contrast , keep on threatening , “ Oh , we ’ re going to call Joe Biden .
It will be bad for your political stuff.
” And I just think that they ’ re talking two different languages .
The House is really talking the language of the rule of law , and the Senate Republicans are really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is , I think , an enormously destructive force .
Look , if they want to make a case that Hunter Biden or Joe Biden is truly relevant to this , great .
But as you were just saying a moment ago , I thought the president ’ s defense was that he had mixed motives in his own head .
And there ’ s only really one true witness who can explain that defense and what ’ s in his head , and that ’ s Donald Trump .
And until he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , all of this has to be taken with more than a grain of salt .
There ’ s really nothing to it , and particularly when you have witness after witness saying , “ Uh-uh , you told me your motivation was something else.
” And , you know , that is exactly what Ambassador Bolton , according to The New York Times , said in his book .
And the idea that we could come to any sort of resolution on this central set of allegations without hearing from him is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American justice .
It ’ s much more like the Soviet system .
And I don ’ t think it ’ s going to work .
I think if the Senate really voted tomorrow to not have any witnesses and to rush to acquittal of Trump , I think all that ’ s going to do is force a rolling impeachment of this president .
The House is then going to go back and call all these witnesses , and they ’ ll all come forward , and the Bolton book will come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for no witnesses will have the blood of the Constitution on their hands .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well , Neal , one of the arguments , as you know , that Trump ’ s lawyers have been making is that by calling witnesses , that will automatically lead to endless litigation .
Could you respond to that ?
You recently wrote a piece saying that Trump ’ s lawyers are in fact wrong in making that argument .
NEAL KATYAL : Yeah , this is a really easy one .
I wrote in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Geltzer , the reason .
And so , in the House , it ’ s true that if they tried to call Bolton or other folks , the president had said he was going to try and fight this in the courts through executive privilege .
But in the Senate , it ’ s a whole different thing , because the chief justice presides over the Senate impeachment trial , and he ’ s right there and can decide any executive privilege question .
And indeed , the United States Supreme Court , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , said that the federal courts have no business in impeachment trials reviewing what ’ s going on .
They called it nonjusticiable .
So , you can ’ t make a federal court case out of impeachment .
And so the chief justice is going to be the last word .
And that ’ s exactly what Representative Schiff said late last night on the floor of the Senate .
And so , we ’ re talking about days , not months or years , but days , to have an executive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s not even clear to me the president would invoke executive privilege .
He never has .
When you invoke executive privilege , you ’ ve got to actually show the documents or the testimony that you want to be privileged .
And here , I think the president is quite afraid to show those documents , because they show that he ’ s guilty .
And , you know , there ’ s any number of other problems with the executive privilege claim , the fact that he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this stuff ahead of time and the like .
So , I think it ’ s a bogus claim , and it ’ ll be easily resolved , and no senators should be worried that this is going to delay things in any serious fashion .
AMY GOODMAN : Neal Katyal , we ’ re asking you a lot about what happened yesterday , which was the beginning of the senators asking actions through the chief justice , who ’ s presiding over the trial , John Roberts .
But , overall , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taking place — I mean , you wrote a book on impeachment , that just came out — what has surprised you most ?
What information did you not realize ?
Has anything changed your mind ?
And do you think it ’ s possible , if Hunter Biden , for example , were forced to take the stand , that new information would come out ?
NEAL KATYAL : So , I wrote the book , which is called Impeach , as a kind of citizen ’ s guide to impeachment .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and it goes through the history of impeachment , starting with the Philadelphia Convention , and brings us up to the present day and the allegations against President Trump .
And to answer your question , I don ’ t think anything that ’ s come out has changed anything that I wrote in the book since it came out about a month and a half ago .
If anything , it ’ s just the case against Trump has become stronger , because each week there ’ s new revelations , whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week or the Lev Parnas testimony last week or the Office of Management — excuse me , the GAO , General Accounting Office , saying what the president did with Ukraine is illegal , the week before .
So , you just have more and more evidence .
And the trajectory of this all points in the president ’ s guilt .
There ’ s no new evidence that ’ s come out ever , since the whistleblower report in September , that says the president is innocent .
It all points in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me what I was surprised about since I wrote the book .
I guess I ’ d say one thing .
You know , the beginning of the book talks about what I call the yardstick rule , which , to me , is the essence of what the rule of law is about , which is , it doesn ’ t matter who the parties are before you .
The whole idea of law is that justice is blind .
That ’ s why Lady Justice in the statues is blindfolded .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re a man or woman , or a Republican or a Democrat .
And so , in the book , I say , as a thought experiment , just pretend that these allegations about Ukraine were against President Obama instead of against President Trump .
How would you vote ?
And I said each senator should look in the mirror in the morning and ask themselves that very simple question .
And it ’ s just as much true for Democrats as Republicans .
And , you know , for me , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is very clear .
I don ’ t care — I loved President Obama .
But if he did this , I ’ d be the first one to march down there and say , “ You ’ re out of there.
” And it ’ s surprising to me that the Republicans have marched in lockstep , so much so they ’ re afraid to even have witnesses .
It ’ s kind of become a party of the three monkeys and seeing no evil and hearing no evil and just willfully @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the contrary .
And that is a really , really sad thing for me as an American .
I believe in a party system .
I believe in vibrant debate .
And what I ’ m saying right now is the collapse of the Republican Party .
They stand for nothing , if they can ’ t stand for the most simple , basic precepts of the rule of law , which is , you know , “ Heck , we don ’ t want a president who cheats in his re-election.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Katyal , who would you like to see — as the Senate impeachment trial continues , who would you like to see testify , and what kinds of documents do you think should be brought in as evidence ?
NEAL KATYAL : So , I think that there ’ s basically two groups of people who I ’ d like to testify .
I ’ ll end that , and then I ’ m going to have to go .
So , the first is , I think the most important person , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago , is President Trump himself .
His whole defense is “ I had pure motives .
I did nothing wrong .
I wanted to fight corruption in Ukraine.
” If he really thinks so , go tell it under oath to the American people , and let ’ s see what they think of that explanation .
So , I think he ’ s the most important witness , given the defense , given all the allegations against him , including now by his own national security adviser , John Bolton .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with firsthand information , that the president has blocked so far from testifying .
So that ’ s John Bolton , the former national security adviser ; Mick Mulvaney , who ’ s the acting chief of staff ; John Duffey , who ’ s the Office of Management and Budget official ; and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo .
So I think it ’ s that group of five witnesses and the documents that they had in relation to the Ukraine situation that we ’ d like to see .
AMY GOODMAN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thank you so much for spending this time with us , former acting U.S. solicitor general in the Obama administration , Georgetown University law professor .
Neal Katyal is the co-author of Impeach : The Case Against Donald Trump .
When we come back , Coded Bias , a new film , has premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival , taking on racial and gender bias in artificial intelligence .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: President Trump’s legal team offered an extraordinary new defense during the president’s impeachment trial on Wednesday. Attorney Alan Dershowitz said that a sitting president could take any action to boost his re-election chances if he felt his re-election was in the public interest.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dershowitz’s claim came during a portion of the trial where senators were given a chance to submit written questions to Trump’s legal team and the House impeachment managers. The question-and-answer period continues today. The impeachment trial could end as soon as Friday if the Senate Republican leadership succeed in blocking Democrats from calling any witnesses.
AMY GOODMAN: Democrats are hoping to secure enough votes to get Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton to testify. Bolton has written a forthcoming book that Trump personally told him he wanted to maintain a freeze on military aid to Ukraine until Ukraine turned over materials related to his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The White House is attempting to halt publication of Bolton’s book, claiming it contains classified information. On Wednesday, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer submitted a question about whether there can be a fair Senate trial without key eyewitnesses, such as John Bolton. This is House impeachment manager Adam Schiff.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF: The short answer to that question is no. There’s no way to have a fair trial without witnesses. And when you have a witness who is as plainly relevant as John Bolton, who goes to the heart of the most serious and egregious of the president’s misconduct, who has volunteered to come and testify, to turn him away, to look the other way, I think, is deeply at odds with being an impartial juror.
AMY GOODMAN: White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin disagreed on the question about calling witnesses.
PATRICK PHILBIN: The point of whether this chamber should hear from Ambassador Bolton. And I think it’s important to consider what that means, because it’s not just a question of, “Well, should we just hear one witness?” That’s not what the real question is going to be. For this institution, the real question is: What is the precedent that is going to be set for what is an acceptable way for the House of Representatives to bring an impeachment of a president of the United States to this chamber? And can it be done in a hurried, half-baked, partisan fashion?
AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we will go to Washington, D.C., where we’ll be joined by Neal Katyal, former acting U.S. solicitor general in the Obama administration. He’s a professor at Georgetown and author of the book Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump. In a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Take It High Now” by the Soul Rebels. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. And we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Neal Katyal, former acting U.S. solicitor general in the Obama administration, Supreme Court lawyer and Georgetown University law professor. Neal Katyal is also the author of the book Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Neal Katyal. We want to go right to, well, that explosive claim by President Trump’s lawyer Alan Dershowitz, his claim of executive power that says a sitting president can take any action to boost his re-election chances if he feels his re-election is in the public interest. If you could start off by weighing in on that, and then talk about the significance of what happened yesterday, where we moved to that period of 16 hours of the senators asking questions, through the Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, who’s presiding over the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump?
NEAL KATYAL: OK. So, Amy, thanks. It’s great to be on your show.
And with respect to what you were saying about Professor Dershowitz, you called it a “claim” by Professor Dershowitz. I think the technical legal word is a “joke.” That is, nobody, no responsible constitutional scholar in two centuries, agrees with Dershowitz. And you can’t like chalk them all up as biased politically or something like that. You can go back decades; you’ll never find a serious scholar saying anything like what he said yesterday. And that’s for a very simple reason: Impeachment is the people’s check against an abusive president. It was laced into our Constitution by our Founders.
And the idea that a president can simply say, “Oh, I think my re-election is in the national interest, therefore I can do whatever I want,” is stupid. I mean, it’s just a ridiculous argument. It would mean, for example, that President Nixon, when ordering the Watergate break-in of the DNC headquarters, didn’t commit an impeachable offense. It would mean that a president could use the Army to go threaten Democrats who voted for Democratic candidates instead of voting for him. It could even mean that the president could shoot his opponent and say, “Hey, you know, my re-election is in the national interest, so I can do whatever I want.” You know, this is not even good — this is not even bad constitutional lawyering; it’s atrocious constitutional lawyering.
And, you know, I’d say one more point about this. This lawyer, Dershowitz, is hired by the president, so he is going out there and advocating what the president wants him to advocate. And any president who has these views has to be removed. I mean, that is the definition of why you have impeachment in there, because he doesn’t believe in the rule of law. He thinks that he’s above it, as long as his motivations for re-election are pure and he’s in the national interest. And our Founders, the whole idea — you go back to The Federalist Papers, Federalist 51 — men aren’t angels. That’s why government is necessary. That’s why the double security of checks and balances is necessary, Madison says. All of that is being destroyed in this moment by the president’s arguments.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Neal Katyal, could you also talk about how Trump’s legal team, more generally, has been dealing specifically with Bolton’s book revelations, which are quite explosive? First they ignored them, then said they’re inadmissible, then Dershowitz saying it doesn’t matter if they’re true or not because it would not, quote, “rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense.”
NEAL KATYAL: Yeah. So let me first back up, so all your listeners and watchers know what’s going on. So, Article 1 of the presidential impeachment articles says that the president abused power. It essentially says that he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by trying to coerce a foreign government to announce an investigation into his chief political rival, Joe Biden. Now, the president has said, “Oh, no, I was just fighting corruption, and that’s what I was trying to do, and that’s why I withheld the aid,” which has always been a kind of ludicrous argument on its facts, because he can’t name a single other place in the world where he actually cared about corruption. And in response, for example, yesterday to Senator Collins’s question, his lawyers couldn’t come up with any explanation of how Trump only magically cared about corruption after Biden entered the presidential race and not before. So it’s always been weak.
But what Bolton did is destroy it, because Bolton, according to The New York Times’ revelations about his book, say that’s not why Trump did it. He wasn’t trying to fight corruption; he was doing it for his political campaign. So that’s why the Bolton testimony is so important. And that’s why Trump is so scared, scared to daylights, that Bolton will testify or, frankly, that anyone in the executive branch will testify, which is why he’s tried to gag every executive branch employee.
So, what Trump’s lawyers are doing — to get to your question — is they’re trying, basically, a game of misdirection. They’re like, “Look over here. Look at what the House did wrong. Look over there. Look at what the Democrats did wrong. And this and that.” But at the end, the central thing is this, and this is what I hope the House managers today focus on, that Trump has produced no evidence at all, zero evidence, to exonerate him. The House managers, by contrast, have produced over a dozen witnesses that all point the finger directly at Trump. The transcript itself points a finger directly at Trump. He has no evidence to the contrary, because he’s afraid to put any evidence in the record, any witness, any document. And in a world in which you’ve got evidence on one side and nothing on the other, except a lawyer’s argument and conjecture, like his lawyers — Trump’s lawyers yesterday, I don’t think this is, frankly, very close. And it would be a grave, grave disservice to try and acquit the president on the basis of this record. It would be obviously in contravention of their oath to do impartial justice.
AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts read a question submitted by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. This is Chief Justice Roberts, followed by, well, Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz.
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: “The House has repeatedly impeached, and the Senate has convicted, officers for high crimes and misdemeanors that were not indictable crimes. Even Mr. Dershowitz said in 1998 that an impeachable offense, quote, 'certainly doesn't have to be a crime,’ end-quote. What has happened in the past 22 years to change the original intent of the framers and the historic meaning of the term 'high crimes and misdemeanors'?”
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: What happened since 1998 is that I studied more, did more research, read more documents and, like any academic, altered my views. That’s what happens. That’s what professors ought to do.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Alan Dershowitz responding to Senator Manchin’s question, read through the Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. Neal Katyal, if you can talk about the substance of the question and answer? And then let’s talk a little about Chief Justice Roberts and how much he can bring his justice experience, how much he can weigh in. It’s so unusual, what is taking place right now, chief justice of the United States presiding over the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.
NEAL KATYAL: Thank you. I’m not going to impugn Professor Dershowitz’s motives or anything like that. I don’t know. Only he knows what’s in his head. But I’d like to hear about what sources he actually studied, because, as I was saying a moment ago, no responsible constitutional scholar — not just now, but for the last two centuries — says anything like what he said yesterday. I mean, the only scholar that I suppose he could find is a guy named Richard Nixon, who said it back in 1977 to David Frost. But, really, no serious scholar says so, and for good reason. You know, there’s lots of stuff that’s impeachable but that isn’t a crime. You know, just take the example: Suppose the president is really upset at Justin Trudeau for dissing him at a global conference, and so the president decides to nuke Canada. That is not a crime. There’s no criminal law that prevents it. But it’s obviously impeachable. Or to take an example that might be a little bit closer to reality, suppose Putin decides to invade Boston and New York tomorrow, and the president doesn’t put up a defense. That is, again, not a crime, but it’s obviously impeachable behavior. And so, you know, crimes have never been the standard, which is as I think Senator Manchin said in his question. They’ve never been the standard, both before 1998 nor after.
Now, your second part of your question had to do with the role of the chief justice. And, you know, I’m fortunate I’ve argued 41 cases before our chief justice. You know, he’s far more conservative than I am, but he’s always fair. I disagree with some of the rulings, but they’re based on a sense of law and a sense of justice. And I think Americans should be glad that he’s presiding over this trial. And yesterday night, Representative Schiff did something which I’ve been expecting for a while, which is to say, “Look, we think this whole witness question should be decided by the chief justice.” As I wrote about it in The New York Times, I think there’s a easy case, that the chief justice can decide whether or not witnesses can be subpoenaed. There’s a harder question about whether it requires 51 senators to overrule him or two-thirds of the Senate to overrule him. And I acknowledge there’s a bunch of debate about that. But I don’t think there’s any serious debate that the chief justice, in the first instance, can authorize the subpoenas of these witnesses. And John Roberts is a real judge, who’s presided over so many cases. He knows that you can’t have a trial without witnesses. There’s no such thing. And so, I think that Representative Schiff did the right thing yesterday in saying he’s going to try and leave this in the chief justice’s hands. And I hope the Republicans do the same thing. I mean, I think all Americans should have faith in this chief justice.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, on Wednesday, the first question came from Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah. They’re the Republicans considered most open to voting in favor of allowing witnesses. They asked Trump’s legal defense team to explain if Trump was culpable if he had mixed motives. This is Trump attorney Patrick Philbin responding.
PATRICK PHILBIN: If there’s both some personal motive but also a legitimate public interest motive, it can’t possibly be an offense, because it would be absurd to have the Senate trying to consider, “Well, was it 48% legitimate interest and 52% personal interest? Or was it the other way? Was it 53% and 47?” You can’t divide it that way.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Neal Katyal, could you respond to that?
NEAL KATYAL: Yeah. I think the most central thing is that the president, if he thinks it’s 52% or 48% or even 90% or whatever in the public interest, he’s got to come out and testify and say so. Right now there’s witness after witness who’s testified, under oath, in the Congress, that the president did this because he was trying to get political points and to get an investigation announced, not even the substance in a real investigation, but just one announced, against Joe Biden by the Ukrainian government. So if the president really believes he had mixed motives, he’s got to have the guts to go and tell that to the American people, and in particular to the Senate of the United States. Until that, it’s just a bunch of lawyer talk and is wholly unpersuasive.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Republicans saying reciprocal witnesses? If the Democrats get Bolton, the Republicans get Joe Biden, Hunter Biden. They get someone for each one that the Democrats get. Talk about the significance of this. What is a material witness? And ultimately, who decides?
NEAL KATYAL: Well, it’s very frustrating, because, you know, I think the Democrats and the House managers have really approached this from the standpoint of trying to get a search for the truth, treating the Senate as, effectively, a court of law and trying to get witnesses who are relevant and material, meaning that they have information that’s pertinent to the allegations against them. And the senators, the Republican senators, by contrast, keep on threatening, “Oh, we’re going to call Joe Biden. It will be bad for your political stuff.” And I just think that they’re talking two different languages. The House is really talking the language of the rule of law, and the Senate Republicans are really talking the language of politics, which is, I think, an enormously destructive force.
Look, if they want to make a case that Hunter Biden or Joe Biden is truly relevant to this, great. But as you were just saying a moment ago, I thought the president’s defense was that he had mixed motives in his own head. And there’s only really one true witness who can explain that defense and what’s in his head, and that’s Donald Trump. And until he goes and says so on the stand, all of this has to be taken with more than a grain of salt. There’s really nothing to it, and particularly when you have witness after witness saying, “Uh-uh, you told me your motivation was something else.” And, you know, that is exactly what Ambassador Bolton, according to The New York Times, said in his book. And the idea that we could come to any sort of resolution on this central set of allegations without hearing from him is like it’s a mockery of American justice. It’s much more like the Soviet system. And I don’t think it’s going to work. I think if the Senate really voted tomorrow to not have any witnesses and to rush to acquittal of Trump, I think all that’s going to do is force a rolling impeachment of this president. The House is then going to go back and call all these witnesses, and they’ll all come forward, and the Bolton book will come out, and these Republicans who voted for no witnesses will have the blood of the Constitution on their hands.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Neal, one of the arguments, as you know, that Trump’s lawyers have been making is that by calling witnesses, that will automatically lead to endless litigation. Could you respond to that? You recently wrote a piece saying that Trump’s lawyers are in fact wrong in making that argument.
NEAL KATYAL: Yeah, this is a really easy one. I wrote in The Washington Post yesterday, with Josh Geltzer, the reason. And so, in the House, it’s true that if they tried to call Bolton or other folks, the president had said he was going to try and fight this in the courts through executive privilege. But in the Senate, it’s a whole different thing, because the chief justice presides over the Senate impeachment trial, and he’s right there and can decide any executive privilege question. And indeed, the United States Supreme Court, in a case about 20 years ago, said that the federal courts have no business in impeachment trials reviewing what’s going on. They called it nonjusticiable. So, you can’t make a federal court case out of impeachment. And so the chief justice is going to be the last word. And that’s exactly what Representative Schiff said late last night on the floor of the Senate. And so, we’re talking about days, not months or years, but days, to have an executive privilege claim invoked and resolved.
Now, it’s not even clear to me the president would invoke executive privilege. He never has. When you invoke executive privilege, you’ve got to actually show the documents or the testimony that you want to be privileged. And here, I think the president is quite afraid to show those documents, because they show that he’s guilty. And, you know, there’s any number of other problems with the executive privilege claim, the fact that he’s waived it by talking about all this stuff ahead of time and the like. So, I think it’s a bogus claim, and it’ll be easily resolved, and no senators should be worried that this is going to delay things in any serious fashion.
AMY GOODMAN: Neal Katyal, we’re asking you a lot about what happened yesterday, which was the beginning of the senators asking actions through the chief justice, who’s presiding over the trial, John Roberts. But, overall, the Senate impeachment trial that has been taking place — I mean, you wrote a book on impeachment, that just came out — what has surprised you most? What information did you not realize? Has anything changed your mind? And do you think it’s possible, if Hunter Biden, for example, were forced to take the stand, that new information would come out?
NEAL KATYAL: So, I wrote the book, which is called Impeach, as a kind of citizen’s guide to impeachment. It’s 150 pages long, and it goes through the history of impeachment, starting with the Philadelphia Convention, and brings us up to the present day and the allegations against President Trump.
And to answer your question, I don’t think anything that’s come out has changed anything that I wrote in the book since it came out about a month and a half ago. If anything, it’s just the case against Trump has become stronger, because each week there’s new revelations, whether it’s the Bolton book this week or the Lev Parnas testimony last week or the Office of Management — excuse me, the GAO, General Accounting Office, saying what the president did with Ukraine is illegal, the week before. So, you just have more and more evidence. And the trajectory of this all points in the president’s guilt. There’s no new evidence that’s come out ever, since the whistleblower report in September, that says the president is innocent. It all points in that same direction.
And you asked me what I was surprised about since I wrote the book. I guess I’d say one thing. You know, the beginning of the book talks about what I call the yardstick rule, which, to me, is the essence of what the rule of law is about, which is, it doesn’t matter who the parties are before you. The whole idea of law is that justice is blind. That’s why Lady Justice in the statues is blindfolded. You get the same justice whether you’re a man or woman, or a Republican or a Democrat. And so, in the book, I say, as a thought experiment, just pretend that these allegations about Ukraine were against President Obama instead of against President Trump. How would you vote? And I said each senator should look in the mirror in the morning and ask themselves that very simple question. And it’s just as much true for Democrats as Republicans. And, you know, for me, at least, I believe the answer is very clear. I don’t care — I loved President Obama. But if he did this, I’d be the first one to march down there and say, “You’re out of there.” And it’s surprising to me that the Republicans have marched in lockstep, so much so they’re afraid to even have witnesses. It’s kind of become a party of the three monkeys and seeing no evil and hearing no evil and just willfully closing their eyes and ears to anything to the contrary. And that is a really, really sad thing for me as an American. I believe in a party system. I believe in vibrant debate. And what I’m saying right now is the collapse of the Republican Party. They stand for nothing, if they can’t stand for the most simple, basic precepts of the rule of law, which is, you know, “Heck, we don’t want a president who cheats in his re-election.”
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Neal Katyal, who would you like to see — as the Senate impeachment trial continues, who would you like to see testify, and what kinds of documents do you think should be brought in as evidence?
NEAL KATYAL: So, I think that there’s basically two groups of people who I’d like to testify. I’ll end that, and then I’m going to have to go. So, the first is, I think the most important person, as we were talking about a moment ago, is President Trump himself. His whole defense is “I had pure motives. I did nothing wrong. I wanted to fight corruption in Ukraine.” If he really thinks so, go tell it under oath to the American people, and let’s see what they think of that explanation. So, I think he’s the most important witness, given the defense, given all the allegations against him, including now by his own national security adviser, John Bolton.
And then, second, the witnesses with firsthand information, that the president has blocked so far from testifying. So that’s John Bolton, the former national security adviser; Mick Mulvaney, who’s the acting chief of staff; John Duffey, who’s the Office of Management and Budget official; and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. So I think it’s that group of five witnesses and the documents that they had in relation to the Ukraine situation that we’d like to see.
AMY GOODMAN: Neal Katyal, we want to thank you so much for spending this time with us, former acting U.S. solicitor general in the Obama administration, Georgetown University law professor. Neal Katyal is the co-author of Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.
When we come back, Coded Bias, a new film, has premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival, taking on racial and gender bias in artificial intelligence. Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-01-30--Headlines for January 30, 2020

Headlines for January 30, 2020

President Trump ’ s legal team offered an extraordinary new defense during the president ’ s impeachment trial on Wednesday .
Attorney Alan Dershowitz said that a sitting president could take any action to boost his re-election chances if he felt his re-election was in the public interest .
Alan Dershowitz : “ If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest , that can not be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.
” Meanwhile , Democrats are trying to secure enough votes to get Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testify .
Bolton has written in a forthcoming book that Trump personally told him he wanted to maintain a freeze on military aid to Ukraine until Ukraine turned over materials related to former Vice President Joe Biden .
The White House is attempting to halt publication of Bolton ’ s book , claiming it contains classified information .
This is Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine .
Sen. Tim Kaine : “ Before there ’ s a vote on conviction or acquittal , there ’ s going to be a vote on whether this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s what the vote ’ s going to be , likely , on Friday : Is this a trial , or is this a sham ?
” Hundreds of protesters descended on Capitol Hill Wednesday to demand the Senate call witnesses as part of Trump ’ s impeachment trial .
This is Reverend William Barber speaking at the protest .
Rev .
William Barber : “ What we ’ re seeing in the United States Senate is as bad as what we saw in Jim Crow .
It is McConnell and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States Senate.
” We ’ ll have more on the impeachment trial after headlines .

President Trump’s legal team offered an extraordinary new defense during the president’s impeachment trial on Wednesday. Attorney Alan Dershowitz said that a sitting president could take any action to boost his re-election chances if he felt his re-election was in the public interest.
Alan Dershowitz: “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to secure enough votes to get Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton to testify. Bolton has written in a forthcoming book that Trump personally told him he wanted to maintain a freeze on military aid to Ukraine until Ukraine turned over materials related to former Vice President Joe Biden. The White House is attempting to halt publication of Bolton’s book, claiming it contains classified information. This is Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine.
Sen. Tim Kaine: “Before there’s a vote on conviction or acquittal, there’s going to be a vote on whether this is a trial or a sham. That’s what the vote’s going to be, likely, on Friday: Is this a trial, or is this a sham?”
Hundreds of protesters descended on Capitol Hill Wednesday to demand the Senate call witnesses as part of Trump’s impeachment trial. This is Reverend William Barber speaking at the protest.
Rev. William Barber: “What we’re seeing in the United States Senate is as bad as what we saw in Jim Crow. It is McConnell and other senators bringing old Southern justice to the United States Senate.”
We’ll have more on the impeachment trial after headlines.