Radio Recap – Here We Go Again: Week 2’s Impeachment Hearing Schedule

By 

Jay Sekulow

|
November 18, 2019

3 min read

Public Policy

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Here we go again. We’re entering week 2 of the impeachment inquiry public hearings.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed the upcoming witness testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.

Last week had three witnesses testify, Ambassador Yovanovitch, Ambassador Bill Taylor, and State Department Official George Kent.

Two additional witnesses testified behind closed doors this past weekend, Friday and Saturday. We don’t yet have transcripts from their testimony.

This week we’ll have eight witnesses testify:

  • Jennifer Williams, on assignment from the State Department as an aide to Vice President Mike Pence;
  • Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council;
  • Ambassador Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine;
  • Tim Morrison, a White House aide with the National Security Council;
  • Ambassador Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union;
  • Laura Cooper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs;
  • David Hale, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; and
  • Fiona Hill, former National Security Council Senior Director for Europe & Russia.

Tomorrow’s hearings start at 9am Eastern time, with Jennifer Williams and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testifying. Jennifer Williams, Lt. Col. Vindman, and Tim Morrison are the only people testifying this week that were actually on the Ukraine call.

There was a lot of discussion regarding Ambassador Yovanovitch’s testimony in the press but the most relevant information came from Congressman Chris Stewart’s exchange with Ambassador Yovanovitch on Friday:

CONGRESSMAN STEWART: Do you have any information regarding the President of the United States accepting any bribes?
MARIE YOVANOVITCH: No.
STEWART: Do you have any information regarding any criminal activity that the President of the United States has been involved with at all?
YOVANOVITCH: No.

There it is right there. There was no wrong doing and what you have at the core of all this is a dispute over policy.

ACLJ Senior Counsel and Director of Policy Harry Hutchison made the same point when he said on the show:

When you look at last week’s testimony carefully and if you parse it carefully, what do you find? At the bottom of this dispute is simply a policy dispute. Guess what? These Deep State actors do not have the right to make policy. Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the President. And so I think it is clear beyond question that essentially the impeachment hearings that we’ve witnessed so far about one thing only, trying to criminalize the President’s exercise of his Article 2 powers. And ultimately, [the House Majority is] trying to undermine the Constitution.

We also discussed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s appearance on Face the Nation. She didn’t make a lot of sense and also didn’t seem too certain about when this impeachment inquiry might end or whether it would even move forward to articles of impeachment:

BRENNAN: You use the term bribery.
PELOSI: Yeah, I was translating from the Latin. That-- that was in the context of E Pluribus Unum. For many, one. And so I said for many, one. Quid pro quo, bribery. Now that's what that is. Mm-Hm.
BRENNAN: So, but do you expect that to be one of the articles--
PELOSI: I have no idea. Well, there is not even a decision made to impeach the President.

It’s a busy week and we’ll keep you informed as events unfold.

You can listen to the entire episode here.