Dozens of House Republicans on Wednesday stormed a secure room in the basement of the U.S. Capitol where lawmakers were about to start an impeachment-related interview. The protest was billed as a demand for public impeachment proceedings. While more transparency would be a good thing, it’s not at all clear it would work to the advantage of President Trump or Republicans.
The Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees have been conducting interviews with key witnesses in the investigation into whether Trump withheld security aid to Ukraine as part of an effort to demand the country investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. While both Democratic and Republican lawmakers are able to ask questions, Democrats have only released opening statements from those testifying and selectively leaked parts of the testimony to media. They have eschewed public impeachment hearings in which everybody can see the testimony, and they have refused to release transcripts of the full interviews.
My colleague Tom Rogan has already explained why a stunt involving bringing cellphones into a secure room was so stupid. But it’s also worth thinking about the underlying transparency issue here.
There’s no doubt that it would greatly increase the media and public understanding of what’s going on in the impeachment process if there were open access to the full testimony and documents that lawmakers are considering. Reading opening statements has provided some helpful context to the events involving Ukraine that unfolded this past summer. But the opening statements also raise a number of obvious follow-up questions, many of which were no doubt asked during the questioning portion of the hearing that is out of public view.
That having been said, Republicans should know that a more transparent process is by no means a slam dunk. While, sure, it would include Republicans challenging witnesses on testimony that is damaging to Trump, it would also mean that damaging information would be that much more powerful.
Trump’s case took a hit on Tuesday after the testimony of the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor. The transcript of his opening remarks was bad enough for the president. But it would be even worse if there were actual camera footage of Taylor stating that he was “alarmed” after he was told that aid to Ukraine “was conditioned on the investigations” into 2016 and the Bidens, and that footage was inevitably played over and over.
My guess is that Republicans haven’t thought that far ahead. Trump’s underlying actions are increasingly difficult to defend, so it’s much easier to go after the secrecy of the process.
