and the person is a middle bank robbery and the person then drops the money and says i am literally without the money everybody's understands that's burr that's robber asperger's we're going to write you. and in this situation we've got somebody really caught in the middle of it and that doesn't excuse the person. you are watching al-jazeera at 700 hours g.m.t. may day in washington d.c. where the next phase of the proceedings against donald trump is underway right now in the u.s. house of representatives the house judiciary committee weighing up evidence gathered by democrats who accuse president trump of abuse of power and obstruction and the democrats right now are questioning 4 constitutional experts at this impeachment hearing the scholars have been testifying to establish the gravity of president alleged crimes they include 3 witnesses 3 constitutional experts

called by the democrats and one by the republicans who have been questioned by the democrats right now they will be questioned by republicans later as speak to melanie sloan who is a former federal prosecutor she is live with us from washington d.c. melanie thank you so much for your patience and for being with us what do you make of what we've heard so far in the past 2 hours. i think what we've heard norm aizen do is try and go through each and every element that the democrats want to use in the articles of impeachment and also have him go through all of the republican arguments for example we've heard repeatedly the republicans say because the ukraine is did not come out and make the announcement that. president that vice president biden and his son were under investigation that it doesn't count and because the the money from ukraine was ultimately the money to ukraine was

ultimately given it doesn't count and we've just heard all 3 law professors refute that and of course it makes sense i mean any time the attempted robbery of the bank i thought was a pretty good analogy. but that's what you are hearing aizen do is try and go through both all of the elements of the crimes and all of the defenses that the republicans are trying to put out there and i think he's trying to do that ahead of the republican questioning already setting up answers to what we will expect to hear later in the hearings this is the last step just to remind our viewers the last step in the process before lawmakers would vote on impeaching president trump when what do you expect the republican strategy is going to be in this phase. well i think the republicans are going to ignore all 3 of these witnesses just as normalise and has ignored professor turley and the republicans will only go to

professor turley and then they will try to set up all of the defenses go back to all the things that we've already been hearing about and then we'll see party line votes all the republicans will vote against impeachment all the democrats will vote for it and in some sense everything that's happening today is just political theater that the outcome is already preordained yeah interesting that you say that i mean this is coming up right against a presidential election cycle will it be you think ultimately the american voters who decide on donald trump's fate ultimately it will because although the house is certain to both the judiciary committee will vote out these articles of impeachment and the house of representatives will ultimately vote to impeach the president because it is controlled by the democrats then the matter goes over to the senate for conviction and the republicans control the senate and we have not heard any republicans yet say that they would be willing to vote to impeach the president even some of the more moderate republicans have mostly been silent but we would

need i think the democrats would need 6 republicans to cross over and vote with them in order to impeach the president and we're simply not going to see that so ultimately this will be a matter for the american public and polling shows that the american public already has pretty firm views about impeachment all of the hearings that were held by the house intelligence committee did not really shift the american public's view which is split nearly down the middle republicans still support the president and democrats believe that he should be impeached as they have for quite some time so you know a lot of our international viewers going to wonder then what's the point of all of this said. well i think in part the democrats did believe that the house intelligence committee hearings which featured people who were not partisan but but well established bureaucrats in the department of state people with really stellar reputations like fiona hill. i think they thought that hearing from those people

about ambassador taylor and ambassador yavanna mitch hearing from those people people would convince sort of rank and file republicans regular people that the president really had done something wrong this wasn't a group of partisans who were out to attack the president and so it is somewhat surprising that all of their testimony has not mattered has not moved the needle so i don't think that testimony was all the outcome was preordained but having heard from that it was very clear that the president had committed what could be considered impeachable offenses and yet it didn't move the needle for rank and file republican voters today is hearing by the judiciary committee which has the responsible for the responsibility ultimately to move the articles of impeachment i mean this is a little more political theater having all of these constitutional law professors who are very well established and very respectable people but nothing that they say is really going to change anything and i thank you so much for sharing your views with us melanie let's go back to the hearings now and again in

a constitutional lawyer experts being questioned by the democrats methicillin chamar campaign official sam a personal lawyer of the president goofy new drooling collectively these are evidence of obstruction just how serious is that evidence of obstruction of justice it is quite serious and that's not all of that of course and. we know as you've mentioned before and others have mentioned obstruction of justice has been recognized an impeachable offense both against president clinton president nixon and this evidence that's been put forward by mr mueller that's in the public record is very strong evidence of obstruction of justice professor karlan when you look at the department of justice arrests russia investigation and how the president responded to that and when you look at congress' ukraine investigation and how the president responded to that do you see a pattern. yes i see

a pattern in which the president's views about the propriety of foreign governments intervening in our election process are the antithesis of what our framers were committed to our framers were committed to the idea that we as americans we as americans decide our elections we don't want foreign interference in those elections and the reason we don't want foreign interference in those elections is because we are a self determining democracy and if i could if i could just read one quotation to you that i think is helpful in understanding this it's somebody who's pointing to what he calls a straightforward principle it is fundamental to the definition of our national political community that foreign citizens do not have a constitutional right to participate in and thus may be excluded from activities of democratic self-government and the person who wrote those words is now justice brett kavanaugh in upholding the constitutionality of

a federal statute that denies foreign citizens the right to participate in our elections by spending money on electioneering or by giving money to pacs they have long been forbidden to give contributions to candidates and the reason for that is because that denies us our right to self government and then judge now justice brett kavanaugh was so correct in saying this that the supreme court which as you know has taken campaign finance case after campaign finance case to talk about the 1st amendment summarily affirmed here that is they don't even need to hear argument to know that it's constitutional to keep foreigners out of our election process and professor feldman you were somewhat of pietschmann skeptic at the time of the release of the mullen report were you not it was what's changed for use or. what changed for me was the revelation of the july 25th call and then the evidence that emerged subsequently of the president of the united states in

a format where he was heard by others and now known to the whole public openly abused his office by seeking a personal advantage in order to get himself reelected and act against the national security of united states and that is precisely the situation that the framers anticipated it's very unusual for the framers predictions to come to that precisely and when they do we have to ask ourselves some day we will no longer be alive and we'll go wherever it is we go the good place or the other place and you know we may meet there madison and hamilton and they will ask us when the president of united states acted to corrupt the structure of the republic what did you do and our answer that question must be that we followed the guidance of the framers and it must be that if the evidence supports that conclusion that the house of representatives moves to impeach him thank you i yield my time back to the chairman

and my time has expired are you back. before we recognize before i recognize the ranking member for his round 1st round of questions the committee will stand in a 10 minute humanitarian recess. i ask everyone in the room to please remain seated and quiet while the witnesses exit the room i also want to announce to those in the audience that you may not be guaranteed your seat if you leave the hearing room at this time. and once the witnesses have left the hearing room at this time the committee will stand in the short recess. so the session has gone into a 10 minute recess as announced by the chair of the house judiciary committee jerry nadler the impeachment inquiry into us present now into the hands of the house judiciary committee and we've heard in the last 23 hours almost now from

34 constitutional law professors 3 who were requested by democrats and one by republicans who have basically been been testifying and who have been. questioned and the house judiciary committee basically weighing up the evidence which has been gathered by the democrats who remind you accuse president of abuse of power and obstruction they 1st start to speak was a constitutional expert and harvard law professor noah feldman who said he believes that president trump has committed impeachable offenses offenses rather and all 3 other experts who were called by the democrats shared his views the only one not to share their views was a 4 c. expert called by the republicans who said that he didn't think what happened the process basically this impeachment process was wrong in his own words

we've been speaking to melanie sloan about this who is a form of federal prosecutor she joins us now live from washington d.c. so melanie they have now gone into recess for about 10 minutes and then the republicans will question the constitutional law experts say will be their turn what do you expect their strategy to be. i think we'll see some more fireworks will see some very aggressive questioning by the republicans to at undermining the case that professors pressers called by the democrats have made but they did an excellent job and again remember that these are highly respected law professors some of the stars in their field we've seen already on twitter one of the campaign advisors kimberly guilfoyle calling these people to star legal illegal stars but they are in fact the top of their field and we will see republicans who don't know the constitution and constitutional law quite as well as these law professors try

to attack what they've said but also you might see them some of them just ignore those professors and move straight to professor turley to try and back up the idea that this has been a rush to judgment that we haven't heard from everybody we need to hear from that the facts aren't enough to make out impeachment i think that's what presser turley is trying to say that we need to hear from more witnesses of course the problem with that argument of we need to hear from our witnesses is the president has refused to cooperate with the investigation and so all the witnesses who should have come forward like john bolton for example refused to testify and there are subpoenas out in court and the democrats decided that they weren't going to let the trumpet ministration delay the proceedings by and lists court hearings which could bring us through another year if we if that was the plan so that's certainly how republicans will attempt to play it rush to judgment and we this is an impeachable there's nothing to see here right this hearing today in the house judiciary

committee coming just a day after the republicans the democrats the congressional democrats release a 300 page report in which describe precisely how president trump abused the power of his office the report alleges that president trump and a group of senior officials and associates try to coerce ukraine into investigating . his potential domestic rival joe biden in effect soliciting a foreign power to interfere in the u.s. election and that's what the constitution experts have been talking about as well any of you met any. of the democrats succeeded in presenting. out how what and what donna did wrong how they've been successful in doing that i guess i think that's what counsel normalize and tried to go through each element of what what is required for impeachment and then each of the presidents acts that that meets those requirements and i think they did

a really great job of laying that out and we heard michael gerhardt say that if this is not impeachable basically nothing is what conduct could be if this is not and while professor turley has tried to make the argument that we're going to be in trouble if we go down impeachment for for these this particular conduct we heard the other 3 professor say it we would be in more trouble if we don't impeach the president for this because what would later presidents what would confine their behavior and i think that's a really good question that we'll have to grapple with but ultimately men and the this what we're hearing today and what we're going to be hearing in the coming days is not going to change much as it. no i don't think we're hearing anything different today than we've been hearing from the house intelligence committee we did learn a lot of interesting facts 3 house intelligence committee hearings when we had all of those people from the state department testifying and so we got the full picture of exactly what happened although i think that there 5 are still you know some some

questions remain the senate intelligence i mean the house intelligence committee's report offered some interesting new facts very new telephone records that had been subpoenaed and they show interesting lee enough that the ranking member of the house intelligence committee devon nunez was speaking to the white house and rudolph giuliani and left parnassus the one of the ukrainians who is now been indicted in the southern district of new york and so there's questions about what representative nunez is involvement in this whole ukrainian debacle is and so we may still learn new facts in the coming days i think that the senate the house intelligence committee is still interested in putting out more information but i think it's going to be a dribble and i don't think in the end any new fact is going to change people's minds people in america seem to be very very set there are the people who firmly believe that the president should be impeached that his conduct is beyond the pale

and then there are another half of the people who believe that basically like the president once said he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and it wouldn't matter i think you meant only for speaking to us melanie sloan there if you're joining us on al-jazeera continuing coverage of the hearing on the house judiciary committee in holding its 1st impeachment hearing into press donald trump as we mentioned cost to tional scholars have been testifying to establish the gravity of donald trump's and alleged crimes and the panel as we said includes 3 witnesses who have been called by the democrats 3 experts law experts and one by the republicans let's take a listen now to somewhat of what they've said so far on the case for or against impeachment. president trump's conduct as described in the testimony and evidence clearly constitutes impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors under the constitution

in particular the memorandum and other testimony relating to the july 25th 29000 phone call between the 2 presidents president trump and president selenski more than sufficiently indicates that president trump abused his office by soliciting the president of ukraine to investigate his political rivals in order to gain personal political advantage including in relation to the 2020 election as president john kennedy declared the right to vote in a free american election is the most powerful and precious right in the world but our elections become less free when they are distorted by foreign interference what happened in 2016 was bad enough there is widespread agreement that russian operatives intervene to manipulate our political process but that distortion is magnified if a sitting president abuses the powers of his office actually to invite foreign

intervention. i cannot help but conclude that this president has attacked each of the constitution's safeguards against establishing a monarchy in this country both the context and gravity of the president's misconduct are clear the favor he requested from ukraine as president was to receive in exchange for his use of presidential power ukraine's announcement of a criminal investigation of a political rival the investigation was not the important action for the president . the announcement was because of good then be used in this country to manipulate the public into casting aside the president's political rival because of concerns about his corruption so we heard that from the 3 constitutional experts called by the democrats to 3 witnesses called by the democrats but there was one called by the republicans and that's jonathan turley who's a non professor at. george washington university and he said that the grounds for impeachment foul shorts take a listen this case is not

a case of the unknowable it's a case of the peripheral we have a record of conflicts defenses that have not been fully considered and subpoenaed witness with material evidence i'm concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger i believe this impeachment not only fails to satisfy the standard of past impeachments it would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments. our lists go to high diesel castro who's watching all of this for us on capitol hill. again just to remind our viewers who are just joining us the impeachment inquiry now in the house judiciary committee what have been the main takeaway so far from what we've heard over the last 3 hours in albums. well from what you just heard the excerpts from the witnesses there certainly was a majority view on this 3 out of these 4 witnesses sounded

a unanimous alarm bell using language that translates to the american public that democracy in the u.s. faces a threat at this moment in their view they compared what trump has been doing to efforts to undermine the pillars of the constitution that prevent the stablished of a monarchy they used forceful language saying that if what trumps dealings with ukraine if those do not amount to impeachable offenses then nothing would in so however this plays out will not only be important as to who remains president of united states but also presidents to come and what sort of what sort of president they will follow of course we heard from that minority voice as well jonathan turley who is the only law professor that republicans were allowed to put on this panel and it's notable because in his opening prepared written statement he

actually made the case saying he didn't elect he didn't vote for trump in 2016 and in fact he said if trump tried to get election interference from ukraine in his favor in exchange of them that he was withholding u.s. security aid in exchange for that he said if that was proven it would be impeachable but then he adds the cov yet he does not believe that the evidence established thus far has proven that fact and surely as we hear republicans now have their opportunity to question these witness. it's further that will be the focus of their questions because the process itself is what republicans have been attacking and what this professor turley has been focusing as well he's calling this impeachment inquiry a rush he said this would be the one of the fastest impeachments in u.s. history and also one that rests on the few of the the thinnest evidence however of

course we know that in the weeks following leading up to this moment we have heard from 17 witnesses who were fact witnesses they were state department employees also and advisors from the white house who were rather unanimous in that they were concerned about the actions of trump and his dealings with ukraine and diplomats were united in their concern that this was putting the president's personal interests above the interests of national security just to pick up on something that you said heidi and this criticism of the democrats that they're trying to rush this whole process and it does feel like they want to be done with this before perhaps a christmas break why why are they wanting to move forward so quickly with this rather than continue with the investigations. well overshadowing all of this is the upcoming us elections in november of 2020 foley and the question is can this

president be held accountable by the impeachment process will that happen 1st before he is up for reelection for voters to decide well republicans have long said elections are just around the corner why don't we drop this impeachment and let the american people make their voices heard they're counting on holding to be correct that republicans the base for trump are still very fired up about their president and they're gambling on those voters giving him a 2nd term as far as the democrats though they're looking at this as of several factors one is how much patience as the american public have with this impeachment process if you think about the whole moller investigation in russia months the year and a half that it really took away a lot of the public's attention and in a sense there's an argument to be made that that it's actually made this ukraine impeachment inquiry more difficult for democrats in order to focus their attack on

the president and it's played into the republicans argument that democrats have been looking for any reason to remove trump from office that this is completely politically driven so democrats may be interested in getting this process moved along as quickly as possible to capitalize on the public's attention and also to get this done before the elections coming up in a year the way things are looking right now heidi is that there's going to be a highly probable partisan vote to impeach a president then it moves on to the senate so of course any indications that things might change in the senate. well at this point we know that the senate of course is dominated by republicans and the constitution says it needs a 2 thirds majority in the senate to convict the president in simply the numbers aren't there for that that would require 20 republicans to vote to convict

and so far not even one has voiced a full embrace of the impeachment so something big would still have to happen something completely unexpected could there possibly be testimony from trump's innermost circle of advisors we don't know perhaps that's a big mystery box yet to be opened because those advisors have refused to cooperate with investigators to offer their testimony so that's a big looming question is can those advisors be compelled to kill the core it's a rush their review of efforts to compel those testimonies with the tiny workout before the election probably not and so democrats are going forward even without that potentially very useful testimony hoping that what they have is enough to convince enough of the american public to jump on board which is there still that's about it even divide those who support or do not support impeachment and removal

and then going on from that to have that public mandate for impeachment may shift some minds in the republican senate. heidi thank you very much for the moment we will of course be checking in with you on capitol hill once the hearing resumes there how does your castro is our correspondent in washington d.c. again if you joining us on al-jazeera continuing coverage of the house judiciary committee hearing into present seem pretty impatient the democrats and republicans on the judiciary committee have been neighing out the battle lines in their opening statements says listen to the chair for a study 3 of the house judiciary committee who's a democrat jerry. facts before us are clear president trump did not merely seek to benefit from foreign interference in our elections he directly and explicitly invited foreign interference in our elections he used the powers of

his office to try to make it happen he sent his agents to make clear that this is what he wanted and demanded he was willing to compromise our security and his office for personal political gain it does not matter that president trump got caught and ultimately release the funds that ukraine so desperately needed it matters it that he enlisted a foreign government to intervene in our elections in the 1st place but if you want to know what's really driving this there's 2 things called the clock and the counter clock an account most people in life if you want what they truly value look at the clock you look at their checkbook in a calendar you know what they value that's what this committee values time they want to do it before the end of the year why because the chairman said it just a 2nd ago because we're scared of the elections next year we're scared the election that we'll lose again so we've got to do this now the clock in the calendar was

driving impeachment not the facts and we understand this that's what the witnesses here will say today. our as we wait for the hearing to resume on capitol hill in the house judiciary committee let's bring back melanie stone who's been with us. this afternoon here on al jazeera melanie is a former federal prosecutor and i thank you so much once again for being with us i just want to come back to something that was said in the opening statement of jerry and he put this in the context of the miller investigation which he was late to criticize for buy dot com in south ranking republican does the miller investigation matter in all this. while the motor investigation might matter it is entirely possible that the democrats will include a count of obstruction of justice based on the mohler report it's seems a long time ago already but remember bob mueller got up and finally spoke about about the report i gave a press conference in which he said that he didn't indict the president on

obstruction of justice because he believed that the department of justice regulations basically prevented him from doing so and that the question of obstruction of justice was one for the house of representatives so i think it's entirely possible we will see an allegation of obstruction in that regard included in the final impeachment counts all right melanie thank you again for being with us stand by we're going to go back now to the house judiciary committee because the proceedings are resume that is 1st round of questions pursuant to house resolution 660 the ranking member or his counsel and 45 minutes to question 2 witnesses remember. the. thank you mr chairman before i begin the question i do want to revisit a comment that was made earlier missed by you mr chairman as our demand for a minority hearing day and you say you would rule on it later i just want to remind you the rule has to not be admit a ruling on this they do not permit a vote you cannot shut it down and according to your own words minorities in title

day of hearings is a right rarely exercise but it's guards against majority abusing its power to exclude them beating the use call of the fair balance rule is not the chairman's right to determine whether we deserve a hearing it's not the chairman's right to decide whether we prior hearings were sufficient is not the chairman's right to decide whether what we say or think is acceptable is certainly no the chairman's right to violate the rules in order to interfere with our right to conduct a hearing and i just command mr sensenbrenner for bringing that forward and look forward to that schedule as you getting that scheduled expeditiously moving on. interesting part now we hit phase 2. you had one side and now i have to say it was eloquently argued by not only the counsel and by the witnesses involved but there is always a face to face 2 is what is problematic here because as i said i'm opening statement this is one that would be in for many one of the most disputed impeachments on just the facts themselves what was interesting is we actually showed videos of witnesses

in fact one was an opening statement again i believe which again the closest thing to perfect outside your resume this side of heaven is an opening statement because there's unchallenged and i agree with that and it should be and we've had great witnesses here today to talk about this but we didn't talk about anything about kurt volker who said nothing about him we said nothing about the morrison who contradicted binman and others were not done that and i don't expect the majority to because that's not what they're here for they're not here to give exult victoria evidence just like the report gives nothing of his gold dorio and also there's still evidence being withheld by adam schiff that is not come to this committee and we still not got any of the underlying stuff that came from that investigation according to age 60 we believe we're supposed to get one being the very important part is the inspector general the assay inspector general his testimony is still being held and there's a quote secret on it are there holding it in class cation last time i checked we have plenty of places in this building and other buildings to handle classified information if they still want to do that but it's being withheld from us i have to

believe now there's a reason it's being withheld because i'm ballet there's a problem with it and what does have to say is that goes forward so anybody in the media anybody watching today the 1st you know 45 minutes is when we went through have painted a very interesting picture it's painted an interesting picture that goes back many many years it paints an inching picture of picking and choosing which part of the last few weeks we want to talk about and that's fine because we'll have the rest of the day to go about this but professor turley you're now well rested. and you got one question you're asking yes no on and not given to elaborate but i want to start here let's just do this. elaborate if you would because you tried to on the question was asked to you and then if there's anything else that you've heard this morning that you would disagree with or how i am for some i will go ahead and tell you some time to talk by the way just for the information mr chairman this is the coldest hearing room.