On Episode 61 of War Room: Impeachment Jim Schultz, lawyer and former Associate White House Counsel to Donald Trump, joined Stephen K. Bannon to discuss the Presidentâs lack of participation in the Judiciary hearings, the Democratsâ game plan, and whether or not the hearsay evidence the Democrats base their impeachment case on is admissible.
Bannon began the discussion by asking Schultz about the White Houseâs participation in the House inquiry: âPat Cipollone sent a letter [to the House Judiciary] yesterday saying, âweâre not in, weâre not going to participate in this.â Do you think thatâs a smart move, not a smart move? Strategically how do you place this?â
âItâs consistent with what theyâve been doing. I think itâs a good move,â the former White House Counsel said.
He elaborated: âThis process has been problematic from the beginning. It started out in Nadlerâs committee and that was a train wreck. Corey Lewandowski came and embarrassed them, and they couldnât ask a question. It wasnât an effective way to prosecute any case. So they move it over into Schiffâs committee. They do that in the basement, itâs leak, leak, leak. And now we get to the point where they do this third phase which has been, quite frankly, another fake hearing if you will. This whole process has been flawed from the beginning.â
âNixon and Clinton: they fought tooth and nail in Judiciary, did they not?â Bannon asked.Â
âRight, but this is a little different.â Schultz explained: âIn Nixon there was a criminal investigation, in Clinton there was an independent counsel that did an investigation. In this case, it was Adam Schiffâs sham committee that kind of rammed everything through.â
He noted: âAnd by the way, the President has every right to object to witnesses coming in there for executive privilege and a number of other things. And in this instance, the Democrats in Congress didnât take those matters to court. So you have got witnesses that didnât even come in and testifyâŠâ
â[Democrats] donât care what the facts are, they just want to get it through [the Judiciary Committee] quickly. And part of that is that thereâs legal issues and the political issues. Polling is going down on this. The popularity of impeachment at this point in time in waning, and itâs going down day by day. If Iâm the Democrats in the House, I want to get this through as quickly as possible, and get it over with, and get it in the Senate.â
You can listen to the War Room: Impeachment podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and Soundcloud.
âLet me counter that,â Bannon interjected. âIf the President participated, could he not have slowed it down? Nadler actually asked them: âwhat do you want to do to participate?â Could he not have slowed this process down and pushed it into 2020?â
âWhy push it into 2020?â Schultz pushed back. âThe best evidence in this case came out months ago: the transcript. The rest of it is all crowd noise. All these witnesses that came throughâŠif they were testifying in a court of law, if they had to go and testify as to the knowledge they had a lot of the facts that were derived from their testimony would be inadmissible in a court of law.â
Bannon clarified with the former White House Counsel: âWill it be inadmissible in the Senate trial?âÂ
âThat depends on how the Senate approaches this thing.â Schultz furthered: âIf they apply the federal rules of evidence to it a lot of this would not be admissible. Thereâs a reason why our courts donât accept hearsay evidence: because itâs not reliable. At the end of the day, itâs not reliable. And in this instance, thatâs all [the Democrats] have. The best evidence here is that transcript.â