This week, Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas gave two bombshell cable news interviews — one with Rachel Maddow for MSNBC, one with Anderson Cooper for CNN. And in both interviews, Parnas laid out a compelling case for removing President Donald Trump from office via his impeachment trial. Presidential historian Jon Meacham, appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday morning, agreed that Maddow’s interview with Parnas was quite damning of Trump — and he stressed that how Senate Republicans respond to Parnas’ assertions will speak volumes about their integrity, or lack thereof.
Parnas, speaking to Maddow, made it clear that Trump and his supporters demanded an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — and in return for that investigation, Ukraine would get military aid.
Making a Watergate/Ukraine scandal comparison, Meacham told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that during the Summer of 1974, more and more Republicans in Congress were turning against President Richard Nixon. That summer, Meacham recalled, many “Republican partisans” — including Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater — were willing to act “in the national interest” rather than sticking by Nixon simply because he was a Republican. But Meacham is extremely skeptical that Parnas’ assertions will sway the Senate Republicans of 2020. Continue reading.
The impeachment battle is shifting to the Senate ahead of a weeks-long trial expected to get underway next week.
A Senate impeachment trial is a rare thing — it has happened only two other times in American history and once in the modern era. Here’s the nitty-gritty of how we believe each day will work, based on a reading of the Senate rules about how to hold trials, how President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial was run, and our current understanding of the expected schedule.
GOP leaders have no interest in turning the Senate into a circus with the hard-line demands of Trump’s House allies.