Midnight in Washington by Adam Schiff

Author:Adam Schiff [Schiff, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2021-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

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On the afternoon of Sondland’s aborted testimony, we received one of the most extraordinary letters from a White House counsel in American history, and something that we understood immediately would be Exhibit A in any potential impeachment based on the president’s obstruction of the lawful functions of Congress. There is advocacy on behalf of a client, and then there is an embrace of your client’s alternate reality. This was the latter.

In eight pages of breathless hyperbole, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone blasted the investigation as illegitimate. The inquiry, he wrote, “violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent.” It was a breach of “the most elementary due process protections” and was a “transparent rush to judgment.” Likewise, our “failure to provide co-equal subpoena power” to Republican members of the committee showed “utter disregard” for “procedural safeguards,” even though that had never been the practice in any prior impeachment.

“Never before in our history has the House of Representatives—under the control of either political party—taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue,” Cipollone wrote. “It is transparent that you have resorted to such unprecedented and unconstitutional procedures because you know that a fair process would expose the lack of any basis for your inquiry.” The call with Zelensky, he added, “was completely appropriate.” Anyone who thought otherwise had clearly been deceived by Schiff’s “decision to create a false version of the call and read it to the American people at a congressional hearing, without disclosing that he was simply making it all up.” Our true intention was not to uncover facts, he argued. It was “to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen.”

Cipollone’s letter had been written for one purpose, which he made clear at the end. “Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation,” he wrote, “the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it.”

For the next two days, I wondered whether the president would once again succeed in thwarting an investigation into his wrongdoing and without repercussion. Our next scheduled witness was the smeared and deposed former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, someone whom President Trump had already said was “going to go through some things” and who remained a current State Department employee. The White House was issuing talking points to Republican members to try to threaten and dissuade her from testifying by claiming that “there is serious danger that she could breach her obligations as a current employee not to reveal such information without authorization.” Would she be willing to defy the president and obey a lawful subpoena? Or would she fall in line?

My staff was in constant touch with her attorney, Lawrence Robbins. Robbins had represented a witness in the Russia investigation and been incensed when Republican staff engaged in unethical conduct surrounding that witness’s testimony. Robbins told us that Yovanovitch would obey a subpoena, but I was concerned that if

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