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The Report: Impeachment, Day Eight

Margaret Taylor
Thursday, January 30, 2020, 11:31 AM

Lawfare and Goat Rodeo boiled the first day of Q&A down to the most essential one hour and 47 minutes.

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On the eighth day of the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump, the question-and-answer session began. Alternating between the Republican and Democratic senators, members submitted questions through Chief Justice John Roberts to the House managers and president’s counsel. After the chief justice read the question aloud, the party to whom the question was directed had five minutes to answer. Senators asked about facts of the case, context for understanding the president’s actions, the constitutional theories of impeachment advanced by each side and the stakes of impeaching President Trump.

It was a marathon day in the Senate, with questions proceeding well into the night. While this phase of the trial is vital to understanding the differences between the arguments for and against the president’s removal from office, many people do not have the time to watch roughly 10 hours of proceedings on the Senate floor. So Lawfare and Goat Rodeo boiled down the first day of Q&A to the most essential one hour and 47 minutes. It’s a long one, but a lot of substantive information was covered that we did not want you to miss.

It’s the impeachment trial, day eight.


Margaret L. Taylor was a senior editor and counsel at Lawfare and a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. Previously, she was the Democratic Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2015 through July 2018.

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