Takeaways on the Trump impeachment: New phone records implicate Devin Nunes

WASHINGTON — Because we know how the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump will likely end does not diminish the historic significance of the times we are living through.

Trump is on track to be the third president to be impeached. Bill Clinton was the second. Andrew Johnson was the first. Richard Nixon quit to avoid the stain of the House voting articles of impeachment against him.

After a Senate trial, Johnson and Clinton were acquitted.

The Constitution sets a high bar for removal from office, two-thirds of the senators present.

If all 100 senators are in the chamber, it will take 67 votes to force Trump out of office. Since there are 53 Republican senators, there is no way — based on current evidence and the partisan climate — Trump will be convicted.

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday starts the work of drafting Articles of Impeachment against Trump with a hearing featuring a panel of law school professors discussing the “constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment.”

This is history coming at you in real time.

Some observations:

•I’m told that the target for the full Democratic-controlled House to vote on articles of impeachment is Dec. 19 or 20. Under that timetable, the GOP-run Senate will start the Trump trial in January. If the vote is on Dec. 19, it will be 20 years to the day Clinton was impeached.

•New and surprising information about phone calls surfaced in the 300-page draft House Intelligence Committee impeachment report, written following two weeks of hearings with testimony from a dozen witnesses.

Though the Trump administration tried to thwart the Intelligence panel’s Ukraine investigation by not cooperating with the production of documents and witnesses, the committee did obtain documentation of phone calls from AT&T and Verizon.

•Those phone records show that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the top Republican on the Intelligence panel, had a much deeper behind-the-scenes role than was known. Nunes activities did not come up in the hearings and he did not volunteer that he took on an expanded portfolio. The phone logs show calls between Nunes and Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in April, as the campaign to use Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden was ripening.

Republicans kept complaining about hearing from witnesses with second-hand information. It turns out that Nunes may have first-hand knowledge of events he kept to himself.

There are also logs about calls Giuliani made to the White House and calls Lev Parnas — the indicted Giuliani business associate — made to Giuliani and Nunes.

•Trump and his team complain that the proceedings are rigged against him. It’s true Democrats in the House control the rules and subpoenas. Though witnesses who testified defied the White House, there are plenty who complied with an order to stand down.

The report states, “Because the Constitution vests the House alone with “the sole Power of Impeachment,” it is not for the President to decide whether the House is exercising that power properly or prudently. The President is not free to arrogate the House’s power to himself — or to order across-the-board defiance of House subpoenas — based solely on his unilateral characterization of legislative motives or because he opposes the House’s decision to investigate his action.”

But he did.

•The Intelligence panel chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has 22 members. The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has 41 — none from Illinois. Each member will get at least one round of five minutes for questions.

•It appears that the articles of impeachment against Trump will focus on abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

•Votes in the House committees and on the floor are all expected to be on party lines.

•When Clinton was impeached in 1998, it was after midterm elections when the Democrats picked up five seats in the House, though the GOP remained in control. Clinton was impeached during his second term.

In 2019, the Trump impeachment comes a year after the midterms when the Democrats won control of the House — and as Trump is seeking a second term in 2020.