The one crucial thing House Democrats got out of Hope Hicks’ testimony

| 9:09 am EDT June 20, 2019
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Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks testified behind closed doors yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, and suffice it to say that it was a mixed bag. Hicks answered questions about some topics and not others, leaving various committee members to characterize her cooperation in starkly different terms. But the House Democrats did get one crucial thing out of Hicks’ testimony.

House Democrats are fighting an ongoing legal battle to force numerous witnesses to testify against Donald Trump, even as Trump makes gibberish arguments that they can’t testify due to privilege and immunity. In the end, the courts will rule that all of the witnesses must testify and answer all questions asked – but that will take months.

In the meantime, House Democrats only had two choices when it came to Hope Hicks: let her testify now on her terms, or not have her testify at all. We’ll have to wait for the transcript to see if anything she said yesterday is useful. But that’s less important than the asinine and cartoonish extent Trump’s lawyers went to yesterday, objecting whenever Hicks was asked any questions about her time in the White House – and that’s the part that matters.

Because Trump’s lawyers behaved in such bad faith yesterday with regard to privilege, it supercharged the House Democrats’ legal argument. Yesterday’s debacle will help ensure that the courts rule that all witnesses must testify, and it should help bring about that ruling more quickly. No matter how loudly certain pundits falsely claim that impeachment is a magic wand and the House Democrats just have to wave it in order to instantly make Trump disappear, back in the real world everything is going to come down to court rulings over testimony and evidence – and yesterday was all about helping the Democrats win those rulings.