Get your popcorn: here come the televised impeachment hearings against Donald Trump
There are three reasons the House impeachment inquiry testimony has all been behind closed doors thus far. The first is the witnesses can’t know what the others are going to say. The second is that it’s difficult for Donald Trump to dishonestly spin what these witnesses are saying if he doesn’t know what they’re saying. The third reason has been more of a matter of timing.
For House Democrats, the key to holding successful televised House impeachment hearings is to make sure they know what each witness is going to say before they say it. The House has to stitch together a cohesive narrative about Donald Trump and his co-conspirators so the American public finds it easy to understand and digest. Thanks to their respective closed door testimonies, for instance, the House now knows that the evasive and apparently self-perjuring Gordon Sondland won’t be a good witness to put on television, but the honest and organized Bill Taylor will make a great TV witness.
The question has been when the House will reach a point where it’s plowed through all of the key witnesses, knows the full narrative, knows which witnesses belongs on television, and knows what these witnesses would specifically be asked about. Here’s the thing. By all accounts, Bill Taylor was the key cooperating witness in the Ukraine scandal. Yesterday’s testimony from the Defense Department’s Laura Cooper seemed to be simply about connecting the dots from Taylor’s testimony. There are still a few more closed-door witnesses scheduled, but the Washington Post says that’s about to end.
The House is now roughly three weeks away from launching televised impeachment hearings, according to a new WaPo report. House Democrats plan to take everything that’s been said behind closed doors thus far, distill it down to a cohesive narrative for the general public, and have the most useful witnesses testify for all to see. Bring it on.
