WASHINGTON — If you think Rep. Jim Himes relishes the opportunity to sit on the House impeachment panel when public hearings open on Wednesday, Himes himself would tell you you’re sadly mistaken.
“I take no pleasure in it,” said Himes, a member of the House intelligence committee that forms the nucleus of both Democratic and GOP team as hearings get underway. “It is distressing. I’ve always thought the way to defeat the president is overwhelming rejection at the polls in 2020.”
To be sure, Himes feels like he was late to the party last June when he announced support for an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. But as it turned out, his conversion to backing the impeachment path came well before anyone else in the Connecticut delegation.
Himes says he was concerned that impeachment — if it had to happen — should not look like a purely political exercise. He says it still bothers him today.
“Impeachment may not be helpful to the Democrats’ 2020 effort,” he said. “There’s some possibility Trump might win re-election because of impeachment and I’m glad the Speaker (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.) is determined to get it done this year.”
And the most worrying thing of them all, Himes said, is the potential for normalization of impeachment.
“I’m against impeachment for policy reasons,” Himes said, meaning you shouldn’t impeach a president because of disagreements over immigration, taxes or a myriad of other policy issues. “I don’t ever want to see impeachment become routine.’’
The impeachment-hearing format is not carved in granite yet. But what you’re likely to see when hearings open Nov. 13 is each party designating a staff lawyer to conduct questioning of witnesses. The lead-off is William Taylor, the veteran diplomat who’s gone the farthest in pinning this particular tail on the elephant, er, donkey.
Taylor was among the first to connect the Trump-Giuliani dots: No military aid for Ukraine until that nation’s government announces an investigation into Hunter Biden’s well-paid seat on the board of the Ukrainian energy-exploration firm, Burisma. The Democrats’ theory of the case, of course, is that the ultimate target was former Vice President Joe Biden, still a prime Dem contender in 2020.
Next up will be George Kent, a bow-tied and suit-vested State Department official who will affirm much of what Taylor says.
On Friday, the witness will be former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch, who grew up in Kent and went to the Kent School before embarking on a diplomatic career.
Himes says the parameters of their testimony are known by now, thanks to release of the deposition transcripts each gave to the committee behind closed doors.
But seeing it on live TV will dramatize the case in an easy-to-digest way.
“This is not a story that needs a lot of embellishment,” Himes said. “It’s not complicated. It just needs to be told.”
The last the House conducted impeachment hearings was 1998, against President Bill Clinton over lying about his intimate relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. At the time, Himes was a 32-year-old exec at Goldman Sachs, living in the same Cos Cob home he lives in today (minus the bee hives and maple syrup taps, one assumes).
“I remember being very troubled that a president would engage in such behavior with an intern,” he said. “I was really torn up by it.”
Did he ever imagine that he himself would be sitting on an impeachment panel some day?
“I’m not even sure that two years ago I would have imagined I would be part of an impeachment process,” he said.
So now that he is, how does it feel?
“It feels very weighty,” he said.
Senate confirms Connecticut prosecutor
The Senate confirmed Connecticut’s William Nardini, a career federal prosecutor, to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, based in New York City. The vote was 86-2, signaling a non-controversial nomination — something unusual for the Trump era in which Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is unabashedly trying to pack the federal courts with hardline conservatives.
Nardini may have conservative leanings but his pedigree appears to be more straight-arrow, maybe even moderate. His judicial-nominee questionnaire, filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee, shows an upbringing in northern New Jersey, Yale law school class of ’94, clerkship with former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (as moderate as a Supreme Court justice gets), and a lot of assignments as Cubmaster and Scoutmaster in Rome (the one in Italy) and Woodbridge.
His current position is chief of the criminal division in the Connecticut U.S. attorney’s office in New Haven.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Nardini nomination is that someone so apparently non-ideological could get the nod from Trump et. al. in the first place.
Both of Connecticut’s liberal Democratic senators, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, voted to confirm Nardini.
“Bill Nardini is a highly respected member of Connecticut’s legal community and a devoted public servant,” the two said in a joint statement. “We believe Bill Nardini will bring significant knowledge and expertise to the court.” The court hears federal court appeals from Connecticut, New York and Vermont. The normal next stop for their rulings is the U.S. Supreme Court.
Blumenthal and Murphy likely are counting their lucky stars the nomination didn’t go to a hard-right nominee, someone like Steven Menashi from neighboring New York. On the same day Nardini won confirmation, Menashi squeaked past the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party line vote (with Blumenthal, a committee member, voting “no.”)
Menashi has a lengthy record of writings and speeches showing hostility to the LGTBQ community, African-Americans and immigrants. He was in the Department of Education counsel’s office under Secretary Betsy DeVos, where Democrats say he led “an illegal effort to deny debt relief to thousands of students swindled by for-profit colleges.”
Menashi now is working in the White House counsel’s office. As a last-ditch effort to sidetrack the Menashi nomination, Democrats are pursuing what he did or did not know about President Trump’s controversial phone call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 25. It is not likely to be enough to convince very many Republican senators to vote against his confirmation.
“The contrast between Nardini and Menashi could not be more stark,” Blumenthal said. “Connecticut is fortunate that a person of Bill Nardini’s caliber and experience has been confirmed.”
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