M-S-S-W media.

The second impeachment.

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump is underway, but will it actually matter?

Let's get on topic.

Welcome to On topic, a weekly in depth look at a topic. Welcome to On Topic.

A weekly in-depth look at a topic that helps us understand the week's news.

My name's Renata Mariati. I'm a former federal prosecutor, a practicing lawyer, and a legal analyst.

I'm usually joined by my friend Betty Vasquez, but we had to tape this on a very short turnaround this week,

so I'm going to be bringing our guests in in just a moment. But

before I do I want to thank our patrons who brought us this episode with special

thanks to Andrew Donnelly, James From Meyer, J.

Gellhausen, Jamie and Isie Gordon, Patrick, Angela Jackson, Ari Lamstein, Dan Maruska, Shana Wachinsky, and an anonymous patron.

You too can become a patron on our website on topic

podcast.com. Just click the support link at the top of the page. So this week has been an interesting one.

Obviously we have all been paying close attention

to the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

And of course, a couple of weeks ago we had I think perhaps the best guess you could

have to discuss that topic Daniel Goldman who was the lead attorney during the

first impeachment trial and discuss sort of what we could

expect and one of the most shocking things that he said at least shocking to

me was that there wouldn't be witnesses. He explained that even the Democratic

senators really didn't want witnesses and he didn't think it was necessary and he

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