Senator Kaine on War Powers and the Coming Impeachment Trial
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2019
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
Senator Tim Kaine is perhaps best known as Hillary Clinton's 2016 vice presidential running mate. For purposes of Lawfare, however, he is better understood as the Senate's leading exponent of congressional authority in the war powers domain. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senator Kaine in the Senate Russell Office Building to talk about all things war powers. They talked about the United States' new military deployment to Saudi Arabia, congressional anxieties about it, the administration's unwillingness to go to Congress for authorization, and the larger drift of congressional war powers to the executive branch. They also talked, of course, about impeachment—just a little bit.
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Transcript
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| 1:10.3 | In the debates at the Constitutional Convention about impeachment, there were those who did not |
| 1:14.4 | want an impeachment provision. |
| 1:16.6 | An argument was made, you have to have an impeachment provision because what if a president |
| 1:22.6 | was actually selling out to a foreign power? |
| 1:25.8 | The prospect of re-election down the road and having to face the voters down the road |
| 1:30.6 | wouldn't be sufficient to guard the system. |
| 1:32.8 | It was that argument. |
| 1:33.8 | The prospect of a president selling out to a foreign power that switched the minds of |
| 1:39.3 | many in Philadelphia in 1787, Gov. |
| 1:41.8 | and others who were arguing there shouldn't be an impeachment provision. |
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