This Week in Impeachment: Obstruct and Distract
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2019
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the impeachment inquiry rolls on, it’s easy to get lost in the paperwork and characters surfacing each week. We’re here to help sort through it all and tell you what you really need to know. Today: the White House’s letter to Congress and what it says about the fight that’s only going to heat up on Capitol Hill.
Guests: Dahlia Lithwick, who covers the courts and the law at Slate. And Jim Newell, a politics writer at Slate.
Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Jayson De Leon, Danielle Hewitt, and Mara Silvers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Friday. We are two weeks into an impeachment inquiry. Here we are, Dahlia Lithwick, Jim Newell. How are you guys doing? |
| 0:14.6 | That's my crazy laugh. Just as great as ever. |
| 0:20.2 | You hear that apprehension? |
| 0:22.7 | That's kind of a you feel about impeachment, too, right? |
| 0:25.5 | Like, how many White House letters am I going to have to read? |
| 0:28.7 | It's one of the worst letters I've seen from the White House counsel's office, |
| 0:31.1 | and they write very well and they make good legal arguments. |
| 0:33.3 | This was trash. |
| 0:34.5 | I mean, this was trash. |
| 0:35.5 | How many more characters am I going to have to get to know? |
| 0:38.9 | And that's what this letter from Pat Cipollone is. It is executive poppycock. |
| 0:44.9 | Later today, a former ambassador to the Ukraine is supposed to testify on Capitol Hill. We'll see about that. |
| 0:51.3 | We're all going to be watching whether former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, |
| 0:56.1 | shows up for her deposition. |
| 0:58.0 | If not, another subpoena could go out. |
| 0:59.8 | And by the way, Congress isn't even back from recess yet. |
| 1:06.0 | This is a lot. |
| 1:08.5 | So today on the show, Dahlia Lithwick, Jim Newell and I are going to recap this |
| 1:12.7 | week in impeachment. We won't go over all the details, just the ones that matter. First, how a |
| 1:18.6 | letter from the White House reveals Trump's impeachment strategy. Then, just a handful of politicians |
| 1:24.1 | are going to decide how this investigation actually goes down. |
| 1:29.3 | Who to watch as the inquiry revs up. |
... |
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