Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump,

President of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God.

Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable discussion that brings together prominent former federal officials for a dynamic analysis of the most important legal topics of the day.

We've gotten used in the last several months to say it's been a blockbuster week, it's been a big week, but words kind of fail in describing these last several days.

We have just for starters, the historic transmission of articles of impeachment against President Trump and the initiation of the third ever presidential impeachment trial,

and the sort of historic procession from one side of Congress to the other, that's a huge event, but there have been six or more very significant developments seemingly one or more per day.

If Talking Feds were a newspaper, we'd have to publish a special thick supplement just to cover the very important, and in some ways more provocative and nuanced other developments, such as the release of documents followed by long interviews from Lev Arnath.

Corroborating so many of the factual allegations against the President and adding some others, for example, the astonishing, if true, harassment of the Ambassador Maria Yovanovich, a determination by GAO that the President's whole campaign to withhold Ukraine aid was unlawful from the get-go.

An assessment of Nancy Pelosi's sort of strategic call to withhold the articles for several weeks.

Ukraine's opening probe into possible surveillance of former US Ambassador Maria Yovanovich, they get into the act from their side, the designation of the House managers and White House lawyers, including for the President, Ken Star and Alan Dershowitz.

The ongoing political battle over whether to call witnesses a trial, which apparently is trending toward doing so, the debate over the role that Chief Justice Roberts will play a trial, the just announced investigation of former FBI Director James Comey for several years old leak, and the relationship of that investigation to others of Trump's political enemies, such as James Clapper, John Brennan and Andy McCabe.

You know, what a long and kind of breathtaking list where to start.

Well, some quick introductions. I'm Harry Litman. I'm a former United States Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, a current Washington Post columnist.

We are joined, as Nicole Wallace might say, by a total all-star squad of talking feds, favorite commentators, all MSNBC political analysts, too well known to need lengthy introductions.

We have Matt Miller, a partner at Villanovo and former Director of DOJ's Office of Public Affairs, Joyce Vance, a professor at the University of Alabama Law School, and former US Attorney and Assistant US Attorney in the Northern District of Alabama.

And Natasha Bertrand, a.k.a. the scoop machine, the national security analyst for political.

Let's just dive in and maybe have enough time to jam in an extra topic or two and starting with Lev Parnass.

His whole account, how damaging was it overall? I mean, remember, we already had what seemed like a slam dunk case that the Republican seemed impervious to.

But does this and the GAO report move the needle at all given that it's the Republicans who are in charge? Anyone?

Yeah, I guess I can start out with this one. It's clear that we have to take what Parnass has said with a big grain of salt because his lawyer did tell me that they're trying to get a cooperation deal with the feds.

And, you know, this isn't necessarily the best way to go about it. You guys probably better know that better than I do. But they are trying to fully cooperate with House Intel and along with that, trying to get public opinion on their side as well.

And part of that obviously is throwing these people under the bus throwing Trump under the bus, Giuliani, Rick Perry, you know, all of these officials who were involved in some way with this scheme.

...