CNS: Like a grand jury.
ZELDIN: Let me answer it. Please. I appreciate it. You asked your question, I'm going to give the answer. Now, in Adam Schiff's words, he said that his closed-door depositions were quote analogous to a grand jury investigation. He said the closed-door depositions, that was the phase that was quote analogous to a grand jury testimony. Now in that grand jury testimony he was – imagine this for a grand jury in the United States if we want to draw equivalencies – he was the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the witness coach. You know how he ruled in anyone's objection with regards to absolutely anything during closed-door depositions? 100% of the time he ruled in his own favor. Now going back to the original part as far as the Senate piece being a trial. How telling is it to you, if that was the case, and if this is the trial where it's supposed to be just like any other trial, that any witness that was called on the House side that they don't want to hear their testimony. To your point if that's what's going on right now, isn't it amazing that they're saying then that they don't want to hear from Gordon Sondland or Bill Taylor or Fiona Hill or Lt. Col. Vindman. I tell you what, it'd be great if we could just hear from Kurt Volker and Tim Morrison, but guess what, we did already. During open intelligence committee hearings, which by the way, they don't want to call these people. You know who wasn't present during all that testimony and all the questions? Any of the president's counsel, was not even allowed in the room to be able to cross examine any of those witnesses at all. They were banned. And if you want to carry it even further, putting that aside, again, as I've pointed out already, there is a lot that wouldn't be admissible if the federal rules of evidence applied, it wouldn't be admissible. If you can't make statements of facts that are not in evidence so on and so forth."
RATCLIFFE: Let me follow up on the question here before we get to the question witnesses about what happened. You keep asking, isn't the trial supposed to occur in the Senate? Yes, it is, And the trial is supposed to occur on the House's record. (Crosstalk) And the House said very clearly –
CNS: According to what precedent, sir?
RATCLIFFE: According to the precedent of the United States. Every time –
CNS: Which impeachment precedent?
RATCLIFFE: Are you going to ask questions or are you going to answer questions? So, in the House what we heard was this is overwhelming, it's indisputable and we can't wait one more day. You don't need to hear from a single witness because this is impeachable. You have everything you need. We stood on the floor and said, 'if we have everything we need to impeach a president, why down the hall 100 yards, are the United States senators already saying we'll need more witnesses and evidence in that trial.' Now you're all in here saying let's talk about a witness related to an unpublished manuscript. You haven't asked me any questions about an actual transcript. There's a 179-page transcript of an actual witness named Michael Atkinson who's the inspector general of the intelligence community of the United States. He's the only witness in this whose testimony hasn't been turned over. His is testimony that we should have heard by now. You're cherry-picking witnesses. I want to hear from all of the witnesses. I wanted to do that over in the House. We wanted a complete process. Adam Schiff decided what witnesses we would hear from, what witnesses we wouldn't hear from. And the minute it became clear that he had met with the whistleblower after he publicly said that he didn't, he immediately changed his tune and said the whistleblower's testimony is no longer necessary. He ruled that he was not a fact witness, that his staff was not a fact witness, that the whistleblower was not a fact witness. He has cherry-picked this all the way. He had the opportunity to do a fulsome investigation in the House and he blew it. He dumped this garbage on the Senate's doorstep and is asking them to do the job in the House, we could have done in the House, we didn't do in the House because the most conflicted member of the House of Representatives, the only one out of 435 that is a fact witness, that the inspector general says in his transcript is a fact witnesses, is the one leading this investigation. The person that got to make every single decision. That's why we're watching the thinnest, weakest impeachment in U.S. history unraveling and getting thinner and weaker every time we hear from witnesses and the testimony that's being played.
__
9:06 p.m. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in Senate Subway
Asked about the relationship between President Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s indicted associate Lev Parnas, Murkowski did not say whether she believes whether Trump knows the man accused of funneling foreign money into U.S. elections.
COURTHOUSE NEWS: Senator, do you think that President Trump should have told the truth that he knew Lev Parnas now that we’ve all seen the video.
MURKOWSKI: I don’t know what he knows about Parnas. He’s got to figure that out.
CNS: Even based on the video evidence, photographic evidence, all of that, you don’t know whether he knows him?
Murkowski shrugged as the doors closed in front of her on the subway in the Senate basement.
__
Reporting by ADAM KLASFELD, JACK RODGERS and TIM RYAN
Read the Top 8
Sign up for the Top 8, a roundup of the day's top stories delivered directly to your inbox Monday through Friday.
