Thread by @sethjlevy

Schiff just makes one straw man argument after another.

I’m telling you this whittles down to whether the Senate wants to become the arbiter of House search warrants.

That implication hasn’t yet been fully explained in the trial but it would damage the balance of power.

Schiff is asking the Senate to assume facts not in evidence.

He’s left with 2+2=4 and adverse inference.

Total madness.

Then Philbin gets up and destroys the adverse influence argument based on claim of privilege.

Democrats can’t escape the box that they chose not to litigate these disputes and now want the Senate to become the arbiter.

This converts impeachment into search warrant on steroids.

Not sure if they realize but the Q&A session is going very badly for Democrats.

They are drowning.

Even if you assume Jefferies argument that WH arguments were without basis this would encourage litigation.

If the arguments had never been upheld by a court this would make litigating attractive.

If right their avoidance of enforcing their subpoenas in court is more dubious.

Booker’s executive privilege question further illustrates the point about converting impeachment into a search warrant.

They ask can a President use privilege to keep information needed in an impeachment hidden?

So in impeachment the executives privilege is seemingly minimized.

Jefferies argues that during impeachment the Senate must have the information necessary to draw their conclusion and therefor it is the Senate that will adjudicate the House’s attempt to search the executive.

Making impeachment a glorified search warrant.

You notice the Senate is stuck in this question of privilege. The House assumes they were right about the legality of their subpoena but instead of going to court they’ve come to the Senate to litigate and authorize their search warrants.

This is a new and novel interpretation.

DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!

Then regarding the ICIG testimony Schiff argues that keeping the Atkinson testimony is appropriate and the House’s interest in its secrecy is more important then the Senators knowing it as part of their deliberations.

The exact opposite argument from the Bolton testimony.

Hmm

And immediately Sekulow makes Schiff eat the contradiction.

Well done.

Schiff now implies that there is intelligence community material being withheld and he spins a conspiracy about why.

Says “we” ought to find out how to gain access to this material.

#GlorifiedSearchWarrant

The red herring of a fair trial has been exposed.

You want adjudicated fairness @RepAdamSchiff, then you should’ve gotten courts to adjudicate.

You aren’t arguing for a fair trial. You are arguing for a reinterpretation of impeachment. A new novel and dangerous interpretation.

To be fair Schiff made an impassioned argument undercutting that the claims made against Trump could not possibly be impeachable.

Of course the analogy he described is completely unlike anything they are claiming against Trump.

But he did do damage to Dersch.