By Missy Crane | December 9, 2019

How very convenient that Jerry Nadler “forgot” to swear in witnesses this morning.

On the surface, it looks like a bungled move from an inept clown. However, what Nadler did by not swearing in witnesses was allowed them to say whatever they wanted without fear of perjury.

How nice and how professional and “fair” too, right?

Nadler failed to swear in the two counsels for Democrats and Republicans prior to them delivering their opening statements at Monday’s impeachment inquiry hearing.

Witnesses must be sworn in and deliver testimony under oath. Nadler is claiming they were not witnesses – they’re staff members.

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Then later, he contradicted himself and called them “witnesses.”

Democrat counsel Barry Berke and Republican Counsel Stephen Castor delivered opening statements free of “oath.”

Berke, of course, made a slew of outright assertions during his statement.

If you’re delivering an opening statement and taking questions during an impeachment inquiring hearing you better damn-well be doing so under oath.

This is such a circus of embarrassment.

“Hilarious !!!! Hearings without swearing in witnesses! Laughable clown show ! #ImpeachmentHearings”

“Procedural: Castor is done & GOP had a parliamentary question asking why Judiciary did not swear in Berke & Castor. Nadler argues that they weren’t witnesses & so there was no need. Republicans rebutted & now there’s a vote on a motion related to the swearing-in of Berke & Castor”

 

Both Democrat counsel Barry Berke and Republican Counsel Stephen Castor delivered opening statements. Berke in particular made several factual assertions — many of which were dubious at best, and outright false at worst.

For example, Berke claimed that State Department staffer David Holmes had “heard it from the president himself” when he testified that President Donald Trump was interested in Ukraine conducting investigations.

In fact, Holmes had not heard anything directly from the president. Rather, he claimed to have overheard part of a conversation on a mobile phone between U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and the president. Sondland was at an outdoor table at a restaurant at the time, and Holmes had been drinking wine with him and two other staffers. Despite a habit of taking notes, and despite the fact that he later emailed the U.S. embassy in Sweden about a part of the conversation dealing with then-jailed U.S. rapper A$AP Rocky, Holmes never wrote down what he later claimed he heard the president telling Sondland. Burke suggested, however, that he heard the president first-hand.

[…]

Nadler’s failure to swear in the witnesses was significant because it allowed the counsels to make claims without fear of perjuring themselves.

It was also significant for another reason: when Republicans raised a point of order, objecting to Berke impugning the president’s motives, which is forbidden under House rules, Nadler ruled that the point of order was invalid because Berke was not a witness.

Later, Nadler described Berke and Castor as witnesses, prompting Republican objections that he had contradicted himself. [Breitbart]

 

This piece originally appeared on WayneDupree.com and is used by permission.

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