Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/24

 informal private settings or closed-door executive sessions of the Committee. The Select Committee also met in numerous executive sessions to receive progress updates from staff. Only later, beginning in May 1973 and lasting through the summer, did the Select Committee call witnesses to testify in public hearings. Those hearings were not impeachment proceedings, President Nixon was not afforded any procedural privileges, such as the right to have counsel present and to question witnesses.

On February 7, 1974—the day after the House adopted its resolution directing an impeachment inquiry—the Senate Select Committee voted to transmit all of its files, including voluminous nonpublic files, to the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee relied on those non-public materials as it gathered evidence. For example, a March 1, 1974 progress report by Judiciary Committee staff noted that its "basic sources" included "the closed files of the [Senate Select Committee], including executive session testimony." In March 1974, the Judiciary Committee also famously received the Watergate grand jury's "roadmap" describing evidence of potential offenses committed by President Nixon. That report—which was not disclosed to the public until nearly 45 years later— described and appended evidence gathered through months of secret grand jury proceedings, during which counsel for defendants were not permitted to appear or question witnesses.

In the course of the Judiciary Committee's investigation, Committee staff also conducted interviews of witnesses in private settings in which no counsel for President Nixon was present. During a closed-door briefing in February 1974, Special Counsel John A. Doar made clear to members that counsel for the Minority would not necessarily be present for all interviews either, depending upon the circumstances. In an effort to develop appropriate procedures governing the inquiry, Committee staff reviewed in detail the proceedings used in prior impeachment inquiries dating back to the eighteenth century. In a memorandum describing their findings, Committee staff noted they had found "[n]o record . . . of any impeachment inquiry in which the official under investigation participated in the investigation stage preceding commencement of Committee hearings." Nor had Committee staff found any instance in which "the official under investigation . . . was granted access to the Committee's evidence before it was offered at a hearing."

Later in the spring and early summer of 1974, the Committee held a series of closed-door meetings for formal presentations of evidence by Committee counsel. As relevant here, the procedures 18