Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/29

 above, the President was given the opportunity to: have counsel attend any presentations of evidence before the Committee; have counsel ask questions during those presentations; respond orally or in writing to any evidence presented; request that additional witnesses be called; have counsel attend all other hearings in which witnesses were called; have counsel raise objections during those hearings; have counsel question any such witnesses; and have counsel provide a concluding presentation. For example, President Trump's counsel could have questioned counsel for HPSCI during his detailed presentation of evidence at the Committee's December 9 hearing. The President's counsel could also have questioned any of the four legal scholars who appeared during the Committee's December 4 hearing. The President could have submitted a statement in writing explaining his account of events—or he could have had his counsel make a presentation of evidence or request that other witnesses be called. President Trump did none of those things.

These privileges were equivalent to or exceeded those afforded to Presidents Nixon and Clinton. As noted previously, the Judiciary Committee conducted numerous closed-door briefings and took substantial investigative steps before affording any opportunities for President Nixon's counsel to participate, including conducting private interviews of witnesses. In addition, when President Nixon's counsel was later granted permission to attend closed-door presentations of evidence by Committee counsel, he could do so only as a passive observer. President Trump, by contrast, could have had his attorney cross-examine HPSCI's counsel during his presentation of evidence. That opportunity was also equivalent to the opportunity afforded to President Clinton to have his counsel cross-examine Independent Counsel Starr—which he did, at length.

Furthermore, although President Trump has complained that his counsel was not afforded the opportunity to participate during HPSCI's proceedings, the proceedings against Presidents Nixon and Clinton demonstrate that in neither case was the President permitted to have counsel participate in the initial fact-gathering stages of the impeachment inquiry. As Committee staff explained during the Nixon impeachment inquiry—and then reiterated during the Clinton impeachment inquiry—there were no records from any prior impeachment inquiry of an "official under investigation participat[ing] in the investigation stage preceding commencement of committee hearings" or being offered access to Committee evidence "before it was offered at a hearing." That is doubly true for the investigative proceedings that took place before the House began its impeachment inquiries against Presidents Nixon and Clinton. President Nixon certainly had no attorney present when prosecutors and grand juries began collecting evidence about Watergate and related matters, nor did he have an attorney present when the Senate Select Committee began interviewing witnesses and holding public hearings. Nor did President Clinton have an attorney present when prosecutors from the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr deposed witnesses and elicited their testimony before a grand jury.

Indeed, the proceedings before the Investigating Committees can be most closely analogized to the Senate Select Committee proceedings during Watergate. In both instances, Congressional bodies other than the House Judiciary Committee engaged in fact-finding investigations of grave Presidential