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Impeachment Invokes Another Rule
The first one is the Rule of Law, to which even presidents must answer.
The second is called just, well, “The Rule.” If you have ever sat through a trial, you may have seen a lawyer stand at the very beginning and announce, “Your Honor, we invoke The Rule.” That announcement requires action of the judge, which this retired judge will explain in due time.
President Trump tweeted the following complaint this week:
Democrats are allowing no transparency at the Witch Hunt hearings. If Republicans ever did this they would be excoriated by the Fake News. Let the facts come out from the charade of people, most of whom I do not know, they are interviewing for 9 hours each, not selective leaks.
I will refrain from riffing on the sheer hypocrisy of this POTUS valorizing “transparency,” in the interest of not starting on a digression that would eat my major point. Instead, I offer from the Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 615, titled “Excluding Witnesses”:
At a party’s request, the court must order witnesses excluded so that they…
