House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) failed to swear in the two counsels for both the Democrats and Republicans prior to their opening statements in Monday’s impeachment inquiry hearing.
Though staff members are not typically sworn in, witnesses must be sworn in and deliver testimony under oath.
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. – READ MORE