But the 280-page chronicle of Eisen’s impeachment era, replete with his insight into how the process unfolded, juxtaposes legislators’ lofty pronouncements on protecting democracy with often provincial tensions and disorderly politics of the Chamber that promoted decisions of national importance.
Eisen, who signed up as an attorney for the House Judiciary Committee in early 2019 with a view to the indictment, also describes the greeting of the first “f — you” he delivered to House Intelligence Committee adviser Daniel Goldman. , whom he said had accused him of stepping on the panel’s lawn. (They would later overcome initial stress, says Eisen.) Describes how internal Democratic politics led him to shave 10 planned recall articles, covering a wide range of allegations such as “collusion” and “silence payments” to three, and then two, after vulnerable Democrats refused to charge Trump obstructive. of Justice.
Eisen reveals the sometimes painful conflicts between the Speaker of the Judicial Chamber, Jerry Nadler (DN.Y.), in the eyes of Eisen, the unknown hero of the prosecution, and the Speaker of the Intelligence Chamber, Adam Schiff (D -Qualif.) And President Nancy Pelosi, who often resisted Nadler. Lead-foot on the accelerator of impeachment. Nadler drew Pelosi’s anger throughout the process by leaning toward impeachment calls faster than the rest of the House was ready, and Eisen said Nadler had accepted that it would take time to restore his “previous level personal warmth” with the speaker.
Eisen is the unlikely narrator of a book about a bleak period in American history. The supernaturally affable former ambassador often seemed out of place in the back rooms of the US Capitol Eisen can often be found in the background of iconic images of impeachment hearings and the trial, sporting a persistent smile underneath of a head of tight curls.
He describes his own mischief, at times, noting that when rumors surfaced that Pelosi was considering a select committee to wrest Nadler’s impeachment process, he worked with other Nadler staff members to crush the idea.
“We immediately started talking to everyone, from the neocon anti-trump on the right to the progressive left, to try to put the kibosh on the select committee idea,” Eisen writes. [Nadler chief of staff Amy Rutkin] and I worked our Rolodex furiously, as did all the staff. “
Among your successes? Eisen writes that he persuaded anti-Trump conservative Bill Kristol to rescind support for a select committee and that Rutkin persuaded progressive representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) to retweet the reversal of Kristol, adding his own urgency note to abandon the process. with the Judicial Committee
In short, Eisen’s book is “This Town” for the Age of Accusation, an X-ray view of the Washington Interconnection, transplanted to the most important stage of all: the floor of the United States Senate during an attempt convicted of removing Trump from office. .
Eisen, a former ambassador to the Czech Republic and ethical czar of the Obama White House, gloats readers with his decades-long entanglement with many of the figures involved in the Trump trial, from Trump’s trial attorneys to witnesses to impeachment of the State Department, such as former ambassador Marie Yovanovich, whom he describes as “my friend and former colleague.”
Judge Ken Starr, Clinton’s independent attorney, and Professor Alan Dershowitz. I had worked for Dersh in law school, my first legal job, ”writes Eisen. “Starr had also been kind to me when I was a young attorney and creator of the Clinton indictment. They had both visited me in Prague.
Eisen also recounts self-critically, during a series of clandestine pre-trial negotiation sessions with White House attorneys, he had an inadvertent encounter with Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
“‘Norma Eisen, what are you doing here?'” Eisen recalls asking Conway. I sidestepped her question, genuinely concerned that she would put the cyst in the negotiations. After some not-so-nice jokes about which of us was more corrupt, she said she was going to see the President. “‘I’ll tell him I saw you!'” He said, according to Eisen.
Perhaps most importantly, Eisen describes an old friendship with Robert Trout, who became a Hope Hicks attorney for a long time during the House’s search to investigate Trump. Trout, Eisen said, was “an old friend and mentor” and personally disagreed with the White House claim that Trump’s aides were “absolutely immune” from testifying before Congress, a legal theory that the courts also have largely rejected. So Trout became the first attorney to negotiate the testimony in person of a senior Trump aide, in exchange for a promise to do so behind closed doors.
“Trout’s offer was obvious,” said Eisen.
I spoke to Eisen, whom I observed from afar during the impeachment process, about the dichotomies shown in his book, which I playfully said could also be called “The Gospel of Jerry.” (Someone on Schiff’s team would have to write “The Gospel of Adam” to capture the story side of the Intelligence Committee, the large sections of which are omitted here.)
In the interview, Eisen acknowledged recounting a version of the events centered on Nadler, in part due to his strategic position from the bench of the Judicial Committee. But it is also because he describes Nadler as “the least known member and, in a way, the most complicated” of what he calls the “Grand Triumvirate” of the prosecution, along with Pelosi and Schiff.
The complexity, he said, comes from Nadler’s long history with Trump. The two fought back during Nadler’s days as a local New York politician when Trump was a celebrity developer, and they understand each other better than most. That’s why, Eisen postulates, that Trump called from Air Force One to verify Nadler in May 2019 after the potential impeachment manager briefly passed out from dehydration at a public event.
“Shortly after the call, I asked Jerry if he thought Trump was doing it to rub it in or show it to him after feeling sick,” Eisen writes. “‘Absolutely not,’ he said without hesitation. Jerry said that Trump seemed lonely and that it was an opportunity for him to establish a connection, yes, with an adversary, but that, nevertheless, he knew him as the oldest of all his current main antagonists. “
Eisen said Trump’s long history with Nadler is another example of the complexities underneath the impeachment process: everyone knew everyone, sometimes for decades.
“There is a story like that for literally anyone who has been involved in this impeachment,” Eisen said in the interview. “This is a small city, it is an industrial city. The government is the company store that we all live in. ”
The book is also the story of typically anonymous employees, some of whom prefer to stay that way, in stories that help lead and shape their most powerful bosses. Judicial Committee parties such as Perry Apelbaum, Aaron Hiller and Arya Hariharan played roles in crafting and driving the House impeachment strategy, along with Eisen and deputy attorney Barry Berke.
Eisen recalls that Pelosi was frustrated during a closed-door meeting, the details of which were leaked at the time, due to the efforts of Judicial Committee staff (including Eisen) to drive the House into impeachment before she and the committee be ready.
“They may think they run the place, but they don’t,” Pelosi told colleagues, according to Eisen. “That’s a committee decision, not theirs. And you can tell them that.”
Eisen writes that the speaker’s slow approach became challenging: Convincing her that the case against Trump was so overwhelming that she should reverse it. That led to repeated friction with the speaker, whom Eisen described as justified in her approach.
“Pelosi was justly concerned about the entire caucus, including the 40 or so front members and the new members representing the districts that Trump had won and that had given him the majority,” he writes. “She was upset with our push, which Jerry accepted. We had a job to do, and she had a job to do.”
Another undercurrent throughout Eisen’s book is disappointment. Constantly disappointed by figures he considered principled who, at the end of impeachment, came to be corrupted by Trump’s influence: he names William Barr and Rod Rosenstein, whom (surprise!) Eisen has known since 1993 when he says they competed for the same work of the Department of Justice. But he saves his most unrelenting criticism for special counsel Robert Mueller, a figure he said he once worshiped, but whom he said disappointed the country after his investigation of Trump’s 2016 contacts with the Russia campaign.
Eisen, as a lawyer for the Judiciary Committee, helped lead the campaign to bring Mueller to the Capitol, but was among those who were disappointed by Mueller’s testimony and felt he “abdicated” during the investigation by failing to comply with the urgency of the accusations against the president. .
That frustration carried over, Eisen said, to efforts to secure Mueller’s testimony on July 24, 2019.
“Mueller’s colleagues seemed more concerned with protecting Mueller from questioning than with protecting our democracy,” writes Eisen. “What difference does a virgin reputation make when Rome burns around you?”
I asked Eisen about renewed efforts by Senate Democrats and Republicans to get Mueller back to Capitol Hill before the election, and he was quick to dismiss the view that it could be some kind of change. “He did not finish the job. He did not reach the limits of his fiscal authority,” said Eisen. “When you face a criminal of the President’s nature, that is unforgivable.”
The book is at its best when it provides a front-row view into the closed-door investigations of the Judiciary Committee or the Senate impeachment trial. Eisen describes a conversation on the floor with Starr and Mitt Romney, who would later become the only Republican senator to endorse Trump’s removal from office.
“Romney told Starr how much he appreciated his presentation, but he proceeded to ask him a series of penetrating questions that answered a mind that had not been invented,” Eisen writes.
It was his first clue, he says, that Romney’s vote was at stake, and he helped House impeachment administrators tailor their arguments to at least capture his vote, even if the trial itself was lost.
