NPR BREAKING NEWS: House Approves Impeachment Managers, Votes To Transmit Articles For Senate Trial.

House Approves Impeachment Managers, Votes To Transmit Articles For Senate Trial

January 15, 20205:00 AM ET

BRIAN NAYLOR

Twitter

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is joined by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff at a news conference to announce impeachment managers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Matt Rourke/AP

Updated at 2 p.m. ET

The House of Representatives has formally voted to transmit the articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate, setting up a trial that is expected to begin next week.

Earlier in the day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named seven Democratic members of Congress as the managers to argue the case for impeachment before the Senate.

Pelosi appointed Reps. Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Val Demings, Hakeem Jeffries, Sylvia Garcia and Jason Crow as impeachment managers. Pelosi said Schiff will take the lead.

"The emphasis is on litigators. The emphasis is on comfort level in the courtroom. The emphasis is making the strongest possible case to protect and defend our Constitution, to seek the truth for the American people," Pelosi said in a Wednesday press conference.

POLITICS

Who Are The Impeachment Managers? Pelosi Unveils Diverse Team For Trump Trial

The vote on the resolution to transmit the articles and confirm the impeachment managers was largely along party lines.

"This is as serious as it gets for any of us," Pelosi said on the House floor. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., called impeachment "a blunder" and "not a moment this body should be proud of."

The seven managers bring a diverse range of experience. Schiff and Nadler led the impeachment process in the House. Lofgren is taking part in her third impeachment process; she was a staffer when the House Judiciary Committee voted out articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, and a committee member during President Bill Clinton's and Trump's impeachment. Demings is a former Orlando chief of police and is also a member of the House intelligence committee; Garcia is a former Houston municipal judge; Hakeem Jeffries is a former corporate lawyer; and Crow is a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a co-author of a letter making the case for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings. Read more about the managers here.

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In announcing the managers, Pelosi said: "What is at stake here is the Constitution of the United States."

She accused Trump of using the congressional appropriations process "as his private ATM machine to grant or withhold funds granted by Congress in order to advance his personal and political advantage." That's a reference to the White House's hold on defense aid to Ukraine even though the funds had been appropriated by Congress. The president's defenders argue the money was held up because of concerns over political corruption in Ukraine.

In a statement, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the naming of the House managers "does not change a single thing. President Trump has done nothing wrong. He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him, and expects to be fully exonerated."

The vote to formally send the two articles of impeachment against Trump that House lawmakers approved last month sets the stage for a Senate trial to begin next week.

"The Senate is on trial as well as the president," Nadler said. "Does the Senate conduct a trial according to the Constitution, to vindicate the republic, or does the Senate participate in the president's crimes by covering them up?"

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The vote comes a month after the House approved two articles of impeachment against the president, charging him with abusing the powers of his office by attempting to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate potential political opponent Joe Biden and his son's activities there and with obstructing Congress by refusing to cooperate in its investigation. Trump denies any wrongdoing and has excoriated the process.

Next, the House will inform the Senate it is ready to transmit the articles across the Capitol. The Senate will respond that it is ready to receive them, and a formal procession and reception will take place. That could occur later Wednesday.

TRUMP IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

How A Senate Impeachment Trial Could Work

As early as Thursday morning, the impeachment managers will read the House resolution that appointed them as well as the articles of impeachment in full – on the Senate floor. Later that day, the Senate will proceed to the articles at 1 p.m. – or sooner.

The Senate would then inform Chief Justice John Roberts who would come over and be sworn in by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who is the Senate president pro tempore. Roberts would then swear in all 100 senators as jurors. After this, the president is summoned and given time to respond.

The congressional proceedings mark just the third time in U.S. history that a president will be tried and face potential removal from office by the Senate. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Clinton were acquitted by the Senate after impeachment by the House.

The exact ground rules for Trump's trial remain unclear. Democrats have demanded that the Senate call additional witnesses, potentially including former national security adviser John Bolton, who has said he is willing to testify if subpoenaed. But McConnell has resisted, saying Tuesday that the "more contentious issue" of calling witnesses will be addressed later.

TRUMP IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

Here Are The Lawyers Who Will Defend President Trump Against Impeachment

From the beginning, the White House has declared the impeachment proceedings a "sham."

"These are the weakest articles of impeachment that have ever been passed," a senior administration official told reporters on a background call. The official said there was no violation of law listed among the articles of impeachment. "We think these articles fail on their face."

"The facts overwhelmingly show the president did nothing wrong," the official said, adding the White House is happy to have a chance to "vindicate the president."

The Senate majority leader has sought to adhere to the procedure established in the Clinton impeachment trial in 1998, which allowed for a vote to dismiss the charges, as well as a vote on hearing additional testimony once opening arguments were made.

Trump has sought to have the Senate dismiss the charges, arguing that he did nothing wrong, but McConnell said Tuesday, "There is little to no sentiment in the Republican conference for a motion to dismiss." With Republicans holding a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and 67 votes necessary to convict Trump, it is almost certain the president will be acquitted.

The official told reporters on Wednesday that the trial is unlikely to last longer than two weeks.

NPR's Kelsey Snell and Tamara Keith contributed to this report.

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION: Important reminder about APA Central hotel reservations.

Dear DAVID,   If you’re planning to attend the 2020 APA Central Division meeting in Chicago and haven’t yet made hotel reservations, we urge you to do so now. The APA conference rate of $169 (plus applicable taxes and fees) is valid through January 27, subject to availability.   Reserve your room at the Palmer House Hilton.   Please note: It is important that those attending the meeting stay in the conference hotel, rather than at other hotels, and specifically in the block of rooms reserved for APA meeting attendees. The financial viability of the meeting depends on our meeting our contractual obligations, the most important of which (by far) is that we fill a minimum number of sleeping rooms. Failure to do so results in a significant penalty, which, as a non-profit organization, the APA is ill-equipped to pay, and which would take resources away from other important APA initiatives.   Register for the 2020 Central Division meeting.   Register for the meeting by February 12 to take advantage of the early bird registration rates: $125 for APA members, $240 for non-members, and $40 for student members. Online registration will be unavailable February 13 through February 25, but will reopen on February 26, the first day of the meeting. You can also register at the registration desk on-site at the meeting. Please note: on-site registration rates will be $50 higher than early bird registration for all categories.   You’ll save an additional $5 on meeting registration if you opt not to receive a paper copy of the program. The meeting program is available online, and our free meeting app for smartphones and tablets will also contain the full program.   Register now.   We hope to see you in Chicago!   All the best,   Melissa Smallbrook Meeting Coordinator

Does Trump deserve to be removed from office? SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE NANCY PELOSI.

Democrats are taking strong action to hold Trump accountable for his grave abuses of power.

We’ve reached a pivotal point in the process, and right now, public opinion is everything. We need to know where Americans stand on this important issue.

POLL: Do you believe Trump deserves to be removed from office?

YES!! No

Thanks -- Nancy is counting on your responses.

Team Pelosi.

NPR NEWS. SPECIAL SERIES 2020 Election: Secure Your Vote. Despite Election Security Fears, Iowa Caucuses Will Use New Smartphone App.

(IT IS BEYOND BELIEF...YOU HAVE A NATIONAL TRAGEDY IN THE WHITE HOUSE, BECAUSE OF RIGGED ELECTION RETURNS IN 2016, YET NOT A SINGLE DEMOCRAT RUNNING FOR THE OVAL OFFICE HAS PUT FORWARD POSSIBLE GUIDELINES TO ENSURE THAT IT DOESN'T HAPPEN AGAIN. IN FACT, THEY HAVE BASICALLY IGNORED THE ISSUE ALL TOGETHER. WE KNOW WHY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOESN'T CARE, BUT THAT IS NO EXCUSE FOR STANDING IDLE AND LETTING THE CORRUPTION OF THE 2016 ELECTION BECOME THE STANDARD FOR THE FUTURE.)

DAVID MCDONALD, WWW.SEARCHINGFORREASON.NET

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Despite Election Security Fears, Iowa Caucuses Will Use New Smartphone App.

January 14, 202010:53 AM ET

KATE PAYNE

MILES PARKS

Twitter

Iowa's Democratic Party plans to use a new Internet-connected smartphone app to help calculate and transmit results during the state's caucuses next month, Iowa Public Radio and NPR have confirmed.

Party leaders say they decided to opt for that strategy fully aware of three years' worth of warnings about Russia's attack on the 2016 presidential election, in which cyberattacks played a central role.

Iowa's complicated caucus process is set to take place Feb. 3 in gymnasiums, churches, recreation centers and other meeting places across the state.

As opposed to a primary in which voters cast ballots in the same way they would for a general election, Iowa's caucuses are social affairs; caucusgoers gather in person and pledge their support for a candidate by physically "standing in their corner" in designated parts of a room.

Iowa's Democrats hope the new app lets the party get results out to the public quicker, says Troy Price, the chairman of the state party.

In an interview, Price declined to provide more details about which company or companies designed the app, or about what specific measures have been put in place to guarantee the system's security.

But security is a priority, he says.

The state party worked with the national party's cybersecurity team, and with Harvard University's Defending Digital Democracy project, but Price declined to answer directly whether any third party has investigated the app for vulnerabilities, as many cybersecurity experts recommend.

"We as the party have taken this very seriously, and we know how important it is for us to make sure that our process is secure and that we protect the integrity of the process," Price says. "We want to make sure we are not relaying information that could be used against us."

Unlike many states in which local and state officials oversee the presidential primary election, in Iowa the state party is responsible for administering, staffing and funding the caucuses, relying primarily on trained but unpaid volunteers.

Cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR said that the party's decision to withhold the technical details of its app doesn't do much to protect the system — and instead makes it hard to have complete confidence in it.

"The idea of security through obscurity is almost always a mistake," says Doug Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa and a former caucus precinct leader. "Drawing the blinds on the process leaves us, in the public, in a position where we can't even assess the competence of the people doing something on our behalf."

Cyber concerns

The Iowa Democrats' plan is for caucus leaders to compile the results from participants and submit them to the central party via their smartphone apps. In the past, the leaders might have called in the results over the phone.

Because caucusing is an in-person process, verified by witnesses, there is virtually no risk that a cyberattack on the app could change the results of the caucus and go undetected.

If the wrong results were reported because of a hack, there would be people from each precinct who could correct it, and paper records.

But the damage to public confidence would be catastrophic, Jones says, if a hack caused the wrong winner to be called on caucus night and then that announcement had to be retracted.

"Once you report something, it's really hard to undo it, no matter how many retractions you print, no matter how many apologies you say, it's too late," Jones says. "From that point of view, someone hacking the reporting process, even though its purpose is entirely informal, not intended to have any permanent importance, is something that could be very disruptive."

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A number of other potential vulnerabilities could also be introduced by using the technology, experts say.

If the app doesn't work, either because a denial of service attack clogs the system or for any other reason, then there could be confusion at precincts across the state, and a potential delay on a winner being announced.

State Dems promise contingency plan

Price, the state chairman, says Iowa Democrats have "redundancies built into the system," including a hotline to accept results, but declined to further detail those as well.

Should the app go down for any length of time, the party would need to receive hundreds, if not thousands, of phone calls from the state's 1,679 precincts.

Still, Price says he's confident in their contingency planning.

"If there's a challenge, we'll be ready with a backup and a backup to that backup and a backup to the backup to the backup," Price says. "We are fully prepared to make sure that we can get these results in and get those results in accurately."

It's unclear how similar this year's app is to one developed by Microsoft and a private contractor that was used by both parties in 2016.

Price did confirm that the app again would be downloaded onto the personal smartphones of the caucus precinct and party leaders, and not onto party-provided hardware.

That could make the system a more appealing attack target, according to Betsy Cooper, director of the Aspen Tech Policy Hub at the Aspen Institute, because peoples' phones also may contain sensitive messages, emails and passwords.

"I sure hope the engineers building it are among the best on the planet," Cooper says.

Price said when designing the app, the developer considered the close proximity to potentially sensitive information, but he again didn't detail exactly how that information would be protected.

Four years ago, Russian attackers hacked into the email accounts of prominent Democrats and weaponized the information they stole throughout the election year.

Cooper said that the party could, if it wished, disclose who developed the app or the types of testing that had been done on it without "giving away the keys to the kingdom and making it easier for hackers to get in."

"Basic transparency about how it was built, how up to date the security of the app is and how it's been tested all could be made publicly available with little cost to the DNC," she says.

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Price said that some details would be unveiled about the app to reporters and the public in the days leading up to the caucuses, but he did not commit to revealing the identity of the developer. Less than three weeks before the caucuses, precinct chairs have not yet gotten access to the app.

Questions beyond security

Internet connectivity and tech literacy in Iowa have improved over the past four years. Local party leaders say they expect that more precinct chairs will own smartphones and be more comfortable using an app this cycle than during the previous one.

Still, in more rural parts of the state, some Iowans have been slow to adopt to technology, according to Gary Gelner, who chairs the Hancock County Democratic Party in north central Iowa. There may be some lingering skepticism.

"At least everybody with smartphones is gonna do it, I know that," Gelner says. "You'd be surprised how many people up here got the old flip cellphones."

Gelner was skeptical of the party moving to a caucus night reporting app in 2016. Though he's more optimistic this year, he's still wary of a process that he says could delay the release of the closely watched results.

Gelner said one of his precinct chairs in 2016 resorted to phoning in his results, only to find he couldn't connect.

"He called in and he tried for half an hour and he couldn't get through," Gelner said.

An insecure ecosystem

The Iowa Democrats' app will theoretically allow the state party to report the results much quicker than a phone-based system, and it may also help local party leaders with what's referred to as "caucus math."

A party manual says the app will "automatically calculate the number of delegates" presidential contenders are awarded, based on a formula involving the number of supporters for each candidate, the total number of delegates awarded and overall turnout.

But as is the case with much in the world of voting technology, things that make voting easier or more efficient can also introduce new unforeseen issues.

Travis Weipert is the top elections official in Iowa's most Democratic County, Johnson County, and this cycle he'll also be volunteering to oversee a caucus site as a precinct chair.

He says his experiences as an elections administrator make him skeptical of any system that mixes democracy and the Web.

"As long as you're staying off the Internet, then there's no connectivity, your chances of an issue are almost zero," Weipert said. "It's when you get on the Internet and security patches haven't been made that you open yourself up [to hacking]."

Weipert says there is a tendency for some local officials to underestimate the interest that foreign powers or bad actors may have in their elections. While he says he's doubtful "rogue states" would target the caucuses, he says it's something party leaders have to consider.

This is the second time in the past few months that the Iowa Democratic Party has had cyber experts questioning its commitment to security.

Last year, under pressure from the Democratic National Committee to increase accessibility at its famously arcane caucuses, the state party proposed a plan to allow Iowans to caucus remotely.

Internet and phone-based voting systems are considered notoriously insecure however, and the national party said there wasn't a system available secure enough to support such an idea.

So that plan was scrapped.

POLITICS

In 2020, Some Americans Will Vote On Their Phones. Is That The Future?

Jones, the University of Iowa cybersecurity specialist, says transmitting results from precincts to the state party through a smartphone app isn't as insecure as the virtual caucus plan — but that it's still insecure for the same reasons.

"The entire ecosystem of smartphones is extraordinarily poorly secured," Jones said. "And resting security functions on that ecosystem is something I don't trust at all."

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