Blah Blah Blah... Grand-standing on display...

The Michael Cohen Hearing Didn’t Have to Be So Awful

Members of Congress don’t know how to ask good questions. The solution: Let someone else do the job for them.

By JEFF GREENFIELD

It’s a measure of the depths to which the typical congressional hearing has sunk in recent years that perhaps the two most startling moments of the Michael Cohen hearing came when a Democrat asked a question that elicited exonerating comments about Donald Trump, and when a Republican asked a potentially incriminating one.

Michigan Republican Justin Amash asked Cohen: “What is the truth that you know Mr. Trump fears most?” Cohen responded: “That's a tough question, sir. I don't have an answer for that one.”

And California Democrat Jackie Speier asked about widely rumored stories about an “elevator tape” showing Trump striking Melania, as well as a “love child” story that Trump was rumored to have paid $15,000 to suppress.

“I don’t believe Mr. Trump ever struck Mrs. Trump, ever,” Cohen said. “I don’t believe it.”

These two moments broke with a pattern familiar to anyone whose has watched Capitol Hill hearings over the years. The traditional congressional hearing, as we now experience it, features a series of questions—and I use the term very loosely—that have virtually nothing to do with the solicitation of information. You can blame it on political polarization, or the insatiable hunger of politicians for the spotlight, or the congenital inability of most officials to speak in public without staff-generated talking points. Whatever the cause, the result is what Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan called judicial confirmation hearings: “a vapid and hollow charade.”

For Democrats, the Cohen hearing offered a chance to underline the jaw-dropping accusations of Trump’s one-time lawyer. Again and again, the members essentially restated the charges that Cohen made about the President’s character and behavior, with various expressions of shock and incredulity.

Have you ever seen the president personally threaten people with physical harm? Tennessee’s Jim Cooper asked.

“No,” Cohen answered with a smile. “He would use others.”

How many times, Speier asked Cohen, did Trump ask you to threaten people or entities? 50 times? “More.” “100 times?” “More.” “200 times?” “More.” “500 times?” “Probably.”

Republicans, in turn, adopted the strategy used by lawyers defending an accused mobster: argue that the chief witness, a one-time colleague turned informant, is someone of such low character that nothing he says can be believed. So the GOP committee members showed little interest in rebutting the charges Cohen leveled about hush money payoffs or Trump’s knowledge of meetings with Russians or phone calls from Wikileaks. Instead, their approach was to describe Cohen as a man who lies about anything and everything, whose motive for testifying is highly suspect, and who should not be believed if he said today was Wednesday. (It’s worth remembering that when Sammy “the Bull” Gravano turned against John Gotti, the fact that Gravano had committed 19 murders was not enough keep the jury from convicting the Dapper Don.)

For Ohio’s perennially shirt-sleeved Jim Jordan, Cohen was a disgruntled colleague embittered by his failure to get a White House job.

“Here's what I see,” Jordan said. “I see a guy who worked for 10 years and is here trashing the guy he worked for for 10 years, didn't get a job in the White House, and now you're behaving just like everyone else who got fired or didn't get the job they wanted—like Andy McCabe, like James Comey, same kind of selfish motivation after you don't get the thing you want. That's what I see here today and I think that's what the American people see.”

Arizona’s Paul Gosar—who was reelected in November even though six of his siblings cut an ad opposing him—called Cohen “a disgraced lawyer.” He went on: “You’ve been disbarred. I'm sure you remember, maybe you don't remember, duty of loyalty, duty of confidentiality, attorney-client privilege. … You want us to make sure that we think of you as a real philanthropic icon, that you're about justice, that you’re the person that someone would call at 3 in the morning. No, they wouldn’t. Not at all. You conflicted your testimony, sir. You're a pathological liar. You don't know truth from falsehood.”

When Gosar was finished, Cohen responded: “Sir, I'm sorry. Are you referring to me or the President?”

“Hey,” Gosar answered. “This is my time. … When I ask a question I'll ask for an answer.”

This may have been the day’s most revealing exchange, an admission that what really mattered was not getting answers from Cohen. What was on display was the near-desperate instance of some members to claim every second of their five minutes. Many members echoed Gosar's impatience when Cohen actually tried to answer a question. (In this regard, freshman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood out, as she has before, as someone who used her five minutes to pose short, pointed questions.)

In fairness, several Republicans yielded some of their time to Jordan, under the impression that his pit-bull approach would undermine Cohen’s credibility. If nothing else, they’re right that yielding their time to someone else would make congressional hearings a lot more productive.

Once upon a time, committee lawyers, rather than legislators, conducted much of the questioning. Think of Joseph Welch eviscerating Senator Joe McCarthy, or Robert Kennedy grilling Teamsters officials, or Sam Dash and Fred Thompson at the Watergate hearings. (Thompson, the minority counsel, elicited the information that there was a White House taping system inside the Nixon White House.) With a generous time frame—say, 30 minutes for each party— a sustained line of questioning would be possible. And staff counsel would be less inclined to deliver canned speeches and polemics.

The lust for face time, however, is why we’re unlikely to ever see such a reform. During a break in a confirmation hearing some years back, I asked Sen. Chuck Grassley why his colleagues were so inclined to speechifying. He pointed right back at me through the camera and snapped, “You’re the reason!” We saw something similar at the Kavanaugh hearings, when the Republicans pushed aside the lawyer they hired to question Christine Blasey Ford so that they could go back to making political points.

Still, we can at least hope for the day when the term “hearing” actually describes what’s taking place in the committee rooms of Congress.