Republicans Who Demanded Public Impeachment Hearings Are Still Not Happy

One of the key objections Republicans have raised against the House impeachment inquiry over the past month is the way Democrats have run it: secretly, behind closed doors  and without sufficient opportunities for President Donald Trump to defend himself.

But now that House impeachment investigators have begun holding public hearings , with a handful more scheduled next week, Republicans say they’re still not satisfied.

“It looks to me like, so far, the [Democrats] are going to give about as much due process to the president as the federal government gave our Japanese-American friends during World War II,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Tuesday, comparing the impeachment process to the tragic forced relocation and incarceration in concentration camps of people of Japanese ancestry.

Republican lawmakers in Wednesday’s blockbuster impeachment hearing on Capitol Hill were allowed to question witnesses, as they did during closed-door proceedings, and make motions to call their own witnesses. Trump’s lawyers were not allowed to participate, but Democrats say the president will be represented once the probe reaches the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over articles of impeachment. White House lawyers will also be allowed to defend the president during a Senate trial if the House impeaches Trump.

Republican senators also weren’t swayed by the substance of the testimony given at the hearing on Wednesday by Bill Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary for Europe and Eurasian affairs. Both Taylor and Kent gave information corroborating allegations initially made by an intelligence community whistleblower that Trump attempted to withhold U.S. military aid to Ukraine until the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden , one of his 2020 rivals.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) insisted Trump did nothing wrong by urging Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, however. The senator called the veteran civil servants “nice guys” who “probably mean well.” But he, too, dismissed their testimony, arguing that they disagreed with Trump simply because they found his style “too out of the box” and because the way the president operates “violates what they believe about their own superiority.”

Under questioning on Wednesday, both Taylor and Kent denied being “Never Trumpers,” as Trump has alleged on Twitter . Both officials are widely accomplished diplomats who have served both Republican and Democratic presidents.

But Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said he found Taylor and Kent “credible only in the sense that I think they interpreted this the way they saw it,” disagreeing with their belief that Trump held up aid to Ukraine while pushing an investigation into the Bidens. He further called the hearing “a bad day for the folks who were trying to build a case” for impeachment because it allowed Republicans to voice their objections in public.