Secret hearings? Not really

It’s among the several dramatic scenes in The Godfather Part II. Frank Pentangeli had betrayed Michael Corleone. He had been brought to a public hearing of a U.S. Senate subcommittee to repeat what he’d told committee investigators pri- vately—that Corleone was a mob boss in control of Nevada gambling, and a killer.

In live testimony before cameras and the press—and his Sicilian older brother flown in to shame him in one powerful stare—he takes it all back.

The senators are aghast, pointing to Pentangeli’s sworn statement otherwise. Pentangeli explains that he had just told those FBI boys what they wanted to hear.

Yes, that’s fiction. But it’s mighty good fiction. It’s drawn from common congressional investigative practice. Fact-finding hearings routinely take place privately and then get played out publicly.

Consider the historically unassailable Senate Select Committee on Watergate headed by Sam Ervin.

It was formed in February 1973. In March, former CIA agent and convicted Watergate burglar James McCord, in exchange for Judge John Sirica’s consideration on sentencing, agreed to tell all he knew to the Senate committee.

He met privately with the committee’s counsel, Sam Dash, implicating John Dean and Jeb Magruder, and then testified privately to the full committee while reporters pressed their ears against the door.

Every bit of his testimony got leaked immediately to the press, causing the committee to decide to meet in public from then on, including with historic live television coverage beginning in May.

But even then, this happened: One Monday afternoon in July 1973, White House official Alexander Butterfield shocked the world by revealing to the committee the existence of tape recordings of all of Richard Nixon’s conversations. But three committee lawyers weren’t shocked at all, having extracted that information from Butterfield in an interview the previous Friday. During the weekend, they told committee chairman Sam Ervin, who told ranking member Howard Baker, who told the White House.

For that matter, Kenneth Starr made his case against Bill Clinton by presenting witnesses in private to a grand jury, as is customary in the federal criminal investigatory process.

The point, if you haven’t guessed, is that there is nothing much irregular in the private basement sessions of three House committees beginning the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

There are more than 40 Republicans on those three House committees, almost as many as Democrats. Thirteen of the 30 or so House Republicans who pulled the stunt of crashing the committee Wednesday were, in fact, members of the committees who were supposed to be there doing their jobs.

Meanwhile, as in Watergate:

• The juicy parts are leaking promptly. • Republicans can and probably do go forth to report in full to the White House.

• Those committees will turn their hearings loose publicly, probably by mid-November, when key witnesses will be brought back to be questioned before all of us based on the transcripts of their testimony.

Acting Ukrainian ambassador William Taylor might go all Frank Pentangeli and say he merely had been telling Democrats what they wanted to hear. But I doubt it. Pentangeli had bigger worries than perjury; Taylor surely doesn’t. He’s a seemingly honorable federal government public servant of five decades, not a mob capo.

And that brings us to the real point: Yes, the Democrats probably have mishandled the inquiry politically by giving the Republicans a means of distraction and counter-attack about the secret process. But Republicans can be counted on to pounce on any opportunities for distraction because their entire defense of this preposterous president in this Ukrainian affair, as I’ve said, is to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of changing the subject.

It worked like pure clockwork last week. Taylor gave the committee its most credible and damning testimony against Trump on Tuesday. The next morning, a couple dozen Republicans pulled their crash-the-party stunt, including 13 who were invited in the first place.

You might ask Republicans: But what about Trump’s leaning on Ukraine to investigate his political opponent and to investigate another matter in his political interest before getting the money Congress had authorized?

Republicans would answer: Well, what about secret congressional meetings? What about Democrats finding those things out in private?

“Sir,” said the officer, “I’ve got you on radar driving 87 miles per hour in a 75-mile-per-hour zone.”

“But officer,” said the driver, “the median needs mowing.”

Anyway, these hearings are not secret to about 40 Republicans, or the world, considering the leaks.

And they won’t be secret to anyone wanting to keep up when there are televised hearings in a month or so.

And they won’t be secret when we have an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, probably around Christmas, with sordid details against Trump a Christmas gift for Democrats and an inability to convict a Christmas gift for Trump.

We’ll decide the next November which gift is better.