Donald Trump has often claimed to not be watching to the impeachment hearings either in the Intelligence Committee or the Judiciary Committees. But as part of the 108 tweets he made on Thursday, Trump made a point of complementing Republicans for there efforts at delaying the final markup of the articles of impeachment. And he had good reason. It wasn’t that the Republicans did a good job defending his actions — the actually refused to do so when Democrats challenged them repeatedly — but they did generate some new excuses for why Trump held the assistance to Ukraine, and they gave him a really good tip.
The major problem with Trump’s actions in Ukraine, as described by multiple representatives on the Republican side of the aisle, was that too many people knew about them. Two many people were in the loop on Trump’s directives to the State Department. Too many people were aware of the schemes being forwarded by Rudy Giuliani. And most of all — too many people listened to his phone call.
Just like former NSC official Tim Morrison, who ran to a White House Counsel not out of concerns about national security, he testified, but to make sure the transcript was buried because otherwise someone might read it, Republicans on the the Judiciary Committee weren’t worried about what Trump said. They were worried that someone heard him say it.
The same legal scholars who, at multiple points in the hearing, argued that it’s impossible to have a crime if the victim doesn’t complain, appeared to be convinced that Trump could say anything he wanted. So long as he wasn’t caught.
And on Friday, the White House took up that challenge by clamping down on access to diplomatic calls.
As CNN reports, the number of people allowed to listen in when Trump makes calls to foreign leaders has been drastically cut back. Trump’s calls already went to a smaller group than usual, and the routing of transcripts to a secure server is unprecedented.
Reducing the number of people who can see the calls means that departments that need to be aware of what Trump says or promises to foreign leaders, from the State Department and NSC to the intelligence community and Defense, will be ignorant of the actual White House agenda. That means fewer people who have the insight to conduct business for the nation, or research potential issues, or point out problems from what either what Trump may have said, or what was said to Trump.
Because of his concerns about protecting himself from scrutiny, Trump is restricting the ability of others to gain access to the calls—which is itself a threat to the nation.