On Tuesday afternoon, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski sat down to answer questions before the House Judiciary Committee. In theory. This is the same hearing that former staffers Rick Dearborn and Rob Porter refused to attend after getting a note from Trump telling them to ignore a congressional subpoena. The specific issue at hand was Trump asking Lewandowski to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to halt the investigation into the Trump campaign, which was one of the instances of obstruction outlined by former special counsel Robert Mueller in his report.
But the first two hours of the hearing showed that Lewandowski was going to give no cooperation, that Republicans on the committee were going to do everything possible to derail the proceedings, and that, for any impeachment inquiry to move forward, committee Chair Jerry Nadler is going to need to adopt a much tougher attitude toward uncooperative witnesses.
When Lewandowski last appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, he provided it a succinct nonanswer in the form of, “I’m not answering your f***ing questions.” Amazingly, no one asked the sergeant-at-arms to pitch Lewandowski into the nearest oubliette until he was ready to apologize to the committee and obey the law.
Even more unfortunately, Lewandowski opened the hearing on Tuesday with an only slightly more polite version of the same statement. And Nadler still continued with the pretense that there could be a hearing in which the only witness refused to answer, while admitting that he couldn’t claim executive privilege.
Nadler opened by reminding Lewandowski that he was there under subpoena and legally required to answer questions. But that seemed to be the last time there was anything like a promise that something might be done other than allowing Lewandowski to answer, or not, as he pleased.
Ranking Republican Doug Collins opened the hearing by talking about Where’s Waldo, the taste of popcorn, how much he misses flashbulbs, the time stamp on the subpoena, and the fact that Lewandowski already “testified before the Intelligence Committee.” That’s as close as any Republican came to actually addressing the topic of the hearing.
In advance of his appearance, the White House told Lewandowski not to testify. But it didn’t ask Lewandowski not to show—because Trump’s former campaign manager had a great reason to be there—as part of his campaign for election to the Senate. So Lewandowski sat down to do an opening statement that was nothing short of a campaign speech, complete with mentions of the “golden escalator,” his role in the “greatest political movement in history,” and plenty of attacks on President Obama.
Lewandowski promised to be open and responsive. And just about then, the House ceased to exist as an investigative body. Immediately, Lewandowski refused to say anything that was not in the Mueller report. Then he said he couldn’t answer the questions because he did not have a copy of the Mueller report. Then he refused to answer because he demanded to be told exactly the line in the report that he was being asked about. Then he refused to answer while he read the report. Then he refused to read the report. As he was killing time, head down, not speaking, Republicans launched into a series of ridiculous attacks on the five-minute rule and parliamentary procedure.
It never stopped being a charade through the first two hours. Lewandowski clearly enjoyed sticking it to the committee by wasting time. Repeatedly he insisted that he would answer a question if asked—then refused to answer a question. Asked about something not in the report, he refused to say anything at all. Asked about something in the report … he asked where it was in the report, which he refused to read. And round and round it went. Meanwhile, Republicans egged Lewandowski on and talked about every single topic except the one that was before the committee. Not one single Republican asked one single question about the topic of the day’s hearing. But they did talk about everything else. Including Ken Buck accusing Democrats of being “useful idiots” for Vladimir Putin, right after he explained that Trump’s attempt to cut off the investigation was really, secretly, a way of protecting future elections.
Possibly the only effective questioning the afternoon came from Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson, who delivered his questions in a warm, laid-back manner that, in combination with Lewandowski’s own inherent smarminess, convinced Trump’s campaign manager to contradict his own testimony at least twice.
Rep. Karen Bass also caught Lewandowski out about how, after taking Trump’s script for Sessions, he ultimately failed to deliver it—because Sessions knew they were doing something wrong and cancelled the meeting.
The amount of information coming from Lewandowski ahead of the first break in the hearing was minimal, but the hearing did illustrate that, if Democrats are going to conduct an impeachment inquiry, Nadler is going to have to be much tougher in how he deals with witnesses, and much quicker to still the nonsense within his own committee.