Impeachment Hearings. House Judiciary Committee, July 30, 1974. Statement of Representative Barbara Jordan.
Impeachment Hearings. House Judiciary Committee, July 30, 1974. Statement of Representative Barbara Jordan.
Impeachment Hearings. House Judiciary Committee, July 30, 1974. Statement of Representative Barbara Jordan. Peter Rodino (D - New Jersey). The gentlelady from Texas is recognized for 3 1/2 minutes. Barbara Jordan (D - Texas). Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, when Mr. St. Clair, the President's attorney, started to present to us his closing summation of the case before this committee, he said as a matter of first instance that a President cannot be impeached by piling, inference upon inference. Now, I agree with that, but if the President had complied with the subpoenas for information issued by this committee, there would be no necessity for an inference to be drawn in the first instance. If the President had provided the best evidence which this committee sought, there would be no necessity for us to infer anything. Example. The June 20 conversation is important. The 18 1/2 minute gap is on the conversation that the President has with Mr. Haldeman. We subpoenaed, this committee subpoenaed conversations which the President had on the 20th of June with Mr. Charles Colson. He talked to Mr. Colson four times that day. Mr. Colson knew about the Liddy plan for intelligence gathering. If we had had compliance with the subpoena of this committee and had secured those four conversations, we may not have to infer what the President knew on the June 20 tape which was manually erased. The argument that this subpoena power of this committee violates separation of powers doctrine has no validity in my judgment in that the fact that we have three separate branches of Government does not mean that we have three Governments. They are independent, but relatively dependent. Consequently, this partial intermixture of powers gives rise to the whole workings and the whole functioning of the Government. If the President had cooperated with this committee, it would have been a part of the whole working of the matter of the impeachment, process as we have tried to go forward with it.