Public Trump impeachment hearings should help Democrats – but Republicans may relish them too

The battle over the merits of public versus private hearings in the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump reached a flashpoint this week with Republicans barging into a high-security hearing room and ordering pizza, forcing a five-hour delay in testimony from a Pentagon official.

As witnesses have appeared for depositions, providing testimony that has left Democrats increasingly confident they can prove Trump had asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his rival Joe Biden and his family, Republicans have increasingly sought to complain about process.

The major complaint is that the behind-closed-door hearings are not transparent and the inquiry is indeed the witch-hunt that Trump has long proclaimed it to be. The president has called on Republicans to be more vocal in backing his efforts at dismissing the inquiry, and respond they did.

Logically, though, there is a point to the rules around the sessions, even when some testimony ends up being leaked to the media. One aim is to stop witnesses discussing testimony with each other. There are also Republicans who sit on the investigating committees in the hearing room: it is not like the party is being shut out.

But the disruption caused by Republicans proves there is still something to be wary of for Democrats. Something that Trump, and the Republicans around him, has sought to do constantly – muddy the waters around any scandal he finds himself involved in.

For the Democrats, public hearings should help their case. It would mean cable news coverage that could dog Trump for weeks or months, with a narrative that is fairly simple to follow. But that is also its biggest potential weakness – the events surrounding the Trump phone call with Zelensky is now clear in the minds of the public, leaving little new news. The only significant twist on the horizon is whether Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton testifies.

But the bigger issue is that public hearings will also open the door to questions from Republicans who sit on the investigating committees. The aim for them will be to fill possible airtime on television with questions about Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and Hunter’s role on the board of directors of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.

The tactic will be about distracting the public from the main narrative the Democrats want them to follow. The more time is filled with questions about the Bidens – however little merit there are in them – means diluting the Democrats’ message.

There are reports that Democrats may limit the number of public hearings and who testifies in them, but Democrats can only really trust the testimony they have.

They will hope it is enough.