Reporter Prepares to Cover His Second Impeachment Trial

How did covering the last impeachment prepare you to cover this one?

It’s so wild. There have been three presidential impeachment trials in American history up to this point. So there’s a certain amount of specialized expertise you have to develop to understand the rules of impeachment and the different terms, not to mention the requirement that you have some mastery over a big, complicated political, legal and constitutional story. So, in some ways this time around, I’m lucky because I don’t need to learn the rules again.

The last impeachment also involved a big investigation and learning a lot of esoteric things about Ukraine and actions by the president that happened out of public view. I was in the Capitol on Jan. 6, and I, like everybody else, had been watching as the president was trying to undermine and overturn the election results. In a lot of ways, I can understand the case more readily.

What is it like to cover this trial when you were in the Capitol on Jan. 6?

I have really visceral memories of that day. But as a journalist, I need to set those aside and cover the debates objectively. My own experience doesn’t have a role in that. Our job is always, at its most basic, to bear witness to events and describe what’s happening.

Maybe it helps give me some additional access to the emotion and rawness that everybody that’s involved in this is experiencing. The Senate is the jury, and the members were themselves witnesses and victims, in a sense. Everybody’s in uncharted territory.

What will you be doing during the trial?

I’ll be following it instantaneously and also trying to step back and take a more considered look. That will include tweets, probably live chats and analysis, and short briefing items that we’ll put up on the website. Then at some point on most days, either I or my reporting partners will sit down and distill everything into a comprehensive article that will end up in the print paper the next day.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/insider/reporter-second-impeachment.html