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- Oct 15, 2015
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Talk about a one trick pony.You've become a one trick pony.
The first issue with the GOP’s tweet is its wholesale approach to the testimony: “it’s literally all hearsay.” That’s not entirely accurate. While some of the testimony almost surely would be considered hearsay in a court of law, some of it would not, and the distinctions are far more complicated than the all-or-nothing assertion made by the GOP’s tweet.
The second issue with the tweet is that Cassidy Hutchinson wasn’t testifying in a court of law. Therefore, the rules of evidence do not apply. Evidence rules apply to criminal and civil lawsuits tried before a judge and sometimes a jury. They do not apply to congressional hearings, which are fact-finding missions at their core. So, the hearsay assertion as applied to the Committee hearings is ultimately irrelevant. Trials are different. Trials assign legal blame in cases and controversies brought before a judge and assess punishments or damages. No legal jeopardy results directly from from a congressional hearing.
That distinction is important. There’s no defendant in a congressional hearing who might be ordered to serve time in jail or pay money as a penalty for tortious conduct or a breach of contract. Therefore, one of the biggest exemptions to the hearsay rule doesn’t even apply here. That exemption applies to statements uttered by a party or an opponent in a court case. Litigation is adversarial, and parties who are named plaintiffs (in civil cases) and named defendants (in criminal and civil cases) cannot use the hearsay rules to prevent their own out-of-court statements from being testified to by a witness. Think about it: police officers testify every day in America about things criminal defendants said to them. Criminal defendants cannot use the hearsay rule to stymie such testimony because the statements uttered are those of a party (themselves) and an opponent (also themselves). Because this is a congressional hearing with no officially named parties or opponents, it’s very difficult to parse out what parts of Hutchinson’s testimony the hearsay rules might exclude or what the hearsay rules might include.
House Judiciary GOP Claimed Mark Meadows Aide's Blockbuster Testimony Was 'Literally All Hearsay Evidence.' The Truth Is More Complicated.
While some of the testimony almost surely would be considered hearsay in a court of law, some of it would not, and the distinctions are complex.lawandcrime.com