Shouting Match Breaks Out at House Rules Hearing: We Can’t Talk Over Each Other, the Stenographer Can’t Keep Up!

Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, got into a heated back-and-forth with Congressman Rob Woodall, a Republican on the House Rules Committee, during today’s Rules hearing ahead of tomorrow’s expected impeachment vote.

Things got particularly heated at one point between the two men over the fairness of the impeachment process, something Woodall seriously questioned by asking, “How are the American people advantaged by Mr. Collins getting absolutely no witnesses before the committee and the White House getting absolutely no witnesses in front of the committee? And the answer is, ‘Mr. Woodall, this wasn’t intended to be a defense for the president.'”

“If you heard me say that, I clearly didn’t make myself clear. The president and Mr. Collins could have called any of the witnesses who appeared, any of the 17 sworn witnesses…” Raskin started.

“Any of your 17…” Woodall responded.

“It’s not yours or mine!” Raskin shouted. “These are American citizens!”

They both shouted back and forth until House Rules Chairman Jim McGovern jumped in and said, “Let me say we can’t speak over one another because the stenographer can barely keep up with us because we all talk so fast, if we’re talking over each other.”

Woodall continued to denounce the process as unfair to the president, saying, “It offends my sense of fairness that my ranking member can’t have a witness of his choosing. I’m not talking about 100 witnesses. I’m talking about a witness of his choosing to come. And that the process gets described over and over again as the White House had plenty of opportunity and everybody had an equal chance to question — nonsense.”

House Judiciary ranking Republican Doug Collins agreed the process hasn’t been fair and hit the Democrats for dismissing witnesses they wanted to call on relevancy grounds.

Raskin said, “So this was the exact same process that took place in the Clinton impeachment, the same process in the Nixon impeachment which is the minority gets the right to request witnesses. And if they’re relevant, they will be accepted. It’s hard to know what to do otherwise, especially in an environment where people are bringing all kinds of extraneous conspiracy theories to explain what’s going on.”

You can watch above, via Fox News.