Corey Lewandowski heads to Congress for a likely contentious impeachment hearing

President Trump's former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is set to testify Tuesday as part of the House Judiciary Committee's first impeachment hearing, and sparks are likely to fly.

Lewandowski will speak after the Judiciary Committee voted last week to set the guidelines of its hearings, with Democrats saying they're investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment against Trump. But CNN notes this "could be a combative hearing," especially since when Lewandowski last appeared before Congress, things turned quite heated and expletive-laden. Unlike that 2018 hearing, Tuesday's will be public, beginning at 1:00 p.m. ET.

The White House on Monday directed Lewandowski, who never actually worked in the White House, not to talk about any conversations with the president outside of what's mentioned in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report. No significant new information, therefore, should be expected. As this is the first official impeachment hearing, it will be the first time that Judiciary staff questions a witness, The Washington Post reports.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Mueller in his report said that Trump instructed Lewandowski to tell then Attorney General Jeff Sessions to deliver a statement declaring that Trump has done nothing wrong and to limit the scope of the Mueller investigation. Lewandowski didn't do so. The report also says that on another occasion, Trump again told Lewandowski to deliver the message to Sessions and fire him if he refused. This time, Lewandowski passed that task off to another White House official, Rick Dearborn, who again didn't deliver it. Democrats have identified these incidents as examples of obstruction of justice by Trump; Mueller did not determine whether Trump obstructed justice.

Lewandowski, who is considering a 2020 Senate run, tweeted Monday morning that he's "excited" about the opportunity to testify and push back against the "angry Democrats who tried to take down a duly elected president." He also previewed this hearing as possibly serving essentially as a campaign stop by using the hashtag "#Senate2020."