Since we were talking about ethics and libel cases I wanted to find an article about that. So i looked on The New York Times under ethics and found this.
This article talks about Mike Pence’s two senior most aides pushing back against colleague, Jennifer Williams after she testified saying President Trump’s phone call with the Ukraine’s president was “unusual” because of its focus on domestic politics.
There were a lot of quotes from different people saying they didn’t think the call was unusual. Later on in the article, it comes out that Donald Trump showed interest in obtaining damaging information about Democrats from Ukraine. Although the writer doesn’t specify further about this, but this would be unethical of Trump to release that information.
This is one of those times where “privilege” is relevant. Thos who testified in front of Congress were protected because they were being compelled (to some degree) to speak, and to state their thoughts. That’s different from a court case where hearsay evidence is not included.
Criticism of the witnesses may not be covered by privilege. If one of Pence’s clown-boys goes on Fox and calls Williams a liar, or says she perjured herself, he needs the evidence to back it up.