Soviet Rules: Despite complaining for weeks about closed impeachment hearings led by House Democrats, the Republicans voted in unison yesterday against a Democratic bill to proceed openly. The vote was 232-136 with only two Democrats siding with the Republicans.

  Minutes after the vote, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham denounced the process as “a sham impeachment” and “a blatantly partisan attempt to destroy the president.” 

  Minority Whip Steve Scalese decried the investigation as “a tainted process” conducted under “Soviet style rules,” which, if it was actually the case, Donald Trump would be dead in the bowels of the Lubyanka.

  Siding with the Democrats was Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, who quit the Republican Party and became an independent. He tweeted, “To my Republican colleagues: Step outside your media and social bubble. History will not look kindly on disingenuous, frivolous, and false defenses of this man.”

  The President, whose primary concern is money, tweeted, “The Impeachment Hoax is hurting our Stock Market.”

  The Republicans have made an addendum to their defense, saying that because the impeachment began illegally, anything that comes from it now is “fruit of the poison tree,” legal slang for a tainted case. They’re also saying that the damning testimony against Trump doesn’t indicate he did anything criminal, although the grounds for impeachment do not have to be commission of a crime.  

  The closed-door testimony goes on. Yesterday a National Security Council aide who resigned on Wednesday testified that a top diplomat close to President Trump told him that military assistance for Ukraine would be held until the country agreed to investigate Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, corroborating a central accusation in the impeachment inquiry. 

   Timothy Morrison suggested that a Trump-appointed ambassador proposed a quid pro quo in which security money voted by Congress would be released only in exchange for the investigations Trump demanded. He confirmed the account given last week by Ambassador William Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine.

  Morrison said he was not concerned that anything illegal was happening, but it is illegal to get foreign assistance in a domestic election.

Double Standard: California Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned in a sex scandal, delivered one last speech in the House yesterday claiming to have been the victim of sexual shaming and condemning a double standard for women.

  Hill was revealed to have had an affair with a female campaign staffer and was accused of also having a romance with a male Congressional staffer, contrary to staff rules. Then someone posted a picture of her naked and smoking from a bong.

  She said on the House floor, “I am leaving because of a misogynistic culture that gleefully consumed my naked pictures,” pointing out that President Trump has faced no consequence for his treatment of women.

 Hill said, “The forces of revenge by a bitter jealous man, cyber exploitation and sexual shaming that target our gender and a large segment of society that fears and hates powerful women have combined to push a young woman out of power and say that she doesn’t belong here.”

The Bulletin Board: Striking Chicago teachers are expected to return to work today. One condition they set was extending the school year to cover the strike days. — ISIS has announced a successor to its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US special forces raid in Syria. The new guy is Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi, identified as the “emir of the believers” and “caliph.” Also a nightmare for headline writers. 

Change of Address: President Trump, raised in Queens and a lifelong New Yorker, filed papers in September declaring that his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida is his official residence. Poor Barron.

Run Silent, Run Deep: A British submarine mysteriously lost in 1942 has been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean off Malta in “fantastic condition,” marine archaeologists announced. HMS Urge went missing cruising to Alexandria, Egypt with 44 sailors. Damage to the bow shows that it suffered a violent explosion that sent it to the bottom quickly.

  Researchers in the Pacific say they may have found the wreckage of the destroyer Johnston sunk during World War II among the Philippine islands. The remains are so broken up they are having difficulty finding identifying marks.

Well Done: Steak for two at the famed Peter Luger steakhouse in Brooklyn is $103.90 and the prices go up from there. The iceberg wedge is $16.95, so it better be good.

  While talk of impeachment dominates Washington, the buzz in New York is the zero-star review given to Peter Luger by NY Times restaurant critic Pete Wells, who panned everything from the service to the sauce.

  He said the servers “give the strong impression that these endless demands for food and drink are all that’s standing between them and a hard-earned nap.”

  Wells goes on, “The shrimp cocktail has always tasted like cold latex dipped in ketchup and horseradish. The steak sauce has always tasted like the same ketchup and horseradish fortified by corn syrup.”

  As for the steak, “Luger caramelizes the top side only, while the underside is barely past raw, as if it had done all its cooking on the hot platter.” We won’t even mention what he says about the potatoes.

  You’d think a good restaurant would be chastened and embarrassed by such a review, but not Peter Luger, which responded, “We know who we are and have always been. The best steak you can eat. Not the latest kale salad.”

  The review never mentioned kale.

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