Tag: GOP congress

Ex-Republican lawmakers tear down Trump team’s excuses for ignoring subpoenas: ‘Our constitutional system requires that Congress have access’

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump has no right to prevent Congress from obtaining the testimony of White House Counsel Don McGahn through a subpoena as the House pursues impeachment, according to a new legal filing made by twenty former Republican lawmakers, government officials, and legal experts.

The filing, as Politico reported, argues on an originalist and conservative basis that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally undermine congressional oversight. This position is in tension, somewhat, with Attorney General Bill Barr’s conservative legal view and disposition which favors expansive presidential powers and discretion — at least when a Republican is in the White House.

The argument takes the form of an amicus brief, which is filed by parties who are not subjects of the dispute but want to offer an opinion on the case. It was organized by Protect Democracy, a group that sprang up in response to Trump’s presidency.  Continue reading

Why Do Trump’s Defenders Deny What He So Clearly Did?

During Monday’s impeachment hearing, Republican lawyer Stephen Castor denied that Donald Trump had asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender to oppose Trump in next year’s election. “I don’t think the record supports that,” Castor said.

That jaw-dropping moment starkly illustrated the lengths to which Republicans have gone in rebutting the charge that Trump abused his powers for personal gain. The president’s defenders have repeatedly contested well-established facts in a way that makes fair-minded nonpartisans despair of having an impeachment debate based on a shared understanding of reality.

According to the White House’s own transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump asked Zelenskiy to look into the claim that Biden pressed the Ukrainian government to replace Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin with the aim of thwarting an investigation of Burisma, an energy company that employed Biden’s son Hunter as a board member. “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution,” Trump said, adding that “it sounds horrible to me.”

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Presidential historian: The GOP has become a party of ‘monarchists’ who have no problem with Trump behaving in a ‘kingly’ fashion

AlterNet logoHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi is often vilified in right-wing media for coming out in favor of an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump — and right-wing media personalities often mock her for describing the inquiry as a “solemn” moment in U.S. history. But presidential historian Jon Meacham defended the House speaker during a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” stressing that she has legitimate concerns about Trump conducting him himself like a “monarch.”

Meacham told long-time “Hardball” host Chris Matthews, “I don’t want to just talk about the speaker’s decision in raw political terms….  This is a solemn moment. It is difficult. We do this once every 60 years in this country: Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton — with varying degrees of seriousness, varying degrees of political divisiveness. But it’s a very important moment. And it was the ultimate check put on the executive.”

With his “60 years” comment, Meacham didn’t mean that literally 60 years passed between the United States’ three most recent impeachment inquiries against presidents: Nixon in 1974, Clinton in 1998, Trump in 2019 — he meant that there have only been four over a period of 242 years.

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A guide to the misleading spin on the IG report

Washington Post logoWhen an official government report disrupts a political narrative, it’s exceedingly rare for politicians to admit error. They either play down the new information — or stick with the original script.

That’s what happened after the release of the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the origin of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

The 434-page report disputed long-held GOP claims that a “dossier” of salacious material originally commissioned by Democrats triggered the probe and that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign.

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Former NSA lawyer debunks Laura Ingraham’s bogus claim that Adam Schiff used the agency to obtain Devin Nunes’ phone records: ‘Not how the law works’

AlterNet logoThroughout the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham hasn’t been shy about jumping through hoops to defend the president — and she recently claimed that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, during the inquiry, abused his power by working with the National Security Agenda (NSA) to obtain Rep. Devin Nunes’ phone records. But according to former NSA attorney Susan Hennessey, Ingraham’s comments have zero basis in reality.

Ingraham made her claims about Schiff when far-right podcast host Sara Carter was a guest on her show on December 6. Ingraham asserted, “A knowledgeable source tells ‘The Ingraham Angle’ tonight that not only did Schiff get dirt from the secret subpoenas that he sent to phone companies, he also got help from the NSA. All Americans should be shocked by this and more — and demand a full and immediate investigation.”

Hennessey, on Twitter, responded that Ingraham doesn’t even understand how the NSA works. Now a legal analyst for CNN, Hennessey tweeted, “Hi, former NSA lawyer here. This is not how it works. At all. It’s not how the law works. It’s not how NSA works. It’s not how phone records work.”

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What the Roman senate’s grovelling before emperors explains about GOP senators’ support for Trump

Unhinged leaders, dynastic intrigue, devastation and plunder: For 15 years I have been researching and teaching the ancient historian Tacitus’ works on the history of the Roman Empire. It has rarely been difficult to find echoes of the history he describes in current events.

I’m not the first person to make this observation.

In a letter dated Feb. 3, 1812, retired President John Adams wroteto fellow retiree Thomas Jefferson about Tacitus and his fellow historian, Thucydides.

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Controversy on phone records intensifies amid impeachment

The Hill logoHouse Republicans are escalating their feud with Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, accusing the California Democrat of carrying out a “smear campaign” against his GOP counterpart, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), by publishing his phone records in the panel’s sweeping impeachment report.

Collecting the phone data has been strongly defended by Democrats while Republicans have seized on the new controversy as unfair and a bad precedent.

President Trump’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill have sought to shine the spotlight back on Schiff as Democrats build their case against the president and continue marching toward an impeachment vote as soon as next week.

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Trump, GOP shift focus from alleged surveillance abuse to Durham Russia probe

The Hill logoRepublicans are preparing to shrug off a forthcoming report on alleged surveillance abuse during the 2016 campaign and turn their focus to an ongoing investigation of the Russia probe.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday is expected to release the long-awaited results of Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign was improperly spied on during the previous presidential election.

While Republicans have been careful to be respectful of Horowitz and hope he can answer their questions, they’re also warning that his authority is limited and he won’t be the final word.

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Republicans’ disdain for intellectualism was on display in Wednesday’s hearing

Washington Post logoWhen a Republican congressman went so far as to encourage American mothers to refrain from sending their children to some of the nation’s top law schools, he was articulating a sentiment that has been prevalent among conservatives for a while: Higher education — particularly of the elite variety — is harmful for America.

Four constitutional scholars testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday; the three invited by Democrats — Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, Stanford Law School professor Pamela S. Karlan and University of North Carolina School of Law professor Michael Gerhardt — said that there is evidence that President Trump committed an impeachable offense by using his power to request that Ukraine investigate a 2020 political rival.

Republican lawmakers weren’t happy with what they heard — or the places from which they believe these views came.

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To GOP hypocrites: I never want to hear about Hillary Clinton’s emails again

Washington Post logoIf there were a global competition for insincerity, President Trump would have won the equivalent of an Oscar, a gold medal, a Ballon d’Or and a Vince Lombardi Trophy combined. You simply could not be more two-faced; it is not humanly possible. His picture belongs in the dictionary under the very word “hypocrisy.”

Trump, recall, spent much of 2016 leading chants of “Lock her up!” because Hillary Clinton made the mistake of employing a private server for some of her official emails as secretary of state. Trump still routinely refers to the former first lady and secretary of state as “Crooked Hillary” as if she had actually committed a crime. Never mind that the Justice Department decided not to prosecute and that a lengthy State Department investigation, completed during the Trump administration, found “no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”

And yet, while castigating Clinton for supposedly mishandling classified information, Trump has been engaging in far more egregious examples of the very same sin.

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