Tag: GOP now the cult of Trump

Schiff Suggests Pence ‘Purposefully’ Misled Intelligence Committee about His Call with Zelensky

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff accused Vice President Mike Pence of refusing to declassify information “directly relevant” to the impeachment inquiry in order to conceal his role in the quid pro quo scheme for which President Trump is being impeached.

Pence’s Russia adviser Jennifer Williams testified last month about the vice president’s September 18 phone call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Schiff requested ten days later that Pence declassify her testimony, contained in a November 26 letter from her lawyer, but Pence last week declined to do so in a letter to Schiff.

The testimony “raises profound questions about your knowledge of the President’s scheme to solicit Ukraine’s interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” Schiff wrote in a Tuesday letter to Pence, adding that Pence’s letter refusing to classify Williams’s testimony is “deeply troubling.” Continue reading

Impeachment and the Crack Up of the Conservative Mind

The Trump years have knocked conservatives off a high horse they’d been riding since the Reagan era.

On this day of righteous fury — the nation’s second presidential impeachment in 21 years — I have a special request.

I want to hear from someone, anyone, who meets two standards. One, this person is a supporter of Donald Trump and his Republican backers in Congress who believes the impeachment proceeding is illegitimate and unfair. Two, this person is ready in good faith to convince me that he or she would also oppose impeachment and believe the whole matter to be terribly unfair if the facts in the Ukraine matter were exactly the same in every respect but these: That Hillary Clinton was in the White House and she had asked a foreign leader to investigate her potential GOP opponent in the 2020 reelection.

Does such a person exist? I have my doubts, but my standards for the search are lenient. You do not need to convince me of the merits of your position as a matter of politics or law or constitutional theory. You only need to convince me that you genuinely believe what you are saying and can credibly defend it. It will help, for instance, if you can point to previous examples when you took positions on matters of principle that happened to conflict with your own partisan preferences. Continue reading

White House working to feature Trump’s House allies in impeachment trial

One idea is to allow a collection of Republicans to present a minority report and make their case on the Senate floor.

The White House is actively exploring a way to give President Donald Trump’s staunchest House allies a public role in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial, according to five sources familiar with the matter, as the president looks to mount an aggressive defense in the upper chamber.

One idea under consideration is to allow a collection of House Republicans — who would be fresh off defending Trump in the House — to present a minority report on the Ukraine affair and make their case on the Senate floor, similar to the role Democratic impeachment managers are expected to play in the trial. The idea has been under discussion for several weeks, according to one GOP member familiar with the talks.

Some of the names in the mix include Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina, two of Trump‘s closest allies, as well as Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, a former prosecutor who sits on both the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Toxic McConnell-Schumer relationship strains impeachment talks

The Hill logoThe toxic relationship between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has left senators pessimistic about reaching a deal to set the rules of President Trump’s impeachment trial.

The leaders already have scars from the battles over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018, efforts to repeal ObamaCare in 2017 and McConnell’s refusal to hold a vote on former President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016, among other controversies.

So perhaps it should not be surprising that talks on rules for the trial are off to a rocky start. Continue reading

A letter from local legal scholars about impeachment

The action is a step in a process. It’s not only warranted in this case but essential.

Opinion editor’s note: This article was submitted on behalf of multiple legal scholars at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law. They are listed below.

Last week, we joined more than 800 of our colleagues from around the country and signed a “Letter to Congress from Legal Scholars”(tinyurl.com/legal-scholars). This letter concluded that President Donald Trump engaged in impeachable conduct.

Also last week, the U.S. House announced that it will bring two articles of impeachment against President Trump, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. This will set in motion the third impeachment of a U.S. president in history.

In light of these extraordinary events, we are writing separately to reiterate to our local community why, as legal scholars, we believe that President Trump engaged in impeachable conduct. We also write to explain why, as citizens, we believe that he should be impeached.  Continue reading

A ‘longtime friend’ of Bill Barr just scorched the attorney general in an impassioned op-ed

AlterNet logoWilliam Webster, a former director of both the CIA and the FBI, published an incisive op-ed on Monday in the New York Times in which he took aim at, among others, his “longtime friend” Attorney General Bill Barr.

The ominous piece warned that Webster sees an “ominous threat to the country I love” under President Donald Trump.

He explained:

I am deeply disturbed by the assertion of President Trump that our “current director” — as he refers to the man he selected for the job of running the F.B.I. — cannot fix what the president calls a broken agency. The 10-year term given to all directors following J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year tenure was created to provide independence for the director and for the bureau. The president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block, disturbs me greatly. The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director is critical and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government.

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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

House votes to impeach Trump

The Hill logoHouse Democrats took the historic step Wednesday of impeaching President Trump, a momentous move that will send long-lasting reverberations throughout the Capitol and the country, both already fiercely divided over the truculent figure in the Oval Office.

The two articles, which charge Trump with abusing power and obstructing Congress in his dealings with Ukraine, passed almost exclusively along party lines, marking the most sectarian and contentious of the three presidential impeachments since the nation’s founding — and the first to target a president in his first term.

Lawmakers voted 230 to 197 on the resolution accusing Trump of abusing his power, with all Republicans opposed and only two Democrats — Reps. Collin Peterson (Minn.) and Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) — crossing the aisle in dissent. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), a Democratic presidential candidate, voted present.  Continue reading

Senators have a choice: Convict Trump or coronate him

AlterNet logoThe two articles of impeachment, which have drawn criticism as either too much or too little, strike me as cleverly drafted to put Senate Republicans in a most uncomfortable box.

The second article, obstruction of Congress, should be the tougher one for Senate Republicans. It flows from Donald Trump’s stonewalling the impeachment inquiry – no testimony, no documents.

On top of this utter contempt of Congress, Trump claims absolute immunity from investigation by anyone for anything. His lawyers asserted in federal court in October that the NYPD could not investigate even if Trump literally shot someone on Fifth Avenue.

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Lindsey Graham gives shameful — and revealing — answer when pressed on Trump’s wrongdoing

AlterNet logoSen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) drew sharp criticism at the Doha Forum on Saturday when he made clear that — despite the oath he’s expected to take at a forthcoming impeachment trial in the Senate — he doesn’t have any plans to keep an open mind or act as an “impartial” juror regarding the conduct of President Donald Trump.

But another section of his comments that didn’t gain as much attention is in some ways even more damning. The interviewer pressed him on the nature of Trump’s conduct in the Ukraine scandal, saying: “Is it OK… ever OK for an American president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival?”

Graham, and everyone else, knows that this is exactly what Trump did. And had Trump not done it, there would be universal agreement that it was wrong. So when Graham answered, he shamefully phrased his response to avoid giving a direct answer, while trying to sound as if he was exonerating the president.

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