Tag: GOP now the party of corruption

Fact Sheet: Trump Says One Thing and Does Another on Criminal Justice

Center for American Progress logoPresident Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed ownership of criminal reform because he signed the FIRST STEP Act—a bipartisan federal sentencing and prison reform bill. A month after signing the bill, he proclaimed, “I did criminal justice reform, nobody else. I did it. Without me, you don’t have criminal justice reform.” In fall 2019, he again declared, “I did criminal justice reform, which President Obama could not get approved—which the media never talks about. If President Obama got criminal justice reform done, it would be front-page stories all over the place. I got it done.”1 But these claims fly in the face of nearly every action this administration has taken, most of which are antithetical to reform efforts.

Too often, the full context of the Trump administration’s record on criminal justice reform is obscured by photo ops and public events.2 However, behind the scenes, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) regularly contravenes the efforts of the criminal justice reform movement. Collected here are a list of those anti-reform actions to date: Continue reading.

These 14 GOP Senators Supported Clinton’s Removal, But Not Trump’s

Donald Trump is expected to to be acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial on Wednesday, with most Republicans predicted to vote in his favor.

Among those standing steadfast with Trump are 14 current GOP senators who voted to impeach or remove President Clinton from office in the late 1990s. Many of those senators have since shifted their reasoning on why a president can’t  be removed from office.

Seven Republican senators serving today voted in 1999 to remove Clinton from office: Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Pat Roberts of Kansas, and Richard Shelby of Alabama. Continue reading.

Ernst walks back her Biden impeachment remarks

The Hill logoSen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on Monday walked back her comments a day earlier warning that Congress could immediately impeach Democrat Joe Biden over his Ukraine dealings if he’s elected president in November.  

Speaking with reporters just off the Senate floor, Ernst said her weekend remarks were overblown and that she was trying to argue that Democrats have made impeachment — once a political tool reserved for extreme circumstances — the new normal in today’s partisan warfare.

“That was taken entirely out of context. The point is that the Democrats have lowered the bar so far that … regardless of who it is, if you have a different party in the House than that of an elected president, you can have just random comments thrown out there with folks saying we’re going to impeach,” Ernst said when asked by The Hill about her earlier Biden comments.  Continue reading.

GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander: Trump Made ‘Mistake’ By Pushing Russian Propaganda

The Tennessee lawmaker said he’s going to vote to acquit the president anyway.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) on Sunday defended his key vote to block witnesses from being called in the impeachment trial, saying President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine were “wrong” but not impeachable.

The Tennessee lawmaker told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he will vote on Wednesday to acquit Trump, despite the president’s “inappropriate” actions and his “mistake” of echoing Russian talking points to Ukraine’s president.

“I think he shouldn’t have done it,” Alexander said of Trump conditioning U.S. military aid on Ukraine investigating political rival Joe Biden. “I think it was wrong. Inappropriate was the way I’d say ― improper, crossing the line.” Continue reading.

Senate to emerge from impeachment trial guilty of extreme partisanship

Washington Post logoThe Senate is poised to end its impeachment trial of President Trump far deeper in the partisan trenches than when it started.

That’s a remarkable feat given how deep the Senate has already descended the past decade, but conversations with several of the more widely respected senators revealed a troubling state of affairs that looks nothing like the last time the supposedly august chamber came out of a presidential impeachment trial.

“I’ve got to figure out where we go from here, because right now, my view, this is the saddest day that I’ve seen in the Senate,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Friday. “I’m really disgusted with everybody, just really — the House, the Senate, the Republicans, the Democrats. It’s just a sad day.” Continue reading.

Trump’s Impeachment and the Degrading of Presidential Accountability

The President will see an acquittal—which was preordained by the highly partisan Senate—as license for further abuse.

The sordid truth of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump is that it will end with the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, doing him a favor: delivering the votes, with little regard for the facts. That is sadly appropriate, because Trump’s favors—the ones he covets, the ones he demands—and the terms on which he extracts them, remain the trial’s most contested issue. The House managers cited Trump’s statement to President Volodymyr Zelensky, of Ukraine, in their phone call on July 25, 2019—“I would like you to do us a favor though”—as the crux of a corrupt scheme. Trump’s lawyers countered that he was talking not about his “personal interests” but about America’s. In their trial brief, they argued that Trump “frequently uses variations of the phrase ‘do us a favor,’ ” and cited examples. “Do me a favor,” he said he’d asked Europe. “Would you buy a lot of soybeans, right now?” “Do me a favor,” he said he’d asked North Korea. “You’ve got this missile engine testing site. . . . Can you close it up?” The lawyers could have added Trump’s claim that, before choosing Alexander Acosta to be his Secretary of Labor, he’d worried that he was related to the CNN reporter Jim Acosta, so he told his staff, “Do me a favor—go back and check the family tree.” Continue reading “Trump’s Impeachment and the Degrading of Presidential Accountability”

Cowardice and guilt: Republican senators finally hint Trump may have done something wrong — in the most shameful way possible

AlterNet logoOn the day it became clear a majority of the Senate would allow the trial of the president to close without hearing from a single witness, Republicans who found themselves protecting Donald Trump started making a surprising admission.

Trump, of all people, might have done something wrong.

The revelations started with Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, whose pending retirement gave him more independence than many of his colleagues to break with the president. But on Thursday night, he revealed that he would join most other Republicans in a vote to block the Senate from hearing witnesses, most notably former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Continue reading.

Republicans Are Twisting Themselves Into Knots Trying To Justify Acquitting Trump

They’ve offered tortured explanations for why no witnesses are needed in his Senate trial and why he shouldn’t be removed from office.

WASHINGTON ― Republican senators are providing incredulous explanations of their views on President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign toward Ukraine and what sort of punishment he deserves over it ― if any ― as a final vote on whether to remove him from office looms in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The swift acquittal promised by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at the trial’s outset became all but certain Thursday night when Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a key swing vote, indicated he’d vote against calling witnesses in a vote on Friday. On Friday, the Senate followed through and voted to block witnesses from appearing ― a first in the history of presidential impeachment trials.

Alexander, in a statement explaining his decision, said he saw “no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven” ― i.e., that Trump pressured Ukraine to open investigations into a chief political rival, former vice president Joe Biden. The position contradicted Trump’s denial of that charge ― the crux of the impeachment case against him ― and the embrace of that denial by many other Republicans for months. Continue reading.

Senate GOP passes resolution setting up end of Trump trial

The Hill logoSenate Republicans muscled through a resolution on Friday night that paves the way for President Trump to be acquitted by the middle of next week.

The Senate voted along party lines 53-47 on the resolution, with every Democratic senator opposing it after Republicans rejected allowing witnesses or documents as part of the trial.

“A majority of the U.S. Senate has determined that the numerous witnesses and 28,000-plus pages of documents already in evidence are sufficient to judge the House Managers’ accusations and end this impeachment trial,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. Continue reading.