Tag: GOP now the party of corruption

Scoop: Sen. Cramer blocks Armenian genocide bill at request of White House

Axios logoThe White House directed Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) to block an effort by Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Thursday to pass a resolution via unanimous consent formally recognizing Turkey’s genocide of the Armenian people, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Why it matters: This is the third time that the White House has directed a Republican senator to block the resolution, a symbolic measure already passed by the House that would infuriate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

    • Cramer said on the Senate floor that he doesn’t think this is “the right time” to pass the resolution, noting that President Trump has just returned from meeting with Erdoğan at the NATO summit in London, and that the resolution could undermine the administration’s diplomatic efforts.

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Republicans are terrified people will watch impeachment hearings as Democrats make a compelling case

AlterNet logoOn the first day of impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee, following the fact-collection hearings last month held by the House Intelligence Committee, one thing was certain: Republicans are terrified that people might actually watch this thing. From the very beginning of the hearing, GOP members kept throwing out BS procedural objections and forcing votes, clearly hoping that curious viewers would get bored and turn the hearings off before hearing any testimony.

We’d better hope it didn’t work. While some (including myself) feared that Wednesday’s hearing — featuring four law professors talking about the legal and historical aspects of impeachment — was going to be boring, it was actually as interesting, if not more so at points, than the direct witness testimony heard in November.

Instead of getting mired in legal dithering, the three law professors called by Democrats were clear as a summer’s day in their opinions: Donald Trump’s behavior is absolutely impeachable, and furthermore stopping presidents from doing what he did was the main reason why the founding fathers wrote impeachment powers into the damn Constitution in the first place.

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Pelosi says House will move to impeach President Trump

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Thursday that the House will move forward with impeaching President Trump, saying his actions — as revealed by their weeks-long investigation — left them “no choice” but to pursue his removal from office.

The move erases any lingering doubt that Democrats view Trump’s dealings with Ukraine as a severe violation of the Constitution — and any question of whether they will take the next step of making him just the third president in the nation’s history to be impeached.

“The president’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution,” Pelosi said in a televised address against a backdrop of American flags. “Our democracy is at stake. The president leaves us no choice but to act.”

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GOP Expert Mistaken On Basic Impeachment Fact

A law professor Republicans called to testify at Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing got a basic fact wrong in trying to defend Donald Trump from impeachment, incorrectly saying that Democrats are running the fastest impeachment process in history.

“That’s the problem when you move towards impeachment on this abbreviated schedule that has not been explained to me why you want to set the record for the fastest impeachment,” Turley said. “Fast is not good for impeachment.”

That accusation is simply false.

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Scholars Call Trump’s Actions on Ukraine an Impeachable Abuse of Power

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives on Wednesday opened a critical new phase of the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, featuring legal scholars vigorously debating whether his conduct and the available evidence rose to the constitutional threshold necessary for his removal from office.

In a daylong hearing convened by the Judiciary Committee, three constitutional scholars invited by Democrats testified that evidence of Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for political gain clearly met the definition of an impeachable abuse of power. They said his defiance of Congress’s investigative requests was further grounds for charging him.

A fourth scholar invited by Republicans disagreed, warning that Democrats were barreling forward with a shoddy case for the president’s removal based on inadequate evidence, and risked damaging the integrity of a sacred process enshrined in the Constitution.

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Democrats debate scope of impeachment charges

The Hill logoDemocrats are debating how broadly to make their impeachment case against President Trump, with some lawmakers seeking to expand the list of charges even as House Judiciary Committee members signal a relatively narrow approach.

House Democrats at the first Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing on Wednesday gave the clearest sign yet of the scope of their likely articles by unveiling posters featuring three possible charges: abuse of power and bribery, obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice.

“I’m for a keep-it-simple scope,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a Judiciary Committee member, told The Hill during a brief break from the Wednesday hearing.

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Scholar rains hell on Republican who questioned her integrity at impeachment hearing: ‘I’m insulted!’

AlterNet logoStanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan hammered Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) on Wednesday after he had questioned whether she and other House Judiciary Committee witnesses had bothered to read transcripts and reports about the House impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

In her opening statement, Karlan immediately took issue with Collins’ claim that witnesses called before today’s hearings did not have time to read and digest all the relevant information about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political opponents.

“Here Mr. Collins, I would like to say to you, sir, that I read transcripts of every one of the witnesses who appeared in the live hearing because I would not speak about these things without reviewing the facts,” she said. “So I’m insulted by the suggestion that, as a law professor, I don’t care about those facts.”

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Constitutional law experts refute GOP witness’ claim Trump associates can refuse to comply with congressional subpoenas: ‘That is the act of obstruction’

AlterNet logoWhen public hearings in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump moved to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Republicans brought on constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley to make a case against impeaching the president. Turley, unlike the three legal scholars featured by House Democrats, was highly critical of the way Democrats have handled the impeachment inquiry — and one of Turley’s criticisms had to do with subpoenas. House Democrats, Turley argued during his testimony, should go through the courts to subpoena potential witnesses. But some legal experts vehemently disagree.

Turley testified that if House Democrats “actually subpoena witnesses and go to court, then you have an obstruction case — because a court issues an order. And unless they stay that order, by a higher court, then you have obstruction.”

Much of the criticism of Turley’s testimony has come from Democrats, but some of it came from Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano — a right-wing libertarian who isn’t shy about criticizing Trump at times. And according to Napolitano, Turley’s testimony underestimated the amount of subpoena powers the U.S. House of Representatives has.

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Giuliani, Facing Scrutiny, Travels to Europe to Interview Ukrainians

New York Times logoPresident Trump’s personal lawyer has been in Budapest and Kyiv this week to talk with former Ukrainian prosecutors for a documentary series intended to debunk the impeachment case.

WASHINGTON — Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump’s political rivals.

Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.

The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.

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Impeachment trial timing hangs over 2020 Senate calendar

January schedule is filled with question marks

The Senate has released its calendar for 2020, but the year will begin with a giant question mark because of a possible impeachment trial.

The month of January is missing from the schedule entirely.

A copy of the calendar, obtained by CQ Roll Call, also includes a notation that the weeklong Presidents Day recess is “subject to Senate floor activity.”

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