Tag: GOP senate

Democrats seek leverage for Trump impeachment trial

The Hill logoSenate Democrats are quietly talking about asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to hold articles of impeachment in the House until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agrees to a fair rules package for a Senate trial.

Democratic senators are concerned by talk among Senate Republicans of holding a speedy trial without witnesses, which would set up a shorter time frame than when the Senate considered President Clinton’s 1999 impeachment.

They want to hear from Trump’s advisers and worry that if they don’t use their leverage now, they’ll have little say over how a Senate trial is run.

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Republicans consider skipping witnesses in Trump impeachment trial

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are weighing a speedy impeachment trial that could include no witnesses for President Trump’s legal team or for House Democrats.

The discussions come as the House is moving forward with articles of impeachment against Trump, teeing up a trial in the Senate that would start in January.

The White House has indicated publicly that it has a wish list of potential witnesses, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff(D-Calif.), Hunter Biden and the whistleblower who sparked the impeachment inquiry.

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Giuliani says Trump asked him to brief Justice Dept. and GOP senators on his Ukraine findings

Washington Post logoRudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, said Tuesday that the president has asked him to brief the Justice Department and Republican senators on his findings from a recent trip to Ukraine ahead of a likely Senate impeachment trial.

“He wants me to do it,” Giuliani said in a brief interview. “I’m working on pulling it together and hope to have it done by the end of the week.”

However, it is unclear whether GOP senators or Justice Department officials want information from Giuliani, whose meetings in Europe last week with Ukrainian sources drew condemnation from Democratic lawmakers and winces even from some Republicans.

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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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‘America, we’ve got a problem’: Isakson’s farewell warning

After 20 years in Congress, Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., spoke Tuesday on the Senate floor for what might be his last time. He delivered a warning to the country and a call for bipartisanship.

Worried that the “strongest country in the world” might “succumb to crushing itself inwardly,” he told the chamber, and C-SPAN2 viewers, that he sees bipartisanship “slipping away.”

He called on Americans to use “your conscious and your heart.”

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NOTE:  There is only one party that is repeating propaganda from a hostile nation to defend the action of their party’s leader while turning a blind eye to that person’s crimes in plain sight.

Graham Justifies Biden Probe By Evoking 2008 Criticism Of McCain

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) justified investigating former Vice President Joe Biden based on a debunked right-wing conspiracy by invoking Biden’s past criticisms of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Last week, in his role as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham requested documents from the State Department, alleging Biden acted inappropriately “to end a [Ukrainian] investigation of the company employing his son,” Hunter Biden. The claims have previously been debunked.

Graham’s Senate-based investigation echoes the conspiracies that Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been pursuing around the world, including the parallel track of foreign policy that led to a holdup of Ukrainian foreign aid that triggered the impeachment inquiry.

View the complete November 25 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

GOP braces for Democratic spending onslaught in battle for Senate

The Hill logoNational Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman Todd Young (R-Ind.) is warning his colleagues to brace for a spending deluge from fired-up Democrats in what’s becoming an increasingly competitive battle for the Senate.

GOP senators have outraised their Democratic challengers and the NRSC has brought in more than the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), but third-quarter fundraising shows the momentum is beginning to shift.

One senator who attended a meeting last week where Young addressed the Senate Republican Conference about the 2020 fundraising landscape said there is “concern” Democrats could pull ahead.

View the complete November 26 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Trump makes his mark on courts amid impeachment storm

The Hill logoPresident Trump and Senate Republicans have had extraordinary success pushing judicial nominees through the confirmation process at a rapid clip, giving the GOP reason to celebrate even as the White House is embroiled in an impeachment inquiry that’s dominating Washington.

Amid the impeachment hearings, the Trump administration has flipped the majorities of two appeals courts to Republican-appointed judges, meaning GOP appointees now outnumber Democrats on most of the nation’s circuit courts. That success has prompted conservative leaders to take victory laps in recent weeks.

Confirming ideologically conservative judges has been a top priority for Senate Republicans. Trump’s pace of filling vacancies on the top appellate courts, with the help of the GOP-controlled Senate, has eclipsed the numbers put up by every other president in recent decades.

View the complete November 25 article by Harper Neidig on The Hill website here.

Senate Impeachment ‘Jurors’ Dining With Trump

Many Senate Republicans have dodged questions about the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, saying that they are staying neutral because they will likely be “jurors” in any impeachment trial.

But according to a Politico report on Thursday, Trump has been hosting many of these same prospective “jurors” for a series of group lunches, part of an “intense outreach” in advance of possible impeachment.

With a public that narrowly approves of the inquiry into Trump’s potentially illegal behavior and a GOP base that strongly opposes it, several Republican senators have punted on questions, noting that they might have to be impartial jurors.

View the complete November 22 article by Josh Israel on the National Memo website here.