Tag: GOP senate

Trump steps up GOP charm offensive as impeachment looms

The Hill logoPresident Trump stepped up his charm offensive with Senate Republicans, who will handle any House impeachment charges, by meeting Thursday with a group of GOP lawmakers that included two of his biggest critics: Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah) and Susan Collins (Maine).

Trump began the closed-door meeting by discussing the House impeachment proceedings and made reference to how hard it’s been to defend himself during the Democratic-controlled process.

He then quickly pivoted to topics GOP senators wanted to discuss, such as legislation to lower prescription drug costs, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal and proposals to curb vaping products.

View the complete November 21 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

White House and Republicans discuss limiting impeachment trial to two weeks

Washington Post logoA group of Republican senators and senior White House officials met privately Thursday to map out a strategy for a potential impeachment trial of President Trump, including rapid proceedings in the Senate that could be limited to about two weeks, according to multiple officials familiar with the talks.

The prospect of an abbreviated trial is viewed by several Senate Republicans as a favorable middle ground — substantial enough to give the proceedings credence without risking greater damage to Trump by dragging on too long.

Under this scenario, described by officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount a private meeting, the Senate trial could begin as early as January if the Democratic-controlled House votes to impeach Trump next month as appears increasingly likely. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mc­Connell (R-Ky.) said earlier this month that Trump would be acquitted in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-seat majority, if the trial were held today.

View the com plate November 21 article by Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

Tensions rise in Senate’s legislative ‘graveyard’

The Hill logoLong-simmering tensions about the slow pace of legislation are boiling over in the Senate.

Senators are lashing out at each other in an increasingly public blame game about who is responsible for the chamber’s legislative agenda, which has largely ground to a halt this year.

The Senate is in its third week of voting only on nominations, though they’ll need to pass a stopgap spending bill before leaving for the weeklong Thanksgiving break.

View the complete November 20 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Republicans Shift Defense of Trump While He Attacks Another Witness

New York Times logoWith Gordon Sondland prepared to testify this week, Republicans backed away from complaints about secondhand information and instead offered a blunter defense: The president did nothing wrong.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans, bracing for another week of impeachment hearings, asserted on Sunday that President Trump had done nothing wrong because his plans for Ukraine to investigate his political rivals never came to fruition — even as the president complicated their efforts by attacking another witness.

On a day of back-and-forth on Twitter and the morning television talk shows that are a staple of Sundays in Washington, Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited Mr. Trump to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, while the president’s allies shifted their emphasis away from the defense they offered last week, when they stressed that witnesses had only secondhand information against him.

That argument may not work much longer, because lawmakers are about to hear from crucial witnesses who had direct contact with the president, including Gordon D. Sondland, a donor to and an ally of Mr. Trump who served as his liaison to Ukrainian officials while the president withheld — but later released — $391 million in military aid to Ukraine.

View the complete November 17 article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg on The New York Times website here.

GOP divided over impeachment trial strategy

The Hill logoDivisions among Senate Republicans are muddying their strategy for a potential impeachment trial.

As lawmakers await any articles from the House, they’re throwing out their own ideas on what the Senate proceeding should look like.

But Republicans disagree over the length of a trial and who should be asked to testify — two issues that will need to be worked out as part of negotiations on the rules of the trial.

View the complete November 17 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Republicans discuss a longer Senate impeachment trial to scramble Democratic primaries

Washington Post logoSome Republican senators and their advisers are privately discussing whether to pressure GOP leaders to stage a lengthy impeachment trial beginning in January to scramble the Democratic presidential race — potentially keeping six contenders in Washington until the eve of the Iowa caucuses or longer.

Those conversations about the timing and framework for a trial remain fluid and closely held, according to more than a dozen participants in the discussions. But the deliberations come as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) faces pressure from conservative activists to swat back at Democrats as public impeachment hearings began this week in the House.

The discussions raise a potential hazard for the six Democratic senators running for president, who had previously planned on a final sprint out of Washington before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary.

View the complete November 13 article by Robert Costa, Michael Scherer and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

GOP senator: Republicans don’t have votes to dismiss impeachment articles

The Hill logoSen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to Senate Republican leadership, says there are not enough votes in the Senate to immediately dismiss any articles of impeachment passed by the House against President Trump.

Republicans have discussed the possibility of quickly dismissing charges against Trump, which would just require 51 votes. But Cornyn said that would be a difficult hurdle for the GOP, which holds 53 seats in the Senate.

“There’s some people talking about trying to stop the bill, dismiss charges basically as soon as they get over here. I think that’s not going to happen. That would require 51 votes,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday.

View  the complete November 13 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Hill staffers in both parties overwhelmingly believe Trump headed for impeachment

But both sides also agree the Senate won’t remove the president from office

If Donald Trump’s presidency feels like a roller-coaster ride, with each hair-raising turn of events quickly giving way to a new one — and opinions about him constantly in motion — the results of CQ Roll Call’s Capitol Insiders Survey in 2019 buttress that view.

Few congressional staffers thought, at the beginning of the year, that Trump was headed for impeachment. But the results of CQ Roll Call’s October poll are unambiguous: Staffers in both parties overwhelmingly believe Trump will become the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

Still, impeachment is proving deeply divisive, with Republicans characterizing it as nothing more than a partisan witch hunt, while Democrats insist the presidency’s integrity is truly at stake.

View the complete November 13 article by Shawn Zeller on The Roll Call website here.

Republicans, Democrats brace for first public testimony in impeachment inquiry

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s congressional allies and critics on Sunday doubled down on their respective positions on the impeachment inquiry as the House prepares to move into the public phase of the process.

Which witnesses should appear was a key topic after House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) requested that former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden be called to testify. Republicans also plan to call the whistleblower whose complaint helped spark the inquiry, among others.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that while some of the suggested Republican witnesses would likely be called, he saw no reason to have Hunter Biden as a witness.

View the complete November 10 article by Zack Budryk on The Hill website here.

Every Republican for himself: Mitch McConnell told senators in closed-door meeting to come up with their own Trump defense

AlterNet logoAccording to a report at HuffPost, Republican lawmakers, left without guidance by the White House on how to push back at the House impeachment hearings being conducted by the Democratic-led House, are being forced to come up with their own defense of embattled President Donald Trump.

With reports that the White House is the scene of a pitched battle over a which plan to use to fight the Democrats, Senate Republicans are floundering when confronted by the press on how they feel about impeachment hearings that could lead to them to have to vote on whether to force Trump from office.

According to the report, “Republicans have no unified argument in the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump, in large part because they can’t agree on how best to defend the president — or for some, if they should.”

View the complete the complete November 10 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.