Tag: GOP senate

GOP senators plan to tune out impeachment week

The Hill logoAs Washington gears up this week for the public phase of the impeachment inquiry, one group is largely tuning it out: Senate Republicans.

Several GOP senators say they either won’t watch the highly anticipated public hearings or haven’t been reading the steady release of transcripts from the House’s closed-door depositions with current and former administration officials.

The reasons vary — some say they don’t have enough time, while others say they distrust the House process. But the decision to disengage underscores the divide between the two sides of the Capitol: on one, impeachment appears all but inevitable; on the other, the potential jury is hanging back, for now.

View the complete November 10 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Rand Paul’s claim that Trump has a constitutional right to confront whistleblowers

Washington Post logo“The Sixth Amendment is pretty clear. It’s part of the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, and it says that you get to confront your accusers. And so, I think it’s very clear that the only constitutional mandate here is, is that if someone’s going to accuse you of something that might remove the president from office, for goodness’ sake, shouldn’t they come forward and present their accusations in person?”

— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in a Fox Business Network interview, Nov. 5, 2019

“The Sixth Amendment guarantees an individual the right to face their accuser. Yet the House of Representatives has been conducting a secret impeachment inquiry based on secret claims made by a secret whistleblower. My bill would make clear that the Sixth Amendment is not superseded by statutes and that the president should be afforded the same rights that we all should: to understand the nature of the allegations brought against them and to face their accuser. This is in the Sixth Amendment. So for all the caterwauling about whistleblower statutes, there is a high law of the land. It is the Constitution, it is the Bill of Rights, and the Sixth Amendment says if you’re accused of a crime, you get to face your accuser.”

— Paul, in a Senate floor speech, Nov. 6, 2019 Continue reading “Rand Paul’s claim that Trump has a constitutional right to confront whistleblowers”

Kennedy defends calling Pelosi ‘dumb’ at Trump rally

“I didn’t mean it as disrespectful at all,” Kennedy said

GOP Sen. John Kennedy defended calling Speaker Nancy Pelosi“dumb” at a rally with President Donald Trump in his home state of Louisiana Wednesday evening.

“I didn’t mean it as disrespectful, I didn’t mean it as disrespectful at all,” Kennedy said Thursday.

View the November 7 article with video by Thomas McKinless on The Roll Call website here.

Who Will Betray Trump?

Donald Trump knows there are potential traitors in his midst. His presidency could depend on keeping them at bay.

From the moment Francis Rooney expressed alarm to his House colleagues that Donald Trump might have abused presidential power in his dealings with Ukraine—and more dramatically, that an impeachment inquiry could be warranted—the Florida Republican was a marked man.

He made for a most unusual suspect. A silver-haired business tycoon, former ambassador and card-carrying member of the GOP establishment, Rooney had reliably played the role of good soldier for the party since easily winning his Naples-area congressional seat in 2016. He had kept his head down. He had dutifully gone about his business as a policymaker and a politician. He had, like so many of his fellow Republicans, muffled his trepidation over the president’s behavior, recognizing that to cross Trump was to commence the extinction of his own political career.

Venting privately about the president has become a hallowed pastime in Republican-controlled Washington, a sort of ritualistic release for those lawmakers tasked with routinely defending the indefensible, and Rooney had long indulged without consequence. Certainly, his friends noticed, the Florida congressman had grown more animated in private over the past year—railing against the improprieties detailed in the Mueller report, decrying the Trump family’s brazen attempts to enrich themselves off the presidency, wondering aloud what the president needed to do before voters would turn on him. Still, there was no real risk. To the extent GOP leaders heard echoes of Rooney’s discontent, they dismissed it as just another member blowing off steam.

View the complete November 8 article by Tim Alberta on the Politico website here.

Trump, GOP senators throw themselves a party to celebrate judicial overhaul

Mitch McConnell to POTUS: ‘Boy, you didn’t blow it. Neil Gorsuch is an all-star’

President Donald Trump and Republican senators took a victory lap  Wednesday to celebrate their push to put nearly 150 of their picks on federal benches from coast to coast.

“It starts with Mitch — because you never gave me a call and said, ‘Maybe we can do it an easier way,’” Trump said during a lively ceremony in the White House’s ornate East Room.

He was referring to using most of the Senate’s floor time to move judicial nominees, and not backing down when some of those individuals received pushback from Democrats — and even some Republicans.

View the complete November 6 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Senate Republicans struggle to coalesce behind an impeachment strategy

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are casting about for the best strategy to defend President Trump from articles of impeachment and divided over several key questions, which has led to a disjointed defense of their party’s leader.

One controversial question for the GOP is how far to go in attacking Trump’s principle accuser, the anonymous author of a whistleblower complaint.

Two of Trump’s staunchest Senate defenders — Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — are calling for the whistleblower to be publicly named and subjected to close scrutiny. Trump did the same Sunday when he urged media organizations to release the whistleblower’s name and declared it “would be doing the public a service if you did.”

View the complete November 6 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

House Dems mourn bills buried in McConnell’s ‘legislative graveyard’

Halloween-timed display tweaks Senate leader for boasts of killing House bills

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries is stepping up his office’s Halloween decorations while expressing his frustration with a stalled agenda he blames on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Throughout the week, the chairman’s office has been displaying a “legislative graveyard,” featuring decorative tombstones inscribed with bills that have passed the House, but have yet to move in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The tombstones represent more than a dozen bills, including ones addressing climate change, pensions and gun purchase background checks.

View the complete October 31 article by Clyde McGrady on The Roll Call website here.

Senate GOP shifts tone on impeachment

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are taking the House impeachment proceedings against President Trump more seriously as damaging revelations against the president mount and the possibility of a quick dismissal of the charges shrinks.

Earlier this year, GOP senators pledged to quickly quash any articles of impeachment passed by the House. But as the Democrats compile more evidence that Trump withheld military assistance from Ukraine to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, they are adopting a more sober tone.

While no Senate Republican has said the charges against Trump rise to the level of being an impeachable offense, many have expressed concern over the drip-drip of damaging revelations.

View the complete October 31 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Trump judicial nominee cries over scathing letter from the American Bar Association

Washington Post logoThe American Bar Association had no shortage of criticism in its assessment of the Trump administration’s new judicial nominee.

Colleagues found Lawrence VanDyke to be “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice,” the chair of an ABA committee wrote in the scathing letter, the result of 60 interviews with lawyers, judges and others who worked with the Justice Department attorney. Acquaintances also alleged a lack of humility, an “’entitlement’ temperament,” a closed mind and an inconsistent “commitment to being candid,” the letter said. It deemed VanDyke “not qualified” for a spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The strongly worded review drew equally strong reactions at a Wednesday hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee — from Democrats who called the ABA findings unusual and troubling as well as from Republicans who called it a low attack from a group they’ve long accused of bias against conservatives. But one charge was particularly upsetting to VanDyke himself: The ABA’s report that he “would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community.”

View the complete October 30 article by Hannah Knowles on The Washington Post website here.

After McConnell advice, Trump lays off GOP senators on impeachment

The president’s team is betting that the cult of his personality and the power of his prolific Twitter feed will be enough to keep senators on his side.

Sitting inside the White House, Mitch McConnell gave Donald Trump some straightforward advice: Stop attacking senators — including Mitt Romney — who likely will soon judge your fate in an impeachment trial.

The one-on-one meeting last week between the Senate majority leader and the president covered several weighty issues including Syria, according to two people familiar with the conversation. But like everything these days when it comes to Trump, impeachment was high on the president’s mind.

And in this case, Trump appears to have listened to the man in the Senate who controls the future of his presidency.

View the complete October 30 article by Burgess Everett and Nancy Cook on the Politico website here.