Tag: Moscow Mitch

McConnell knocks call for additional impeachment witnesses

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday knocked talk of calling additional impeachment witnesses, arguing that Democrats want the Senate to go “fishing” during the soon-to-start impeachment trial.

“If the existing case is strong, there’s no need for the judge and the jury to reopen the investigation. If the existing case is weak, House Democrats should not have impeached in the first place,” McConnell said from the Senate floor.

McConnell’s comments come as his caucus is locked in an increasingly public fight over impeachment witnesses. Continue reading.

McConnell: Senate impeachment trial to start next Tuesday

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says the Senate will begin debating an organizing resolution to start the Senate trial on Tuesday of next week.

The GOP leader said Chief Justice John Roberts will swear in senators as jurors this week, before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

McConnell said the House is expected to send over articles of impeachment on Wednesday and that the Senate will then have to go through a series of preliminary steps and housekeeping measures. Continue reading.

McConnell backs changing Senate rules over Pelosi impeachment delay

Axios logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signed onto a resolution by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) seeking to change the rules of the Senate to dismiss articles of impeachment if they are not transmitted within 25 days of their approval — in this case, Jan. 12.

Why it matters: The constitutionality of such a move, which 12 other co-sponsors have signed onto, is not clear. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reiterated on Thursday that she is waiting to see what the Senate trial will look like before she names impeachment managers and transmits the articles.

  • McConnell has said he has the GOP votes to approve a resolution on trial rules without support from Democrats, and he has repeatedly criticized Pelosi for attempting to interfere with the Senate process.
  • The Senate would require a two-thirds majority in order to change the rules, unless McConnell were to invoke the “nuclear option” and decide the issue by a simple majority vote. Continue reading.

McConnell to GOP on impeachment rules: I have the votes

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Tuesday that “we have the votes” to pass an organizing resolution to start President’s Trump impeachment trial without requiring witness testimony.

“We have the votes, once the impeachment trial has begun, to pass a resolution essentially the same, very similar to the 100 to nothing vote in the Clinton trial which sets up, as you may recall, what could best be described maybe as a Phase One,” McConnell said.

McConnell told Republican senators he had the votes during a closed-door caucus lunch before he spoke publicly. Continue reading.

GOP moderates side with McConnell over Bolton testimony

Democrats are unlikely to get four Republicans to vote to subpoena John Bolton.

Despite John Bolton’s willingness to testify about the Ukraine scandal, the GOP-controlled Senate has no immediate plans to subpoena him in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial — a win for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the White House.

While Democrats have called for testimony from Trump’s former national security adviser, so far there’s no sign that they will secure support from four Republicans they would need to follow through on their demand.

In their bid for a “fair trial,” Democrats were hoping moderate Republicans like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah will endorse their efforts to bring in Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to testify at the trial. They also want to subpoena documents related to the Ukraine scandal. Continue reading.

Least deliberative Senate faces weighty task of holding Trump’s impeachment trial

Washington Post logoThe Senate tasked with holding President Trump’s impeachment trial would be unrecognizable to most of its predecessors.

It’s particularly true for those who ran the last trial 21 years ago, a GOP-led Senate that logged almost 1,200 hours in session. By the end of 1999, senators had cast more than 350 votes on legislation and ushered into existence 170 laws, signed by a president after they tried and failed to evict him from office. It took more than 15,000 pages to cover that year’s Senate work in the Congressional Record.

The current Senate logged almost 230 fewer hours of floor time in 2019, voting just 108 times on actual legislation. And through the first 11 months of last year, the Senate’s official footprint covered just 6,779 pages in the Congressional Record. Continue reading.

‘Seriously corrupt’: Greenville SC resident pens letter to the editor demanding Lindsey Graham ‘recuse’ himself from impeachment after showing ‘disheartening level of cynicism’

AlterNet logoSouth Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has flaunted the fact that he has no desire to seriously evaluate the evidence against President Donald Trump when an impeachment trial takes place in the U.S. Senate. And a letter pushed in South Carolina’s Greenville News asserts that Graham and McConnell should both recuse themselves from the trial.

“Recent statements from U.S. senators have shown a disheartening level of cynicism never before displayed by Congress members involved in impeachment proceedings,” Greenville, South Carolina resident William Byars writes. “Both Senate leader Mitch McConnell and SC Sen. Lindsey Graham have made it abundantly clear they have no interest in even attempting impartiality in the Senate impeachment trial.”

Byars goes on to say, “Openly bragging about refusing to do one’s best to be impartial toward such a solemn responsibility is a display of a seriously corrupt attitude about governing. This behavior insults jurors throughout our court systems, on whom we depend to uphold the mutual trust that underpins our society.” Continue reading

What’s Mitch McConnell’s endgame in shaping the Senate impeachment trial to benefit Trump?

Washington Post logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will run the Senate impeachment trial “in total coordination” with the White House, which means he’ll probably frame it in a way that benefits President Trump. When asked why, he says the answer is obvious: because everyone knows Trump’s going to be acquitted anyway by the Republican-controlled Senate, so why bother?

“We all know how this is going to end,” McConnell said on “Fox and Friends” last week.

The limited history of Senate impeachment trials — there has been only one in the modern era — doesn’t give us much insight into whether this is normal. Continue reading

McConnell Saved Big Money For Big Coal — And Let Us Pay Instead

Kentucky coal miners—along with the rest of us—will be paying the price to keep the government running next year. And we can thank Kentucky’s senior senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for the sellout.

Buried in the giant $1.4 trillion government spending package that McConnell ushered through the Senate last week was a relatively modest $15 billion, 30-year payout to sustain the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund—a boon to the majority leader’s home state coal miners.  As many as one in five coal miners suffer from black lung.

But here’s the kicker: What McConnell had removed from the must-pass funding legislation. In order to keep the government running, McConnell threw out provisions that would have forced coal companies to commit to higher payments toward the health-care costs of their employees and retirees, nixing requirements to extend the commitment period and modestly increase the tax on coal mining companies that are supposed to support the trust fund. Continue reading

Mitch McConnell’s days of dastardly deeds going unrecognized are over

AlterNet logoThe days of Moscow Mitch McConnell quietly destroying the institutions of government behind the scenes are over, it seems. He’s not getting a pass from anyone these days, and it’s about damned time. His declaration that he will work with the White House—the defendant—to make sure that Donald Trump is acquitted has finally done the trick.

Here’s Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor and regular cable news guest:

And here’s Newsweek, amplifying that tweet. There’s little question now that the hearing McConnell and Trump are plotting will be fair and impartial, or that these two have any intention of making it so. They’re not even bothering to pretend otherwise at this point, but for once the traditional media is calling them on it. Not universally and not frequently enough, but it’s happening.