Tag: Senate GOP

Schiff closes with plea to GOP on Trump: ‘He is not who you are’

The Hill logoHouse Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) closed his impeachment argument on Monday by pleading with GOP senators to vote to convict President Trump, arguing that they are better than the president and that history will judge them poorly if they vote to acquit. 

“Truth matters to you. Right matters to you. You are decent. He is not who you are,” Schiff, facing the seated Republican senators, said from the well of the Senate.

“History will not be kind to Donald Trump. I think we all know that. Not because it will be written by ‘never Trumpers,’ but because whenever we have departed from the values of our nation, we have come to regret it, and regret is written all over the pages of our history,” argued Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager. Continue reading.

Schiff: Senators who fail to convict Trump will not be ‘off the hook’

“I still think it’s enormously important that the president was impeached.”

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said on Sunday senators voting to keep President Donald Trump in office will not be “off the hook,” as Democrats look ahead to the president’s likely acquittal in the impeachment trial.

“I’m not letting the senators off the hook. We’re still going to go into to the Senate this week and make the case why this president needs to be removed,” Schiff said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “It will be up to the senators to make that final judgment, and the senators will be held accountable for it.”

Although the president will most likely remain in office, the lead House impeachment manager said, “I still think it’s enormously important that the president was impeached.” Continue reading.

Senate to emerge from impeachment trial guilty of extreme partisanship

Washington Post logoThe Senate is poised to end its impeachment trial of President Trump far deeper in the partisan trenches than when it started.

That’s a remarkable feat given how deep the Senate has already descended the past decade, but conversations with several of the more widely respected senators revealed a troubling state of affairs that looks nothing like the last time the supposedly august chamber came out of a presidential impeachment trial.

“I’ve got to figure out where we go from here, because right now, my view, this is the saddest day that I’ve seen in the Senate,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Friday. “I’m really disgusted with everybody, just really — the House, the Senate, the Republicans, the Democrats. It’s just a sad day.” Continue reading.

While Stained in History, Trump Will Emerge From Trial Triumphant and Unshackled

New York Times logoHis acquittal in the Senate assured, the emboldened president will take his victory and grievance to the campaign trail, no longer worried about congressional constraint.

WASHINGTON — Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to foresee the lesson of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. “When you strike at a king,” Emerson famously said, “you must kill him.”

Mr. Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down.

With the end of the impeachment trial now in sight and acquittal assured, a triumphant Mr. Trump emerges from the biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail.

The president’s Democratic adversaries rolled out the biggest constitutional weapon they had and failed to defeat him, or even to force a full trial with witnesses testifying to the allegations against him. Now Mr. Trump, who has said that the Constitution “allows me to do whatever I want” and pushed so many boundaries that curtailed past presidents, has little reason to fear the legislative branch nor any inclination to reach out in conciliation. Continue reading.

Cowardice and guilt: Republican senators finally hint Trump may have done something wrong — in the most shameful way possible

AlterNet logoOn the day it became clear a majority of the Senate would allow the trial of the president to close without hearing from a single witness, Republicans who found themselves protecting Donald Trump started making a surprising admission.

Trump, of all people, might have done something wrong.

The revelations started with Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, whose pending retirement gave him more independence than many of his colleagues to break with the president. But on Thursday night, he revealed that he would join most other Republicans in a vote to block the Senate from hearing witnesses, most notably former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Continue reading.

Fox News judge comes out swinging against Senators who vote to block evidence in Trump’s trial

AlterNet logoJudge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News contributor and frequent critic of President Donald Trump, wrote an editorial Thursday, which asked Republican senators who refuse to call witnesses for Trump’s impeachment trial the following: “How can the Senate be faithful to the Constitution if it suppresses the truth?”

After reviewing the history of the separation of powers established in the U.S. Constitution, Napolitano wrote that “in the case of impeachment of the president, the Constitution gives ‘sole power’ to the House of Representatives. In the case of an impeachment trial, the Constitution gives exclusivity to the Senate. There is no place for presidential resistance or judicial interference, so long as the House and Senate arguably follow the Constitution.”

The president was impeached by the House of Representatives for valid reasons, in the view of the Fox News judge. Continue reading.

Republicans Falsely Claim To Have Heard Witnesses In Trump Trial

The Senate Republican majority is all but set to vote to acquit Donald Trump in his impeachment trial, without hearing any witness testimony whatsoever.

Despite this, many senators have been misleadingly suggesting that witness testimony was in fact part of the trial.

The Senate Republican Communications Center, part of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office, posted a list of “Senate Trial Facts” Friday afternoon, intended to demonstrate why the GOP believed it was “time to move on.” Continue reading.

Republicans Are Twisting Themselves Into Knots Trying To Justify Acquitting Trump

They’ve offered tortured explanations for why no witnesses are needed in his Senate trial and why he shouldn’t be removed from office.

WASHINGTON ― Republican senators are providing incredulous explanations of their views on President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign toward Ukraine and what sort of punishment he deserves over it ― if any ― as a final vote on whether to remove him from office looms in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The swift acquittal promised by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at the trial’s outset became all but certain Thursday night when Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a key swing vote, indicated he’d vote against calling witnesses in a vote on Friday. On Friday, the Senate followed through and voted to block witnesses from appearing ― a first in the history of presidential impeachment trials.

Alexander, in a statement explaining his decision, said he saw “no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven” ― i.e., that Trump pressured Ukraine to open investigations into a chief political rival, former vice president Joe Biden. The position contradicted Trump’s denial of that charge ― the crux of the impeachment case against him ― and the embrace of that denial by many other Republicans for months. Continue reading.

In Senate trial, Trump may have gained power but lost political case

Analysis: It’s hard for the president to cast himself as the victim of a system that looks rigged by him — especially after GOP senators say he’s guilty.

President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trialpromises to leave him more powerful in Washington — and possibly more vulnerable to defeat on the campaign trail.

That’s in part because a handful of pivotal Senate Republicans chose to criticize Trump’s behavior in office while protecting him from both official sanction and the potential jeopardy of witnesses unraveling his impeachment defense under oath. As a result, Trump is on the verge of emerging from the trial with a tacit green light to defy Congress without fear of reprisal, and also safe in the knowledge that elected representatives will push only so far to find out whether he tells the truth to the public.

“It’s arguable that he’s the most politically powerful president in American history,” presidential biographer Jon Meacham said on NBC News during a break in the trial Friday. Continue reading.

Senate GOP passes resolution setting up end of Trump trial

The Hill logoSenate Republicans muscled through a resolution on Friday night that paves the way for President Trump to be acquitted by the middle of next week.

The Senate voted along party lines 53-47 on the resolution, with every Democratic senator opposing it after Republicans rejected allowing witnesses or documents as part of the trial.

“A majority of the U.S. Senate has determined that the numerous witnesses and 28,000-plus pages of documents already in evidence are sufficient to judge the House Managers’ accusations and end this impeachment trial,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. Continue reading.