Tag: Senate GOP

Trump’s lawyers are also on trial

The president’s impeachment trial has revealed a common Trump theme: The lawyers he brings in to defend his behavior end up in their own legal morass.

They’ve been accused of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy. They’ve been dubbed ethically compromised. They’ve been labeled liars. They could even be called to testify in the impeachment case they were hired to combat.

In the opening days of Donald Trump’s Senate trial, it has at times felt like the president’s lawyers are his co-defendants.

“Nonsense,” said Jay Sekulow, the longest-serving personal attorney to Trump, when asked about the litany of allegations flying around Capitol Hill. Continue reading.

How Trump’s Senate trial lawyers could complicate the case his DOJ lawyers are making in court

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s legal team took House Democrats to task in the opening hours of the Senate impeachment trial for refusing to defer to the federal courts and rushing to impeach the president without waiting for judges to resolve lingering disputes over witnesses and evidence.

But that doesn’t sound at all like the Trump Justice Department’s team that is actually navigating those courts. In fact, it’s pretty contradictory, some legal experts suggest, and could affect the administration’s efforts in those cases.

“We’re acting as if the courts are an improper venue to determine constitutional issues of this magnitude,” the president’s lawyer Jay Sekulow declared on the Senate floor. “That is why we have the courts, that is why we have a federal judiciary.” Continue reading.

Law professor details 4 glaring ‘deficiencies’ with Trump lawyers’ impeachment trial brief: ‘We’ve seen this before with the tantrums’

AlterNet logoOn Monday, January 20, attorneys representing President Donald Trump during his impeachment trial submitted a legal brief voicing their reasons for objecting to the trial. The 109-page brief has been drawing a great deal of criticism from Trump’s opponents, who argue that the attorneys’ reasoning is badly flawed in multiple ways. And law professor Michael J. Gerhardt, analyzing the brief in an article published by Just Security on January 21, cites four fundamental “deficiencies that make it more of a political screed than a legal document deserving of respect and serious consideration by senators, the public, historians and constitutional scholars.”

Deficiency #1, according to Gerhardt, is the “table pounding” tone of the memo — which the law professor criticizes for being “replete with bluster” and using over-the-top rhetoric like “an affront to the Constitution” and “a political tool to overturn the result of the 2016 presidential election.”

“— I am being precise and literal with that choice of words — thrown by Republican members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees,” observes Gerhardt, who teaches at the University of North Carolina. “The only thing this kind of rhetoric seemingly achieves is energizing the president’s base.” Continue reading.

How McConnell Plans To Conceal New Witnesses In Trump Trial

During the House’s impeachment inquiry, Republicans raged about the process, condemning Democrats for holding witness interviews behind closed doors and even trying to dismiss the entire investigation because of it.

Donald Trump himself said the process had “zero transparency” because of the closed-door depositions. Republicans went as far as protesting the process by storming a secure area of the Capitol where the closed-door depositions were being held, a move that compromised national security.

However, under the impeachment trial rules crafted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, any potential impeachment witnesses would first need to be deposed behind closed doors — adopting a process the GOP attacked Democrats for using. The “Senate shall decide after deposition which witnesses shall testify, pursuant to the impeachment rules,” according to McConnell’s resolution. Continue reading.

The Memo: Day One shows conflicting narratives on impeachment

The Hill logoThe third impeachment trial of an American president got underway in earnest on Tuesday, amid an atmosphere of instant recrimination and polarization.

One small exception came when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made a last-minute concession, announcing that each side would have three days — not two as he had previously asserted — to make its case.

But that was a rare, and relatively minor, shift from McConnell, who has previously said that he would coordinate the conduct of the trial with the White House. Continue reading.

1999 Trial vs. McConnell Rules

Mitch McConnell is trying to gaslight the American people. He wants us to believe that his ridiculously unfair, biased impeachment rules follow past precedent and he’s repeatedly lied that his procedures mirror the 1999 impeachment trial.

McConnell: “And all we are doing here is saying we are going to get started in exactly the same way that 100 senators agreed to 20 years ago.”

McConnell: “What was good enough for President Clinton in an impeachment trial should have been good enough for President Trump.”

That’s a lie. Here are the facts: Continue reading “1999 Trial vs. McConnell Rules”

Senate blocks push to subpoena Bolton in impeachment trial

The Hill logoSenate Republicans blocked an attempt by Democrats to include a deal on former national security adviser John Bolton‘s testimony in the impeachment trial rules.

Democrats forced a vote in the early morning hours Wednesday on calling Bolton to testify, but it was tabled, effectively pigeonholing it, in a 53-47 party-line vote.

The proposal from Democrats would have inserted language into the trial rules resolution, which is expected to be passed later on Tuesday, to subpoena Bolton. The failed vote followed a similar unsuccessful effort to subpoena acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), speaking for the first time from the Senate floor, said Republicans and Trump were “afraid” to let Bolton testify because “they know he knows too much.” Continue reading.

Adam Schiff brilliantly used Trump’s own words against him at the start of the impeachment trial

AlterNet logoAddressing the Senate on the first official day of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) delivered a persuasive and impassioned speech that urged senators to conduct a robust and thorough proceeding — rather than rushing through the trial as many Republicans would like.

Schiff repeatedly dismantled many of the arguments against hearing new witnesses and obtaining new evidence that have been put forward by the president’s defenders, and he rebutted the arguments that the impeachment inquiry he led in the House of Representatives was too swift. The House, he said, has a constitutional right conduct impeachment in the manner it sees fit, and it was obligated to move forward once it had a compelling and urgent case against Trump. And while some critics have said that he should have fought to obtain more witness testimony and documents, he pointed out that the president obstructed many efforts to get this evidence and that going to the courts would have been unnecessary and far too slow.

In a clever and compelling move, Schiff used video clips of Trump’s own words to bolster his arguments. He played a clip of Trump saying, for instance, that he would like to see witnesses at the Senate trial. Continue reading.

Presidential historian: Martha McSally’s unhinged outburst proves GOP has become a ‘monarchist party’ and ‘cult of personality’

AlterNet logoPresidential historian Jon Meacham is known for looking at the big picture, and he did exactly that on Tuesday during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when he analyzed Arizona Sen. Martha McSally’s recent outburst at CNN reporter Manu Raju.

Last week, Raju asked McSally if she wanted new evidence to be included in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. And the Arizona Republican angrily responded, “You’re a liberal hack. I’m not talking to you. You’re a liberal hack.”

According to Meacham, McSally’s outburst wasn’t an anomaly or an isolated incident but rather, was designed to express her unwavering devotion to Trump. Such behavior on McSally’s part, Meacham told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, is characteristic of a “monarchist party” and a “cult of personality. Continue reading.

Senate rejects Democratic effort to subpoena acting White House chief of staff Mulvaney for testimony in Trump’s impeachment trial

Washington Post logoSenators began debate Tuesday afternoon over the rules that will guide the impeachment trial of President Trump — just the third in history of a U.S. president — focused on his conduct toward Ukraine.

The Senate rejected Democratic amendments to subpoena records from the White House, State Department, Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget related to the Ukraine probe. The White House stonewalled requests for those records by House investigators during their inquiry.

The Senate also rejected amendments to subpoena Trump administration officials, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; his senior adviser, Robert Blair; and top Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey. Each amendment was tabled on a 53-to-47 party-line vote. Continue reading.