Tag: Senate impeachment trial

Starr Mocked Over ‘Ridiculous’ Impeachment Argument

Bringing Ken Starr on to President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team seemed like a terrible idea from the start, and on Monday afternoon, the former independent counsel showed why.

As the former independent counsel who pushed for a slew of impeachment charges against former President Bill Clinton, Starr is in the odd position of having vigorously and publicly advocated for removing a chief executive under much less serious accusations that Trump now faces. So inevitably, his defense was going to draw accusations of hypocrisy.

Yet somehow, he didn’t seem to foresee this and try to mitigate the damage. Continue reading.

Legal scholars explain why John Bolton’s book could expose Trump lawyers to criminal liability

AlterNet logoOver the weekend, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt reported in the New York Times that former National Security Adviser John Bolton — in an unpublished  manuscript of his new book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” due out March 17 — asserts that President Donald Trump and his allies directly tied military aid to Ukraine with an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. This was the “quid pro quo” that House Democrats alleged during their impeachment hearings last year and continue to allege in Trump’s impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate. And legal writer Jerry Lambe, in an article for Law & Crime, reports that the Bolton’s assertion might subject Trump’s lawyers to criminal exposure.

“The threshold question is whether the president’s attorneys were aware of the information contained in the manuscript,” Lambe explains. “According to a letter from Bolton’s attorney, Charles J. Cooper, the White House was made aware of the book on December 30. The bombshell revelations reportedly therein could not only change tenor of the Senate trial by forcing the chamber to hear from witnesses such as Bolton — they may place the president’s impeachment attorneys in a precarious position.”

On Sunday night, attorney Mark S. Zaid tweeted, “At least some members of Trump’s legal team also likely knew of Bolton’s knowledge which, if so, potentially subjects them to criminal perjury charges or legal disciplinary actions for their statements before the Senate.” Continue reading.

Romney: ‘Increasingly likely’ other GOP senators will support hearing from Bolton

The Hill logoSen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said on Monday that he believes it is more likely other Republican senators will support subpoenaing former national security adviser John Bolton in the wake of an explosive New York Times report.

Romney said it’s “increasingly apparent” that the Senate should hear from Bolton after the Times reported that he claims in his forthcoming memoir that President Trump tied Ukraine aid to help with investigations into Democrats.

“It’s pretty fair to say John Bolton has relevant testimony,” Romney told reporters. “I think it’s increasingly likely that other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton.” Continue reading.

Republicans fear the ‘floodgates’ will open if John Bolton testifies during Trump’s impeachment trial: report

AlterNet logoFormer National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” isn’t due out until March 17, but Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times are reporting that according to an “unpublished manuscript” of the book, Bolton asserts that President Donald Trump and his allies tied military aid to Ukraine with an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. And in Axios, journalists Jonathan Swan, Mike Allen and Alayna Treene are reporting that Trump’s Republican supporters are seriously worried that the “floodgates” will open if Bolton testifies at Trump’s impeachment trial.

Trump and his allies have vehemently denied that there was ever a “quid pro quo” when it came to a Bidens investigation and military aid to Ukraine, while the House Democrats who led the impeachment inquiry against Trump last year have maintained that there most certainly was a “quid pro quo.” And according to Haberman and Schmidt’s report, Trump’s former national security adviser is confirming in his book that House Democrats are right.

Axios quotes a “top” White House aide as saying that if Bolton testifies during Trump’s impeachment trial, things can only get worse for the president. Continue reading.

Senate Republicans face pivotal moment on impeachment witnesses

The Hill logoRepublicans in the Senate are facing new pressure to subpoena key witnesses on the impeachment trial of President Trump. 

The Senate was headed into the second week of the trial facing a pivotal vote on the subject, and it looked like Democrats would almost certainly not win the four GOP votes needed to subpoena new witnesses.

But that was before a report Sunday night in The New York Times. Continue reading.

Senate Republicans push back on calls for more impeachment witnesses

Republicans appeared unmoved by Democrats’ arguments for Trump’s removal and reiterated that the Senate shouldn’t seek new evidence.

Senate Republicans on Sunday defended President Donald Trump and panned calls for witnesses to testify in the Senate impeachment trial, ahead of the start of the second week.

In interviews on major networks, Republicans appeared unmoved by House Democrats’ opening arguments for Trump’s removal and reiterated that the Senate should not seek new evidence.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a strong Trump ally, warned on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” that calling in witnesses would create only more havoc. Continue reading.

Four significant questions raised by the newly released recording of Trump and Lev Parnas

Washington Post logoAt the beginning of a video released Saturday by an attorney representing Lev Parnas, we see a hallway. At the end of the hallway is an arch with a dark-colored backdrop, in front of which two people appear to be posing for a photograph. Behind the person on the left is what looks like an American flag.

That shot establishes what we’re looking at: footage captured during a fundraising dinner on April 30, 2018, for the group America First Action, which was held at Trump’s D.C. hotel. That shot is definitive because it’s trivial to match that distant scene with one we’ve seen from a much closer perspective, thanks to material released by the House Intelligence Committee. In one photo from the committee, for example, we see Parnas and President Trump standing in front of an archway with blue curtains, flanked by American flags.

Parnas would become tightly integrated into Trump’s circle, though the distance at which he was kept varies depending on whom you ask. Trump insists Parnas, an eventual business associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, was only given access to the president because he’d contributed to Trump’s campaign or to America First. Parnas, the argument goes, was simply one of hundreds of such people who take photos with the president. To hear Parnas tell it, though, his work for Giuliani in late 2018 and in 2019 was well-known by Trump and was integral to the effort to get Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a possible opponent of Trump’s in the upcoming election. Continue reading.

‘Stop lying’: White House attorney’s bogus defense of Trump summarily discredited by observers with readily available facts

AlterNet logoAfter three days of House impeachment managers’ brilliant prosecution of President Donald Trump – and “prebuttal” of the arguments the president’s team was expected to make – White House attorneys Saturday morning began their defense of President Trump.

It’s not going well.

Deputy White House Counsel Mike Purpura (photo) has been making the majority of today’s arguments – they have decided that not enough people will be watching on TV so Saturday’s defense will last not eight but just two hours.

Purpura is not doing a good job – unless his job is to lie to U.S. Senators and the American people. Continue reading.

Trump defense team signals focus on Schiff

The Hill logoAt several points during their opening argument, President Trump’s defense team trained their fire on Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), removing any doubt about their intent to make the House manager’s credibility an issue at the impeachment trial.

Addressing the Senate on Saturday, Trump’s lawyers accused Schiff of repeatedly stretching the truth and creating false impressions amid his pursuit to take down the president.

“Chairman Schiff has made so much of the House’s case about the credibility of interpretations that the House managers want to place on — not hard evidence — but on inferences,” said Patrick Philbin, deputy counsel to Trump. Continue reading.

The impeachment evidence will catch up to Republicans and Trump — whether they ignore it or not

Washington Post logoDONALD TRUMP’S presidency has been, among other things, a war against truth. So it’s fitting that in making the case for his removal from office this week, House impeachment managers showered the Senate with facts. Over and over again, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and his co-managers laid out the hard evidence that Mr. Trump used presidential powers to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations that would aid his reelection campaign, and that he engaged in unprecedented obstruction of Congress’s subsequent investigation.

Videos of testimony and damning statements by Mr. Trump, as well as images of revealing text messages among administration officials, were exhibited repeatedly on the Senate floor, prompting some Republicans to complain that they were being forced to rehear the same pieces of evidence. So be it: GOP senators intent on exonerating the president without bothering to fairly consider the case against him should at least be forced to face the reality of his abuses. Meanwhile, busy Americans who took the time to tune in to the proceedings for even an hour or two between Wednesday and Friday likely heard a substantial version of the case.

Several strands of the managers’ argument struck us as particularly on point. One presentation laid out a 10-point proof that in pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump was pursuing not U.S. foreign policy but his private interests. The campaign was orchestrated by his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said publicly that he was seeking to benefit Mr. Trump, not the country. Mr. Giuliani convinced Mr. Trump that there was dirt to be found in Ukraine on Joe Biden; but a presentation by Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Tex.) demolished the claim that Mr. Biden acted improperly when, as vice president, he sought the ouster of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor. Continue reading.