Tag: Senate sham impeachment trial

House managers: Trump won’t be vindicated. The Senate won’t be, either.

Washington Post logoReps. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Val Demings (Fla.), Sylvia Garcia (Tex.) and Jason Crow (Colo.) were the Democratic House managers in the impeachment trial of President Trump.

Over the past two weeks, we have argued the impeachment case against President Trump, presenting overwhelming evidence that he solicited foreign interference to cheat in the next election and jeopardized our national security by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to pressure Ukraine to do his political bidding. When the president got caught and his scheme was exposed, he tried to cover it up and obstruct Congress’s investigation in an unprecedented fashion. As the trial progressed, a growing number of Republican senators acknowledged that the House had proved the president’s serious misconduct.

Throughout the trial, new and incriminating evidence against the president came to light almost daily, and there can be no doubt that it will continue to emerge in books, in newspapers or in congressional hearings. Most important, reports of former national security adviser John Bolton’s forthcoming book only further confirm that the president illegally withheld military aid to Ukraine until Kyiv announced the sham investigations that the president sought for his political benefit. Continue reading.

Beyond the Partisan Fight, a Wealth of Evidence About Trump and Ukraine

New York Times logoRegardless of the Senate’s verdict, the impeachment inquiry, President Trump’s own words and other revelations yield a narrative establishing his involvement in the pressure campaign.

As the Senate moved toward acquitting President Trump on Wednesday, even some Republicans stopped trying to defend his actions or dispute the evidence, focusing instead on the idea that his conduct did not deserve removal from office, especially in an election year.

Mr. Trump’s “behavior was shameful and wrong,” and “his personal interests do not take precedence over those of this great nation,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said on Monday. She went on to declare that she would nonetheless vote to acquit. Continue reading.

These 14 GOP Senators Supported Clinton’s Removal, But Not Trump’s

Donald Trump is expected to to be acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial on Wednesday, with most Republicans predicted to vote in his favor.

Among those standing steadfast with Trump are 14 current GOP senators who voted to impeach or remove President Clinton from office in the late 1990s. Many of those senators have since shifted their reasoning on why a president can’t  be removed from office.

Seven Republican senators serving today voted in 1999 to remove Clinton from office: Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Pat Roberts of Kansas, and Richard Shelby of Alabama. Continue reading.

The closing arguments in Trump’s Senate trial, in 5 minutes

Washington Post logoThis week, the impeachment trial of President Trump ends — probably in his acquittal by the Senate on Wednesday.

That means Trump will be just the third president in American history to be impeached by the House of Representatives, but he can still go on being president and running for reelection.

It’s tough to tell how having the asterisk of impeachment will affect his reelection bid because Democratic voters largely support his impeachment, while Republicans largely oppose it, and independents are split. In other words, something as remarkable as impeaching a president in an election year polls predictably for the partisan era we’re in. Continue reading.

Manchin calls for bipartisan censure of Trump

The Hill logoCentrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) on Monday urged the Senate to censure President Trump for holding up military aid to Ukraine in order to spur an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, predicting a formal reprimand could pick up bipartisan support.

“I do believe a bipartisan majority of this body would vote to censure President Trump for his actions in this matter. Censure would allow this body to unite across party lines, and as an equal branch of government to formally denounce the president’s actions and hold him accountable,” Manchin said in a speech on the Senate floor.

Manchin’s proposal has received little traction among Senate Republicans who control the schedule, but it could gain the support of a handful of Republicans who have expressed concern over Trump’s actions, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). Continue reading.

 

‘A massive historical story’: Trump’s impending acquittal could have profound ramifications for future presidents

Washington Post logoThe evidence of President Trump’s actions to pressure Ukraine was never in serious dispute. After a systematic presentation of the facts of the case, even some Senate Republicans concluded that what he did was wrong.

But neither was the verdict of Trump’s impeachment trial ever in doubt. The Senate’s jurors are scheduled to etch an almost-certain acquittal into the historical record on Wednesday.

The impending judgment that the president’s actions do not warrant his removal from office serves as a testament to Washington’s extraordinary partisan divide and to Trump’s uncontested hold on the Republican base. The expected acquittal also has profound and long-term ramifications for America’s institutions and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, according to numerous historians and legal experts. Continue reading.

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.

Senate GOP ‘cowards’ who voted against calling witnesses show ‘moral failure’ of ‘quasi-authoritarian party’: conservative columnist

AlterNet logoBefore Donald Trump’s presidency, Max Boot was a proud Republican — and the conservative Washington Post columnist is still decidedly right-wing. But Boot left the GOP because of Trumpism, which he believes has been terrible for the conservative movement and terrible for the United States. And following Senate Republicans’ vote against featuring any witnesses during Trump’s impeachment trial, Boot is asserting that the GOP doesn’t even deserve to survive as a party.

“Trump will leave office someday — I hope! — but he will leave behind a quasi-authoritarian party that is as corrupt as he is,” Boot stresses. “The failure to call witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial revealed the GOP’s moral failure.”

On Friday, January 31, only two Republicans joined Senate Democrats in voting in favor of featuring witnesses in the trial: Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Democrats were hoping for testimony from former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who in his forthcoming book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” (which is due out on March 17), alleges that Trump made an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, a condition of military aid to Ukraine. Bolton, in other words, alleges the very “quid pro quo” that Democrats have been offering as a reason for removing Trump from office. 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.