Tag: Trump abuse of power

Trump holds White House ‘celebration’ for impeachment acquittal

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Thursday celebrated his impeachment acquittal during a freewheeling White House speech in which he declared vindication and denied any shred of wrongdoing having survived the most perilous stretch of his presidency.

“This is really not a news conference, it’s not a speech. It’s not anything,” Trump said to a crowd of GOP lawmakers, Cabinet officials, family members and other supporters at the East Room of the White House. “It’s just, we’re sort of, it’s a celebration because we have something that just worked out.

“It’s called total acquittal,” said Trump, who held aloft a newspaper headline declaring him cleared by the GOP-controlled Senate. Continue reading.

Senators try to punt their way out of trouble and Trump’s line of fire

It may look like a winning strategy today, but the election is still nine months away

OPINION — Don’t you just hate it when someone uses a sports metaphor to teach a life lesson? So do I, usually. But with the Super Bowl not a week in the rearview mirror, it would be impossible to ignore the concept of the punt — getting out of a tough situation by moving the ball as far as possible toward the opponent’s end zone.

If you’re playing against a Patrick Mahomes-led Kansas City Chiefs, you’re merely buying some time before the inevitable score. But senators using that tactic in an impeached President Donald Trump’s trial are no doubt hoping any payback comes late, or not at all.

For them, it’s a way to satisfy both their consciences and a Trump-supporting voting base. Continue reading.

Fox News legal analyst: Trump guilty as charged in impeachment trial — and ‘morally bankrupt’ Republicans ‘trashed’ the Constitution

AlterNet logoFox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano blasted Senate Republicans for acquitting President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial without hearing a single witness.

The former New Jersey Superior Court judge said a trial should be a search for truth, but the Fox News contributor wrote in his new column that GOP senators instead turned the impeachment into “a steamroller of political power” by blocking witness testimony.

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” Napolitano wrote, quoting from George Orwell’s “1984.” “It was their final, most essential command.” Continue reading.

President celebrates Senate acquittal at the White House, expresses no contrition and calls Democratic leaders ‘vicious and mean’

Washington Post logoPresident Trump celebrated his Senate acquittal Thursday at a White House event that stretched more than an hour, expressing no contrition and calling Democratic leaders “vicious and mean” while portraying his impeachment as the continuation of scrutiny he has faced since he announced his run for the presidency in 2015.

“We’ve been going through this now for almost three years. It was evil, it was corrupt,” he told a packed East Room crowd. Trump expressed no remorse related to the allegation that he inappropriately pressured the leader of Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, despite some Republican senators calling his actions wrong.

“This is a day of celebration because we went through hell,” he said.

Marie Yovanovitch: These are turbulent times. But we will persist and prevail.

Washington Post logoMarie L. Yovanovitch served most recently as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

After nearly 34 years working for the State Department, I said goodbye to a career that I loved. It is a strange feeling to transition from decades of communicating in the careful words of a diplomat to a person free to speak exclusively for myself.

What I’d like to share with you is an answer to a question so many have asked me: What do the events of the past year mean for our country’s future?

It was an honor for me to represent the United States abroad because, like many immigrants, I have a keen understanding of what our country represents. In a leap of optimism and faith, my parents made their way from the wreckage of post-World War II Europe to America, knowing in their hearts that this country would give me a better life. They rested their hope, not in the possibility of prosperity, but in a strong democracy: a country with resilient institutions, a government that sought to advance the interests of its people, and a society in which freedom was cherished and dissent protected. These are treasures that must be carefully guarded by all who call themselves Americans. Continue reading.

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.

Colbert Gives Senate GOP A Dire Warning Over What Trump Will Do Now

“Late Show” host reveals the only lesson the president has learned from his impeachment acquittal.

“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert warned that President Donald Trump will only be emboldened now that he’s been acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial.

“It’s official: Nothing means anything,” Colbert said. “Right is wrong. Up is down. Missouri is Kansas.”

He said asking for foreign interference in an election is the “new normal.” And he cracked that Democratic presidential candidates have “no choice” but to ask for foreign help ― and did an impression of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asking Russia to help find the “pee-pee tape.” Continue reading.

Romney shocks GOP with vote to convict

The Hill logoSen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) shocked his fellow Republican senators and surprised much of the nation on Wednesday with a dramatic floor speech announcing he would vote to convict President Trump on the impeachment charge of abuse of power.

Romney announced his decision in a nearly empty Senate chamber just hours before the Senate voted to acquit Trump and after fellow GOP colleagues such as Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) had already announced they would not vote to convict Trump.

Just as surprising as his vote was the intensity of the 2012 Republican presidential nominee’s language. Continue reading.

 

Like McCain before him, Romney rebukes President Trump

2008 and 2012 presidential nominees have been most forceful GOP critics in the Senate

The greatest rebukes of Donald Trump’s presidency from the Republican side of the aisle have come from the two previous standard-bearers for the GOP.

When Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a freshman senator best known for being the 2012 Republican nominee for president, announced Wednesday on the Senate floor that he would vote to convict Trump of abuse of power, it evoked memories of the time when the late Arizona Sen. John McCain voted in 2017 to thwart the president’s desired repeal of the 2010 health care law.

McCain, a hero of the Vietnam War and the 2008 Republican nominee for president, cast his vote with a dramatic thumbs-down that the current occupant of the Oval Office has not forgotten. Trump has continued to allude to the vote, which doomed GOP plans to nix the health care law, particularly during campaign rallies. 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.