Tag: Trump abuse of power

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.

How John Bolton can lawfully break his silence — and speak out against Trump: legal experts

AlterNet logoLast week during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, Senate Republicans closed the door on the possibility of featuring former National Security Adviser John Bolton or anyone else as a witness: only two Republicans, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, voted in favor of featuring witnesses during the trial. But Democrats are still determined to hear what Bolton has to say in his forthcoming book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” (due out March 17). And legal experts Jameel Jaffer and Ramya Krishnan, in an article for Law & Crime, examine some possible ways in which Bolton can lawfully speak out on Ukraine.

“The fact that Bolton’s book is in the hands of the censors does not mean that Bolton could not share his story with the public now if he wanted to,” explain Jaffer (former deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU) and Krishnan (a staff attorney at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute).

One of the things the Trump White House has been doing in the hope of silencing Bolton is claiming that they are worried about him possibly revealing classified information. But according to Jaffer and Krishnan, there are ways around that. Continue reading.

Senate Republicans defend decision to bar new evidence as Trump acquittal vote nears

Washington Post logoSenate Republicans on Sunday acknowledged that President Trump was wrong to pressure Ukraine for his own political benefit, even as they defended their decision to prohibit new evidence in his impeachment trial while pressing ahead with the president’s all-but-certain acquittal.

The remarks from key Republicans — including Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Joni Ernst (Iowa) — came after the Trump administration revealed the existence of emails that could shed light on the president’s reasons for withholding military aid to Ukraine.

“I’m going to vote to acquit,” Alexander said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m very concerned about any action that we could take that would establish a perpetual impeachment in the House of Representatives whenever the House was a different party than the president. That would immobilize the Senate.” 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.

Susan Collins says Trump will be ‘much more cautious’ after impeachment. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Washington Post logoAs President Trump’s impeachment trial winds down, the argument from some Senate Republicans is trending in a very specific direction: What he did was perhaps wrong, but it wasn’t impeachable. The message to Trump seems to be: Please don’t do it again.

They sound awfully certain that he won’t, though, despite plenty of reasons to be skeptical Trump will be chastened by this.

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) became the latest Republican on Tuesday to suggest that even when Trump is acquitted, he will have learned his lesson. She ventured a prediction that Trump will be “much more cautious” about soliciting foreign assistance. 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.

Trump Campaign and R.N.C. Spent $9 Million in 4th Quarter, Mostly on Digital Ads

New York Times logoThe groups supporting the president’s re-election bid also made 150 payments to Trump-owned entities and properties, Federal Election Commission filings show.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee together spent more than $9 million on polling, digital ads and fees paid to Trump-owned properties in the last three months of 2019, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission released on Friday.

The filings detail how the Trump campaign, the Trump Victory committee, a third entity called the Trump Make America Great Again Committee and the national party committee spent their cash from October through the end of December. Together, they previously reported raising $154 million over those months, and closed the year with $195 million in cash on hand.

The Trump apparatus has raised an outsize sum, but it has faced questions about how, exactly, it is spending its reserves. Even though he is not funding his own bid this time around, Mr. Trump has repeatedly grilled his advisers about where and how they are spending money. 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.