Tag: Trump abuse of power

Schiff: Senators who fail to convict Trump will not be ‘off the hook’

“I still think it’s enormously important that the president was impeached.”

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said on Sunday senators voting to keep President Donald Trump in office will not be “off the hook,” as Democrats look ahead to the president’s likely acquittal in the impeachment trial.

“I’m not letting the senators off the hook. We’re still going to go into to the Senate this week and make the case why this president needs to be removed,” Schiff said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “It will be up to the senators to make that final judgment, and the senators will be held accountable for it.”

Although the president will most likely remain in office, the lead House impeachment manager said, “I still think it’s enormously important that the president was impeached.” Continue reading.

GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander: Trump Made ‘Mistake’ By Pushing Russian Propaganda

The Tennessee lawmaker said he’s going to vote to acquit the president anyway.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) on Sunday defended his key vote to block witnesses from being called in the impeachment trial, saying President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine were “wrong” but not impeachable.

The Tennessee lawmaker told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he will vote on Wednesday to acquit Trump, despite the president’s “inappropriate” actions and his “mistake” of echoing Russian talking points to Ukraine’s president.

“I think he shouldn’t have done it,” Alexander said of Trump conditioning U.S. military aid on Ukraine investigating political rival Joe Biden. “I think it was wrong. Inappropriate was the way I’d say ― improper, crossing the line.” 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.

Justice Department acknowledges 24 emails reveal Trump’s thinking on Ukraine

Washington Post logoHours after the Senate voted against seeking new evidence in the impeachment case against President Trump, the administration acknowledged the existence of two dozen emails that could reveal the president’s thinking about withholding military aid to Ukraine.

In a midnight court filing, the Justice Department explained why it shouldn’t have to unredact copies of more than 100 emails written by officials at the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department about the hold on funds to Ukraine.

Heather Walsh, an OMB lawyer, wrote that of the 111 redacted emails in the lawsuit, 24 are protected by “presidential privilege.” Continue reading.

Trump’s Impeachment and the Degrading of Presidential Accountability

The President will see an acquittal—which was preordained by the highly partisan Senate—as license for further abuse.

The sordid truth of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump is that it will end with the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, doing him a favor: delivering the votes, with little regard for the facts. That is sadly appropriate, because Trump’s favors—the ones he covets, the ones he demands—and the terms on which he extracts them, remain the trial’s most contested issue. The House managers cited Trump’s statement to President Volodymyr Zelensky, of Ukraine, in their phone call on July 25, 2019—“I would like you to do us a favor though”—as the crux of a corrupt scheme. Trump’s lawyers countered that he was talking not about his “personal interests” but about America’s. In their trial brief, they argued that Trump “frequently uses variations of the phrase ‘do us a favor,’ ” and cited examples. “Do me a favor,” he said he’d asked Europe. “Would you buy a lot of soybeans, right now?” “Do me a favor,” he said he’d asked North Korea. “You’ve got this missile engine testing site. . . . Can you close it up?” The lawyers could have added Trump’s claim that, before choosing Alexander Acosta to be his Secretary of Labor, he’d worried that he was related to the CNN reporter Jim Acosta, so he told his staff, “Do me a favor—go back and check the family tree.” Continue reading “Trump’s Impeachment and the Degrading of Presidential Accountability”

Cowardice and guilt: Republican senators finally hint Trump may have done something wrong — in the most shameful way possible

AlterNet logoOn the day it became clear a majority of the Senate would allow the trial of the president to close without hearing from a single witness, Republicans who found themselves protecting Donald Trump started making a surprising admission.

Trump, of all people, might have done something wrong.

The revelations started with Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, whose pending retirement gave him more independence than many of his colleagues to break with the president. But on Thursday night, he revealed that he would join most other Republicans in a vote to block the Senate from hearing witnesses, most notably former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Continue reading.

Fox News judge comes out swinging against Senators who vote to block evidence in Trump’s trial

AlterNet logoJudge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News contributor and frequent critic of President Donald Trump, wrote an editorial Thursday, which asked Republican senators who refuse to call witnesses for Trump’s impeachment trial the following: “How can the Senate be faithful to the Constitution if it suppresses the truth?”

After reviewing the history of the separation of powers established in the U.S. Constitution, Napolitano wrote that “in the case of impeachment of the president, the Constitution gives ‘sole power’ to the House of Representatives. In the case of an impeachment trial, the Constitution gives exclusivity to the Senate. There is no place for presidential resistance or judicial interference, so long as the House and Senate arguably follow the Constitution.”

The president was impeached by the House of Representatives for valid reasons, in the view of the Fox News judge. Continue reading.

The cringing abdication of Senate Republicans

Washington Post logoREPUBLICAN SENATORS who voted Friday to suppress known but unexamined evidence of President Trump’s wrongdoing at his Senate trial must have calculated that the wrath of a vindictive president is more dangerous than the sensible judgment of the American people, who, polls showed, overwhelmingly favored the summoning of witnesses. That’s almost the only way to understand how the Republicans could have chosen to deny themselves and the public the firsthand account of former national security adviser John Bolton, and perhaps others, on how Mr. Trump sought to extort political favors from Ukraine.

The public explanations the senators offered were so weak and contradictory as to reveal themselves as pretexts. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she weighed supporting “additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings” of the House’s impeachment process, but decided against doing so. Apparently she preferred a bad trial to a better one — but she did assure us that she felt “sad” that “the Congress has failed.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the case against Mr. Trump had already been proved, so no further testimony was needed. But he also said, without explanation, that Mr. Trump’s “inappropriate” conduct did not merit removal from office; voters, he said, should render a verdict in the coming presidential election. How could he measure the seriousness of Mr. Trump’s wrongdoing without hearing Mr. Bolton’s firsthand testimony of the president’s motives and intentions, including about whether the president is likely to seek additional improper foreign intervention in that same election? Continue reading.

Investigators interview IRS whistleblower who warned of meddling in audit of Trump or Pence: report

AlterNet logoThe Senate is investigating claims made by an IRS whistleblower who has accused at least one political appointee in the Treasury Department of interfering with an audit of the tax returns of either President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.

Senate investigators conducted an extensive interview with a whistleblower who claimed that there had been improper political interference with the audit process in recent weeks, according to The Washington Post. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who are the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, received the whistleblower’s transcribed remarks.

The complaint specifies that at least one political appointee meddled in the process for handling audits for one or both officials. The issue was initially disclosed by the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., in an August court filing that was part of a larger lawsuit over the release of Trump’s tax returns. Individuals who described the complaint at the time said the whistleblower was a career IRS official. Officials from the Trump administration dismissed the complaint as hearsay. Continue reading.