Tag: Trump abuse of power

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and Michael S. Schmidt reported in the New York Times that former National Security Adviser John Bolton — in an unpublished  manuscript of his new book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” due out March 17 — asserts that President Donald Trump and his allies directly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.

Law professor blows up Trump defense team’s 2 most ‘egregious constitutional claims’: They ‘have impeachment exactly backwards’

AlterNet logoWriting for Just Security on Friday, Frank O. Bowman III, a legal expert and professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, detailed two of the “more egregious constitutional claims” put forth by Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team in a trial brief filed last week.

The 171-page brief, which reminded one law professor of the president’s public “tantrums,” outlined the defense team’s case against two articles of impeachment filed by the House of Representatives earlier this month. According to Bowman, the defense brief includes two glaring errors that give more credence to the House charges against the president: 1 — that the president can only be impeached “for violations of ‘known and established law,’” and 2 — that “impeachment for ‘abuse of power’ is ‘made-up,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and unconstitutional.”

On the first point, Bowman writes the defense brief intimates that “the law violated must be criminal” in order to be impeachable. Bowman notes that Alan Dershowitz, one of the president’s impeachment defense attorneys, has repeatedly made, and will continue to make, the case that “impeachment requires proof of crime or ‘crime-like conduct.’” Continue reading.

Trump Tweet Threatens NPR Over Pompeo Tantrum

The cycle of Fox News coverage and President Donald Trump’s id repeated itself this weekend, this time involving the network’s coverage of the now-infamous blowup between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly.

In response to negative media coverage, Trump is now seconding a suggestion from Fox News personality Mark Levin — to end NPR’s funding, and even get rid of the organization itself.

Original controversy regarding Pompeo

Kelly’s interview of Pompeo on January 24 became heated when she asked him about the ongoing Ukraine scandal and impeachment, to which he replied that he had only come on to talk about Iran. (Kelly answered that she had confirmed with his staff that she would discuss both Iran and Ukraine.) 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.

New Poll Shows Most Voters Favor Trump’s Removal (And It’s Fox!)

A new Fox News poll released on Sunday showed a clear majority agreeing that the Senate should convict Donald Trump on the articles of impeachment brought by the House — and eject him from the White House.

“On impeachment, by a 50-44 percent margin, voters think the Senate should vote to convict Trump and remove him from office,” according to Fox. “Most Democrats say remove (81 percent) and most Republicans disagree (84 percent). Among independents, more say Trump should be removed by a 19-point margin (53-34 percent).”

The poll found Trump’s overall approval rating under water by ten points, 45 percent positive to 55 percent negative, with 47 percent holding “strongly negative” views of the president. 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.

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.

Trump plots a flashy series finale for impeachment

The president is itching to close out a bruising chapter of his presidency — with a victory lap to maximize the political value of his expected acquittal.

President Donald Trump is already itching to broadcast the series finale of his impeachment.

In recent days, he and top White House aides have been considering how he should celebrate his presumed acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate and whether he should deliver a rare Oval Office address to mark the occasion, according to three senior administration officials.

Trump has not settled on a specific plan yet, but the internal machinations show the extent to which the president remains focused on the details and optics of his ongoing impeachment trial — from the TV slot in which his lawyers argued his case to the performance of his legal team to the look and feel of a speech or ceremony marking the end of the months-long saga. Continue reading.

Schiff: Trump lawyers ‘deathly afraid’ of witnesses

“I think they’re deathly afraid of what witnesses will have to say and so their whole strategy has been deprive the public of a fair trial,” he said on NBC.

The leader of the House impeachment case said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s defense team is “deathly afraid” of possible testimony from key witnesses in a Senate trial.

“I think they’re deathly afraid of what witnesses will have to say and so their whole strategy has been deprive the public of a fair trial,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They don’t frame it that way, but that’s in essence it.”

Democrats have argued that officials with potential firsthand knowledge of Trump’s decision to hold up military aid to Ukraine should testify in the trial. Those possible witnesses include acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton. Continue reading.