Trump abuse of power 49 , CD3 DFL

George Conway, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson burn Trump and the GOP to the ground in scathing joint op-ed

Four prominent conservatives, including the husband of White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, called for the defeat of President Donald Trump.

George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson published an op-ed for the New York Times rebuking Trump as unfit to serve, and they shamed the Republican Party for replacing conservatism “with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet.”

“This president’s actions are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans,” the four men wrote. “They have done no less than abdicate their Article I responsibilities.”

McConnell takes heat from all sides on impeachment

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is under pressure from Senate Democrats, House Republicans and President Trump when it comes to the fraught impeachment trial that is about to take over life in the Senate.

Democrats are making it crystal clear they’ll cast McConnell as a Trump stooge if he doesn’t run what they consider to be a fair trial. House Republicans, frustrated they didn’t get to call former Vice President Joe Biden or the anonymous whistleblower as witnesses, are demanding that McConnell put them in the hot seat.

And the GOP leader, who himself is up for reelection next year, is under the wary eyes of Trump and his own Senate caucus. Any false steps are bound to bring the heat — and even more pressure for the Senate veteran.

Giuliani Provides Details of What Trump Knew About Ambassador’s Removal

Rudolph Giuliani said in an interview that he briefed the president “a couple of times” about Marie Yovanovitch, the envoy to Ukraine, setting her recall in motion.

WASHINGTON — Rudolph W. Giuliani said on Monday that he provided President Trump with detailed information this year about how the United States ambassador to Ukraine was, in Mr. Giuliani’s view, impeding investigations that could benefit Mr. Trump, setting in motion the ambassador’s recall from her post.

In an interview, Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, described how he passed along to Mr. Trump “a couple of times” accounts about how the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, had frustrated efforts that could be politically helpful to Mr. Trump. They included investigations involving former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ukrainians who disseminated documents that damaged Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The president in turn connected Mr. Giuliani with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who asked for more information, Mr. Giuliani said. Within weeks, Ms. Yovanovitch was recalled as ambassadorat the end of April and was told that Mr. Trump had lost trust in her.

Trump campaign says impeachment backfiring. Not really, polls suggest

(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s campaign has embraced Democratic-led efforts to impeach him as a major asset to his 2020 re-election campaign, betting that his supporters and disaffected political independents will be motivated to vote for him next November.

But if the Republican president is hoping for a public backlash like the one against the 1998 impeachment of Democratic President Bill Clinton, it has so far not worked out that way, Reuters/Ipsos polling data over the past few months shows.

In fact, the House of Representatives’ impeachment investigation has fueled an equally fervent demand among Democrats to hold the Republican president accountable for his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden, according to a review of polls conducted every week since Sept. 24 when the Ukraine scandal broke.

Senators are required to take a ‘special oath’ as impeachment triers — and some of them have ‘precommitted themselves to violating’ that obligation: legal experts

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee) have made it abundantly clear that if President Donald Trump is indicted on articles of impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives — which is likely — and those articles go to the U.S. Senate for consideration, they have no intention of seriously considering the evidence. And legal experts Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic, in a December 16 article for The Atlantic, emphasize that both of those high-ranking Republicans are failing to perform their constitutional duties as U.S. senators.

Wittes and Jurecic are both sought out for their legal expertise. Wittes is editor-in-chief of Lawfare, while Jurecic is Lawfare’s managing editor. Both are freelance contributors to The Atlantic, and Wittes is a frequent guest on MSNBC.

Citing Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 of the U.S. Constitution, Wittes and Jurecic assert that according to the Founding Fathers, “the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments” — and when the Senate is in session “for that purpose,” United States senators “shall be on oath or affirmation.”

Democrats tell court they need Mueller grand jury documents for impeachment trial

Lawyers for the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee told a federal appeals court on Monday that secret grand jury materials from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe are needed for President Trump’s impeachment inquiry and likely Senate trial.

House Democrats, who have repeatedly pushed the Justice Department for the urgent release of the redacted materials, made the case for the documents’ continued relevance, even as the impeachment scope has narrowed. The Justice Department is arguing that the House should not have access to the documents.

“The Department of Justice (DOJ) takes extraordinary positions in this case,” the House Judiciary Committee told the D.C. Circuit Court in a court filing on Monday. “It does so to avoid disclosing grand-jury material needed for the House’s impeachment of President Trump and the Senate’s trial to remove him from office.”

‘Fox & Friends’ host ‘stunned’ as network poll shows majority of Americans want Trump impeached and removed

“Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade confessed Monday morning his surprise a brand new Fox News poll reveals a majority of Americans want President Donald Trump impeached. Kilmeade also incorrectly reported the numbers in the poll, downplaying just how bad they are for the president.

“A Fox poll came out and I was stunned by this,” Kilmeade told his co-hosts. “It says 50 percent of the country want the president impeached. I was stunned to see the number because I thought that things were trending away” from impeachment.

The Fox News poll reveals not 50% but actually 54% want Trump impeached. 50% want Trump impeached and removed from office, so Kilmeade delivered the information incorrectly, favoring Trump.

Lindsey Graham gives shameful — and revealing — answer when pressed on Trump’s wrongdoing

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) drew sharp criticism at the Doha Forum on Saturday when he made clear that — despite the oath he’s expected to take at a forthcoming impeachment trial in the Senate — he doesn’t have any plans to keep an open mind or act as an “impartial” juror regarding the conduct of President Donald Trump.

But another section of his comments that didn’t gain as much attention is in some ways even more damning. The interviewer pressed him on the nature of Trump’s conduct in the Ukraine scandal, saying: “Is it OK… ever OK for an American president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival?”

Graham, and everyone else, knows that this is exactly what Trump did. And had Trump not done it, there would be universal agreement that it was wrong. So when Graham answered, he shamefully phrased his response to avoid giving a direct answer, while trying to sound as if he was exonerating the president.

Schumer calls for testimony from Mulvaney, Bolton in proposal to GOP on parameters for Trump impeachment trial

The top Senate Democrat on Sunday called for subpoenaing several senior Trump administration officials who have yet to testify in the House’s impeachment probe as witnesses for President Trump’s likely trial — part of an opening salvo in negotiations that could determine the parameters for the Senate proceedings next month.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlined a number of procedural demands that Democrats say would make the Senate trial fair and able to be completed “within a reasonable period of time.”

That includes subpoenas issued by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; Robert Blair, a senior adviser to Mulvaney; former national security adviser John Bolton; and Michael Duffey, a top official at the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney, Blair and Duffey had been subpoenaed by the House committees and defied the summons; Bolton has not been subpoenaed but indicated he would fight one in court.

‘We’ve seen enough’: More than a dozen editorial boards call for Trump’s impeachment

The headline the New York Times editorial board settled on was simple: “Impeach.”

The same could be said of the “damning” case laid out against President Trump, the Times said Saturday, as it joined a growing roster of more than a dozen national and regional newspapers that argue that the Senate should take up convincing accusations of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The opinions of major publications are divided as the House prepares for a historic vote Wednesday, and a host of traditionally more-conservative editorial boards have yet to weigh in — including several that snubbed Trump in 2016 by conspicuously breaking from long histories of Republican endorsements.

NOTE: As of December 15, we’ve found the following newspaper Editorial Boards have expresses support for impeachment: Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, New York Times, Orlando Sentinel, Philadelphia Inquirer, Salt Lake Tribune, Tampa Bay Times, USA Today and Washington Post.

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Rudolph Giuliani said in an interview that he briefed the president “a couple of times” about Marie Yovanovitch, the envoy to Ukraine, setting her recall in motion.

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