Trump abuse of power 53 , CD3 DFL

Trump demands ‘fast’ impeachment in House

President Trump said Thursday that if House Democrats are going to impeach him they should do it “now” and “fast” so he can have a “fair” trial in the Republican-controlled Senate.

In a series of tweets, Trump also said he wanted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and the Bidens to testify at a Senate trial.

“The Do Nothing Democrats had a historically bad day yesterday in the House. They have no Impeachment case and are demeaning our Country. But nothing matters to them, they have gone crazy,” Trump tweeted.

Legal scholar calls Sondland testimony ‘most chilling’ evidence Trump used power of office for private ‘political benefit’

Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan on Wednesday told House impeachment investigators that the “most chilling” evidence that President Donald Trump was pursuing his own political gain in Ukraine came from the November 20 testimony of Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union.

Karlan, one of four legal scholars to testify during Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing, said she spent her entire Thanksgiving break reading transcripts from previous public impeachment hearings in the House Intelligence Committee.

The “most striking” line from the witness testimony, said Karlan, was Sondland’s claim that Trump did not care whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky actually opened an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.

Democrats debate scope of impeachment charges

Democrats are debating how broadly to make their impeachment case against President Trump, with some lawmakers seeking to expand the list of charges even as House Judiciary Committee members signal a relatively narrow approach.

House Democrats at the first Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing on Wednesday gave the clearest sign yet of the scope of their likely articles by unveiling posters featuring three possible charges: abuse of power and bribery, obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice.

“I’m for a keep-it-simple scope,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a Judiciary Committee member, told The Hill during a brief break from the Wednesday hearing.

Scholar rains hell on Republican who questioned her integrity at impeachment hearing: ‘I’m insulted!’

Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan hammered Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) on Wednesday after he had questioned whether she and other House Judiciary Committee witnesses had bothered to read transcripts and reports about the House impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

In her opening statement, Karlan immediately took issue with Collins’ claim that witnesses called before today’s hearings did not have time to read and digest all the relevant information about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political opponents.

“Here Mr. Collins, I would like to say to you, sir, that I read transcripts of every one of the witnesses who appeared in the live hearing because I would not speak about these things without reviewing the facts,” she said. “So I’m insulted by the suggestion that, as a law professor, I don’t care about those facts.”

The GOP’s only impeachment witness on Wednesday contradicted his own previous testimony

Jonathan Turley, a law professor who appeared as a Republican witness in Wednesday’s impeachment hearings, made a number of claims that directly contradicted his previous statements and testimony.
On Wednesday, Turley argued there was no proof that President Donald Trump broke a specific law related to the Ukraine scandal and therefore should not be impeached.
But in 1998, Turley made the opposite case, telling Congress during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings that Clinton’s actions didn’t need to violate any laws in order to be impeachable conduct.
“While there’s a high bar for what constitutes grounds for impeachment, an offense does not have to be indictable,” he wrote in a 2014 op-ed for The Washington Post.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, testified on Wednesday that he didn’t see any proof that President Donald Trump committed a crime and that Trump therefore should not be impeached.

Turley was one of four legal experts — and the only one invited by the Republicans — who testified in the House Judiciary Committee’s first public impeachment hearing about Trump.

Constitutional law experts refute GOP witness’ claim Trump associates can refuse to comply with congressional subpoenas: ‘That is the act of obstruction’

When public hearings in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump moved to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Republicans brought on constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley to make a case against impeaching the president. Turley, unlike the three legal scholars featured by House Democrats, was highly critical of the way Democrats have handled the impeachment inquiry — and one of Turley’s criticisms had to do with subpoenas. House Democrats, Turley argued during his testimony, should go through the courts to subpoena potential witnesses. But some legal experts vehemently disagree.

Turley testified that if House Democrats “actually subpoena witnesses and go to court, then you have an obstruction case — because a court issues an order. And unless they stay that order, by a higher court, then you have obstruction.”

Much of the criticism of Turley’s testimony has come from Democrats, but some of it came from Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano — a right-wing libertarian who isn’t shy about criticizing Trump at times. And according to Napolitano, Turley’s testimony underestimated the amount of subpoena powers the U.S. House of Representatives has.

Impeachment trial timing hangs over 2020 Senate calendar

January schedule is filled with question marks

The Senate has released its calendar for 2020, but the year will begin with a giant question mark because of a possible impeachment trial.

The month of January is missing from the schedule entirely.

A copy of the calendar, obtained by CQ Roll Call, also includes a notation that the weeklong Presidents Day recess is “subject to Senate floor activity.”

How Schiff Used Trump And Mulvaney’s Own Words To Impeach Them

With the release of the Ukraine report from the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Chair Adam Schiff and his colleagues laid out the damning case for impeaching President Donald Trump in excruciating detail. Much of it, however, has been publicly known as transcripts of the inquiry depositions and public hearings revealed the key facts of Trump’s effort to induce Ukraine into investigating his political rivals while withholding military aid and White House meeting.

But because of Trump’s stonewalling — which itself features as a pillar of the president’s misconduct in the report — Republicans have argued that Schiff and the Democrats haven’t persuasively made the case that Trump was a part of the effort to leverage official acts in exchange for the political investigations. While extensive evidence strongly suggests that Trump was at the center of the scheme, not one witness’ testimony tied Trump directly to the quid pro quo.

The Ukraine report, however, gets around this fact by pointing to key statements not as a part of the inquiry itself, but made in public by White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Trump himself.

‘You should have recused yourself’: Lawyer for Lev Parnas explains why Nunes’ participation in House impeachment hearings is a huge conflict of interest

During the House Intelligence Committee’s recent impeachment hearings, Rep. Devin Nunes of California was among President Donald Trump’s most vociferous and combative defenders. The Intelligence Committee’s lengthy, comprehensive impeachment report, released on Tuesday, shows that Nunes was hardly an impartial observer — and the famous criminal defense attorney Joseph A. Bondy, who is representing indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, asserted the GOP congressman had no business participating in the hearings.

Information in the House Intelligence report vividly illustrates why Nunes should have recused himself from the House Intelligence hearings: a series of conversations with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who was recently arrested for alleged campaign finance violations. In other words, Nunes’ participation was — according to Bondy — a huge conflict of interest.

Journalist Natasha Betrand has posted, on Twitter, a partial timeline of those Nunes/Parnas conversations: the two of them, AT&T records show, spoke several times on April 12, 2019. Bertrand, posting the information, tweeted, “More calls between Devin Nunes and Lev Parnas, including one that lasted 8 minutes on April 12.”

Folksy John Kennedy gets serious pushback on Ukraine mess

The Louisiana Republican has pushed a discredited theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.

Sen. John Kennedy has long been known as a folksy, straight shooter on Capitol Hill. But now his legacy may be something else altogether: The guy who spread a debunked conspiracy theory about Ukraine.

As the House moves forward with its impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump’s staunch allies have attempted to shift the focus to Ukraine. And Kennedy has emerged as the most prominent senator in this process, making Sunday show appearances that have perplexed his Senate colleagues by offering some level of equivalency between Russian and Ukrainian influence in 2016.

“I draw a completely different conclusion from his,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said. “And it’s my understanding he has now changed his mind a bit. But as a member of the Intelligence Committee I have seen no evidence at all that the Ukrainians were involved. And indeed it is more likely that this is part of Russian disinformation campaign, in my judgment.”

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January schedule is filled with question marks

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The Louisiana Republican has pushed a discredited theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.

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