Tag: Trump abuse of power

The GOP’s impeachment report is a series of red herrings

Washington Post logoHouse Republicans released a lengthy report Monday defending President Trump in the face of impeachment proceedings. But several of the arguments in it leave something to be desired.

The more-than-100-page document, crafted to preempt the findings in the report by Intelligence Committee Democrats that is expected to be released publicly Tuesday, is an extensive recitation of arguments that what Trump was doing with regard to Ukraine was not only not impeachable but not even wrong. Yet it relies on a series of straw men, rebutting allegations that aren’t really being made against Trump.

Let’s run through a few of the arguments.

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Trump Administration Quietly Releases Over $100 Million in Lebanon Military Aid

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has quietly released more than $100 million in military assistance to Lebanon after months of unexplained delay that led some lawmakers to compare it to the aid for Ukraine at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

The $105 million in Foreign Military Financing funds for the Lebanese Armed Forces was released just before the Thanksgiving holiday and lawmakers were notified of the step on Monday, according to two congressional staffers and an administration official.

All three spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the matter.

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Prosecutors: More Charges Possible In Case Of Giuliani Associates Parnas, Fruman

Prosecutors could bring more charges in the case of two Soviet-born associates of Rudy Giuliani — although it wasn’t precisely clear when, what or who else might be involved after a conference in New York City on Monday.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman face charges of conspiracy, false statements and falsification of records in connection with two alleged schemes to violate U.S. election laws. But it’s their work helping Giuliani dig up dirt in Ukraine that has put the pair under intense public scrutiny.

And a superseding indictment — which could add to or modify the existing charges — is likely, prosecutors said on Monday, but also adding that they’re continuing to evaluate the case.

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Trump says Democrats are ‘getting killed in their own districts’ over impeachment

POTUS accuses opposition party of trying to humiliate him with Judiciary hearing while he’s on foreign soil

Accusing House Democrats of trying to humiliate him while on foreign soil, President Donald Trump predicted voters will punish the party in November for their impeachment inquiry.

“They’re getting killed in their own districts,” Trump said Monday morning as he left the White House for a two-day NATO summit in London. “I think it’s going to be a tremendous boon for Republicans. Republicans have never, ever been so committed as they are right now, and so united. It’s really a great thing in some ways.”

The comment shows anew how the president views most matters through a prism related to his reelection chances. But his assessment of the inquiry was not all upbeat.

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Not enough Pinocchios for Trump’s CrowdStrike obsession Add to list

Washington Post logoThe president persists in pursuing a debunked conspiracy theory. Somehow, we’ve never gotten around to assigning a Pinocchio rating for this claim. Maybe that’s because there aren’t enough Pinocchios available in our system to truly do this justice.

Note to the president: When even one of your strongest TV allies expresses skepticism about a claim, it’s probably time to drop it.

The Facts

Trump made these comments the day after Fiona Hill, his former top Russia adviser, told Congress that any notion that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 election was a hoax hatched by Russia to deflect from its well-documented efforts to interfere in the vote.

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Impeachment inquiry enters critical new phase

The Hill logoHouse Democrats plowing ahead with their impeachment investigation will enter the twilight phase this week, when lawmakers begin to examine the most crucial question facing them to date: Do President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine warrant his removal from office?

The answer, to be decided by the House Judiciary Committee, seems increasingly likely to result in a House vote later this month to make Trump just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

And it carries far-reaching consequences for a restless nation fiercely divided over Trump’s fitness for office — ramifications that will long echo through the halls of a partisan Congress and extend far into the 2020 election cycle, when voters will be asked to deliver their own verdict on the impulsive figure in the Oval Office.

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Fox News’ Chris Wallace smirks at Republican Doug Collins after he says Schiff must be first witness: ‘You’re pretty wound up’

AlterNet logoRep. Doug Collins (R-GA) on Sunday called for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) to be the first witness in the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on impeachment.

Collins made the remarks to FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

According to Collins, Republicans are not being allowed to see the Intelligence Committee’s report on impeachment — which he referred to as the “Schiff report” — until later this week.

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Everyone involved in this impeachment sham understands Donald Trump is a crook. That’s not the root of our nation’s problems

AlterNet logoThe House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings have been the perfect sweeps-season exhibition of American dysfunction, weirdness and stupidity. Democrats are meticulously proving that President Trump is an inveterate liar who broke the law by transforming international diplomacy into a partisan, tabloid dirt-finding expedition in exactly the buffoonish manner that anyone would expect. Trump is a corrupt con artist unqualified for a junior high student council. Impeachment and removal are beyond debate to anyone of minimal sanity. In other breaking news, the Earth orbits the sun.

More shocking than the extent of Trump’s petty corruption is the obsequiousness of leading Republicans, all of whom have publicly invested in the personality cult surrounding the former host of “Celebrity Apprentice.” Apparently convinced that the country cannot survive without the leadership of the man who had the wisdom to fire Gary Busey in the boardroom, and later defend murderous white supremacists, the GOP have exposed themselves as lacking any of the principles — “family values”; belief in small, honest government; fiscal conservatism, patriotic loyalty to the laws and institutions of the United States — they previously boasted about.

House impeachment, and subsequent Senate removal, in any rational Congress would have taken all of four minutes, allowing the electorate to prepare for the alarming reality of President Mike Pence.

View the complete December 1 article by David Masciotra from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance

New York Times logoChief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher’s case pits a Pentagon hierarchy committed to enforcing longstanding rules of combat against a commander in chief with no military experience but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority.

He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.

Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck. Continue reading “Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance”

How Democrats’ missing witnesses could fill in the Ukraine story

The Hill logoThe stonewalling from several key witnesses at the center of President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine is not stopping Democrats from plowing ahead with their fast-moving inquiry.

Rather than wait to secure their testimony, Democrats say they can move forward because other witnesses have corroborated a whistleblower complaint that sparked the inquiry in September.

Democrats continued to hold that view this week, even as they received a favorable court ruling from a judge who ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify in the probe.

View the complete December 1 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.