Tag: Trump impeachment inquiry

‘We think we’re ready’: Democrats near end of closed-door impeachment testimony

Investigators see diminishing returns on the parade of private depositions and are getting ready to make their case in public hearings.

Their list of cooperative witnesses is dwindling. The ones who are showing up are increasingly just corroborating what has already been revealed.

And a growing number of House impeachment investigators say the evidence is overwhelming that President Donald Trump used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine’s government to open spurious investigations into his political opponents, including former Vice President Joe Biden.

At this point, the investigators say they’re seeing diminishing returns on the parade of closed-door depositions — and they’re eager to move to the public phase of the process. That means it’s decision time for Democrats.

View the complete October 31 article by Kyle Cheney and Andrew Desiderio on the Politico website here.

Fox News Judge: Impeachment Is Lawful, Unlike Soliciting Foreign Election Help

Last week found Republicans in Congress complaining loud and long that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, along with the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, all bipartisan and under the leadership of Rep. Adam Schiff, were violating the rules of the House of Representatives by interviewing witnesses about impeachment behind closed doors. They derided Schiff’s hearings as a “secret impeachment.”

President Donald Trump called the hearings a hoax. When some pointed out that the initial round of government interviews of witnesses is always conducted behind closed doors to facilitate candor, Senate Republicans supported the president and condemned the House process. Nevertheless, the House rules, which were adopted in 2015, when Republicans had the majority, clearly authorize the process Schiff is utilizing.

Not to be overshadowed by their Senate counterparts in their anger over this process, about 30 House Republicans, not on the interviewing committees, physically stormed the Intelligence Committee hearing room last Wednesday morning and occupied it so as to bar the scheduled interviews. By midafternoon, they had tired of their stunt and peacefully departed.

View the complete October 30 article by Andrew Napolitano on the National Memo website here.

Conservative pundit says the right wing is ‘flailing angrily’ as they ‘confront the reality’ of Trump’s impeachment

AlterNet logoConservative writer Charlie Sykes is a passionate critic of President Donald Trump, but he remains deeply immersed in the world of right-wing ideology and media. In a segment on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” with host Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday, he pointed out that as Trump’s impeachment crisis expands, his usual defenders are growing desperate.

“You do get the sense … among Republicans that they’re back on their heels,” he said. “I’m reading a lot of conservative media, and they’re flailing angrily because it is more and more difficult. They’re raging about the process, but that has an expiration date on it. That fig leaf is going to be torn off,  and then they have to confront the reality.”

In his view, it will only go downhill from here on out for the president’s supporters.

View the complete October 31 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

History professor explains how ‘racial resentment and brooding white anger’ have defined the GOP for decades

AlterNet logoMore than half a century has passed since President Richard Nixon launched his infamous “southern strategy,” which found the Republican Party pursuing the votes of white racists who had angrily left the Democratic Party because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And after all these years, history professor Leonard Steinhorn asserts in an October 30 op-ed for the Washington Post, the GOP is still grappling with its racism problem.

The GOP certainly didn’t start out as the party of racism. The first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, who became an ally of the abolitionist movement. And when Republican Teddy Roosevelt was president in the 1900s, African-American neighborhoods in northern cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston leaned GOP. However, the Democratic Party made a lot of inroads with black voters under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal in the 1930s.

In the 1960s, Steinhorn explains, Nixon saw a golden opportunity for his party: appealing to a sense of white grievance. The professor recalls, “Nixon inflamed the ‘silent majority’ and ‘forgotten Americans’ with coded language about race and ‘law and order’ that played to their sense of grievance and victimization.”

View the complete October 30 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

White House official corroborates diplomat’s account that Trump appeared to seek quid pro quo

Washington Post logoA White House adviser on Thursday corroborated key impeachment testimony from a senior U.S. diplomat who said last week he was alarmed by efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate President Trump’s political rivals in exchange for nearly $400 million in military aid.

Tim Morrison, the top Russia and Europe adviser on President Trump’s National Security Council, told House investigators over eight hours of closed-door testimony that the “substance” of his conversations recalled by William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, was “accurate,” according to his prepared remarks and people familiar with Morrison’s testimony.

In particular, Morrison verified that Trump’s envoy to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, conveyed to a Ukrainian official that the military aid would be released if the country investigated an energy firm linked to the son of former vice president Joe Biden. Morrison, who announced his resignation the night before his testimony, said he did not necessarily view the president’s demands as improper or illegal, but rather problematic for U.S. policy in supporting an ally in the region.

View the complete October 31 article by Carol D. Leonnig, John Hudson, Karoun Demirjian and Rachael Bade on The Washington Post website here.

Senate GOP shifts tone on impeachment

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are taking the House impeachment proceedings against President Trump more seriously as damaging revelations against the president mount and the possibility of a quick dismissal of the charges shrinks.

Earlier this year, GOP senators pledged to quickly quash any articles of impeachment passed by the House. But as the Democrats compile more evidence that Trump withheld military assistance from Ukraine to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, they are adopting a more sober tone.

While no Senate Republican has said the charges against Trump rise to the level of being an impeachable offense, many have expressed concern over the drip-drip of damaging revelations.

View the complete October 31 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

The Memo: After Vindman, GOP anxiety deepens

The Hill logoRepublican concerns are mounting about President Trump as damaging information piles up regarding his dealings with Ukraine.

The dam is not yet at the bursting point, but anxiety — fueled by the sense that more revelations could emerge at any moment — is rippling through the GOP.

“It’s fair to say my conversations with members continue to go to a worse place,” said Doug Heye, a former communications director of the Republican National Committee.

Heye added that, for the moment, there was a sizable gap between “private consternation versus public consternation.”

View the complete October 30 article by Niall Stanage on The Hill website here.

CNN anchor slams her colleague’s bigoted attack on a witness against Trump

AlterNet logoCNN’s Brianna Keilar had harsh words on Tuesday for her new colleague, Sean Duffy, who was recently hired as a commentator for the network.

Earlier in the day, Duffy had attacked the latest witness in President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. An expert on Ukraine serving on the National Security Counsel, Vindman said in remarks released before his Tuesday deposition that he was deeply concerned by Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating his political rivals. Duffy, in a baseless attack during a CNN segment, suggested that Vindman’s Ukrainian heritage made him unduly sympathetic to the foreign country.

“So that is some anti-immigrant bigotry,” said Keilar. “And it’s odd questioning of patriotism coming from Sean Duffy, the guy who spent his 20s on MTV’s The Real World and the Real World/Road Rules Challenge while Alexander Vindman spent his on foreign deployments, including one to Iraq, where he earned a Purple Heart after he was injured by a roadside bomb. And it’s a sign of how desperate some of the president’s backers are as they try to defend him against what Vindman — perhaps the most credible and knowledgable witness so far — has to tell Congress.”

View the complete October 29 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Senate GOP in bind on impeachment

The Hill logoSenate Republicans, with 22 seats up for reelection and their majority up for grabs in 2020, are in a bind over how to defend President Trump from the House impeachment push.

They realize their political fortunes and policy goals are tied to the president, but they also know their best shot at keeping control of the Senate hinges on senators preserving their independent brands.

That means they have to be careful in defending conduct they see as improper; several Senate Republicans say it would be wrong to hold up military aid to Ukraine to gain political leverage, the issue at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

View the complete October 30 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Big Majority Believes Asking Foreign Power For Election Help Is ‘Wrong’

More than 4 in 5 Americans (81 percent) say asking foreign governments for help in an election is wrong, according to a new Grinnell College poll released Tuesday.

The results are the same or higher among Trump’s political base.

The same poll shows 81 percent of Republicans, 85 percent of evangelical Christians, and 87 percent of rural voters agree that it is wrong to ask for such assistance.

View the complete October 29 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.