Michael Ramirez, Creators Syndicate
Tag: Trump impeachment
Trump may not be removed by the Senate, but he’s still terrified of his trial — here’s why
Donald Trump is scared. The Senate trial following his impeachment for a blackmail and campaign cheating scheme starts next week, and it’s driving him to distraction. He was supposed to host a lame event at the White House on Thursday to bolster fake concerns that white evangelicals are being oppressed, but blew off pandering to his strongest supporters for an hour, likely because he couldn’t pry himself away from news coverage of the impeachment trial’s kickoff. After ending the event swiftly, Trump then tweeted angrily, “I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL!”
(As with most things the president says, this was untrue — he was impeached weeks ago, in December.)
Trump’s cold sweats are significant, because everyone who has been following this case knows that the Senate will acquit him. Not because he’s innocent — no one who has actually consulted the evidence is foolish enough to believe that — but because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republicans who control the Senate decided long ago that they would cover up for their shamelessly corrupt president no matter what he does. With such an assured outcome, Trump’s fears seem overblown and silly, even for someone crippled by sociopathic narcissism and its accompanying paranoia. Continue reading.
Rick Santorum flattened by CNN’s Berman after calling Parnas bombshell revelations ‘extraneous’ to impeachment
Rick Santorum and CNN’s John Berman got into a frantic back-and-forth on Friday morning after the former Republican senator attempted to dismiss the revelations by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas as something that should not be submitted as evidence in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
Discussing the Senate trial expected to start next week, Santorum said the only testimony and witnesses that should be allowed are ones that came up in the earlier House hearings.
“The House’s responsibility to bring to us a case,” Santorum stated. “They’re the one who is said these are offenses that are worthy of the president being removed from office; here is the record, here are the charges. The Senate didn’t impeach, the House did, so we are going to look at the record the House presented us. We’re going to look at the witnesses and say are there are questions that we have for the people that brought this case forward and relied on these witnesses and look at their testimony.” Continue reading.
GOP Senators Swear To Do ‘Impartial Justice’
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts officially swore in senators on Thursday for the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, asking all senators to take an oath of impartiality.
“Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God?” reads the oath 99 senators swore, signing their name in a book to make their oath official. One senator was missing from the swearing in: Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, who was in his home state tending to a sick family member.
By taking that oath, however, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham committed perjury, as both previously said aloud that they do not plan to be impartial at all. Continue reading.
Trump trial poses toughest test yet for Roberts
Chief Justice John Roberts will soon discover firsthand that while the Supreme Court and the Senate sit on adjacent Washington city blocks, the two institutions occupy separate worlds.
Roberts on Thursday appeared in the Senate in his black robes to preside over President Trump‘s impeachment trial, leaving the collegiality of the court for a chamber marked in recent years by partisan fighting.
The chief justice was led by a procession of Judiciary Committee and Rules Committee members to the well of the chamber. There, he raised his right hand and swore to do “impartial justice” — the kind of oath he is more accustomed to hearing from advocates before the Supreme Court. Continue reading.
Here’s what the Parnas revelations mean for Trump
What’s Lev Parnas up to? How strong is his new evidence? Are there more bombshells coming?
Lev Parnas, the indicted Rudy Giuliani associate at the center of the Ukraine controversy, has disrupted the days leading up to President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
With a slate of newly released documents from House investigators and round of TV interviews, Parnas and his attorney have offered remarkable — if true — details about just how far Trump and his allies were willing to go to dig up dirt on the president’s potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden.
Text exchanges show potential surveillance of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. Digital chats reveal Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, dangling dirt on Biden in exchange for Yovanovitch’s firing. And Parnas has alleged he was acting at the behest of the president. Continue reading.
Senate GOP hopes for a drama-free impeachment trial while bracing for Trump and his legal team
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a knowing smile when the only hiccup of Thursday’s formalities got resolved: After a brief pause, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. realized he had to gavel the impeachment trial out of session, adjourning until Tuesday.
McConnell got the day’s ending he had hoped for, a Senate looking somber and serious as it conducts President Trump’s impeachment trial. A Senate that might, as he put it a day before, be capable of rising above “short-termism and factional fever.”
But that fever lingers as the sides jockey for position when the real phase of the trial kicks in, with early skirmishes about calling witnesses getting overtaken by talks about what limits could be placed on the presentation of evidence. Continue reading.
With stakes beyond task at hand, John Roberts takes central role in Trump’s impeachment trial
With an oath of impartiality, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Thursday became only the third American sworn to preside over a presidential impeachment trial.
How he fulfills that pledge will have obvious consequences for President Trump. But it also will shape the public image of the nation’s 17th chief justice, and it holds ramifications for the Supreme Court and federal judiciary he leads. He portrays both as places where partisan politics have no purchase.
“And now he crosses First Street, where it’s all about partisan politics,” said Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, referring to the roadway in Washington that separates the Supreme Court from Congress. Continue reading.
New allegations, watchdog report complicate GOP position on impeachment trial
A flood of captivating new details surrounding President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine has spilled out into the public just as the Senate begins the impeachment trial, putting fresh pressure on GOP leaders to consider witnesses and new documents.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Thursday issued a stunning report, accusing the White House budget office of breaking the law by withholding military aid to Ukraine — the very issue at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment effort.
Separately, a close associate of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, has delivered a trove of information to House Democrats related to Giuliani’s campaign to pressure Ukrainian leaders to find dirt on the president’s political rivals. Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born Florida businessman facing unrelated campaign-finance charges in New York, is also making the media rounds to deliver a damning message: Trump, he says, was privy to the pressure campaign from the start. Continue reading.
Devin Nunes vows to sue fellow congressman after allegation he ‘conspired with Parnas’
Rep. Devin Nunes was outed by Rudy Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Wednesday.
In the conversation, Parnas explained that he and Nunes didn’t have much of a relationship until he was told to work with Nunes’ aide Derek Harvey.
“We met several times at the Trump Hotel, but our relationship started getting — basically where it expanded was when I was introduced to his aide, Derek Harvey, and the reason why Derek Harvey I was told because Devin Nunes had an ethics — something to do with the Ethics Committee, he couldn’t be in the spotlight. He was kind of shunned a little bit and that he was looking into this Ukraine stuff also, wanted to help out. And they gave me Derek Harvey to deal with,” said Parnas. Continue reading.