Once, not so long ago, congressional Republicans were impeachment’s constitutional stalwarts.
They stood up for the House of Representatives’ “sole power of impeachment,” a power granted in the Constitution, including the right to subpoena witnesses and evidence. Even when the president under investigation was a Republican. Even when the Republican political base threatened to turn against them.
But that was when the president was Richard Nixon, not Donald Trump. Continue reading.
The party line among many of President Donald Trump’s defenders at Fox News is that the recent impeachment inquiry by House Democrats was flawed from start to finish, but Judge Andrew Napolitano hasn’t been shy about offering critical analysis of Trump during the Ukraine scandal — and according to Napolitano, “newly acquired evidence” is reason enough for Democrats to “reopen the impeachment” inquiry.
Appearing on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom on Monday, Napolitano asserted, “If I were a Democrat in the House, I would be moving to reopen the impeachment on the basis of newly acquired evidence — which are these new e-mails of people getting instructions directly from the president to hold up on the sending of the (military) funds (to Ukraine). That would justify holding on to the articles of impeachment, because there’s new evidence, perhaps new articles.”
Napolitano added, “If I were a Republican in the Senate, I would go about my business as if there had been no articles of impeachment — because until those articles of impeachment come over to the Senate, there is nothing for the Senate to do.” Continue reading.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is flexing her muscles at the start of a critical election year by challenging President Trump on two explosive issues — impeachment and Iran — that are sure to exacerbate tensions between Congress and the White House.
Lawmakers in the House will vote this week to limit Trump’s military powers amid intensifying friction with Tehran, marking a new and unexpected front in Democratic efforts to rein in a president they impeached just weeks ago on charges of abusing his office over foreign policy in Ukraine.
The “War Powers Resolution” arrives as questions swirl over when Pelosi will deliver the impeachment articles to the Senate, a step she’s declined to take before Republican leaders outline the trial parameters. Pelosi charged over the weekend that absent a serious effort to gather and weigh new evidence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is merely an “accomplice” to Trump’s misconduct. Continue reading.
But they are unsure whether the want to bring in the president’s top House allies.President Donald Trump’s lawyers have their strategy in place for the upcoming Senate impeachment trial. All they need now is a start date.
Coordinating over the past month, the White House counsel’s office and the president’s team of private lawyers have prepared a detailed legal brief pushing back against last month’s House-passed impeachment articles that seek Trump’s removal from office for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
That document, according to a person familiar with the Trump legal strategy, is modeled after one that President Bill Clinton’s lawyers submitted at the start of his 1999 Senate impeachment trial — which ended a month later with his acquittal. Continue reading.
Former national security adviser John Bolton said Monday that he would testify in a Senate impeachment trial of President Trump if subpoenaed.
“The House has concluded its Constitutional responsibility by adopting Articles of Impeachment related to the Ukraine matter. It now falls to the Senate to fulfill its Constitutional obligation to try impeachments, and it does not appear possible that a final judicial resolution of the still-unanswered Constitutional questions can be obtained before the Senate acts,” Bolton, who was ousted by Trump last September, said in a statement.
“I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study. I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify,” Bolton said. Continue reading.
President Trump returned to Washington on Sunday facing dueling crises that could define his presidency and shape the course of his reelection bid.
The president spent more than two weeks at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, where he visited his nearby golf club on a near daily basis, met with top advisers and allies, and on Thursday night — in one of the most consequential decisions of his time in office — approved a military operation that resulted in the death of a top Iranian official.
But impeachment was never far from Trump’s mind. Continue reading.
NOTE: Our question is if President Trump has repeated his behavior when faced with a crises by created an even bigger crises to change the focus of the media.
The Senate tasked with holding President Trump’s impeachment trial would be unrecognizable to most of its predecessors.
It’s particularly true for those who ran the last trial 21 years ago, a GOP-led Senate that logged almost 1,200 hours in session. By the end of 1999, senators had cast more than 350 votes on legislation and ushered into existence 170 laws, signed by a president after they tried and failed to evict him from office. It took more than 15,000 pages to cover that year’s Senate work in the Congressional Record.
The current Senate logged almost 230 fewer hours of floor time in 2019, voting just 108 times on actual legislation. And through the first 11 months of last year, the Senate’s official footprint covered just 6,779 pages in the Congressional Record. Continue reading.
NEW YORK — A federal judge in Manhattan ruled Friday that an indicted associate of President Trump’s personal attorney can provide Congress with evidence in his criminal case that is of interest to impeachment investigators.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken granted an application from an attorney for Lev Parnas seeking permission to give lawmakers access to phone data and documents seized by federal prosecutors after his October arrest. The House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the materials as part of its impeachment inquiry, according to Parnas attorney Joseph Bondy.
The materials are expected to include documents taken from Parnas’s Florida home, along with a complete readout of his iPhone. Bondy has said there is relevant information contained in the materials, though he has not disclosed specifically what that might be.
It contends the release of the documents sought by The Times would “inhibit the frank and candid exchange of views” in government decision-making.WASHINGTON — The Trump administration disclosed on Friday that there were 20 emails between a top aide to President Trump’s acting chief of staff and a colleague at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget discussing the freeze of a congressionally mandated military aid package for Ukraine.
But in response to a court order that it swiftly process those pages in response to a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, lawsuit filed by The New York Times, the Office of Management and Budget delivered a terse letter saying it would not turn over any of the 40 pages of emails — not even with redactions.
“All 20 documents are being withheld in full,” wrote Dionne Hardy, the office’s Freedom of Information Act officer. Continue reading.
It remains to be seen when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will send the two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the U.S. Senate: although the U.S. House of Representatives indicted Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on December 18, Pelosi was still holding onto the articles on January 2. But Democrats certainly have a mountain of evidence to work with, and security expert Kate Brannen examines some of the Ukraine-related documents in an in-depth report for Just Security.
One of those documents is an August 30 e-mail from Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In that e-mail, Brannen notes, Duffey told Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker, “Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.” Duffey was referring to the hold that Trump had placed on military aid to Ukraine, which House Democrats say was offered by Trump on the condition that the Ukrainian government investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
