Tag: Trump impeachment

Trump says ‘angry majority’ supports him against impeachment drive

TUPELO, Miss. (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday he believed an “angry majority” of American voters will support him against an impeachment inquiry as he sought to rally his supporters to voice their opposition to the Democratic attempt to oust him.

At a packed arena in Tupelo, Mississippi, Trump aired his grievances at length a day after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted formally to lay out the rules for the inquiry into Trump’s attempt to get Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

“The American people are fed up with Democrat lies, hoaxes and extremism,” said Trump. The Democrats, he said, “have created an angry majority that will vote many do-nothing Democrats out of office in 2020.”

View the complete November 1 article by Steve Holland on the Reuters website here.

Mitch McConnell warns Trump to stop attacking GOP senators who will decide his fate

Trump called Mitt Romney a “pompous ass.” Mitch reminded him Romney will be a juror in Trump’s impeachment trial

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned President Donald Trump to stop attacking Republican senators who will soon consider his fate at an impeachment trial, Politico reports.

McConnell met with Trump one-on-one at the White House last week and warned Trump to stop attacking senators like Mitt Romney, R-Utah, whom the president called a “pompous ass” after Romney said that Trump’s demand for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was “wrong and appalling.”

Attacking Romney was a “big mistake,” a former Senate aide told Politico, adding that the Utah senator will still be around in the chamber for at least another five years. “You can’t go guns blazing on the Senate.”

View the complete November 1 article by Igor Derysh on the Salon website here.

Trump at rally says impeachment an ‘attack on democracy itself’

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Friday painted himself as the victim of an impeachment effort years in the making.

The president portrayed the investigation in harsh terms during a rally in Tupelo, Miss., equating it to a clandestine plot by his Democratic detractors. He decried the impeachment inquiry — a process laid out in the Constitution — as “an attack on democracy itself” and an effort to undo his 2016 election win.

“Yesterday, the Democrats voted to potentially nullify the votes of 63 million Americans, disgracing themselves and bringing shame upon the House of Representatives,” Trump said, referring to Thursday’s adopted House resolution that codifies an impeachment inquiry into his alleged abuse of power. “They’ve been plotting to overthrow the election since the moment I won.”

View the complete November 1 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Veteran GOP conservative who called for Nixon’s resignation now champions Trump impeachment inquiry: ‘It was a pure shakedown’

AlterNet logoIn March 1974 — when the Watergate scandal was getting worse and worse for President Richard Nixon — conservative Republican Slade Gorton called for Nixon’s resignation. Five months later, Gorton (who was serving as attorney general for Washington State at the time) got his wish: Nixon resigned in August 1974, and Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as president of the United States. Gorton is now 91, and he is once again in favor of an impeachment inquiry against a Republican president — only this time, it’s President Donald Trump.

Gorton discussed the House impeachment inquiry against Trump during an interview with the Seattle Times. Many Republicans in Congress are insisting that Trump did nothing wrong on July 25, when he tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. But Gorton (who represented Washington State in the U.S. Senate in the 1980s and 1990s) strongly disagrees, joining House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in asserting that Trump seriously crossed the line by encouraging a foreign leader to investigate a political rival.

“I reached the conclusion that there are a dozen actions on this president’s part that warrant a vote of impeachment in the House,” Gorton told the Seattle Times’ Jim Brunner.

View the complete October 31 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Often-talkative Trump goes quiet amid impeachment testimony, slowing economy

‘It’s almost like he is low energy these days,’ Democratic strategist says

ANALYSIS | All week, reporters at the White House have waited for the announcement over the loudspeaker instructing the day’s press pool to report for duty pronto for unplanned presidential remarks. But, so far, the speaker has remained mostly silent — just like President Donald Trump.

Even during a term that has featured — at the time, at least — what felt like consequential weeks, this one quickly took on a different feel.

Other than brief remarks over the loud engines of Air Force One on Monday morning, a president who has effectively counterprogrammed negative media coverage, questionable policy moves, bitter West Wing staff departures and even the opening weeks of an impeachment has retreated from reporters’ questions.

View the complete October 31 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Democrats unveil impeachment procedures

The Hill logoHouse Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a resolution to outline the next phase of their impeachment inquiry that will bring their case before the public after weeks of closed-door witness testimony.

The resolution, unveiled by House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), sets up procedures for open hearings by the Intelligence Committee and releasing witness testimony.

It also allows Republicans to request witness testimony and documents, similar to previous impeachment inquiries. But Democrats on the Intelligence panel still have the ability to block the requests.

View the complete October 29 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.

Democrats see hopes rise in Senate with impeachment

The Hill logoImpeachment is raising the likelihood that the Senate will be a real battleground next year, and that Democrats could regain the majority.

Much will need to go right for Democrats to take back control. They would need to net three seats and the White House, and that’s with many in the party expecting to lose Sen. Doug Jones’s (D) seat in Alabama.

Yet Democratic hopes are rising given the steady series of negative headlines surrounding President Trump, which have put Republicans on the back foot.

View the complete October 29 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

House to vote for first time on impeachment procedures

The Hill logoHouse Democrats will for the first time vote on impeachment procedures on Thursday, a shift in their strategy seemingly meant to cut off GOP arguments about an unfair process.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said Monday that he will introduce a resolution this week to “ensure transparency” and “provide a clear path forward” in the impeachment inquiry.

The text of the resolution has yet to be released, but McGovern plans to introduce it Tuesday ahead of a markup in his committee Wednesday. A senior Democratic aide said that the resolution is expected to hit the House floor on Thursday.

View the complete October 28 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.

Trump confronts limits of his impeachment defense strategy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is confronting the limits of his main impeachment defense.

As the probe hits the one-month mark, Trump and his aides have largely ignored the details of the Ukraine allegations against him. Instead, they’re loudly objecting to the House Democrats’ investigation process, using that as justification for ordering administration officials not to cooperate and complaining about what they deem prejudicial, even unconstitutional, secrecy.

But as a near-daily drip of derogatory evidence emerges from closed-door testimony on Capitol Hill, the White House assertion that the proceedings are unfair is proving to be a less-than-compelling counter to the mounting threat to Trump’s presidency. Some senior officials have complied with congressional subpoenas to assist House Democratic investigators, defying White House orders.

View the complete October 25 article by Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin and Jonathan Lemire on the Associated Press website here.

Republicans Grind Impeachment Inquiry to Halt as Evidence Mounts Against Trump

New York Times logoHouse Republicans staged a protest in the secure suite on Capitol Hill where the impeachment inquiry is proceeding, seeking to shift the focus away from damaging revelations about the president.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans ground the impeachment inquiry to a halt for hours on Wednesday, staging a protest at the Capitol that sowed chaos and delayed a crucial deposition as they sought to deflect the spotlight from the revelations the investigation has unearthed about President Trump.

Chanting “Let us in! Let us in!” about two dozen Republican members of the House pushed past Capitol Police officers to enter the secure rooms of the House Intelligence Committee, where impeachment investigators have been conducting private interviews that have painted a damaging picture of the president’s behavior.

They refused to leave, and the standoff in the normally hushed corridors was marked by shouting matches between Republican and Democratic lawmakers and an appearance by the House sergeant-at-arms, the top law enforcement official in the chamber.

View the complete October 23 article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos on The New York Times website here.