Tag: Trump impeachment

Trump team doubles down despite Bolton bombshell

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s lawyers did not change their tactics Monday despite bombshell new revelations related to former national security adviser John Bolton’s alleged knowledge about the Ukraine affair at the center of the president’s impeachment trial.

In hours of arguments on the Senate floor, Trump’s attorneys did not address or seek to knock down Bolton’s account as Trump himself has done.

Instead, they doubled down on their argument that House Democrats did not uncover evidence showing Trump tied military assistance or a White House meeting to Ukraine launching investigations. Continue reading.

Legal scholars explain why John Bolton’s book could expose Trump lawyers to criminal liability

AlterNet logoOver the weekend, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt reported in the New York Times that former National Security Adviser John Bolton — in an unpublished  manuscript of his new book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” due out March 17 — asserts that President Donald Trump and his allies directly tied military aid to Ukraine with an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. This was the “quid pro quo” that House Democrats alleged during their impeachment hearings last year and continue to allege in Trump’s impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate. And legal writer Jerry Lambe, in an article for Law & Crime, reports that the Bolton’s assertion might subject Trump’s lawyers to criminal exposure.

“The threshold question is whether the president’s attorneys were aware of the information contained in the manuscript,” Lambe explains. “According to a letter from Bolton’s attorney, Charles J. Cooper, the White House was made aware of the book on December 30. The bombshell revelations reportedly therein could not only change tenor of the Senate trial by forcing the chamber to hear from witnesses such as Bolton — they may place the president’s impeachment attorneys in a precarious position.”

On Sunday night, attorney Mark S. Zaid tweeted, “At least some members of Trump’s legal team also likely knew of Bolton’s knowledge which, if so, potentially subjects them to criminal perjury charges or legal disciplinary actions for their statements before the Senate.” Continue reading.

Law professor blows up Trump defense team’s 2 most ‘egregious constitutional claims’: They ‘have impeachment exactly backwards’

AlterNet logoWriting for Just Security on Friday, Frank O. Bowman III, a legal expert and professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, detailed two of the “more egregious constitutional claims” put forth by Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team in a trial brief filed last week.

The 171-page brief, which reminded one law professor of the president’s public “tantrums,” outlined the defense team’s case against two articles of impeachment filed by the House of Representatives earlier this month. According to Bowman, the defense brief includes two glaring errors that give more credence to the House charges against the president: 1 — that the president can only be impeached “for violations of ‘known and established law,’” and 2 — that “impeachment for ‘abuse of power’ is ‘made-up,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and unconstitutional.”

On the first point, Bowman writes the defense brief intimates that “the law violated must be criminal” in order to be impeachable. Bowman notes that Alan Dershowitz, one of the president’s impeachment defense attorneys, has repeatedly made, and will continue to make, the case that “impeachment requires proof of crime or ‘crime-like conduct.’” Continue reading.

Republicans fear the ‘floodgates’ will open if John Bolton testifies during Trump’s impeachment trial: report

AlterNet logoFormer National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” isn’t due out until March 17, but Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times are reporting that according to an “unpublished manuscript” of the book, Bolton asserts that President Donald Trump and his allies tied military aid to Ukraine with an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. And in Axios, journalists Jonathan Swan, Mike Allen and Alayna Treene are reporting that Trump’s Republican supporters are seriously worried that the “floodgates” will open if Bolton testifies at Trump’s impeachment trial.

Trump and his allies have vehemently denied that there was ever a “quid pro quo” when it came to a Bidens investigation and military aid to Ukraine, while the House Democrats who led the impeachment inquiry against Trump last year have maintained that there most certainly was a “quid pro quo.” And according to Haberman and Schmidt’s report, Trump’s former national security adviser is confirming in his book that House Democrats are right.

Axios quotes a “top” White House aide as saying that if Bolton testifies during Trump’s impeachment trial, things can only get worse for the president. Continue reading.

New Poll Shows Most Voters Favor Trump’s Removal (And It’s Fox!)

A new Fox News poll released on Sunday showed a clear majority agreeing that the Senate should convict Donald Trump on the articles of impeachment brought by the House — and eject him from the White House.

“On impeachment, by a 50-44 percent margin, voters think the Senate should vote to convict Trump and remove him from office,” according to Fox. “Most Democrats say remove (81 percent) and most Republicans disagree (84 percent). Among independents, more say Trump should be removed by a 19-point margin (53-34 percent).”

The poll found Trump’s overall approval rating under water by ten points, 45 percent positive to 55 percent negative, with 47 percent holding “strongly negative” views of the president. Continue reading.

Four significant questions raised by the newly released recording of Trump and Lev Parnas

Washington Post logoAt the beginning of a video released Saturday by an attorney representing Lev Parnas, we see a hallway. At the end of the hallway is an arch with a dark-colored backdrop, in front of which two people appear to be posing for a photograph. Behind the person on the left is what looks like an American flag.

That shot establishes what we’re looking at: footage captured during a fundraising dinner on April 30, 2018, for the group America First Action, which was held at Trump’s D.C. hotel. That shot is definitive because it’s trivial to match that distant scene with one we’ve seen from a much closer perspective, thanks to material released by the House Intelligence Committee. In one photo from the committee, for example, we see Parnas and President Trump standing in front of an archway with blue curtains, flanked by American flags.

Parnas would become tightly integrated into Trump’s circle, though the distance at which he was kept varies depending on whom you ask. Trump insists Parnas, an eventual business associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, was only given access to the president because he’d contributed to Trump’s campaign or to America First. Parnas, the argument goes, was simply one of hundreds of such people who take photos with the president. To hear Parnas tell it, though, his work for Giuliani in late 2018 and in 2019 was well-known by Trump and was integral to the effort to get Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a possible opponent of Trump’s in the upcoming election. Continue reading.

Senate Republicans face pivotal moment on impeachment witnesses

The Hill logoRepublicans in the Senate are facing new pressure to subpoena key witnesses on the impeachment trial of President Trump. 

The Senate was headed into the second week of the trial facing a pivotal vote on the subject, and it looked like Democrats would almost certainly not win the four GOP votes needed to subpoena new witnesses.

But that was before a report Sunday night in The New York Times. Continue reading.

Schiff: Trump lawyers ‘deathly afraid’ of witnesses

“I think they’re deathly afraid of what witnesses will have to say and so their whole strategy has been deprive the public of a fair trial,” he said on NBC.

The leader of the House impeachment case said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s defense team is “deathly afraid” of possible testimony from key witnesses in a Senate trial.

“I think they’re deathly afraid of what witnesses will have to say and so their whole strategy has been deprive the public of a fair trial,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They don’t frame it that way, but that’s in essence it.”

Democrats have argued that officials with potential firsthand knowledge of Trump’s decision to hold up military aid to Ukraine should testify in the trial. Those possible witnesses include acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton. Continue reading.

Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says

New York Times logoDrafts of the book outline the potential testimony of the former national security adviser if he were called as a witness in the president’s impeachment trial.

WASHINGTON — President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.

The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense: that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.

Mr. Bolton’s explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, the third in American history, was included in drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books. Continue reading.

Four significant questions raised by the newly released recording of Trump and Lev Parnas

Washington Post logoAt the beginning of a video released Saturday by an attorney representing Lev Parnas, we see a hallway. At the end of the hallway is an arch with a dark-colored backdrop, in front of which two people appear to be posing for a photograph. Behind the person on the left is what looks like an American flag.

That shot establishes what we’re looking at: footage captured during a fundraising dinner on April 30, 2018, for the group America First Action, which was held at Trump’s D.C. hotel. That shot is definitive because it’s trivial to match that distant scene with one we’ve seen from a much closer perspective, thanks to material released by the House Intelligence Committee. In one photo from the committee, for example, we see Parnas and President Trump standing in front of an archway with blue curtains, flanked by American flags.

Parnas would become tightly integrated into Trump’s circle, though the distance at which he was kept varies depending on whom you ask. Trump insists Parnas, an eventual business associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, was only given access to the president because he’d contributed to Trump’s campaign or to America First. Parnas, the argument goes, was simply one of hundreds of such people who take photos with the president. To hear Parnas tell it, though, his work for Giuliani in late 2018 and in 2019 was well-known by Trump and was integral to the effort to get Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a possible opponent of Trump’s in the upcoming election. Continue reading.