Impeachment — The Trial

[QueEx]

The third impeachment trial of an American president is set to begin this week.




The House impeachment managers, appointed this past week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, above, will argue that the Senate should convict President Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to a pressure campaign on Ukraine.


And Mr. Trump’s defense team, including the high-profile litigators Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, will make its legal cases as to why those actions do not rise to the impeachment standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Oral arguments are likely to begin on Wednesday.

What to expect when the impeachment articles hit the Senate

The procedures of an impeachment trial in the Senate are a mix of straightforward actions -- like House managers walking the articles over to the other chamber and the Supreme Court chief justice swearing in senators as jurors -- and a more complex set of rules, traditions and precedents that...

www.cnn.com

Mr. Trump, for his part, will be attending the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos when the trial begins.

Redirect Notice

Meet the Democrats prosecuting Trump's impeachment

These Democratic lawmakers will be managers in Trump's impeachment trial.

www.google.com

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[MASTERBAKER]

Seriously, how stupid do these LIARS and HYPOCRITES think Americans are?

 

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[QueEx]

The Bolton BOMB

Bolton account of Ukraine aid could reignite call for impeachment witnesses

A New York Times report says President Donald Trump told his national security adviser the release of the money was contingent on an investigation into opponents.

www.politico.com

A bombshell report on Sunday about President Donald Trump’s handling of military aid to Ukraine could jump-start Democrats’ efforts to call witnesses in the Senate’s impeachment trial, just days before a likely vote on whether to seek testimony from current and former Trump administration officials.

According to The New York Times, former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in an initial draft of his forthcoming book that Trump told him that critical military aid to Ukraine would remain suspended until the country’s government helped with Trump’s desired investigations targeting former Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats.

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[QueEx]

 

[QueEx]

The Bolton BOMB

What is Bolton really up to??? He is a creature of the conservative movement; he relies on the Republican Party; and not about to do Democrat’s any favors (by helping to remove Trump).

 

[QueEx]

Impeachment

This could be the most crucial day in the impeachment trial yet.

Today, the Senate will vote on whether to call witnesses. Despite the wave of uncertainty over revelations from former national security adviser John Bolton and despite ongoing debates about whether Chief Justice John Roberts can intervene to make sure witnesses are called, it appears Republicans will close ranks and vote against witnesses.

That means the Senate could swiftly vote to acquit President Trump and end the trial, possibly today.

What happens after it's all over?Well, there will be a lot to think about. In the short term, it's unclear how the whole saga will affect this year's presidential election. Constitutionally speaking, the broad presidential powers outlined by the President's defense could reshape the way future Oval Office occupants view their duties.

5 things to know for January 31: Coronavirus, impeachment, US military, Mexico, guns

Here's what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door.

www.cnn.com

 

[ronmch20]

The American ideal that no one is above the Law is on life support and maybe beyond resuscitation. We'll know for sure in November if it can be revived.

 

[QueEx]

The American ideal that no one is above the Law is on life support and maybe beyond resuscitation. We'll know for sure in November if it can be revived.

Well put . . .

 

[QueEx]

This means the Impeachment Trial Was A Sham

 

[MCP]

Intercepted Podcast: John and the Giant Impeachment

Reporter Spencer Ackerman and writer Sarah Lazare are this week’s guests.

theintercept.com

 

[QueEx]

Justice Dept acknowledges hidden emails on Trump's Ukraine scheme


MSNBC
By Steve Benen
February 3, 2020



There's a phenomenon known as the "Friday night news dump," which is exploited precisely because it's often effective. It's a straightforward strategy: those who have to release information they don't want people to see will wait until late on a Friday to share the information, increasing the odds that the news will go overlooked.

A few days ago, we saw a classic of the genre, which shouldn't be discounted. The Washington Postreported over the weekend:

Hours after the Senate voted against seeking new evidence in the impeachment case against President Trump, the administration acknowledged the existence of two dozen emails that could reveal the president's thinking about withholding military aid to Ukraine.

In a midnight court filing, the Justice Department explained why it shouldn't have to unredact copies of more than 100 emails written by officials at the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department about the hold on funds to Ukraine.

. According to Heather Walsh, an OMB lawyer, these secret emails are protected by "presidential privilege."

"Specifically, the documents in this category are emails that reflect communications by either the President, the Vice President, or the President's immediate advisors regarding Presidential decision-making about the scope, duration, and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine," Walsh wrote in her midnight filing.

And while there's room for a spirited debate about the merits of the administration's legal argument, let's not miss the forest for the trees: the existence of these emails is of great significance. We are, after all, talking about hidden documents that reportedly shed light not only on the nature of the president's illegal extortion scheme, but also why he launched it.

In theory, these are exactly the kind of materials senators should want to see before voting on whether to convict or acquit Trump in his impeachment trial.


A CNN report added, "The filing, released near midnight Friday, marks the first official acknowledgment from the Trump administration that emails about the President's thinking related to the aid exist, and that he was directly involved in asking about and deciding on the aid as early as June. The administration is still blocking those emails from the public and has successfully kept them from Congress."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) released a written statement on Saturday that read, "Every single Republican Senator voted to endorse the White House cover-up of these potentially important truth-revealing emails. Make no mistake, the full truth will eventually come out and Republicans will have to answer for why they were so determined to enable the president to hide it."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who's leading the House impeachment managers' efforts in the Senate, raised a related point in his closing remarks late Friday.

"The facts will come out in all of their horror," Schiff reminded senators. "The documents the president is hiding will come out. The witnesses the president is concealing will tell their stories. And we will be asked why we didn't want to hear that information when we had the chance."

Redirect Notice

 

[playahaitian]

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Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. Impeachment is done. President Trump was acquitted.

What happened today

By an almost straight party-line vote, the Senate acquitted President Trump on the charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress to aid his own re-election, bringing the impeachment trial to a close and allowing Mr. Trump to claim vindication and exoneration. As expected, the tally in favor of conviction fell far below the 67-vote threshold necessary for removal on each article. Fifty-two senators voted against the abuse of power charge, while 48 of them voted to support it. And 53 senators — the entire Republican caucus — voted against the obstruction of Congress charge, while 47 voted for it. Despite weeks of speculation about moderates crossing party lines, there was only one who did: Senator Mitt Romney. He sided with Democrats on the first article, and became the first senator in American history to vote to remove a president of his own party from office. In an emotional speech on the Senate floor hours before the vote — even Democrats in the room teared up — Mr. Romney declared that Mr. Trump was “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.” He said Mr. Trump’s Ukraine pressure campaign was “a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values.” Mr. Trump was eager to deliver a public statement declaring victory after the acquittal, but his advisers argued against the move. Shortly after the Senate vote, he said he would wait until noon on Thursday to appear at the White House “to discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax.”

Wednesday’s only surprise

It was his “inescapable conviction,” he said.

Shocking the Senate, Mr. Romney announced in an emotional speech this afternoon that he would vote to convict the president, taking his place alone in American history.

“A president can indeed commit acts against the public trust that are so egregious that while they’re not statutory crimes, they would demand removal from office,” he said.

Mr. Romney resisted the pleas of those he said had contacted him and encouraged him to “stand with the team.” And he said that with his vote, he would tell his children and grandchildren that he did his duty to the best of his ability.

“I will only be one name among many, no more, no less to future generations of Americans who look at the record of this trial,” Mr. Romney said. “They will note merely that I was among the senators who determined that what the president did was wrong, grievously wrong.”

He added, “We are all footnotes at best in the annals of history, but in the most powerful nation on Earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that distinction is enough for any citizen.”

[Read a transcript of Mr. Romney’s speech.]

My colleague Mark Leibovich visited Mr. Romney in his Senate office this morning to interview him about his decision. I asked Mark what he took away from it.

How did Mitt Romney get to the point where he was ready to act alone?

He said he woke up before 4 a.m. every day and did a lot of agonizing. He read a lot: the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, a lot of political biographies. He took this very seriously. It’s an easy thing for a politician to say, but I actually believed him. Mitt Romney doesn’t exactly wear a lot of angst on his face. Spending time with him this morning, you could see that this decision wore on him.

Did his own political health influence him?

Mitt Romney is in a rare position. He’s at the end of his career. He doesn’t have to stand for an election for another four and a half years. He has his own stand-alone “brand,” if you want to call it that. He was the nominee in 2012. Whether or not the Trump people want to admit this, he was an elder statesman in the party. He has quite a bit of stature. He took the ultimate lonely position.

What is it about the circumstances of our politics now — the pressures that both parties put on their members to fall in line — that meant Mr. Romney would be the only one?

Republican politics in Washington in the time of Donald Trump is a vise grip. Loyalty has never been a more important virtue in the party than it is now. The Republican Party has shrunk a lot, by weeding out the Trump-ambivalents. A lot of the Republicans who broke with Donald Trump in 2016 are no longer Republicans.

Mr. Romney is a Mormon. On the Senate floor today he said that as a juror in the trial, he had sworn an oath “before God” to act impartially. He cited a Mormon hymn in explaining his decision on Fox News.

The example of his father, George Romney, who was very active in the Mormon Church and who was the moderate Republican governor of Michigan, was very powerful to him. George was also a lonely dissident voice in the Republican Party during the Vietnam War. He paid a big price for it. To this day, Mitt says he reveres his father for that.

Mitt used to say when he was running for president that when he went up to the debate lectern, he would write the word “dad” to remind himself of the example his dad set. He said to me this morning that George Romney was an example he looked to regularly in the process of making this impeachment decision.

He told you he thought there would be “unimaginable” consequences to his vote. What do you think he meant?

He is as lonely a voice inside the G.O.P. as there is right now in the Senate. It takes different forms, like being heckled in grocery stores, which happened to him in Florida over the weekend. God knows what people say about you on social media. There are calls for his expulsion, led by Donald Trump Jr. He said he was prepared for it. He said he was willing to do this for the privilege of voting his conscience.

The acquittal

A few minutes after 4 p.m., Chief Justice John Roberts called the impeachment trial into session for the last time. Approximately a half-hour later, Mr. Trump had been fully acquitted on the two charges. In between, each senator stood twice to register votes on both articles of impeachment.

My colleagues Emily Cochrane and Catie Edmondson were in the room, seated with dozens of other reporters directly above the chief justice looking out at the senators. I asked them to narrate what they saw, with some help from the chief justice’s script during the proceedings.

“The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment.”

CATIE: The press and public galleries were completely full, as full as they’ve been during the trial. Members of the House of Representatives came over from the other side of the Capitol to see the proceedings to sit in the back of the chamber. There were so many lawmakers and Republican staff that they had to sit in an overflow area on the Democratic side.

EMILY: The clerk methodically read the two articles of impeachment into the record before the votes took place. Then Chief Justice Roberts read out his instructions.

“Each senator when his or her name is called will stand in his or her place and vote guilty or not guilty … Senators, how say you? Is the respondent, Donald John Trump, guilty or not guilty?

CATIE: Normally when senators vote, they make a hand motion or say “yea” or “nay.” The combination of having senators stand at their desks and utter the words “guilty” or “not guilty” reminded you that you were in a room with the 100 people vested with the task of determining whether the president should be removed from office. That brought home the gravity for me.

“On this article of impeachment, 48 senators have pronounced Donald John Trump, president of the United States, guilty as charged. Fifty-two of the senators have pronounced him not guilty as charged. Two-thirds of the senators present not having pronounced him guilty, the Senate adjudges that the respondent, Donald John Trump, president of the United States, is not guilty as charged.”

CATIE: There were long pauses before the chief justice read out the vote counts, as the Senate clerk formally tallied everything.

EMILY: During Chief Justice Roberts’s announcement of the votes, you could hear a pin drop in the room. The old-fashioned language added to the formality of the moment. It reminded you of how old this process is, and how no one has updated that language since it’s used so rarely.

“The Senate, having tried Donald John Trump, president of the United States, upon two articles of impeachment exhibited against him by the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the senators present not having found him guilty of the charges contained therein, it is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges in said articles.”

CATIE: After the conclusion, Chief Justice Roberts was escorted out of the chamber by a group of Democratic and Republican senators. Everyone stood. It underscored this somewhat bipartisan notion in all of this, the idea that the judicial branch needed to remain above the fray of politics. No one wanted the judicial branch to be tainted by partisanship.

EMILY: Mr. Romney appeared to be one of the first senators to leave. He seemed to dart out pretty quickly. Most senators stayed in the room, milling around like they normally do. The weight had been taken off the chamber.

 

[QueEx]

Anti-Trump protests held across the U.S. following impeachment acquittal



Thousands of demonstrators attended "Reject the Cover-Up" protests across the United States on Wednesday evening, after the Senate impeachment trial ended with President Trump's acquittal.

Hundreds gathered outside of the Capitol, where Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) declared, "I will focus my ire on Senate Republicans. Shame on you, Mitch McConnell."

About 50 people held a sit-in inside the building, chanting, "Trump is guilty!" and "We know this is a cover-up."

In Boston, protesters praised Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the former governor of Massachusetts. He was the only Republican to vote "guilty" on the abuse of power charge, and one protester carried a sign that read, "Thanks, Mitt! Now let's censure."


Source: USA Today, WBZ News

 

[Ghost of Lamarr]

Well...........Well...............Well


Had failed presidential candidate
@MittRomney devoted the same energy and anger to defeating a faltering Barack Obama as he sanctimoniously does to me, he could have won the election. Read the Transcripts!

 

[QueEx]

Well...........Well...............Well

I don't believe in Ghosts.

Perhaps a Reincarnated "X" or "Former" Member and Obama Hater ? ? ?

Thoughtone! what you think ? ? ?


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