Month: January 2020

Report: GOP Sen. Toomey proposing impeachment trial witness deal

Posted on by Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Report: GOP Sen. Toomey proposing impeachment trial witness dealOver the last few days, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) has spoken with several of his Republican colleagues about the possibility of having two witnesses appear during President Trump's impeachment trial, three GOP officials told The Washington Post. One of the witnesses would be called by Republicans, and the other by Democrats, the officials said. The Senate is scheduled to vote later this week on whether to have witnesses in the trial, with Democrats urging lawmakers to allow testimony from witnesses with firsthand information on Trump and the Ukraine scandal. On Sunday night, The New York Times reported that former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes in his forthcoming book that Trump said he wanted to withhold military aid to Ukraine until officials there launched investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.Toomey, who is not up for reelection until 2022, is close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), but not President Trump or his top aides, the Post reports. Toomey has discussed his "one-for-one" proposal with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the Republican officials said, as well as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). On Monday morning, Romney said Bolton's testimony was "relevant," adding that it is "important to be able to hear from John Bolton for us to be able to make an impartial judgment."More stories from theweek.com Mike Pompeo is a disgrace Investigators: Kobe Bryant's pilot tried to gain altitude before crash All the president's turncoats


Posted in Uncategorized

Biden pushes for witnesses in impeachment trial but says of his Ukraine role, ‘What is there to defend?’

Posted on by Vandana Rambaran
Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden told reporters Monday that he does not think it's necessary for him to testify as a witness in President Trump's impeachment trial because he has "nothing to defend." 

White House impeachment team weighs in on Bolton claims

Posted on (Updated by Politics - CBSNews.com
In an interview with "CBS Evening News" anchor Norah O'Donnell, a group of impeachment defense surrogates questioned a report that found President Trump wanted to withhold military aid to Ukraine until officials there looked into his political rivals. O'Donnell spoke to Representatives Mark Meadows, Doug Collins, Elise Stefanik and Debbie Lesko.
Posted in Uncategorized

Impeachment trial resumes with more of Trump’s lie-and-attack defense: Live coverage #5

Posted on by Laura Clawson

White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Trump personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, and their whole crew are back to continue the opening arguments in the impeachment defense of Donald Trump. They gave a brief preview on Saturday, which was exactly what you’d expect: lies and attacks. They resume in the wake of reports that former national security adviser John Bolton’s book recounts a conversation with Donald Trump in which Trump explicitly tied military aid to Ukraine investigating his political opponents—exactly what Trump was impeached for—but it’s unlikely that will change the basic lie-and-attack strategy.

Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 12:02:14 AM +00:00 · Hunter

A new face in the Trump defense lineup: Robert Ray, who so far is repeating Ken Starr’s arguments that there is too much impeachment these days so everyone should just go home.

Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 12:05:19 AM +00:00 · Barbara Morrill

Robert Ray, the latest Trump lawyer to yap, tell us that Nixon committed a lot of crimes when he wasn’t impeached. 

Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 12:07:23 AM +00:00 · Hunter

“Impeachment was never intended to be a partisan tool,” says Ray, ignoring that the problem here is that one party and only one party believes Corruption is Good Now.

Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 12:13:53 AM +00:00 · Hunter

After the fireworks of Pam Bondi brazenly lying about the basics of Shokin’s corruption, Ray’s return to a long, meandering “and we tied an onion to our belts, which was the style at the time” reminiscing brings things back around to where we were this morning. This impeachment is partisan and improper, because we say so, and Trump’s crimes aren’t serious, like lying about sex, but only attempts to tamper with the fabric of our elections (again.)

Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 12:23:38 AM +00:00 · Hunter

I’m not ignoring Ray, I just once again have no idea how this ties into an actual defense of Trump. He’s instead arguing that a “partisan” impeachment is “illegitimate”, the alleged crime wasn’t serious enough, and the House did it wrong, ad nauseam.

Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 12:27:04 AM +00:00 · Hunter

Now Ray is again saying the evidence of a quid-pro-quo is “weak,” again completely ignoring the new Bolton revelation that Trump directly told him he was holding up military aid for a Biden investigation—debunking this entire plank of the defense. All of this is now gibberish.

Is Trump’s legal defense resonating with Republican senators?

Posted on by PBS NewsHour - Politics
President Trump's legal team has begun its defense in his Senate impeachment trial. The central argument: Trump did nothing wrong, and the summary of his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shows no evidence of conditioning military aid on investigations. But John Bolton reportedly says that did occur. Amna Nawaz reports and Lisa Desjardins and Yamiche Alcindor join Judy Woodruff.

Watch Fox host contort himself as new damaging info emerges in Trump impeachment trial

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

The Republican Party continues forward with its oblique defense of Donald Trump’s impeachable crimes. This on the heels of bombshell news that former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his soon-to-be-published memoir that Trump froze the congressionally earmarked financial aid to Ukraine subject to them opening up a public corruption investigation into the Biden family. By any measure this would be a smoking gun. In fact, back in September, even Fox & friends’ Steve Doocy could agree to that. In a clip you can watch below from Sept. 24, 2019, Doocy explains how the whistleblower complaint only means something if someone could truly point to Donald Trump withholding aid because he wanted an investigation into a campaign rival—Joe Biden.

STEVE DOOCY: If the president said, you know, “I’ll give you the money but you’ve got to investigate Joe Biden,” that is really off-the-rails wrong.

Ainsley Earhardt agreed.

x

Steve Doocy spent Monday pushing back those goal posts, while Fox News brought on corrupt politician after corrupt politician to pooh-pooh these bombshell revelations. Speaking with alleged sexual molestation accessory after the fact Rep. Jim Jordan, Doocy asked this of the new Bolton allegations. Calling these allegations something that “we have heard before,” Doocy went on to both illustrate exactly why the news is damning, while also saying it didn’t matter now, for no reason.

DOOCY: This is something we have heard before but now, because it’s John Bolton, and he was in the room, what does this change?

Media Matters put together this clip showing Doocy in September and Doocy on Monday.

x

Listen, everybody has the right to change their minds about things. In fact, as more and more evidence is revealed, one should be able to change their mind as they now have new information to work with. And yet, somehow, Steve Doocy is so filled with the poison of cynicism, he is able to seamlessly change the parameters of the argument in such a way that it makes me wonder if Steve Doocy’s mind is simply filled with a gaseous sulfur-smelling void.

Alicia Keys Demands That Trump Be Impeachment While Hosting Grammy Awards

Posted on by LifeZette

By Andrew Spalding | January 27, 2020

While hosting the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, singer Alicia Keys took the opportunity to call for President Donald Trump to be impeached.

Breitbart News reported that Keys took the stage near the beginning of the show to perform her own version of the song “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi. The star revamped the lyrics of the song to include reference to various nominees at the music show, including Ariana Grande and K-Pop group BTS. However, she also made sure to include some lyrics about impeaching President Trump.

“Tonight we must unite in spite of all the news that we’re seeing,” Keys sang as she also played piano. “It’s like so crazy. I don’t even watch TV.”

RELATED: Twitter Goes Ballistic on WAPO Reporter Who Trashed Kobe Bryant Minutes After His Death

“Commander in chief impeached, y’all get out, let’s bring Cardi B. Cardi — can you please show all these people what to do?” she added.

Cardi B is a 26 year-old former stripper-turned-rapper who has been open about her hatred for President Trump. Over the past few weeks, Cardi B has begun saying that she wants to run for Congress, and she has even earned the endorsement of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Unfortunately for Keys, her little political moment backfired on her, as social media users made it clear that they don’t care what she thinks about the current president.

Keys’ move was particularly classless given the fact that the Grammys took place hours after the death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, who was killed on Sunday morning in a helicopter crash along with his 13 year-old daughter and seven others. Keys opened the show by paying tribute to Bryant, and it was hoped that she and her fellow stars would be able to put their leftwing politics aside for an evening to honor the athlete.

RELATED: This Family Lost Three People in Yesterday’s Tragic Helicopter Crash

“We are literally standing here heartbroken in the house that Kobe Bryant built,” Keys said to kick off the show. 

Unfortunately, Keys just couldn’t resist still using the awards show to take digs at Trump like the ignorant liberal elitist that she is.

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Rocket Strikes U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
Congressional Democrats Add Insult to Injury by Alienating Second Possible Impeachment Trial Swing Vote
DEVELOPING: More GOP Senators Could Defect in Impeachment Trial

The post Alicia Keys Demands That Trump Be Impeachment While Hosting Grammy Awards appeared first on The Political Insider.