For former President Donald Trump, the opening day of his second impeachment trial did not go as planned or to his liking.
Cocooned at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump watched as his defense attorneys responded to an emotional presentation by House impeachment managers with a series of dry, technical and at times meandering arguments about due process and the constitutionality of the proceedings. As they droned on, he grew increasingly frustrated with the sharp contrast between their muted response and the prosecution’s opening salvo, according to two people familiar with his thinking.
"President Trump was not happy with the performance of his legal team in action,” said one of the people familiar with his thinking.
It didn’t help that his lead attorney, former Pennsylvania prosecutor Bruce Castor, name-checked Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who just days ago slammed his state party for their “weird worship” of Trump. Castor also referred to Trump as the “former president,” conceding that he had in fact lost the 2020 election when he was removed by “smart” voters last November.
Trump, according to those familiar with his thinking, saw his legal team’s performance as a missed opportunity and also was annoyed by the public criticism of his attorneys. And he wasn’t the only one.
Some people close to the president’s defense team said they quit watching the proceedings out of sheer frustration with Castor’s presentation and were confused by his refusal to use graphics or a video––tools his TV-obsessed client had hoped to deploy.
At one point during Castor’s remarks, the right-wing network Newsmax––which Trump had been watching throughout the day, according to a person familiar with his viewing habits––cut away to a segment featuring the ex-president’s former impeachment attorney Alan Dershowitz.
“I have no idea what he is doing,” Dershowitz said of Castor, shaking his head dismissively. “The American people are entitled to an argument… but this, just, after all kinds of very strong presentations on the part of the House managers… it does not appear to me to be effective advocacy.”
Dershowitz’s assessment was later shared on Twitter by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.), a steadfast Trump ally who offered to resign from Congress last week to represent Trump himself.
“Explosive interview,” Gaetz said of the clip.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who met with GOP senators ahead of the trial to brief them on theories about its constitutionality, suggested Castor spent too much time focusing on extraneous arguments before arriving at the core of Trump’s defense.
“I am surprised by the exhaustion of so much time before addressing the concrete and compelling constitutional arguments,” Turley said in a text message. “They have a finite amount of time but you could not tell that this long opening.”
The decidedly frosty reaction from Trump and his allies mirrored the reviews that some GOP Senators offered upon leaving the chamber. And it raised a variety of questions: would the ex-president demand an adjustment of strategy? Was he regretting not appearing himself? And, most intriguing, what would his offerings be if he still had a Twitter account?
Trump’s own attorneys seemed to concede that their presentation wasn’t quite on par with the one offered by the House impeachment managers, who used their time on the floor to remind Senators of the harrowing scenes that took place on Capitol grounds with a dramatic video that juxtaposed Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 with his supporters violently breaking through security barriers and clashing with bloodied police officers.
“I'll be quite frank with you,” Castor said at one point, “we changed what we were going to do on account that we thought that the House managers' presentation was well-done. And I wanted you to know that we have responses to those things.”
According to initial plans for the trial, Trump attorney David Schoen was expected to begin arguments. But an aide to Trump said that, at the last minute, they decided to let Castor go first as part of a “very clear, deliberative strategy.”
“This is about lowering the temperature from the Democrats’ emotionally charged opening argument before dropping the hammer on the unconstitutional nature of this impeachment witch hunt,” the aide said.
Despite the rockiness of the presentation and the bad reviews for it, only one Republican Senator seemed swayed by the proceedings. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who initially voted that the trial was unconstitutional because it involved a former president, changed his mind on Tuesday, joining only five other Republicans to affirm the constitutionality of the impeachment trial. The Senate will move ahead with the trial on Wednesday afternoon.
PBS correspondent and MSNBC political contributor Yamiche Alcindor spoke out on Tuesday to defend the Democratic Party’s double standard when it comes to the impeachment effort against Donald Trump.
After it was reported that Trump’s legal team is planning to argue that Democrats incited riots with their speeches, Alcindor said that this argument is not valid because speeches by leftists like Maxine Waters and Kamala Harris did not result in deadly riots.
“I’m really watching to see how much this becomes a personal reliving of what happened on January 6,” Alcindor said. “You’re hearing from senior Democratic aides that they want this to feel like a violent crime trial. They want people to be brought into what happened at the Capitol.”
“So that’s why they’re saying this is going to be this new evidence. I suspect some of that will probably be possibly videos that we haven’t seen before, talking to aides on Capitol Hill, they’re really feeling as though they need to remind people exactly what happened.”
Related: PBS Reporter Yamiche Alcindor Slams Paralyzed GOP Candidate Madison Cawthorn After His RNC Speech
“The Trump team, as you reported, also is going to be bringing out this video, trying to say, ‘Hear what Democrats said. Here is why they are just like President Trump,'” she added. ”
“But I think the thing that’s going to be so obvious is going to be that there wasn’t a storming of the Capitol after Maxine Waters or Senator Harris — then-Senator Harris had fiery speeches,” Alcindor said. “So I think that’s all the things that we should be watching, how they juxtapose this at the scene of where this happened.”
Alcindor has long been an outspoken critic of former President Trump, and she went at it with him regularly at various points in his presidency. On Tuesday, she took to Twitter to celebrate the start of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.
“And we’re off, House impeachment managers and making the walk to the Senate chamber,” she wrote. “Trump Impeachment 2.0 is upon us.”
Related: PBS Reporter Tangles With Trump – Gets Backlash
And we’re off, House impeachment managers and making the walk to the Senate chamber.
Trump Impeachment 2.0 is upon us.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) February 9, 2021
This piece was written by James Samson on February 9, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
Read more at LifeZette:
Maxine Waters Confronted By MSNBC About Encouraging Violence Against Republicans
Bill Maher Claims Christianity Is To Blame For Capitol Riot
Liz Cheney Says There’s Major Criminal Probe Into Whether Trump Made ‘Premeditated Effort To Promote Violence’
The post PBS’ Yamiche Alcindor Defends Democrat Double Standard On Impeachment – ‘Wasn’t Storming Of The Capitol’ After Maxine Waters’ Speech appeared first on The Political Insider.
A Texas Sheriff claimed on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that the Biden administration is releasing illegal immigrants into the interior of the U.S. without any COVID testing.
Sheriff A.J. Louderback of Jackson County made his comments to Tucker after the host asked him whether or not illegal immigrants who are released into the United States after being detained were getting tested.
The Sheriff replied in the affirmative:
“It’s absolutely true. It’s even, if I can continue, Tucker, the memo, the memo that I received this last week, it’s essentially a defund the ICE by memo, by a memorandum that was sent out by David Borkowski on Jan. 20 or 21. So this is a particularly devastating document for Texans and Americans here in the United States.
The memo Sheriff Louderback referred to in his reply was sent out by then Acting Homeland Security Secretary David Pekoske on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2021.
Can’t fly into USA w/o showing negative test for virus but Pres Biden will let ppl who illegally walked across the border do so w/o testing. Is that protecting our citizens?
— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 9, 2021
RELATED: Governor Greg Abbott Wants Texas To Be A Second Amendment Sanctuary State
Sheriff Louderback, in his interview with Carlson, did not hold back.
He said that the memo, put out to CBP (Customs and Border Patrol), ICE, and USCIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) essentially ties the hands of these immigration enforcement agencies.
The Sheriff stated that, “This is a particularly devastating document for Texans and Americans here in the United States. When I read it and looked at it, it’s a message to the world that you can come here illegally, you can commit crimes here against Americans, and remain illegally.”
At a time where the U.S. and the rest of the world are still in the grips of a global pandemic, the Sheriff was particularly bothered, as should all Americans be, by the very vital issue of COVID testing being overlooked.
“The COVID issue [is being] during that time. So I struggle for a thought process, like many Americans and Texans, on how an administration can conduct themselves in this manner,” stated Sheriff Louderback.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been many news articles about illegal immigrants who have been afraid to get tested for COVID for fear of being identified and deported.
'Catch and release' will be a magnet for more illegal immigration—the last thing we need during a pandemic. https://t.co/7fE9WTGlaq
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) February 5, 2021
RELATED: Biden Administration In ‘Active Conversation’ To Require COVID Test Before Domestic Flights
Sheriff Louderback also said that this was not the first time that America had gone the way of lax enforcement of immigration law. “We walked this path from 2008 to 2016,” he said.
The Sheriff stated that the policy was very similar to the Priority Enforcement Program in 2014 and 2015 during the Obama administration.
In his interview, Sheriff Louderback painted a very grim view of the safety of Americans, at least for the next four years.
“Every peace officer in the United States should be extremely concerned about the attitude, the lawlessness, the complete abject removal of law.
We have a full nullification of the law going on here. We’re going to allow our ICE officers, USCIS, all affected by this memo, which guts the INA and handcuffs them so that they’re unable to respond. So in law enforcement here, those of us that don’t have the jurisdiction to enforce the federal laws here, we’ve created a situation that is unthinkable for the public.”
During the first 3 months of FY21, border patrol encounters w/ illegal migrants have increased 178% compared to the same time last year.
More than 2 dozen #RSC members wrote President Biden to warn of a brewing crisis of illegal immigration at our southern border. pic.twitter.com/y7ID3pPPTR
— RSC (@RepublicanStudy) February 9, 2021
RELATED: Constitutional Professor: Why Senate Cannot Bar Trump From Being President Again
New Biden administration policies include guidelines for Homeland Security that will mean fewer arrests and deportations for drug crimes, DUI’s, and low-level assaulters, fraudsters, and thieves.
Sheriff Chuck Jenkins of Frederick County Maryland says that traditionally in the deportation process, criminal histories are considered.
With fewer arrests for these kinds of crimes, those who may have committed crimes will be free to walk the streets.
Those coming into the country through the southern border are not just from Mexico and Central America.
Recently, eleven Iranian citizens were apprehended in Arizona, and there is evidence of Chinese drug lords assisting Mexican drug cartels in smuggling fentanyl and other substances across the border.
The new policies are a strong departure from the policies of the Trump adminstration.
To see the entire interview with Tucker Carlson and Sheriff A.J. Louderback, see below.
The post Texas Sheriff Claims Biden Admin Releasing Illegal Immigrants Into U.S. Without COVID Testing appeared first on The Political Insider.
