Category: AdamSchiff

House impeachment managers: Bolton ‘directly contradicts the heart’ of Trump’s defense

Posted on by Hunter

The team of House managers presenting the case for impeachment in the Senate trial of Donald Trump have released their first statement responding to the news that John Bolton asserts Trump personally told him he was freezing congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine until Ukraine agreed to assist in investigations of Democrats and his potential challenger Joe Biden:

“Today’s explosive revelation that President Trump personally told former National Security Advisor John Bolton that he would continue the freeze on military aid to Ukraine until that country agreed to his political investigations confirms what we already know. There can be no doubt now that Mr. Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the President’s defense and therefore must be called as a witness at the impeachment trial of President Trump.

“Senators should insist that Mr. Bolton be called as a witness, and provide his notes and other relevant documents. The Senate trial must seek the full truth and Mr. Bolton has vital information to provide. There is no defensible reason to wait until his book is published, when the information he has to offer is critical to the most important decision Senators must now make—whether to convict the President of impeachable offenses.

“During our impeachment inquiry, the President blocked our request for Mr. Bolton’s testimony. Now we see why. The President knows how devastating his testimony would be, and, according to the report, the White House has had a draft of his manuscript for review. President Trump’s cover-up must come to an end.

“Americans know that a fair trial must include both the documents and witnesses blocked by the President—that starts with Mr. Bolton.”

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Nancy Pelosi also weighs in:

Amb. Bolton reportedly heard directly from Trump that aid for Ukraine was tied to political investigations.The refusal of the Senate to call for him, other relevant witnesses, and documents is now even more indefensible.The choice is clear: our Constitution, or a cover-up.

Second day of Trump impeachment trial ends with Adam Schiff delivering closing argument for the ages

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Thursday, House managers of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump shifted gears from the chronology of events as laid out on Wednesday to the corrupt intent behind Trump’s actions. The entire day was focused on just the issue of abuse of power and why it is an impeachable offense, and on evidence that Trump’s actions in Ukraine were taken with a deeply corrupt intent. Over the course of the day, that meant revisiting some of the same statements and clips from the hearings that were presented on Wednesday. But the tone of the day was quite different. More pedantic in places. More insistent in others. 

And then the whole thing ended with Adam Schiff giving a 10-minute closer that, in any other circumstance, should have brought on a standing ovation. It was a masterful demonstration not just of how to make a point, but of why Donald J. Trump really has to go.

The opening of the day was really left to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, who spoke of the basic idea of abuse of power and grounded the first article of Trump’s impeachment in historical thought. For Republicans who love to hear those quotes from founders, Nadler’s talk delivered. From The Federalist papers to English common law to the Constitution itself, Nadler reviewed the origins of both the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” and the way in which abuse of power had become defined as a crime that can only be committed by someone who is, obviously, in a position of power.

After that beginning, each of the House managers took a turn at methodically plowing through the history of past impeachments before switching to look at how Trump’s actions compared to those past cases. Schiff took part in carrying one of those segments at mid-morning, but, as the day wore on, it was Rep. Val Demings and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries who again emerged as stars of the management team. Both of them looked specifically at how Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine were taken not out of any concern over corruption or out of any national interest, but purely to benefit Trump personally.

Jeffries in particular did a knock-out job of destroying the argument that Republicans have used so often: the idea that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky felt “no pressure.” Reviewing the steps that began before U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was forced from her position and proceeding to the moment when Trump relented to release military assistance to Ukraine, Jeffries showed that Zelensky recognized that what Trump and Rudy Giuliani were trying to force on him was corrupt and wrong. Zelensky actually tried to resist that effort until Trump piled on the freshman president with a push that came from all directions, and with statements that made it obvious that giving in to Trump was the price of Ukraine’s security.

Over the course of the day, the Democratic team also took the time to pre-puncture some other parts of the Trump argument, with Schiff stepping in to detail the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory, and show that what Ukraine was being asked to support wasn’t some generic review of actions in 2016. Zelensky was being asked to support Russian propaganda, even as Russia was crushing Ukrainian troops at his eastern border. Overall, the day was another powerful, deeply convincing turn from the House team, which is expected to continue talking about abuse of power before moving to discussion of obstruction on Friday.

Then, at the end of the day, Schiff rose again for a brief conclusion. This wasn’t the closing argument for the team. It wasn’t the closing argument for this phase of the presentation. It wasn’t even the closing argument for the case on article one. This was just the closing argument for Thursday. 

But it was amazing. Devastating. A plea for the ages that should have brought the room to its feet, and created a spark of doubt in even the biggest Trump supporter. In less than 10 minutes, Schiff laid out not just why what Trump did was wrong, but why it is vital to the nation that Donald J Trump be removed from office. Immediately. And it started with a very simple question.

Schiff said, "Whether we can say it publicly, we all know what we're dealing with here with this president. Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies ... that makes him dangerous ... Why would anyone in their right mind believe Giuliani over Christopher Wray?" 

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Schiff continued, “If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. The framers could not protect us from ourselves if right and truth don’t matter. And you know what he did was not right. That’s what they do in the old country, where Colonel Vindman’s father came from, the old country that my great-grandfather came from, or the old country that my ancestors came from, or maybe where you came from.

“Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.”

The Senate chamber was silent as he left the podium. But that silence was ringing.

Today in impeachment: Obstruction of Congress to take center stage as House Democrats wrap up

Posted on by Laura Clawson

After a powerful closing Thursday night, Rep. Adam Schiff and the rest of the House impeachment managers return Friday for their final day of opening arguments in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The question remains whether any Republican senators are even listening amid all the fidget spinning and playing hooky.

Schiff, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, and Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Sylvia Garcia, Val Demings, and Jason Crow have another eight hours to make their case, but they aren’t required to use it all, and some have suggested they might wrap up early. In Thursday’s arguments, the Democrats prebutted key parts of the Trump defense and did exactly what Trump is always saying people should do: read the “transcript” of his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Friday they are expected to show how Trump obstructed Congress (and why that’s wrong, since Republicans seem fine with it).

On Saturday, Trump’s defense team begins to make its case, which evidence suggests will consist of a lot of lies, attacks on Schiff, and blatant pandering to Trump’s ego.

Friday’s arguments once again start at 1 PM ET.

‘With me, there’s no lying,’ Trump says as he lies and lies and lies and lies about impeachment

Posted on by Laura Clawson

“Now, with me, there's no lying,” Donald Trump said Wednesday about impeachment. You know what happened next, right? Yup, Trump unleashed a barrage of lies about impeachment. Trump made 14 false claims Wednesday spread out between the press conference in which he said “Now, with me, there's no lying” and interviews with CNBC and Fox Business.

CNN’s invaluable Daniel Dale has the tally: Trump repeatedly claimed, in different ways, that House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff misled Democrats about what Trump said in his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and that once the White House released the call summary, “all hell broke out with the Democrats, because they say, 'Wait a minute. This is much different than Shifty Schiff told us.’” In reality, Schiff’s comments on the call came after the White House released the summary, and the only way Democrats were taken aback by the contents of the call is that it was kind of unbelievable how blatantly Trump worked to extort Zelensky.

Trump also claimed that “I never see them talking about the transcription. I never see them talking about the call, because there's nothing to say.” This is false. He has been impeached as a direct result of the call, and it is still being discussed constantly. Sections of the call were read out on Wednesday as part of the impeachment trial.

Trump suggested that two whistleblowers “disappeared,” when really what happened was that one filed a complaint which kicked off an investigation that corroborated the complaint, and a second whistleblower spoke to the intelligence community’s inspector general but did not make a separate complaint. And, Trump said, “when [Democrats] saw this transcript, they said, ‘We got problems,’” which is, once again, false. Or rather, the problems “they” said “we got” are the problems you get with a corrupt president trying to rig an election.

Other Trump lies included basically anything you can think of about funding to Ukraine: he said “They got their money long before schedule,” which they did not on account of how he held it up illegally. He lied about the type of aid that former President Obama extended to Ukraine. He lied about how much funding Ukraine has gotten from Europe.

Donald Trump lies about everything, big and small, but when it’s about impeachment, it’s almost always big. Usually very big, with the biggest being the fundamental claim that the July 25 call that showed firsthand that he was trying to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political opponents is somehow exonerating. He did what Democrats say he did, and we have it in his own words, released on his authority. No matter how often he lies about it, he can’t change it.

Trump’s trial, day one: A master class from House Democrats, and empty seats from Senate Republicans

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On the first full day of the presentation to the Senate in the impeachment trial against Donald Trump, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and the House management team delivered the evidence against Trump in three different ways: in a two-hour opening statement; in a six-hour walk-through of the whole timeline of events; and in a ten-minute recap of the highlights. The entire team was effective, and the presentation was clear. Schiff’s opening account was genuinely compelling—sharp, precise, impactful, well-supported by short moments of testimony from the House hearings, and leaving absolutely no doubt as to Trump’s guilt.

So naturally, throughout the day, Republicans left their seats, wandered out into the hallways, and complained that they were “bored.” Though the rules of the trial require all senators to be present, double-digit numbers of Republicans were missing at any given time. At least one, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, found an opportunity to make an appearance with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson during the trial … without garnering as much as the shake of a finger from Chief Justice John Roberts. 

For anyone tuning in from outside the Senate, Schiff’s opening was a master class in getting across complex information. Despite the volume of material on events and individuals, Schiff moved from point to point with precision, delivering information in a speech that’s likely to appear in future textbooks. Even for those who had seen the facts presented in House hearings, he was simply compelling. For anyone watching—whether or not they knew the facts of the case coming in—it was spellbinding work: a scene straight out of the best courtroom dramas.

Following Schiff’s introduction of the facts, the House team worked through events in a timeline, starting with the smear campaign to unseat U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, and proceeding to the whistleblower, congressional investigations, and the eventual release of U.S. aid that had been allocated to Ukraine. Each presenter took a section of the timeline, mixing a recitation of facts with snatches of testimony. All of the presentations moved the story forward, but some presenters brought additional energy to their time in front of the camera, presenting the information in a personal and genuine way. In Rep. Val Demings’ case, her experience in law enforcement came through in her clear disdain for the criminal behavior of Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others maneuvering to game the system for personal gain.

Unlike the lengthy opening act on Tuesday, when amendments, efforts to obtain witnesses, and Republican actions to suppress those witnesses carried the hearing into the early hours of the morning, Schiff actually wrapped the presentation within 8 hours after it began, revisiting the high points of the day in a compressed replay. Whereas Schiff used his opening statement to deliver a thorough, sharp account of the events leading to Trump’s impeachment, in the final 10 minutes of the night he touched again on some of the most compelling moments of that story. That included the scheme against Yovanovitch and the sorry spectacle of officials standing back to allow Giuliani to threaten and harass a widely respected ambassador.

Across all the presentations, there was a theme: Trump wasn’t fighting corruption; he was the source of corruption. The actions that Trump took in an effort to secure an announcement that had personal benefits only for him came at the cost of the national security of the U.S. and Ukraine. It also came at enormous cost to the relationship between the two nations, and to the whole idea that the United States is on the side of justice and democracy.

And, of course, despite the fact that this was the first day of the presentation; despite the fact that many Republican senators claimed not to have watched a moment of the hearings in the House; despite the fact that Schiff and his team presented their information in a way that would have made a must-watch documentary—or a genuinely outstanding college course—there were those empty seats. Republicans complained that the information was just the same thing over and over, that they were bored, that they … were absent. Anyone wondering why Mitch McConnell locked down the camera locations and kicked out C-SPAN has their answer in those empty seats.

Chief Justice John Roberts opened his mouth long enough on Tuesday evening to caution visitors that this was the United States Senate, the “greatest deliberative body” on the planet. He should have told the senators. But then, it seemed Roberts had no concern about the Republicans violating the rules he was supposed to enforce.

Schiff shines bright light on Moscow Mitch’s dangerous negligence in protecting our elections

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Rep. Adam Schiff, in his role as impeachment manager, both distilled the import of this trial and put Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell under a harsh light, without ever mentioning McConnell's name. In his opening argument, as prepared and provided by email, Schiff says that the "House did not take this extraordinary step lightly. As we will discuss, impeachment exists for cases in which the conduct of the President rises far beyond mere policy disputes to be decided, otherwise and without urgency, at the ballot box."

But, he says "we are here today to consider a much more grave matter, and that is an attempt to use the powers of the presidency to cheat in an election. For precisely this reason, the President’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box—for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won. [emphasis added]"

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end his career as majority leader.

That's the case in a nutshell, that and the continuation of the thought, that "in obstructing the investigation into his own wrongdoing, the President has shown that he believes that he is above the law and scornful of constraint." Trump believes he's above the law and unconstrained because McConnell refuses to do his constitutional duty and provide a check. No where is that failure of McConnell more dire than in refusing to secure the ballot box, which Schiff is subtly underscoring in his statement.

The legislation to protect our elections from interference from Russia and other adversaries has been sitting in the graveyard of the Senate for months, with McConnell refusing to act on it because he says the government has done enough, and even congratulates the Trump administration for the actions it's taken. That presumably includes Trump publicly, on national TV,  inviting any foreign government who wants to interfere to come on in.

This is deadly serious business. McConnell and Senate Republicans might not be taking that seriously, but the nation is watching.

Chuck Schumer and House impeachment managers destroy Team Trump on first night of Senate trial

Posted on by Mark Sumner

All through Tuesday afternoon, and evening, and night, and the early hours of Wednesday, the Democratic team of House managers fought the good fight, seeking subpoenas of documents and witnesses as well as procedural changes that would close loopholes intentionally built into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s design for the Senate impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. And they lost every time. In fact, except for a single early morning vote from faux moderate Susan Collins, Republicans voted exactly as expected, giving Trump and McConnell a 53-47 party line victory on nine straight proposed amendments.

But if that made it seem that the day was a waste … it wasn’t. Yes, Republicans batted down attempts to get documents, call witnesses, and prevent the White House from flooding the zone with cherry-picked documents. However, with every amendment, House managers got the chance to lay out their case. They introduced the facets of Trump’s malfeasance step by step, pillar by pillar, with each member of the team stepping up to carry the load on a specific area. Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team was left sputtering and looping back over not just talking points, but also obvious lies. It might have been a losing effort—but it was still magnificent.

At first, it wasn’t clear exactly what was happening. After an introductory speech from both sides—during which Trump attorneys Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow burned up every talking point they had—Schumer introduced a proposal to seek documents from the White House. This provided for an hour on each side to debate the merits of the amendment. Except the Democratic team used that time for a detailed review of those documents that were being withheld by the White House and how key they were to the case ahead. Trump’s attorneys responded by repeating their talking points and throwing on more personal insults for the case managers.

This pattern then repeated for an incredible nine more amendments. After the second, it became clear just what was happening: Chuck Schumer structured the amendments not as simple requests, but as detailed explanations that mentioned specific exchanges, particular conversations, critical meetings, and other events that were known to have happened, but were missing from the evidence available to the House team. During the debate period for each amendment, different members of that House team rose to give an even more detailed defense of the need for those documents, with Zoe Lofgren, Val Demings, Hakeem Jeffries, and Jason Crow all doing spectacular jobs in dealing with requests from the White House, State Department, Office of Management and Budget, and Department of Defense.

After the OMB request, Schumer mixed things up a bit by requesting a personal subpoena of Mick Mulvaney. Again, this wasn’t just a “Give us Mulvaney” request, but a detailed summons that included a recitation of Mulvaney’s interactions with Trump, his role in blocking military assistance to Ukraine, and—wonderfully—his press conference confession, complete with the “Get over it” moment. The individual subpoenas continued, allowing Sylvia Garcia and Jerry Nadler to join in the fray. Those subpoenas bracketed additional requests for changes to the structure of the proceedings to eliminate wording that made it excessively easy for the White House to pretend to respond to a request by producing only documents that are favorable to Trump, and another section that gave Republicans multiple chances to kill future requests for witnesses.

By the sixth proposed amendment—at around 9:30 p.m.—a clearly dragging Mitch McConnell begged for mercy. He called for a quorum vote to force a delay, trying to negotiate Schumer into making all his remaining requests in a lump so Republicans could give them a single down vote and go home.

But Schumer had no inclination to make such a deal for a very, very good reason. Over the course of 10 amendments, the team of Democratic House managers introduced the case against Trump in loving detail. Without touching a minute of the 24 hours that the proposal allots to each team, the House managers made a 10-hour introduction to the case, spelling out the players and the crimes.

Through it all, both McConnell and the Trump team seemed utterly unprepared, while the Democrats had clearly practiced this maneuver for weeks. Despite McConnell’s vaunted reputation as a master of Senate secrets, he seemed utterly unable to deal with Schumer’s moves as the Democratic team slowly, methodically, and systematically bulldozed the Republican team. 

There were some highlights for Trump’s attorneys, but not in a good sense. While Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin stepped in to occasionally spell Sekulow and Cipollone, it was after 11 p.m. before Trump lawyer Pam Bondi was allowed to make a five-minute appearance in which she not only failed to even mention the topic at hand, but also sat down without even noting that her moment in the spotlight was done. The other top-notch moment came when Jay Sekulow apparently misheard Val Demings talking about “FOIA lawsuits” and spent his entire time period making an incoherent rant about “lawyer lawsuits,” and “how dare” Demings talk about “lawyer lawsuits”?

The Bolton subpoena was near the end of the proceedings, and when a still-wound-up-at-midnight Nadler rose to support that amendment, he jumped in with both feet, taking a much more aggressive tone than previous House managers. The usually much more pedantic House Judiciary Committee chair called Republican votes to suppress subpoenas “treacherous” and accused Republicans in the Senate of being part of the cover-up as they voted to shut out witnesses. Nadler’s sharply worded performance seemed to wake up Trump’s tired team, and both Cipollone and Sekulow jumped in to flat-out scream at Nadler in response—following which Chief Justice John Roberts saw fit to waggle a finger at both sides, cautioning them about the Senate’s rules against personal insults. Notably, Roberts had not been stirred to make such a comment despite hundreds of insults and lies from the Republican team earlier in the night.

In the end, the Republicans got everything they wanted. On paper. But the Democratic team didn’t put on a pointless show. It showed that it’s come loaded for a serious fight, and that neither McConnell nor Trump’s legal team is prepared. It’s almost as if the House managers spent that time that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave them planning strategy and tactics and practicing their approach to the material. Which suggests that, like Tuesday night, the rest of the week might not go quite as well for Team Trump as they’ve been expecting.

Schumer and the House team may not have won the votes, but they absolutely won the evening. By miles. And everyone on the other side of the aisle should be sweating.

Impeachment trial opening arguments kick off Wednesday after marathon Tuesday debate

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Opening arguments in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump begin at 1 PM ET on Wednesday, after a brutal nearly 13-hour day of procedural debate on Tuesday that ended at nearly 2 AM. Democrats offered a series of amendments to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s cover-up plan, seeking to be able to call witnesses or subpoena new evidence that the White House has obstructed, but Republicans voted down proposal after proposal, making clear again and again that they do not want the facts.

On Wednesday, the House impeachment managers will begin to make their case, for which they have 24 hours over three days. That means arguments could stretch past 9 PM, depending on how many breaks the Senate takes. The day will be especially exhausting for Chief Justice John Roberts, who presides over the trial and will also be hearing arguments at the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning.

The House managers—Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, and Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Jason Crow, and Sylvia Garcia—will lay out the case that Trump abused power and obstructed Congress. In fact, they already began to make that argument on Tuesday as they argued for why the Senate trial should include more witnesses and evidence, showing themselves to be far sharper and more prepared than Trump’s defense team, even before you consider that the facts are on the House managers’ side. Wednesday, they have the opportunity to put it all together uninterrupted.

Trump will spend most of the day in the air on his way back from Davos, Switzerland, where he conducted several typically lie-riddled interviews before leaving.