Category: Impeachment

Romney Says He’s ‘Very Likely’ to Join Democrats on Call For New Impeachment Witnesses

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Senator Mitt Romney has revealed he’d be in favor of new witnesses being called to testify in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

Romney’s decision comes just prior to controversy over anonymous sources relaying information on a book manuscript by former National Security Advisor John Bolton to the New York Times.

The Times indicates that the manuscript accuses President Trump of withholding military aid to Ukraine until Joe Biden and his son Hunter were properly investigated.

Romney, however, was wavering already and suggesting he’d side with Democrats before the Times published that report.

“I think it’s very likely I’ll be in favor of witnesses, but I haven’t made a decision finally yet and I won’t until the testimony is completed,” the former presidential candidate said on Saturday.

If Romney was in favor of teaming up with Democrats before the Bolton report, he’ll most assuredly be demanding witnesses now.

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Romney Wanted to Hear From Bolton From the Start

Senator Romney was suggesting he’d like to hear from Bolton weeks ago.

“I would like to hear from John Bolton and other witnesses, but at the same time I’m comfortable with the Clinton impeachment model when we have opening arguments first and then we have a vote on whether to have witnesses,” he said.

Democrats would need four Republicans in total to side with them on calling new impeachment witnesses.

Other key individuals that Democrats hope to see defect had listened to the impeachment managers opening arguments and were outraged at the suggestion that if the Senate fails to bend to the whim of their House colleagues they’d be engaged in a “cover-up.”

“I took it as offensive,” Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said last week. “As one who is listening attentively and working hard to get to a fair process, I was offended.”

Are her offended sensibilities going to outweigh the obvious media collusion with the Bolton revelations?

Aside from Romney and Murkowski, the resistance would also likely need Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Cory Gardner of Colorado to join their side. Collins and Murkowski have, like Romney, been vocal in the idea that they’d be open to new witnesses.

Romney and Political Pressure

Prior to the onset of the impeachment trial, Romney issued a statement explaining his mindset regarding witnesses.

“I have made clear to my colleagues and the public that the Senate should have the opportunity to decide on witnesses following the opening arguments,” he said.

“I will conclude by noting that this is not a situation anyone would wish upon our country,” he continued. “It is difficult, divisive, and further inflames partisan entrenchment. There is inevitable political pressure from all sides.”

The idea that Romney can be so easily swayed from day to day seems to suggest he easily crumbles under that political pressure.

Or is he really being swayed at all? Perhaps this has been the plan all along.

Back in October, Romney hinted that he’d vote to remove the President should impeachment pass in the House of Representatives.

Appearing in an interview with ‘Axios on HBO,’ Romney, according to the outlet, “made it clear that he’s open to voting to remove Trump.”

This is just a continuation of the Senator’s opportunism when it comes to swiping at Trump or praising him when it suits his own needs. Does he smell blood in the water?

The post Romney Says He’s ‘Very Likely’ to Join Democrats on Call For New Impeachment Witnesses appeared first on The Political Insider.

What did Moscow Mitch know about Bolton bombshell and when did he know it?

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Senate Republicans are reportedly feeling "blindsided" by the revelation from John Bolton's upcoming book that Donald Trump personally told the former national security adviser that he was withholding aid to Ukraine until he got his investigations into Democrats and the Bidens. They want to know who in the White House knew about this and why it was withheld from them, they say. They should be looking closer to home, at their majority leader, Mitch McConnell, if indeed this news came as a total shock to them.

Bolton's lawyer said he provided the manuscript of his book to the White House on Dec. 30. That's two weeks after McConnell promised Sean Hannity on Fox News, "Everything I do during this, I'm coordinating with White House Counsel. There will be no difference between the president's position and our position as to how to handle this." Just a few days after that interview, McConnell told reporters, "I'm not an impartial juror. This is a political process. There's not anything judicial about it. […] I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I'm not impartial about this at all." He also said that it was the House's "duty to investigate" and not the Senate's, and that "we certainly do not need 'jurors' to start brainstorming witness lists for the prosecution."

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

There is no way that McConnell didn't know what the White House was sitting on with the Bolton manuscript. There is no way that McConnell wasn't acting with the White House to keep this information from his Republican senators. If in fact he did keep it under wraps. If they're blindsided by anything, it's because they thought the White House had done a better job at shutting Bolton up.

This one on John Bolton was a big, stupid lie even by Trump standards

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump responded in the most Donald Trump way to news that former national security adviser John Bolton wrote that Donald Trump personally told him that military aid to Ukraine was held up until Ukraine investigated Trump’s political opponents: He lied. And Trump didn’t just lie about whether he held up the aid to get help in the 2020 elections. He lied about something that can easily, publicly be proven as a lie.

According to an early morning Trump rage-tweet, “The Democrat controlled House never even asked John Bolton to testify. It is up to them, not up to the Senate!” This is so ridiculously false it's embarrassing even by Trump’s standards.

The House Intelligence Committee scheduled a deposition with Bolton in early November, then waited to see if he’d show up. Bolton instead said he would go to court to get a ruling on whether the White House could block him from testifying. “We would welcome John Bolton’s deposition and he did not appear as he was requested today,” the Intelligence Committee said in a statement at the time. “His counsel has informed us that unlike three other dedicated public servants who worked for him on the NSC and have complied with lawful subpoenas, Mr. Bolton would take us to court if we subpoenaed him.” Instead, the committee marked Bolton’s refusal, under White House pressure, as another piece of Trump’s obstruction of Congress.

Trump needs the world to believe him over Bolton, to believe that he did not tell Bolton that the Ukraine aid was on hold for his own political benefit. But he can’t even tell the truth about the House having called Bolton to testify in the impeachment inquiry. That’s how much Donald Trump’s word is worth, and how much contempt he has for people who remember things that happened all the way back in November. John Bolton is warmongering scum, but there’s just no contest here.

Senate Republicans fear that if Bolton testifies, ‘the floodgates are open’

Posted on by Laura Clawson

In a reasonable world, the bombshell report that former national security adviser John Bolton wrote that Donald Trump tied military aid to Ukraine to investigations targeting his political opponents would have immediately prompted a stream of Republican senators to say that they were voting to have witnesses testify in Trump’s impeachment trial. Well, in a reasonable world, Republican senators would already have supported the testimony of witnesses—but we don’t live in either of those worlds, and we’re still waiting to hear if even four Republicans will do the right thing.

Even anonymous Republican sources for insider D.C. publications aren’t making any bold predictions about what’s going to happen next. Axios reports, “GOP sources say the revelation could be enough to sway the four Republican senators needed for witnesses.” Could be, not will definitely. Politico Playbook wrote that “our GOP sources said they could not predict what was going to happen now with witnesses, and the Republican Conference lunch today will be key in determining the state of play.” Again, no guarantees.

Trump’s defenders have insisted again and again that the many witnesses to his pressure campaign against Ukraine didn’t count because none of them had heard directly from him that nearly $400 million in military aid was held up specifically to demand investigations into Trump’s political opponents. That’s exactly what Bolton’s book reportedly does say: that Trump told him that was the reason for the hold-up. 

But the fact that Bolton could knock down that critical Trump defense is exactly one of the reasons Team Trump will fight having him testify. A Republican source told Axios that “there is a sense in the Senate that if one witness is allowed, the floodgates are open.” If Bolton testifies, who knows? It might be harder for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to block other witnesses and evidence: “If [Bolton] says stuff that implicates, say Mick [Mulvaney] or [Mike] Pompeo, then calls for them will intensify.”

In other words, Bolton’s revelation increases public and media pressure on Senate Republicans to vote to call witnesses at the impeachment trial. But, if anything, it increases pressure from Team Trump and Senate Republican leadership to block witnesses, because they know just how devastating this could be. 

Senate Republicans face a very simple question: continue to cover up, or do the rock-bottom minimum needed for a fair impeachment trial? 

Trump Defense Goes for Broke on Monday

Posted on by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 27, 2020

Saturday saw the Trump defense team embarrass the Democrat House managers. With a carefully devised message and personality calibration they laid out their case in a concise yet powerful manner.

But Jay Sekulow, the Trump attack dog, said Saturday was but a mere preview. That sets a serious expectation level. What’s the movie going to look like? Here are some possible PR and legal scenarios.

The kitchen sink- The Democrats want it? They get it. After bringing up Hunter Biden and his dad repeatedly on Friday the Democrats have left the door open for the GOP team to walk right through it. Is it a trap? Will they pull a Battle of Cowpens? Unlikely.

It very well could be an invitation from the hard left of the Democrat party to do their dirty work for them and implicate Biden just before the Iowa caucuses.

RELATED: CNN Admits Trump Legal Team Success, But Argues a Lack of Diversity

Just as there are those who say the Pelosi delay was an effort to help Biden by keeping Sanders and Warren out of Iowa close to the election. Either way, Team Trump has said they’re going for it and the possible consequences are devastating for the Democrat legal team.

It will not be too hard to prove that this impeachment effort is but a distraction operation to set aside notice from a myriad number of Democrat scandals, the Bidens among them.

There is no there, there- Pat Cipollone’s team has already shown us this in an entertaining trailer. The main feature looks quite popcorn worthy. The basic premise is, where’s the crime? A phone call? A missed meeting? As Mike Purpura said, “There can’t be a quid pro quo without a quo.”

They could expose the big lie behind the entire Democrat case, that this is a political operation and not a legal argument. It is an attempt to refight the 2016 election by way of impeachment and Senate trial.

It will likely have the same outcome as that election: Donald Trump is the president.

RELATED: Poll Gives Trump Best Economic Rating in Almost Twenty Years

Where is the victim? – If the Ukrainians say they felt no pressure and they didn’t even know about the defense aid delay during the time in question, just who exactly was victimized?

These and other gambits will be featured on Monday by Team Trump. It promises to be a good day for the president’s defense.

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

Read more at LifeZette:
Crucial Moderate Senators Are ‘Offended’ and ‘Stunned’ After Nadler Accuses Senators of ‘Cover-Up’
Congressional Democrats Add Insult to Injury by Alienating Second Possible Impeachment Trial Swing Vote
Rocket Strikes U.S. Embassy in Baghdad

The post Trump Defense Goes for Broke on Monday appeared first on The Political Insider.

On the Sunday shows, Trump’s Senate bootlickers show how low they can go

Posted on by Hunter

Before this evening’s blockbuster John Bolton news, we’d already seen that the level to which Republicans will sink to defend Donald Trump on anything and, literally, everything has no bottom. There seems no cutoff point beyond which now thoroughly-corrupted lawmakers will abandon him; he could sacrifice Mitch McConnell's family to Satan on the steps of the Capitol and senators like Lankford and Cotton would applaud madly at his boldness and explain that this is indeed What Middle America Wanted.

Sen. Tom Cotton went pretty damn low on Face The Nation this morning when asked about Trump’s dismissal of soldiers being flown back to the United States for medical treatment after suffering TBIs, or traumatic brain injuries, in the Iranian strikes responding to Trump’s targeted assassination of a top Iranian military leader. Trump said “they had headaches,” and “but it is not very serious.”

That seemingly glib dismissal of brain injuries as “headaches” caused anger among numerous veteran’s groups, who have demanded Trump apologize. To Sen. Cotton, though, Trump is still-and-always in the right. “He’s not dismissing their injuries, he’s describing their injuries,” he told Face the Nation.

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The Veterans of Foreign Wars, for example, disagrees. “TBI is known to cause depression, memory loss, severe headaches, dizziness & fatigue—all injuries that come w/ both short- and long-term effects” said VFW National Commander William Schmitz in a statement.

Cotton had thoughts about impeachment as well. Asked about the release of a new recording in which Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman got a Trump instruction to “take her out” after the trio falsely claimed that anti-corruption U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was “badmouthing” him,  Cotton’s only take away from the extended recording was that “badmouthing” sounded like “a pretty sound reason to move an ambassador.” That Trump was getting that advice from Rudy Giuliani and two now-indicted foreign agents, he claimed, was not a problem. See the bar getting lower? Do you think a similar tape coming out featuring, say, any Democrat that Tom Cotton could name would be similarly uninteresting to Tom Cotton?

So there you go. That’s the kind of person the Republican base puts in the Senate these days.

As for Sen. James ‘Young Lindsey’ Lankford, he has been throwing himself in front of whatever cameras he can find to defend Trump, during the trial. He made forays onto multiple networks to hail Our Dear Glorious Tweeting Leader; it’s not clear what administration job he’s angling for, as Trump already has more shoe-shiners than the Trump family has shoes. On MSNBC he got slapped around for lying repeatedly to the viewing audience. On CNN he pivoted to defending Dear Leader’s tweet-grouse complaining that impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff “has not paid the price, yet,” for challenging Dear Leader. 

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If you need a measure of just how intensively the Lankfords of Republicanism are willing to grovel, this might be a good one: Well I don’t personally interpret Dear Leader’s latest remarks as an actual “death threat” against a sitting congressman, so everything remains fine. All Hail Twitterburp.

The standards of the presidency have fallen very far, in the last three years, and Sen. Lankford would like you to buckle in because, at least according to him, the new lower bound is openly calling for the death of his opponents. Is he there yet? No? Then all praise Dear Leader, who will be vindicated after we vote to conceal all remaining evidence. And if Dear Leader does cross that last line, Sen. James Lankford will defend him still.

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.