Category: Impeachment

Rand Paul continues his efforts to get the Ukraine whistleblower killed

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Sen. Rand Paul has not been getting enough attention during this impeachment process, so he executed his predictable and promised stunt on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, submitting a question to Chief Justice John Roberts during the Q&A session that presumably contained the name of the whistleblower. Roberts refused to read the question, so Paul left the floor to have an "impromptu" press conference (and probably hit the send button on a fundraising email).

CNN's Manu Raju reports, "At press conference, Paul says: 'I can tell you my question made no reference to any whistleblower.' Then Paul reads aloud his question which names a Schiff's staff member and names the individual who has been reported as possible whistleblower—and asks about their contacts." This was an apparent effort to get the press to publish the name, since he seems intent on getting the whistleblower killed.

It likely won't work. One reporter asked, "With all due respect, shouldn't you be at the impeachment hearing right now?" Of course he should have been, and the sergeant-at-arms should be putting him in the Senate jail right now. He should also be disqualified from sitting as a juror in this impeachment trial and have his vote taken away—if either Roberts or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to save this trial from being a total farce.

Senate impeachment Q&A continues. Republicans lay the groundwork for cover-up: Live coverage #1

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Thursday is the second day of questions from senators to the House impeachment managers and Donald Trump’s defense lawyers. Questions are submitted in writing to be read by Chief Justice John Roberts, with questions alternating between Republican and Democratic senators and answers generally limited to five minutes.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:33:37 PM +00:00 · Barbara Morrill

Ongoing coverage can be found here.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:33:59 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Durbin responds to claims by Sekulow that Democratic senators tried to extract political favors from Ukraine. 

“The Senators’ letter was written in response to a New York Times report that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General was considering not cooperating with the Mueller Probe out of concern that President Trump would cut off aid as punishment. The Senators’ letter in no way calls for the conditioning of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine.”

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:15:28 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Senator Murray asks the House managers a question inviting further discussion of the Trump legal team’s claims that House subpoenas were “invalid.”

Zoe Lofgren goes through the House rules, showing that the House had already adopted rules that included giving several committees the authority to issue subpoenas. The Trump legal team has been making claims that the rules don’t include the authority of impeachment, Lofgren shows that the rules authorize the House committee to issue subpoenas for “any” of it’s duties, details the way in which the rules have changed since the time of Nixon so that the House no longer requires a specific vote to authorize each committee, and generally slices, dices, and makes julienne fries of the Trump arguments.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:21:22 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Baldwin sents a note to the House managers asking them to answer the question Trump’s team wouldn’t answer from Mitt Romney—that is, when was the hold put in place. A very nice question.

Note that it’s not that the Trump team can’t answer the question. It’s that they won’t answer it.

Jason Crow rises to explain that John Bolton is one of those who may have an answer. Crow lists several other incidents in which U.S. officials were contacted by Ukrainians concerned about the hold in advance of the date it became public.

Crow then takes time to smack around the argument that Trump’s team made that Trump intentionally kept the hold “private” out of some concern that didn’t apply to any other hold.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:24:44 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

A collection of Republican Senators make a pointless bow toward the “impeachment undoes elections” arguments and gives Jay Sekulow a chance to get up and rant about taking the vote away in  2020 (and I can say that before he does, because I know he will).

But even answering this question without spiraling out into WTF-land. is really too much to ask of Sekulow. 

Sekulow is so Michael Cohen 2.0 that Michael Cohen should collect royalties. And send this poor guy some plaid pants.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:28:47 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Adam Schiff gets the chance to talk about the “descent into constitutional madness” by talking about the claims that Dershowitz made on Wednesday evening absolving a president of any limits at all on quid pro quo.

Schiff calls it the kind of argument a lawyer only makes when they’ve been caught “dead to rights.” Draws a straight line from Dershowitz’s claims right back to Nixon’s “if the president does it, it’s not illegal.”

Schiff: “We may be in a worse place, because this time that argument may succeed. … That means we’re not back to where we were. It means were are worse off than we were. That’s the normalization of lawlessness.”

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:32:27 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Cramer and Young give the Trump team a tonguebath … sorry, I mean they hand them a question that’s simply an invitation to dress Donald Trump up in a star-spangled suit and pretend that he’s the paragon of virtue, defending the justice system against those meanies in the House.

Early coffee break!

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:35:22 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Made it back with a fresh cup and a double-handful of animal crackers in time to hear Philbin talking about “fast and furious.” Because of course he was.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:37:45 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

House managers get a request for another round of explanations on the rules that allowed them to issue subpoenas before the general House vote. And they’re asked for a list of subpoenas that went out after 660.

Apparently the senator asking this question wasn’t listening literally ten minutes ago, when Zoe Lofgren went through these rules, including going line by line through the rules.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:41:43 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Schiff is showing that each House committee had authority — and that the subpoenas issued were squarely in the oversight capacity of Congress even before the inquiry became official. 

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:49:00 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Oh, wonderful. We’re already up with a combined Cruz and Hawley and Graham. Stand by for smear …

Question accuses Demings of refusing to answer a question about Hunter Biden, that brings in half a conversation from USA Today.

Expect the Trump team to put on their mud suit and roll in this one. Oh, look. It’s Pam Bondi! Recovered from her arduous single answer on Wednesday to talk about fishing in Norway. And then Bondi lies about Shokin, about Biden. 

Seriously hoping that the House management team uses their opportunity to ask why Pam Bondi was on the board of a foreign company where she “didn’t know the language.” Please. Please. Please.

Demings steps up again, Starts off by talking about “if we’re serious about why we are here ...” somewhere off camera, Cruz has just moved on to the next person who will help him slip up another smear of the Bidens. 

Cruz is getting an early start today. Expect this same question to be asked, along with paragraph length excerpts from any article that he things sounds bad for Biden, at least a dozen times.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:55:27 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Rosen to House managers asks about the precedent set by Trump’s actions. Jason Crow takes the answer (sorry, did you know he’s a veteran?) Anyway, Crow moves on to talking about alliances … (did you know he’s a veteran?) … back to talking about the importance of alliances.

Sorry, I’m a bit fritzed out by Crow’s repeated mention of his military service. Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it. It’s just that inserting a personal story into any of these five minute windows is almost certain to weaken the response and certainly takes up time that can be used on the the topic at hand.

Then Crow runs a series of clips showing all the times Trump has directly appealed for foreign interference in the election. Which is a sequence we should have available … will look for it.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 6:58:35 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

A heap’o Republicans give Trump’s team a chance to repeat the blandest aspects of the abuse of power case and quote the statements from Republican witness Jonathan Turley that they like. 

This is another of those questions from Republicans who wanted to show that they were present, but not risk asking anything that had the slightest chance of generating new information.

Dear Team Trump, Isn’t he great? Isn’t his toilet the goldest? Please talk for the next five minutes and don’t say anything anyone will ever quote. Thank you.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:00:45 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Ahh. Here you go.

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Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:06:35 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

The House managers get a question from Wyden giving them a chance to comment on how Team Trump absolutely refused to say that soliciting information from a foreign government for political advantage is a bad thing.

Hakeem Jeffries talks about the message that Trump, and Trump’s team, are putting out to autocrats, and governments of all kinds, about seeking information from foreign governments for political purposes. Jeffries is describing the idea of investigating opponents as wrong, in a room where more than half of those present are not just actively supporting such an investigation, but helping to smear a candidate on the Senate floor.

That’s a tough job.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:10:58 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Hawley back again already, this time with Mike Lee. And this is actually an interesting one, because what Hawley asks the Trump team is flat out a defense of bribery, by offering Trump’s team a chance to talk about how it’s just dandy to “exchange official acts.”

Trump’s team doesn’t lean into it at first, but continues to pretend that Trump didn’t do anything wrong … Only, hypothetically, says Philbin, of course Trump could condition aid on something “legitimate to look into” like “these specific areas of corruption.”

Truthfully, the response was less interesting than the question, because the question from Hawley and Lee showed just how much they have bought into the idea that Trump can use the power of his office for his benefit without facing scrutiny.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:15:00 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Val Demings gets a chance to talk about the scale of the “loop” and just how many people were aware of the Ukraine scheme. Rather than concentrating on Bolton, she focuses on a series of — and this term should be familiar to Republicans — missing emails; in particular the emails that State Department officials mentioned in texts and testimony, but which the White House refused to produce.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:20:20 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Thune, Crap, et. al. give Trump’s team another chance to hit Nancy Pelosi on the “bipartisan impeachment” front. And Sekulow stands up to claim “that should end it.” Everyone go home.

Sekulow is already back at “removing Trump from the ballot” and the horrible, terrible results of removing Trump. Which “the American people wouldn’t tolerate it.” Now Sekulow is against Trump-splaining how the House gets to do impeachments. And now “all of the ballots need to be torn up” and blergh.

Let me say … please, people. Can you be so out of questions that we’ve already had this Sekulow rant twice in the first hour?

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:26:06 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

A split question from Reed “can you explain who has paid for Rudy Giuliani’s legal fees, international travel, and expenses in his capacity as Mr. Trump’s attorney?” Popcorn time!

Schiff: “The short answer is, I don’t know.” Schiff suggests that if “other clients” are paying, it raises profound questions. Schiff extends Dershowitz’s quid pro quo argument to China, declares again that he doesn’t know who is paying Rudy’s tab.

Sekulow gets up and begins … ranting about Joe Biden. Is he going to be giving any answer on Rudy? Oh, no he is not. Now he’s ranting about a letter supporting the Mueller investigation. 

Sekulow believes that if he talks loud enough, people will forget the question.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 · 7:29:15 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

A bunch of dates, other dates, and some dates. All under the pretense that everything was just the same this year even though Trump placed a hold on military assistance.

Again, Republicans have zero interest in learning anything. This was a question that might as well have been “Can you confirm that money spent in September was also spent in September?”

Rand Paul is determined to show that he is more vile than anyone else in Congress

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts read more than 80 questions that had been submitted to him by lawmakers in the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump. That included questions that were long enough to include whole right-wing conspiracy theories and multiple questions that included the names of people who appear in no document in the whole investigation, but whom Republicans accuse of being involved in a conspiracy involving John Bolton and the whistleblower. 

But there was one question that Roberts refused to read—a question from Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who intentionally placed in his question the name that right-wing publications have insisted is that of the whistleblower. Roberts refused to read the question. And today Paul is going to do it again.

From the very beginning, the whistleblower made it clear that he or she was not a firsthand witness to events but had only been told about actions that were reasons for concern. Based on that information, the whistleblower raised those concerns with the intelligence community inspector general. Then, following the strict instructions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, the whistleblower contacted a specific staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, who instructed the whistleblower in the next appropriate step.

All of this is defined by law. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff has made it clear that he did not meet with the whistleblower. He has made it clear that he does not know the whistleblower’s name. He has also made it clear that his staff did not assist in preparing the whistleblower’s complaint or provide any research to the whistleblower, or offer any assistance whatsoever beyond the instructions that are required by the law—a law that has, in the past, been strongly supported by Republicans.

There is no evidence, none whatsoever, that Schiff or anyone on his staff did the slightest thing wrong in regard to the whistleblower.

There is no evidence, none whatsoever, that the whistleblower took any step that was not strictly legal, strictly moral, and strictly out of concern for the nation.

There is absolutely no doubt that what Rand Paul is doing is petty, vile, mean-spirited, and definitively evil, with no intent but to bring harm to an individual who acted entirely within the law.

On Thursday, Paul has already declared that he is going to do it again. And if what he accomplishes from this is the ruin of someone who was doing their best for the nation—or the ruin of someone who is not the whistleblower, since the name Paul is using came from no official source—he’s perfectly okay with that.

Now is the time for Chief Justice Roberts to rise to the defense of his country

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Assuming that there are three Republican senators who care enough about their country and the rule of law to want witnesses and documents in Donald Trump's impeachment trial (not a given by any means) Chief Justice John Roberts could be put in a difficult position. He would have to break the a 50-50 tie either voting for a sham trial or a real one. Or, do what the conventional wisdom expects and choose not to decide and let entropy win. At a stalemate, the side asking for witnesses would lose.

Thus far, Roberts has been more of a spectator than an umpire, to use his infamous analogy during his confirmation hearing of what his role on the Supreme Court would be—"calling balls and strikes." He's watched while Republican senators made the presentation by House managers a farce, napping through the discussion, playing with toys, standing in the back of the room chatting, reading unrelated books, or just flat out leaving the room for long stretches. That is against the rules of impeachment trials, rules he's there to enforce. That has not impressed the experts. So far, Roberts has been "less of a force than some people expected or hoped for," Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor and impeachment expert told the Washington Post. Few watching this have high hopes that he'll rise to the challenge.

No matter how we get there, the end goal is the same: John Bolton must testify.

The only peep out of him on the proceedings was a "both sides" scolding of Rep. Jerry Nadler spurred on, of course, by Sen. Susan Collins' note tattling on him. He's done something helpful in rebuffing Sen. Rand Paul's efforts to out the person who blew the whistle on Trump's Ukraine extortion. That was done behind the scenes, even before the question and answer period began Wednesday.

So, with his chance to actually do the job, call the balls and strikes, the big question is whether he'll step up to save the institution of the Senate from itself, try to save the republic from Trump, or even try to save his own legacy. One Democrat, Sen. Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, is going to attempt to force the issue by offering a motion putting pressure on Roberts to decide. Republicans will almost certainly defeat it, but that doesn't mean Roberts couldn't be the hero all of his own accord.

What should senators ask in the last eight hours of the impeachment Q&A?

Posted on by Mark Sumner

A republic, if you can keep it. A republic, if you can keep it. A republic, if you can keep It. A republic … until Friday.

Republicans in the Senate are set to vote not just that Donald Trump can get away with extorting a foreign government into interfering in the 2020 election, but that such an act isn’t even worthy of their time. They have, sniff, important things to do. As a demonstration of their disdain for democracy, while Republicans prepare to press the plunger on our old friend the Fascism Watch, they’re indulging themselves by burning up the final Q&A session of democracy by asking questions that aren’t questions at all, but just a head start on smearing political opponents.

So with eight hours left before Republicans provide a definitive “No, you can’t” to Benjamin Franklin’s much-quoted remark, this seems like a good time to ponder: What are the right questions to ask, here at the end of all things?

On Wednesday, the eight hours of questions in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump were more than a little agonizing. Democrats—both senators and the House impeachment managers—stayed in there and kept up the pretense that all of this still means something. Exhausted as they all must be at this point, Adam Schiff was still swinging for the fences on every response, and the other members of the team—Jason Crow, Val Demings, Sylvia Garcia, Hakeem Jeffries, Zoe Lofgren, and Jerry Nadler—continued on amazingly undaunted.

Meanwhile, across the aisle, Republicans were engaged in a snickerfest, with Ted Cruz and company stopping just short of handing John Roberts a question to read on the legal position of I.C. Wiener. In fact, considering that Rand Paul authored one note that Roberts refused to read, it could have been worse.

But if Cruz’s parade of “Is Joe Biden just evil, or is he also the evil master of the evil whistleblower?” questions are what America doesn’t need as the ship of state circles the whirlpool, what are the right questions? What notes should senators be dropping in Roberts’ hands that could still embarrass the unembarrassable, shine a light in the smoggy darkness, and maybe snatch at least a hint of victory back from the jaws of corruption?

What question would you ask, if you had the opportunity? If you were in the Senate chamber today and could pass just one note up to John Roberts, knowing that a vote to end democracy is 24 hours away, what would you want him to say? Could you save the nation ... or at least give the people drowning it one last middle finger as we’re going down?

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Senate Republicans: Screw what voters want. It’s impeachment cover-up time

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Senate Republicans have come back to where they started: they’re going to stage an impeachment cover-up, and they’re not going to half-ass it. With Donald Trump in full public bully mode and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell twisting arms behind the scenes, the number of Republicans willing to vote for a fair trial is expected to be less than the necessary four—and even the one or two Republicans who vote to hear from witnesses will do so with McConnell’s permission, knowing that they aren’t changing the outcome.

This recommitment to cover-up comes as poll after poll shows anywhere from 66% to 80% of Americans—including substantial percentages of Republicans—wanting witnesses in the impeachment trial. Republican senators do not care.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s take is that “For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate, and still the House would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office.” But we never expected Graham to stand up to the latest powerful figure he’s attached himself to in a bid for greater relevance.

”We don’t need Mr. Bolton to come in and to extend this show longer, along with any other witnesses people might want, and occupy all of our time here in the Senate for the next few weeks, maybe even months,” said Sen. John Cornyn. Heaven forbid the Senate waste its time on frivolous things like finding out how far the president went to undermine American democracy! 

Sen. Susan Collins may vote to hear witnesses, with McConnell’s permission, so she can keep duping news outlets like The New York Times into writing long-discredited nonsense like that “She is the rare member of her party who still seeks to appeal to a broad range of independent and even Democratic voters as well as Republicans.”

Senate Republicans have made it clear: They will acquit Trump even if they are somehow forced to acknowledge that he did what all the evidence shows he did, withholding military aid to Ukraine to pressure the nation to help him out in the 2020 elections by digging up dirt—or at least publicly announcing that there was dirt to be dug—on the Democratic opponent he saw as most threatening at that time. Senate Republicans don’t care what he did. They just want to stay in power, and they think Trump is their best bet for doing so. And even though voters have seen through their intent to cover up, they’re going through with it anyway, because apparently Republicans are convinced it’s better to have people know you’re covering something up than to have them knowing what lies under the covers.

Alan Dershowitz jumps in to attack the ridiculous theories of legal muttonhead Alan Dershowitz

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Alan Dershowitz may have kept his underwear on in the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump—though, thankfully, we do not know that one way or the other. What he didn’t keep was any pretense that his “constitutional scholarship” went beyond the ability to say “James Madison” while providing a defense of nothing less than overt fascism.

In a series of appearances, Dershowitz declared that there’s nothing wrong with a president using the federal government to launch investigations of opponents, nothing wrong with a president extorting political assistance from a foreign government, and in fact nothing at all forbidden to a president clinging to power. Nothing.

It was such an amazing statement that it generated immediate concern—from everyone except Republican senators who who will vote to endorse that theory on Friday. But now Dershowitz’s embrace of unbounded authoritarianism is under assault from a new source: Alan Dershowitz.

On Thursday morning, Dershowitz—clothing status unknown—tweeted that when he said a president could never be impeached for abuse of power, that a president was perfectly justified in using his office to persecute opponents, and that there were no limits on what a president could do to cling to power … people were taking it the wrong way.

“They characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his re-election was in the national interest, he can do anything,” complained the attorney of Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. “I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest.”

Well, it’s certainly a good thing that Mitch McConnell’s personally controlled camera was fixed on Dershowitz during his appearance so that these slanderous accounts can be cleared up.

What did Dershowitz really say? Well, there was the part where he discussed what a president could demand, from anyone, including foreign governments, in exchange for political help against opponents.

If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.

If that wasn’t clear enough, Dershowitz walked through scenarios to make it clear that, no matter how severe the action, there was nothing, nothing, nothing off the table. All it takes is anything that creates the slightest possibility of mixed motives … even if the “good” part of that mixture is unlimited hubris.

’I want to be elected. I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was. And if I’m not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly.’ That cannot be an impeachable offense.

And rather than suggesting that it was an issue for the president to use his power to solicit—or order—investigations into political opponents, Dershowitz made the case that, because Joe Biden is a candidate, Trump can put him under additional scrutiny.

The fact that he’s announced his candidacy is a very good reason for upping the interest in his son.

If the media is reporting that Dershowitz said a president can do anything to maintain their own power, and a president can use that power to persecute opponents, it’s because he did. No matter what Alan Dershowitz says.

And when the Senate votes on Friday, it’s exactly these theories that it’ll be voting on.

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