McConnell Tells Caucus They Lack the Votes to Block Impeachment Witnesses
Senator Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said he doesn't have the votes to block a resolution to allow witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial, according to multiple reports.
Category: Impeachment
GOP Trial Defense Team Wraps Up, Scores Big
By David Kamioner | January 28, 2020
Tuesday, the last day of the GOP case to the Senate in defense of President Trump, was marked by scholarly analysis and low key appeals to basic integrity by presidential attorneys Pat Cipollone, Patrick Philbin, and Jay Sekulow.
Philbin led off the day, after an intro by Cipollone, expounding on points made Monday by Alan Dershowitz. He specifically warned of the expansive nature and vague context of the “abuse of power” impeachment charge against the president, likening it to a Bill of Attainder.
That kind of bill, legislation targeting a single individual, was prohibited by the Founders in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
RELATED: Toomey Proposes One Witness Deal in Senate Trial
The podium was then taken by Jay Sekulow who, eschewing his usual tough manner, moderately emphasized that elections, not impeachments, are the proper way to change presidents in this nation.
He did castigate Democrat manager Jerry Nadler for referring to executive privilege as “other nonsense.” In warning of Nadler’s attitude and impeachment itself, Sekulow oddly channeled the robot from “Lost in Space” as he intoned “danger, danger, danger” more than once.
Will Robinson could not be reached for comment.
Pat Cipollone concluded the active defense case with a subtle, yet hard-hitting, strike against the Democrats by playing videos showcasing their own words from the Clinton impeachment against them.
Nadler, Lofgren, and even Chuck Schumer had to sit there mortified while their on-screen selves from over 20 years ago warned against partisan impeachment and the negative future effects of it on the nation and the presidency.
RELATED: GOP Brings Out Three Big Guns in Senate Trial of Trump
Schumer even predicted then that Democrats would want “payback” in the future and would unfairly target a GOP president.
Upon seeing that, Cipollone simply responded, “You were right.”
Pat Cipollone closed with a sincere appeal to the Senate, “It is time for this to end here and now.” His manner and tone were agreeable, even gentle, as he asked the 100 members of the U.S. Senate to look to the better angels of their natures and defend the Constitution by rejecting these articles of impeachment. His pitch seemed to be convincing and effective, as opposed to the bombast of the Democrat legal team.
The Senate reconvenes Wednesday at 1pm to begin two days of senatorial questions to opposing legal teams. Chief Justice Roberts asked that responses be brief.
Whether the legal teams will act as such remains to be seen.
This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
Read more at LifeZette:
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The post GOP Trial Defense Team Wraps Up, Scores Big appeared first on The Political Insider.
The numbers keep adding up against McConnell’s cover-up trial: 75% of voters want witnesses
Senate Republicans are skating on pretty darned thin political ice, and Moscow Mitch McConnell is whipping them into the danger area in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Here’s the latest from Quinnipiac which finds that 75% of voters want the Senate to hear witnesses. "There may be heated debate among lawmakers about whether witnesses should testify at the impeachment trial of President Trump, but it's a different story outside the Beltway. Three-quarters of American voters say witnesses should be allowed to testify, and that includes nearly half of Republican voters," said Quinnipiac University Poll Analyst Mary Snow in the polling memo.
That includes includes 49% of Republicans, 95% of Democrats, and 75% of independents. What’s more, 53% of voters say Trump is lying about his actions in Ukraine, compared to 40% who say he’s being truthful (the cult remains). For those “independent” senators like Susan Collins, here’s a number: 53% of independents say Trump is lying. Among all voters, 54% say he abused his power, 52% say he obstructed Congress, and 47% say he should be removed. Oh, and 57% say they are paying a lot of attention to the proceedings. That’s got to be shaking up some Senate Republican offices right now.
Trump’s legal team closed out his ‘defense’ by showing that it had no defense
On Tuesday, Donald Trump’s legal team stood before the Senate to give its closing argument … and discovered it didn’t have one. Instead, Pat Philbin spent half an hour adding some footnotes to Alan Dershowitz’s Monday night muddle. Pat Cipollone devoted 10 minutes to running some 20-year-old video of Democratic representatives complaining about Bill Clinton’s impeachment. And Jay Sekulow provided America with an hour of television too incoherent even for Alex Jones.
Sekulow’s final speech wasn’t so much an argument as it was the world’s angriest tone poem, a dissociative spew that drew from more conspiracy theories than four seasons of X-Files. And if it sometimes seemed that Sekulow was channeling the robot from Lost in Space, he was most definitely lost. But Sekulow did have a theme: Why won’t everyone stop picking on Donald Trump?
James Comey, Nellie Ohr, FISA warrant, Senate floor Foreign agent, Robert Mueller, Crossfire Hurricane Peter Strzok, phone text, CrowdStrike, what’s next? Whistleblower, Lisa Page, they don’t know in Ukraine Adam Schiff, Hamilton, “Danger” is back again, John Bolton, Manuscript, Inadmissible Trump’s shoes, FBI, investigate the sad guy Dossier, filed away, what else is there left to say?Well … quite a lot, actually. Sekulow’s speech wasn’t rambling or inarticulate so much as simply pointless. He touched on more conspiracy theories than can be composed by a whole alphabet of secret Twitter sources, but even when accepting such ideas as Joe Biden being corrupt, or Donald Trump being the downtrodden underdog, Sekulow failed to knit the threads together into something that looked more organized than dryer lint. If Adam Schiff gave a moving speech for the ages, and he did, Sekulow’s coda didn’t merit a moment.
Mostly, what Sekulow achieved in an hour was the same thing his compatriots managed in a much shorter period—a statement that he had nothing. That there was no defense of Trump’s actions. That there was no answer to the challenges posed by new evidence. And he demonstrated that Donald Trump selects lawyers by loyalty, not competence.
Not one of Trump’s attorneys could produce anything that looked like a closing argument. Because that first requires an argument.
WATCH LIVE: Trump’s impeachment trial — Jan. 29
U.S. senators will get the first opportunity to ask questions of President Donald Trump's attorneys and House managers on Wednesday. Watch live.
Rand Paul Slams Chuck Schumer, Says Trump Should Sue Him for Defamation
During an interview on Fox News Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul became incensed over Senator Chuck Schumer’s recent comments, advocating for President Donald Trump to sue the New York Democrat for defamation.
“You know, I’m offended and shocked that Schumer would be so scurrilous as to accuse the president and his children of making money illegally off of politics when the only people we know have made money off of this have been Hunter Biden and Joe Biden,” Paul said.
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Rand Paul: We Know Hunter Biden Has Made Millions
“So Hunter Biden makes a million dollars a year, that’s documented, but Schumer simply creates and makes up and says, ‘Oh, maybe the president’s kids are making money,’” Paul went on. “John Bolton is making money as we speak. He has probably already gotten the several million dollar advance for this book. He’s making money by testifying against the president.”
We Know John Bolton is Making Money
“The only people we know who have actually made money? Hunter Biden and now John Bolton,” Paul continued. “And they’re not objective–John Bolton is not objective in any way now that he’s cashing million dollar checks. To have Schumer come up and say out of the blue, ‘Maybe the president’s kids are making money,’ with no evidence at all, that’s defamation and they ought to sue him.”
Paul is correct that Sen. Schumer has suggested–with zero evidence–that President Trump’s family may have been making money abroad.
BOOM:@RandPaul drops the hammer on Chuck Schumer for his reckless defamation of the Trump family
It is a FACT that Hunter Biden profited off his dad's name
To suggest any of the president's children have done that while in office is a flat-out lie
Chuck should be ashamed. pic.twitter.com/j6OKdexZYF
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 28, 2020
Trump SHOULD Sue Schumer!
“There is nothing in the record about the president’s kids,” Paul said. “So Schumer has just created this whole thing out of whole cloth and said, ‘Oh, why don’t we go after the president’s kids?’ We don’t know yet whether or not the president’s dealings with the Chinese president have something to do with the Trumps making money.’ He just made it up! Completely made it up! That’s defamation of character and he ought to go to court and be sued for it.”
Rand Paul has been a staunch defender of President Trump throughout the impeachment process, even going so far as to threaten forcing a vote to have Hunter Biden and the CIA whistleblower testify.
Who knows? That could happen.
Donald Trump could even eventually sue Chuck Schumer, too.
The post Rand Paul Slams Chuck Schumer, Says Trump Should Sue Him for Defamation appeared first on The Political Insider.
Schiff speaks after Trump’s defense rests: ‘You simply can’t have a fair trial without witnesses’
Following what Rep. Adam Schiff described as the “rather abrupt end to the president’s case,” the House impeachment managers spoke to the press, with Schiff saying it was “clear that [Trump’s lawyers] are still reeling” from the revelation that former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his book that Donald Trump directly told him that military aid to Ukraine was being held up to pressure the country to investigate Trump’s political opponents.
Schiff offered a brutal assessment of the defense’s arguments and continued to press hard for the Senate to hold a fair trial, saying that Trump’s lawyers “really did not, cannot defend the president on the facts,” despite their presentation of a “list of grievances, which I’m sure the president was delighted to hear but nonetheless, not particularly relevant to the charges.”
“I don’t think frankly that we could have made as effective a case for John Bolton’s testimony as the president’s own lawyers,” Schiff said. “And part of the way they did that today was the bulk of Mr. Sekulow’s argument was this is merely a policy difference. That’s all this is—they’re seeking to impeach the president over a policy difference. As if, as Sekulow would have us believe, Donald Trump released the military aid because he was so grateful that the Ukrainian parliament passed a anti-corruption court bill, and he was just waiting for that the whole time. No one believes that. No one believes that.”
Schiff returned again and again to the need for a fair trial in the Senate. Asked if the House will subpoena Bolton if the Senate fails to call him as a witness, he refused to talk about a “back-up, fallback position” because “At the end of the day nothing is sufficient if the Senate doesn’t decide to have a fair trial, and you simply can’t have a fair trial without witnesses.”
New poll: 82% of voters say Bolton must testify in impeachment trial
Donald Trump's lawyers and Senate enablers are doing their damnedest to pretend that former national security adviser John Bolton is just some guy making stuff up in "An unpublished manuscript, that some reporters, maybe, have some idea what it said. If you want to call that evidence." They might want to rethink that considering new polling from Navigator research showing that a whopping 82% of registered voters think Bolton should testify at the impeachment hearing.
What's more, and this is something, that question was included in a poll in the field last week, before the report from Bolton's leaked manuscript which says flat-out that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine for his own political gain. From the toplines of the poll, respondents were asked "If John Bolton has firsthand knowledge of Donald Trump's actions relating to Ukraine and investigating Joe Biden, how important is it for John Bolton to testify in the Senate impeachment trial?" A total of 82% say yes—56% say it's very important and 26% say it's somewhat important to hear from him. That includes 70% of Republicans, with 33% saying it's very important and 37% somewhat important.
x[NEW POLL] 82% of Americans think that Ambassador John Bolton must testify in the Senate #ImpeachmentTrials.Senate Republicans: #BoltonMustTestify pic.twitter.com/1gtu6q5cKi
— Law Works (@LawWorksAction) January 28, 2020
Trump Lawyer Jay Sekulow Dismissed Bolton Allegations: ‘It’s Inadmissible’
President Trump's legal counsel Jay Sekulow dismissed the contents of John Bolton's upcoming book as irrelevant to the ongoing impeachment proceedings.
Impeachment trial opening arguments come to a close: Live coverage #2
The final day of opening arguments from Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team (which will be closing arguments, too, if they have their way) is expected to be relatively brief. Guess they’ll have to increase their lies-per-minute to make quota.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:56:04 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
That’s all folks. Cipollone’s closing speech was … there was no closing speech.
They’ll begin the question session on Wednesday for eight hours, alternating questions between Republicans and Democrats. Questions will be written and submitted to Roberts to be read.
Roberts indicates that he’s going to enforce a five minute rule on the response to each question.
That will wrap up the question period on Thursday. Unclear if the vote for possible witnesses would be held on that same evening.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:46:39 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
xTuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:49:10 PM +00:00 · Mark SumnerJay Sekulow is the Lionel Hutz of the impeachment trial. https://t.co/YPpD4dKYoX pic.twitter.com/aANnAolQYF
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) January 28, 2020
Pat Cipollone up for the final Trump note. Starts off by saying that he believes they’ve “already made their case” and ends by playing old clips of Nadler and Lofgren during the Clinton impeachment.
Arguments that were clearly so convincing that Republicans didn’t take the articles out of the House and send them to the Senate. Except … umm.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:50:39 PM +00:00 · HunterTrump defenders now going through past Democratic opposition to the Clinton impeachment, which was premised on lying about a sex act, to claim hypocrisy on Democrats now concerned about covering up the extortion of election help from a foreign power by illegally using the withholding of military aid as bargaining chip. To be fair Republican senators do seem to consider those two things equal.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:51:17 PM +00:00 · Mark SumnerThat seems to be all Cipollone is going to do. Show the old clips and repeat the claim that impeachment means “tearing up every ballot across this country.”
As he has at several points, Cipollone is arguing that impeachment itself is unconstitutional.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:52:02 PM +00:00 · Mark SumnerHonestly, that seems to be all he has. Meaning that the whole Republican closing argument is “we’ve given you a lot of evidence, so we don’t need to tell you about the evidence.”
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:52:44 PM +00:00 · HunterThis talking point of ‘overturning the last election’ is false. The election would not be overturned. Pence would be placed in charge (shudder) due to Trump’s removal. And yet they still bleat on about this. If Trump can’t abide by the laws of the country, it is he who has betrayed his voters, not the Senate.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:53:14 PM +00:00 · Mark SumnerCipollone keeps starting lines with “finally.” And then continuing. But he doesn’t really seem to have anything to say here.
And hey, after Sekulow, what is there to say?
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:54:04 PM +00:00 · HunterAnd Cipollone says the defense is done. McConnell now laying out how questioning both sides will proceed tomorrow.
Tuesday, Jan 28, 2020 · 7:55:49 PM +00:00 · HunterRoberts suggests that answers during the question and answer period be limited to 5 minutes or less. For 16 hours.