Category: Impeachment

Watch: Ted Cruz Rips ‘Nasty’ Reporter Who Suggested Jailing His Kids

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Ted Cruz eviscerated a reporter covering the impeachment trial for playing a “nasty game” after the latter suggested the senator’s children should be in jail.

The reporter clearly thought he was making a witty retort to Cruz’ insistence that Hunter Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden, may be involved in corruption with a Ukrainian gas company.

The journalist dismissed Hunter’s involvement with the company and his father’s quid pro quo in demanding a prosecutor investigating them be fired under the threat of withholding aid.

“Hunter Biden got a job,” they said. “His dad was Vice President. If that’s a crime, shouldn’t half of your children be in prison?”

Cue the sad trombone. We’re sure when he wrote it down, this hack thought he was delivering an epic rebuttal. Until you realize Cruz’s children are 9 and 11-years-old.

RELATED: Ted Cruz: Democrats Made ‘Very Serious Strategic Error,’ Hunter Biden Testimony Now Needed

Cruz Shreds Democrats

Republican senators have been threatening to haul Hunter in with a subpoena during the impeachment trial as a means to understand more about President Trump’s desire to investigate corruption in Ukraine.

“We’ve just seen two hours of evidence and at a minimum, it was not only reasonable and justified but the president, I think had an obligation to investigate corruption that potentially extended to the very highest levels of government,” Cruz told reporters.

Cruz shrugged off the latest alleged ‘bombshell‘ involving former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book and instead suggested it is Biden who is the more crucial witness.

“I get that the press loves to obsess over the latest bombshell,” Cruz responded. “Listen, I don’t know what John Bolton’s book says or doesn’t say. I’ve seen the New York Times coverage but at the end of the day, it doesn’t impact the legal issue before this Senate.”

“The legal issue before this Senate is whether a president has the authority to investigate corruption,” he continued. “So the House managers built their entire case on the proposition that investigating Burisma corruption, investigating the Bidens for corruption, was baseless and a sham. The proposition is absurd.”

Not as absurd as the media suggesting his children should be in jail if they had jobs. Which they don’t. Again, because they’re 9 and 11.

RELATED: Senator Hawley Preparing Motions to Subpoena Schiff, Bidens, Whistleblower in Impeachment Trial

Comparing Hunter to a 9-Year-Old

To his credit, Cruz keeps his cool when being confronted with such an asinine analogy that everybody surrounding him and the reporter bursts into laughter.

‘Shouldn’t half your children be in prison?’

The reporter actually had to write this down in his little journal or rehearse the question in his head and then actually said it out loud.

“My children are 9 and 11, I’m sorry you want to throw a 9-year-old in prison, but at this point, my third-grader plays basketball and softball at her school so stop playing the nasty Washington game,” Cruz shot back.

“It’s not a nasty Washington game,” came the reporter’s response.

“Attacking a 9-year-old?” Cruz scoffed, giving a slight wave of the hand and moving on to people more serious about their careers.

The post Watch: Ted Cruz Rips ‘Nasty’ Reporter Who Suggested Jailing His Kids appeared first on The Political Insider.

Bolton’s team denies leaking his book, contends White House made copies

Posted on by Lauren Floyd

President Donald Trump claimed to reporters Monday that he hadn't seen the manuscript from former national security adviser John Bolton’s new book, but Bolton’s team reportedly believes the White House was not only given the manuscript but made copies of it, according to NBC News. The book, which The New York Times obtained a copy of, alleges that Trump told Bolton military aid to Ukraine was being delayed until the country investigated Trump’s political adversary, which is now the central claim of the president’s impeachment trial.

NBC News correspondent Carol Lee reported Monday that one hard copy of Bolton's book was delivered to the White House in December for a national security review. "What happened to the copy of the book is unknown to Bolton's team, but it appears copies of it were made," NBC News said in its report. "Bolton's team submitted the book 'in good faith' and now feels that process was corrupted." 

In an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Lee said Bolton’s team is contending: “Essentially it's hard to get your head around the idea you have one copy of a book and everyone is passing it around, and then all of those people are going and talking to reporters about what they read in this one copy that they've all been sharing.” Lee added: “So it suggests that there are multiple copies floating around and from the Bolton team's perspective, they're saying we give them one copy. What they did with it, we don't know, but clearly it's gotten out there and it's not coming from us. They really want to distance themselves from the idea he is somehow behind leaking this.”

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

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Poppycock, pettifogging, and foul calumny: Trump’s team tries it all in Senate trial

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Monday saw Trump’s defense team roll out the big guns. Not Alan Dershowitz’s universally panned effort to apply legal-ish terminology to an argument that Fifth Avenue could fill up with bodies, and Donald Trump still wouldn’t be subject to impeachment. Not even the multiparty pile-up effort to use the Senate floor as a proxy for what Trump tried to extort from Ukraine, by delivering a prime-time smear of Joe Biden. No. The really big guns on Team Trump were reserved for denial, as Pat Cipollone, Jay Sekulow, and crew plunged madly on, ignoring the fact that their case was thoroughly sunk by weekend revelations.

Not that there was ever a case to begin with, since the evidence of Trump’s actions in Ukraine was overwhelming and public. It might be tempting to feel some pity for a legal team charged with defending Trump against the idea that he was trying to involve a foreign government in the 2020 election, when he has—more than once—appeared before cameras to request exactly that, and expanded the scope of his crimes by dragging China into the mix. If that weren’t bad enough, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney stepped in front of cameras to declare that, yep, it was true, every word of it, so … “Get over it.” Against that backdrop, pitiful is the best that can be achieved.

Still, Team Trump worked hard on Monday to make pitiful seem like a high-water mark they were not even interested in reaching. Across the day, they took a tripartite approach: denying Trump did anything wrong, smearing Joe Biden, and declaring that abuse of power is not impeachable in roughly equal—and equally bad—portions.

The day started out in denial territory, with the case continuing from the positions Trump’s core group of attorneys had held on Saturday. Resting on the certainty that Republicans would never ask for a fact witness to appear, Cipollone and company continued to tout the idea that the case meticulously assembled by the House managers was lacking the critical connections that would show Trump’s hands on the wheel. As it has from the time of the House hearings, this case boiled down to the fact that Trump had never stood on top of the Resolute Desk to deliver a Lex Luthor-style monologue, explaining every step of his actions complete with a diagram of connections. Short of this, said Trump’s team, there can’t really be a case. Also, Trump said, “No quid pro quo,” while explaining that someone would have to give him that to get this. So, all good.

But every word of that argument on Monday required that Trump’s attorneys ignore the elephantine Yosemite Sam in the room. With not only the revelation that John Bolton was willing to testify, but also his leaked manuscript providing a very good indication that any testimony would definitely not exonerate Trump, Republicans on both Trump’s legal team and the Senate floor—which is really the same thing—had to spend the morning operating with fingers firmly pressed in their ears. Meanwhile, Fox News began a concerted effort to explain that John Bolton was not really a Republican, had never been a Republican, and was really a deep-state operative in bed with (quick spin of the random Trump Enemy dial) … James Comey.

The middle chunk of Monday was devoted to using the Senate to achieve what Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump, and all Dmytro Firtash’s men, could not accomplish in Ukraine: a public smear of Joe Biden. The primary tactic for accomplishing this was simple enough: utterly flipping the facts on their ear. Over the course of the day, Trump’s team argued that Biden had pushed to eliminate a prosecutor who was investigating the company where his son worked. Which was and is 100% a lie. They built on that lie with the lie that Biden’s actions were somehow beneficial to his son. A good chunk of this was delivered by attorney Pam Bondi, whose chief talent lies in her ability to take a bribe. That was, unfortunately, not a talent that contributed much to her talk on Monday.

However, this part of the day seemed to be a hit with Republican senators, who couldn’t wait to get to a microphone during the next break to talk about how well they had smeared Joe Biden. That was particularly true of Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who gushed with joy as she pondered how a day of dragging his family through the mud might directly change the outcome of the looming primaries. Which … does Ernst remember why this trial was going on in the first place?

In any case, Ernst and others proved that Trump had wasted considerable time and effort overseas. After all, plain old American corruption could be had for the cost of a few dollars in campaign contributions and the treat of a Twitter beat-down. There was really no need to threaten Ukraine, what with that kind of talent in America’s heartland.

Finally, the day was capped off by Alan Dershowitz’s effort to explain that this wasn’t “no harm, no foul,” because there aren’t any fouls. With the nation’s constitutional scholars looking on, Dershowitz reminded listeners that he is a defense attorney to the nation’s most notorious, who rode to fame attached to the names Claus von Bülow, O. J. Simpson, and Brett Kavanaugh. His work as a professor of constitutional law consists of: He isn’t one, and his record before the Supreme Court is a perfect 0 for 0. So Dershowitz was clearly the perfect choice to engage in a long technical argument that boiled down to, the Founding Fathers didn’t know what the hell the Founding Fathers were talking about … but Dershowitz could read their minds.

Overall, the day was an embarrassment top to bottom. Much of it, particularly Dershowitz, wasn’t even the fun kind of embarrassment. It didn’t rise to the ranks of so-bad-it-was-good. It was just bad. It was so bad that—other than the GOP- and Trump-pleasing section of Biden-smearing—it’s difficult to recall a single salient point, just hours after they stopped talking. 

In any case, the real case on Monday wasn’t happening in front of Mitch McConnell’s carefully aimed camera. It was happening offscreen, where Republicans were trying desperately to calculate whether giving Trump the quick acquittal that he wants—a move that had seemed like a sure thing on Friday, despite a crackerjack case from the House managers—was still such a slam dunk. Republicans always knew that going along with Trump was going to make them part of the conspiracy. They just didn’t know it was going to be this damn obvious.

Tuesday in impeachment: Trump’s defense team closes out opening arguments

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team spent Monday strenuously ignoring the news that there is a firsthand witness willing to testify under subpoena that Trump linked military aid to Ukraine to the country helping him out with some election interference. Expect more of the same on Tuesday, when the defense’s opening arguments resume at 1 PM ET.

This is the final day of defense arguments, and in theory it could stretch into the early hours of Wednesday, since Trump’s lawyers haven’t even used half of their 24 hours. But it’s generally expected that they won’t use all their time. This makes sense: Since they’re not spending meaningful time on the facts or evidence, every hour of defense arguments is another hour of repetition of the same lies and conspiracy theories and spurious constitutional claims, with the occasional detour into “They’re tying themselves to Rudy Giuliani? Really?”

After opening arguments from both sides have ended—likely starting Wednesday—the senators will have a chance to submit written questions to be read by Chief Justice John Roberts. The question-and-answer period will last 16 hours.

The big question for the week is whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will then be able to rush an acquittal, or whether four or more Republican senators will decide that former national security adviser John Bolton’s eyewitness account of Trump’s Ukraine extortion is worth hearing—or at least that the political downside of such an extreme cover-up is too big to risk. But first we have to get through the rest of these mendacious opening arguments.

GOP Brings Out Three Big Guns in Senate Trial of Trump

Posted on by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 28, 2020

Monday was a banner day for the GOP in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump as three members of the Republican legal team, even by some liberal estimations, ran circles around the Democrat case for removal of the president.

Pam Bondi handled the myriad legitimate allegations against Joe and Hunter Biden. Eric Herschmann focused on the massive double standard being applied against Trump in this case.

Batting cleanup the famed Alan Dershowitz engaged in a historical tour de force and urged senators, some of them his former students, to rise above partisan concerns and do what is right for the country. Clinton impeachment figure Ken Starr also spoke for the defense, as did Patrick Philbin.

The low key Starr made a workmanlike appeal against a partisan impeachment, using his work in and knowledge of the Clinton drama to make his case.

RELATED: Bolton Manuscript Leaked, Romney and Collins May Vote Against the President

Then it was Bondi’s turn and the extremely telegenic former Florida Attorney General point by point laid out the corruption at the heart of the Burisma affair. She detailed how the cozy relationship between the then veep’s son and other scions of wealth and power enabled Hunter Biden to leverage his status into a position he was completely unqualified for with Burisma. By the end of her time at the podium she had eviscerated both Bidens.

This was bound to happen when the Democrats opened the door to this line of attack on Friday.

Bondi will be heard from again on the national scene.

She was followed by the powerful arguments of Eric Herschmann, who launched a devastating strike on the double standards involved in the Trump impeachment. He showed graphic evidence of past misdeeds by Democrat presidents, most notably the infamous Obama hot mike moment with Russian leader Medvedev, that rose to the level of impeachment. Yet Democrats never uttered a peep about those. Fancy that.

Herschmann made a point of using the Democrat’s own words against them and when he was done their obvious hypocrisy was laid bare.

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

Alan Dershowitz then made the day’s final detailed presentation. Dershowitz used his brilliant knowledge of history and impressive courtroom manner to nail down the historical precedent against impeachment.

Citing the vague nature of the charges against the president, he noted that the Founders had made the bar for impeachment high, lest the president, as in the British parliamentary model, serve at the will of the lower house and be subject to removal from office by a virtual vote of no confidence.

At the day wrapped up, many noted the last day of the GOP case on Tuesday looks to be the finale of a very good defense for the president.

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

Read more at LifeZette:
Rocket Strikes U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
More GOP Senators Could Defect in Impeachment Trial
Bolton Manuscript Leaked, Romney and Collins May Vote Against the President

The post GOP Brings Out Three Big Guns in Senate Trial of Trump appeared first on The Political Insider.

‘I am now proudly a registered Democrat standing with the Constitution,’: #ILeftTheGOP goes viral

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Can people change their minds? Of course they can. Will certain cults of personality lose their followers this coming election cycle? Some people have traveled too far down a very dark road and are unwilling to face up to their own fears and faults. But some people have started out one way and went another. My father was a conservative kid from a working-class Queens, New York, family who went from being a conservative who liked late-1950s Nixon into a bleeding heart liberal a few years later. For him, a young woman telling him his ideas were like those in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead made him rethink his values. People change, and for many people, watching the current Republican Party under Donald Trump debase the Constitution and walk back virtually everything they’ve said they stood for, is enough to get #ILeftTheGOP to begin trending on Twitter.

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There are a mixture of serious testimonials as well as some funny digs at the Grand Old Party.

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Many people who showed up at the Kos blog porch over 10 years ago to talk about their feelings and ideas might remember a similar story to this:

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And there are the more modern converts.

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For some it was coming for a long time.

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And these hearings, with such stark hypocrisy on the part of the Republican Party, will hopefully have more people making these moves.

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But, never forget, we do not choose when and where and to whom we are born. We all have to make our ways to the light in different ways.

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And there is a lot of pain involved in changing what might once have been a strongly held belief system.

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And just for some of us, showing our support.

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If you were once conservative, share your story below.

To GOP’s delight, Trump’s attorneys turn impeachment trial into a Biden disinformation campaign

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

When Trump's personal attorney Jay Sekulow opened the floor arguments Monday in defense of his client, he had a simple message: Just the House facts, man. "We deal with transcript evidence, we deal with publicly available information," Sekulow said. "We do not deal with speculation—allegations that are not based on evidenciary standards at all." Trump's legal team wouldn't be dabbling with anything outside of the case that was transmitted to the senate by the house. In other words, the John Bolton bombshell directly implicating Trump in an extortion scheme was entirely off the table. 

What Sekulow forgot to mention was that, when it came to conspiracy theories about Joe and Hunter Biden, Team Trump would let their imaginations run wild. In fact, Trump attorney and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi quoted a 2014 Washington Post article citing Hunter Biden's position on the Burisma board as “nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst.” Bondi claimed that the House managers referenced Biden or Burisma "over 400 times" as they made their case for impeachment, as if that alone was somehow an incriminating fact. In other words, Bondi quoted House Democrats who were quoting the disinformation injected into the ether by Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and then she charged that the sheer quantity of those mentions was somehow dispositive. In reality, what she latched on to was nothing but a feedback loop created by Trump and his henchmen.

Bondi also implicitly put Biden on trial, making the ridiculous claim that Democrats must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump's accusations about the Bidens were baseless. She added that Democrats, by noting all those accusations had been debunked, were just creating "a distraction."

Actually, no. Bondi was creating the distraction—dangling her keys as it were before the American public in order to direct its gaze on Biden rather than Trump, who's the person actually on trial. 

But Senate Republicans were just thrilled by all that key dangling. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst could barely contain herself as she was musing later about the effect all that disinformation might have on Biden's chances of winning Iowa.

"Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening. And I'm really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucus goers," Ernst said late Monday, beaming with the enthusiasm of a high school cheerleader. "Will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not sure about that."

Wow. Senate Republicans, supposedly weighing whether the nation's commander in chief tried to corrupt the 2020 elections with bogus investigations, are gleefully finishing the job Trump started. 

Wanna put the Senate back in the hands of people who actually put the country before their personal interests? Give $2 now to the effort to flip the Senate to Democratic control. 

Watch Ernst gush.

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