Category: impeachmenttrial

The second day of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial kicks off: Live coverage #1

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

The House impeachment managers kicked off day one of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial with a searing video of the Capitol attack, reminding senators of the stakes of the trial—and of the danger they had faced—at the beginning of an argument about the constitutionality of impeaching someone after he’s left office. Day two begins the actual arguments for convicting Trump, and it’s expected to bring more video evidence of what Trump incited and how he incited it.

The arguments will be presented by the nine House impeachment managers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin. They have 16 hours to make the case over two days before Trump’s alternately incompetent and scary defense has the same amount of time. You can watch on most television news channels or their websites, and Daily Kos will have live coverage.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 7:06:38 PM +00:00 · Barbara Morrill

Live coverage continues here.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:13:19 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Rep. Jamie Raskin opening with a series of the ways in which Trump summoned and incensed those who assaulted the Capitol.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:20:18 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:21:25 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Raskin’s recounting of Trump’s statements and actions on Jan. 6 is so disturbing all on its own, it shouldn’t even be necessary to see more. But obviously, it is.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:28:16 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The tweet that underlies a huge part of the case, which Raskin has been centering.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:30:53 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Rep. Joe Neguse takes up the story, repeats the sequence that the mob was “summoned, assembled, and incited” by Trump.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:33:29 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Rep. Neguse lays out the way in which House managers will lay out their case.

The Provocation:

  • The Big Lie: The election was stolen
  • “Stop the Steal”
  • “Fight like hell”

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:41:54 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Neguse: "He didn't just tell them to fight like hell. He told them where, how, and when."

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:51:10 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

If you were wondering if they would use the words of indicted insurrectionists—“Trump made us do it”—they are. 

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:55:27 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

“These defendants themselves told you exactly why they were here” pic.twitter.com/6HVsD8Kl0M

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) February 10, 2021

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 5:59:58 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Rep. Neguse finishes with a call out to the senators, telling them that his proudest moment in Congress was coming back that night “with you” to finish counting the electoral vote.

Rep. Joaquin Castro is taking over the narrative to explain in detail Trump’s incitement of his supporters.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 6:05:15 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Using months of Trump’s statements about the rigged election—going back as far as May—is good strategy on the House managers’ part. Showing Trump’s supporters saying months before that they will reject a Biden win caps it. They are going to make it every Republican senator rejecting their argument look as bad as Trump.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 6:09:40 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Rep. Castro doing a good job of explaining just how unusual Trump’s statements about a rigged election. These claims are unlike anyone “at any level of government.”

People have become so used to Trump’s lies, it’s hard to realize just how out of the ordinary they are.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 6:14:18 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Castro’s presentation includes footage from all the protests in the states starting in November, during the initial vote counting, all of it following Trump tweets and statements. There was ample evidence for what would happen on January 6.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 6:15:44 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Igor Bobic reports from the chamber: “Hawley is the only senator sitting alone in the gallery. He spent most of the presentation with his legs crossed reading paper from a manilla envelope. He did look up and watched as Neguse showed criminal complaints from the rioters charged by DOJ.”

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 6:16:55 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Rep. Eric Swalwell takes up the story of incitement, showing how Trump only increased his rhetoric over time.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 6:17:58 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

The evidence is damning, chilling, and overwhelming. Only cowardice and complicity stands in the way of conviction.

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) February 10, 2021

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 6:31:46 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

It’s smart to see Rep. Swalwell bringing up tweets in which Trump insulted Republican senators.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 · 6:41:46 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Swalwell points out that Trump spent $50 million on national "STOP THE STEAL!" ads that ran until January 5 -- the day before the insurrection pic.twitter.com/ZKVMaG22d4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 10, 2021

Catalyst in chief: Democrats’ ticktock video of Jan. 6 is a searing indictment of Trump

Posted on (Updated by Kerry Eleveld

Most Americans have seen any number of isolated snippets of video from Jan. 6, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol complex—rioters in one hall or another, lawmakers ducking for cover, Capitol Police trying to deter Trump's cultists, and the occasional first-hand video of one person's experience that day. 

But watching it all knit together in one chronological video documenting Trump's exhortations and the immediate responsiveness of his cultists is a different—and far more powerful—experience altogether. That's exactly what Democratic impeachment managers presented Tuesday to punctuate their opening arguments that Trump’s culpability is too undeniable and his transgressions too inexcusable by any objective measure to escape punishment.

"We will stop the steal," Trump tells his rallygoers in the opening frames of the video. "And after this, we're going to walk down—and I'll be there with you—we're going to walk down to the Capitol ..."

Cut to source video from the crowd, with multiple people yelling, "Yeah ... Let's take the Capitol!" Another Trumper in the crowd helpfully orients his peers to the Capitol, bellowing, "We are going to the Capitol, where our problems are—it's that direction." 

Text on the video notes that as "Trump continues his speech, a wave of supporters begins marching to the Capitol."

Action-reaction. Trump directs his cultists to the Capitol—they go to the Capitol. Trump tells them to "fight like hell," and they fight like hell. Trump says that when you catch somebody in a fraud, "you're allowed to go by very different rules," and they employ very different rules.

Then Trump sets up his vice president for a fall from grace among his devotees, concluding, "So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he needs to do."

As Trump very well knew, Vice President Mike Pence had already informed him that he didn't have the power to overturn the election results during certification.

On the floors of the House and the Senate, lawmakers are performing their constitutional duties as the Trump's rabid rioters breach the perimeter and soon after start roaming the halls looking for lawmakers. Pence is ushered off the floor of the Senate chamber, as is Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the House chamber. Lawmakers' speeches are abruptly ended as they are informed the mob is now inside the building and the ones who can be are evacuated. 

Action-reaction. Trump sends a tweet criticizing Pence for failing to overturn the election. Chants of "Treason! Treason!" erupt among rioters inside, while "Traitor Pence!" becomes a rallying cry outside the building.

Two hours after the Capitol insurrection began, Trump tweets a video of himself saying, "There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home at peace."

Back at the Capitol, angry rioters continue destroying the building, beating police officers, and destroying the equipment they confiscated from various journalists. 

In the end, the video notes, at least seven people lost their lives and more than 140 law enforcement officers suffered physical injuries, not to mention the mental trauma that remains with many others to this day. 

Four hours after the Capitol incursion began, Trump celebrated the lethal havoc that had just unfolded in the heart of our nation’s government. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long," Trump tweeted. "Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"

Watch it: 

YouTube Video

Everyone would prefer no witnesses at Trump’s second impeachment, but Trump is making it hard

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

Republicans are desperate to have no witness testimony at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. They’d much rather run on the pretense that the whole thing is unconstitutional for mumble mumble reasons, and power through the whole of the presentation from the House impeachment managers with hands clamped tightly over their ears. After all, as long as they can pretend to be voting on a technical issue about impeachment, it’s less obvious that they’re actually signing on as full participants in sedition.

On the other hand, Democrats in both the House and Senate seem content to also run the impeachment trial without witnesses. Part of that comes from a concern that if there is a trial stretching out for weeks, Republicans will be on television every day pounding the “the Senate is getting nothing done because of this trial” drum—and ignoring the fact that “getting nothing done” was the definition of almost every day that Mitch McConnell controlled the Senate. Democrats also feel like they already have a solid case against Trump without needing testimony. After all … what he’s accused of is an event that everyone in the nation saw unfold. Every member of the House and Senate was a witness.

But the one person who seems determined to force the House impeachment managers to call witnesses against Trump is … Trump. That’s because the direction he’s taking his legal defense practically screams with the need to bring in people who can explain the truth.

Over the last week, Trump’s legal team and the House impeachment managers have filed a series of letters and replies. In the latest of these, the House team walked through the response that Trump’s attorneys made to the original statement from the impeachment managers. 

The first three-fourths of that response lean heavily on the idea that trying Trump after his term in office has expired is not constitutional. It’s an argument that is based largely on quotes taken from work by Michigan State University Professor Brian Kalt, only every single instance has been taken out of context, or misquoted, to completely reverse the intention of Kalt’s readings. That alone may be enough to nudge House managers into calling a witness, because having Kalt appear to take apart the statements by Trump’s legal team has to be tempting—especially since this house of straw is the shelter where every Republican in the Senate is hiding from the big bad wolf of facts.

But there are actually two other parts of Trump’s defense that are even more tempting, both when it comes to calling witnesses and focusing the the case by the House.

First, Trump’s team has inserted into the response the claim that Trump felt “horrible” about the events on Jan. 6, and “immediately” took action to secure the Capitol. That’s pretty amazing, because the most “immediate” response that Trump seems to have taken was to focus the attack on Mike Pence. Ten minutes after the first insurgents smashed their way into the Capitol building, Trump tweeted this:

"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"

It was an hour and a half later that the announcement was made that National Guard forces were on their way to the Capitol. And that announcement cited approval by Pence. There was no mention of Trump. There were multiple phone calls and communications that afternoon between the Pentagon, local officials, police leadership, and Pence. Not one of these calls seems to have involved Trump.

As The Washington Post has reported, “Trump was initially pleased” by the assault on the Capitol and the resulting halt in the counting of electoral votes. According to Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, Trump was “walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building.” Witnesses said that Trump “belatedly and reluctantly” called for peace only after ignoring people both inside and outside the White House trying to get him to stop his supporters. Then, when Trump finally appeared before the public—following a demand that he do so by Joe Biden—Trump told the people smearing feces along the halls of Congress, “We love you, you’re very special.” 

The claims that Trump was immediately horrified and that he acted quickly to restore order are both clearly contradicted by events and statements on that day. In making these claims, Trump’s legal team makes it more likely that witnesses will be summoned to directly counter these false statements and show that Trump is still lying to the American people.

But there’s one last thing about Trump’s final response that may make it even more necessary to call witnesses, no matter what kind of strange threat Lindsey Graham makes. That’s because Trump has apparently made it clear to his attorneys that at no point can they admit he lost the election. Instead, as The Daily Beast reports, every mention of President Biden is only as “former Vice President Joe Biden” and at no time can the attorneys admit that Trump’s lies about voting machines, dead people voting, truckloads of ballots, sharpies affecting outcomes, or any of the other conspiracy theories raised over the course of months … are lies.

Trump is insisting on running a defense that doesn’t just make false claims about his actions on Jan. 6, but one that extends his incitement to violence right into the impeachment trial itself. And that needs to be made clear enough that no flimsy shelter of “we’re only here to talk about technical issues” can protect Republicans when they give the last scrap of their party to Trump.

Most Americans don’t just want Trump convicted, they want him banned from office entirely

Posted on (Updated by Kerry Eleveld

More Americans have concluded that Democrats were always right—Donald Trump is a menace who should be impeached and convicted. But perhaps more importantly, a solid majority wants Trump barred from ever holding office again, which garners even more support than a Senate conviction. Of course, a Senate conviction is a necessary precursor to a permanent ban on Trump, but people's views aren't always rational, and most Americans value the idea of keeping Trump as far away from power as possible.

But overall, support for Trump's impeachment and conviction are both up over this time last year, when GOP senators ultimately acquitted Trump of charges over his effort to extort Ukraine into manufacturing an investigation into his political rival, Joe Biden.

In an ABC News/Washington Post poll from January 2020, for instance, 47% wanted Trump removed from office while 49% opposed his removal. But in the latest ABC/Ipsos poll, 56% want Trump convicted and barred from holding office while just 43% oppose it. So Trump's removal went from being two points underwater to a +13 spread.

In an average of polls, FiveThirtyEight.com found 53% support for Trump being removed from office up through Jan. 20. Here's a brief rundown of the latest polls on conviction:

But on the question of making sure Trump never gets his stubby little fingers on the levers of government again, 55% in an average of 13 polls supported permanently barring Trump from office, according to FiveThirtyEight.

The Trump ban polls nearly five points above support for Senate conviction, which averages out at just over 50%. As mentioned above, the conviction must come before the Trump ban, but most Americans are very clear about their desire to permanently confine Trump to the dustbin of history, as they say.

Rules for second impeachment trial have been set, with House managers to begin their case on Weds.

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Monday evening, House impeachment managers, Senate leadership, and Donald Trump’s legal team reached agreement on the rules under which the impeachment trial will proceed. In many ways, the trial will look like the one that followed Trump’s first impeachment: Each side will have up to 16 hours over two days to present their case, there will be a period of debate in which senators can submit written questions to either side, then the Senate will vote on whether to hear from witnesses. That last vote will happen only if the House impeachment managers request witnesses, and at the moment it doesn’t appear this will be the case because the crimes Trump committed were done in front of the nation, and every senator and representative present bore witness to the results of those crimes.

The rules for the trial will be voted on in the Senate on Tuesday. Assuming everything goes as expected, House managers will begin presenting their case on Wednesday. But as the Senate heads into the second impeachment trial in a year, Trump is looking for more than an acquittal from Republicans. He’s looking for a vote that confirms the party is his, now and forever.

As The Washington Post reports, the stage is set for a trial over what are by far the most serious impeachment charges ever to be considered. Last year, Donald Trump was impeached for using his office in an attempt to extort the leader of a foreign government into interfering in a United States election. It appeared to be—and was—a clear case of violating the oath of office, exploiting the power of the presidency for personal gain, and threatening an allied nation to generate false claims against a political opponent.

In that Senate trial, Republicans signaled Trump that their support was absolute, and that they would not even consider the evidence against him. Bolstered by the knowledge that he was free to do as he pleased, Trump went on to spend the period before the election preparing his followers with this message: “The only way we can lose this election is if it’s rigged.” Trump delivered this statement not once but dozens of times at rallies, on Twitter, and before the media. When Trump did lose the election—by a wide margin—he doubled down on the idea that the election wasn’t valid, repeatedly attempted to overturn the results, and drove his followers with claims that ultimately generated the events on Jan. 6.

Now Trump is hoping to do it again. According to the Post, Trump’s lawyers will continue to argue that the Senate trial is somehow unconstitutional. To do so, they’ve leaned heavily on statements from Michigan State University Professor Brian Kalt, citing Kalt’s statements in both sets of replies they have provided to the House charges. However, as NPR reports, the statements aren’t just taken out of context. They’ve been turned inside out.

"The worst part is the three places where they said I said something when, in fact, I said the opposite," Kalt said in an interview with NPR.

Kalt’s argument is not that someone’s impeachment trial can’t go forward after they’re out of office, but that they can’t be impeached for actions taken while out of office. He also argues that impeachment is about more than just removal, though his work is cited by Trump’s attorneys as if he claims the reverse.

But it doesn’t matter that there’s not real support for the claim that Trump can’t be tried over crimes which he carried out in office, and for which he was impeached while still in office. What’s important is that Republicans intend to use this claim of “big constitutional issues” to simply ignore all evidence put forward against Trump. Just as with the 2020 trial, Republicans have already set up Trump’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card and are prepared to execute on that plan no matter what evidence the House managers provide.

The end result is that Donald Trump expects to emerge from this trial, as he did in 2020, with an even firmer control of the Republican Party. As Politico reports, the Republican Party has already “coalesced back behind” the “Teflon” Trump. Trump and his allies are confident that he will emerge from the trial as the only real power in the party, able to punish every Republican who doesn’t go along with his acquittal.

Trump’s not wrong. Criminals have long known that the best way to secure the loyalty of others is to involve them in a crime. It’s not just the people on the receiving end of knuckle-breaking goons who fall in line. Once you’re a goon, it’s very, very hard to ever be human again. 

In 2020, Senate Republicans went along with Trump’s crimes against an American ally and American elections. In 2021, they’re expected to sign on again, this time to the destruction of democracy and sedition.

And how do you come back from that?

Trump’s impeachment trial will also be an indictment of Republican lawmakers—and they know it

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

The Republican Party, which has now firmly staked its claim as a “big” tinfoil tent, is deploying some of the very same lawmakers who perpetrated a giant election fraud lie to assure the nation that impeaching Donald Trump is unwarranted, unfair, and unconstitutional.

“I mean, the House is impeaching him under the theory that his speech created a riot,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Face The Nation Sunday despite being directly involved himself with pushing the very lie that fueled the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. At one point, Graham even pressured Georgia officials to commit fraud themselves in order to overturn the election. 

But that's where the Senate GOP is: pushing out liars who lied to poke holes in the impeachment case assembled by House Democrats. Please proceed, senators, because the impeachment presentation Democrats are getting ready to make starting on Tuesday is going to be a doozy.

“The story of the president’s actions is both riveting and horrifying,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead prosecutor, told The New York Times. “We think that every American should be aware of what happened — that the reason he was impeached by the House and the reason he should be convicted and disqualified from holding future federal office is to make sure that such an attack on our democracy and Constitution never happens again.”

The Democrats' case will rely heavily on a video recreation of the violent siege, viscerally reminding both lawmakers and citizens alike of the trauma Trump inflicted on the nation that day. Since Democrats will need the votes of at least 17 GOP senators to convict Trump and only five have signaled a willingness to consider the arguments on their merits, winning a Senate conviction seems unlikely. But convicting Trump and his GOP enablers in the court of public opinion is clearly worth the energy—particularly as Republicans spend the next couple years whining about President Biden sidelining them in his effort address the country's urgent needs. Congressional Republicans spent four years helping Trump shred the U.S. Constitution in pursuit of stealing another election. Now they think they deserve to be equal players in a presidency they sought to nullify by overturning the will of the people. Democrats are going to remind The People that Trump engineered an attack on the homeland specifically to disenfranchise them and the Republican Party aided and abetted that effort.

Republicans' chief argument against convicting Trump is that it's unconstitutional since he's no longer in office. But remember—Sen. Mitch McConnell stalled the Senate trial until Trump was safely out of office. As luck would have it, Senate Republicans are now basing their key defense strategy on a loophole McConnell created.

But it's not only a phony loophole, it’s also a weak loophole at that. The notion that presidents can't be held to account for their conduct during the entirety of their tenure is ludicrous. As the House impeachment managers wrote in their brief, "There is no 'January Exception' to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution." 

Even conservative stalwart and constitutional law expert Charles Cooper is calling BS on the notion that a president can't be held accountable for their actions in office merely because they are no longer in office. Specifically because the Senate has the constitutional authority to bar people from holding office in the future, Cooper argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.”

So GOP efforts to discredit the impeachment trial come down to sending out a bunch of discredited Republican lawmakers to make a preposterous constitutional argument based on circumstances that they themselves manufactured.

Sounds totally reasonable, said nobody who was sane enough to vote for Biden in the first place. And just maybe a few people who voted for Trump but were repulsed by the lethal Jan. 6 riot—or who had hoped the Republican Party would redeem itself in a post-Trump era—will find the Republican posture equally as revolting. The Capitol siege already set in motion a wave of conservative voters who are fleeing the party. The sentiment fueling those defections is only likely to gain steam as Americans watch the impeachment trial and the GOP’s bogus defense of Trump and, by extension, themselves.

As Trump’s legal team respectfully resigns, his supporters join Dems in blaming him for Capitol riot

Posted on by Lauren Floyd

Former President Donald Trump is apparently having some trouble finding legal representation in his upcoming impeachment trial. All five lawyers, including former federal litigators and Trump’s anticipated lead attorneys Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, have quit less than two weeks before the trial is scheduled to begin the week of February 8, unnamed sources told CNN. Other attorneys with the good sense to distance themselves from Trump include South Carolina lawyers Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris and Josh Howard, a North Carolina attorney who worked on the Monica Lewinsky investigation during former President Bill Clinton's time in office, CNN reported.

"A person familiar with the situation called it a ‘mutual" decision,’ New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman tweeted Saturday. "Bowers has been noticeably muted for someone leading a Trump defense, choosing not to talk to most reporters. The person familiar with the situation said there was no chemistry between Bowers and Trump."

Bowers has been noticeably muted for someone leading a Trump defense, choosing not to talk to most reporters. The person familiar with the situation said there was no chemistry between Bowers and Trump.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 31, 2021

The legal team’s decision to leave reportedly boiled down to a disagreement about legal strategy in the case, with Trump wanting them to argue the clearly unwinnable case that he's a victim of mass election fraud. The reality TV star’s better case is that impeaching a former president is unconstitutional, but even that is a toss-up considering it’s not actually mentioned in the constitution, legal scholars told various news agencies. Trump’s team—and by team, I mean the few remaining people linked to his presidency who aren’t desperately trying to distance themselves from him—is clutching to the constitutionality argument.  

"The Democrats' efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country,” Trump’s former campaign adviser Jason Miller told CNN. “In fact, 45 Senators have already voted that it is unconstitutional. We have done much work, but have not made a final decision on our legal team, which will be made shortly."

Despite GOP sentiments these days that impeaching a former president is unconstitutional, Rep. Matt Gaetz argued the exact opposite point on Twitter Dec. 4, 2019, when Trump suggested former President Barack Obama should be impeached for his stance on healthcare. “You actually can impeach a former President, FWIW”, Gaetz tweeted.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said in a statement The Washington Post obtained that the Senate “lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president.” “The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office — not an inquest against private citizens,” Cotton said.

The Post’s fact-checking team, however, gave a less definitive analysis:

“Some argue it’s impossible to impeach former officials. Some say it’s possible — if Congress wants to ban them from holding federal office again. One scholar said a definitive answer would come only after a court battle on these issues.

For now, no court appears to have ruled on this question, the text of the Constitution doesn’t spell out the answer, and past practice in Congress is an inconclusive guide.” 

What’s more conclusive is just how much damage Trump did when he made repeated claims of widespread election fraud then challenged his supporters to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. “We will never give up. “We will never concede. It doesn't happen,” Trump said at the Save America rally before the riot at the Capitol. “You don't concede when there's theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about.” 

Ten House Republicans joined 222 Democrats in a vote to impeach Trump on January 13, and as it turns out, even supporters of the former president who are charged in connection to the Capitol riot are now arguing Trump made them do it, CNN reported. Jacob Anthony Chansley otherwise known as the “QAnon shaman” who appeared horned, shirtless, and draped in bearskin during the riot, said through an attorney that he was "duped" by Trump, according to CNN. Chansley was arrested earlier this month on federal charges of “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority” and violent entry, and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

"You become very self-interested very quickly when you've been charged by the Department of Justice," Elie Honig, a former federal litigator and CNN analyst, said on the news network. "Whatever political mission these people thought they were on while invading the Capitol, now that they might get locked up, they'll point the finger wherever they need to. Political goals now go out the window."

Vimeo Video

RELATED: The second impeachment of Donald Trump is underway, and this time, several Republicans are on board

RELATED: Traitor to democracy was just impeached. Again

RELATED: Federal prosecutors and former senior DOJ officials say video evidence is damning against Trump

McConnell’s vote against allowing impeachment trial shows once again how he’s manipulating the media

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Senate Republicans once again showed the limits of their willingness to hold Donald Trump accountable for his actions. Those limits include the occasional disapproving statement, but emphatically do not include following through when he’s impeached. Just five Republicans voted to even allow the impeachment trial to go forward when Sen. Rand Paul tried to block it on the grounds that Trump is already out of office.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had used leaks that he might vote for conviction to con the traditional media into portraying him as a fair broker, was not one of those five Republican votes. Sen. Rob Portman, who likes to be seen as a reasonable guy who’d consider bipartisan action and who doesn’t have to worry about a primary because he’s retiring, was not one of those five Republican votes.

Nope, the only Republicans who were even open to hearing the evidence on Donald Trump inciting an insurrection that physically threatened all of them were Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and Pat Toomey. Murkowski and Romney probably meant it, Collins and Sasse knew that the time had come when they had to do something do justify continuing coverage of their supposed distaste for Trumpism, and Toomey is retiring.

Here’s the really perfect, chef’s kiss part of McConnell voting against a retroactive impeachment trial: Two weeks ago, when he was still majority leader and Trump was still in office, McConnell refused to reconvene the Senate for a trial. But at the same time, he leaked that he might maybe vote to convict, getting the Very Serious Reasonable Person headlines he was seeking. Now McConnell turns around and votes against holding a retroactive trial that is only retroactive because of him.

I’d say, “Do they not think we’re going to notice what they’re doing?” Except that McConnell has the measure of the traditional media, most of which will absolutely allow itself to get played in this way. To really oomph up the level of “Are you kidding me?” involved here, Republicans decided to hear from their go-to constitutional law scholar, Jonathan Turley, about how retroactive trials are no good … even though in 1999 he strongly endorsed retroactive trials. 

The next level of Republican procedural objection will be because Chief Justice John Roberts isn't presiding over the trial, which was 100% his decision and apparently didn’t come with any indication that he is opting out because he considers the trial illegitimate. But Sen. Patrick Leahy, the most senior Democrat in the chamber, will be presiding, which Republicans will use to suggest it’s a partisan event even though Leahy is scrupulously fair, frequently to a self-owning extent.

It remains possible that evidence of Trump’s incitement of insurrection will emerge that’s so strong that not even most Republicans can ignore it. But in the absence of that, consider the wagons fully circled around Trump, and don’t be surprised by it.

Senate Republicans—minus Romney—tie themselves to Trump’s legacy with impeachment acquittal

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Senate Republicans turned the impeachment trial of Donald Trump into a cover-up, and what they weren’t able to cover up, they—with one notable exception—have now dismissed as meaningless. The Senate voted 52 to 48 to acquit Donald Trump on abuse of power, with every Republican but Sen. Mitt Romney voting to acquit, and 53 to 47 to acquit on obstruction of Congress, with Romney joining the rest of the Republicans. Romney earlier announced his decision in an emotional speech that was a challenge and a rebuke to those of his Republican colleagues who voted to acquit despite having voted to hear witnesses or despite having said that Donald Trump did something wrong and the House managers proved it.

Trying to cheat in an election? These Republicans are fine with it, as long as it benefits Republicans. Withholding aid to another country for your own personal benefit? Again, fine by Republican senators, if you’re on their team. This vote will inextricably link the legacy of these Republican senators with Trump’s own legacy. They will go down in history as people who embraced abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Highlights from the first two weeks of the Republican Party’s sham impeachment trial

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Two weeks of history came to something of a head on Friday. The Senate Impeachment trial, while a coverup orchestrated by the Republican Party, is also a historic attempt by American patriots to begin the process of fixing a corrupted executive branch before irreparable damage is done. Lead House Manager Adam Schiff began by explaining the seriousness of the charges against Donald Trump.

x

And then a quick reminder of how Sen. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican party has hamstrung this essential Democratic process,

x

House Manager Jerrold Nadler from New York spoke on the Senate floor on Thursday, and brought some receipts. First the fact that the evidence is overwhelming.

x

And then a relentless barrage of video showing that the conservatives arguing on Trump’s behalf, with names like Alan Dershowitz and Lindsey Graham, arguing the absolute opposite just a few years ago. 

x

One of the most glaring realities of the “perfect” phone call, and subsequent statements about Trump’s personal interest in getting an investigation started into the Bidens is the fact that he didn’t care if there were actual investigations into corruption … just the perception of investigations.

x

Schiff came back and delivered what many called an “historic” 30-minute closing argument to end day two of the Senate Impeachment trial. The final eight minutes included a powerfully stark reminder of what is at stake.

x x YouTube Video

On Friday, House Manager Hakeem Jeffries once again reminded the world that this is not a partisan process—at least it is not supposed to be one.

x

On Saturday, the Republican Party—who has made this a thoroughly partisan procedure—had their chance to begin the defense of Donald Trump. As all the president’s men began their disinformation campaign to muddy the waters with conspiracy theories, news began circulating of an almost 90-minute long audio tape purportedly secretly recorded by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas. Highlights included Trump angrily saying he wanted people to “get rid of” then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Besides the myriad questions this should bring to anyone’s mind didn’t seem to faze Republican lawmakers: 1) Does Donald Trump not realize he has the right, as president, to replace her, and if he does 2) What was he suggesting be done with Yovanovitch, and 3) What kind of crap national security is being run if any dubious character can record the president secretly for almost 90 minutes? 

On Sunday, news came out that former Ambassador John Bolton’s new memoir would feature smoking gun statements of Trump’s guilt in the Ukraine affair. Calls for witness testimony were reinvigorated. It would seem that allowing for such testimony as Bolton’s would be a fait accompli but, with the republic under fire from inside, there is nothing we can take for granted.

x

This, of course, was followed by the deafening silence of Republican officials, and vitriol on Twitter from the the chief executive of our country. On Monday, all the president’s men went back to their posts to defend the indefensible. This might have to do with their fear of their fearful leader. Who is more cowardly, the coward or the cowards afraid of him? And while they went to work, trying to figure out what to do about the John Bolton-sized elephant in the room, the Trump defense spewed lie after lie after lie.

x

Oops. Sorry, that’s a different Republican Senator clearly from an alternate reality.

x

x

x

It is hard to sum up how outrageous the Trump-defense presentation on Monday was.

x

A considerable amount of Monday’s “defense” was dedicated to figuring out ways to use old-fashioned phraseology that could be succinctly grabbed for headlines. Words like “poppycock” provided the deepest defense Trump’s team had to offer. The day ended with a promise of one thing, though.

x

To place you in time, Monday also included Iowa Sen. Jodi Ernst embarrassing herself in remarkable fashion.

x

By Tuesday it became more and more clear that the leaked John Bolton manuscript was becoming too hard to control and witnesses would likely need to be called in to testify. However, the plan for Republican leadership at this point was how best to hide testimony from the public, so that the rightwing propaganda machine could more easily lie about the framing and characterization of said testimonies. The summary of Trump’s defense by the end of Tuesday was best summarized by Steve Vladeck.

x

By the end of Tuesday, Republican Majority Leader McConnell had brought fellow GOP senators into his lair for a closed-door session, to discuss whether or not they had the votes to stop witnesses from actually being called during this “trial.” Reports from numerous media outlets contradicted one another, with the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reporting that McConnell did not have the votes secured to stop something resembling a real impeachment trial from breaking out, while Politico and The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman saying he did. 

By Wednesday morning, it seemed that the Republican Party was exactly where they’ve always been—inside of Donald Trump’s pocket. The White House, after telling everybody that John Bolton’s memoir meant nothing, decided to threaten legal action against Bolton and his publisher. Republican leadership sent out the new day’s talking points which consisted of admitting that Donald Trump did indeed hold up money in order to force Ukraine to publicly “investigate” a political rival, but … so what? “#WeWantWitnesses” went viral as protestors descended upon our nation’s capital.

x

And then the questions began:

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz thought they were able to put together a real stumper, using the old Obama whataboutism.

x

Trump attorney Dershowitz took the fragments of what was left of his career and integrity and flushed them down the drain of history, by arguing that a president couldn’t be impeached for crimes, because his belief in himself as being awesome made it not a crime. The law scholar he repeatedly cited during this extraordinary argument went on television and also wrote an op-ed in The New York Times to say that Alan Dershowitz was as full of shit as you suspected him to be.

Meanwhile, news broke that Chief Justice Roberts had denied Republicans from outing the “whistleblower,” in the most cowardly fashion available to them: by getting Chief Justice Roberts to read their name as one of the submitted questions. Chief coward amongst them, Sen. Rand Paul.

Lead Manager Schiff  presented the Joseph Heller-level Catch-22 breaking news story of Trump’s Department of Justice, arguing in federal court—resisting subpoenas—that a president can’t be impeached by the House if they cannot be in court to fight for subpoenas … because they are in the Senate making their case for impeachment. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

x

And sadly, none of us have made any of this up. It’s just the lazy writing of corruption and cowardice and incompetence. Americans rolled out of their beds on Friday to news that Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, and Cory Gardner—all possible swing votes—were all in agreement that there was no such thing as crime. Just as Donald Trump’s new favorite lawyer Alan Dershowitz instructed. The rest of the day was filled with the bad, illogical theater one has come to expect from this Republican Party. Sen. Murkowski voted against new witnesses and new evidence, even with Bolton revelation after Bolton revelation getting leaked to the public. Her statement on the matter should truly disabuse anyone of the belief that Lisa Murkowski is anything but a corrupt tool of a politician, with zero ethical convictions whatsoever.

x

#RIPAmerica began trending on Twitter.

x

And the cowards we have come to know under Donald Trump continued to fly their bright yellow colors.

x

The Republican Party made their decision clear. Our democracy means far less to them than the promise of short-term power. As Friday wore down, we were left with murmurs of amendments and promises of votes to come.

x

In the end, this was the takeaway for next week, when the United States Senate, led by the Republican Party, decide to set the precedent that a president can be corrupt as long as he—and they are definitely talking about a man—thinks it is in his best interests to be corrupt.

x

But before the very end of Friday, Republican Senators all stepped up to write the first line of their obituaries, voting to nix witnesses and to block five amendments Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put up.

Commiserate below in the comments. If you feel up to it.