Hawley Calls on Bolton to Publish ‘Relevant’ Sections of Book
Senator Josh Hawley called on John Bolton to publish the sections of his book that are relevant to President Trump's ongoing impeachment trial.
Category: Republicans
Senate Republicans: Screw what voters want. It’s impeachment cover-up time
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.
‘The Daily Show’ Sends Truck to Washington D.C. to Play Video Of Trump Blasting Senators
By PopZette Staff | January 29, 2020
There was a time when “The Daily Show” was a humorous program that would offer funny takes on news stories of the day. Unfortunately, however, those days are long gone, as “The Daily Show” has devolved into just another bitterly leftwing television program that is hellbent on destroying President Donald Trump.
“The Daily Show” showed it’s anti-Trump bias once again this week by hiring a black truck with a large TV screen on it’s side to drive around Washington D.C. playing videos of the president insulting U.S. senators as they prepare to decide his fate in his impeachment trial. The video of Trump’s insults plays on a never-ending loop, with host Trevor Noah sometimes jumping in to address the senators personally.
“As a juror, the most important thing is to remain impartial,” he can be seen saying. “The following remarks by the defendant should not be considered when rendering your verdict.”
Please make sure every U.S. senator sees this important jury duty orientation video. #ImpeachmentTrial pic.twitter.com/YSl8rvczPO
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 22, 2020
Given the fact that the Senate is controlled by Republicans, there is virtually no chance that they will vote to impeach Trump, so this is an enormous waste of time and money. That doesn’t matter at all to the liberals behind “The Daily Show,” however, as they are relishing the opportunity to get in their immature digs at Trump.
“It’s just funny and ironic to see that [Trump’s] fate now rests in these senators’ hands, after he spent all this time insulting them and calling them names,” Ramin Hedayti, a supervising producer at “The Daily Show,” told The Washingtonian.
It was Hedayti who came up with this ridiculous idea during the first few days of the impeachment trial.
“Once the [impeachment] trial started, we just got all the clips of Trump dunking on all his prospective jurors,” Hedayati explained. “We realized — ‘Okay, there’s a lot here.’”
Too bad none of it will have any impact on the senators deciding Trump’s fate.
Who did this
https://t.co/U0isLX99i4
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 28, 2020
Nevertheless, Hedayti is standing by the stunt and appears to think it’s ingenious.
“We’re trying to always think of ways to take jokes that we have and take them outside the boundaries of 11:00 to 11:30. Like, how can we exist in the real world? How can we get closer to the people that we’re covering?” Hedayti says. “Literally driving a truck outside of the building they’re in is a way to do that.”
The lunacy of liberals never ceases to amaze!
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 ‘The Daily Show’ Sends Truck to Washington D.C. to Play Video Of Trump Blasting Senators appeared first on The Political Insider.
Bribery. The crime is bribery. Say it
The Trump defense against impeachment is premised on layers upon layers of nonsense, but the notion that Donald Trump's act—suspension of military aid to a foreign nation until its government announced an investigation of his just-announced domestic political opponent—does not constitute a crime is among the most blatant.
Bribery. The crime is that Donald Trump demanded a personal bribe in exchange for an official act of his office. And soliciting a bribe is, unequivocally, a criminal act.
The defense theory that Trump was allowed to target a specific political opponent for an "investigation" as a supposed foreign policy is inherently corrupt. There is no other word for it. Criminal defender Alan Dershowitz went further still, claiming that if Trump believed that his winning reelection was genuinely in the public's best interest, then any action he took to sabotage his opponents would be legal and allowable. In every other public context, this is recognized unequivocally as an act of corruption.
Ex-House Republican Chris Collins was indicted for insider trading—using private information to make stock trades meant to benefit himself. Ex-Rep. Duncan Hunter was indicted for stealing, outright, campaign funds for his own personal gain. The then-governor of Illinois, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, was impeached, removed, and imprisoned for seeking to trade political appointments, an official act of his office, for personal bribes.
It is Blagojevich's case that is a close analogue to what Trump himself did. Trump unilaterally delayed military aid allocated by the House and Senate to a foreign ally. Trump distanced his White House from that government, refusing a meeting the newly elected Ukrainian leader considered of utmost importance in signaling to Russia that his nation had the support of the United States. He withheld both acts, indisputably now, to procure an announcement from the Ukrainian government that his potential election opponent was now being investigated for corruption.
That is soliciting a bribe. Trump could have requested that his Department of Justice "investigate" his election opponent itself; it would still likely be a crime. Trump could have made the request without using the tools of his office to pressure the desperate Ukrainian government into compliance; doing so in his official capacity as president would still likely be a crime. Trump did the most corrupt of all versions, however.
Trump demanded that Ukraine announce two specific investigations, one of Biden and one promoting an anti-Democratic Party conspiracy theory boosted by the same Russian government known to have targeted Trump’s election opponents in the past. The only investigations Trump demanded were focused on his domestic political opponents.
Trump coordinated the effort not through the United States' robust law enforcement and foreign policy agencies, but through his personal lawyer, working with now-indicted Ukrainian criminals, coordinating "evidence"-gathering with a known-to-be-corrupt Ukrainian official seeking to trade that evidence to Trump's team in exchange for getting his own criminal indictment squashed by Trump's Department of Justice. This gaggle of criminals was elevated above the official United States foreign policy apparatus, and quickly succeeded in getting a member of that foreign policy apparatus, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, removed from her position by convincing Trump she was a political, not a policy, opponent.
Trump ordered multiple members of his Cabinet to take official actions, actions determined at the time to be baseless and soon afterwards judged to be illegal, intended to put maximum pressure on Ukraine to comply in providing the “favor’ he’d asked for. He ordered his subordinates to perform official acts meant to extort Ukraine into compliance—literally at gunpoint.
Trump provided no public explanation for his acts, Trump's subordinates provided their own government subordinates no private explanations for those acts; an after-the-fact effort was launched to investigate any possible rationale that could be offered for his acts; White House officials swiftly moved to conceal his acts as numerous White House and government officials alerted White House lawyers of the potentially criminal nature of those acts; and when Congress eventually learned of his acts, Trump offered no explanation, but instead ordered all agencies to refuse document requests, subpoenas for testimony, and other basic tools of oversight.
Donald Trump sought a bribe from Ukraine. Donald Trump demanded that the government of Ukraine grant him two very specific personal favors, both targeting his election enemies, and withheld official acts of his government to procure them. Trump ordered his administration to take official acts to obstruct congressional investigation of those acts.
Seeking something of personal value in exchange for performing an act as a public official is seeking a bribe. It is not hard to understand. It does not matter if it is called a new "foreign policy" in which personal bribes are, now, supposedly both official policy and good for the country.
It's bribery. Just say it. And every Republican senator either knows full well that Trump was soliciting a bribe or, by denying it, has indicated that they too are sufficiently corrupt to consider demanding precisely the same thing in exchange for doing their own official duties.
That is likely the case. It is evident, at this point, that nearly every Republican senator both stipulates that Trump did exactly what John Bolton claims to be an eyewitness to and is taking the official position that members of their party are indeed allowed to solicit such "favors" without repercussion or recourse. But it is unambiguously bribery, and each of them is now conspiring in that act.
Moscow Mitch’s 2020 campaign fund helped out by Trump’s impeachment defense team
You can't make this degree of corruption up. Moscow Mitch McConnell, the guy who has promised again and again that he is working with Donald Trump's impeachment lawyers to make sure that Trump will not be convicted and removed from office, has gotten campaign donations from those lawyers. This year. For his 2020 reelection campaign.
The Louisville Courier Journal reviewed campaign finance data for McConnell, finding that Ken Starr gave the maximum allowed, $2,800, on July 31, 2019. He's been a donor to every one of McConnell's campaigns since 2020. McConnell's gotten two separate donations from Robert Ray for a total of $5,600. Those were on Sept. 30, 2019, 12 days after The Washington Post reported on the whistleblower report that Trump was withholding aid to Ukraine until the country agreed to announce an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.
McConnell's campaign blew off the glaring appearance of corruption in the transaction, taking a swipe at House Democrats. "The absence of any adequate arguments by House impeachment managers seems to be playing a pretty meaningful role however," McConnell's campaign manager Kevin Golden said. Clearly the money isn't a bribe for McConnell to ensure Trump's acquittal, because that's been a foregone conclusion from the get-go. Moscow Mitch promised it. So it must be a reward.
Trump and McConnell push hard to cement impeachment cover-up
The Trump White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell planned an impeachment trial cover-up, and they’re not about to let former national security adviser John Bolton mess that up. The plan was to call no witnesses and have Senate Republicans vote to acquit Trump as quickly as possible. That plan took a hit when reports came out that Bolton’s upcoming book described Trump telling him that he was holding up military aid to Ukraine in a demand for investigations into his political rivals—but that just means McConnell and Trump will have to work a little harder to keep the cover-up in place.
When McConnell told Senate Republicans, in a private meeting, that he didn’t have the votes locked down to block witnesses in the trial, it wasn’t an admission of defeat. It was, sources told The New York Times, ”a pointed signal that it was time for rank-and-file senators to fall in line.”
Similarly, the White House is telling Republicans that allowing witnesses “could drag things out for months” and be “tough on all incumbents up for reelection,” a “Republican close to the White House” told Politico. Nice Senate seat you’ve got. Shame if anything messed that up.
Sen. John Cornyn told The Washington Post’s Robert Costa that he was “pretty confident” Republicans would keep the trial from including witnesses. (You know, keep it from being even an imitation of a fair trial.)
According to Sen. Kevin Cramer, “Some people are sincerely exploring all the avenues.” Some people. Others, not so much. And virtually every Republican in the Senate is under strong pressure to stop exploring and definitely stop being sincere—virtually every, and not every-every, only because Sen. Susan Collins gets a pass on appearing to vote against McConnell once he knows he already has the votes he needs locked down.
Republicans do not want the American people to know the truth, and they’ll do whatever they can to keep that from happening.
Who’s paying for Trump’s impeachment defense? Republican donors, yet again
Almost everything about Donald Trump's finances remains murky, because Donald Trump has refused to do the customary tax disclosure of what he owns and who owns him, while his cabinet blocks outright any congressional attempts to review that material. But we do know, in a bit of an ironic twist, who is paying for Trump's lie-filled legal defense during his Senate impeachment trial. You will not be surprised to learn it ain't Donald Trump.
The Trump defense is in large part being paid, reports The Washington Post, by the Republican National Committee. Yes, it is the Republican Party itself, through the donations of America's greatest suckers, that is paying to argue that a Republican-and-only-a-Republican president can demand that a foreign government assist his reelection efforts, and can use the tools of his public office to extort it into doing so. Impeachment word-sayers Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin had received $225,000 as of November, says the Post, but we can expect that amount to balloon significantly.
The RNC's costs to defend Trump are expected to be in the millions, all of it coming from Trump-supporting Republican donors (presuming, of course, there's no Lev Parnas or other foreign-agent cash mixed in, which is not a bet anyone should take). This is less money that Trump's supporters have to donate toward actual Republican campaigns, so this is good news. That doesn't mean that the rest of America isn't on the hook for some of Trump's defense, however: Taxpayers of course pay for the Justice Department and White House-based government lawyers who have done their damnedest to obstruct the House's impeachment investigation and continue to argue vigorously that the Senate has no right to or need for evidence either.
But the rest of the details, like Trump's own finances, remain murky. Defender Alan Dershowitz claims he is not receiving a penny for his work defending Trump, which checks out, because Alan Dershowitz would consider national television time to be the best pay anybody could possibly give him, and will probably be using his own recordings ... privately ... for the next 10 years. Ken Starr isn't talking at all, because Ken Starr has gotten very reluctant to talk about much of anything since his most recent scandal—or maybe he decided he needs all the fact-hiding practice he can get, just to keep himself limber.
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.
Sen. Martha McSally defends insulting a reporter with rambling, self-satisfied op-ed
Republican Sen. Martha McSally will never be mistaken for a person of integrity. She is, however, the sort of Trumpian person who likes to invent insults and fundraise off them by selling overpriced T-shirts emblazoned with them. McSally responded to a CNN reporter's question about whether she would consider new evidence in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump by calling the reporter a "liberal hack," saying, "I'm not talking to you," and walking away. Within hours, McSally's website sported a new "You're a liberal hack" T-shirt as fundraising gimmick. Bask, America, in the glow of the world's greatest deliberative body and its assembled merchandise.
All of that looked boorish, unnecessary, and more than a little cowardly; McSally also faced calls to apologize to the reporter who had asked a perfectly legitimate question of a public official. So now McSally's got a long, rambling, extremely whining op-ed out, complaining that she, of course, is the real victim here.
Again, let's keep in mind that the chief justice of the United States recently called the Senate by its preferred porn name, World's Greatest Deliberative Body, as we try to glean any meaningful content from this piece other than self-satisfied grunting noises.
McSally writes, "Predictably, his entire industry melted down. How dare someone – a woman, perhaps? – ‘lash out’ at a reporter like that! In a hallway, no less! The pearl-clutching was more over-the-top than I could have ever imagined."
All right, that is about enough of that. There's also quite a bit of McSally reminding the world that she is a veteran, saying that, "as a combat veteran who survived situations where foggy communications could get people killed, I don't have time for the language games they expect you to play in Washington."
Right, because insulting reporters and refusing to answer the most fundamental questions about the single biggest issue and story in the country today is saving people from "getting killed." So brave. So, so very brave.
The rest of piece seems to be an entirely contentless stream-of-consciousness bashing of the "liberal media" and "DNC talking points," and by God I flew 325 combat hours so I should be able to insult all the reporters I want to because they are "liars" and this is, yes, pretty much what Donald Trump himself would write if he did not have bone spurs and if he allowed ANYONE AROUND HIM to edit his burping thoughts into complete sentences.
But the central message is unmistakable: The press is "liberal"; therefore the free press is an enemy, and attacks on it are therefore not only justified but required of all Good Republicans as we trundle toward the great Republican future in which no reporters will ask questions that our lawmakers do not like. And you can support this new Republican future by buying our favorite insults printed on T-shirts.
Mike Pompeo lied about NPR interview with Mary Louise Kelly—and there’s proof
It's hard to keep track of every detail of Republican corruption, but Trump-appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got himself into a new scandal when he cut an NPR interview short after journalist Mary Louise Kelly asked him about ousted ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, screamed at Kelly afterward, and dared her to find Ukraine on a "blank" map he keeps in his office, for some reason (which she did, as Kelly has a master's degree in European studies). He capped off this tour de force by sending out a crass official State Department statement claiming she was lying about all of it.
Among his claims: Kelly had agreed to limit questions only to Iran and was not supposed to ask about anything Ukraine-related. It turns out, because we've heard this song before, that Mike Pompeo was lying through his teeth on that one and The Washington Post was quickly given proof. Once again, Pompeo has used his State Department to lie to the American people.
The Washington Post obtained the email exchanges between NPR and Mike Pompeo's staff. They show that Kelly specifically did not agree to Pompeo's conditions, and specifically said she would also be asking questions about "Ukraine." "I never agree to take anything off the table," Kelly wrote in one email.
Pompeo's office pushed back, asking at least that Iran be the topic for "a healthy portion of the interview," once again signaling Pompeo's months-long aversion to answering any questions whatsoever about the impeachment-causing scandal he is buried in up to his ex-House Republican eyebrows. But Kelly gave only the assurance that her "plan" was to spend a "healthy portion" on Iran, with no promise that other subjects wouldn't come up.
So the secretary of state lied to the American people in an official State Department statement, which is many times worse than the Benghazi scandal House Republican Pompeo attempted to manufacture out of thin air. This is not surprising: He is crooked. He has repeatedly lied. He has been identified as a key figure in Trump's scheme to withhold military aid to Ukraine until a "Biden" investigation was announced.
Former national security adviser John Bolton's unreleased book manuscript alleges that Pompeo personally knew of the smear effort against Ambassador Yovanovitch, and knew that Rudolph Giuliani's claims about her were false, The book says Pompeo expressed a supposition that Giuliani was working to undermine Yovanovitch on behalf of other, unspecified clients. Pompeo is corrupt. He must be removed from office.