Rep. Adam Schiff, in his role as impeachment manager, both distilled the import of this trial and put Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell under a harsh light, without ever mentioning McConnell's name. In his opening argument, as prepared and provided by email, Schiff says that the "House did not take this extraordinary step lightly. As we will discuss, impeachment exists for cases in which the conduct of the President rises far beyond mere policy disputes to be decided, otherwise and without urgency, at the ballot box."
But, he says "we are here today to consider a much more grave matter, and that is an attempt to use the powers of the presidency to cheat in an election. For precisely this reason, the President’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box—for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won. [emphasis added]"
It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end his career as majority leader.
That's the case in a nutshell, that and the continuation of the thought, that "in obstructing the investigation into his own wrongdoing, the President has shown that he believes that he is above the law and scornful of constraint." Trump believes he's above the law and unconstrained because McConnell refuses to do his constitutional duty and provide a check. No where is that failure of McConnell more dire than in refusing to secure the ballot box, which Schiff is subtly underscoring in his statement.
The legislation to protect our elections from interference from Russia and other adversaries has been sitting in the graveyard of the Senate for months, with McConnell refusing to act on it because he says the government has done enough, and even congratulates the Trump administration for the actions it's taken. That presumably includes Trump publicly, on national TV, inviting any foreign government who wants to interfere to come on in.
This is deadly serious business. McConnell and Senate Republicans might not be taking that seriously, but the nation is watching.
One of the more baffling moments of the frequently baffling defense offered up by Trump's impeachment team was an extended rant on "lawyer lawsuits" delivered by Trump personal lawyer and co-conspirator to crimes Jay Sekulow. Nobody could figure out what he was going on about. Here’s a taste:
“Lawyer lawsuits? We’re talking about the impeachment of a president of the United States, duly elected, and the managers are complaining about lawyer lawsuits? The Constitution allows lawyer lawsuits. It’s disrespecting the Constitution of the United States to even say that in this chamber. Lawyer lawsuits.”
It now looks like Sekulow's whole rant was based on him completely mishearing House manager Val Demings. So naturally Team Trump is, rather than admitting that, doubling down on Sekulow's newly discovered bonnet-bug. Of course.
What House manager Demings was talking about, in her own speech, was "FOIA lawsuits" (commonly pronounced as FOY-uh). She was referring, of course, to the Freedom of Information Act-based lawsuits that have secured redacted government documents that the administration attempted to hide from the public. The Washington Post and reporter Igor Bobic, however, report that White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland insisted that Sekulow did not mishear and that "lawyer lawsuits" was a real thing. The transcript "says 'lawyer lawsuit,'" claimed Ueland.
Wait, what transcript? We don't know. Neither of the ones the Post looked at contained such a phrase, and there is certainly a distinct possibility that Ueland is, like the Trump White House continues to do on a daily and hourly basis, simply lying about it. Inventing a new hand-waving outrage out of thin air, refusing to acknowledge those who point out it is incorrect or manufactured, and then angrily insisting the new invention is in fact a great travesty and a shameful, shameful moment for Dear Leader's critics is exactly what Trump's team would do, because it is what Trump's team did throughout the night, over and over.
Republicans were not allowed to witness "secret" House depositions, they insisted. They not only were allowed, but did. Donald Trump was not allowed to present a defense, they shouted to senators. The House invited the White House to send a legal team, produce a defense, and produce documents for that defense; Trump's legal team refused. Republicans were not allowed their own witnesses, they claimed; House Republicans produced multiple witnesses, who were questioned and cross-examined on live television. These were not mischaracterizations. They were lies about recent, extremely televised, extremely reported-on public happenings that we all witnessed.
While Republican senators prattle on about the supposed dignity of their chamber, the Trump legal team lying to the Senate outright about matters in clear public view has resulted in exactly zero outrage from those lawmakers. We can infer from that that they both expect to be lied to and, in fact, are counting on it. It doesn't matter what Trump's "legal team" comes up with during their own presentations. Jay Sekulow can simply invent new words and phrases and scream at the Senate about the outrage they represent, and most of the Republican senators will nod their heads and vote ... exactly like they intended to from the first moment.
Susan Collins is damned if she does stick with Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump on impeachment and damned if she doesn't. The filing deadline for the primary for her Senate seat is March 16, and while she's got the backing of the state's rabid Republicans now, they would turn on her in a split second. Former Gov. Paul LePage, who's endorsed her, has to be casting a beady eye on the seat in case she strays. While Collins has to keep looking over her right shoulder, the rest of Maine is bailing on her, according to the latest polling by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group for the Democratic Senate Majority PAC.
Pollster Geoff Garin points out, based on the polling, that "Maine voters already see Collins as someone who who makes decisions based on what's best for her and least risky politically. They don't see her as acting on principle or what's best for Maine." That makes her voting lock-step with Republicans against witnesses and documents at Trump's impeachment trial on Tuesday a problem for her. That's because 71% of respondents in Maine said the Senate "[s]hould insist on seeing documents and call witnesses." That's on top of the 53% who say that Trump abused the power of his office, including 57% of independents. She has no room to maneuver here.
This comes on the heels of a Morning Consult survey showing Collins to be the least-popular senator with home-state voters in the entire country, in either party. What was remarkable in that survey, conducted quarterly in every state, wasn't necessarily that she's 10 points underwater in her approval rating with Maine's registered voters, 52% disapprove to 42% approve—a drop of 10 net points since the last survey in September. The big deal is that 93% of Maine voters are familiar enough with her to have an opinion about her. Just 7% percent of Maine voters don't look at her favorably or unfavorably.
In this context, this conclusion from the polling for Senate Majority PAC has got to be striking terror in her heart: "Maine voters do not trust Susan Collins to put principle above politics, and if she votes to acquit President Trump a majority say it will be because she is following a party line and doing what she believes is in her own political interest."
Behind the scenes of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, some Democrats are reportedly pondering a deal that could go wrong in about a dozen ways. With Republicans blocking witnesses while yelling about Hunter Biden, these Democrats are considering a trade in which they’d get to call White House officials like former national security adviser John Bolton, an actual witness to Trump’s actions that prompted impeachment, and Republicans would get to call Hunter Biden, a Republican talking point with no actual connection to impeachment.
While Democrats have repeatedly said that calling either Hunter or former Vice President Joe Biden would be irrelevant and a distraction, “behind closed doors, a small group of Democratic senators and aides has begun to question that logic, sounding out colleagues on whether to back a witness deal that could lead to testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton or other administration officials with possible firsthand knowledge of the Ukraine controversy,” The Washington Post reports, citing “multiple Democratic officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.”
Some Democrats have sent mixed messages. Sen. Chris Coons said that “If you want to give Joe Biden an opportunity to sit in the well of the Senate and answer the question, ‘Do you think the president acted appropriately?’ go right ahead”—but he also tweeted that “Trials have witnesses, and the witnesses have to be relevant to the case. It isn’t complicated. The President is on trial here, not anyone with the last name Biden. VP Biden and Hunter Biden are not relevant witnesses.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown told CNN’s State of the Union that he was “fine” with a Biden testifying in exchange for administration officials, but on Tuesday he called the idea “a typical Donald Trump-Mitch McConnell distraction that the national media continues to play with and continues to assist them.”
The big question at this point is not what Democrats are saying publicly, though. It’s what they’re talking about behind the scenes.
It is tempting to think that having Bolton or other current or former Trump officials testify could blow this thing wide open, but there are so many risks it’s hard to count them. Like, Hunter or Joe Biden testifies, giving Republicans the distraction they crave, and then Bolton refuses, or Trump manages to block Bolton. Just for starters. The Biden campaign is calling it right, saying that this is a “sad and obvious attempt at diversion” by Republicans.
This impeachment trial is about Donald Trump and what Donald Trump did.
Opening arguments in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump begin at 1 PM ET on Wednesday, after a brutal nearly 13-hour day of procedural debate on Tuesday that ended at nearly 2 AM. Democrats offered a series of amendments to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s cover-up plan, seeking to be able to call witnesses or subpoena new evidence that the White House has obstructed, but Republicans voted down proposal after proposal, making clear again and again that they do not want the facts.
On Wednesday, the House impeachment managers will begin to make their case, for which they have 24 hours over three days. That means arguments could stretch past 9 PM, depending on how many breaks the Senate takes. The day will be especially exhausting for Chief Justice John Roberts, who presides over the trial and will also be hearing arguments at the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning.
The House managers—Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, and Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Jason Crow, and Sylvia Garcia—will lay out the case that Trump abused power and obstructed Congress. In fact, they already began to make that argument on Tuesday as they argued for why the Senate trial should include more witnesses and evidence, showing themselves to be far sharper and more prepared than Trump’s defense team, even before you consider that the facts are on the House managers’ side. Wednesday, they have the opportunity to put it all together uninterrupted.
Trump will spend most of the day in the air on his way back from Davos, Switzerland, where he conducted several typically lie-riddled interviews before leaving.
The impeachment trial of Donald Trump started on Tuesday with debate on trial procedures—namely, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's carefully planned cover-up. The debate has been conducted by the House impeachment managers and Trump’s defense team. On Tuesday McConnell released a slightly relaxed version of the dark-of-night procedure he initially proposed, but make no mistake that he and Trump’s team continue to press for a cover-up.
Republicans have voted down one Democratic amendment after another. The House impeachment managers have been eating the Trump defense team’s lunch on both substance and style, but Republican senators do. not. care.
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:14:32 AM +00:00 · Mark SumnerCipollone sets up jeffries with a “do nothing Dems” comment, which allows Jeffries to bomb the Senate chamber with the number of bills that have been sent to rot on McConnell’s desk.
Then Jeffries picks up on a “why are we here” comment from Sekulow and uses it to rip him a new one. By God that was satisfying.
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:19:42 AM +00:00 · Mark SumnerSchiff up again. As the day goes on, the lopsidedness of the recitation of facts on the Democratic side, and the sluggish repetition of the same debunked talking points on the Republican side only seems to become more apparent.
And while Schiff seems fresh, Sekulow seems ready to topple off the stage.
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:21:33 AM +00:00 · Mark Sumner xWednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:24:08 AM +00:00 · Mark SumnerHakeem Jefferies ends his comments by quoting by quoting Christopher Wallace:"If ya don't know, now you know."
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) January 22, 2020
McConnell searches for what he’s supposed to say … remembers that he’s asking to table the motion on Mulvaney. And here we go again with a vote.
BTW, we may not be down to just witness subpoenas. Schumer may ask for documents from still more departments. They’ll have this whole case laid out before the night is over.
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:31:30 AM +00:00 · Mark SumnerMcConnell tries to get Schumer to stack his requests, asking them all at once. Schumer makes it clear that he’s willing to move some votes to tomorrow, but won’t submit them in a heap. Schumer suggests they could continue tomorrow (Yes, please).
McConnell forces a quorum vote.
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:33:47 AM +00:00 · Mark SumnerSchumer is standing by with a request for documents from the Defense Department along with requests for more individual subpoenas. Justice Roberts has a case to hear in the morning. It will be interesting to see if McConnell agrees to continue tomorrow afternoon.
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:39:38 AM +00:00 · Mark SumnerIt would be great to listen in to Schumer and McConnell at this point. McConnell is clearly frustrated, because Trump’s team is unprepared, the Democrats in House and Senate are working together well, and this day has turned into free presentation time for the House impeachment team without taking even a scratch.
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:47:12 AM +00:00 · Mark SumnerThere is apparently no joy in McMudville. Schumer goes back to proposing amendments, starting with a request for subpoenas for documents held by the Defense Department.
And you can bet that by a total non-coincidence, a member of the House team is standing by to address this specific topic in detail. Get ready for quotes from Laura Cooper.
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020 · 2:49:30 AM +00:00 · Mark SumnerMitch McConnell has the reputation of being the guy with a encyclopedic knowledge of obscure Senate rules that allow him to dominate this kind of thing. But so far in this hearing, Chuck Schumer has beaten him like a drum. A sad, wrinkly drum.