Senate Impeachment Trial Moves Coming Fast and Furious, Biden Livid

Posted on January 29, 2020 by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 29, 2020

Since the gavel went down in the Senate Tuesday afternoon the Hill has been abuzz with activity, plots, and counterplots. Here are the latest developments:

The Biden campaign is hopping mad with House managers and the Democrat Senate for possibly setting up a scenario where Joe Biden or his son Hunter would have to testify at the impeachment trial of President Trump.They know what it would do to their poll numbers and they have seen that Hunter is notoriously bad under pressure. His recent personal issues also do not play well with women. The Biden effort is putting tremendous pressure on Democrats not to permit witnesses at all, arguing that the numbers are just not there to remove Trump, why drag down Biden in a losing cause?

Word out of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office is that they may try a poison pill defense on witnesses. Oh sure, we’ll have witnesses, they say.And every one will be one the Democrats don’t want on the stand. Not only the Bidens, but Ciaramella, Comey, Brennan, Holder, Schiff, Nadler, and maybe even Hillary or Obama. With that prospect, they think the Democrats will think twice about witnesses.
Also, if witnesses are to be called, plots the McConnell office, they will be called at the same ratio they were called in the House. So, the GOP would have four witnesses to every one Democrat witness. Another poison pill gambit.
The White House may try to block any Bolton testimony by exerting executive privilege and then watch it play out in the courts. Bolton could testify anyway, but he may not want to go though the legal headaches of doing it.

Internal GOP polling numbers say this process is helping them with swing voters, as the swings cannot believe the Democrats are blindly defending the Bidens when the evidence of corruption on Burisma and other issues is so overwhelming.
Rumor is that Senators Warren and Sanders have grown happy with the trial and the effect it is having on the Biden campaign. They want the trial to end, but not too quickly.

Correction: In a recent piece we stated “54 Republicans” are in favor of witnesses being called. There are only 53 Republicans in the Senate. It should have read “54 senators”. Mea culpa- DK

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

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Trump Defense Goes for Broke on Monday

Posted on January 27, 2020 by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 27, 2020

Saturday saw the Trump defense team embarrass the Democrat House managers. With a carefully devised message and personality calibration they laid out their case in a concise yet powerful manner.

But Jay Sekulow, the Trump attack dog, said Saturday was but a mere preview. That sets a serious expectation level. What’s the movie going to look like? Here are some possible PR and legal scenarios.

The kitchen sink- The Democrats want it? They get it. After bringing up Hunter Biden and his dad repeatedly on Friday the Democrats have left the door open for the GOP team to walk right through it. Is it a trap? Will they pull a Battle of Cowpens? Unlikely.

It very well could be an invitation from the hard left of the Democrat party to do their dirty work for them and implicate Biden just before the Iowa caucuses.

Just as there are those who say the Pelosi delay was an effort to help Biden by keeping Sanders and Warren out of Iowa close to the election. Either way, Team Trump has said they’re going for it and the possible consequences are devastating for the Democrat legal team.

It will not be too hard to prove that this impeachment effort is but a distraction operation to set aside notice from a myriad number of Democrat scandals, the Bidens among them.

There is no there, there- Pat Cipollone’s team has already shown us this in an entertaining trailer. The main feature looks quite popcorn worthy. The basic premise is, where’s the crime? A phone call? A missed meeting? As Mike Purpura said, “There can’t be a quid pro quo without a quo.”

They could expose the big lie behind the entire Democrat case, that this is a political operation and not a legal argument. It is an attempt to refight the 2016 election by way of impeachment and Senate trial.

It will likely have the same outcome as that election: Donald Trump is the president.

Where is the victim? – If the Ukrainians say they felt no pressure and they didn’t even know about the defense aid delay during the time in question, just who exactly was victimized?

These and other gambits will be featured on Monday by Team Trump. It promises to be a good day for the president’s defense.

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

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Boston Poll Puts Sanders on Top in New Hampshire

Posted on January 23, 2020 by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 23, 2020

Bernie Sanders is on a roll.

No, not a kaiser roll.

His political timing is hitting apogee at just the right time for the nation’s first Dem primary (Iowa is a caucus), as a Boston-based WBUR poll Thursday puts him at 29% in New Hampshire. That’s a strong lead over Buttigieg at 17%, Biden at 14%, and Warren at 13%. Everybody else is in single digits.

The poll was conducted by talking to 426 likely voters in the Granite State. The contest is in three weeks.

But Sanders is off the campaign trail until the impeachment trial of the president is over.

Will his lead hold until then?

However, he’s top dog now and is also having a great fundraising cycle. The recent kerfuffle with neighboring Massachusetts’s own Dem Senator Elizabeth Warren only seems to have helped as, incredibly, most appear to believe he never said it. Thus Warren, not him, has taken the hit even with women.

The guy is on a lucky streak.

In a stinging indictment of the American education system, Sanders is killing it with Dem voters under 30. The socialist is taking an absolute majority of 52% of these sad ignorant toddlers. On the other hand, Biden leads with voters over 60.

They vote.

One interesting thing about this poll. A full third of male Dem NH voters approve of the way President Trump has dealt with the economy.

If that were to hold for November and even half of those voters swing to the GOP, Trump would win there handily. He narrowly lost to Clinton in the state in 2016.

Yet another reason to applaud toxic masculinity. But Sanders’ good fortunes make life easier for Trump as well.

Regardless of the conformist bleatings of the kiddie set, who vote in low numbers anyway, a socialist with a pro-communist past is likely too far left for America and the president would romp to a reelection victory much like Nixon in 1972 or Reagan in 1984.

Dem pros know this, as does Hillary Clinton, and want to forestall that fate not only for electoral credibility but to prevent a crashed and burned Dem party from being bought at fire-sale political prices by the Obamas.

The duo would move in on the prostrate remains of the party like ravenous vultures at a rodent buffet in preparation for Michelle’s very probable statewide run in Illinois and then her eventual run for the White House.

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

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Long, Drawn-Out Trials Are No Way to Convince Anyone of Anything

Posted on January 23, 2020 by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 23, 2020

If either side in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump believes they are benefiting from the non-stop talkfest they are currently engaging in they are sorely mistaken.

The current schedule calls for 24 hours, 24 hours!, of incessant gabbing by the Dems, broken up over three days. Then the GOP gets a crack using the same timeline. 48 hours of political chin-wagging in total.

Yup, 24 hours of continuous talk from politicians on both sides will do the rhetorical trick, ya think? Oh it may convince people of something. It’ll convince them for the need of a noose or a revolver loaded with one bullet after having to endure the kind of torture that would have made WWII Japanese POW camp guards swoon with envy.

It’s a given that pols love the sound of their own voices. But they don’t generally love the sound of the voices of other pols. Does either side actually think that after hour upon hour of verbal assault a senator is going to rise and cry out, “I see it now! I change my vote!”

Not very likely.

This bad sequel to “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” cannot be designed to sway voters either. What sane voter wants to hear 2 days of a political diatribe even if they agree with half of it?

If you’ve watched the total proceedings to this point, as I have, then you’ve seen the Dems make the same points over and over again. The GOP lawyers will no doubt do the same thing. Thus, the worse indictment of this court schedule?

It’s bad television.

The only possible motivation is to draw out the process. It’ll benefit the GOP, as a tired public will grow more weary of impeachment with every passing day.

It’ll benefit the Pelosi-picked House managers because it gives them national exposure and hours of free advertising.

It may also benefit Biden and other Dem candidates by keeping senatorial candidates Warren, Sanders, and Klobuchar stuck in the Senate while other contenders merrily hop across Iowa.

It is 2020 and the average consumer and voter attention span is that of a flea. Thus 48 hours of excruciating political theater must be seen as a tad too much.

The Dems seem to want to take up every second of it with never-ending argle bargle. When they get their shot in a couple of days hopefully the GOP won’t be so self-obsessed

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

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States Speak Up Asking Senate to Throw Out Impeachment

Posted on January 22, 2020 by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 22, 2020

Fox News reports on Wednesday that 21 GOP Attorneys General have requested that the U.S. Senate bounce both articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, saying that the impeachment and trial, “establishes a dangerous historical precedent.”

They pulled no punches.

“If not expressly repudiated by the Senate, the theories animating both Articles will set a precedent that is entirely contrary to the Framers’ design and ruinous to the most important governmental structure protections contained in our Constitution: the separation of powers,” the AGs said. They continued.

“Even an unsuccessful effort to impeach the President undermines the integrity of the 2020 presidential election because it weaponizes a process that should only be initiated in exceedingly rare circumstances and should never be used for partisan purposes.”

In conclusion, they noted, “It cannot be a legitimate basis to impeach a President for acting in a legal manner that may also be politically advantageous.

Such a standard would be cause for the impeachment of virtually every President, past, present, and future.”

The letter was signed by the GOP Attorneys General of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

The states have hit upon a point also stated by the president’s lawyers in the trial and by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) last week. At least three of the “jurors” in the Senate, Warren, Sanders, and Klobuchar, would directly benefit from a partisan guilty verdict.

How can a person with that kind of conflict of interest sit on the jury? In fact, the entire 47 member Senate Dem caucus would benefit.

How indeed can they sit in judgment of the man they have already said they desperately want removed from office before he is reelected?

The GOP is in the same boat, you say. They directly benefit from the president’s acquittal. But the GOP didn’t bring these charges, they did not initiate this fiasco and weaponize a process that should be reserved for solemn and dangerous constitutional questions.

Like these:

FDR trying to pack the Supreme Court to ram through more socialism? Sure, impeach and convict him.

John Kennedy’s 1960 election stealing and intimate mob ties? Boot him.

Jimmy Carter, well, just on general principle? He’s history.

But this president has done nothing wrong and these states know it. As does, the American people.

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

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