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The 2019-2020 Impeachment, Trial and Acquittal of Donald John Trump

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  • ‘Presidents Are Not Kings’: Judge Orders Trump Lawyer Don McGahn To Testify Before Congress
    House Democrats subpoenaed McGahn to testify after the Mueller report laid out several instances of the counsel refusing to carry out orders.

    Former White House Counsel Don McGahn must honor a congressional subpoena and testify before Congress, a federal judge in the nation’s capitol ruled Monday.

    U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled that McGahn, who played a major role in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report focused on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, must appear, but can assert legal privileges during his testimony.

    Jackson ruled that “individuals who have been subpoenaed for testimony by an authorized committee of Congress must appear for testimony in response to that subpoena — i.e., they cannot ignore or defy congressional compulsory process, by order of the President or otherwise” but that they were “free to assert any legally applicable privilege in response to the questions asked of them, where appropriate” during the hearing.

    “Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote. “This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Moreover, as citizens of the United States, current and former senior-level presidential aides have constitutional rights, including the right to free speech, and they retain these rights even after they have transitioned back into private life.”

    The Trump administration is likely to contest the ruling, which could have an immediate impact on the ongoing impeachment inquiry surrounding Trump’s more recent Ukraine scandal. The House Judiciary Committee wants McGahn to testify soon, now that the House Intelligence Committee’s public hearings on the Ukraine scandal are winding down.

    “To make the point as plain as possible, it is clear to this Court ... that, with respect to senior-level presidential aides, absolute immunity from compelled congressional process simply does not exist,” Jackson wrote.

    House Democrats subpoenaed McGahn to testify after the second volume of Mueller’s report laid out several instances of McGahn refusing to carry out orders he considered inappropriate or illegal. McGahn, according to the Mueller report, told former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus that he would resign because Trump had asked him to “do crazy shit” like fire Mueller. Trump then tried to get McGahn to deny that Trump had ordered him to get Mueller removed, according to the report.

    The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in an opinion signed by Trump appointee Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel, found that the public disclosure of the Mueller report “does not have any legal bearing upon the force of the congressional subpoena” and that the public disclosure of the report “did not constitute a general waiver concerning Mr. McGahn’s communications with the President on those subjects or any other subjects.”

    Trump told his former counsel to ignore the subpoena. The House Judiciary Committee sued McGahn back in August, and Jackson heard the case in October. At the October hearing, according to CNN, Jackson said that McGahn’s “status as a former executive branch official” doesn’t shield him from giving information. The Trump administration has argued that McGahn has absolute immunity from being forced to comply with a congressional subpoena.

    Trump told ABC back in June that what McGahn told Mueller “doesn’t matter” and said that McGahn “wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer.”

    Since the dispute over McGahn’s testimony began seven months ago, the White House has blocked several fact witnesses from testifying about their knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine scandal, even as Republicans and White House officials have complained that many of the impeachment inquiry witnesses lacked firsthand knowledge of Trump’s actions.
    _________

    And there it is, laid out in clear and plain English. When was this ever in doubt??
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

    Comment


    • What the hell just happened that there was a sudden jump in support for impeachment? It had actually been trending downward for several days.

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      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

      Comment


      • it's a poll aggregator model from 538. latest poll shows a rough 3% increase in both Dems and independents supporting impeachment. while it looks significant over the period of a week, if you extend it out it's not that big of a difference.

        https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/impeachment-polls/

        political factor won't change unless there are truly huge increases from GOP folks whom think he should be impeached. considering that after the Ukraine scandal broke it went from 8% to a high of 15% (declining to 11.6% now), I can't say I'm optimistic.
        There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

        Comment


        • ahahahha Rudy just went under the bus.

          ====

          https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-...-other-clients

          President Donald Trump appeared to hang his personal lawyer out to dry in an interview with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday night, insisting that Rudy Giuliani's push for a Biden investigation in Ukraine was not done on his behalf and noting that Giuliani has “other clients.”

          Asked point-blank if Giuliani was acting on his behalf in trying to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden—an issue now at the heart of an impeachment inquiry—Trump said, “No, I didn’t direct him, but he is a warrior, he is a warrior.”

          When asked what Giuliani was doing in Ukraine, Trump deflected and told the ex-Fox anchor that he would “have to ask that to Rudy.”

          “I know that he was going to go to Ukraine and I think he cancelled the trip. But Rudy has other clients, other than me. He’s done a lot of work in Ukraine over the years,” the president continued.
          There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

          Comment


          • Originally posted by astralis View Post
            ahahahha Rudy just went under the bus.
            Saw that this morning, what a (completely predictable) joke!

            According to the White House's own rough transcript of Trump's now infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump himself repeatedly brought up Giuliani in the same conversation where he reminded Zelensky of all that America does for Ukraine and asked him for a “favor.”

            “Rudy very much knows what’s happening, and he is a very capable guy,” Trump told Zelensky, after asking him to investigate a widely debunked conspiracy theory about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election.

            “If you could speak to him that would be great,” he said.

            In early November, Giuliani wrote on Twitter that his probe into “2016 Ukrainian collusion and corruption” was done to “defend (his) client against false charges.”
            So not only did Trump make himself out to be a liar (yet again) but he did the same with Rudy. 2 idiots with 1 stone, very impressive!

            News flash to Trump supporters and brain-dead sycophants (but I repeat myself): Trump will throw anybody under the bus, even "America's Mayor".
            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

            Comment


            • Trump is true to form as always. Can't wait till he says that he barely knows who Giuliani is...

              Comment


              • I believe there is a town in Ukraine - I cannot recall it's name offhand or where it was - where Giuliani is a 'freeman' or something of that nature.

                Comment


                • Report Will Likely Accuse President Of Seeking Foreign Election Help, Nadler Writes Trump

                  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) sent a rattling letter to Donald Trump on Friday informing him of the likely conclusions of the impeachment inquiry by the Intelligence Committee, including obstruction of justice and soliciting foreign interference in an American election.

                  He also gave Trump a deadline of next Friday to inform the committee if he plans to present a defense in the next round of impeachment hearings.

                  An upcoming report on the hearings from the Intelligence Committee will detail an “effort in which President Trump again sought foreign interference in our elections for his personal and political benefit at the expense of our national interest,” Nadler wrote in the letter. The “again” likely refers to Russian interference in the 2016 election, and may be an indication that the investigation will try to link that to Trump or his campaign.

                  The report will also allege an “unprecedented campaign of obstruction in an effort to prevent the committees from obtaining evidence and testimony,” Nadler informed Trump.

                  Nadler noted that his own committee has “also been engaged in an investigation concerning allegation that you may have engaged in acts of obstruction of justice, as detailed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s” report.

                  Nadler asked Trump in the letter if his counsel “intends to participate in the upcoming impeachment proceedings.”

                  The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin its first public hearings in the impeachment investigation on Wednesday. Nadler set a 5 p.m. deadline on Dec. 6 for the president to say if he or his counsel will participate.

                  The White House could not immediately be reached for comment.
                  _______________

                  Nixon had 3 Articles of Impeachment approved against him by the House...I wonder how many Trump will score?

                  Oh and now it's Trump's chance to have himself (yeah right lol) or his lawyers in front of the Committee to do...whatever it is they do. Attempt to defend the indefensible, I guess.
                  “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                  Comment


                  • Meanwhile..
                    Poll: Majority of Republicans say Trump better president than Lincoln

                    A majority of Republicans say President Trump is a better leader than former President Lincoln, according to this week’s Economist/YouGov weekly tracking poll.

                    Fifty-three percent of Republicans said Trump was a better president than Lincoln, while 47 percent chose the Civil War-era leader.
                    Lincoln still overwhelmingly beats Trump among all Americans, 75 percent to 25 percent, with the vast majority of Democrats and independents choosing the former president.
                    Of course, Trump has something to say about that
                    “You know, a poll just came out that I am the most popular person in the history of the Republican Party,” Trump said in a July interview with The Sun newspaper in the U.K.

                    “Beating Lincoln,” Trump added, without clarifying to which poll he was referring. “I beat our Honest Abe.”

                    I'm now convinced that America even today is basically two radically different nations with opposing ideologies forced to live together due to a lack of geographical separation as well as economic imperatives.
                    Last edited by Firestorm; 02 Dec 19,, 23:58.

                    Comment


                    • So what is the defence? I mean it is not clear to me how there can be on after the release of the memorandum of the call (I understand it was not a for word transcript). That it was really Ukraine what done it? A GRU conspiracy theory? And Trump is not in hoc with Moscow still? They have him under their thumb as I said from the start.

                      Comment


                      • House Report Outlines Evidence For Trump Impeachment

                        WASHINGTON (AP) — The House released a sweeping impeachment report Tuesday outlining evidence of what it calls President Donald Trump’s wrongdoing toward Ukraine, findings that will serve as the foundation for debate over whether the 45th president should be removed from office.

                        The 300-page report from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee makes the case that Trump misused the power of his office and, in the course of their investigation, obstructed Congress by stonewalling the proceedings. Based on two months of investigation, the report contains evidence and testimony from current and former U.S. officials.

                        “The impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection," the report said.

                        “The President engaged in this course of conduct for the benefit of his own presidential reelection, to harm the election prospects of a political rival, and to influence our nation’s upcoming presidential election to his advantage," it said. In doing so, "the President placed his own personal and political interests above the national interests of the United States, sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security."

                        The House intelligence panel will vote later Tuesday, in what is expected to be a party-line tally, to send the document to the Judiciary Committee ahead of a landmark impeachment hearing Wednesday.

                        “It will be up to the Congress to determine whether these acts rise to the level of an impeachable offense," said Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said in a joint statement with the chairmen of the Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committee, who drafted the report.

                        “With the release of our report, the American people can review for themselves the evidence detailing President Trump’s betrayal of the public trust.”

                        In a statement, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said “Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump.” She said the report "reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing.”

                        Ahead of the release, Republicans defended the president in a rebuttal claiming Trump never intended to pressure Ukraine when he asked for a “favor” — investigations of Democrats and Joe Biden. They say the military aid the White House was withholding was not being used as leverage, as Democrats claim, and besides the $400 million was ultimately released, although only after a congressional outcry.

                        Trump at the opening of a NATO leaders' meeting in London on Tuesday criticized the impeachment push as “unpatriotic" and “a bad thing for our country."

                        The findings in The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report draw deeply from history, citing Alexander Hamilton and other Founding Fathers, to explain grounds for impeachment.

                        "Rather than a mechanism to overturn an election, impeachment was explicitly contemplated as a remedy of last resort for a president who fails to faithfully execute his oath of office ‘to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” the report said.

                        The report will lay the foundation for the House Judiciary Committee to assess potential articles of impeachment starting Wednesday, presenting a history-making test of political judgment with a case that is dividing Congress and the country.

                        Trump said he will not watch the judiciary panel's hearing, saying it's “all nonsense, they’re just wasting their time.”

                        Democrats once hoped to sway Republicans to consider Trump's removal, but they are now facing the prospect of an ever-hardening partisan split over the swift-moving proceedings on impeaching the president.

                        The findings are expected to forcefully make the Democrats’ case that Trump engaged in what Schiff, D-Calif., calls impeachable “wrongdoing and misconduct” in pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden and Democrats while withholding military aid to the ally.

                        For Republicans offering an early rebuttal ahead of the report’s public release, the proceedings are simply a “hoax,” with Trump insisting he did nothing wrong and his GOP allies in line behind him. Trump tweeted his daily complaints about it all and then added a suggestive, if impractical, question: “Can we go to Supreme Court to stop?”

                        Trump criticized the House for pushing forward with the proceedings while he was overseas, a breach of political decorum that traditionally leaves partisan differences at the water’s edge.

                        He predicted Republicans would actually benefit from the impeachment effort against him.

                        For the Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces a critical moment of her leadership as she steers the process ahead after resisting the impeachment inquiry through the summer, warning at the time that it was too divisive for the country and required bipartisan support.

                        Possible grounds for impeachment are focused on whether Trump abused his office as he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July 25 phone call to open investigations into Trump’s political rivals. At the time, Trump was withholding $400 million in military aid, jeopardizing key support as Ukraine faces an aggressive Russia at its border.

                        The report also is expected to include evidence the Democrats say suggests obstruction of Congress, based on Trump’s instructions for his administration to defy subpoenas for documents and testimony.

                        The next step comes when the Judiciary Committee gavels open its own hearing with legal experts to assess the findings and consider potential articles of impeachment ahead of a possible vote by the full House by Christmas. That would presumably send it to the Senate for a trial in January.

                        The Democratic majority on the Intelligence Committee says its report, compiled after weeks of testimony from current and former diplomats and administration officials, will speak for itself in laying out the president’s actions toward Ukraine.

                        Republicans preempted the report’s public release with their own 123-page rebuttal.

                        In it, they claim there’s no evidence Trump pressured Zelenskiy. Instead, they say Democrats just want to undo the 2016 election. Republicans dismiss witness testimony of a shadow diplomacy being run by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and they rely on the president’s insistence that he was merely concerned about “corruption” in Ukraine — though the White House transcript of Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy never mentions the word.

                        “They are trying to impeach President Trump because some unelected bureaucrats chafed at an elected President’s 'outside the beltway' approach to diplomacy,” according to the report from Republican Reps. Devin Nunes of California, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Michael McCaul of Texas.

                        Schiff said the GOP response was intended for an audience of one, Trump, whose actions are “outside the law and Constitution.”

                        Democrats could begin drafting articles of impeachment against the president in a matter of days, with voting in the Judiciary Committee next week.

                        Republicans on the committee, led by Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, plan to use procedural moves to stall the process and portray the inquiry as unfair to the president.

                        The White House declined an invitation to participate, with counsel Pat Cipollone denouncing the proceedings as a “baseless and highly partisan inquiry” in a letter to Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

                        Trump had previously suggested that he might be willing to offer written testimony under certain conditions, though aides suggested they did not anticipate Democrats would ever agree to them.

                        Cipollone’s letter of nonparticipation applied only to the Wednesday hearing, and he demanded more information from Democrats on how they intended to conduct further hearings before Trump would decide whether to participate.

                        Nadler said Monday if the president really thought his call with Ukraine was “perfect,” as he repeatedly says, he would “provide exculpatory information that refutes the overwhelming evidence of his abuse of power."

                        House rules provide the president and his attorneys the right to cross-examine witnesses and review evidence before the committee, but little ability to bring forward witnesses of their own.
                        _____________

                        The report is here if anyone cares to read it
                        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                        Comment


                        • This impeachment is a sham and I have better things to do like go to the NATO Conference on America's business. More like screw up America's business and burn some left over bridges with our allies. Just maybe those leaders are starting to take Trump with a grain of salt. Oh, how he will hate that not be the center of conversation but on the outside being made fun of like on a playground. He doesn't like that as it harks back, to what would be around 60 years for most of us, but only a few years for him.

                          Twitter, here we come.

                          Leaders talking about Trump not that anyone should be surprised.

                          https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/polit...ato/index.html

                          Comment


                          • Nancy Pelosi Calls For Articles Of Impeachment Against Trump

                            House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday called on House Democratic leaders to begin drafting articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.

                            “Today, I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment,” she said Thursday, in what was billed as a special announcement about the “status” of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Trump. Lawmakers on two congressional committees have held impeachment hearings over the last few weeks.

                            The timing makes it likely there will be a House vote on the articles before lawmakers adjourn for the holidays later this month and a Senate trial beginning in January.

                            Pelosi said the testimony proved that “the president’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution.”

                            “The facts are uncontested: The president abused his power,” she said. “The president leaves us no choice but to act.”

                            After several marathon days of hearings in November, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released a detailed report Tuesday. In the report, they laid out “overwhelming” evidence of misconduct by Trump.

                            Chiefly, they concluded that his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, pressuring him to investigate 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, represented “stark evidence of misconduct; a demonstration of the President’s prioritization of his personal political benefit over the national interest.”

                            On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee began its own set of impeachment hearings, featuring testimony from constitutional law scholars.

                            White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham responded by claiming that “Pelosi and the Democrats should be ashamed.”

                            “We look forward to a fair trial in the Senate,” she tweeted following Pelosi’s announcement.
                            ___________

                            Not exactly a surprise. The only question is what those articles will be. I'm going to guess they're the exact same articles approved against Nixon.
                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • I thought she was spot on when she said that this is not political - it is not about political issues such as immigration, health care, or defence spending etc - but legal; when a person breaks the law (or the Constitution in this case) the elected representatives have a legal duty to go after them. It's not about hating or liking someone it's about whether they have violated their terms of employment - in this case oath of office.

                              I do not 'hate' Trumpkin; thankfully I have never met him. I wholly reject him as he is at root a liar, a fool, a criminal, and a traitor to those he claims to serve.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by snapper View Post
                                I thought she was spot on when she said that this is not political - it is not about political issues such as immigration, health care, or defence spending etc - but legal; when a person breaks the law (or the Constitution in this case) the elected representatives have a legal duty to go after them. It's not about hating or liking someone it's about whether they have violated their terms of employment - in this case oath of office.

                                I do not 'hate' Trumpkin; thankfully I have never met him. I wholly reject him as he is at root a liar, a fool, a criminal, and a traitor to those he claims to serve.
                                I pity the man, as I've mentioned in past posts. His childhood was probably one attempt after another to earn his parent's love, his adulthood...well, ditto. And now that he's reached the highest office in the land, he's still treated like...well, what he is. And he's losing his mind to boot.

                                Having said all that, I hate what he's done to this country and its (formerly) sacred institutions.
                                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                                Comment

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