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Impeachment inquiry


TheStatGuy

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Just now, Impartial_Observer said:

I ain't going to lie, the more debates I see, it's becoming apparent why impeachment is so critical. I managed about 15 minutes last night and was somewhat surprised to see Cory Booker has become a Republican. 

I refuse to watch. It's pathetic.

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14 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

I refuse to watch. It's pathetic.

It's literally like they're throwing sheet at the wall and seeing if anything sticks. Robert Francis was obviously the first to do this, while polling at Blutarski numbers 0.0, he started using naughty words and jumped gun confiscation. I only watched about 15 minutes, but Cory Booker seems to be trying the same thing. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here we go:  https://apnews.com/6ea344e9bf24d8a8b64c20a305c14305

Quote

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that the House is moving forward to draft articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.

’’Our democracy is what is at stake,” Pelosi said. “The president leaves us no choice but to act.”

Pelosi delivered the historic announcement as Democrats push toward a vote, possibly before Christmas.

With somber tones, drawing on the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, Pelosi stood at the speaker’s office at the Capitol and said she was authorizing the drafting of formal charges “sadly but with confidence and humility.”

“The president’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution,” she said. “He is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit. The president has engaged in abuse of power, undermining our national security and jeopardizing the integrity of our elections.

“Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairmen to proceed with articles of impeachment,” she said.

At the heart of the impeachment probe is a July call with the president of Ukraine, in which Trump pressed the leader to investigate Democrats and political rival Joe Biden as Trump was withholding military aid to the country.

Trump tweeted that if Democrats “are going to impeach me, do it now, fast.” He said he wants to get on to a “fair trial” in the Senate. The president also said that Democrats have “gone crazy.”

At the White House, press secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that Pelosi and the Democrats “should be ashamed, then she, too, looked past the likely impeachment in the Democratic-controlled House to trial in the Republican-majority Senate.

The chairmen of the House committees conducting the impeachment inquiry will begin drafting the articles, and some lawmakers are expecting to remain in Washington over the weekend.

On Wednesday, Pelosi met behind closed doors with her Democratic caucus, asking, ”Äre you ready?”

The answer was a resounding yes, according to those in the room.

Democrats are charging toward a vote on removing the 45th president, a situation Pelosi hoped to avoid but which now seems inevitable.

Three leading legal scholars testified Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee that Trump’s attempts to have Ukraine investigate Democratic rivals are grounds for impeachment, bolstering the Democrats’ case.

A fourth expert called by Republicans warned against rushing the process, arguing this would be the shortest of impeachment proceedings, with the “thinnest” record of evidence in modern times, setting a worrisome standard.

Trump is alleged to have abused the power of his office by putting personal political gain over national security interests, engaging in bribery by withholding $400 million in military aid Congress had approved for Ukraine, and then obstructing Congress by stonewalling the investigation.

Democrats in the House say the inquiry is a duty. Republican representatives say it’s a sham. And quietly senators of both parties conferred on Wednesday, preparing for an eventual Trump trial.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chair of the Judiciary panel, which would draw up the articles of impeachment, said Trump’s phone call seeking a “favor” from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wasn’t the first time he had sought foreign help to influence an American election, noting Russian interference in 2016. He warned against inaction with a new campaign underway.

“We cannot wait for the election,” he said. “ If we do not act to hold him in check, now, President Trump will almost certainly try again to solicit interference in the election for his personal political gain.”

Once an outsider to the GOP, Trump now has Republicans’ unwavering support. They joined in his name-calling the Judiciary proceedings a “disgrace” and unfair, the dredging up of unfounded allegations as part of an effort to undo the 2016 election and remove him from office.

“You just don’t like the guy,” Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel, said Wednesday. Trump rewarded some of his allies with politically valuable presidential tweets as the daylong hearing dragged into the evening.

At their private meeting Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers also delivered a standing ovation to Rep. Adam Schiff, whose 300-page Intelligence Committee report cataloged potential grounds for impeachment, overwhelmingly indicating they want to continue to press the inquiry rather than slow its advance or call a halt for fear of political costs in next year’s congressional elections.

Meanwhile, Trump’s team fanned out across the Capitol with Vice President Mike Pence meeting with House Republicans and White House officials conferring with Senate Republicans to prepare for what could be the first presidential impeachment trial in a generation.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who has declined for now to participate in the House proceedings, relayed Trump’s hope that the impeachment effort can be stopped in the House and there will be no need for a Senate trial, which seems unlikely.

White House officials and others said Trump is eager to have his say. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said, “He feels like he has had no opportunity to tell his side of the story.”

Trump lambastes the impeachment probe daily and proclaims his innocence of any wrongdoing at length, but he has declined to testify before House hearings or answer questions in writing.

Based on two months of investigation sparked by a still-anonymous government whistleblower’s complaint, the Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report found that Trump “sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process and endangered U.S. national security.” When Congress began investigating, it says, Trump obstructed the investigation like no other president in history.

Republicans defended the president in a 123-page rebuttal claiming Trump never intended to pressure Ukraine when he asked for investigations of Biden and his son.

While liberal Democrats are pushing the party to incorporate the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and other actions by Trump, more centrist and moderate Democrats prefer to stick with the Ukraine matter as a simpler narrative that Americans understand.

 

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At House Impeachment Hearing, Legal Scholars Disagree on the Meaning of 'High Crimes and Misdemeanors': https://reason.com/2019/12/04/at-house-impeachment-hearing-legal-scholars-disagree-on-the-meaning-of-high-crimes-and-misdemeanors/#comments

Quote

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday held an impeachment inquiry hearing with four legal scholars, who were asked to offer their perspectives on the potential charges facing President Donald Trump. Despite the presence of "experts," the hearing proved to be yet another partisan back-and-forth that likely changed very few minds.

...

Meanwhile, Republican witness Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School, expressed caution, likening the Trump impeachment process to an "impulse buy." 

Turley described the impeachment process as rushed, and although he said the evidentiary record may eventually be strong enough for a trial, he contended that it is too thin at present. "It has not been explained to me why you want to set the record for the fastest impeachment," he said. "You need to stick the landing on quid pro quo."

"The House testimony is replete with references to witnesses like John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Mulvaney who clearly hold material information," Turley noted, arguing that congressional investigators must hear from people in the president's inner circle before proceeding. Yet Trump has prohibited those people from appearing before Congress.

Turley also took issue with his fellow scholars' interpretation of what qualifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors"—the constitutional standard for impeaching a president. Those on the other side of the argument are looking through too vague a lens, he testified. "That's a favorite mantra, that it's sort of close enough for jazz," Turley said. "Well, this isn't improvisational jazz. It isn't good enough. If you're going to accuse a president of bribery you need to make it stick." 

Feldman countered that the bar is clear, and Trump met it. "High crimes and misdemeanors are actions of the president in office where he uses his office to advance his personal interests," he said, "potentially for personal gain, potentially to corrupt the electoral process, and potentially as well to corrupt the national security of the United States."

....

Well the "why" concerning the record for fastest impeachment is obviously the 2020 elections.  

 

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