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Impeachment inquiry


TheStatGuy

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Roberts admonishes House prosecution, White House defense: https://apnews.com/ddec6989614fea6b5421c130a4ee4efa

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Chief Justice John Roberts drew little attention to himself in the beginning 12 hours of his first impeachment trial. But it was just before 1 a.m., as tempers on the floor had started to wear thin, that he reminded senators, House impeachment managers and President Donald Trump’s defense team who was in charge.

I think it is appropriate at this point for me to admonish both the House managers and the president’s counsel in equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body,” Roberts said, after a particularly tense exchange between House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and the president’s lawyers.

Roberts asked them to “avoid speaking in a manner and using language that is not conducive to civil discourse.”

He did not say what prompted his comments, but they came after Nadler told senators that voting to deny certain witnesses in the trial, as many GOP senators had, was a “treacherous vote” and a vote against the United States. Trump’s defense team then said Nadler should be embarrassed and should apologize to the president and the American people.

Roberts’ new role presiding over the trial is one of two jobs he is juggling as the impeachment session gets underway. On Tuesday morning, he donned his black robe and oversaw two arguments at the Supreme Court before heading across the street to the U.S. Capitol where he is presiding over the trial in the Senate chamber. His busy schedule meant he didn’t have time to join his fellow justices for a group lunch, a high court custom following arguments.

And he was scheduled to be back again in the Court on Wednesday morning — just hours after the first day of the trial adjourned at 2 a.m.

....

Roberts’ added responsibilities shouldn’t affect the work of the court. That’s because the justices generally finish their joint business in the mornings, giving Roberts time to preside over oral arguments and lead the justices’ regularly scheduled private conferences before beginning his Senate duties in the afternoon.

Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in written responses to questions from reporters that it’s expected to be “business as usual” at the court during the trial.

And if there’s a good time in Roberts’ schedule to take on added responsibility, this is it, since it’s a relatively quiet time at the court. After one more oral argument scheduled for Wednesday, the court is taking its standard break from oral arguments until late February.

It’s not until later in the spring that it gets to be crunch time for opinion writing for the justices, who finish their work in June before adjourning for the summer. The court did acknowledge it scheduled only one argument Wednesday instead of the more standard two in anticipation of a possible impeachment trial. That made Roberts’ day at the court shorter.

...

At the Capitol, the chief justice is using the ceremonial President’s Room as an office. It’s the same space used by Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1999 during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. One of Roberts’ four law clerks, Megan Braun, will join him every day when he travels to the Senate, Arberg said.

Roberts’ colleagues will have to plan one celebration around his new schedule. The chief justice’s 65th birthday is Monday, and the justices generally make time to celebrate birthdays at the court. They get together to sing “Happy Birthday” and have a toast.

No word if the senators will do the same.

We'll see how long Mr. Roberts can keep things civil during this trial.

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38 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Watching Representatives Schiff and Nadler cry "unfair trial" after their performance in the House is frickin hilarious........Pure Pot calling the Kettle black moment......

There wasn't a trial in the House. It's up to the Senate to conduct the Impeachment Trial. Government 101.

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15 hours ago, gonzoron said:

There wasn't a trial in the House. It's up to the Senate to conduct the Impeachment Trial. Government 101.

I don't believe SF's comment was indicating there was a trial in the U.S. House of Representatives.  His statement indicates the hypocrisy of Mr. Schiff and Mr. Nadler complaining about how "unfair" the U.S. Senate trial is/will be in regards to their partisan behavior & performance during the impeachment hearings in the House.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/schiff-nadler-impeachment-tension-spill-onto-senate-floor

Reading comprehension is your friend,  don't let it be blinded by your "Orange man bad!!!!!" hatred.

 

 

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36 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

I don't believe SF's comment was indicating there was a trial in the U.S. House of Representatives.  His statement indicates the hypocrisy of Mr. Schiff and Mr. Nadler complaining about how "unfair" the U.S. Senate trial is/will be in regards to their partisan behavior & performance during the impeachment hearings in the House.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/schiff-nadler-impeachment-tension-spill-onto-senate-floor

Reading comprehension is your friend,  don't let it be blinded by your "Orange man bad!!!!!" hatred.

 

 

Apples to Oranges. Please explain though, how the Impeachment hearings were "unfair". Witnesses were allowed and encouraged to testify. Many refused, including the subject of the Hearing. 

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17 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Apples to Oranges. Please explain though, how the Impeachment hearings were "unfair". Witnesses were allowed and encouraged to testify. Many refused, including the subject of the Hearing. 

It was, without a doubt, a rushed process.   The House should have taken more time to investigate, gather witnesses, etc.   But no, the entire thing,  being at it's base completely political in nature was all about "impeach the orange man NOW, so it will hurt his re-election chances!"

And again for the record I did not vote for either uni-party candidate in 2016, nor will I in 2020.

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16 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Apples to Oranges. Please explain though, how the Impeachment hearings were "unfair". Witnesses were allowed and encouraged to testify. Many refused, including the subject of the Hearing. 

Executive Privilege - The Democrats certainly could have went to court and argued for those important witnesses to be forced to testify.  (Would not have worked, IMHO but....) They just didn't want to wait since their main goal was to put this in front of the public prior to the 2020 election......

 

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2 minutes ago, swordfish said:

They just didn't want to wait since their main goal was to put this in front of the public prior to the 2020 election...

The whistleblower accomplished that.

 

3 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Executive Privilege

It's a little concerning to me that the Executive Branch is now controlling the Judicial Branch and half of the Legislative Branch. Where are the Constitutionalists when we need them?

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10 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

The whistleblower accomplished that.

Not as much as a formal Senate Impeachment Trial would.

11 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

It's a little concerning to me that the Executive Branch is now controlling the Judicial Branch and half of the Legislative Branch. Where are the Constitutionalists when we need them?

Ask your Congressmen.  Congress is the completely partisan, do-nothing, only care about getting reelected body that has abdicated so much of it's responsibility to the Executive Branch over the decades.  Of course the level of power is ok when it is your side of the uni-party sitting in the Oval Office..........................

 

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17 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

The whistleblower accomplished that.

 

It's a little concerning to me that the Executive Branch is now controlling the Judicial Branch and half of the Legislative Branch. Where are the Constitutionalists when we need them?

This is the dirty little secret that the hacks in the mainstream media are COMPLETELY missing. The courts are being changed and that will be Trumps lasting legacy. He's appointing young and seemingly bright lawyers. 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges

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https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/stop-saying-that-impeachment-is-political

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One of the things often heard about impeachment is that it is essentially a political process. This seeming truth is said with a kind of sleepy sapience, as though only the naïve or the self-deluded would imagine anything otherwise. So, this vein of argument usually goes, if the Democrats fail at the politics of the impeachment of Donald Trump—if they don’t produce enough sexy sound bites, or if, despite the evidence, they can’t persuade Republicans of Trump’s guilt in trying to use the State Department as a shakedown office for his reëlection campaign—then they will have failed utterly, and the blame will lie squarely with them.

Certainly, there’s a sense in which impeachment is a political process, in the same sense that any legal prosecution is partly political. Judges and juries are people with political opinions, and courtrooms are filled with people who share the sentiments and the prejudices of the moment. A prosecutor’s decision to undertake a case is always made with an eye to whether, given a typical jury and the evidence at hand, a conviction can be obtained. The evidence may be good but not good enough to convict. Or the evidence may be good enough but, given the public passions at the time and place of the trial, may not result in a conviction.

In this limited but universal sense, impeachment is political; it should be undertaken with an eye to the likely consequence of the jury’s decision. This is why Nancy Pelosi, a smart politician, was for so long dubious about the merits of launching an impeachment inquiry against Trump. There appeared to be no point in attempting to bring him to justice if justice would not be done.

....

Would the democratic side of the uni-party pushed so hard for impeachment in late 2019 if 2020 was not a presidential election year?  

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4 hours ago, Muda69 said:

It was, without a doubt, a rushed process.   The House should have taken more time to investigate, gather witnesses, etc. 

4 years of investigation from 1994-1998 found that Bill Clinton lied about a blow job. I don't think a longer investigation would have mattered in this case either. 

 

4 hours ago, Muda69 said:

But no, the entire thing,  being at it's base completely political in nature was all about "impeach the orange man NOW, so it will hurt his re-election chances!"

See also "Ken Starr"

4 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Would the democratic side of the uni-party pushed so hard for impeachment in late 2019 if 2020 was not a presidential election year?  

See also 1998. Republicans almost began too early to get Bush appointed President by the Supreme Court.

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2 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

4 years of investigation from 1994-1998 found that Bill Clinton lied about a blow job. I don't think a longer investigation would have mattered in this case either. 

Yes it may have.  Mr. Trump could very possibly have been reelected POTUS in November of 2020, before the investigation had been properly completed.   And he still may, especially if the Senate fails to convict him.

 

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1 minute ago, Muda69 said:

Yes it may have.  Mr. Trump could very possibly have been reelected POTUS in November of 2020, before the investigation had been properly completed.   And he still may, especially if the Senate fails to convict him.

 

Thankfully there will be more than 53 Americans doing the deciding.

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3 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Thankfully there will be more than 53 Americans doing the deciding.

Agreed.  I hope he does not get re-elected.  I also hope the Democratic party candidate does not get elected.

With the short-sided impeachment process introduced by the Democratic wing of uni-party this just opens the doors for more and more impeachments,  wasting more and more lawmakers time and taxpayers money.   If say, Mr. Biden, wins the 2020 presidential election on November 3rd do you not think "ok, how can we impeach this guy?" will be a favored strategy by the GOP on November 4th?

 

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7 hours ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

Muda=Trump Stooge

Night Hawk=leftist/socialist stooge.

And interesting how I can somehow be a "Trump Stooge" when 1) I never voted for him and 2) The vast, vast majority of my comments concerning Mr. Trump are negative in nature. If you can find links here on the GID to the contrary then by all means please post them.

Criticizing the tactics and methods the Democratic side of the uni-party used to impeach Mr. Trump is not a tacit approval of Mr. Trump. Someone of your supposed intelligence should know that.  But of course what your statements reveal is your blind, leftist hatred of our current POTUS.  Such hatred clouds your intelligence, and your judgment.

 I would be using the same criticism if the Republican side of the uni-party  had used similar methods and tactics to impeach Mr. Obama during his presidency.

 

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Did Trump Just Admit To Withholding Material From the Impeachment Process? https://reason.com/2020/01/23/did-trump-just-admit-to-withholding-material-from-the-impeachment-process/

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One of the notable characteristics of President Donald Trump's impeachment trial is that there is little dispute about the underlying charges. 

The first of two articles of impeachment, for instance, charges President Trump with seeking to "pressure the Government of Ukraine" to help him gain a personal political advantage over a likely political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. "Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit."

We know this for a variety of reasons: because of the transcript of a key phone call that Trump had with Ukranian President Zelenskyy; because of recently released government documents showing that government officials were concerned about the legality of delaying the aid funds; because of a Government Accountability Office report laying out a detailed timeline of the delay and finding that it was illegal—and, of course, because both Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Trump's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, have said as much. "I have news for everybody," Mulvaney said last year, when discussing the legality of withholding the funds. "Get over it. There is going to be political influence in foreign policy."  

Also, because Trump himself asked China and Ukraine to investigate Biden while standing in front of news cameras on the White House lawn

That covers the first article of impeachment. This week, Trump all but admitted to the second, which charges that he obstructed Congress by withholding documents and testimony during the House impeachment proceedings. 

The second article says Trump undermined the Constitution by seeking "to arrogate to himself the right to determine the propriety, scope, and nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own conduct, as well as the unilateral prerogative to deny any and all information to the House of Representatives in the exercise of its 'sole Power of Impeachment.'"

Yesterday, when asked about the Senate impeachment trial, Trump appeared to admit to doing exactly that.

As Justin Amash, an independent congressman from Michigan who recently defected from the Republican party after saying that Trump had committed impeachable offenses, noted on Twitter, Trump appeared to be bragging about obstructing Congress: 

"We're doing very well. I got to watch enough. I thought our team did a very good job. But, honestly, we have all the material; they don't have the material."

President Trump brags about obstructing Congress, which is the second article of impeachment.pic.twitter.com/EpfK4GlTVv

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 23, 2020

The White House has since denied that this was a reference to withholding documents, saying he only meant that the evidence was on his side. But it is hard to believe that shortly after an extended Senate argument about whether the impeachment trial rules would allow new evidence and testimony, Trump was merely speaking generally about his defense. 

Trump has been charged with withholding relevant information in a way that undermines Congress' power to investigate him for the purposes of impeachment; his statement yesterday looks very much like an admission that he withheld relevant information in a way that undermines Congress' power to investigate him for the purposes of impeachment. 

That may or may not be cause for removal. Probably the best defense of Trump, or at least the most honest one, is that the charges are essentially accurate, but do not warrant being forced out of office. Politics and personal gain inevitably seep into presidential decision making, this argument goes, and even bad presidential decisions do not necessarily justify removal. Or, as Mulvaney put it: Get over it. 

Still, it is telling that Trump and his allies have all but admitted to the basic charges against him, and that the best defense of Trump involves admitting his guilt. 

 

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