Archive for December, 2019
Impeachment Insanity Insults Independents Integrity — Videos
Impeachment Insanity Insults Independents Integrity — Videos
Trump impeached: The votes, the reaction and what’s next
Trump reacts to impeachment vote at Michigan rally
Trump impeachment: Mitch McConnell speaks on the Senate floor | FULL
Pelosi wants the Senate to clean up the House’s work: Grassley
Robert Ray: Pelosi doesn’t have power to dictate what the Senate will do
Jordan and Biggs on Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to submit articles of impeachment to the Senate
President Trump: “Democrats … are declaring their deep
hatred and disdain for the American voter.”
Ratcliffe: Trump didn’t get caught, Schiff got caught with the whistleblower
Michigan Trump supporters voice their opinions on impeachment efforts
Why Trump supporters say they’re sticking by their president
Schiff met with boos, angry constituents at town hall
Mitch McConnell threatens to CANCEL Donald Trump’s Senate trial if ‘scared’ Nancy Pelosi does not hand over ‘slapdash’ articles of impeachment – as Speaker slams him as a ‘ROGUE leader’ and president gloats he will be cleared by ‘default’
- Nancy Pelosi forced the Trump impeachment across the finish line Wednesday
- Now the process moves to a U.S. Senate trial but Pelosi said she’s in no hurry
- She blasted Senate leader Mitch McConnell for saying he’s not an ‘impartial’ juror, and declared she won’t hand him the baton without a pledge of ‘fairness’
- Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing for witness subpoenas that Republicans don’t want to agree to
- Impeachment trial can’t start until Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy choose ‘managers’ to carry the House’s case to the Senate
- McConnell slammed Pelosi in a floor speech and warned the Senate’s more patient pace will have a ‘calming’ influence after ‘slapdash’ impeachment
- President Donald Trump warned that ‘[t]he Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it’s Senate’s call!’
Mitch McConnell threatened on Thursday to cancel Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate if ‘scared’ Nancy Pelosi refuses to send him the formal articles of impeachment that Democrats passed Wednesday night.
The Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority leader went to war over next steps in the impeachment process, with Pelosi slamming McConnell as a ‘rogue leader’—and he blasted her indictment of the president as ‘slapdash’ and ‘unfair.’
The dispute exploded into the open the morning after Democrats voted to impeach Trump, with the president bragging he could prevaIl by ‘default.’
‘If the Do Nothing Democrats decide, in their great wisdom, not to show up, they would lose by Default!,’ Trump argued on Twitter of his upcoming Senate trial, which is now in doubt.
Pelosi has to transmit the articles of impeachment and appoint ‘managers’ to prosecute the president. She offered no timeline, saying she wanted to see the Senate’s plan for a ‘fair trial,’ effectively holding the articles over McConnell’s and Trump’s heads.
McConnell, who previously said he wanted to hold a trial in January, responded: ‘It’s beyond me how the Speaker and Democratic Leader in the Senate think withholding the articles of impeachment and not sending them over gives them leverage.’
‘Frankly, I’m not anxious to have the trial. If she thinks her case is so weak she doesn’t want to send it over, throw me into that briar patch.’
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers are exploring the legal question of whether or not Trump has even been impeached since Pelosi hasn’t sent over the articles, Bloomberg News reported.
They argue, based on how the impeachment process is laid out in the Constitution, an impeachment isn’t formalized until the House reports the charges to the Senate.
Open warfare: Nancy Pelosi slammed Mitch McConnell as a ‘rogue leader’ and he called her articles of impeachment ‘slapdash’ and ‘unfair’ as the two clashed over the Senate trial of Donald Trump
Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson are both labeled as ‘impeached’ even though neither president was convicted in their respective Senate trials.
The legal and historic argument was a president is impeached when the House approves articles of impeachment. But the additional element of the transfer of the articles to the Senate adds a legal question that could require a court answer if the articles aren’t transmitted soon.
Meanwhile, McConnell and the president both blasted Pelosi for refusing to move to the next step, with Trump unleashing a storm of tweets and retweets and venting: ‘PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT.’
The president also charged Democrats with being ‘ashamed’ of the impeachment articles.
‘They don’t want to put them in because they’re ashamed of them,’ he said Thursday in the Oval Office.
McConnell also criticized Democrats on the Senate floor, accusing them of creating what he called an ‘unfair, unfinished product’— charges that stemmed from ‘partisan rage.’
Calling Pelosi’s work ‘constitutionally incoherent,’ he said impeaching a president on the basis of political disagreements would ‘invite an endless parade of impeachable trials’ in the future, making House leaders ‘free to toss up a jump-ball every time they feel angry.’
‘She’s failed the country,’ McConnell said.
‘It was like the speaker called up Chairman [Jerrold] Nadler and ordered up “One impeachment, rushed delivery, please”.’
Pelosi herself held a press conference after McConnell spoke and offered no hint on when she would move.
‘Just to get this off the table right away, we impeached the president immediately and everybody was on to the next thing,’ she said.
‘The next thing will be when we see the process that is set forth in the Senate. Then we’ll know the number of managers that we may have to go forward and who we would choose.’
And she grew testy as reporters pressed her for more details on when the two articles of impeachment will end up on McConnell’s desk.
‘I’m not going to answer anymore questions on this. Clearly you understand when we see what their process is we will know who and how many we want to send over, not until then. I’m not going to go there anymore,’ Pelosi said.
But she did react angrily to McConnell’s speech, saying: ‘I saw some – I didn’t see it – but heard some of what Mitch McMconnell said today and it reminded me that our founders, when they wrote the constitution, they suspected that there could be a rogue president.
‘ I don’t think they suspected that we could have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time.’
In the Senate, McConnell declared that ‘their slapdash process has concluded in the first purely partisan presidential impeachment since the wake of the Civil War.’
Citing previous House votes that fell short of authorizing impeachment inquiries, he said Democrats had ‘tried to impeach President Trump for being impolite to the press, for being mean to professional athletes, for changing President Obama’s policy on transgender people in the military.’
‘All of these things were high crimes and misdemeanors according to the Democrats,’ he said.
McConnell cited Democrats’ earlier pledges to impeach Trump as proof that Wednesday’s vote ‘was not some neutral judgment that Democrats came to with great reluctance. It was the predetermined end of a partisan crusade that began before President Trump was even nominated, let alone sworn in.’
House Democrats have begun pressing Pelosi to force the Senate to tailor the upcoming constitutional trial to their wishes—by refusing to send the articles of impeachment to McConnell until he agrees to their terms.
McConnell called her bluff, saying she’s afraid to hand him the baton because she knows the articles are weak.
‘Pelosi suggested that House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate,’ he will say, mocking her suggestion in a post-vote press conference that she’ll hold the two articles over his head until he agrees to a ‘fair’ trial.
In response Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader accused McConnell of offering no defense of Trump’s actions.
He renewed his call for witnesses at the trial saying: ‘Is the president’s case so weak that none of the President’s men can defend him under oath?’
And echoing McConnell’s criticism of ‘the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history,’ Schumer said the Republicans were ‘plotting the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment trial.
A defiant Trump partially quoted the Senate’s rules for impeaching President Andrew Johnson in 1868, saying in a tweet that ‘[t]he Senate shall set the time and place of the trial.’
‘The Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it’s Senate’s call!’ he warned, saying they would ‘lose by default’ if they decided to ignore whatever schedule McConnell sets.
‘PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!’ Trump tweeted in a standalone message.
McConnell said Schumer has been ‘searching for ways the Senate could step out of our proper role and try to fix House Democrats’ failures for them.’
George Washington is said to have told Thomas Jefferson that the U.S. Senate was designed to be a calming counterpoint to the more raucous House of Representatives, in the way a teacup’s saucer ‘cools’ a hot beverage.
McConnell, famous for embracing a plodding style when key legislation is on his desk, leaned on the oft-quoted ‘cooling saucer of democracy’—saying that the U.S. Constitution’s framers ‘built the Senate to provide stability’ and ‘[t]o keep partisan passions from boiling over. Moments like this are why the United States Senate exists.’
Pelosi told reporters after adjourning the House of Representatives on Wednesday night that she’s in no hurry to send the two articles of impeachment to McConnell for a trial. Her caucus passed them without any Republican votes, accusing Trump of abusing his power and showing open contempt for Democrats’ investigation by blocking witnesses and document demands.
The Republican-led Senate owns the next chapter of the saga, a trial where Chief Justice John Roberts will preside. An unlikely two-thirds supermajority is required to convict the president and remove him from office.
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, expects his Republican majority to exonerate Trump. But that can’t happen until impeachment ‘managers,’ duos chosen by both parties, present the Senate with the twin impeachment articles.
Pelosi said Wednesday night that she won’t be ready to let go of the process until McConnell demonstrates the trial will be ‘fair’—and she’s nowhere near convinced yet.
The Washington Post quoted Oregon Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer overnight saying he has talked to three dozen Democratic lawmakers who favor ’rounding out the record and spending the time to do this right.’
‘At a minimum, there ought to be an agreement about access to witnesses, rules of the game, timing,’ Blumenauer said of the upcoming Senate trial.
And an unnamed Democrat told the newspaper that Democrats are discussing ‘serious concern about whether there will be a fair trial on the Senate side.’
Impeachment managers are appointed via House resolutions; Thursday is the last day the House will be in session until January 7.
‘So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,’ she warned. ‘So hopefully it will be fairer. And when see what that is, we’ll send our managers.’
‘Let me tell you what I don’t consider a fair trial,’ Pelosi said as she read from a piece of paper an aide handed her.
‘This is what I don’t consider a fair trial, that Leader McConnell has stated that he’s not an impartial juror, that he’s going to take his ‘cues’ from the White House, and he is working in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office.’
In Michigan, a sweat-glowing Trump said during a raucous campaign rally that he expects no drama.
‘The Republican Party has never been so affronted, but they’ve never been so united as they are right now, ever. Never,’ the president said.
‘And I know the senators and they’re great guys. And women too. We have some great women, we have great guys, they’re great people. They love this counry. They’re going to do the right thing.’
‘Americans will show up by the tens of millions next year to vote Pelosi the hell out of office,’ Trump boasted, calling for the restoration of a Republican House majority.
In the meantime, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is pressing McConnell for permission to call a list of witnesses who Democrats want to hear from.
House Democrats denied Republicans the ability to call witnesses of their choice in Intelligence and Judiciary Committee hearings during the impeachment process.
Pelosi’s gambit could be resolved once Schumer has exhausted his leverage.
‘We have done what we set out to do,’ she said, adding that ‘right now, the president is impeached.’
‘We’ll see what happens over there.’
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )