WTF Community

The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

I can’t help it, this summary is dead on and makes me giggle.

2 Likes

Some obfuscation by Rep Nunes tonight on Hannity…

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1202055334379966465?s=19

https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1202079193070284800?s=19

4 Likes

This is all any voter needs to know. Did the President try to cheat in the next election and did he try to cover it up? The report says yes he did and provides ample evidence.

The House Intelligence Committee set out three questions at the beginning of their inquiry, see below

Democrats unveil 3 questions to guide public impeachment hearings

• Did the President request that a foreign leader and government initiate investigations to benefit the President’s personal political interests in the United States, including an investigation related to the President’s political rival and potential opponent in the 2020 U.S. presidential election?

• Did the President – directly or through agents – seek to use the power of the Office of the President and other instruments of the federal government in other ways to apply pressure on the head of state and government of Ukraine to advance the President’s personal political interests, including by leveraging an Oval Office meeting desired by the President of Ukraine or by withholding U.S. military assistance to Ukraine?

• Did the President and his Administration seek to obstruct, suppress or cover up information to conceal from the Congress and the American people evidence about the President’s actions and conduct?

and the report says, yes and provides lists of evidence, see below

Executive Summary

I. The President’s Misconduct: The President Conditioned a White House Meeting and Military Aid to Ukraine on a Public Announcement of Investigations Beneficial to his Reelection Campaign

II. The President’s Obstruction of the House of Representatives’ Impeachment Inquiry: The President Obstructed the Impeachment Inquiry by Instructing Witnesses and Agencies to Ignore Subpoenas for Documents and Testimony

Remember the Judiciary Committee decides to bring Articles of Impeachment, which is why the hearing on Wednesday will center around the grounds for Impeachment.

4 Likes

Tonight Rachel Maddow gave us a dramatic reading of the Table of Contents. :hugs:

4 Likes

Yup…I saw that too. #30,000ftView

Kismet…great insights from you both!

3 Likes

Page 12

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election. As described in this executive summary and the report that follows, President Trump’s scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign. The President demanded that the newly- elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.

During a July 25, 2019, call between President Trump and President Zelensky, President Zelensky expressed gratitude for U.S. military assistance. President Trump immediately responded by asking President Zelensky to “do us a favor though” and openly pressed for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory. In turn, President Zelensky assured President Trump that he would pursue the investigation and reiterated his interest in the White House meeting. Although President Trump’s scheme intentionally bypassed many career personnel, it was undertaken with the knowledge and approval of senior Administration officials, including the President’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. In fact, at a press conference weeks after public revelations about the scheme, Mr. Mulvaney publicly acknowledged that the President directly tied the hold on military aid to his desire to get Ukraine to conduct a political investigation, telling Americans to “get over it.”

President Trump and his senior officials may see nothing wrong with using the power of the Office of the President to pressure a foreign country to help the President’s reelection campaign. Indeed, President Trump continues to encourage Ukraine and other foreign countries to engage in the same kind of election interference today. However, the Founding Fathers prescribed a remedy for a chief executive who places his personal interests above those of the country: impeachment. Accordingly, as part of the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in coordination with the Committees on Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs, were compelled to undertake a serious, sober, and expeditious investigation into whether the President’s misconduct warrants that remedy.

In response, President Trump engaged in an unprecedented campaign of obstruction of this impeachment inquiry. Nevertheless, due in large measure to patriotic and courageous public servants who provided the Committees with direct evidence of the President’s actions, the Committees uncovered significant misconduct on the part of the President of the United States. As required under House Resolution 660, the Intelligence Committee, in consultation with the Committees on Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs, has prepared this report to detail the evidence uncovered to date, which will now be transmitted to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration.

It’s a 300 page report. It’s long. :pensive:

4 Likes

Watch Judiciary Hearing on Constitutional Framework for Impeachment

Legal discussions on the Constitutional tenets which support/oppose this move to impeach President T.

:point_down:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?466833-1/judiciary-hearing-constitutional-framework-impeachment

2 Likes

Let the Judiciary Hearing begin… #NadlerStayStrong

Here’s what you need to know:

President Trump committed impeachable offenses, three scholars invited by Democrats will testify.

Three constitutional scholars invited by Democrats to testify at Wednesday’s impeachment hearings will say that President Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for political gain clearly meet the historical definition of impeachable offenses, according to copies of their opening statements.

The three law professors are appearing in the first impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee as it kicks off a debate about whether to draft articles of impeachment against the president.

Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard, planned to argue that attempts by Mr. Trump to withhold a White House meeting and military assistance from Ukraine as leverage for political favors constitute impeachable conduct, as does the act of soliciting foreign assistance on a phone call with Ukraine’s leader.

“President Trump has committed impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors by corruptly abusing the office of the presidency,” Mr. Feldman planned to say. “Specifically, President Trump abused his office by corruptly soliciting President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce investigations of his political rivals in order to gain personal advantage, including in the 2020 presidential election.”

Michael J. Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina, planned to argue that Mr. Trump “has committed several impeachable offenses” by taking actions regarding Ukraine that were worse than Richard Nixon’s misconduct during Watergate.

“If left unchecked, the president will likely continue his pattern of soliciting foreign interference on his behalf in the next election,” Mr. Gerhardt plans to say, adding that Mr. Trump’s actions “are worse than the misconduct of any prior president.”

Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor, will tell lawmakers that the president’s attempt to “strong arm a foreign leader” would not be considered politics as usual by historical standards.

“It is, instead, a cardinal reason why the Constitution contains an impeachment power,” she planned to say. “Put simply, a candidate for president should resist foreign interference in our elections, not demand it. If we are to keep faith with the Constitution and our Republic, President Trump must be held to account.”

Case against Trump is ‘slipshod’ and premature, scholar invited by Republicans will testify.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who was invited to testify at Wednesday’s impeachment hearing by the committee’s Republicans, will offer the lone dissent, arguing in his opening statement that Mr. Trump should not be impeached.

In a 53-page written statement submitted to the committee, Mr. Turley makes it clear that he is not a supporter of the president and believes that the Ukraine matter warrants investigation. But he plans to say that the Democratic impeachment case is dangerously “slipshod” and premature.

“I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger,” he planned to say. “If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president.”

2 Likes

I tried to watch. Listening to people who sound like they are trying to sell me a “bill of goods” makes me turn it off. (That was when it was turned over to the Republican). I just can’t do it.

Thank you to the folks who listen & post. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.

5 Likes

I am watching. The GOP is doing the usual; making excuses, insisting there’s nothing wrong (even when they say there were things wrong in the same diatribe), and looking to subpoena the whistleblower.

The legal scholars are on now and laying it all out.

https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1202260128721973249




https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1202264506971426817

This statement rips apart Trump’s (and Barr’s) “total immunity” argument utterly.


In a recess now. What they’ve set out is really stunningly effective. In particular were Prof. Karlan invoking Kavanaugh and Prof. Feldman explaining why he changed his mind.

https://twitter.com/minhtngo/status/1202278505418936320

Turley now: "I don’t see anything impeachable here."

Turley in 1998 when Bill Clinton was impeached:

https://twitter.com/grantstern/status/1202273784725725185

https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1202272724263079936

6 Likes

Here comes the R’s line of questioning with Prof. Jonathan Turley starting out by saying that the proof of the bribery is not there and that he’s calling it an amorphous definition, like 'Jazz." Turley also says the Impeachment inquiry has happened too quickly without all the evidence #SeeT’sObstructionOfWitnesses

Approx quote: Turley
“If you make a high crime of an abuse of power, It’s YOUR abuse of Power (Dems/Congress)”

https://twitter.com/JProskowGlobal/status/1202262066716917760?s=20

And Conway’s rebuttal of Proskow’s tweet

https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1202281395885920258?s=20

Update:
Joyce Alene Vance - Law Professor (MSNBC) talking about that Turley says this s an amorphous crime, ie the bribery charge, yet Vance notes he contradicts himself.

https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1202283734097125377?s=20

3 Likes

My take on something Turley just said:

1 Like

Flash back, this Prof Turley during the Clinton Impeachment

3 Likes





The GOP argument now is, again, that this is all partisan.

It is. And that’s sad. Being partisan isn’t inherently a bad thing. The reason WHY it is partisan is what’s important.

The GOP has utterly failed to protect this country or uphold its oath, that’s WHY it is partisan.

5 Likes
4 Likes











3 Likes

Giuliani is trying to get ahead of the Ukraine/Impeachment (fallout) story by meeting with Lutsenko in Ukraine, to get some video footage of the (made-up) Biden “controversy” and make a video to defend the President.

Wonder how much this kind of propaganda will help Rudy/T?..Most definitely with T’s supporters, but legally zilch.

We are always fighting an image campaign…and here’s the crooked Giuliani trying to re-up the facts, give it a positive spin.

WTFery I’d say. :tired_face:

WASHINGTON — Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump’s political rivals.

Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.

The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.

Those claims — some baseless and others with key disputed elements — have been the foundations of the effort by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani to pressure the Ukrainian government to commit itself to investigations that would benefit Mr. Trump heading into his re-election campaign. That effort in turn has led to the impeachment proceedings in the House against the president.

Mr. Giuliani is using the trip, which has not been previously reported, to help prepare more episodes of a documentary series for a conservative television outlet promoting his pro-Trump, anti-impeachment narrative. His latest moves to advance the theories propounded by the prosecutors amount to an audacious effort to give the president’s supporters new material to undercut the House impeachment proceedings and an eventual Senate trial.

It was Mr. Giuliani’s earlier interactions with some of the same Ukrainian characters that set the stage for the impeachment inquiry in the first place, and also led to an investigation by federal prosecutors into whether Mr. Giuliani violated federal lobbying laws.

5 Likes

WTF…???

4 Likes

Here’s the proof of Quid Pro Quo, President Trump and Mick Mulvaney have already admitted to it in public and Sondlands testimony backs up those statements. It’s crazy!

Trump

Mulvaney

Sondland

5 Likes

This is about the President abusing his power to influence the 2020 election as he did in 2016. He’s trying to cheat the people. Impeachment is the only way to stop him and hold him accountable for his cheating, lying ways.

5 Likes