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The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

Behind the Scenes of Impeachment: Crammed Offices, Late Nights, Cold Pizza

I love a good behind the scenes read. Question, can we send them better food?

But food has been arriving like a perpetual potluck: Brownies, cookies, Indian curries, pies, endless coffee. A leftover Thanksgiving turkey sits in a Judiciary Committee fridge, a relic of a holiday spent typing. Like so much impeachment planning, you take what comes, expect the unexpected and, in many cases, the very much expected.

“It tends to be pizza,” Mr. Swalwell said of the go-to sustenance in the run-up to the hearing. But you never know, hope springs eternal for a bit of variety, maybe something different before Monday.

“I’m just looking for a break,” Mr. Swalwell said, “from pizza.”

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Schiff: Pence aide provided new impeachment evidence — but VP’s office classified it

A national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence submitted additional classified evidence to House impeachment investigators about a phone call between Pence and Ukraine’s president, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff revealed Friday.

In a letter to Pence, Schiff (D-Calif.) asked the vice president to declassify supplemental testimony from the aide, Jennifer Williams, about Pence’s Sept. 18 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, arguing that there is no “legitimate basis” to keep it secret.

“The Office of the Vice President’s decision to classify ‘certain portions’ of the Sept. 18 call … cannot be justified on national security or any other legitimate grounds we can discern,” Schiff wrote to Pence, requesting a response by Dec. 11.

Schiff indicated that Williams recalled the relevant information about Pence’s phone call after her closed-door deposition on Nov. 7 and wished to convey it to impeachment investigators. The letter indicates Williams submitted the supplemental filing on Nov. 26, a week after she testified publicly.

“Having reviewed the supplemental submission, the committee strongly believes that there is no legitimate basis for the Office of the Vice President to assert that the information … is classified,” Schiff added in his letter to Pence, whose office has refused to turn over a slew of documents that investigators requested in October.

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Went looking for the Friday letter and found this amazing cache of letters a documents! I wish every committee was this organized online.

If anyone finds a link to Schiff’s Friday letter to the VP, please post it here.

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This is what taking the high road looks like.

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Schiff’s Letter to VP :point_down:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aC5jqUI_BM5_gNye0ROfE262BXvD1dsF/view

Found it in this TalkingPointsMemo article.

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cross posting for you @dragonfly9

This was expected from RBG

POLITICO

Justice Ginsburg temporarily halts Trump financial records subpoena

The stay is ordered until 5 p.m. on Dec. 13.

The stay is ordered until 5 p.m. on Dec. 13, and the court ordered that a response must be filed on or before Dec. 11 by 11 a.m.

The emergency filing came after a federal appeals court in New York ruled on Tuesday that Deutsche Bank and Capital One should comply with subpoenas from the House Financial Services and House Intelligence committees seeking information about Trump’s finances.

The House subpoenas seek documents including tax returns, evidence of suspicious activity and, in the case of Deutsche Bank, any internal communications regarding Trump and his ties to foreign individuals.

@MissJava - Can I ask you to kindly ask uou to put under Impeachment plz.

These are tied to uncovering T’s financial links with any foreign entities he seems to be beholden to or perhaps the 'smoking gun."

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12/07/19 PRESS RELEASE: Monday: House Judiciary Hearing to Receive Counsel Presentations of Evidence in the Impeachment Inquiry of President Donald Trump

On Monday, December 9, 2019 , the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to receive presentations from counsels to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Judiciary Committee, as authorized by the House of Representatives under H. Res. 660. Today, Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) released the names of the counsels who will present before the Committee:

House Committee on the Judiciary

Barry Berke
Majority Counsel

Stephen Castor
Minority Counsel

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Daniel Goldman
Majority Counsel

Stephen Castor
Minority Counsel

Pursuant to the Judiciary Committee procedures adopted under H. Res. 660, Monday’s hearing will proceed in two phases. First, Majority and Minority counsel for the Judiciary Committee will present opening statements for up to one hour, equally divided. Second, Majority and Minority counsel for the Intelligence Committee will present for up to 90 minutes, equally divided. Majority and Minority counsel for the Intelligence Committee will then take questions from the Committee.

Date: Monday, December 9, 2019

Time: 9:00 a.m. EST

Location: 1100 Longworth House Office Building
Washington D.C.

Livestream: The House Judiciary Committee hearing will stream live here.

116th Congress

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Thank you…!

:flashlight::open_book:

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LA Times - endorsed Impeachment. “We’ve seen enough. Trump should be impeached.”
Boston Globe -endorsed Impeachment “make clear that the answer is an urgent yes” to the question of “whether President Trump’s misconduct is severe enough that Congress should exercise that impeachment power, less than a year before the 2020 election.”
NY Daily News “The truth hurts: The House Intelligence Committee presents a coherent and compelling case for impeachment.”
Chicago Tribune - Wants Censure
USA Today - Suggest T has no defense

NY Times
Washington Post
"But both have been critical of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and efforts to stonewall the inquiry, a process the New York Times editorial board endorsed in late September.

  • The Los Angeles Times editorial board on Saturday called for President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
  • Less than a week after the impeachment inquiry transitioned into a new phase in the House Judiciary Committee, the Times’ editorial board wrote: “We’ve seen enough. Trump should be impeached.”
  • A growing list of major newspapers are publicly calling for Trump’s impeachment, while criticizing his dealings with Ukraine and efforts to stonewall the impeachment inquiry.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board on Saturday called for President Donald Trump to be impeached, joining an expanding list of major newspapers offering public support for either Trump’s impeachment or the impeachment inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine.

Less than a week after the impeachment inquiry transitioned into a new phase in the House Judiciary Committee, the Times’ editorial board wrote: “We’ve seen enough. Trump should be impeached.”

"The Times’ editorial board was a reluctant convert to the impeachment cause," the paper’s editorial board said, citing concerns about how divisive the impeachment against Trump could be and the high probability he’d ultimately be acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.

"But those concerns must yield to the overwhelming evidence that Trump perverted US foreign policy for his own political gain," the Times’ editorial board added. "That sort of misconduct is outrageous and corrosive of democracy. It can’t be ignored by the House, and it merits a full trial by the Senate on whether to remove him from office."

The Boston Globe earlier this week also called for Trump’s impeachment, with its editorial board writing that the results of the House Intelligence Committee’s inquiry "make clear that the answer is an urgent yes" to the question of "whether President Trump’s misconduct is severe enough that Congress should exercise that impeachment power, less than a year before the 2020 election."
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Some papers have been less direct, while still leaning toward support for impeachment. The New York Daily News editorial board, for example, wrote on Tuesday: "The truth hurts: The House Intelligence Committee presents a coherent and compelling case for impeachment."

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune has said that both chambers of Congress should censure Trump over his dealings with Ukraine, as opposed to taking the historic action of making him the third president in US History to be impeached.

And USA Today’s editorial board earlier this week said the fact Trump and his legal team have refused to participate in the House Judiciary Committee’s is a “damning argument in itself,” adding that when the reaction to the damning allegations against the president "consists primarily of name-calling and tweeting and denouncing and deflecting, it’s hard to avoid concluding that the White House has no substantive defense to offer."

The Washington Post and The New York Times, perhaps the most prominent papers in the country, have not explicitly called for Trump’s impeachment. But both have been critical of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and efforts to stonewall the inquiry, a process the New York Times editorial board endorsed in late September.

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Trump’s attorney Giuliani collects more dirt on visit to Kyiv

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WATCH: Hearing on Evidence in Impeachment Inquiry

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the evidence in the on-going impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?467123-1/hearing-evidence-impeachment-inquiry&live

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https://gen.medium.com/running-covert-propaganda-against-americans-is-illegal-trump-tried-it-anyway-c324133b218a


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Live updates,

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‘Full of unknowns’: Mitch McConnell blocked by his own party from calling impeachment witnesses Trump wants for Senate trial



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The IG Report is out. It decimates all of Trump’s talking points, showing that the Russia investigation was rooted in serious concerns and proper methodology in every single instance.

It shows that, though there were oddities and issues in the wiretap of Trump campaign aide Carter Page, very little info came from that direction and ultimately the Russia investigation in every facet was NOT politically motivated and was rooted in sound, definite knowledge and intel.

The FBI had been entirely vindicated of the wrong-doing and political bias Trump has long accused them of, thanks to an investigation TRUMP insisted on. This could result in a solid third article on Obstruction of Justice.

FBI wiretap of Trump campaign aide was riddled with errors, but Russia probe was legally justified, IG report finds

Inspector general report says FBI had ‘authorized purpose’ to investigate Trump campaign’s Russia ties but finds some wrongdoing

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/inspector-general-report-trump-russia-investigation/2019/12/09/d5940d88-184c-11ea-a659-7d69641c6ff7_story.html

Justice Department watchdog releases report on origins of Russia investigation

AG Barr Made Last-Minute, ‘Highly Unusual’ Decision to Alter OIG Russia Report

In direct opposition to the IG report, “US attorney general Bill Barr says the report of DoJ inspector general, Michael Horowitz, shows that the “FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a US presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions.”


Link to that particular section: https://gu.com/p/cpqy9/stw


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Full OIG Report

READ: OIG Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation

And

READ: Statement by Attorney General William P. Barr on the Inspector General’s Report of the Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation

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What a twist!

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