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The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

‘We’ve Upped the Ante.’ Why Nancy Pelosi Is Going All in Against Trump

On Dec. 17, the night before the full House would debate and vote on Trump’s impeachment, Pelosi met behind closed doors with top caucus members on the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. She hinted, for the first time, that she was contemplating a curveball: declining to immediately transmit the impeachment articles to the Senate after the House passed them. “The rule empowers the Speaker to be able to decide how to send the articles and when to send the articles over to the Senate,” she said, according to an aide who was in the room. “My view is we don’t know enough about what they are going to do. We want to see what [is] their level of fairness and openness and the rest.”

Pelosi, according to an aide, had been mulling the tactic since she heard former Nixon White House counsel John Dean float the idea on CNN on Dec. 5. In the committee meeting, she added that she believed McConnell would be motivated to move. “Somebody said to me today that he may not even take up what we send. [But] then [Trump] will never be vindicated,” she said, according to the aide in the room. “He will be impeached forever. Forever. No matter what the Senate does.”

The following day, Pelosi presided over the floor vote on impeachment, wearing a striking black suit to project solemnity, accessorized with a large gold brooch of the Mace of the Republic, a symbol of the House. When scattered cheers broke out inside the chamber after the first article was approved, she sternly and silently shushed them with a glare and a sharp gesture. After the vote, she announced that she did not plan to transmit the articles right away, saying she could not determine how to appoint House impeachment managers until the Senate decides on its rules for the trial.

McConnell has mocked the idea that Pelosi or Schumer can shape the Senate trial to their liking. But he’s also said he won’t start it until Pelosi sends the articles, and it’s clear from Trump’s tweets and statements that the unresolved situation bothers him. Moreover, the delay is allowing facts to emerge. Over the two-week holiday break, newly unredacted emails showed Pentagon officials worrying about the legality of Trump’s effort to withhold military aid from Ukraine. And on Jan. 6, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, potentially a key witness to Trump’s alleged actions toward Ukraine, announced he would testify before the Senate if subpoenaed. On Jan. 7, McConnell announced that he had enough Republican votes to begin the trial, and Democrats in both chambers appeared to be getting restless–but still Pelosi refused to budge.

The gambit is reminiscent of another Pelosi maneuver designed to exploit Trump’s insecurities. Pelosi retook the speakership a year ago amid a government shutdown triggered by Trump’s demand for border-wall funding. She refused to negotiate on the matter until the government reopened. As the stalemate dragged on, Pelosi seized on an unexpected source of leverage: she postponed Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress, knowing that he prized it as a televised set piece showcasing his power.

Then she stubbornly waited out her adversary. “The President tried to break us in January [2019] by throwing us into a government shutdown at the same time we were transitioning into the majority,” says Hakeem Jeffries, a Democratic Congressman from New York who serves as caucus chairman. “We held together, and instead of breaking us, we broke him. It ended in unconditional surrender.”

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Dear Colleague on Next Steps on Impeachment

JANUARY 10, 2020

PRESS RELEASE

Dear Democratic Colleague,

For weeks now, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has been engaged in tactics of delay in presenting transparency, disregard for the American people’s interest for a fair trial and dismissal of the facts.

Yesterday, he showed his true colors and made his intentions to stonewall a fair trial even clearer by signing on to a resolution that would dismiss the charges. A dismissal is a cover-up and deprives the American people of the truth. Leader McConnell’s tactics are a clear indication of the fear that he and President Trump have regarding the facts of the President’s violations for which he was impeached.

The American people have clearly expressed their view that we should have a fair trial with witnesses and documents, with more than 70 percent of the public stating that the President should allow his top aides to testify. Clearly, Leader McConnell does not want to present witnesses and documents to Senators and the American people so they can make an independent judgment about the President’s actions.

Honoring our Constitution, the House passed two articles of impeachment against the President – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – to hold the President accountable for asking a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 elections for his own political and personal gain.

While the House was able to obtain compelling evidence of impeachable conduct, which is enough for removal, new information has emerged, which includes:

  • On December 20, new emails showed that 91 minutes after Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, a top Office of Management and Budget (OMB) aide asked the Department of Defense to “hold off” on sending military aid to Ukraine.
  • On December 29, revelations emerged about OMB Director and Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s role in the delay of aid, the effort by lawyers at the OMB, the Department of Justice and the White House to justify the delay, and the alarm that the delay caused within the Administration.
  • On January 2, newly-unredacted Pentagon emails, which we had subpoenaed and the President had blocked, raised serious concerns by Trump Administration officials about the legality of the President’s hold on aid to Ukraine.
  • And on January 6, just this week, former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton announced he would comply with a subpoena compelling his testimony. His lawyers have stated he has new relevant information.

I am very proud of the courage and patriotism exhibited by our House Democratic Caucus as we support and defend the Constitution. I have asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to be prepared to bring to the Floor next week a resolution to appoint managers and transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate. I will be consulting with you at our Tuesday House Democratic Caucus meeting on how we proceed further.

In an impeachment trial, every Senator takes an oath to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.” Every Senator now faces a choice: to be loyal to the President or the Constitution.

No one is above the law, not even the President.

Thank you for your leadership For The People.

Sincerely,

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-impeachment-live-updates/2020/01/10/e65f5f16-3398-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html

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:eyes:

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Speaking of, here’s their latest argument.

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Osama bin Laden & al-Awlaki were terrorists, like al-Baghdadi. Which is why no Democrat protested al-Baghdadi’s death. Muammar Gaddafi was killed by his own people, NOT Obama. This is a patent falsehood; if Obama had, it would have been illegal. Like killing Soleimani was.



Trump’s Deputy Press Secretary Mocked After Falsely Claiming Obama Killed Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi: ‘Just do a Google Search’

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Cross-posting :pray:

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Trump wants to invoke executive privilege when and if Bolton ever testifies.

Mitch wants to outright ban witnesses and documents in the trial.

Their fear says everything.






Hannity Appears to Threaten to Give Out GOP Senators’ Phone Numbers if They Allow Impeachment Witnesses

“Don’t make me start giving out the phone number!"

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U.S. Warns Iraq It Risks Losing Access to Key Bank Account if Troops Told to Leave

Loss of access to New York Fed account, where international oil sale revenue is kept, could creating cash crunch in Iraq’s financial system

And here is Trump bluntly stating our troops in Syria are there to take the oil.

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:eyes: Do it

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Esper Says He ‘Didn’t See’ Specific Evidence Iranians Planned to Attack 4 Embassies

Despite admitting he had NO evidence to support this, Defense Sec. Mark Esper says he believes Iran was planning an attack on 4 embassies and that Trump believed it.

This is basically Trump’s sycophants yet again circling the wagons to support a Trump lie, only unlike #SharpieGate it resulted in real deaths and international turmoil instead of amusing memes.

The original lie was a planned attack on our Baghdad embassy; Trump later added 3 more without naming specific locations.

President Trump had claimed that a planned attack on four American embassies was a justification for the strike on an Iranian general.



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We are now the world’s largest protection racket. Trump Mob Inc.


A brief moment of levity that is also very, very sadly accurate:

The UK is abandoning its alliance with Trump as the United States ‘withdraws from its leadership around the world’

In a statement certain to shock nobody, Trump is entirely in favor of the Senate flat dismissing the charges without a trial.

I suspect he doesn’t comprehend that if the Senate does this, he’s still impeached. This would explain his persistent argument that he shouldn’t be.
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Good to see I am not the only one by far to recognize that Trump thinks he can wriggle out of his status as #ImpeachedForLife .

Pelosi says Trump ‘impeached for life’ despite McConnell’s ‘gamesmanship,’ ‘coverup’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-says-trump-impeached-for-life-despite-mcconnells-gamesmanship-coverup/2020/01/12/4e75531a-3544-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html

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:eyes: maybe we’ll learn more about Nunes? :joy:


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House Democrats will discuss on Tuesday morning how to move forward, Pelosi said on Sunday, with the chamber possibly voting to send the charges to the Senate later that day.

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JOINT STATUS REPORT: AMERICAN OVERSIGHT V. DOE – PERRY AND BROUILLETTE’S UKRAINE RECORDS AND COMMUNICATIONS

Joint Status Report filed by American Oversight and the Department of Energy in American Oversight’s lawsuit seeking the release of Secretary Rick Perry’s communications with high-level Ukraine officials; with outside groups associated with U.S. energy interests in Ukraine; and with particular associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani. American Oversight is also requesting records regarding the U.S. delegation, led by Perry, to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s inauguration, including the records of former Chief of Staff Brian McCormack.

The Department of Energy agreed to make the first production of records on Jan. 28, 2020, prioritizing Perry’s and McCormack’s communications as well as records related to the delegation. Subsequent productions are scheduled for Feb. 4 and March 16.

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This is outrageous. The Russians are not our friends – again and again, we see them taking extraordinary measures to mess up our country any way they can. In this case, are they looking to release dirt on Biden during the 2020 election cycle, the same way they released dirt on Hilary Clinton in 2016? Could they be fabricating dirt? Could they be destroying exculpatory records? Who knows. One thing we do know is that Trump appears to be doing little or nothing to protect our elections or the cyber infra-structure of our government and businesses.

With President Trump facing an impeachment trial over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, Russian military hackers have been boring into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the affair, according to security experts.

The hacking attempts against Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served, began in early November, as talk of the Bidens, Ukraine and impeachment was dominating the news in the United States.

It is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for. But the experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

The Russian tactics are strikingly similar to what American intelligence agencies say was Russia’s hacking of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, once they had the emails, the Russians used trolls to spread and spin the material, and built an echo chamber to widen its effect.

Then, as now, the Russian hackers from a military intelligence unit known formerly as the G.R.U., and to private researchers by the alias “Fancy Bear,” used so-called phishing emails that appear designed to steal usernames and passwords, according to Area 1, the Silicon Valley security firm that detected the hacking. In this instance, the hackers set up fake websites that mimicked sign-in pages of Burisma subsidiaries, and have been blasting Burisma employees with emails meant to look like they are coming from inside the company.

The hackers fooled some of them into handing over their login credentials, and managed to get inside one of Burisma’s servers, Area 1 said.

“The attacks were successful,” said Oren Falkowitz, a co-founder of Area 1, who previously served at the National Security Agency. Mr. Falkowitz’s firm maintains a network of sensors on web servers around the globe — many known to be used by state-sponsored hackers — which gives the firm a front-row seat to phishing attacks, and allows them to block attacks on their customers.

“The timing of the Russian campaign mirrors the G.R.U. hacks we saw in 2016 against the D.N.C. and John Podesta,” the Clinton campaign chairman, Mr. Falkowitz said. “Once again, they are stealing email credentials, in what we can only assume is a repeat of Russian interference in the last election.” …

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Cross-posting :pray:

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Mmmm… :thinking: Interesting times. The cynic in me says we’ll never see witnesses during the the Senate trial, and then along comes an article like this that offers just a little glimmer of hope. Could this all be posturing by vulnerable Republican Senators just to give the appearance of being fair (à la the Kavanaugh “investigation”)? We’ll find out soon!

The White House is preparing for some Republican senators to join Democrats in voting to call witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial, which could get underway in the coming days.

Senior White House officials tell CBS News they increasingly believe that at least four Republicans, and likely more, will vote to call witnesses. In addition to Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and possibly Cory Gardner of Colorado, the White House also views Rand Paul of Kentucky as a “wild card” and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as an “institutionalist” who might vote to call witnesses, as one official put it.

Last week, Collins said she was working with a “fairly small group” of GOP senators to allow new testimony, adding that her colleagues “should be completely open to calling witnesses.” Romney has expressed an interest in hearing from former national security adviser John Bolton, who has said he would testify under subpoena. Murkowski said last week that the Senate should proceed as it did during the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial.

Gardner and Alexander have both said the Senate trial should be fair and impartial. Paul has said the president should be able to call his own witnesses, including the whistleblower whose complaint about Ukraine sparked the impeachment inquiry in the first place.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the question of whether to call new witnesses in the trial would be decided by the full Senate after the trial gets underway. A simple majority of 51 votes will be needed to approve motions to call witnesses, meaning Democrats would need to convince four out of the 53 Republicans in the Senate to vote with them to compel testimony. …

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That makes four. :crossed_fingers: But is if it drops back down to three, it’s my understanding that Chief Justice Roberts will break tie votes during the trial.

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More articles for this one. Wow.



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