So it looks like schifty and the Bidens aren’t willing to testify, this **** show should be called for what it is and ended already.
fair enough. maybe others will appreciate reading this one https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-corrupt-purposes-impeachment-11579737006?mod=hp_opin_pos_1 The ‘Corrupt Purposes’ Impeachment Why the House logic is a danger to all future Presidents. By The Editorial Board Jan. 22, 2020 6:50 pm ET As House managers make their impeachment case, many Americans will dismiss it all as a partisan effort that hasn’t persuaded the country and will die in the Senate. They have a point. But the precedents that Democrats are setting could live on, so forgive us if we explain how dangerous the House’s impeachment logic is to future Presidents and the Constitution’s separation of powers. Especially pernicious is the new House “corrupt purposes” standard for removing a President from office. The House managers don’t assert that any specific action by President Trump was an abuse of power or a violation of law. They don’t deny he can delay aid to a foreign country or ask a foreign leader to investigate corruption. Presidents do that all the time. Instead they assert in their first impeachment article that Mr. Trump is guilty of “abuse of power” because he committed those acts for “corrupt purposes.” As an aside here, we should repeat that a President doesn’t have to break a specific law to commit an impeachable offense. Mr. Trump’s lawyers are wrong on this point. Presidents were accused of breaking specific laws in America’s three previous impeachments. But under the Constitution a President can commit “high crimes and misdemeanors” if he commits non-criminal acts that exceed his executive authority or if he refuses to execute the law. But this means committing specific acts that are impeachable in and of themselves. Examples might be deploying U.S. troops against political opponents, or suspending habeas corpus without Congressional assent. (Lincoln received a Congressional pass in wartime.) House Democrats are going much further and declaring that Mr. Trump’s acts are impeachable because he did them for “personal political benefit.” He isn’t accused of corruption per se. His Ukraine interventions are said to be corrupt because he intended them to help him win re-election this year. In other words, his actions were impeachable only because his motives were self-serving. Think about this in the context of history and as a precedent. Every President has made foreign-policy decisions that he thinks may help his re-election. That’s what President Obama did in 2012 when he asked Dmitry Medvedev to tell Vladimir Putin to ease up on missile defense until after the election. Mitt Romney was criticizing Mr. Obama for being soft on Mr. Putin, and Mr. Obama wanted a political favor from the dictator to help him win re-election. Was Mr. Obama’s motive also corrupt and thus impeachable? We can guess what Mr. Romney thought at the time, but he didn’t say Mr. Obama should be impeached. He tried to defeat him at the ballot box. As 21 Republican state attorneys general explained in an important letter to the Senate on Wednesday, “It cannot be a legitimate basis to impeach a President for acting in a legal manner that may also be politically advantageous. Such a standard would be cause for the impeachment of virtually every President, past, present, and future.” The AGs add that the “House’s corrupt motives theory is dangerous to democracy because it encourages impeachment whenever the President exercises his constitutional authority in a way that offends the opposing political party, which is predisposed to view his motives with skepticism and motivated by its own motives to regain that very office.” Some sages dismiss this argument as slippery-slope alarmism that won’t come to pass. Their belief is that Mr. Trump is uniquely a threat to constitutional order and a future Congress wouldn’t apply the same logic to a more conventional President. Others want to make impeachment more routine as a check on presidential power. This is wishful thinking. Once unleashed, the corrupt motives theory will become a temptation whenever a President is disliked and down in the polls. The mere threat of common impeachment will make Presidents much more beholden to Congress. With this in mind, the Republican AGs advise the Senate to “explicitly reject” the House’s legal theory. This might take the form of a Senate resolution at the time of acquittal. The crucial point is to reject impeachment as a regular tool of partisan punishment, reserving it for genuine cases of presidential abuse.
Not to forget that the DOD and State Dept had already certified that Ukraine met anti-corruption standards.
This argument was brought up against the Andrew Johnson impeachment as one of the articles was "Unlawfully opposed the will of Congress". There is some merit to this argument but in this case where a foreign power is involved would clearly be in line with one of the main concerns of the Founders. Further in this case where we have aid that is lawfully passed by Congress and with the DOD and State already acknowledging Ukraine had met anti-corruption standards withholding it for personal purposes would constitute abuse of power. While yes all Presidents do things to benefit them politically. To the extent that they do things that go against vital interests of the US, against the law, enacted by another co-equal branch, and certified by their own administration that is where we get into dangerous grounds. As Lincoln once said "The Constitution isn't a suicide pact" and to the extent that impeachment and separation of powers exist the Founders understood that corruption could and would occur and that using things like "the power of the executive" shouldn't be a cover for those.
I'm leaning towards having Joe Biden testify if John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney also testify. Whether Biden is material or not this isn't exactly a judicial trial and if the defense wants Biden to testify as the cost of getting prosecution witnesses then that deference should be made in a political trial. Also what will having Biden there actually add to the defense? I highly doubt Biden will say anything that actually helps the President. It most likely will turn into a "Have you no decency!" moment as Jay Sekulow cross examines Biden about his family. I think McConnel is very aware of the danger of allowing the defense to call the witnesses that they want as he is aware they won't actually add anything to Trump's defense and might very well backfire on them.
Yesterday trump broke his previous record of tweets and retweets (most, whiny tweets in defense of himself)... 160 in a single day. As you can see from today's busy schedule, trump will have a lot of down time (literally the entire day) as he travels to Mar A Lago for what must be the start of yet another extended weekend of golf and tweeting.
I hear you. The 2016 election suggested otherwise. The late Comey bombshell coincided with undecided voters moving toward Trump by 3-4pts in swing states. In an election by a thin margin (Trump won by a razor-thin margin in those swing states), a 3 to 1 ratio among IND in swing states is significant.
They should testify if subpoenaed and I'd make that trade for Bolton and Mulvaney's testimony every day of the week.
"Opening of Trump impeachment trial draws 11 million TV viewers" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...v-viewers-idUSKBN1ZL321?utm_source=reddit.com
Impeachment Doesn’t Require a Crime By THE EDITORS Senate Republicans, by and large, have reached an unspoken consensus about President Trump and Ukraine. He should not have put a temporary freeze on congressionally authorized aid to Ukraine, should not have dabbled with using the aid to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden or a nutty theory about Ukrainian hacking during the 2016 election, and should not have kept defending his “perfect call” as such. At the same time, his conduct does not merit his removal from office — especially since voters will get to pass judgment on that conduct in a few months. It’s a reasonable position, and it’s the case that Republicans ought to make in public. They are inhibited from doing so by the president’s obstinacy. Instead of sticking to the most defensible case for a Senate acquittal of Trump, Republicans from the president on down are making arguments that range from the implausible to the embarrassing. Hence the claim now being advanced half-heartedly by Republicans that presidents cannot be impeached for any abuse of power unless that abuse took the form of a criminal violation of a statute. The consensus of those who have studied this question is to the contrary. Jonathan Turley, the Republicans’ star witness in the House hearings about the constitutional issues raised by impeachment, has repudiated this view. Attorney General William Barr has in the past denied it. The Founding-era debates about impeachment are clear that Congress was to be able to remove a president from office if he had exercised his legal powers in an abusive way. One example that came up during those debates: What if the president tacitly encouraged a crime and then pardoned the perpetrator? The pardon power is arguably unreviewable, and certainly very nearly so. It was left to the judgment of a majority of the House and a supermajority of the Senate, as always under the supervision of the voters, whether a president’s conduct had rendered his continuation in office intolerable. Attempts to impeach presidents have thus frequently combined charges of crimes with charges of non-criminal abuses. A categorical denial of the latter class of charge would do violence to the Constitution and one of its checks on presidential misconduct. Republicans would be better off arguing that in this case the president’s behavior, while objectionable, should be left, as scheduled, to the judgment of the voters directly — an argument that already has the support of most voters in polls and accords with Senate Republicans’ actual beliefs. There is no need for constitutional contortions. https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/impeachment-doesnt-require-a-crime/
It'd be pretty entertaining to watch Joe Biden assert executive privilege when he's asked to explain his interactions with Ukraine as vice president. Trump posted more on Twitter than @NewRoxFan could ever manage in a single day on the bbs!
