Pelosi is waiting for permission from someone/group, and those someones aren’t the American People.
Yeah, well – Rudy has his own reality.
2 Likes
Have any news-talkers pointed out that Barr stated Mueller could have charged Trump . . . after Mueller resigned?
I know, but you went so heavy with your own snark that I couldn’t help it haha
Someone should tell Nancy: the the swing-district people who elected democrats did it so that democrats would get rid of Trump, and then fix the ACA, and all the other legislation Nancy is working on so hard even tho she knows it’ll never ever ever even be voted on in the Senate.
Voters know -as Pelosi ought to know- that nothing will ever be done to benefit them so long as Trump is president and the treasonous GOP is running things.
So you’re for the ‘hanging’, yes?
Except they’re also very busy doing things like holding hearings on other things, like taking Pharma to task for the ridiculous prices of Truvada ($2K in the US, $8 in Australia) despite the American people having funded development, testing and approval of the drugs and programs associated with their distribution.
If you really want impeachment to be the ONLY thing they’re working on, then sure, I guess that’s a position to take, but it’s a tough one to explain away in 2020.
4 Likes
And you know I hope that impeaching Trump does nothing toward getting rid of him.
1 Like
I’m for impeachment now.
Actually, I think Pelosi is just waiting for the situation to “ripen,” for the Democratic committees to put out enough evidence to build the momentum in the public mind for impeachment. Timing is everything, and I think at the moment, Pelosi has a good sense of what the timing needs to be.
You want to strike while the iron is hot, but you don’t want to strike before it has a chance to heat up.
6 Likes
Are you for the inquiry or the vote?
dear god, don’t let this guy be put in charge of impeachment.
and god, please, please please make it a select committee – with people like Katie Porter on it.
“Part of the function of Congress, just the same as the Watergate hearings 40 years ago, [is] to have a dialogue with the American people so people can make informed decisions and know what’s going on,” Nadler said. “It’s very important that he, to a television audience and to the American people, state it and answer questions about it, even if there is no new information.”
uh, no. Read your constitution. Public hearings are not a dialogue with the American people. They are a means of gathering information that Congress needs in performing its duties and exercising its powers. Its not a publicity stunt, or a media event.
And the best way to get Robert Mueller to “respect” Trump’s executive privilege claims is to do exactly what Jerry Nadler is doing right now, and frame Mueller’s testimony as a way to gather public support for an impeachment inquiry…
You’re straining waaaaaay too hard again. You’re going to get a brain hernia.
Nadler is 100% correct that the hearings process needs to be used to inform the public. Read the fucking article about Amash’s idiot constituents. We need to sway the public whether you like it or not. Frankly, you appear to want us to act before we’ve swayed the public and it makes me question your motives, because practical reality should be controlling our decisions here, not ideological partisan butthurt.
6 Likes
and this is why I’ve been saying all along that an impeachment inquiry should be done by a select committee. Make it small, and limit GOP participation – and tell any GOP member that there is a single mission of the committee, and that is to gather evidence relevant to Trump’s commission of impeachable offenses.
And IF they are allowed to question witnesses, they will do so with that single purpose in mind.
And if they stray from that purpose, their mikes will be turned off, and the chairperson will dismiss that person from the committee itself.
2 Likes
Democrats really, really, really, need to take the Senate as well, no matter who wins the presidency. If the Democrats win the presidency but don’t take the Senate, then nothing is going to get done for at least the first two years. Mitch will just sit on his hands, the way he did once he had the majority when Obama was president. And if, God forbid, Trump wins a second term it is absolutely imperative the the Democrats have both houses of Congress to keep him from doing any worse harm to the country than he has already done.
That’s why I would much prefer that some of these guys running for the Democratic nomination, the ones in red states, would turn their aspirations on the Senate instead.
3 Likes
I think its crucial to remember that, when the Senate Select Committee was created, impeachment was not even on the table. Or in the restaurant.
yeah, the Senate knew there was something very fishy going on with the Watergate break-in. But John Dean was still working for Nixon when the committee was formed on Feb 7, 1973, and it wasn’t until Dean testified before the committee on June 23 that Nixon himself was personally tied to the scandal.
In other words, we’re way past the basic fact-finding stage here that the select committee represented. And the other other “watergate” hearings took place in an impeachment setting. For Nadler to suggest otherwise is really disingenous.
once again, you’re incapable of comprehending the obvious.
Mueller isn’t going to show up to testify if hearings are about gaining “political” support for impeachment. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to play that game.
And he doesn’t have to. All he has to do is “respect” Trump’s executive privilege claim, and let the case play itself out in the courts for the next two years.
Mueller will obey a congressional subpoena. Period. He won’t like it. He won’t want to say anything different than what’s in his report. But he’ll show up.
There’s no executive privilege claim about the Mueller Report, which has been largely made public. Moreover, he’ll show up and to the extent he believes he cannot talk about something due to a claim of executive privilege, he’ll say so.
4 Likes
One minor nit:
That wasn’t John Dean; it was Alexander Butterfield. From Wikipedia:
The existence of the White House taping system was first confirmed by Senate Committee staff member Donald Sanders, on July 13, 1973, in an interview with White House aide Alexander Butterfield. Three days later, it was made public during the televised testimony of Butterfield, when he was asked about the possibility of a White House taping system by Senate Counsel Fred Thompson.
On July 16, 1973, Butterfield told the committee in a televised hearing that Nixon had ordered a taping system installed in the White House to automatically record all conversations. Special Counsel Archibald Cox, a former United States Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy, asked District Court Judge John Sirica to subpoena nine relevant tapes to confirm the testimony of White House Counsel John Dean.
Dean was, however, the first White House official to accuse the president of direct involvement in the Watergate affair. He did suspect that Nixon had a taping system, and tipped prosecutors to ask witnesses questions along that line to find out for sure. His “come-to-Jesus” moment came after he began to suspect that he was being set up as the scapegoat for the cover-up, and it was at that point that he hired an attorney and began co-operating with investigatorsWhite House Counsel. That was even before he left his job as Chief White House Counsel, and long before he gave his testimony before the committee.