We don’t need the Senate to vote for conviction to start impeachment proceedings. It is the investigation in the House with enhanced subpoena power that will make Trump reveal his dirty little secrets.
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I don’t either, but I think that Roberts understand that if he kneecaps congressional power in Trump’s favor, the judiciary is next.
Ask your husband if this is a possibility. The Supreme Court finally has to grant cert to a case, because lower court appeals have been exhausted. Months and months later, they announce their decision — to bounce the case back down to the District Court level on some procedural grounds without making a determination on the merits of the case…
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Impeachment needs to be moved NOW. And make every goddamned Republican live with the consequences of a No vote.
Harass every Republican who votes no 24/7. Don’t let up. Make their lives a living hell by having hecklers pursue them wherever they go.
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My question is, how likely it is that the REAL strategies of the Dem leadership could be exposed by reports like this from anonymous sources? If they have some secrect weapons, I’m sure they would keep them within a limited circle instead of allowing someone to tell the media.
I think what we’re reading and hearing now are just what Dem leaders want us to know. Messages to the public are part of their strategies.
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Pelosi needs to instruct her committee chairs to start arresting those that won’t comply with subpoenas. A few frog marches will go a long way, but if she’s looking for these hearings that the folks simply refuse to show up for to clarify her impeachment position, it’s not going to happen with an empty chair at the hearings.
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Something even beyond this dichotomy. I can get at what I think by articulating some other things I do and don’t think are going to happen:
- “majority of Senate Republicans” will never come to her and say “Please impeach.” I’m sure we’re agreed on that.
I think, further, that she recognizes that impeachment articles that start in the House and are blocked by McConnell in the Senate would actually and significantly empower Trump–probably guaranteeing a second term.
I think she sees the rolling investigations and revelations as net-gain helping BOTH Dems in Nov 2020 AND further eroding support for Trump.
I think she sees the investigation and revelations increasing.
I think what she most wishes to avoid is making a strategic mistake which makes Trump re-electable in 2020. If slow-rolling impeachment is, by her strategic estimate, most likely to (a) reduce his chance of re-election and (b) also accelerate erosion of GOP power in the Senate, I think she’ll stick with the slow-roll.
And should.
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Circumstances are ripe for Trump to defy SCOTUS rulings that thwart him. Traditional bulwarks against this are scant. Congress would acquiesce, the Senate refusing to act, and the House too weak kneed and cowering to do so. I’ve read a bit about what would happen if a President simply refused to comply with a SCOTUS ruling, Historical examples are thin, and the issue at hand in the few cases cited were resolved via other means and rulings before the shit really hit the fan. I find little as to what SCOTUS could do to deal with a Presidential refusal to comply. Contempt is mentioned, but how would that be enforced? SCOTUS isn’t going to have a President arrested and jailed. Nor can they “suspend” him in any fashion, strip him of office until compliance is achieved. Seemingly SCOTUS is very limited in enforcing a ruling if a President tells them to piss off, and no significant institutions elsewhere (Congress? DOJ?) interject themselves to restore order. He’s exempt from sanctions with any teeth, and certainly cannot be made to cease holding office or conducting his duties.
Do not be surprised if things take a distinct turn for the worse for Trump, and when one of these subpoena/document/testimony battles reaches SCOTUS and he loses, he merely refuses to accept defeat and defies any orders from the court. We all know it’s coming. It’s so Trumpian I think it would be surprising if it didn’t happen, actually. And there will be no one, no law, no method to hold him to account or enforce a ruling.
Save the vote of 67 Senators to convict at impeachment. Which will never, ever happen.
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She is pleading for patience. He is stalling for time. Here is a time line of the Mazar suit.
April 22: Suit filed to block subpoena.
May 1st: Elijah Cummings Committee files response.
May 14th: Oral Argument.
May 20: Judge rules against BenedictDonald. Denies stay. Gives Mazars 7 days to comply.
Depending on who acts quicker- Mazar in complying with the order and BenedictDonald’s appeal, this could be done in a week. IF Mazar is quicker, appeal is moot. If BenedictDonald is faster, my guess is the appeals court will fast track it. FWIW Merrick Garland is the Chief Justice in this appellate circuit.
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Even I, the pessimistiest of all, would think the Rethugs would know it’s game over if that happened and they would finally see that defiance as their escape hatch for backing impeachment.
They’re probably praying for it, except the most loathsome among them.
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All Trump has to do is hold the line at 34 GOP Senators with him. And there are certainly that many too craven, self-serving, chickenshit and fearful of being primaried to get to that number.
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When wondering why Pelosi does/says what she does/says, just go straight to the source and ask the DONOR class. She is totally controlled by and does the bidding of the wealthy donors who support the incumbents and the DNC. She cares not a bit about the great, unwashed masses.
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By what mechanism can the committee chairs do this?
Defying SCOTUS is pitchforks and AR-15 time, as in end of the Republic.
ETTD dies.
So you may be right.
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Luckily, he’s usually not.
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I have to disagree.
A Senate Trial at this point is ill-advised. First, the Dems don’t have all the information they should have to mount an effective prosecution at trial.
More importantly, Trump’s defense is likely to be based on a “jury nullification” strategy – with the “jury” being the American people. He will turn an impeachment trial to a weeks long calvacade of spurious allegations of improper conduct by “Deep State” actors. This could turn the whole thing into a disaster…and for what?
I think Democrats should consider passing some articles of impeachment – but not send them to the senate. Instead, use them as the basis of further investigations — just as there are “superceding indictments” emanating from Grand Juries as they get more information, so too can Congress issue “superceding articles” as their investigations bear fruit.
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I could see a scenario in which he defies SCOTUS as a negotiating tactic to better define terms of his resignation.
“I don’t agree with the ruling, and I don’t need to abide by it, but for the good of the country myself and my family are moving to a nice dacha on the Black Sea.”
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Revelations are in the same neighborhood as investigations. Aggressive reporting had a hand in Watergate. Aggressive reporting has a hand in what we are now faced with.
We are dealing with a lawless president…and if anyone believes the Press is immune from the control of tyranny never went past the fourth grade.
ETA By the way, the dirt on Trump is far more out in the open since Barr has been on the scene. Barr’s pronouncements have become more and more as though he is a Trump PR man. This is a gradual thing which escapes the clueless
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I’m certain that he will defy his way all the way up. But the farther he goes the more the rapeuglicans are exposed. They don’t want pitchforks even more than you don’t want them.
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It’s not a matter of right or wrong. Could it happen? Yes? Would defying SCOTUS fit Trump’s personality? Yes? Will one of these cases reach SCOTUS? Maybe/probably? Does he tolerate losing? No. Would a loss (suspecting what he’s trying to conceal is fatal in nature) be a death blow for him? Likely, yes. So, what option is he left with? He has terrible secrets that must remain secrets. And he must protect that secrecy at all costs. Losing a SCOTUS ruling leaves him one option, and that is to defy it.
I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen. But the perfect storm is brewing for Trump’s hand to be forced, and in my opinion he won’t concede anything, even to a SCOTUS ruling. I hope I’m wrong, but a betting man would look at Trump’s track record and assess it’s at least even money he would tell the courts to piss off if the alternative is finding out he owes some Russian oligarch $300 million, or some other similar fatal secret in waiting.
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I don’t know. A couple of days ago, there was a story about a conference call of all the House Democrats in which it was claimed that no one objected to Pelosi’s impeachment strategy.
That story sounded bogus to me — the only way that “no one objected” is if no opportunity to object occurred. e.g the conference call was scheduled to provide “updates on current legislation being considered to advance our priorities”, and impeachment wasn’t an issue.
That kind of story would have pissed off a lot of people who do think the House should be more aggressive – and this story was the result.
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