Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Friday picked apart the increasingly common argument among Republicans against calling witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
Moscow Mitch and his co-conspirators want a kangaroo court and sham trial. Witnesses and documents aren’t part of that goal to ignore facts and the law.
It’s all a joke and a disgrace to our country and a torching of the Constitution.
I feel like the GOP is starting to feel the tide turning against them. Many of their base are tuning in for the first time to see Shiff and the house managers juxtaposed against the Trump defence and finding the its not quite what they were led to believe. Maybe I am just being optimistic and this isn’t a general trend. But I hope.
“He’s not in the Executive Branch, so executive privilege cannot be used against him,” Schumer said.
I think Schumer is wrong on that point. Bolton was in the Executive Branch and any communication he had with Trump that would legitimately be privileged doesn’t lose privilege after he leaves. Otherwise, a good zing on GOP hypocrisy.
Can everybody please notice what a milquetoast John Roberts is? He is letting Midnight Moscow Mitch rope him into this debacle and so make him go down in history as a likely co-conspirator.
Get him some Ethics, STAT!
In a related story, the Senate has just been handed a gun that was used to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
They voted 53-47 to dump it in the river at midnight.
Better to remind everybody that Bolton prefers to SELL his story for $2M instead of doing the proper patriotic Oath-loving thing. It’s what a prostitute would do.
“He’s not in the Executive Branch, so executive privilege cannot be used against him,” Schumer said.
I thought I read somewhere, probably here, that executive privilege could be claimed (and in some cases successfully), for staff who have left their White House jobs?
To the extent the privilege is valid at all, it would need to protect conversations with the President whether you’re in or out of the WH.
Maybe they could confine Bolton’s testimony to everything he is putting in his book. Because his publisher has already seen it, privilege has been waived. He could think of it as the kickoff of his book tour.
We don’t have enough time to do it
The American people just want the truth. Don’t hide the truth.
Bolton is not in the Government…there are parameters that apply to Bolton testifying.
No. Remember that YOU are having that feeling. There needs to be an outpouring of calls from within their districts to get them out of this shameless head.
Occasionally I wonder onto Fox News in a desperate attempt to understand what color the sky is in the world of conservatives. Amidst the headlines of finding a sasquatch and claiming Samantha Bee was now a supporter of Ivanka Trump (neither of those are jokes), there was this gem of an article. It’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a while:
“I’m going to cast my vote regardless of the congressman’s performance,” she told Politico. “His negative comments about the Senate will not have any impact.”
“I mean, that’s an extraordinary thing to say on the floor of the United States Senate, the middle of the trial, and that’s what drew the rebuke and rightly so,” Hawley said. “I can tell you, there was an open, open gasping on the Senate floor when Nadler was saying these things. I mean, It’s really, really extraordinary.”
You just can’t make up a more farcical demonstration of pearl clutching.
Weaponization of civility…
“How DARE you slander Simon Legree!!”
The dignity weaponizers knew, that in such a trial dealing with Trump, there would be a pearl-clutching moment.
It reminded me of deciding when to jump in on a moving boxcar on a railroad track.
Go try to call your congressperson and Senator and get back with us. Not snark. I have Mitch and Rand and they always turn off the phones or auto to voicemail or whatever to not hear from their constituents so they can say, “I’m not hearing this from my constituents.” Faxes are usually better. They don’t do town halls outside their supporters either.
Well I am feeling hope, which I would rather not give up on. I have seen some conservative friends recently that are finally starting to “get it”. My hope is that this is a larger trend, though it may not be. My fear is that another dosage of propaganda will cure them of any temporary sanity.
I know Bolton is not in the government right now. That is not my point. Executive privilege is the right of the executive to withhold information from Congress for certain national security needs and to protect the privacy of White House deliberations when it is in the public interest to do so. If any of Bolton’s conversations with Trump were subject to legitimate claims of privilege that claim, the right to protect the substance of the conversation, is not lost simply because Bolton is no longer in government.
When it rains, it pours:
The Trump administration is finalizing a plan to let states convert a chunk of Medicaid funding to block grants, even as officials remain divided over how to sell the controversial change to the safety net health program.
CMS Administrator Seema Verma plans to issue a letter soon explaining how states could seek waivers to receive defined payments for adults covered by Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, according to seven people with knowledge of the closely guarded effort. An announcement is tentatively slated for the end of next week, more than one year after Verma and her team began developing the plan.
Please don’t analogize the GOP to kangaroos. The marsupials are much more intelligent and fairer.
And under duress enough as it is right now.