I agree and have made that same question-by-question post myself. Trump is making a bogus claim that forces the House to go to District Court, which will then go to the Appellate Court, which will remand for further findings, which will then go back to the Appellate Court, which will then go to the Supreme Court, which will remand, ad nauseam, all as nothing more than a blatantly obvious ploy to run out the clock. And the lickspittle GOP senators applaud.
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Yeah, but just wait. I won’t be shocked if the “October Surprise” is something batshit crazy like declaring a national emergency and martial law on liberal population centers based on ridiculous claims of evidence of voting machines being rigged, voter fraud conspiracies and such…
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Yes, but in either case privilege would be asserted on a question-by-question basis, and would be debatable (or litigate-able?). And in no can can it be asserted if a conversation involved illegal activity. I assume that’s why we don’t here “executive privilege” so much as “absolute immunity” (aka “fuck you”).
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Oh right-o. We’ll have to have one of our own “October Surprises” ready. Plenty to chose from.
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So let me get this straight, Collins is “stunned” that Nadler accurately describes both her and the Senate GOPs actions, even if impolitely, but not at that avalanche of evidence regarding Trump’s flagrant abuses and law breaking.
Where’s the link to donate to her opponent in 2020?
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I started out hoping he might show some testicular fortitude and press for a fair trial process. But you are exactly right: this guy is a toady who only reads from index cards and repeats verbal instructions given him by the staff.
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Schumer does not need to worry about judicial review.
“It was long assumed that no judicial review of the impeachment process was possible, that impeachment presents a true “political question” case, i. e. , that the Constitution’s conferral on the Senate of the “sole” power to try impeachments is a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of trial procedures to the Senate to decide without court review.”
As to the question of how long judical review might take, that was addressed directly in the Judge Nixon impeachment:
" The Court listed “reasons why the Judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, were not chosen to have any role in impeachments,” and elsewhere agreed with the appeals court that “opening the door of judicial review to the procedures used by the Senate in trying impeachments would expose the political life of the country to months, or perhaps years, of chaos.” 506 U.S. at 234, 236."
See https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-2/56-judicial-review-of-impeachments.html
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“Stunned” that a Dem dare depart from the Senatorial decorum that Moscow Mitch has trod upon since taking power. Still “disappointed” that her overlord betrayed his country.
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Its better that he testifies but shit will ooze out in his book anyway. Maybe this summer, right in time as the election gears up and it all hits the headlines to remind everyone again.
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I’m not sure the usual denial of EP for illegal activity would apply here. A Senate impeachment is a political trial, and the articles from the House don’t accuse Trump of a statute crime.
Of course that wouldn’t stop Pompeo or Mulvaney from claiming they’re under EP as directed by Trump anyway, knowing that the schedule is too tight for a court challenge.
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Holy frijole the Repubs are using the argument that the dotard will not honor their subpoenas so why spend months pursuing the case through the courts? Really? That is what Lisa Murkowski was mouthing yesterday as her preemptive excuse for voting against anymore documents of witnesses that require subpoenas. If the POTUS will not honor subpoenas then he is in contempt of the Senate. Full stop Senator. He is not respecting you or your fellow GOP senators right to have the information necessary to make an informed vote on acquittal or conviction. This is the lamest shit yet as far as I’m concerned. Just an obvious lack of courage to take on the dotard.
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While I am most definitely not a Roberts fan, I don’t think the rules give him much to do. He could require Senators to remain seated (an admittedly bladder-challenging task), but I doubt he can do much if anything else. Judges don’t challenge lies.
Yep, a photo that has been seen any number of times over the last 50 years.
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Don’t they have a judge right there at the ready?
Collins was not stunned by the abject lies being spewed by the dotard’s lawyers but was stunned when Nadler dared say out loud and in the face of her co-conspirators that they were participating in a cover up if they did not vote for more witnesses and documents that dotard refused to hand over? The lawyers were guilty of lying and Nadler was guilty of speaking the truth to power and she found that truth speaking to be the most offensive. Tells ya a lot about the priorities of the GOP doesn’t it?
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Called Murkowski and the useless Sullivan’s Anchorage offices two days ago and left messages. Yesterday was able to talk to an aide in the DC office and I told her to tell Lisa that if she ignores this illegal activity by trump in this situation and votes to acquit him he will be unleashed to commit verbal and legal assaults on his domestic challengers with the aid of the DOJ and Barr. She will be complicit in his future crimes for not having the courage to convict in this trial. That is not hyperbole. This raving asshole will be unleashed to attack anyone who challenges him now that he knows the entire US Senate and DOJ are in his pocket.
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I guess someone could just turn around and yell “Hey Yo!” to Roberts for an answer.
If you told your boss “I can prove Larry is the guy who’s been stealing from the bike room, so let’s sit down with witnesses I’ve found, and have the cops search his home,” it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to say, “slow down, and just tell me what you think you’ve found before we undertake all that work.”
It would be reasonable to expect you to do just that: lay out everything you know so far, along with whatever inferences or conclusions you’ve drawn (properly labeling everything!), so she could decide for herself how compelling the case is. That’s a reasonable way for truth-seeking people to proceed when they’re free to conduct their inquiry as they see fit.
And so, there’s an angle from which the Democrats’ insistence on voting on witnesses on day 1 is premature. That’s the mindset the GOP is hoping to present to the public consciousness. But it’s done in bad faith, because:
The Constitution demands the Senate conduct “a trial.” Every trial in this country’s history has provided guarantees for the presentation of witnesses and evidence. It’s part of the ideological bedrock of a people who were literally throwing off a monarchy whose long history of misrule depended in large part on a weak justice system easily manipulated by the wealthy. Good trial procedure was literally cutting-edge technology, the prototypical example of Americans using scientific ingenuity to alleviate a social ill. It was a fucking invention. It’s no accident that the Bill of Rights is largely concerned with exactly this cluster of problems, or that the Supreme Court’s long-enjoyed reputation as a legitimate check on the other branches is built on the correctness of that body’s rulings in cases like this hundreds of years ago. (A reputation it has never deserved less than now.)
And so when the Framers call for a trial, that’s the context: the trappings and expectations and philosophy that justice requires a kind of hygiene. And it’s exactly that: just like brushing your teeth, you have to do it properly every single day; the Constitution doesn’t protect jack shit from inside its glass case.
And so, since the Senate Majority Leader leads the Senate in a country governed by the United States Constitution (it bears repeating), McConnell’s original trial procedure proposal should have had all the same guarantees, because all trials under our Constitution must provide them. The fact that he didn’t put that stuff in there is itself material support for the accused President, and belies the oath he took. There’s no reason to presuppose a “trial” worthy of the name would even contemplate excluding that stuff a priori. If your boss said, “I don’t want to hear it, and I’ll never talk to your witnesses don’t even tell me how many there are,” you would know your boss was working against you.
To say nothing of the fact that the Democrats’ narrative has been largely public since day one, and that Republicans refused every opportunity for formal participation. The fact is that every good national newspaper chronicled the discovery and development of almost all the evidence in real-time. Everybody on both sides knows this is the last “put up or shut up” moment. A Senate interested in both doing its job and the appearance of competence would have immediately issued an official statement assuring both parties and all Americans that every effort would be made to discover the truth, rather than making every effort to avoid it.
Let’s not forget that this trial is very precisely the remedy that Mueller believed Trump must have if his name were to even appear in the same sentence as a term for law-breaking. Mueller pulled his punches because Trump had no opportunity to face his accusers and defend himself. This is the place Trump is fighting back, so now we’re owed the opportunity to take our best swing.
Justice is like a “chain of custody”: every link must be strong or the whole chain fails. Trump’s whole life has been spent weakening every link around him as a precaution against the day when someone might try to use one of those chains to rein him in. It’s stochastic corruption.
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And that includes both Biden’s. What they have to say would destroy the entire CT that so many GOPers are trying to hide behind even as the House impeachment managers dismantle the false accusations for the umpteenth time. Most of the GOPers get their information from the right wing media machine so are hearing for the first time the background of the Biden smears/CTs.