The End Game
The end to the tedious partisan trial of a controversial President is at hand. We were subjected to laborious opening statements by House managers and White House lawyers that needed only half the time to make an argument. Then after a process was created to avoid a circus like the one we saw in the House, we were disappointed to find Senators write up friendly questions to support claims rather that question conclusions and facts. Immediately prior to the trial we had the usual political stunts from the left. Lev Parnas was paraded all over cable news making outrageous statements, the NSC leaked a portion of John Bolton's book and the GAO waited until the eve of the trial to announce that withholding Ukrainian aid violated the law. Then there was the push for witnesses by Chuck Schumer. The idea of this last gasp attempt to dredge up some new incriminating information (of any kind) was much touted by the liberal media. It depended on the concerns of moderate Senators, especially those running for re-election. Sen Lamar Alexander (Tenn) would be one of them, except he is not running - he is retiring! Sen Alexander turned out to be the key vote in the witness battle.
Lamar Alexander
"Alexander, who is retiring from the Senate after this term, said in a Thursday evening statement that “it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation.”“But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate,” he continued, adding that voters should decide whether Trump remains in office."
yahoo.com/huffpost/lamar-alexander-impeachment-trial-senate-witness-vote-040739812.html
That should be game..set..match for this travesty of justice, but as we know the dems never go down quietly. They are if anything..tenacious. We can expect a full scale fight today. Schumer will look for any way to delay the final votes from being completed in today's session. It will be a test of wills to grind it out and get it all done today! There is also the possibility that the dems could be working behind the scenes to get that one Republican defector which may force a tie on the witness vote making the Chief Justice in this case the tie breaking vote. And we know how that gets plaid by the media. If Roberts were to vote in favor he would be portrayed as "a man of honor " and if he voted no, he would be called "a Trump toady. "
Finally, there is the very remote possibility that democrats could pull out a victory on calling witnesses. That would really be a tragedy for the nation.
Let us hope that the end is finally at hand.
Article is LOCKED by author/seeder
Tags
Who is online
496 visitors
We start the day with two hours of closing arguments.
Rules of civility apply
Trump's entire time in office has been one scandal after another. There is no "end" Vic. The reason there is no end is very simple,... he is a horrible human being. Since he won't be changing, neither will the endless parade of scandals change.
The most likely result of all this is that we will learn that what he did regarding Ukraine is worse and more despicable than we know so far. It is clear Bolton's book is unfavorable to Trump on this issue. Now that the Republicans have let the guilty party off the hook, Democrats can use the republican cowardice as a talking point in the upcoming elections.
I'm sure some imagine it so.
The most likely result of all this is that we will learn that what he did regarding Ukraine is worse and more despicable than we know so far.
I got a feeling we will find that his gut instinct was spot-on, as usual.
It is clear Bolton's book is unfavorable to Trump on this issue.
Bolton's memoir should sell well. I share his views on certain things, but this method of selling a book really was beneath him.
Now that the Republicans have let the guilty party off the hook, Democrats can use the republican cowardice as a talking point in the upcoming elections.
To the contrary, the fraudulent impeachment, the kangaroo Court in the House and the overall conduct of democrats will be the prime feature of GOP commercials from now until election day. (I expect another impeachment farce to be concocted in the meantime.)
I dont think there is a chance, not a chance, that history will see this impeachment as having been unfair to Trump. Not a chance.
Long term history or short term history.
I do. It will be regraded as the least credible of the three presidential impeachments that were all voted down in the Senate. The only credible one was the one that never took place - the one that was totally bipartisan.
Laughable. The least credible will be those who prevented witnesses from being called. There is no trial without witnesses.
The House called 17 and deposed & questioned each at length. They denied House Republicans a single one.
That's your party.
The Republicans wanted to call Joe and Hunter Biden , and the whistleblower, and Adam Schiff himself, lol.
None of those people are relevant witnesses in this matter.
Was there NO ONE the defense could have called that would attest that Trump was innocent? Evidently not.
18
Rep. Adam B. Schiff , California Democrat, and other impeachment managers repeatedly talk about the 17 witnesses interviewed during the House ’s secretive depositions. But they do not mention an 18th witness, Michael Atkinson , the intelligence community’s inspector general who has firsthand knowledge of the origins of the whistleblower complaint that led to the impeachment.
I'd say they were at the heart of it. Joe Biden bragged about getting a prosecutor fired who was investigating the company which hired Hunter Biden. The President wanted to know about that. Was there corruption there? Or do we just dole out the money?
As for Schiff and the WB, we have questions about when their interactions and even the motivations of the WB. That is also fair game.
Was there NO ONE the defense could have called that would attest that Trump was innocent?
Of what? Inappropriate behavior? That's not even being contested. You need an impeachable offense. Hatred for the man is not enough!
there was no evidence presented against trump to defend himself against.
what people only speculate happened? means nothing.
Very good. Schiff won't release that transcript. I'm sure it would give us a clear understanding of the motivations of the so called Whistleblower.
Really ? , Trump and many of his lackeys say his phone call was perfect.
As far as Biden goes, it is actually well known that Joe Biden was simply effecting US foreign policy when he demanded that the prosecutor Shokin be fired. It is well known Vic.
Trump is the president of the United States. he should be responsible for learning these things, not just listening to crack pot far right conspiracies.
=============
GOP senators know Trump’s defense is based on lies. Here’s proof.
JANUARY 30, 2020As President Trump’s trial hurtles toward a vote on new witnesses, his lawyers have based his defense in part on the notion that Trump’s demand that Ukraine investigate the Bidens was legitimate.
A core claim from Trump’s team has been that Trump had at least some reason to suspect there was something untoward about Joe Biden’s efforts as vice president to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor.
They’ve cited two facts -- that Biden threatened to withhold loan guarantees from Ukraine to leverage that ouster, and that Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board of Ukrainian company Burisma -- which they claim presented a potential conflict of interest. That made Trump’s suspicions reasonable, they say.
But Republican senators themselves know this argument is nonsense. And here’s how we can be certain they know this.
At a Senate hearing in 2016, a number of GOP senators who are still in office today sat in attendance during discussions of the Obama administration’s approach to Ukraine. At those hearings, officials and outside experts repeatedly discussed the need to remove the prosecutor in question -- Viktor Shokin, the Prosecutor General -- describing this imperative as central to official U.S. policy.
What’s more, Joe Biden’s own role in prompting this ouster came up repeatedly, and it was openly and explicitly discussed that the loan guarantees were being used as leverage to bring it about -- as U.S. policy.
Ever since we learned that Trump and personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani sought to pressure Ukraine into announcing a sham investigation that would smear the Bidens, Trump’s defenders have continued to assert that Biden’s conduct in Ukraine was suspicious at best, and scandalously corrupt at worst.
Trump defenders have noted that Biden boasted in a January 2018 speech about withholding a loan guarantee to bring about Shokin’s ouster, and that, given Hunter’s role on Burisma’s board, this showed Biden engaged in his own corrupt quid pro quo.
This whole narrative is based on lies . In recent months, news organizations have convincingly established -- in retrospect -- that ousting Shokin was U.S. policy at the time, backed by international institutions , because his office was actually facilitating corruption . They’ve also established that Hunter was irrelevant to the investigation into Burisma, and that this probe was dormant at the time of the pressure to oust Shokin.
But, crucially, the public record at the time also shows that the ouster of Shokin, including the use of loan guarantees as leverage, was U.S. policy -- and that at least some Republican Senators knew all of this as it was happening .
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in March 2016 , Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state under President Barack Obama, testified about efforts to oust Shokin. Nuland noted that Shokin had resigned but that the Ukrainian parliament still had to remove him (which happened soon after ).
Nuland also told senators that the agenda of the U.S.'s aid program for Ukraine, with the “generous support” of Congress , included replacing Shokin, for the good of fighting corruption in Ukraine.
Nuland noted it was a U.S. priority to secure a "new prosecutor general who is committed” to “indicting and prosecuting the corrupt.”
Nuland also cited the loan guarantee as leverage. “We have pegged our next $1 billion loan guarantee” in part on “ensuring that the prosecutor general’s office gets cleaned up,” Nuland said.
Biden also came up repeatedly at this hearing. Nuland explicitly noted that Biden himself had conditioned U.S. support for Ukraine on getting rid of that prosecutor as a matter of U.S. policy. She cited a speech that Biden had given in Ukraine a few months earlier, in which Biden declared: “The office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”
In reference to that speech, Nuland told senators that Biden “could not have been clearer or more public about what our support depends on.”
GOP Senators present at the hearing -- and who remain in office today -- included John Barrasso (Wy.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), James Risch (Idaho), and David Perdue (Georgia).
What this shows is that ousting the prosecutor was about fighting corruption in Ukraine as a matter of administration policy -- and that GOP Senators understood this full well at the time. Indeed, none of that stirred any controversy.
At another Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in October 2015 , before Shokin was removed, Nuland again stated it was U.S. policy to target Shokin. Nuland said the U.S. was pursuing “a cleanup of the prosecutor general’s office so that it begins to serve the Ukrainian people rather than ripping them off.”
Nuland added this was being done with the help of “European advisers,” and that the administration’s anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine had the support of the International Monetary Fund.
It was already known to some degree that a few GOP senators at the time supported the administration’s efforts to clean up Shokin’s office. A February 2016 letter signed by Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ron Johnson (Wisc.) called for such reforms.
That GOP Senators were present at hearings where this was extensively discussed as administration policy underscores this further.
The idea that Trump had reasonable cause for concern about Biden’s activities in Ukraine is central to justifying his pressure on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce a sham investigation of those activities.
As Trump’s legal brief argues , it was “legitimate” for Trump to bring this up with Zelensky, because “Biden threatened withholding U.S. loan guarantees” to secure Shokin’s dismissal “even though Biden was, at the time, operating under what appeared to be, at the very least, a serious conflict of interest.”
But as GOP Senators themselves well know, having been briefed on the policy at the time, that wasn’t motivating the policy in the least.
It has been public since 2014 that Hunter got the Burisma gig. GOP Senators should be challenged to point to any examples of them raising alarms about any of this at the time.
The real story is that the Hunter rational has been reverse-grafted on to Joe Biden’s activities by Trump and Giuliani, to create a fake rationale for getting Ukraine to smear Biden. The idea that Trump was concerned about corruption has always been absurd, given that he only demanded investigations that would help him politically, as if that was pure coincidence.
Indeed, it’s even more absurd than this. As James Risen has detailed , in 2015, U.S. officials criticized the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office for failing to assist with a British investigation into Burisma’s owner, which cuts directly against the nonsense that this was a corrupt effort to help Burisma (or Hunter).
The bottom line is that it was not legitimate for Trump to claim Biden’s effort to oust Shokin was linked to Hunter’s Burisma gig to justify his corrupt demand of Zelensky. To allow Trump to make this legitimate simply by saying there might have been such a link is to concede to him the power to rewrite reality with disinformation, all to justify his extortion of a foreign power to help him cheat his way through the next election.
GOP Senators who know better might be prepared to concede that power to him. But we don’t have to.
The motivations of the whistleblower dont mean a damn thing. The only issue with the whistleblower is whether or not his information was accurate, and it was.
But John, that has never been my position, nor is it Lamar Alexander's. The call was inappropriate, but does not rise to an impeachable offense. So we didn't need to hear the 21 hours of repetitive opening statements from Schiff and company nor the valuable legislative time & money wasted by the House on impeachment. There is a huge difference between inappropriate and criminal.
Tell Vindman and Ciaramella to try again.
BTW, thanks for the Washington Post piece. My free articles have long ago been used up.
If he is intent on taking down a President he can't be a whistleblower! He would simply be another rogue agent.
In the USA, it's not a defendant's job to prove his innocence. It is up to the prosecution to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt and the Schiff Schumer Sham Show failed to do so.
History will not reflect well upon the Trump-hating Democratic/Socialist Party, their "witnesses", and their complicit media for what they've forced the American and international communities to endure for the past 3+ years. They lost the 2016 election and will therefore remain bitter and vindictive.
Actually, they count a lot. Once the perceptions of a backdoor deal, dirty hands and impure motives solidify, the chance of a clean win sucks.
All of those scandals have been created by an entrenched and power hungry bureaucracy. And the bureaucracy has successfully diverted the public's attention onto meaningless political propaganda.
Dictatorships are run by bureaucrats; that's where the real power of a totalitarian government resides. Dictators fail when they lose the support of bureaucrats.
Ukraine isn't an innocent bystander. Political pressure wouldn't work if Ukraine didn't want something substantial from the United States. Ukraine has been lobbying Congress and the administration to obtain something of great value to Ukraine. Ukraine has been attempting to influence the United States government; otherwise there would not have been leverage for a quid pro quo.
But Ukraine feeds the political gravy train. Trump's impeachment if more about protecting the political gravy train while allowing the government to be run by an entrenched and power hungry bureaucracy. That's the status quo that hair-on-fire Trump resisters are fighting so very hard to protect.
Democrats can use the republican cowardice as a talking point in the upcoming elections.
I suppose the Dems are going to start yelling "COVER UP" and try to get rid of Roberts somehow. But we certainly don't think the losers will have learned their lesson. No, there will be whining and crying from the left from now till November. But it won't matter. The electorate has pretty much made up it's mind about Trump and the futility of this impeachment hoax and scam and, as a result of misusing and abusing the Constitutional process, Trump will be reelected by a comfortable margin. Also, the Dems are likely to lose control of the House. We told you so.
Do they realize how obvious it all is? They really must think the American people are as stupid as Don Lemon & co portrays them.
And don't forget Schiff himself.....................
The Alienation Train continues..............and it is glorious
I'm sure all of America heard that, including the "deplorables", the "clingers", the Coal Miners and even Barak Obama's "typical white person" grandmother!
Comments like this are basically gaslighting. The vast majority of Americans want to see witnesses called in the Trump impeachment case.
and about half want the bidens, schiff and the whistleblower on the stand.
ya can't have one without the other.
imagine the mess that would make. it would be awesome. I can only hope.
I think they will protect the bidens, schiff and the whistleblower.
if there was a reason no witnesses will be called? there ya go.
For those who haven't sanctioned it yet:
gaslighting: the action of tricking or controlling someone by making them believe things that are not true , especially by suggesting that they may be mentally ill :
The latest version of Newspeak used by progressives
From your poll....................
Did you get past the headline (which you haven't posted a link to since you have been spouting this for three days)
I have no idea what you are talking about. I dont have a poll. I heard on tv that 75% of Americans want to see witnesses at the impeachment. If you have evidence that information is wrong, have at it, otherwise take a hike.
Lol, John hearing something on tv is hardly a credible source. I have heard you mention that poll numerous times, as a matter of fact, I hear Juan Williams mention it on an almost daily basis. It would be on you to support the claim you make not the person questioning it.
Example: Gallup has a new Poll out:
Didn't say it was wrong. Methinks the liberal doth protest too much. Jesus Christ John, lighten up. If you bothered to read the linked article, it is more than likely where the story you "heard" came from. And my post showed that in the same poll, 89% had already made up their minds on what they see as the outcome.
And you parroted that without researching to see if it were credible? Not a good look. I know, but Trump........................
This just in:
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) on Friday ratcheted up pressure on Chief Justice John Roberts to break a possible tie vote on a motion to consider subpoenas of additional witnesses and documents, which could extend President Trump ’s impeachment trial for weeks.
Schumer to this point has focused on putting pressure on four moderate Senate Republicans to break ranks and vote for subpoenas of former national security adviser John Bolton . But with Sen. Lamar Alexander ’s (R-Tenn.) announcement Thursday that he will vote against subpoenas, Roberts is now Democrats’ best hope.
“If it’s a tie, it will be up to the chief justice. The chief justice knows every trial has witnesses and documents, ” Schumer told reporters Friday morning, though he declined to discuss the scenario at length.
Shouldn't that really read 'every trial can have witnesses.. ' ? It's not mandatory to the best of my knowledge. And as for documents, what was that on the trolley that the House Managers wheeled over to the Senate at the beginning of the trial? It sure didn't look like boxes of donuts to me.
This constant harping over it's not a fair trail without witnesses and if they don't allow witnesses then President Trump is not exonerated. I'll admit I'm not a constitutional lawyer but I seem to remember that the House has the sole power in Impeachment and the Senate has the sole power in the trial of said impeachment. About the only thing in this entire mess that I agree with Pelosi on is that I don't believe President Trump can say that he's been exonerated if the trial ends without conviction. In order to be exonerated don't you first have to be convicted of the crime and then cleared based on new evidence?
There is that lack of a crime issue, but the impeachment was based on what democrats might argue was "crime like", which I think it clearly wasn't. It was an inappropriate call at best, but I think exoneration still would apply.
Exoneration: the action of officially absolving someone from blame; vindication
Shouldn't that really read 'every trial can have witnesses.. ' ?
Absolutely! That was a clear pulling of the wool over all our eyes. Something Schumer has a talent for.
And as for documents, what was that on the trolley that the House Managers wheeled over to the Senate at the beginning of the trial?
That was their entire case. Not exactly like the truck load of files Ken Starr produced in the Clinton case.
(was it, though?)
No, it isn't. Being the president's political opponent does not excuse you from investigation. We have heard over and over that no one is above the law. That is true of the president's political opponents just as it is true for the president. Considering that the alleged wrongdoing by the former VP took place in that foreign country, it is entirely appropriate to discuss the matter with the leader of that country.
The available evidence shows that did not happen. It is not in the transcript of the phone call that inspired this farce and both parties to the exchange say it did not happen. Furthermore, when the story broke in September, and President Zelenskyy asked about the aid, Biden was not mentioned. Instead, our current VP Mike Pence told him that the aid was held up over general corruption concerns and burden sharing from European allies.
The Senate just voted 51-49 to not call witnesses.
Chuck Schumer just walked away from the mic. Very angry and dejected.
I'm looking forward to read what Pelosi, Schiff, and Schumer invent as their next "impeachment article".
Just the way I like it. There is a problem with what happens next. The final vote will not come tonight. There is at least one Republican Senator who screwed that part up. I'm sure we will find out.
Say it isn't so, He must have to check in and get his talking points. Get ready for the proglib tears...
End game? Not quite. That comes November 3rd 2020.
Already the DNC is gonna change rules to accommodate minj-Mike. They’ll eat each other before then.