The Formal Impeachment Inquiry of Trump

... and as soon as someone figures out just what republican senators actual do, let us know...

 

Billy Graham would be so disappointed in what his son has become...

 

WSJ editorial today:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-banality-of-impeachment-11573689793?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

The Banality of Impeachment
The hearings are a pro-forma march to a foregone conclusion.
By
The Editorial Board
Nov. 13, 2019 7:03 pm ET

House Democrats went public Wednesday with what the media are calling “historic” impeachment hearings, but what strikes us is the pre-cooked nature of the exercise. This isn’t a search for truth. It’s a set-piece production to promote a foregone conclusion. Democrats are turning impeachment into another partisan banality, and the country won’t be better for it.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff plans only five days of public hearings, and he has already heard the witnesses in secret. Mr. Schiff won’t allow most witnesses requested by Republicans, notably the whistleblower who started it all and Hunter Biden. Perhaps Democrats have some new bombshell they’ve uncovered, but that has not been the pattern. What they learn, they quickly leak to the impeachment press.

***
The impeachment case—after the failure of non-collusion with Russia and the non-obstruction of Robert Mueller —now boils down to President Trump’s dealings over a few weeks this summer with new Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Readers who want to save time should read Mr. Schiff’s opening statement Wednesday because it offers the most damning interpretation of events.

Mr. Schiff’s claim is that Mr. Trump sought to “condition, coerce, extort or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his re-election campaign.” He did this by having his Administration threaten to withhold U.S. military aid and deny an Oval Office meeting until Mr. Zelensky publicly announced a corruption probe. That sums up the case.

We are not defending Mr. Trump’s phone call with Mr. Zelensky or any plan to deny military aid. Sending his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to lobby Ukrainian officials outside formal U.S. diplomatic channels was dumb, ran counter to Mr. Trump’s own policy, and was ultimately self-destructive.

Mr. Giuliani was hardly quiet about his efforts, and it appears that most of the American bureaucracy had heard something about it. Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, opposed it. In the end the aid was delivered and Mr. Zelensky never began a corruption investigation. Like much else in this Administration, Mr. Trump’s worst impulses were blocked.

Mr. Schiff says this is still an impeachable “abuse of power” because criminals can be prosecuted if their attempts fail. But there is no underlying crime here. Democrats have given up calling it a “quid pro quo,” which must not have played well in polling. Instead they are using “extortion” and “bribery” to suggest a crime without citing any specific statute.

The Justice Department has already dismissed the bribery claim because there was no “thing of value” exchanged. And the extortion charge is absurd regarding U.S. aid to a foreign government.

American Presidents have long asked foreign leaders for actions or policy cooperation that serve a President’s personal political interest. Recall when President Obama was caught in 2012 on a hot mic telling then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to ask Vladimir Putin to give him diplomatic “space” until after Mr. Obama’s re-election when he would have more room to maneuver on the issue of missile defenses. He was under fire from Republicans for being soft on Russia, so that surely was a request in Mr. Obama’s personal political interest.

Appropriate requests to foreign leaders include reducing corruption, which was one of Mr. Zelensky’s campaign planks. Joe Biden and Hunter Biden don’t have immunity from such a probe simply because Joe Biden is running for office against Mr. Trump.

If Democrats think that mentioning the Bidens is impeachable, they should also investigate the political context in which Mr. Trump made this request. That would include calling Hunter Biden, as well as Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee who allegedly worked with Ukrainian officials in 2016 on opposition research against the Trump campaign. If there’s nothing to Mr. Trump’s claims here, wouldn’t this boost the Democratic impeachment case with the American public?

Mr. Trump’s actions also can’t be separated from Democratic attempts in 2016 to use Russian disinformation to unleash an FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. This was one of the dirtiest political tricks in history, yet Democrats and the impeachment press justify it to this day.

Mr. Trump’s Giuliani gambit failed amid opposition from his own government. The Clinton-financed Steele dossier worked in triggering an FBI probe that eventually morphed into the Mueller investigation that undermined the Trump Presidency for two years. When it comes to inviting foreign meddling in U.S. politics, Democrats and the impeachment press have a double standard.

***
In a healthier political culture, Democrats would be using the Ukraine episode as an argument against Mr. Trump’s re-election. How can you trust his foreign-policy judgment in a second term when he won’t have the check of another re-election?

Instead Democrats have pulled out the constitutional bazooka of impeachment. They are doing so in partisan fashion, contrary to their earlier pledges, and in a political rush to beat the 2020 political calendar. On the evidence and the process to date, they are turning impeachment into a routine political weapon, and future Presidents of both parties will regret it.


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The honor of turning impeachment into a routine political weapon squarely belongs to Mr Newt Gingrich, not the Dems.

 

"Republicans discuss a longer Senate impeachment trial to scramble Democratic primaries":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...e46d24-064c-11ea-b17d-8b867891d39d_story.html

Republicans discuss a longer Senate impeachment trial to scramble Democratic primaries

By
Robert Costa,
Michael Scherer and
Seung Min Kim
November 13, 2019 at 6:42 p.m. EST

Some Republican senators and their advisers are privately discussing whether to pressure GOP leaders to stage a lengthy impeachment trial beginning in January to scramble the Democratic presidential race — potentially keeping six contenders in Washington until the eve of the Iowa caucuses or longer.

Those conversations about the timing and framework for a trial remain fluid and closely held, according to more than a dozen participants in the discussions. But the deliberations come as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) faces pressure from conservative activists to swat back at Democrats as public impeachment hearings began this week in the House.

The discussions raise a potential hazard for the six Democratic senators running for president, who had previously planned on a final sprint out of Washington before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary.

“That might be a strategy,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said with a coy smile when asked about the possibility of a trial that disrupts the Democratic campaign. “But I’ll leave that up to others. I’m just a lowly worker.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a McConnell ally, said the Senate would try to distinguish itself during impeachment “by doing this right,” with a trial that probably lasts five or six weeks. But he acknowledged the timing could have an effect on the campaign by giving a potential boost to presidential candidates who have no official role in the process.

“Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden might like that,” Cornyn said of the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and the former vice president, who now poll in the top four in Iowa with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

There is an emerging divide among Republicans, however, over timing. While some Republicans favor a lengthy trial as a means of defending President Trump and creating problems for Democrats, others are calling for swift dismissal or final vote.
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more at the link

 

...they usually spend their time naming post offices...

 

Extending the Senate trial would be a mistake for the GOP and just provide a lot of free air-time for Warren, Harris, Bernie, et al to excoriate the dotard on national TV. Sounds like a plan.

 

More than 400 bills are sitting on McConnel's desk unacted upon.

He is the **** CLog in the sewer line.

DD

 

I hope McConnell does have a very long and thorough Senate Trial. The primary and the need to campaign shouldn’t take precedence over Constitutional duty.

Also if McConnell is going to do this annoy Democrats there is another politician who would really like to see this whole thing go away and I don’t think he will be happy to see impeachment and possible removal of office dominate the news cycle for a long time.

 

If Chief Justice Roberts is the judge doesn’t all of McConnells rules eventually have some sort of approval process from Roberts? I would imagine he would have some say so since it will be essentially his show.

Roberts is a Republican through and through but he does seem very keen on perception of integrity of the institutions. Even though it’s just perception. I can’t see him either approving of a sham open shut trial or a manufactured drawn out exhaustion of the impeachment process manipulated for political gain.

 

ratings apparently are fairly low

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-p...cted-break-ranks-testify-impeachment-inquiry/

 

That is what all impeachments should be based on. Really poignant posting there.

 

I’ll forward this information to McConnell.

 

really poignant posting there

 

I agree. The Republican Counsel is by far the most poignant thing we've seen yet. Absolutely amazing stuff by the Trump defense Republicans.

 

more on the banality theme. This a certified @FranchiseBlade Poignancy™ post.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/impeachment-as-usual-11573775239?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

Impeachment as Usual
Democrats have managed to turn a grave process into a dully partisan one.
By
Kimberley A. Strassel
Nov. 14, 2019 6:47 pm ET

Democrats have already lost their impeachment battle. That’s the takeaway from Wednesday’s first public hearing. What was meant to be a moment in history turned out to be business as usual.

Democrats laid out their best case for removing Donald J. Trump from office, repeatedly using words like “extortion,” “bribery” and “abuse of power.” Mr. Trump was accused of “presidential misconduct,” of a “shakedown scheme” and of “corruption.” He was said to have broken the law and violated the Constitution. Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro analogized the president’s actions to “attempted murder.”

What else is new? The left has been leveling similar claims since before Mr. Trump was elected. When a party spends three years baselessly accusing a president of everything from being a Russian mole to obstructing justice, from profiting off the presidency to abusing security clearances and cheating on his taxes, that party loses the credibility to say: Really, this time, we mean it. Democrats didn’t lose the war for hearts and minds on Wednesday. They lost it three years ago.

Those hearts and minds are the only prize here. The media will continue to imbue this event with gravity, to report every bit of testimony as more “bombshell” evidence against Mr. Trump. But impeachment is a political process, so the measure of its “success” is whether its supporters can convince a bipartisan majority of the country that Mr. Trump took an action worthy of removal from office. Nothing in Wednesday’s hearing came close, and the Democrats took their best shot.

The FiveThirtyEight blog offers a useful polling tracker that broadly sums up public opinion on impeachment. Aside from a bump in favor in late September, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her semiformal impeachment inquiry, the ensuing weeks of testimony and leaks have barely moved the needle. Instead positions have hardened. Democrats overwhelming support impeachment; Republican overwhelmingly oppose it. A majority of independents continue to oppose it. And a Politico/Morning Consult poll this week found that 81% of voters say there is no or little chance they will change their minds about the proceedings.

As for the 8% of respondents who say there is “some” chance they could be persuaded, what did Wednesday’s hearing provide them? Not much new. The Democratic strategy of holding depositions in secret and leaking nuggets meant they’d already handed out their best info to the public. The hearing was a repeat, only this time with Republican pushback.

For the most part, it was a five-hour slog through the minutiae of U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Even political junkies had a tough task trying to keep track of dates, meetings and the long, dizzying cast of bureaucratic players. Two State Department officials, William Taylor and George Kent, laid out their concerns over the temporary delay in security aid to Ukraine and their belief that it was driven by domestic politics.

At the same time, viewers watched the Democrats’ two star witnesses acknowledge that they had no firsthand knowledge of White House decisions on the aid. They were reminded that Ukraine got the money without launching an investigation into Hunter or Joe Biden. And they watched Republican congressmen make a persuasive case that Democrats are abusing the process by blackballing White House counsel from hearings and refusing to call witnesses from the Republican list.

A Roll Call story this week about voter sentiment on impeachment in Washington state quoted Mark Stephan, a political science professor at Washington State University Vancouver. He said most voters “are either not exactly tuned to it closely, or . . . they’re just like, ‘I can’t make anything of this. This all seems like a Washington, D.C., mess.’ ”

That’s a Democratic failure by any measure, and it is hard to see how that dynamic could change as the hearings progress. Friday’s hearing is with a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who left that post two months before the disputed phone call. Next week’s hearings will include more critics but also witnesses such as Kurt Volker, former special representative to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who will likely defend the administration’s actions.

Democrats have meanwhile abandoned efforts to get testimony from central players, including former national security adviser John Bolton. Such testimony would arguably be most important, but Democrats have decided the process would take too long. They want a quick vote, not a thorough probe.

Given the current dynamic, it’s also hard to see how impeachment redounds to either party’s benefit. Both sides are already claiming victory and will use it as a voter-turnout tool in 2020. Impeachment is meant to be a big deal, but Democrats and the media have accomplished the disturbing feat of turning it into day-to-day partisan warfare. And the public is understandably treating it as just that: Washington as usual.

Write to kim@wsj.com.
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