??? Asking to skip their constitutional responsibilities to better fit your preferred timeline is an odd request. Grand juries don’t vote to refer to jury trial without weighing evidence. But maybe you just mean it is so obvious that 45 is a crook. I guess I could see that argument.
All this letter means is that Pelosi is getting to Donald... Right now she is Cool Hand Lucy and not showing her cards at all... Trump keeps poking for a response and she want give him one.. By the way The House does not Have to take a vote on impeachment... T_Man
The democrats in Congress are talking as though guilt is obvious. The media is generally reporting guilt is obvious. If they think they've got him, then just do it. Heck, after the letter sent to congress today, they could just impeach him for obstructing congressional duties. in any case, my opinion is that the longer they drag this investigation out without a formal impeachment, it will lose momentum with the public, as they will think it has become a solely political show and that the alleged misdeeds aren't really that big of a deal after all. Strike while the iron is hot. Sh*t or get off the pot.
As obvious a crook as he is, plenty of facts are not known and they need to be established. Obstructing that implies worse crimes. Cutting short prematurely is the preferred timeline of a criminal and supporters of the criminal that doesn’t want all the facts known, for good reasons. The facts are incriminating and so far , the more is known, the more the public support removing the criminals, the more the Senate wall to protect the criminal could crack. There are revenue around the obstructions. Giving up so quickly and not try to get to all the facts at this time is politically stupid and irresponsible of the impeachment constitutional duty of the House.
Lol now it’s coming out that Ukraine was reopening the corruption investigation into Biden well before the aid was cut and the “phone call”.
Ann Althouse with some interesting commentary October 9, 2019 What if the Senate really does produce a supermajority to convict Trump and ousts him from office? What happens next? I think the entire theater of impeachment is taking place within the false security that the Senate will never be able to convict. But what if the momentum gets going and 2/3 of the Senators vote to convict? Yes, Pence becomes President, but what I mean is: What happens to the American people who voted Trump into office and who — from the moment they won — have had the experience of seeing their President treated like a big, horrible mistake? Their choice was never honored, never treated as respectable. They got to see that their opinion never mattered and was never supposed to prevail. And what will Trump do? Freed from the responsibilities of the presidency and past all the fighting of the impeachment battle, he won't hide away. He will be out and about, energized and inventing more new ways of being a politician in America, and he will have an immense audience, overshadowing what any other political candidate can do. The new temptation will be to prosecute him for crimes, but, again, how will this affect the millions of people who thought they won the election and then saw their victory taken away? Posted by Ann Althouse at 8:54 AM
See Nixon. The Trump voters also got to see their President continuously break laws without a care in the world. What happens to the American people who voted Hillary into office and see their choice win the majority of the vote yet not get sworn in?
I think the premise is kind of crazy. The Senate will not turn on him, no matter what comes up in the House investigation. At a basic level though, some of her questions are interesting ones, and many of us have been wondering about aftermath of whatever is to come -- with a central character who will never apologize or admit to wrongdoing and who will use ever-stronger and more-dangerous rhetoric if called to account. The bully survives by making those around him fear what happens if you stand up to him. And this is the core of that Althouse column. None of her questions are reasons to close our eyes to criminal conduct. All of her questions are just as relevant if he loses next year and has to leave office. Yeah, elections have consequences, as we've seen. They make lots of voters unhappy every four years, as we've seen. And actions have consequences, as we see every day. He crossed a line, (at the very least one clear one), admitted to crossing the line, and now some people are doing what they believe their duty calls them to do when that line is crossed. And yes, she's right: he's going to be a big pain in butt after he leaves office, be it next year or in five years, or in whatever manner he leaves office. That is assured. He wasn't exactly a uniter previously, pushing birther poison to his followers. But here too: We can't ignore crimes because he will be a pain in the butt if he leaves. There's the bully logic. Oh, it will be easier if we just put up with it, and he'll eventually go away. Look, he'll be a less damaging pain in the butt, I would think, if he can't order around federal agencies and the military. But yeah, he'll always have Twitter and his caps lock key.
WSJ editorial tonight for tomorrow's paper: https://www.wsj.com/articles/back-to-you-nancy-11570663218?mod=hp_opin_pos_1 Back to You, Nancy Trump calls the Speaker’s bluff on her impeachment tactics. By The Editorial Board Oct. 9, 2019 7:20 pm ET The White House letter late Tuesday telling Speaker Nancy Pelosi that President Trump won’t cooperate with her impeachment inquiry is causing heartburn among all the usual suspects. Readers should ignore the fainting spells over “a constitutional crisis” and keep in mind that this is largely a political response to a political attack by House Democrats. “Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process,” wrote White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who lists the due-process protections that the House is denying Mr. Trump as it pursues impeachment. He’s right about due process but wrong to dress this up in constitutional clothes. No doubt Mr. Cipollone is doing this for political effect, since he knows that under the Constitution the House can organize impeachment more or less as it wants. The House is under no constitutional obligation to allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers to cross-examine witnesses, as if impeachment were a criminal proceeding. Like the President’s pardon power, the House’s impeachment power is among the least fettered in America’s founding charter. Mr. Cipollone is trying to make a political point about the unprecedented secret and unfair way the House is proceeding on impeachment, and on that he’s entirely correct. As we’ve been writing, Mrs. Pelosi has refused to let the House vote on a resolution authorizing an official impeachment inquiry with rules that define the scope and procedures. This contrasts with how the House worked in both the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachments. Mr. Cipollone is now using the lack of a House vote to justify the White House refusal to cooperate with witnesses and documents “under these circumstances.” Mr. Cipollone holds out the prospect of cooperating if Mrs. Pelosi holds such a vote. Think of this as a “back to you, Nancy” memo. She now faces a political choice of her own. She could treat Mr. Trump’s lack of cooperation as one more impeachable offense, add it to whatever the House decides to do about Mr. Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president, and impeach Mr. Trump on those grounds. Joe Biden endorsed impeachment on this basis Wednesday. But this rush to impeach might not persuade anyone who hasn’t wanted to oust Mr. Trump since January 2017. On the other hand, Mrs. Pelosi could let the House vote to authorize an inquiry with regular order and rules that give the minority subpoena power and have everything done in public. This was the House standard for Nixon-Clinton. The risk for Mrs. Pelosi is that she might lose some House Democrats on such a vote without gaining many Republicans—which would make the partisan nature of the exercise clear and undermine its public credibility. She’d still face fights over access to White House documents and witnesses, though she’d be in a stronger position to prevail in the courts. These legal fights are hardly new, by the way, and hardly “norm-breaking.” A President and Congress controlled by opposing parties fight over documents all the time. We don’t recall Democrats fretting when Mr. Clinton made executive-privilege claims that were more sweeping than Nixon’s during Watergate. The media that now profess horror at Mr. Trump raised not a whit of concern when Attorney General Eric Holder denied documents to Congress and was held in contempt. Just politics, they said then. Now, in their hatred of Mr. Trump, they dilate about constitutional norms they ignore when it suits them politically. If Mrs. Pelosi does choose to brawl over documents, she’s likely to win in court more than she loses. The House in its impeachment power can seek evidence from the executive, and the courts are likely to agree when its requests are reasonable and related to the alleged offenses being investigated. But Mr. Trump may also sometimes prevail if the House is issuing kitchen-sink subpoenas that jeopardize his ability to conduct foreign policy or communicate freely with advisers. No one should be surprised if the White House chooses to fight back, and hard, when Democrats are trying to remove Mr. Trump from office and brand him as “impeached” for 2020. The Pelosi Democrats are fighting ugly, and Mr. Trump is fighting ugly back.
Fox News calls Trump's bluff ... And you gotta know that Fox News tilted this poll crazy to support their political bias.
I think it's fairly simple. Most will abandon him and move on (welcome back!). A selected few (10%ish ) will stick to him and wear the victimhood badge for a long time. Without power of the US gov under his control, all foreign gov and most foreign and domestic businesses will abandon him. Most will no longer want anything to do with him - he's simply not trustworthy and not a good partner to work with. Of course, this ain't happening because of impeachment. The Senate isn't going to move.
