House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces drafting of articles of impeachment against President Trump. “Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairmen to proceed with articles of impeachment."- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced this morning https://t.co/NHl24GyU1o pic.twitter.com/9bqXZWhXNy — Mother Jones (@MotherJones) December 5, 2019 … Read More
Justice Department IG Likely To Ignore Conspiracy Theories In His Report . . . Because There’s No There There, And Rudy Gets Dirt From The Corrupt Ukrainians
The report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on the origins of the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016 has still not been released, though every indication is that the core report was completed weeks, if not months, ago. But while that report is still getting some final edits around the DOJ, one thing … Read More
House Begins Live Impeachment Hearings
Three constitutional scholars invited by Democrats to testify at today’s impeachment hearings will say that President Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for political gain clearly meet the historical definition of impeachable offenses, according to copies of their opening statements. The three law professors are appearing in the first impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee as it kicks off a … Read More
The Triumph
Jennifer Rubin: Some observers of the impeachment hearings conducted under the auspices of the House Intelligence Committee bizarrely concluded that the proceedings lacked “pizzazz.” While that is a ridiculous metric for evaluating an inquiry into gross misconduct by the president, no one will find the report on those hearings and on other evidence boring. It’s got pizzazz to spare. First, the nuts … Read More
The Phone Records In The Impeachment Report
In addition to summing up the findings from weeks of testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, Intelligence Committee Democrats’ new report has a surprising inclusion — the phone records of several major players involved in the scandal, including President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of the committee, confirmed on CNN that investigators subpoenaed these phone records. And while the … Read More
Views On The Republican Prebuttal
The Republican staff report is as predictable as a typical Trump tweet—and as mendacious. It assails and belittles the Democrats’ effort to investigate whether Trump muscled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate investigations that would dig up dirt on Joe Biden and produce information to back up a nutty conspiracy theory that holds that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the 2016 election. And … Read More
Trump Declines Invitation To Participate in House Judiciary Committee Hearings, Then Complains About Unfair Process
Neither President Donald Trump nor his attorneys will participate in Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, they said late Sunday. In a letter to Chairman Jerrold Nadler, White House counsel to the President Pat Cipollone said, “We cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the … Read More
Trump: ‘Rudy Who?”
LISTEN: President Trump is now distancing himself more than ever from lawyer Rudy Giuliani, claiming he did not direct Giuliani to act on his behalf in Ukraine in a new interview with Bill O’Reilly. pic.twitter.com/6JaP9oOLMI — TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) November 26, 2019 Funny, but also deeply absurd, based on the known facts: Trump told Zelensky on July 25 call: … Read More
The Lawfare L’Affaire Ukraine Report
Breaking — some more to add to the timeline. The Office of Management and Budget’s first official action to withhold $250M in aid to Ukraine came on the evening of July 25—the day of the now-infamous call between Trump and Ukrainian president Zelensky. The Office of Management and Budget’s first official action to withhold $250 million in Pentagon aid to … Read More
No Absolute Executive Privilege, Rules Judge
It might seem like ages ago that former White House Counsel Don McGahn blew off the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena seeking his testimony related to the Mueller report. That’s because, well, it was ages ago. On Monday evening, a federal judge resolved the dispute between the executive and the legislature. And D.C. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nearly 120-page ruling couldn’t … Read More
Lev Parnas Has Tapes Of Trump/Giuliani Conversations, And Now The House Impeachment Committee Has Them
ABC News: The House Intelligence Committee is in possession of audio and video recordings and photographs provided to the committee by Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly played a key role in assisting him in his efforts to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News. The … Read More
House Impeachment Hearings Over: What Now?
I join everybody else in believing that President Trump will be impeached by the House. Sadly, I think two or three Democrats will not join the rest of the party, but I doubt there will be any Republican defectors, and the GOP will make mincemeat of that. In the Senate, I had hoped there would be signs of adulthood, but … Read More
Live Impeachment Testimony: Hill and Holmes Bring Up The Last Day Of Public Testimony
Another bad day for Republicans. Here are the key takeaways: Holmes’s succinct explanation of two quid pro quos The explanation by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, of how the Ukraine quid pro quos worked got lots of attention Wednesday — remember “2 plus 2 equals 4?” Sondland’s point was basically that everyone understood why a White … Read More