Where TF is the Impeachment Inquiry Thread?

[HouseDivided]

Ol’ Crazy Nancy’s decision to not submit the articles may prove to be a clever move.

At the very least, Trump has been impeached. Even if that’s just symbolic, and more of a statement than would be achieved with a hurried partisan acquittal.

If they get the senate to agree to witnesses, maybe it’s worth submitting.

If they gotta just wait it out and let the news keep dropping - shady Ukraine businessmen, financial records, foot in mouth moments - maybe some bombshell drops so hard that even the senate is like yeah we need to hear from some folks, and the articles can be advanced then.

Orrrr maybe it rallies Trump’s base so much so that he gets re-elected with even less Russian interference than last time.

There’s nothing clever about Pelosi. She knows the articles are dead in the water. She knows there is nothing substantive, and that the public is aware that the Dems have been banging this drum sans cause since Inauguration Day. Kabuki theater; a tale told by a fool, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[ousdahl]

How are you able to know that?

Do you not have any curiosity to learn exactly what the potus is up to?

[seahawk]

It's part of Family Values--women cannot ever be called clever. Pelosi is a woman, therefore not clever.

[HouseDivided]

How are you able to know that?

Do you not have any curiosity to learn exactly what the potus is up to?

Couldn’t care less. He fulfilled his primary job for me by virtue of not being Dowdy the Clown. I am hopeful that he will fulfill some more of his promises on trade and immigration in his second term, but he has made significant inroads with Federal and Supreme Court appointments that will have a lasting impact. After eight years of the Kenyan Muslim and a close call with DTC, I’m going to count my blessings and be happy with the current POTUS for the rest of this term and all of the next. It’s morning in America, baby!

[chiknbut]

How are you able to know that?

Do you not have any curiosity to learn exactly what the potus is up to?

If there's one thing the Dotard in Chief loves more than the uneducated, it's the dimwitted.

[ousdahl]

sigh.

[HouseDivided]

sigh.

My sentiments exactly every time I hear some screeching lump of ridiculousness start off on a rant that includes the words “collusion,” “quid pro quo,” or “foreign interference”. Nobody cares.

[Geezer]

Some don't care, don't say nobody.

[ousdahl]

plenty of people care. Maybe they have a political axe to grind. Maybe they're just genuinely curious on some civic level.

plenty of people "couldn't care less," even despite the myriad of evidence to the contrary. These people are to whom my sigh is directed.

also, is it supposed be myriad of or just myriad? That one confuzzles me.

[HouseDivided]

If there were evidence, there would be actual charges, not this stupid Kabuki crap.

Nobody whose opinion I value much cares, so that’s as good as nobody to me.

I believe the proper usage is “myriad”.

[Geezer]

If you had been paying attention, you would know.

[HouseDivided]

If you had been paying attention, you would know.

I have been paying attention. There is no credible evidence, just a lot of hearsay, impressions, and wishful thinking from desperate people.

[Geezer]

Not hearsay, testimony from witnesses is certainly valid evidence.

[twocoach]

How are you able to know that?

Do you not have any curiosity to learn exactly what the potus is up to?

Couldn’t care less. He fulfilled his primary job for me by virtue of not being Dowdy the Clown. I am hopeful that he will fulfill some more of his promises on trade and immigration in his second term, but he has made significant inroads with Federal and Supreme Court appointments that will have a lasting impact. After eight years of the Kenyan Muslim and a close call with DTC, I’m going to count my blessings and be happy with the current POTUS for the rest of this term and all of the next. It’s morning in America, baby!

So his biggest accomplishments are simply to have been in office when 2 Supreme Court seats were up to be filled? Shit, even one of those had to be stolen for him.

Nice to have a job where once you arrive, your supporters dont require you to produce anything of value in your own.

[twocoach]

If there were evidence, there would be actual charges, not this stupid Kabuki crap.

Nobody whose opinion I value much cares, so that’s as good as nobody to me.

I believe the proper usage is “myriad”.

It's been abundantly clear that the President cannot face charges. Did you ignore the Mueller Report, too?

[DCHawk1]

As some smart guy on here said, there's no impeachment until the articles cross the hall to the Senate.

So, recall the vote and re-open the hearings, get court ordered subpoenas, and take testimony, just like the Trumplicans demand. As I've said before, Federal Judges like expedited briefing on important issues. We are dealing with east coast law firms that run their offices 24/7. Videotape the depositions. It can be done. Call the Majority Leader's bluff. If he thinks everything has been sloppy, clean it up. Give the Majority Leader what he wants, a full record.

In the legal context, judges can hold judgments for 30 days and alter or amend them on their own motion. I'm sure the Speaker can do the same thing since, you know, it is only political.

Leawood is, as is his wont, the most reasonable person in the room.

[DCHawk1]

How are you able to know that?

Do you not have any curiosity to learn exactly what the potus is up to?

I am.

I am also curious to know what Obama's DCI WAS up to. I'm curious what Chuck Schumer knew when he warned Trump that it was unwise to criticize the intelligence establishment. I'm curious to know what Giuliani is up to and whether there is any evidence to corroborate what he says he's found in Ukraine. I'm curious about a LOT of things. And I'd like answers to ALL of them, not just those that fit my partisan predilections.

[DCHawk1]

It's part of Family Values--women cannot ever be called clever. Pelosi is a woman, therefore not clever.

Pelosi is, by far, the smartest Speaker since at least Tipsy O'Neill, and probably a great deal longer.

That said, I think she is having trouble keeping the newly elected, institutionally ignorant, and slightly unhinged faction of her caucus from losing its damned mind. Fish suggests that the GOP is at the breaking point. Maybe. But the Democrats almost certainly are, and it is causing the Speaker to do things she would never, ever do, if she had her way.

[Shirley]

Gosh, no wonder Trump doesn't want them to testify:

This is at least the second major revelation that's come since Trump was impeached, and I can't imagine anyone sane would suggest we've seen all there is to see.

Unless something changes dramatically and Trump is actually removed (or forced to resign), the Democrats will have to figure how to handle additional revelations post-non-removal. I would think the right course of action would be to use these subsequent revelations to put heat on vulnerable GOP senators (as opposed to re-litigating impeachment on worse iterations of the same facts).

"Revelation X simply underscores what we already knew: Trump is guilty as sin. However, it makes clear that Vulnerable Senator Y is and has always been complicit in the coverup."

Democrats have to start thinking ahead, and swinging control of the Senate would seem to be the best firewall protecting the country from a second Trump term, whether legitimately won, or otherwise.

Speaking of "...the Democrats will have to figure how to handle additional revelations post-non-removal...", they aren't the only ones:



If Mitch McConnell is going to pull off his scheme to turn President Trump’s impeachment trial into a quick and painless sham with no witnesses, the Senate majority leader needs the story to be covered as a conventional Washington standoff — one that portrays both sides as maneuvering for advantage in an equivalently political manner.

But extraordinary new revelations in the New York Times about Trump’s corrupt freezing of military aid to Ukraine will — or should — make this much harder to get away with.

McConnell badly needs the media’s both-sidesing instincts to hold firm against the brute facts of the situation. If Republicans bear the brunt of media pressure to explain why they don’t want to hear from witnesses, that risks highlighting their true rationale: They adamantly fear new revelations precisely because they know Trump is guilty — and that this corrupt scheme is almost certainly much worse than we can currently surmise.

That possibility is underscored by the Times report, a chronology of Trump’s decision to withhold aid to a vulnerable ally under assault while he and his henchmen extorted Ukraine into carrying out his corrupt designs.

The report demonstrates in striking detail that inside the administration, the consternation over the legality and propriety of the aid freeze — and confusion over Trump’s true motives — ran much deeper than previously known, implicating top Cabinet officials more deeply than we thought.

[...]

What makes all this new information really damning, however, is that many of these officials who were directly involved with Trump’s freezing of aid are the same ones Trump blocked from appearing before the House impeachment inquiry.

This should make it inescapable that McConnell wants a trial with no testimony from these people — Democrats want to hear from Mulvaney, Bolton, Duffey and Blair — precisely because he, too, wants to prevent us from ever gaining a full accounting.

We now have a much clearer glimpse into the murky depths of just how much more these officials know about the scheme — and just how much McConnell and Trump are determined to make sure we don’t ever learn. That’s so indefensible that it might even breach the levee of the media’s both-sidesing tendencies.

...Trump’s defenders are taking a huge risk
Here’s another possibility. If McConnell does pull off a sham trial leading to a quick acquittal, more might surface later that, in retrospect, will get hung around Republicans’ necks and reverse-reveal just how corrupt their cover-up really was.

As George T. Conway III has noted, in such a scenario, Trump’s defenders will suffer blowback from “the very evidence they sought to suppress.”

This new report underscores the point. The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is currently battling the administration over a tranche of OMB and Pentagon documents related to the aid freeze that CPI just obtained due to a court order. This is how Duffey’s emails surfaced, but much of what CPI has obtained has been blacked out.

CPI is asking a judge to lift the blackouts, and a ruling is expected as early as March. So it’s plausible that CPI could obtain a great deal of new information — showing even more clearly how worried officials were that Trump’s freeze was breaking the law — in only a few months.

That could come after Senate Republicans ran a sham trial and acquitted Trump. Do they really want to be on the hook for having suppressed such evidence, even in the face of a whole new round of deeply incriminating revelations?

[...]

[HouseDivided]

How are you able to know that?

Do you not have any curiosity to learn exactly what the potus is up to?

I am.

I am also curious to know what Obama's DCI WAS up to. I'm curious what Chuck Schumer knew when he warned Trump that it was unwise to criticize the intelligence establishment. I'm curious to know what Giuliani is up to and whether there is any evidence to corroborate what he says he's found in Ukraine. I'm curious about a LOT of things. And I'd like answers to ALL of them, not just those that fit my partisan predilections.

That’s a bingo! President Trump pissed off the intelligence community, which has set in motion the current house of mirrors sh*t-show that we’ve been watching unfold. U.S. government is and has been a power struggle between the POTUS and the FBI/CIA, and the POTUS usually loses.