So the inquiry process was "too fast/unfair", but now the GOP is cool with ramming the impeachment trial through the Senate since they're so sure they have nothing to hide. It shouldn't take a ton of critical thinking to realize how dumb their line of reasoning is, but here we are.

12/5/2019 7:25:25 PM

Now they want it done before the election takes shape. Thus why Pelosi rushing it is so damn stupid

12/5/2019 8:14:13 PM

The general election is 11months away and the Dem nominee won't even be decided until at least late March/April, but likely not until June or later. Why would Dems try to rush anything when they have mountains of evidence and plenty of time?

Also, to anyone criticizing Pelosi: you should calm down. She's a shrewd/calculating/self-serving politician, but she's damn good at her job and you should probably just be patient yourself.

[Edited on December 5, 2019 at 8:49 PM. Reason : .]

12/5/2019 8:47:51 PM

I'm not sure about the strategy of pushing the vote to Christmas time, I'm worried they'll lose momentum

12/5/2019 9:10:26 PM

It's supposed to be the week BEFORE Xmas.

12/5/2019 9:19:15 PM

Time travel movie where a ragtag group of disgruntled liberals go back in time to blow the whistle and get Trump impeached to stop him from interfering in the election but when they get back, Trump is still the president. They check history and realize it was their intervention that caused him to win the election.

Buy or sell?

12/5/2019 10:57:37 PM

If they vote on impeachment before Christmas and punt to the senate, Pelosi deserves all the criticism. She has been the opposite of savvy during this process, fighting it the whole way and making no effort to bring the hammer down.

12/5/2019 11:27:26 PM

I can appreciate your skepticism/negativity, but you should actually be feeling pretty good about how the Dems handled the inquiry. The only real question is whether to include the Mueller stuff, but either way, the evidence and facts are solid. The GOP’s strategy to deflect/smear witnesses may not work very well this time. Time will tell.

Also, while many of us already know what impeachment means (ie that impeachment is just formal charges, while removal is a separate process) a TON Of Americans have appallingly bad comprehension of Civics/US Government and will be paying way more attention to the Senate trial.

Close to 50% of ALL Americans think he should be removed from office. That’s REALLY bad. 70% agree that he did something wrong. That’s pretty damn high, too.

If the GOP steamrolls the process and/or creates a media circus like the Kavanaugh confirmation, it’s going to suck and get ugly. But the Dems did their job and took their time getting it to the Senate. Be angry at the criminal and his supporters, not the ones that did their best to bring him to justice.

[Edited on December 6, 2019 at 12:36 AM. Reason : .]

12/6/2019 12:35:38 AM

You said like 3 posts up that they shouldn't rush

12/6/2019 9:46:13 AM

No, I was talking about the hypocrisy of the GOP. They’ve been crying about how rushed/unfair the inquiry process was, but now THEY want to get the trial over with in the Senate ASAP...

12/6/2019 10:46:35 AM

I watched Rep. Mike Johnson bemoan the haste of the impeachment process and express his exhaustion from it during the same interview yesterday.

12/6/2019 10:54:22 AM

Why give them any control over the process whatsoever. There are 50 more impeach able offenses, investigate then all.

12/6/2019 10:55:26 AM

Quote :

"At long last, Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump have discovered bipartisanship–over the impeachment of Donald Trump. https://t.co/zlckPnQtDi https://t.co/C46IbM7VgJ"

12/6/2019 12:33:15 PM

i'm wondering if this is because democrats shot themselves in the foot waiting so long to start impeachment, so now they need to wrap it up quick so it doesn't go to the senate too late in the campaign process

12/6/2019 1:06:48 PM

So in theory if somehow 2 senate republicans flip and vote to remove him from office Pence would have to decide - and potentially vote Trump out and himself in correct?

12/6/2019 5:40:16 PM

No, you need two thirds

12/6/2019 5:49:26 PM

Got it thanks! Thought it was majority for some reason.

[Edited on December 6, 2019 at 5:57 PM. Reason : .]

12/6/2019 5:57:14 PM

Which is why he won't be removed. No way enough GOP senators vote for it.

12/6/2019 6:26:12 PM

Can’t the house subpoena trump? Why wouldn’t they do this?

12/6/2019 11:35:40 PM

I'd much rather see the House enforce some of their existing subpoenas first.

12/7/2019 12:52:17 PM

i don't understand the logic of not a) immediately issuing subpoenas instead of wasting weeks and b) not immediately enforcing them when they were ignored

12/7/2019 6:20:55 PM

Wouldn't it have to go to SC which would take months?

[Edited on December 7, 2019 at 6:53 PM. Reason : .]

12/7/2019 6:52:51 PM

Possibly depending on courts, but the SC would probably hear it quickly and the timeline us exactly why it should have been started mo ths ago

12/7/2019 7:03:31 PM

Castor getting murdered

12/9/2019 1:17:57 PM

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dossier-author-chris-steele-met-ivanka-trump-years/story?id=67597270

The trumps tried to hire cristopher Steele back in 2010 to help the trump org do business overseas

12/9/2019 2:14:17 PM

You want to argue "Abuse of Power", go ahead. You can make a case.

"Obstruction of Congress". Throwing in the concept of separation of powers and history, this is one giant eyeroll. Let's go through history and name all the presidents that obstructed Congress. John Tyler, absolutely. Andrew Johnson, absolutely. Woodrow Wilson, absolutely. FDR did at points. Nixon, yes. Clinton obstructed Congress on occasion post-1994 midterms. If obstruction of Congress is going to be a thing, pretty much the president in current political times is going to be in hot water if the House is held by the other party considering it's just a 50 percent plus 1 threshold. This is a ridiculous article of impeachment as far as precedent. I don't understand why they didn't write an article for Obstruction of Justice in contrast. You could make a way more powerful case for that than obstruction of Congress.

[Edited on December 10, 2019 at 11:20 AM. Reason : .]

12/10/2019 11:19:05 AM

The mcgahn stuff is of course obstruction of justice

Also, why are dems so bad at this?

12/10/2019 11:53:09 AM

So serious question for the TWW legal scholars. How can you have an abuse of power without any other charges? Like if the bribery charge or Russia collusion charge was included, then there would also be an abuse of power charge. But can you have just abuse of power by itself?

12/10/2019 12:30:14 PM

^ The CNN blurb I read on it said that Pelosi and company did not include obstruction of justice to appease more moderate members of their caucus that wanted impeachment to narrowly focus on Ukraine. This means neither article explicitly draws anything from the Mueller Report. However, the contents of the Mueller Report would be discussed as part of the abuse of power article. I think "abuse of power" is going to be a catch-all describing certain actions Trump has done and combine them altogether, there's your abuse of power.

I'm flabbergasted at "obstruction of Congress". "Abuse of power" should have more voting support unless we have block voting. I expect a block vote from the Republicans. I think there should be a handful of Democratic Representatives that may vote for 1 article and against 1 to try to demonstrate nuance.

For the sake of history, the strongest charge against Clinton ended up being obstruction of justice, where the Senate voted 50-50. The weakest charge of the 4 was abuse of power, which only about a third of the House voted for.

[Edited on December 10, 2019 at 12:41 PM. Reason : /]

12/10/2019 12:33:29 PM

https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/12/10/with-release-of-doj-ig-fisa-report-democrats-should-pause-on-impeachment/

12/10/2019 7:11:16 PM

Without actually reading the articles themselves word for word, my gut reaction to "obstruction of congress" is that it's related to all the stonewalling (refusing subpoenas/storming closed door meetings/etc), and the blatant witness intimidation efforts by Trump on Twitter and during his rallies, which imo seem perfectly reasonable. The word obstruction, however, is slightly problematic, because it literally means to prevent/impede/block and presidents and congressmen alike deliberately obstruct legislation in the literal sense all the fucking time. English and words are hard, and when we rely on the words of dead rich white guys from hundreds of years ago, we wind up with things like the 2nd amendment.

I don't know why some of you people are so upset about this stuff though. He's getting impeached, which is what you people wanted all along, and even if they included more charges, the odds of Trump being removed are basically the same.

In other words, you got what you wanted, but now you're whining that it's not exactly what you wanted, and you're falling into the same trap you always do which is trying to attack centrists/moderates even if they're on your same team.

Personally, I think this outcome is probably better than it could have been, but then again I don't live in some fantasy world where politicians are ethical/transparent/honest and truly serve the people.




[Edited on December 10, 2019 at 8:51 PM. Reason : .]

12/10/2019 8:46:59 PM

I didn't get what I wanted. I wanted a long comprehensive impeachment inquiry that investigates all his many extremely corrupt actions

12/10/2019 10:48:24 PM

The fact that a few Dems might actually vote against impeachment is a pretty good reminder of how fucked we are as a nation.

This Senate trial is going to be a fucking nightmare.

12/11/2019 12:11:19 AM

McConnell might be the most old-school leadership politician left in Washington. Being in the Senate, he's more isolated from the winds of change that can come from nowhere. Read an article yesterday he's already defying Trump on a couple things - Trump wants this to be more theater and spectacle as you can imagine, and McConnell wants none of that. (McConnell also only has 53 of 100 people backing him, so it only takes 4 Republicans to defy him and force something.) I think McConnell is going to play this thing straight and then the vote occurs. He'll have done his job then as required.

Quote :

"Without actually reading the articles themselves word for word, my gut reaction to "obstruction of congress" is that it's related to all the stonewalling (refusing subpoenas/storming closed door meetings/etc), and the blatant witness intimidation efforts by Trump on Twitter and during his rallies, which imo seem perfectly reasonable."

I do not want in the future every time someone from the executive branch refuses a legislative branch subpoena when Congress is controlled by the other party that becomes grounds for impeachment according to some partisan asshole Representative, and you know those people will always exist on both sides. That is an absolutely horrible precedent to set.

Congress as a body has a power to deal with individuals that refused subpoenas. They can charge all the individuals with "Contempt of Congress", whereby the House Sergeant-of-Arms can go arrest them and bring them to the floor.

[Edited on December 11, 2019 at 8:10 AM. Reason : /]

12/11/2019 7:59:25 AM

it's harder to make a theater in the senate than in the house just because of the format

it will still be one, but republicans won't be able to have as many scenes of outrage at the actual thing and will have to rely more on outside pressers and the media

12/11/2019 8:44:17 AM

Something to add on to my rant on the power of Congress to hold people in contempt, be arrested, and bring them before the House to answer questions. People that are employees of the executive branch there's obviously a separation of powers question there on whether Congress can "compel" them to testify. Rudolph Giuliani however is not an executive branch employee, he's a private citizen. So what's stopping them? Based on all the testimony I've read, Giuliani is at the center of a lot of this.

[Edited on December 11, 2019 at 9:58 AM. Reason : /]

12/11/2019 9:56:32 AM

Quote :

" I think McConnell is going to play this thing straight and then the vote occurs. He'll have done his job then as required."

I think he will do whatever benefits him the most, whether that be throwing Trump under the bus and getting the party to stab him in the back ala Julias Caesar style, and feigning ignorance; getting just enough votes to make it look like it was 'close' and then making the case that it's up to voters, since the Senate won't remove him; playing along ,or even upping the ante with distractions/conspiracy theories to energize the hardcore Trumpers/evangelicals and get them to implement Hitler's Final Solution 2.0

He's a lot smarter than Trump, but definitively more evil.

12/11/2019 8:59:47 PM

GOP is 100% behind trump. There’s no secret backstabbing going to happen. Trumps 40% support is going to hold.

Election is going to be a bitter and still be close.

They should have gone for more articles of impeachment, I’m not sure why they didn’t...

12/11/2019 10:47:00 PM

my prediction (over a month ago) of trump coming out of this unscathed still holds.

watch him get stronger and bolder, and his supporters become even more hardened and hateful.

12/11/2019 10:57:36 PM

Come on...did (does) anyone actually think that the Senate will convict and remove? That's not exactly a novel prediction you made there.

12/12/2019 8:26:04 AM

Literally no one. Anywhere.

Except a handful of never-Trump Republicans like David Frum, who for some reason still believe somewhere inside the rotting carcass of a Republican Party lies something worth redeeming.

12/12/2019 9:12:03 AM

as far as expectations i bet we get more dems voting against impeach/remove than any republicans crossing the line

12/12/2019 9:27:55 AM

"Nag nag nag nag"

-Some lady from AZ

[Edited on December 12, 2019 at 9:45 AM. Reason : .]

12/12/2019 9:43:51 AM

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1205104256312848385?s=21

If Dems were serious this is just blatant corruption using his office to garner business and press for his not-divested from personal businesses.

12/12/2019 10:06:03 AM

Pelosi is saying she wont whip the vote

This is the correct thing to say in public, but jesus christ I hope that's not actually what she's doing

12/12/2019 11:36:08 AM

12/12/2019 3:20:22 PM

Can you blow my whistle baby

12/12/2019 5:53:18 PM

Today was like https://youtu.be/epIT4-gF__M

[Edited on December 12, 2019 at 7:24 PM. Reason : .]

12/12/2019 7:22:01 PM

Interesting they’re still debating now live on tv

I hope people are watching.

12/12/2019 9:53:06 PM

Just saw jayapal and Bass, they need to put these ladies in all the tv stations.

12/12/2019 10:52:50 PM