The Trump Impeachment

[L'Emmerdeur]

The Republican self-gratification on 'precedent' and 'process' will have to find a new fantasy subject.

'Pelosi to Hold Vote to Formalize Impeachment Inquiry and Bring It to "Open" Phase'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced on Monday that lawmakers will vote on a resolution that would effectively formalize the impeachment proceedings into Donald Trump, a major step in a weeks-long process that has ensnared the current presidency.

The resolution, which will be considered by the House Rules Committee, appears on the surface to be a bow to process criticisms that Trump and his allies have been making for weeks. But in a letter to her colleagues announcing her decision, Pelosi framed her decision as an attempt to outline the next steps forward as lawmakers move to more “open” hearings, in addition to removing any doubt about the legitimacy of the inquiry.

“This resolution establishes the procedure for hearings that are open to the American people, authorizes the disclosure of deposition transcripts, outlines procedures to transfer evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment, and sets forth due process rights for the President and his Counsel,” Pelosi’s letter reads. “We are taking this step to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump Administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives.”

As if there will be any change in stonewalling by the Trump mob.

[Tero]

Asked whether the vote on Thursday will change the White House’s calculation on how to handle the inquiry, Conway said simply, “No, it doesn’t.”

Conway then went after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, saying he has “no credibility” and called on Democratic Rep. Jim Himes to take over the investigation.

[Tero]

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[Tero]

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Vindman told impeachment investigators in his 10-hour testimony that he sought to restore the White House changes, but he failed.

More from the explosive piece of reporting from The New York Times:

The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.

Colonel Vindman, who appeared on Capitol Hill wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military medals, told House impeachment investigators that he tried to change the reconstructed transcript made by the White House staff to reflect the omissions. But while some of his edits appeared to have been successful, he said, those two corrections were not made.

Colonel Vindman did not testify to a motive behind the editing process. But his testimony is likely to drive investigators to ask further questions about how officials handled the call, including changes to the transcript and the decision to put it into the White House’s most classified computer system — and whether those moves were meant to conceal the call’s most controversial aspects.

Still, Vindman’s testimony shows that Trump’s call with Ukraine was much more controversial and damning than previously known. Both presidents discussed Biden and his son in more detail than the initial transcript indicated, undercutting Trump’s argument that he was more interested in the general subject of corruption than he was about the Bidens.

Vindman’s testimony also confirms that the White House did, indeed, try to cover up the contents of the call – not only by putting it in a top-secret server but by essentially scrubbing the transcript of the most damning words and phrases.

“It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up,” is a phrase commonly associated with presidential scandals dating back to Watergate. In Trump’s case, there is ironclad evidence of a crime and cover-up.

https://www.politicususa.com/2019/10/29 ... rimes.html

[Tero]

Trump was advised on Ukraine by a fellow conspiracy theorist:
Vindman also testified that he was told Patel had been circumventing normal NSC process to get negative material about Ukraine in front of the president, feeding Trump’s belief that Ukraine was brimming with corruption and had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.

That upset Vindman, along with Hill and Bolton, he testified, because they were constantly having to counter that narrative with the president.

It’s still not clear what materials Patel was giving Trump, or where he was getting them. But he was not interacting with Ukraine experts at the State Department and Pentagon on the issue, and never had a conversation with Vindman, the NSC’s director for Ukraine, about Ukraine — or about anything for that matter, Vindman testified.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/3 ... ert-061763

[Tero]

Republicans going along with process but...

In other words, Trump did nothing wrong, and it's the Democrats who are in the wrong for even asking about it. Taken a step further, Graham’s line of reasoning appears to be that the president is totally infallible. And that seems to be the only line of defense, really, that the president will accept from his flunkeys in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — one of the people most important to the president’s defense — claimed victory after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to hold a vote in the House on Thursday, bringing the impeachment proceedings before the full chamber. “Obviously they’ve responded to the pressure that we put on them to try to handle this in a more transparent way that meets basic standards of due process that every American would be entitled to,” McConnell said. That wasn’t enough for Trump.

“I’d rather go into the details of the case rather than the process,” Trump told reporters Monday. “Process is wonderful,” he added. “But I think you ought to look at the case.”

Again, to translate: He’s innocent, the case against him is nothing more than another "witch hunt," and all Republicans should dismiss it out of hand, full stop. No parsing the process, no conceding any facts — the “details of the case” clear Trump’s name, and that is that.

So far, most Republicans seem to be toeing the line. Maybe it’s because they’re afraid to cross their base, which still overwhelmingly supports Trump. Or maybe they actually believe he’s infallible.

It’s hard to say which option is worse.
http://mic.com

[Tero]

CNN
Yovanovitch said she alerted George Kent, who notified then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs A. Wess Mitchell about Shokin’s visa denial.

“And when you know, of course, when the calls came from Mr. Giuliani to the White House and to the Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, they got in touch with the European Bureau, and Mr. Mitchell, you know, held firm. I mean, it was a consular decision. The consular folks felt that they had made the right decision. And, you know, there was the added issue that, you know, basically the notorious reputation of Mr. Shokin,” she said.

“And, frankly, at the end of the day, he lied on his visa application,” Yovanovitch added, noting that he had said on his application he was visiting family when he was really visiting Giuliani.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/ ... 43ebb35ad1

[Tero]

The Ukrainian official who gave Yovanovitch the heads-up of Parnas', Fruman's and Giuliani's involvement was Arsen Avakov, Ukraine's minister of internal affairs. He told Yovanovitch that he had become aware of Giuliani's pressure campaign to get Ukraine to investigate conspiracy theories about the 2016 election and former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/77609257 ... -depositio

[Brian Peacock]

Impeachment is losing momentum. Just do it. Never impeaching makes Democrats look weak.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/10/26/politi ... cnn.com%2F

Haven't you figured out how these things work yet. Trump makes everything so chaotic that its impossible to maintain a coherent story. He's always traded on chaos and uncertainty, and every time some new bit of intel comes up he just tweets something stupid and irrelevant, or rambles at a press conference for an hour, and then every talks about that for five days instead. The Dems have to start treating him like he's a fictional character and get on with deciding what they stand for.

[Tero]

One story at a time. Leave the Paris agreement and GLOBAL domination of our COUNTRY day after 2020 election. IF Trump wins. Only IF. You have pipeline land and rent coming from Canada? Vote Trump! Free to make unlimited CO2.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Holy hell, Lindsey Graham is just a despicably pathetic excuse for a senator.

'Graham Says He Won’t Read Transcripts Because It’s All "A Bunch Of B.S."'

Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters Tuesday that he doesn’t plan on reading the deposition transcripts of the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

According to CBS News, Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill that he’s “written the whole process off” and that he thinks “this is a bunch of B.S.”

Graham’s latest comments come in the wake of the House releasing transcripts Tuesday from depositions featuring EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and former Special Envoy for the Ukraine crisis Kurt Volker. Sondland, who revised his testimony, confirmed that he told a Zelensky aide that Ukraine military aid would be contingent upon the Ukrainian government publicly announcing that it help investigate the Bidens and the origins of the Russia probe. Volker’s testimony outlined how Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani pressured the Ukrainian government to help the President politically.

[Woodbutcher]

Any time now the reptilian overlords will step in and fix the American system. Honestly, it seems that every day some politician says:" Here, hold my beer as I say something even more fantastic".

[Scot Dutchy]

Trump's EU envoy admits Ukraine quid pro quo in updated testimony

Gordon Sondland says he told Ukraine it was unlikely to get $400m in aid unless it announced investigations into Trump rivals

An ally of Donald Trump has changed his impeachment inquiry testimony to confirm that the US president offered Ukraine a quid pro quo to investigate a political rival.

Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, said he had told a senior official in Ukraine that nearly $400m in military aid would probably be withheld until the country announced an investigation into corruption, including allegations concerning a gas company with ties to the former vice-president Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The dramatic revision to Sondland’s account was revealed in a four-page transcript of sworn testimony made public on Tuesday.

“I now do recall a conversation on September 1, 2019, in Warsaw with” Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Sondland said in his updated evidence. “I said that resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”

The rats are jumping ship.

[Tero]

Whistleblower text
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/09 ... annotated/

[Tero]

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"Nothing happened. Even if it did, the President was only looking for corruption."