Impeachment Today: Be Careful What You Wish For
This morning President Trump started the day by tweeting a desire to have the impeachment process move forward quickly.
An hour later House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she was asking Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to proceed with Articles of Impeachment.
Reading the tea leaves here, Pelosi’s announcement means she’s already counted the votes on the Democratic side of the aisle and is confident that the evidence from the Intelligence Committee hearings meets the standards necessary to proceed.
Here’s an excerpt from her announcement:
During the debate over impeachment at the Constitutional Convention, George Mason asked: ‘Shall any man be above justice? Shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?’
In his great wisdom, he knew that injustice committed by the President erodes the rule of law – the very idea that – of fair justice, which is the bedrock of our democracy.
And if we allow a president to be above the law, we do so surely at the peril of our republic.
In America, no one is above the law.
From the Washington Post:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that President Trump’s wrongdoing strikes at the heart of the Constitution and asked House committee chairs to proceed with articles of impeachment, saying lawmakers have “no choice but to act.”
Her address, in which she invoked principles espoused by the nation’s founders, came shortly after Trump went on Twitter to urge House Democrats to impeach him quickly, if they plan to do it, and suggested he would call an expansive list of witnesses during a trial in the Republican-led Senate.
At the heart of the Democrats’ case is the allegation that President Trump tried to leverage a White House meeting and military aid, sought by Ukraine in the face of Russian military aggression, to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as a probe of an unfounded theory that Kyiv conspired with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Press reports say Democratic party leaders expect a committee vote as soon as next week. Depending on the scope of items included in the articles of impeachment, the full House could vote on impeaching Trump near the end of the year, although there is no set calendar.
The Judiciary Committee has announced a hearing for Monday, December 9 at 9am.(EST)
The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee
This hearing will come the same day the Inspector General releases its report about the origins of the Russia investigation. Inclusion of evidence from the Judiciary Committee in the announcement means obstruction charges stemming from the Mueller investigation are still on the table.
It’s gonna be one hell of a day. You might want to buy extra popcorn.
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It’s important to pause here for a moment to clarify what’s going on. Should the full House of Representatives vote to affirm the articles of impeachment, two things happen:
There will be a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate. Most observers expect the President to be acquitted. Evidence --or the lack of it should the White House continue stonewalling-- presented could impact public perceptions.
Regardless of the results in the Senate, constitutional scholars say the House vote will prevent pardons related to impeachment.
As the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony from witnesses on Wednesday about whether the threshold for articles of impeachment had been crossed, the White House began organizing its defense.
The White House signaled Wednesday that it will aggressively defend President Trump in a near-certain Senate impeachment trial in the coming weeks, as legal experts called by House Democrats testified in a contentious hearing that Trump’s Ukraine dealings constitute an impeachable offense.
Eric Ueland, the White House director of legislative affairs, told reporters that Trump “wants his case made fully in the Senate,” previewing a strategy that would include live witnesses on the floor, rather than videotaped depositions that were entered into evidence during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999.
Republican senators coming out of a White House meeting acknowledged hadn’t figured out how the trial would unfold until the House drafted articles of impeachment and voted on them. Reflecting that uncertainty, the Senate floor schedule released Wednesday for 2020 doesn’t start until February 1.
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Here’s one attractive alternative:
https://twitter.com/theaarynb/status/1202609584268931073?s=20
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There will be undoubtedly be a flood of Very Serious Persons on TV talking about how Democrats have rushed into this moment and how bad it is that they haven’t taken the time to convince “moderates.”
These are bs arguments. Until or unless the White House agrees to cooperate in allowing witness testimony and documents, the case will not go further. So what’s really being said here is “don’t do anything.”
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Get your marching shoes ready. #NobodyisAbovetheLaw
A coalition of progressive advocacy groups are staging a "historic nationwide mobilization" across the U.S. on the eve of the House's yet-to-be-scheduled vote on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets around the country, said the "Nobody Is Above the Law" coalition, which includes MoveOn, Public Citizen, Indivisible, and Stand Up America, as well as more than a dozen other organizations.
There is a rally in San Diego scheduled for the Sunday before the House vote. It will be at Waterfront Park/County Administration Building starting at noon.
Register to receive email & text updates via MoveOn here:
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The Sinclair News (Very Right Wing) reporter asking the question was fired from Fox for sexual harassment, BTW.
https://twitter.com/RedTRaccoon/status/1202623739755675650?s=20
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