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"Speaking on behalf of the anti-impeachment Republican minority, Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley was just as singular in message, but somewhat comical in substance; his testimony had none, in terms of addressing the president's many unmistakable abuses of power. (You can read it, or rather not read it, here.) Yet Turley was fussily upset about the speed with which the Democratic majority has been pursuing impeachment. My goodness, he moaned, this is all proceeding just too quickly — as though if Trump had shot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight, at least a year, maybe two years, of investigation would be required."
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Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) sheepishly dodged Fox News host Sean Hannity’s question Tuesday night about whether he spoke with Rudy Giuliani’s indicted associate Lev Parnas. Parnas has been indicted in the Southern District of New York on campaign finance charges related to the Ukraine scandal, and he is known to have worked with Giuliani as the former mayor carried out his scheme to pressure the foreign country to investigate President Donald Trump’s political rivals. On Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee’s report on the Ukraine investigation revealed that phone records show at least four calls between Nunes and Parnas’ phones in April, two of which were long enough for substantial conversations to have occurred.
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Anti-Semitism is alive and well in some conservative Christian evangelical circles, as witnessed by the longtime and recent ravings of dollar store evangelist Rick Wiles. On November 22nd Wiles devoted an entire 90-plus-minute episode of his online channel TruNews to what he called the “Jew Coup.” In the episode, titled “Jew Coup: Seditious Jews Orchestrating Trump Impeachment Lynching,” Wiles called the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, a “Jew Coup.” According to People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch, “Wiles, who is deeply anti-Semitic and dedicates many of his TruNews programs to railing against Israel and the Jews — still regularly receives press credentials from the Trump administration.”
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Thanksgiving is gone and no thanks were given for the House Democrats’ unfolding plan for a quick, tidy, Christmas-wrapped impeachment package. Why are they doing it like this? What are they thinking? Why not take the fight to the president on all the available grounds? What is the rationale for a rushed process based on a fraction of presidential infractions? Why deliberately give up control of the narrative when you have mountains of evidence on your side?
That’s where the Democrats appear to be taking us. At this point, no one knows how it will turn out, and I long to be wrong in my apprehensions. But there’s not much to work with here. Democratic leaders don’t even explain their thinking publicly. The state of play as this is written seems unchanged from what CNN reported November 21:
Privately, Democrats are anticipating a busy December that will be filed with proceedings before the House Judiciary Committee, including public hearings and a markup, and a likely vote to impeach Trump on the House floor by Christmas Day, according to multiple Democratic sources, which would make him just the third President in history to be impeached.
The American political system needs a good flushing. The Democrats’ plan seems almost designed to avoid any such cleansing. As December begins, there are no articulated impeachable offenses on offer. There is strong testimony and other evidence of the president trying to coerce Ukraine into helping his 2020 campaign. But there is massive avoidance of all the president’s other violations of the Constitution, the law, his oath of office, and the common good."
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Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has said his committee will have a full report on its findings in Trump’s Ukraine bribery scandal ready for review by the House Judiciary Committee this week. The hearings, depositions, text messages and contemporaneous notes from the witnesses, as well as the White House “transcript” containing what amounts to a presidential confession, are all public knowledge. So the report is unlikely to contain any surprises. But Schiff did not rule out other information “coming to light,” and it’s certainly possible. It seems as if there is a new crime revealed every day.
by William Rivers Pitt | December 5, 2019 - 6:44am |
by William Rivers Pitt | December 5, 2019 - 6:44am |
The (House Dems) report does not use the word “bribery,” except to quote Trump and Giuliani accusations against the Bidens and the whistleblower. After weeks of deploying the Latin phrase “quid pro quo” to describe Trump’s illegal actions in Ukraine, Democrats finally began saying “bribery” in connection with Trump’s activities, likely because that word is specifically mentioned in the Constitution as an impeachable offense. The absence of such pointedly specific language in this report is disquieting if it signals a rhetorical retreat by Democrats, but such concerns will be forestalled if that language eventually appears in the articles of impeachment themselves.
The House Intelligence Committee report is a strong document, but it is difficult to imagine how it could be otherwise. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff did a masterful job of managing the public testimony of key witnesses like U.S. envoy to Ukraine William Taylor, Ukraine expert Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and National Security Council Eastern Europe specialist Fiona Hill, in the face of balderdash eruptions from the likes of Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan. The report is the issue of that endeavor, and stands as a pivot point for the next phase of impeachment proceedings.
The day before the release of the House Intelligence Committee report, Republicans attempted to blot out the sun with a multiple-megaton manure bomb they passed off as their own impeachment hearings “report.” This 110-page ball of sweaty drivel is the culmination of years of Breitbart-bubble GOP conspiracy-mongering.
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Whatever the Democrats decide to do about the specific charges, Trump is going to be impeached. I would think dragging that out and keeping him tied down and off-balance would be the better way to ensure that he doesn’t use his office for personal political gain again. But that ship is rapidly sailing out of the harbor.
According to CNN, the White House and Republican senators are planning a “defense” in which they attack Joe Biden and his son. They don’t want to waste the opportunity to smear the former veep some more while the whole world is watching. But regardless of their sleazy tactics, the outcome of the whole thing is preordained. Trump will not be convicted and will undoubtedly strut around the country afterward, bragging that he beat the rap.
