Trump's Derangement On Mail Ballots Signals A Potential Effort At A November Election Coup

"BWAAHAAHAHA! We got to stop mail voting! It would be the end of me! Melania, change my diapers!"

"How is it that  this man is even president?" - Maureen Dowd, Sunday NY Times 

"So Trump is worried about his reelection prospects and eager to attack mail-in voting that pretty clearly does not give Democrats any particular leg up, raising the possibility that he is setting himself up to accuse Michigan and Nevada of rigging the system if he loses in November." - Heather Cox Richardson,  'Trump's Twitter  Threats On Voting: Is There Really A Bite Behind The Bark?', smirkingchimp.com blog

After yet another weekend with endless histrionics from a "leader" with the moral compass of a slug and self-control of a two year old on a sugar high, even closet Trumpers have to admit the obvious: The nation is saddled with a degenerate whose vile depravity and excesses know no bounds.  This is especially after we beheld the fungus -infested maggot  relentlessly using his Twitter feed to spread slurs and slander about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.  This in connection to the death of Lori Klausutis who worked for him when he was a congressman, inventing outrageous conspiracy ideations about Scarborough being somehow responsible (despite coroner's finding  it was a cardiac condition causing her to fall and hit her head on a desk).   

Even worse, this unhinged swine continued his drumbeat despite  Timothy Klausutis pleading with  Twitter  to take down the offensive Trump posts that have caused deep pain to him and his family.  But Trump, white trash vermin that he is, wouldn't hear of it. Instead ramping up his squalid attacks while drawing next to zero rebukes from the Reepos eager to look the other way as Dotard wreaks havoc.  So again what we have seen the past few days is a swine who calls himself "president" willing to spout almost anything - no matter how inflammatory or untrue - in order to be used in his tawdry political battles.  So  Timothy Klausutis has become yet more collateral damage of Trump's war against critics and we know he has lost it since the COVID-19 pandemic usurped his one sure  track to re-election. Exposing him as the grifting con man and reality show pretender resident he really is.   As the NY Times also noted:

"Among other things on Tuesday, he boasted about the rising stock market and tried to sow doubt about the results of the coming fall election that polls currently show he would lose, saying, “This will be a Rigged Election.”


  The last, of course, is tied to his endless jihad against mail ballots and voting.  His latest ploy has been to create so much turmoil, angst and confusion over mail ballots that state governors bow to his whims and whining and halt the march forward: to making mail balloting a viable option for most citizens in November.  That is, incidentally, when the COVID second wave could be at its peak - thanks to the hundreds of thousands of idiots who think masks are for Halloween, and COVID  intubation scenes in ICUs on the news are medical play acting.

According to a Denver Post piece a week ago, Trump is escalating his assaults on mail voting, with animus especially directed at states like Nevada and Michigan. The foul fungal imp, unable to bluff or intimidate the COVID virus, is trying his best to get as many states as possible to back off a move to mail ballots.  In the course of his tilting at mail ballot 'windmills' he has unloaded so many lies, tall tales and disinformation that even his GOP enablers are starting to worry he's gone too far. After all, Reepo voters like and use mail voting as much as Dem voters, as I pointed out in a previous post, e.g.

Skewering The Strawmen Surrounding Mail Voting

This is important, all Trump's huff and puff and hysteria to the contrary. For example, therein I cited  University of  Florida professor Michael McDonald - who tracks balloting in his own ex post facto research, and found that "Republicans rather than Democrats are most likely to vote by mail".  

So, in effect, the bombastic buffoon brat is trying to kneecap his own voters in the process of trying to halt blue states' efforts like in Michigan.    In regard to that state, Trump really took a brain dump as he went after Jocelyn Benson,  the Michigan Secretary of State, bellowing in one nutso tweet (cf. Denver Post, ibid.):

"Michigan sent absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of primaries and the general election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this voter fraud path!"

An hour later, the Post article notes he made similar threats to Nevada.

Several wacko aspects to note here which are germane to this discussion:  First Ms. Benson did NOT send mail ballots to Michigan residents, she sent applications for mail ballots "just as election officials have done in other states."  That also includes, btw, more than a dozen R-governed states. This alone shows Trump doesn't even know what he's talking or tweeting about before he pulls it out of his fat ass.

Second, the threats made to withhold funding, are exactly the classic impeachable offenses that professor Pamela Karlan of Stanford  cited in a House  impeachment committee hearing last fall.  In her words:

“What would you think if, when your governor asked the federal government for the disaster assistance that Congress has provided, the President responded, ‘I would like you to do us a favor.’ I’ll... send the disaster relief once you brand my opponent a criminal.” 

 That is, trying to extort a political favor  via the threat of no critical funding if said favor wasn't delivered. 

Interestingly, as the Post article points out, all this kerfuffle and flailing from Trump has occurred as polls show him trailing Biden nationally and in key swing states. In Wisconsin alone, polls take before his rage tweets showed him losing over 65 voters by nearly 18 points.  And yet Trump's own campaign staff - writing their own op-eds (D. Post May 17), also are casting baseless suspicion on mail ballots.

I refer to two Trumper campaign clowns, Jenny Ellis and Justin Clark, writing in that Post op-ed ('Mail Ballot Cheating Is Real', ibid.) claiming that: "ballot harvesting creates an environment for potential fraud and election illegitimacy"

Then targeting Democrats in our state (Colorado) for "paying ballot traffickers to go door to door to collect ballots".  It appears these two geniuses neglected to mention the most monstrous such "ballot trafficking" offense occurred in North Carolina. An investigation found that such "trafficking" had been done in the NC 9th congressional district election in 2018.

The result? Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. was indicted for tampering with mail ballots. Again, this was a GOP lackey in the service of the campaign he was seeking to help get elected. No thanks to these shenanigans the Republican Mark Harris narrowly defeated Dem candidate Dan McReady.

To my knowledge, no Dem candidate has benefited from such tampering - even in low level elections to a school board.   The two Trumper propagandists could as well have saved their time and brain power because no one here in Colo. is going to drop mail voting. It's too convenient and too important an option to be left off the table. And as one former election official responded in a Post letter to Ellis and Clark:

"Mail ballots in Colorado are totally secure. A signature is required for validation and this is always compared to the signature at voter registration. Also, a tab is provided which can be removed before mailing and allows the voter to check to see if anyone else has attempted to vote in their name."

Let's also point out, as Oregon Governor Kate Brown did on All In last week, that mail voting is safe from hacking, and also that paper record provides proof of the process being sound.   This skewers the claims of the two Trumpers that "there is a risk of losing the chain of custody of the ballots."   No, there is not, given the response of the Colorado state election official, specifically the signature and the tab to mark custody of the actual ballot. Hence, any voter can determine at any time if his ballot is being misused or copied.

Trump's fulminations are clearly also being done to deliberately undermine trust in the November general election. If he can sow enough distrust of the process, especially if mail ballots are allowed in most states, this slimey despot can try to claim the election was rigged.  As a recent NY Times article  ('Trump Sows Doubt On Voting - It Keeps Some People Up At Night') by Reid J. Epstein put it:


"The president attacked mail balloting again Sunday morning, with a baseless claim that it would lead to “the greatest Rigged Election in history.” And the Republican National Committee said on Sunday that it and other G.O.P. groups had sued to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom of California from mailing absentee ballots to all of the state’s voters... “We’re setting ourselves up for an election where neither side can concede defeat,” Professor Foley said. “That suggests that the desire to dispute the outcome is going to be higher than ever.”

The piece went on to note how Democrats and others are game planning for Trump refusing to leave the White House after a marginal Electoral College loss - and we know he'll be slaughtered in the popular vote. As for the risk of Trump not leaving office if he endures a "narrow" loss, I side with former AG Eric Holder on Real Time some weeks ago: we dispatch the Capitol police and/or SWAT teams, to remove him by force. 

In the meantime, Twitter has at least flagged Trump's false tweets about mail voting - giving an addendum 'Get the facts about mail voting'.  Well, I have provided a lot of them in this and earlier posts.  And btw, should this cockroach try remain in office after being voted out, or try to claim the election results were "rigged" , we will need Americans to erupt in fury in the streets.

See also:

• The Trump campaign isn't about winning, but setting the stage for whatever happens after he loses 

AND:

Donald Trump

Twitter Finally Takes a Step to Counter Trump’s Online Disinformation

And:

2020 Elections | Election Integrity

20 Ways Vote by Mail Could Revolutionize Our Democracy and Save Our Nation—if Election Protection Activists Make It Happen

And:

2020 Elections | Election Integrity

Trump’s Twitter Threats on Voting: Is There Really a Bite Behind the Bark?

And:

2020 Elections | Donald Trump

Trump Moves Openly to Steal the Election: Democrats Should Impeach Him Again

And:

Donald Trump

Overwhelmed and Losing, Trump Is Melting down in a Narcissistic Rage

by Joshua Holland | May 21, 2020 - 7:30am | permalink

— from Alternet

Why Is A 73 yr old. "President" Taking Precious Time To Mock 16 y/o Greta Thunberg?

Greta Thunberg has a Mensa level IQ which propels her grasp of climate science and energizes her climate protests. Trump is a moron tyrant and  bully who'd rather take time from his supposedly busy schedule to attack assorted perceived enemies via tweets. This time he picked on the wrong person.

 It was pretty well a no -brainer that once Dotard got nixed for TIME's person of the year he would go off on  Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate  activist who's featured prominently in the news the past 2 months.   Traitor Trump, the most monstrous narcissist buffoon ever to occupy the Oval Office, couldn't take it so he had to mock the girl (diagnosed on the autism spectrum) with his infernal sideways putdowns.  Thus, Trump tweeted last Thursday:

 “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend.  Chill Greta, Chill!”

Of course, here we see Trump projecting his own psychological failings on Thunberg.  She isn't the one with the "anger management" issues, it's him. She doesn't pitch incessant tirades in an oval office, hurling half eaten sandwiches across the room at fretful aides, nor go on tweet attacks - starting at 3 a.m.  

 But it appears Greta, for some reason, seems to be really making Trump upset but without meaning to.   I mean she isn't posting images of his orange orangutan face on her instagram, nor is she calling him an ignorant pestilence who knows next to nothing about climate change. So it has to be: a) that she has an I.Q. at least six standard deviations in excess of his on the Bell curve, and b) she got named the person of the year and he didn't.    What's a mentally afflicted, malignant narcissist bully to do? Well,  strike out at the one who's one upped him in intelligence, and in prominence - at least for this TIME cover.

So it's no mystery that when Ms. Thunberg was named TIME’s person of the year, an honor Trump reportedly wanted,  he careened off the mental rails once more. Hence, did what he always seems to do when he perceives someone has stolen his thunder, edged him out of public attention: taken to  Twitter while on the crapper, and hurled verbal taunts at the object of his ire.  Thus,  he lashed out by accusing the person upsetting him (Greta) of the very things he’s  guilty of: uncontrolled anger episodes - so frequent that his aides have lost count. (One reported they exceed his lies, totalling 13, 400 -odd, since entering the WH.)

But a $64 question emerges here for both Trump's defenders, and his bilious, brainless base who believe the orange maggot walks on water.  (Like the woman at one of his Pennsylvania rallies who burbled in one CNN interview:  "He is just so fantastic, how can those Democrats do this to such a fine man?")  The question:  How does the putative leader of the nation and free world - with at least a dozen issues of critical import pending (including a new China trade and tariff deal) -  find the time to fire off putdowns at a 16 year old girl? Priorities anyone? Anyone?

Perhaps Dotard Donnie was roused to fury because Thunberg doesn't fit the mold (in Trump's misshapen excuse for a mind)  of how girls are supposed to act. She isn’t trying to be a contestant in one of his beauty pageants.  Nor would she ever have allowed Trump  and  (now deceased) pal Jeffrey Epstein to enlist her in their salacious schemes. She’s too busy trying to get world leaders like him to do something about the climate crisis. She’s too occupied by giving speeches at places like the UN – where Trump was laughed at, when he gave a speech in 2018, and Thunberg was met with respect, despite slamming the entire body for “misleading” the public with inadequate emission-reduction pledges

Meanwhile, Trump, detested as the most odious "leader" on the planet, was roundly mocked by his peers at the NATO summit in London.  The mutt was so humiliated that he turned tail and bolted the next morning - instead of attending the final conference.  But this is Trump,  a coward at heart. He can't take any level of pushback at all, but always believes he's entitled to "punch back", especially when confronted by powerful women - say like Nancy Pelosi.  Thus, his recent puerile remarks to a reporter about her teeth, i.e. that "because Nancy's teeth were falling out of her mouth, and she didn't have time to think!"

That was after Pelosi was seen answering the reporter's question, then moved her mouth slightly and took a sip of water. But her teeth did not appear out of place and her speech was not interrupted.  But see this is the nature of Trump,  who despite being 73 years of age chronologically is barely 13 mentally.  So his behavior and words match,  often resorting to jabs about people's appearance.   One of the most outrageous episodes is when he mocked a disabled reporter, and Rep. Maxine Waters was compelled to bring the image to the House to convince the gathered Reeps who even then believed their golden (errr....orange) boy could do no wrong.


 Thus, strong women, disabled reporters, and legions of the defenseless have all become Trump targets because the arguably most powerful man on Earth is the psychological equivalent of a 13 year old with a perpetual chip on his  shoulder.  That chip flies off at the slightest hint of challenge, or if Trump sizes up an individual as ripe for twitter predation out of some imagined transgression.

By contrast,  Greta Thunberg-  like the majority of girls growing up in the digital age  -   has been cyberbullied before .  By Trump himself, who, after her celebrated speech before the UN General Assembly 2 months ago, sarcastically tweeted, “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”

Both times Trump has tweeted about her, Thunberg’s responses have been jocular, and sarcastic in kind. This week, she changed her Twitter bio to: “A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”

In her handling of being cyberbullied by the president of the United States, at age 16, Thunberg has become an inspiration for girls two times over – first as a climate activist, then as a social media ninja.

But that doesn’t mean that Trump’s cyberbullying of Thunberg is any less despicable, or dangerous. What it says to girls all over the world is: no matter what you do, no matter how much you achieve, powerful bullies with XY chromosomes can and will try to cut you down.  But the funniest aspect is how the deranged Trumpie nitwits have tried to redeem the loss of the TIME cover prestige by photo-shopping Trump's visage on Greta's.  Hey maybe Trump aspires to having XX chromosomes

While we may howl with derisive laughter at this pathetic move,  the underlying message is depressing and not without potentially dire consequences. It’s a message that has contributed to a precipitous rise in the suicide rate among girls, in efforts to diminish girls' own identities. This has contributed to rising anxiety and depression among girls and young women, not just in the U.S. but the UK. It’s a message that Trump’s wife, Melania, is supposed to be combatting, with her "Be Best"  campaign against cyberbullying.  But it's too bad her bullying scrutiny is too limited, failing to target the biggest bully of all: Trump. 

Nonetheless, Melania, recall, whined about son Barron being singled out by Prof.  Pamela Karlan  during the House Judiciary hearings.  Joy Reid on her MSNBC show Saturday morning put things in perspective:

"Keep in mind this kind of cyberbullying is exactly the kind  that Melania Trump is supposed to be against. Remember the outrage over the mere mention of her son Barron's name during the impeachment hearing? Well, the White House says this is totally different though because her son is not an activist'."

But this is more disingenuous,  false equivalence. Prof. Karlan did not single out Barron for personal attack only mere nominal mention to point out the limits of Trump's aspirations to monarchy.  Thus,while Trump can name his son "Barron" he can't appoint him as a Baron.  Big deal    It was a perfect pun-type illustration to clarify the limits of the presidency. Trumpie crybabies need to get over it.  There is no negative aspect there, though it's doubtful Trump's dumb base can see it.

But leave it to them to come up with the specious argument that even  a pun-wise bare mention of the first son's name is verboten, given he's not an "activist".  But it's ok to mock and take sarcastic shots at a teen girl who does something besides play video games all day long, act as an "influencer" for goofy junk products, or keep the nose buried in tiny screens. 

Greta is at least  trying to get fellow humans to get off their butts and work to preserve the planet for future generations.

Meanwhile, Trump lavished his praise on fellow turncoat, House Dem Jeff Van Drew - who announced he plans to vote against impeachment and cross over to join the bad guys, i.e. Repukes. This after Trump "personally wooed him" according to a CBS News report this morning.  So yet another POS out to show he lacks any moral compass as he joins the most lawless political party in U.S. history.   

See also:

Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

Education Policy | Energy Policy

The Kids Know Another World Is Possible

And:

• 73-year-old Trump bullies 16-year-old Thunberg on Twitter. She once again makes a fool of him 

And:

Donald Trump

MSNBC Guest Explains Why Trump’s Disgraceful Attack on Nancy Pelosi Backfired

Jonathan Turley Whiffs Vs. More Learned Constitutional Scholars At House Judiciary Hearing

"We don’t need Professor Turley’s hand-wringing performance to scare us away from defending our democracy through the exercise of our political power to hold an oligarchic authoritarian accountable. Exercising our accountability muscle will make a stronger, not weaker in the future. It will make us more familiar with the source of our political authority and power and will protect us against further abuses in the future, not make us vulnerable to them, as Professor Turley suggests.

President Trump needs to be impeached for his shocking and multi-dimensional misconduct. But the people need him held accountable for another reason: We need him held accountable to reconnect with the underlying authority on which our democracy is based and to start cleansing our society of the noxious false relativism infecting our public debate, such as we witnessed yesterday in Professor Turley’s performance." -    Hank Edson, 'Professor Turley Is Dead Wrong On Impeachment, And Here's Why', smirkingchimp.com (link at bottom)

"The Republicans are arguing that if a president stands in the middle of Fifth Avenue, fires a gun and misses someone, just leave him alone. He didn't do anything wrong. That's an insane argument!"

Chris Mathews last night, MSNBC, 'Hardball'

As I watched the next phase of the impeachment inquiry unfold yesterday,  with the House Judiciary Committee  hearings featuring four constitutional scholars,  the Reeptard minority didn't waste time wasting time .  Almost before  Chairman Jerry Nadler could get the first words out of his mouth, e.g.

“Never before has a president engaged in a course of conduct that included all the acts that most concerned the framers,”

The bankrupt Reeps resorted to procedural objections and high-temperature harangues in an effort to protect Traitor Trump.   It was as if the imbeciles knew in advance their case would be skewered by the 3 real constitutional scholars the Dems had selected as witnesses. (Noah Feldman of Harvard, Pamela Karlan of Stanford, Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina.)

 So what does an imbecile do confronted by such intellectual firepower?   And when they only have in their corner a William Barr crony and pal like Jonathan Turley?  Well, they must resort to chaos and impotent huff and puff to try to impede or distract.

 Thus the hapless Reepos lodged a series of rapid-fire interruptions and parliamentary "inquiries" as the hearing began, interrupting the first witnesses and leading Nadler to resort repeatedly to his gavel.  At one point I actually thought Nadler would use his gavel on one of their heads.  Aside from the typical Reepo clown show, the other farce was the interminable grandstanding. Thus, one beheld Georgia congressman Doug Collins, the top Republican on the committee, accusing Democrats of moving to impeach Trump,   “because you just don’t like the guy”.

Uh, no, lunkhead, it's because they don't want our nation ruled by some halfwit, half mad wannabe King.  Especially a two bit former Queens lowlife,  grifter, real estate chiseler and former reality show mutt who fancies himself a latter day monarch.   The cornpone Collins then burped out perhaps the most presumptuous bark of all: 

“The American people is [sic] really gonna look at this and say, ‘Huh? What are we doing?’” .

Nope. That take would apply for the lower half of the IQ curve, in the parlance of Harvard prof Harvey Mansfield - referring to those who voted Trump in 2016.  The rest of the people, I am confident, have enough brain cells to see what the House is doing is impeaching a thug who thinks he can rule the nation like he ran his scam real estate properties and fraudulent fronts like "Trump University".

The cornpone congress critter then yapped sarcastically:

“We’ve got law professors here.  What a start to a party!"”

But not a "party" for the Reeptardos who the three actual scholars beat down mercilessly - especially in one exchange when Stanford Professor Pamela Karlan directly challenged the Georgian dolt when he claimed the scholars "didn't do their homework".

Looking back on the nine hours of testimony and questioning it's a pity that  professor  Karlan never had George Washington University "scholar"  Jonathan Turley as a student.   She might have spared him from the display of rank sophistry he exhibited in his assorted turns to speak during the  hearing yesterday.    

The three professors called by Dems were on the mark in presenting coherent, well -argued cases that Trump's abuses of power  offered  the textbook case for impeachable offenses as defined in the Constitution.  

Meanwhile, CBS legal  analyst and GWU prof Turley tried to use language parsing and hair splitting  to argue there was an insufficient threshold to impeach.  (This is the same turkey who - some 20 years earlier- said that Bill Clinton had to be impeached for a sexual peccadillo. Oh wait! I forgot, he lied about having a sex act! My bad! But hey, he didn't try to barter away the upcoming 2000 election for a "favor, though"!)

According to Turley there was no real bribery by Trump, i.e. that met the standard for impeachment, nor any obstruction.  Evidently Turley believed for the latter to genuinely happen the Dems would have to produce "real" evidence - given that what existed didn't count. (Hours of witness testimony, including first hand listening in to the call, the call transcript itself- released I might add, after the whistle got blown, Mulvaney's own admission of quid pro quo etc.)  Bottom line, this existence of actual evidence isn't rocket science or quantum physics, for Pete's sake.  Any brainless zombot ought to be able to figure it out, without a constitutional law degree.

So in other words, we have more than ample 'there,  there' - the proverbial smoking gun if you will- without going further as Turley demands. As Michael Gerhardt, the University of North Carolina law professor made clear:

 “If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable,” 

As for bribery,  Prof. Karlan also had to correct Turley on  his truncated take by using a 1792 definition from  dictionary by Samuel Johnson.   My primary complaint with Turley has to do with his use of sophisticated  language manipulation, or what one blogger (P.M. Carpenter) called "fussiness".   In this case, one found abundant "Turleyisms" popping up comparable to the "Posnerisms" exposed by serious JFK assassination researchers  from Gerald Posner's book, 'Case Closed".  

Twelve of the most serious “Posnerisms”  are documented here:

http://assassinationweb.com/twpos.htm

Those who take the time to examine, study the examples in the link will become aware of an unnerving lack of attention to detail and a penchant for what appears to be deliberate misrepresentation.  Turley,  by contrast,  doesn't employ deliberate misrepresentation but rather technical twisting of aspects of the law (in relation to the Constitution and impeachment powers therein)  leading to obfuscation.  An obfuscation of the meaning of "bribery" and an obfuscation of the meaning of "obstruction".  Of course, his expansive, I'd say preposterous, interpretation of executive privilege lies at the heart of both obfuscations.

In regard to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" cited in the Constitution, Turley asserted (my paraphrasing) 'Yeah, but I would prefer a felony as a prerequisite".   That, my friends, is a Turleyism.  The reason is that the Constitution makes no such requirement. As MSNBC legal guru Ari Melber put it in the discussion during the lunch break: "If that's what Turley demands he needs to write an amendment and add it to the Constitution".  

Ari went on to expatiate:

"There's a larger stupidity here which is important, because Americans are watching this. You don't need an underlying crime to remove a president. And the reason is very simple; There's all sorts of things that are criminal but are not an abuse of power. It is a felony to deface a mailbox. But definitely not impeachable. I don't think you'll find serious scholars who'd suggest otherwise. And yet, that would be the needed crime in what Turley said was the extra prerequisite he wants to add.

And on the flip side you have abuses of power that may not be a felony, which is important for everyone to understand.  Why? Because most citizens don't have those powers to wield. So you don't have laws that say 'you can't steal money from the OMB to give to a foreign country'  because most people aren't in any position to seize and appropriate those funds.  So for this professor Turley to say no, you still gotta double back to the courts, well that's just not what the Constitution says. "

Prof. Kaplan also used the example of the vandalism of a mail box, a specified felony.  If a president were to commit such a felony - while a serious statutory crime - it would still not be impeachable. Why not? Because there is no linkage to an abuse of the power of his office, as Ari Melber explained. What's he gaining in terms of his self-interest by wrecking a mail box? Only a lot of bad press.

We can also reference a divergence from what Turley himself once opined in a WaPo piece ('Five Myths About Impeachment')

"While there's a high bar for what constitutes impeachment, an offense does not have to be indictable. Serious misconduct or a violation of the public trust is enough."

Well, at least for one time in one political epoch you got it right, son.  

So it was kind of mind boggling to then see Turley babbling:

"There's  difference between requesting investigations and  a quid pro quo. You need to stick the landing on the quid pro quo. You need to get the evidence to support it. It may be out there, I don't know, but it's not in this record."

Which makes one wonder what 'record'  Turley is accessing, or if he's tripping out on MJ candies when he does. As Caroline Frederickson of the American Constitution Society pointed out after the hearings, on 'Hardball':  "Professor Karlin described what is the essence of an impeachable offense. Going to a foreign government and saying 'we're not gonna give you money unless you say you're gonna investigate my political rival.'  This is absolutely the essence of an impeachable offense."

That offense, I might add, lies right in the open in the transcript of the July 25th phone conversation, in tandem with the timeline (only released after the whistleblower's whistle), pointing unambiguously to Trump's grievous misconduct. One doesn't need an advanced degree in political science or government to figure that out - it's out in the bloody open!

 If instead of the existing record, Turley is  referencing the gaps inferred from “unsubpoenaed witnesses with material evidence,”  that's also a joke.   As former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben -Veniste put it on 'Hardball":

"This is a most amusing argument given the president has ordered the very witnesses Mr. Turley is talking about not to cooperate. This is like a defendant who's convicted of poisoning his parents, throwing himself on the mercy of the court, because he's an orphan."

In other words, an out and out "Turleyism" on a par with Posner's Posnerisms.

As for Turley's obsession with the Dems'  "speed" (his stated dismay with “the abbreviated period of this investigation”), this is irrelevant, because the Constitution makes no demand on whether the impeachment process ought to be slow or fast.  In fact, one can conceive of occasions where speed in acting is imperative. Say a deranged president holding up critical disaster relief unless the governor of a state complies with a demand to slime his political opponent.  

Even more powerful was Harvard Prof. Lawrence Tribe's observation last night (MSNBC, 'Last Word'):

"Obviously, what he's trying to do is drag this out so there's no time left to a potentially corrupted 2020 election. That is a prescription for disaster. The idea that we need to have this thing saturate and pickle for a while longer is just crazy. When you have a president  who orders the entire executive branch to stonewall, then whenever any subpoena ends up in court and says 'now you got to wait til the courts decide' that's a prescription for not having an impeachment power."

Law professor Paul Butler last night also diced Turley's "too hasty" argument (from a historical perspective)  by noting this impeachment process will already take longer than either that for Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton.  Adding: "This is going to be the most scholarly, well developed impeachment inquiry in our history".  So much for Turley's insipid claim of a "slipshod impeachment."  Maybe Turley needs to get Prof. Butler to give him some remedial  historical impeachment tutoring. 

Turley also showed he was prepared to award Trump unlimited Executive Privilege, by asserting he was opposed to  Article 3 of the Nixon impeachment. What was that? Refusing to turn over items, e.g. the tapes, in response to lawful subpoenas. This prattle alone showed Turley's arguments were basically sophomoric compared to the three other genuine constitutional law scholars.

In effect, if one accepts Turley's spurious claim then it follows any president who's willing to dig in and stonewall subpoenas for documents and testimony can use the courts to run out the clock, undermining the House’s ability to use its impeachment power in practice. Indeed, another Harvard constitutional law professor - Lawrence Tribe- appearing on 'All In' (Nov. 21) scuttled this nonsense one time:

"This unprecedented erection of a stone wall in which he directs everybody connected to the White House and State Department not to testify, not to comply with subpoenas.  That amounts to contempt of congress - a far more sweeping  violation of separation of powers than even Richard Nixon was guilty of, cited in impeachment article 3."

Basically then, Trump and his Reep cult participated in the stonewalling, but they're now trying to blame the results of their subpoena blockade on the Democrats.  Meanwhile, Turley is trying to argue that  the House Dems are stuck with the stone walling,  so they ought to suck it up. There is "not enough evidence to impeach" without the added witnesses, documents, but the Trump stone walling won't allow it. And oh, Trump is justified in doing this. This is nuts, madness. It is essentially asserting there is NO impeachment power, period.

I suspect Prof. Tribe and the three professors featured yesterday as pro-impeachment know a tad more than Mr. Turley.  As P.M. Carpenter put it (see first link in previous blog post) comparing the different presentations:

"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"

However, Turley does get some performing credit for being facetious, i.e.  at the time when he blurted:

 "We are all mad. ..My kids are mad. My wife is mad ... even my dog, a golden doodle".  

Adding:

"Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad or will it only give an invitation for the madness to follow in every future administration?”

Prof. Tribe, I imagine, would respond to Turley here by telling him any impeachment of a president is going to make somebody, some group mad. Mainly because impeachment is more a political process than a legal one. Thus, the Trumpie dolts - those who voted for this disgusting, worthless imp-  will certainly be "mad" as impeachment progresses.  (And oh, even as Trump takes their food stamps away by April 1st.) Why mad?  Not because anyone is trying to "redo the 2016 election" but because their little bitch will finally be held to account, as they will - as the 'minority faction" Hamilton and Madison warned us about. The lot of reckless fools who blindly put a demagogue into power.

Turley claimed before any charge for obstruction is offered, it must first go through the courts.  Each court decision must be rendered in turn, and all exhausted, finally (presumably) ending up at the Supreme Court. Only then in the final ruling stage, if Trump refuses to comply, can  charge of obstruction be leveled.

Again, if one accepts this codswallop, it means he also accepts any president can use a total blockade of lawful subpoenas in tandem with the courts,  to "run out the clock" -  thereby rendering one branch of government redundant.   This is in direct contradiction to the Article 1 powers allotted congress by the Constitution. As Michael Tomasky so aptly put it: "Are the Democrats supposed to wait until next October to make sure they don’t miss anything?"

On the plus side-   like Bob Mueller- Turley did not assert Trump did nothing wrong, as his hard-core zombies have done. He said that the July 25th  call in which Trump pressured Ukraine’s president Zelenskiy to announce investigations that could benefit him politically “was anything but perfect,” and that Congress had a legitimate reason to scrutinize it.  Wow, will wonders never cease.  But the thing is that call amounted to an extortion, or a bare bones bribe and congress had an absolute duty to not only investigate but impeach.  In any case, Turley's modified statement doesn't redeem his sophomoric attempts to rescue Trump, or the GOP's specious case.

As for the Dems they need to move on the articles of impeachment in an expeditious manner and avoid the temptation to overthink - in which case they may end up not far from Turley's twaddle.  As Michael Tomasky put it in his NY Times piece yesterday:

"I’m not convinced that the American public will find seven articles of impeachment more persuasive than two."  

Adding: .

"His violations matter more than the specific degree to which the Democrats officially remonstrate with him for them. ...There’s a decent argument for throwing the hot potato to Mitch McConnell and shaming him, and the Senate Republicans, for abasing themselves with a blanket exoneration of Mr. Trump."

With which I agree. And also, in the process, shaming transparent  twits and sophomoric lackeys like Jonathan Turley.

Update - Addendum: To show how marginal Turley's arguments are, 500 constitutional scholars have since signed a letter attesting to their agreement with the arguments made by the three Democratic witnesses, Profs. Karlan, Gerhardt and Feldman.


See also:

Donald Trump | Impeachment

Professor Turley Is Dead Wrong on Impeachment and Here’s Why

Excerpt:

"In his opening statement emphasizing the importance of legal standards, George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley claimed that impeaching, “a president on this record would expose every future president to the same type of inchoate impeachment” and warned, “I hope you will consider what you will do when the wind blows again perhaps for a Democratic president.”

In making this argument, Turley might just as well have argued that the founding patriots should not have declared independence because once they were in power, the people might declare their independence from them. The founding patriots, after all, were not asserting a codified legal standard in declaring their independence, they were asserting their political power. The source of the people’s political power sufficient to overthrow codified law, the Declaration itself announced, was not the written codes authored by human beings, but the “self-evident” truths describing natural law. 

Faced with Turley’s argument, our founding patriots might well have said, “If we, as governors of the people, deserve it, let the people declare their independence from us.” Indeed, Thomas Jefferson famously welcomed such exercise of the people’s authority under natural law to assert their political power when he said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” But Jefferson and the other founding patriots were also wise enough to allow for a process that would avoid the need for such bloodshed in the assertion of the people’s authority and power under natural law to remove an illegitimate government. They gave us impeachment."

And:

Donald Trump | Impeachment

Three Constitutional Law Professors on Behalf of Impeachment Vs. One Law Professor on Behalf of Fussiness