DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Impeachment: Tears of the Sun

I guess if one calls being liars a "good job of obstruction". Because according to Mueller, that's what happened here.

j/c

'I needed Yovanovitch out of the way': Rudy Giuliani made a dangerous admission about his role in ousting a former US ambassador

https://www.yahoo.com/news/needed-yovanovitch-way-rudy-giuliani-193239801.html

please rudy, keep talking.

Or Trump supporters have just started hanging up on/not picking up for pollsters more.

And Democrats/anti-Trumpers could be taking the time to answer more because they want to vent on Trump.

Polls are an inexact science and the wording of the questions can shift things.

Or people are starting to just want him to be impeached so they can stop hearing about it. I'm getting close to this one. So much energy put into spinning our wheels here that could be used more productively elsewhere. Maybe things would be more productive with Trump out of the way, I won't hold my breath, though.

The only thing bipartisan we have seen is calls against impeachment.

That's what I do, wait and watch my phone hoping pollsters call me so I can select answers that hurt Trump...

Sadly, there isn't a circling phone smilie for your eye roll to follow. Maybe that's what Adam Gase was doing during that press conference. He was expecting a pollster to call him back so he could rail against Trump, and he wasn't sure where his phone was.

I wasn't trying to imply that people did. More that pollsters can let their biases be known by their inflection and how they phrase the initial "do you have time to answer questions about ______?" and people that share them are more likely to stay on the line. Regardless of what the _____ is.

Polls are like company funded research/tests in the pharmaceutical industry, you have to keep in mind how they're being paid for.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter...leblower-wrong/

Lie of the year .... Puts truth and factual context to why Trump is being impeached. Well, for those with an open mind.

He only read the cliff notes version.. He didn't get past what AG Barr wrote about it. Which by the way, turned out to be so misleading that Mueller felt compelled to set the record straight.

how come none of the trump supporters wanted to comment on giuliani's recent comments? dont worry, ill post it again:

Giuliani: Trump 'relied on' his claims about US diplomat

https://www.yahoo.com/news/giuliani-trump-relied-claims-us-130512179.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, says he provided the president with information that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was impeding investigations that could benefit Trump politically. Within weeks, she was recalled from her post.

In an interview with The New York Times, Giuliani portrayed himself as directly involved in the effort to oust Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and he provided details indicating Trump's knowledge of that effort.

Giuliani's interview, published Tuesday, comes as Trump is facing near-certain impeachment Wednesday by the House for abuse of power over his pressure on Ukraine to announce investigations of Democrats while he was withholding aid to the Eastern European nation.

Giuliani said he passed along information to Trump “a couple of times” about how Yovanovitch had frustrated efforts that could help Trump, including efforts to have Ukraine investigate political rival Joe Biden.

Trump, in turn, passed the information on to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Giuliani said. Within weeks, Yovanovitch was told Trump had lost trust in her and she was recalled as ambassador.

Trump has said he did nothing wrong and his pressure on Ukraine was aimed at rooting out corruption there.

Early last year, Giuliani said, he told Trump that Yovanovitch was impeding investigations in Ukraine that could benefit Trump.

“There's a lot of reasons to move her,” Giuliani told the Times. He said Trump and Pompeo “relied on” his information, likely leading to Yovanovitch's ouster last April.

“I just gave them the facts,” Giuliani said. “I mean, did I think she should be recalled? I thought she should have been fired. If I was attorney general, I would have kicked her out. I mean — secretary of state.”

Testimony in the Trump impeachment inquiry showed that the claims about Yovanovitch were either unsubstantiated or taken out of context.

In the Times interview, Giuliani portrayed himself as directly involved in the effort to derail Yovanovitch's career. He said he told Trump and Pompeo that Yovanovitch was blocking visas for Ukrainian prosecutors to come to the United States to present evidence that he claimed could be damaging to Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

“I think I had pointed out to the president a couple of times, I reported to the president, what I had learned about the visa denials,” Giuliani said, as well as claims that she ordered one Ukrainian prosecutor to drop cases.

According to an article published Monday in The New Yorker, Giuliani said that he needed Yovanovitch “out of the way” and that she “was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.”

“I forced her out because she’s corrupt,” Giuliani told Fox News on Monday. He claimed that Yovanovitch “committed perjury” when she said she turned down the visa requests for a prosecutor because he was corrupt. Giuliani claimed he had witnesses “who will testify that she personally turned down their visas because they were going to come here and give evidence either against Biden or against the Democratic Party. ”

Yovanovitch, testifying in October in defiance of Trump, said there was a “concerted campaign” against her based on “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”

In a tweet Tuesday, Giuliani insisted, “Yovanovitch needed to be removed for many reasons most critical she was denying visas to Ukrainians who wanted to come to US and explain Dem corruption in Ukraine. She was OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE and that’s not the only thing she was doing. She at minimum enabled Ukrainian collusion.”

Trump and his allies falsely claim that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. The special counsel's investigation, as well as U.S. intelligence agencies, found that Russia, not Ukraine, meddled in the election.

__________________

well, where yall at?

Sitting around doing nothing while collecting socialist funds and complaining about socialists. Lol. Ever notice how the forever trumpers and trump himself accuses his accusers and ignores the stupid illegal crap trump and his crooked cronies do.

Read Donald Trump's scathing letter to Nancy Pelosi"More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials," he wrote to the Democratic leader.THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

December 17, 2019

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Washington, DC. 20515

Dear Madam Speaker:

I write to express my strongest and most powerful protest against the partisan impeachment
crusade being pursued by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. This impeachment
represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers,
unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.

The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable
under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no
crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of
the very ugly word, impeachment!

By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of of?ce, you are
breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American
Democracy. You dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election-nulli?cation
scheme?yet your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America?s founding and your
egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build.
Even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by
continually saying pray for the President,? when you know this statement is not true, unless it
is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it,
not 1!

Your ?rst claim, ?Abuse of Power,? is a completely disingenuous, meritless, and baseless
invention of your imagination. You know that I had a totally innocent conversation with the
President of Ukraine. I then had a second conversation that has been misquoted,
mischaracterized, and fraudulently misrepresented. Fortunately, there was a transcript of the
conversation taken, and you know from the transcript (which was immediately made available)
that the paragraph in question was perfect. I said to President Zelensky: would like you to do
us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.?
I said do u_s a favor, not m, and our country, not a campaign. I then mentioned the Attorney
General of the United States. Every time I talk with a foreign leader, I put America?s interests
?rst, just as I did with President Zelensky

......................................

You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable
offense?it is no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with
crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power.

You know full well that Vice President Biden used his of?ce and $1 billion dollars of US. aid
money to coerce Ukraine into ?ring the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his
son millions of dollars. You know this because Biden bragged about it on video. Biden openly
stated: said, ?I?m telling you, you?re not getting the billion dollars?. . .I looked at them and
said: ?I?m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not ?red, you?re not getting the money.?
Well, son of a bitch. He got ?red.? Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with
NPR that it ?looked bad.? Now you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing

what Joe Biden has admitted he actually did.

President Zelensky has repeatedly declared that I did nothing wrong, and that there was No
Pressure. He further emphasized that it was a ?good phone call,? that don?t feel pressure,? and
explicitly stressed that ?nobody pushed me.? The Ukrainian Foreign Minister stated very
clearly: have never seen a direct link between investigations and security assistance.? He also
said there was ?No Pressure.? Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a supporter of Ukraine who
met privately with President Zelensky, has said: ?At no time during this meeting. . .was there any
mention by Zelensky or any Ukrainian that they were feeling pressure to do anything in return
for the military aid.? Many meetings have been held between representatives of Ukraine and our
country. Never once did Ukraine complain about pressure being applied?not once!
Ambassador Sondland testi?ed that I told him: ?No quid pro quo. I want nothing. I want
nothing. I want President Zelensky to do the right thing, do what he ran on.?

The second claim, so-called ?Obstruction of Congress,? is preposterous and dangerous. House
Democrats are trying to impeach the duly elected President of the United States for asserting
Constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations
of both political parties throughout our Nation?s history. Under that standard, every American
president would have been impeached many times over. As liberal law professor Jonathan
Turley warned when addressing Congressional Democrats: ?1 can?t emphasize this enough. . .if
you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it
is an abuse of power. It?s your abuse of power. You?re doing precisely what you?re criticizing
the President for doing.?

Everyone, you included, knows what is really happening. Your chosen candidate lost the
election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227), and you and your party have never
recovered from this defeat. You have developed a full??edged case of what many in the media
call Trump Derangement and sadly, you will never get over it! You are unwilling and
unable to accept the verdict issued at the ballot box during the great Election of 2016. So you
have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify
their votes. You View democracy as your enemy!

Speaker Pelosi, you admitted just last week at a public forum that your party?s impeachment
effort has been going on for ?two and a half years,? long before you ever heard about a phone
call with Ukraine. Nineteen minutes after I took the oath of of?ce, the Washington Post

....................................................


published a story headlined, ?The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.? Less
than three months after my inauguration, Representative Maxine Waters stated, ?I?m going to
?ght every day until he?s impeached.? House Democrats introduced the ?rst impeachment
resolution against me within months of my inauguration, for what will be regarded as one of our
country?s best decisions, the ?ring of James omey (see Inspector General Reports)?who the
world now knows is one of the dirtiest cops cur Nation has ever seen. A ranting and raving
Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, declared just hours after she was sworn into of?ce, ?We?re
gonna go in there and we?re gonna impeach the Representative Al Green said in
May, ?I?m concerned that if we don?t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.? Again, you
and your allies said, and did, all of these things long before you ever heard of President Zelensky
or anything related to Ukraine. As you know very well, this impeachment drive has nothing to
do with Ukraine, or the totally appropriate conversation I had with its new president. It only has
to do with your attempt to undo the election of 2016 and steal the election of 2020!

Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the present day, even going so far
as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine
and read this fantasy language to Congress as though it were said by me. His shameless lies and
deceptions, dating all the way back to the Russia Hoax, is one of the main reasons we are here
today.

You and your party are desperate to distract from America?s extraordinary economy, incredible
jobs boom, record stock market, soaring con?dence, and ?ourishing citizens. Your party simply
cannot compete with our record: 7 million new jobs; the lowest-ever unemployment for African
Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans; a rebuilt military; a completely reformed
VA with Choice and Accountability for our great veterans; more than 170 new federal judges
and two Supreme Court Justices; historic tax and regulation cuts; the elimination of the
individual mandate; the ?rst decline in prescription drug prices in half a century; the ?rst new
branch of the United States Military since 1947, the Space Force; strong protection of the Second
Amendment; criminal justice reform; a defeated ISIS caliphate and the killing of the world?s
number one terrorist leader, al-Baghdadi; the replacement of the disastrous NAFTA trade deal
with the wonderful USMCA (Mexico and Canada); a breakthrough Phase One trade deal with
China; massiVe new trade deals with Japan and South Korea; withdrawal from the terrible Iran
Nuclear Deal; cancellation of the unfair and costly Paris Climate Accord; becoming the world?s
top energy producer; recognition of Israel?s capital, opening the American Embassy in
Jerusalem, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; a colossal reduction in
illegal border crossings, the ending of Catch-and-Release, and the building of the Southern
Border Wall?and that is just the beginning, there is so much more. You cannot defend your
extreme policies?open borders, mass migration, high crime, crippling taxes, socialized
healthcare, destruction of American energy, late?term taxpayer-funded abortion, elimination of
the Second Amendment, radical far-left theories of law and justice, and constant partisan
obstruction of both common sense and common good.

There is nothing I would rather do than stop referring to your party as the Do-Nothing
Democrats. Unfortunately, I don?t know that you will ever give me a chance to do so.

...............................................

After three years of unfair and unwarranted investigations, 45 million dollars spent, 18 angry
Democrat prosecutors, the entire force of the FBI, headed by leadership now proven to be totally
incompetent and corrupt, you have found Few people in high position could have
endured or passed this test. You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you
have in?icted upon wonderful and loving members of my family. You conducted a fake
investigation upon the democratically elected President of the United States, and you are doing it
yet again.

There are not many people who could have taken the punishment in?icted during this period of
time, and yet done so much for the success of America and its citizens. But instead of putting
our country ?rst, you have decided to disgrace our country still further. You completely failed
with the Mueller report because there was nothing to find, so you decided to take the next hoax
that came along, the phone call with Ukraine?even though it was a perfect call. And by the
way, when I speak to foreign countries, there are many people, with permission, listening to the
call on both sides of the conversation.

You are the ones interfering in America?s elections. You are the ones subverting America?s
Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering
to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.

Before the Impeachment Hoax, it was the Russian Witch Hunt. Against all evidence, and
regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the
Russians?a grave, malicious, and slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other. You forced our
Nation through turmoil and torment over a wholly fabricated story, illegally purchased from a
foreign spy by Hillary Clinton and the DNC in order to assault our democracy. Yet, when the
monstrous lie was debunked and this Democrat conspiracy dissolved into dust, you did not
apologize. You did not recantforgiven. You showed no remorse, no
capacity for self-re?ection. Instead, you pursued your next libelous and vicious crusade you
engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person. All of this was motivated by
personal political calculation. Your Speakership and your party are held hostage by your most
deranged and radical representatives of the far left. Each one of your members lives in fear of a
socialist primary challenger?this is what is driving impeachment. Look at Congressman
Nadler?s challenger. Look at yourself and others. Do not take our country down with your

party.



If you truly cared about freedom and liberty for our Nation, then you would be devoting your
vast investigative resources to exposing the full truth concerning the horrifying abuses of
power before, during, and after the 2016 election?including the use of spies against my
campaign, the submission of false evidence to a FISA court, and the concealment of exculpatory
evidence in order to frame the innocent. The FBI has great and honorable people, but the
leadership was inept and corrupt. I would think that you would personally be appalled by these
revelations, because in your press conference the day you announced impeachment, you tied the
impeachment effort directly to the completely discredited Russia Hoax, declaring twice that ?all
roads lead to Putin,? when you know that is an abject lie. I have been far tougher on Russia than
President Obama ever even thought to be.


.......................................................

Any member of Congress who votes in support of impeachment?against every shred of truth,
fact, evidence, and legal principle?is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how truly
they detest America?s Constitutional order. Our Founders feared the tribalization of partisan
politics, and you are bringing their worst fears to life.

Worse still, I have been deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process from the beginning of this
impeachment scam right up until the present. I have been denied the most fundamental rights
afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence, to have my own counsel
present, to confront accusers, and to call and cross-examine witnesses, like the so-called
whistleblower who started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no
relationship to the actual phone call that was made. Once I presented the transcribed call, which
surprised and shocked the fraudsters (they never thought that such evidence would be presented),
the so-called whistleblower, and the second whistleblower, disappeared because they got caught,
their report was a fraud, and they were no longer going to be made available to us. In other
words, once the phone call was made public, your whole plot blew up, but that didn?t stop you
from continuing.

More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.

You and others on your committees have long said impeachment must be bipartisan?it is not.
You said it was very divisive?it certainly is, even far more than you ever thought possible?and
it will only get worse!

This is nothing more than an illegal, partisan attempted coup that will, based on recent sentiment,
badly fail at the voting booth. You are not just after me, as President, you are after the entire
Republican Party. But because of this colossal injustice, our party is more united than it has ever
been before. History will judge you as you proceed with this impeachment Charade.
Your legacy will be that of turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body
into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution.

Perhaps most insulting of all is your false display of solemnity. You apparently have so little
respect for the American People that you expect them to believe that you are approaching this
impeachment somberly, reservedly, and reluctantly. No intelligent person believes what you are
saying. Since the moment I won the election, the Democrat Party has been possessed by
Impeachment Fever. There is no reticence. This is not a somber affair. You are making a
mockery of impeachment and you are scarcely concealing your hatred of me, of the Republican
Party, and tens of millions of patriotic Americans. The voters are wise, and they are seeing
straight through this empty, hollow, and dangerous game you are playing.

I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the
upcoming 2020 election. They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of
power

...............................................

There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. It is time for you
and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy
and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I
write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and
indelible record.

One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it,
and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.



ona J. Trump
President of the United States of A rica

cc: United States Senate
United States House of Representatives link

llink

On the eve of the House’s expected vote on impeachment, President Donald Trump wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which he called the accusations against him "disingenuous, meritless, and baseless invention of your imagination."

Trump accused the Democrats of suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome" after losing the election in 2016 and said they are trying to steal the election in 2020.

The letter included specific attacks on the overall impeachment process, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff and former Vice President Joe Biden — while making several false or misleading claims. We fact-checked some of the more prominent ones.

Trump: "You know full well that Vice President Biden used his office and $1 billion dollars of U.S. aid money to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his son millions of dollars. You know this because Biden bragged about it on video. Biden openly stated: ‘I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars...I looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.’"
This is a misleading and incomplete representation of the facts.

Biden as vice president took a lead role in U.S. diplomacy toward Ukraine after a popular revolution in early 2014 led to the ouster of a pro-Russia Ukrainian president. Viktor Shokin became Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2015, after the Ukrainian president went into exile. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion from Ukraine unless Shokin was fired, in hopes that a new prosecutor would do more to enforce the law.

Trump omits that the U.S. government, many Western leaders and institutions, as well as Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, viewed Shokin as corrupt and ineffective. We’ve also found no evidence that Biden advocated with his son's interests in mind; and it’s not clear that a Ukrainian gas company that Biden’s son worked for was actively under investigation or that a change in prosecutors would have benefited the company. At a January 2018 event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden recounted how he told Ukrainian leaders that they would not get $1 billion from the United States unless Shokin was fired. Biden at the event did not mention the company his son worked for or his son, Hunter.

— Amy Sherman, Louis Jacobson

"Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with NPR that it 'looked bad.'"
The "it" is out of context. From the letter, it appears Trump is saying Biden’s pressure-campaign to oust Shokin looked bad. In reality, Joe Biden in his NPR interview mentioned what his son Hunter had to say about the fallout of joining the Ukrainian company.

The NPR interviewer brought up that George Kent, a State Department official, testified that he had raised his concern that "Hunter Biden’s status as a board member could create the perception of a conflict of interest."

Kent testified in his closed-door deposition that when he raised his concern with a member of Biden’s staff, he was told that they didn’t have the "bandwidth" to deal with it while Biden’s son Beau was dying of cancer.

Biden told NPR: "Well, my son was dying, so I guess that's why he said it, because my son was on his deathbed. But that, that's not the reason why — they should have told me. And the fact of the matter is, my son testified and did an interview saying if he, looking back on it, made a mistake, he made a mistake although he did nothing wrong. The appearance looked bad and it gave folks like Rudy Giuliani an excuse to come up with a Trumpian kind of defense, why they were violating the Constitution. His, his words speak for themselves."

— Amy Sherman

"Now you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what Joe Biden has admitted he actually did."
Trump is trying to compare his actions on Ukraine’s to Biden’s. But the two actions aren’t equal.

Biden was pushing for action that overall U.S. foreign policy supported, as well as the international community.

When Biden confronted Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko in 2015, he was delivering a message not only from the United States, but from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. All three entities were focused on curtailing corruption in Ukraine, and all three were deeply suspicious that Poroshenko’s prosecutor was playing a familiar game of tamping down investigations as a form of political favoritism.

By all credible accounts, the prosecutor had slow-walked the investigation of the energy company that hired Biden’s son; so, if anything, the prosecutor was doing the Bidens a favor. Getting rid of him would do the opposite.

By contrast, Trump sought a public announcement from Ukraine that it was investigating the Bidens. Trump was pressing for something that fell outside the recommendations of federal agencies.

— Jon Greenberg

Says Jonathan Turley is a "liberal law professor."
This is an oversimplification.

At times, Turley has articulated traditionally liberal views, and during his impeachment testimony, he said, "I am not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him in 2016 and I have previously voted for Presidents Clinton and Obama." Turley added, "I have been highly critical of President Trump, his policies, and his rhetoric, in dozens of columns."

However, in recent years, his views have been more heterodox, siding with conservatives in several notable situations – including Trump’s impeachment, when he was called to testify by the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.

For instance, Turley was critical of President Barack Obama’s use of executive authority, including working on behalf of House Republicans on a health care lawsuit. He also testified favorably on behalf of one of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch.

— Louis Jacobson


Says he beat Hillary Clinton "in an Electoral College landslide (306-227).’’
By any reasonable measure, Trump’s victory wasn’t a landslide.

Since the end of World War II, Trump’s percentage of the Electoral College vote is lower than 12 previous results (1948, 1952, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012). By contrast, Trump’s electoral vote haul was bigger than only five elections in the post-World War II era (1960, 1968, 1976, 2000 and 2004).

For the record, history will record Trump winning 304 electoral votes, because two Texas electors didn’t vote for Trump. They voted for John Kasich and Ron Paul.

— Bill McCarthy

"I have been deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process from the beginning of this impeachment scam … More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials."
Without getting into the witch trials of the late 17th century, Trump’s claim is wrong. We’ve fact-checked similar versions four times.

The House Judiciary Committee invited Trump to participate in its impeachment hearings, but the White House rejected both of those invitations.

The Constitution is vague on the rules for impeachment, saying only that the House "shall have the sole Power of Impeachment" and the Senate "shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments."

If due process rights were to apply at all, legal experts told us they would be granted during the Senate’s trial phase, not the House stage. The House’s inquiry is akin to an investigation by the police, a prosecutor or a grand jury — and due process rights are not granted then, either.

But even in the Senate, it’s not clear that an impeachment trial would require due process protections, experts told us. That’s because Trump would stand to lose only his position in the White House, rather than his life, liberty or property.

— Bill McCarthy

Impeachment "is nothing more than an illegal, partisan coup."
We have rated a virtually identical claim about a coup as Pants on Fire.

A coup d'état is "the sudden and irregular (i.e., illegal or extra-legal) removal, or displacement, of the executive authority of an independent government," as defined by the The Coup D’etat Project at the University of Illinois’ Cline Center for Democracy.

Impeachment is described in the Constitution as the way to remove a president who has committed "high crimes and misdemeanors."

— Louis Jacobson

Well there’s no way he wrote that. Too many multisyllabic words.

LOL If anyone thinks that Donald Trump actually wrote that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you cheap...

That letter will go down in infamy for all the wrong reasons.

The fact that the person who wrote it is being questioned rather than the content is interesting to me.

After I post this people will probably try to dig into the content, so as to appear unbiased. Still the initial reaction seems kind of revealing.

I think Trump is a contemptible person, as well. However, it feels like the court of public opinion and personal feelings are bleeding over into court of law matters.

Trump should never have been elected president. But, he was. The doublestandard that he's being held to could be precedent for a very slippery slope. A member of the other party is president and you don't like his or her policies? Hamstring them with investigations and impeachment proceedings. Ensure government is bogged down in bereaucracy indefinitely.

We’re gonna make Obama a one term president

- senator mitch McConnell

what goes around comes around.

If you want Trump out, provide a better candidate and get the people to vote him out.

I'm sick of political intrigue being the focus of our elected officials rather than focusing on coming up with better policies.

It's all about political maneuvering to get a bigger piece of the pie. That recent spending bill is a travesty.

Trump shouldn’t had his private lawyer starting smear campaigns to get an ambassador out of her position in order to persuade his own political agenda. He shouldn’t have his private lawyer acting like he works for the state department trying to get Ukraine to investigate his political rival. He shouldn’t had withheld tax payer funded aid in order to get Ukraine to announce a public investigation into his political rival.

You don’t think all of us want to be focused on policy? You think you’re some special snowflake that knows better than others?

The president doesn’t engage in this behavior and we wouldn’t be here. Hell, trump could’ve been a MAN, apologize to the American people and atleast gave some crap excuse why he thought it was fine but realized otherwise. Very few people would’ve believed him, but it would’ve completely handicapped the Dems in any sort of impeachment proceeding, and indeed made it about 2020.

Did he do that? No. He just double down and blamed everyone else, like he always does. The buck does NOT stop with the president. You keep claiming you don’t like trump, yet seem to hold him responsible for absolutely nothing, just like his supporters do. The same people constantly talking about accountability and taking responsibility for their actions all of a sudden don’t believe that when it comes to trump.

The constitution doesn’t give two craps about upcomig elections when it comes to wrongdoing by elected officials, or ANYBODY for that matter. I don’t care if the election was 2 months away. He president engaged in criminal behavior and must be held accountable.

And if you don’t support that, then just admit you think the president is above the law, and quit playing this both sides nonsense. It’s gotten old real quick.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-impeachment-letter-gets-constitution-103050626.html

Trump’s Impeachment Letter Gets Constitution Wildly Wrong

Bloomberg
Noah Feldman
BloombergDecember 18, 2019

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Impeachment seems to have struck a nerve in President Donald Trump. On the eve of the House’s impeachment vote, he sent a six-page public letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, replete with self-justification, recrimination, and accusation. I will leave the psychological profiling to others. My job is to address the constitutional arguments, such as they are, in the extraordinary document. They may or may not be made again on the floor of the Senate in the upcoming trial; regardless, Trump has now made them part of the historical record.

The constitutional talk starts right up top, in sentence two, in which Trump writes that “the impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.”

White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s letter announcing that Trump would stonewall the impeachment inquiry claimed absurdly that the House was violating the Constitution by not passing a resolution authorizing the inquiry. No such requirement exists in the text or history of the Constitution.

In any event, there is certainly nothing even remotely unconstitutional about the House’s decision to impeach Trump. The Constitution assigns the House “sole power of impeachment.” It isn’t up to the president, or for that matter any other branch of government, to find that impeachment is unconstitutional. Every constitutional expert agrees that it’s well within the power of the House to investigate presidential conduct and vote on impeachment.

The very next sentence of the letter asserts that “The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence.”

This is flatly false. The articles state two immediately recognizable high crimes and misdemeanors: 1) abuse of power for personal advantage in the 2020 presidential election and 2) obstruction of Congress. The framers of the Constitution spoke directly about abuse of the office of the presidency for personal gain, and were obsessed with the possibility that the president would use corrupt means to get himself reelected. As for obstruction of Congress, the charge was also contained in the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon that were adopted by the House Judiciary Committee. (Nixon resigned before the House could vote on them.)

Trump’s next sentence says that the articles of impeachment “include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever.” The sentence rests on a very basic linguistic error. The Constitution does not say that the president can be impeached for crimes or misdemeanors. It says he can be impeached for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The key word here is the adjective “high.” It applies both to “high crimes” and “high misdemeanors.” The word “high” means “political,” or connected to the office of the presidency, as Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 65. The framers took the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” from the English law of impeachment. That law clearly described high crimes and high misdemeanors as completely different from ordinary crimes or ordinary misdemeanors. High crimes were crimes against the state; high misdemeanors were similarly wrongful official acts.

The upshot is that the articles of impeachment don’t need to specify any statutory crimes, or any misdemeanors of any kind. They need to specify high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution — which they absolutely do.

In addressing the abuse of power article, Trump astonishingly never mentions soliciting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. He speaks only about the “favor” he asked for, which referred, he says, to his request for Zelenskiy to speak to attorney general Bill Barr. He says he “put America’s interests first,” with no mention of how the national interest was served by his request for an investigation of Biden.

Trump then claims what Congress is doing is “no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power.” But of course Congress has the constitutional power and responsibility to impeach the president. The president has no similar oversight power over Congress.

To the contrary, the Constitution specifically makes members of Congress immune from any form of criminal process for the exercise of their legislative function. Trump’s comparison is misleading and constitutionally false. It’s also a bit frightening for its implicit hint that the president could bring criminal charges against Congress — even if that threat is legally impossible to carry out.

When it comes to obstruction of Congress, Trump asserts that he is being impeached “for asserting Constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations of both political parties throughout our Nation's history.” That’s wrong, too, Trump is being impeached for the unprecedented act of ordering a complete stonewall of the impeachment inquiry.

Finally, Trump insisted that he has

been deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process from the beginning of this impeachment scam right up until the present. I have been denied the most fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence, to have my own counsel present, to confront accusers, and to call and cross-examine witnesses, like the so-called whistleblower who started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made … More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.

The trouble with this argument is that there is no due process right in impeachment before the House. Impeachment in the House isn’t a trial in which the defendant would get the right to notice, the opportunity to be heard or the other rights Trump invokes from criminal trials. Some of those rights may well exist in the Senate impeachment hearing, which although not a criminal or civil trial is a distinct proceeding that the Constitution calls a “trial.”

But House impeachment is more like a grand jury proceeding, in which the prosecutors gather evidence and issue an indictment that leads to a trial. And in a grand jury, the defendant isn’t always entitled even to know about the proceedings in advance, much less to have a lawyer or present evidence. The Salem witch trials, for all their flaws, were trials — not indictments.

Trump told Pelosi that she had “cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!” Trump’s response cheapens a very beautiful word, Constitution.

To contact the author of this story: Noah Feldman at nfeldman7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. His books include “The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President.”

We're supposed to talk about the content of a rambling bull crap PR stunt letter to prove what exactly ??????

Sorry but the letter is garbage. It doesn't want matter who wrote it, much like it matters not who writes speeches. It has the President's name to it and it's on official White House stationary. And as Swish said, among all the momentous, awful and pathetic things Trump will be remembered for this one will be right up there.

The fact anyone would refer to the letter and in some way people's reaction to it reflects in any way positively for Trump or Republicans is a bad joke. Seriously!!! Now ask me how I really feel !!

What you're doing is excusing Trump for his actions and buying into the Republican rhetoric like he's done nothing wrong. He has. He withheld money appropriated to Ukraine for a public statement that they were investigating Biden. He obstructed congress by refusing to turn over documents and block witnesses from testifying. Even Nixon didn't do that.

Let's talk about Trump's love letter....

Trump asking for an investigation of a "political rival", bad. Not ordering or carrying out, asking. And was he asking for the investigation to be of the "rival" or of the alleged illegal acts? The withholding of funds argument seems specious as the funds ended up where they were supposed to go.

Democrats pressing for and ordering an investigation (fishing expedition) of a political rival, good.

Democrats have been adversarial with the president since before he was elected. In my opinion, that makes them poor choices to "sit on the jury".

It just seems like if one is bad, both should be bad.

I thought Republicans "investigating" Obama was pretty shady, too.

Unfortunately, finding objective people in this political climate is near impossible. Things are so polarized it's ridiculous.

The Browns are only run slightly less effectively than the country. Though, I guess the Browns are at least in the green.

Dems spin creative narrative without factual evidence.

But please carry on.

What a bunch of jack wagon republican representatives talking about “WHATABOUT!!!” rather than the facts.

I hope every single one of you on here who vote for him in 2020 or those who want him to remain after these facts know your vote means you care only about yourself and not American values.

...and another Republican saying “facts don’t matter.”

What have we even become?

The funds were released AFTER the Whistleblower report was known. Once what you've done has been discovered, desperate people immediately begin the cover up. There are proper channels to investigate people for suspected illegal acts. Your personal lawyer isn't one of them. Asking a foreign government to do it for you isn't one of them.

Obstructing congress by blocking witnesses and refusing to turn over documents by refusing to answer to legal subpoenas is an obstruction of congress.

So wrong. That's the same logic that says when Trump attempted to obstruct justice but ultimately failed, then it's all good. So wrong. Smh

Another GOP rep “WHATABOUT WHATABOUT WHATABOUT THESE DEM REPS?!”

It’s a shame how Soviet propaganda techniques can be found on this very forum and also in the chambers of Congress.

Stand and be counted. Who thinks it’s okay to withhold financial assistance to get a country to do your dirty work?

Again with the deep but unintentional irony. . . . You write about Dem creative narrative while we discuss the 6 page work of fiction Trump released.

you do realize the funds werent released until AFTER they got caught still withholding the funds, correct?

no, apparently not. bro please get up on the facts.

Withholding funds isn't a crime.

Asking another country about criminal activity of a Us citizen, even if that citizen is running for President is not a crime.

Our Congress is full of a bunch of knuckleheads, they violated the 2nd most known blunder in the world which is :

" Never try and prove a criminal case solely on intent without real evidence"

There is no way they can prove this. There are thousands of rational explainable reasons why Trump could have been withholding that aid, that range from "the paperwork was filed incorrectly and needs to be resubmitted" to "internal administrative errors in paper work and tracking that took time to track down"

The amount of paperwork and tracking required at the Fed government level if could take 6 months to 2 years to get funds released due to administrative or clerical errors on paper work....try applying for a government grant sometimes and see how long it takes at times...

Congress has to prove Trumps intent that he did this for the reasons they claim and they have to refute all the other reasons...without actual "evidence" and evidence is NOT witness testimony, but real evidence....good luck with that, not gonna happen. Just because Trump asked about Biden doesn't mean that was the reason he was witholding aid, and they have nothing that can prove it.

the Democrats fully know this impeachment is going now where, they are only doing hoping it can effect the election, not because of any wrongdoing they can actually prove.

If anyone should be charged with "abuse of power" it should be Pelosi, Schiff, and others pushing an impeachment case and vote on something they know full well they have ZERO evidence nor chance to convict on. When Nixon was impeached, many Republicans voted against him because they had real evidence.

The Clinton impeachment WAS the biggest scam in American politics...until now...it will be replaced with the Trump impeachment as the biggest scam in American politics...what a shame...

The Pentagon went so far as to conduct its own legal analysis of the holds, determining that they were illegal. A government official confirmed that such an analysis took place. So did several Capitol Hill staffers. They all described the conclusion of that analysis in similar terms.

https://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-official...-090046566.html

please thoroughly read up on why withholding aid was a problem. you clearly still dont get it.

Did I really just see a republican house rep say abuse of power isn’t an impeachable offense?

Steve Cabot of Ohio. God my state has gone to crap.

I guess that's a step up from claiming that it didn't happen.

A republican rep named Loudermilk just claimed that Jesus had more due process in his trial the Dems gave trump.

All I can do is laugh at this nonsense right now. Everybody is so over the top.

Well you knew somewhere along the line they were going to bring Jesus into it. I mean trump just attacked Pelosi's prayers so at that point anything can happen.