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

You are a riot. Republicans have ZERO interest in the truth.

When the Mueller report came out Barr had to get out ahead of it and lie about the content to change the narrative.

When the Dems were first holding impeachment testimony they cried and claimed it wasn't fair because the GOP wasn't allowed unrestricted access ..... but the Dems and GOP had equal access.

The WH then denied subpoena requests because they didn't want the truth to come out.

They hid the real transcript of 'the call' because they don't want the truth to come out.

Trump won't let Mulvaney and Bolton testify because he doesn';t want the truth to come out.

When the IG released it's report debunking the lies and spin Trump promoted for years, Trump didn't like the truth so he called the FBI scum and sent his henchman Barr out to try and obfuscate.



Yeah - the GOP and Truth do not make good bed fellows.

Once again your bias would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

The House Democrats had to back off on Quid Pro Quo as the evidence didn't support it.
Next they backed off on Bribery due to a lack of evidence.


Therefore, I shall teach...

The Senate will run things more professionally than the House did.

The Trial would probably begin in January.
First, all 100 Senators are sworn in by The Chief Justice to sit in as jurors.

Next, The House Managers will present their case, their evidence, their arguments. Whatever they have.

Both sides will present their case in respect of Due Process.

Then, the President will be allowed to present his case. His team gets to represent him.

The next stage will be Senators asking questions. Senate rules do not allow Senators to speak in open session so there won't be fighting as a few go back and forth with each other. They must sit at their desks and not speak while the cameras are on.

Senators must submit their questions in writing to the Chair and the Chief Justice will read the questions.

After all this there should be a debate as to whether or not witnesses will be called to testify.

I just want to congratulate trump for finally doing something that President Obama never did. Something he can claim as his own.... getting impeached.
Congrats donny. You truly deserve this (dis)honor.

Your knowledge of the law and the language it uses seems to be lacking.

Trump hasn't been charged with extortion or bribery (or the "attempted" versions, which lead to the same charge, but can and do often differ in the punishments in criminal cases.) with regards to the impeachment.

He was charged with the vague abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

If Trump is successfully impeached, Pelosi could be in line for similar impeachment after her threat to withhold impeachment materials from the Senate on abuse of power grounds and obstruction of Congress as well.

Good. Burn the entire thing down and start over. No one in Washington has our backs anyway. Maybe if they continue to attack each other they’ll be too busy to find new ways to turn the screws on us through further corporate tax breaks, rollbacks on EPA standards, and funding the war machine.... who am I kidding. Lol. It’s a mess and it’ll only get worse. I’m just glad I didn’t have kids. The country I was born into is dead.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...&yptr=yahoo


THE BATTLE FOR THE CONSTITUTION

John Roberts’s Surprisingly Straightforward Task Ahead
The chief justice’s role in the impeachment trial is a limited one, and he should be able to manage it easily without putting his or the Court’s legitimacy at risk.

Jane Chong


Now that President Donald Trump has been impeached, the nation’s attention will soon turn to Chief Justice John Roberts, who is constitutionally obliged to preside over the forthcoming Senate trial. This may seem like an impossibly difficult task: How will he respond to potential Republican efforts to truncate the proceedings with a premature vote? And more challenging still, at a time when the Supreme Court stands accused of politicization and ideological polarization, how will he resolve contentious disputes without putting his own neutrality, and that of the judiciary, in question?

For answers, the country doesn’t have to look further than the hands-off approach perfected by Roberts’s predecessor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who rightly recognized that the Senate—not the chief justice—commands the proceedings. The senators themselves will determine just how hard or easy Roberts’s job will be, but as Rehnquist demonstrated, the Senate’s rules and historically heavy reliance on its own past practices prevent it from forcing a skillful presider into an uncomfortable corner.

To be sure, Rehnquist was uniquely suited to preside over President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. The respect he commanded from the Senate flowed in part from the fact that he happened to be an impeachment expert: Years before Clinton’s impeachment trial, Rehnquist, an amateur historian, published a well-received book detailing the impeachments and acquittals of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson. The Senate was aware of Rehnquist’s authority on the process—its solemn objectives and potential pitfalls—as well as his views on the importance of those acquittals. In Rehnquist’s assessment, the conviction of Chase or Johnson would have upset the checks and balances established by the Constitution, undermining judicial review (in the case of Chase) and executive authority (in the case of Johnson) and moving the nation closer to a regime of congressional supremacy.

Roberts does not have similarly articulated views on the subject. But the suggestion that he will do anything to inject himself into the political fray or serve as the ultimate decider on key issues not clearly addressed by the Senate rules or precedents requires ignoring his well-established commitment to judicial nonpartisanship and sensitivity to respecting the powers and competencies of the various branches. The suggestion also reflects, at best, confusion over his duties as the official presider.

One popular analogy for understanding the Senate phase of the proceedings is a standard civil or criminal trial, in which the chief justice plays the role of judge while the senators act as the jury. It’s an appealing analogy, but also a very bad one. Judges decide law, and juries assess facts. In an impeachment trial, by contrast, the senators will make virtually all the important legal determinations as well as the factual ones. The Senate’s function in deciding the legal issues is no small point, given that facts have not been the primary point of disagreement in any past presidential impeachments. The disagreements have been largely over the legal significance of those facts.

Thus, the Senate is, as Alexander Hamilton put it in “Federalist No. 65,” the court—the whole court. During Clinton’s impeachment trial, when a senator formally objected to the House managers’ repeated references to the senators as “jurors,” Rehnquist agreed and directed counsel to cut it out: “The Senate is not simply a jury; it is a court in this case.” And so it was. The senators decided the appropriate burden of proof, the applicable rules of evidence, and—of course—the standard for what constitutes an impeachable offense. They also decided key procedural issues, such as whether there was any need for live testimony (they concluded there wasn’t), and whether it was appropriate to stick to closed-door deliberations on major issues (they concluded it was).

Roberts, should he follow Rehnquist’s lead, will serve not as the judge but as the presiding officer. There is a script for that. He will read the senators’ written questions. He will recognize speakers. He will call the Senate to order; he will call recesses; he will adjourn. Like Rehnquist, he may occasionally get up to stretch his back, but probably only after politely advising the chamber that this is not intended to disrupt the proceedings. On issues minor and major, he will rely heavily on the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough (the first woman ever in the role), who will serve as a living encyclopedia of Senate rules and conventions—in other words, supply in real time the information required to facilitate recognition of and deference to Senate precedents, and in this way establish some neutral baselines. In a 1978 interview, Floyd Riddick, who served as Senate parliamentarian during preparations for the planned impeachment of President Richard Nixon, explained the point simply: “Generally speaking, I think [the chief justice] would find, just like the senators find, that it’s better to follow the practices and precedents of the Senate which are told [to] him by a nonpolitical person, rather than to go out on a limb on his own … and get overruled by the Senate.”

That’s not to say Roberts will make no important decisions, or that in these complex, highly formalistic proceedings, there won’t be material points of procedure that invite scrutiny from lawmakers and the nation. But his role will be limited by constitutional design. Under Article I, Section 2, the Senate has “the sole Power to try all Impeachments,” and the Senate impeachment rules reflect this mandate. Those rules are subject to revision by a Senate majority, but in the century and a half since the very first presidential impeachment, that of President Johnson, they have undergone only minor updates and will likely prove sticky. The same rule that allows the chief justice to rule on evidence and objections also says that he can refer these matters for determination by the Senate. Rehnquist made referrals, and when he decided to rule, it was with the common sense and savvy that came of understanding he could be instantly overruled by a simple majority vote. (The majority’s ability to overturn the presiding officer is not unique to the impeachment process, but an ordinary point of procedure incorporated from the Senate’s standing rules.)

The country should be less concerned about anything the chief justice is likely to do and more concerned about how fairly his decisions will be portrayed by commentators eager to wring political significance from his every word and action. This is a point worth considering because historically, this commentary has ventured into the absurd. For instance, the Trump supporter and radio personality John Cardillo has made waves for arguing that Chief Justice Roberts should recuse himself from presiding over a Trump impeachment trial. Why? Because in 2018 Roberts asserted the independence of the judiciary after Trump publicly criticized “an Obama judge” who issued an order preventing the administration’s asylum policy from going into immediate effect. In response, Roberts issued a rare statement: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

The idea that Roberts compromised his judicial neutrality by asserting judicial neutrality is not a serious proposition to anyone familiar with 28 U.S.C § 455 or the code of conduct for United States judges (which does not bind Supreme Court Justices, but which they all consult for guidance). That the recusal proposal has received any airtime at all is itself an outgrowth of the political gloss that was applied to Roberts’s statement back when he made it. At the time, observers insisted, some gleefully and some disapprovingly, that the statement was a “rebuke” of Trump. This characterization says a great deal about the country’s growing cultural tendency to breathlessly examine the federal judiciary through the prism of personal entanglement, rather than constitutional obligations and institutional competencies. The proposition that there was anything improper about the chief justice’s affirmation of the federal judiciary’s independence ignored the fact that he is the face of a professional workforce and co-equal branch of government whose legitimacy turns on principles of impartiality that were challenged by the president of the United States.

America has few precedents for presidential impeachment, and none for presidential conviction and removal. The public rightly finds the idea of politicians charging and trying anyone profoundly weird and disconcerting, and to make sense of how this is supposed to work, to understand the saga that is about to unfold, people will naturally grasp for metaphors and models. They want a framework to consult as they read the news and watch the televised proceedings. They want a factual basis for discerning when their representatives are conducting themselves thoughtfully and in adherence to their oath of office, or throwing down like prizefighters in a hopeless partisan melee.

As the country searches for something solid and dispassionate in the midst of political spectacle, it will benefit, on balance, from seeing the chief justice presiding. Not because he will serve as a judge, but because he won’t. Not because he will force any major rulings, or save the Senate from itself, but because he can’t. The question of removal lies in the hands of 100 people constitutionally assigned to answer it. It’s out of Roberts’s hands.

This story is part of the project “The Battle for the Constitution,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center.

Well, then... because they have the facts, we can surely expect testimony (under oath) from:

Mike Pompeo
Rudy Giuliani
John Bolton
Mick Mulvaney
Mark Esper
Russell Vought

...right?

yeahNo... because full disclosure and The Total Picture ain't healthful or nutritious for Trump.
Truth/facts to Dolt45® is like sunlight to a vampire.

They had their opportunity to do so and did not in the House circus. Why should they be able to now do so in the Senate...where they have zero authority?

Trump is the first POTUS to be impeached for no crime.

The Dem statement that "No one is above the law" is a joke. They've not impeached him for breaking the law. They'll hope that the sheople who believe this farce is valid will miss the point.

Think about that. Impeaching a POTUS with no criminal accusation. Just when you thought the circus couldn't get more-ridiculous...it did. Then..ole' Nancy says she's gonna sit on it awhile. It's like a bad cartoon.

If they decide to call more witnesses, then they can.
If they decide the investigation was done by the House and no further investigation is necessary, they will.

I agree with WSU Willie, it was the House's responsibility to do the investigation and they decided to impeach. No further investigation is necessary. The House is either justified in impeaching the President or they were not.

The Senate will let us know.

That's what the subpoenas were for. Subpoenas that were summarily ignored. Why? Because facts are not healthful or nutritious for Donald J. Trump.



Because if facts/truth were not damaging to the POTUS, these men would be INVITED to testify before their GOP friends in the Senate. Um... where are they?
Moscow Mitch doesn't want them even in the same area code as these proceedings, and we both know why.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and these roaches are staying hidden inside that walls.

You can play coy with this all you want. It's not going to fly with me.

I have no interest in being coy with you or anyone else. The Dem lawyers in the House chose to NOT proceed with legal remedy for ignored subpoenas. That's where you should Wonder why?

I have my own idea why. But that doesn't matter. They chose not to. That's on them, not on Trump or McConnell.

After the botched kangaroo court held by the House, you are suggesting that the defendant should gladly call witnesses to profess the defendant's innocence where no crime has been charged.

You are way to intelligent to think that that has any business being a part of any demand of any US citizen.

Clem, snap out of it! They found him guilty and pronounced sentence, impeachment.

Yet you still cry?

Now the Senate will decide if the trial was fair, the facts were there, and if impeachment was warranted.

Its all right there in that thing we call the Constitution/Bill of Rights.

Nancy did say its all about the Constitution did she not?

There is evidence and they did impeach him. Let me guess? You're going to say it didn't actually happen? Or are you pretending you don't know the difference in a president being impeached and a president being removed from office?

Speaking of someone not following their oath......

Here is the oath that McConnell, Graham and all other Republican senators must attest to....



Statement from Graham

“This thing will come to the Senate, and it will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly,” he said. “I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here.”

Statement by McConnell

“I'm not an impartial juror,” McConnell said. “This is a political process. There is not anything judicial about it. Impeachment is a political decision . . . I'm not impartial about this at all.”

They are going to take an oath they've already admitting they are lying about. That taking an oath to God means nothing to them.

Is that you Nancy Pelosi?

Here’s why the stock market is ignoring Trump’s impeachment by the House

-Strategists said investors expect the Republican-controlled Senate to acquit President Trump, following Wednesday’s vote by House Democrats to impeach him.

-Stocks were able to gain 5% since the House of Representatives first voted Oct. 31 to conduct impeachment proceedings against the president because investors did not fear he would be removed from office.

-The impeachment should not have any negative impacts on fiscal or monetary policy, but may have brought some positive developments, like the China trade deal and bipartisan support for a new NAFTA.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/19/heres-wh...-the-house.html

Still Winning

Shokin has disputed Kasko’s narrative, but the manner in which he was running his office also concerned the US ambassador to Ukraine, who said publicly in September 2015 that the office was “subverting” the UK’s investigation.

Concern at the embassy mounted, and by 2016, officials there began suggesting the Obama administration push for the prosecutor general’s ouster. In particular, the embassy suggested that $1 billion in loan guarantees the country hoped to receive from the US in order to stay solvent should be tied to a tougher anti-corruption strategy that involved removing officials seen as blocking progress, namely Shokin.

It wasn’t just the US that wanted Shokin gone, either — many other Western European officials, including the IMF’s then-managing director Christine Lagarde, also insisted Ukraine was doing far too little about corruption.

So in March 2016, Biden says he told the Ukrainian government that their loan guarantees would be cut off unless they removed Shokin. He told the story at a session at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours,” Biden told his audience. “I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’”

The former vice president said after the threat, “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

But though Biden may have taken credit for it, this was hardly his unique idea. “Everyone in the Western community wanted Shokin sacked,” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told the Wall Street Journal. “The whole G-7, the IMF, the EBRD, everybody was united that Shokin must go, and the spokesman for this was Joe Biden.”

The people of Ukraine wanted Shokin gone as well, and demonstrated for his removal around the time of Biden’s threat. Shortly after that demonstration, Shokin was dismissed.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/...lower-complaint

You are so busy seeing only what you want to see, that you refuse to even look for facts. Trump/s actions were for his own political gain. Biden's actions were on the part of the U.S and our western allies.

did they summarize by saying because the Republican senate has no backbone?

So Bill Clinton was never impeached?

Economy is rolling, jobs are rolling, interest rates are low. Market totally ignoring all of this nonsense. Trump isn't going anywhere. The Senate will NOT have the votes. Get over it folks. There are MORE important issues facing this country. How about the people that are supposed to REPRESENT Americans actually get to work on doing that? When Trump wins again, his main focus should be to get the states to ratify a constitutional amendment on TERM LIMITS. Now THAT would actually benefit AMERICA going forward. Get it done PRESIDENT TRUMP!

Everyone knew the senate would not remove Trump from office. But we see what our nation can turn into when people think more about their wallets than morals and character.

How do you prove his actions were primarily motivated by political gain?

It's been implied numerous times that that was his reason, but what is the basis? Because Trump wanted something done the reason must be bad? (I don't doubt that it's bad, but proving it is not the same as suspecting)

If as everyone seems to be alleging an investigation would only clear Biden, how would that help Trump?

The continued cloud that Biden hasn't been investigated is likely to do him more harm. The fight to avoid an investigation makes him look like there is something to hide.

Is a shadow hanging over a former government official good for the US? If not, wouldn't having the shadow cleared be good for the US's diplomatic relations in the region? One could argue that was the president's intent.

Do I buy it? Not really, but the burden of proof lies on the prosecution. Innocence is supposed to be assumed in our justice system. The assumption of guilt and a rush to judgment is the opposite of how it is supposed to work.

Calling anything justice when politics are involved is one of modern America's great ironies.

Motivation is the process by which all people take action. Who, other than Trump had anything to gain from this? What does someone ho;ding a job for a power company in Ukraine have to do with anything here in the U.S.?

Sometimes the answers are simple and not at all complicated.

Trump's political goals were the only reason for such actions.

When it's your son, the drug addict, who got a job doing something he knew nothing about, to the tune of some $50,000 a month, but the son is being investigated, and you hold back a billion in aid (probably voted on by congress, by the way)...........yeah, what did that have to do with anything? [quote]

Sometimes the answers are simple and not at all complicated. [/quote} Correct.

Putin says Trump was impeached for 'far-fetched' reasons

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/putin-acknowledges-threats-posed-climate-092500201.html

Cool so the dems definitely did the right thing. Screw Putin and his puppet trump.

I see you have never actually looked into it. The American government and many of our allies wanted this guy removed. I've already posted the information on the board. That was the motivation behind it. When someone is motivated by what's best for our nation and our allies, that's far different than doing it for one's own personal gain.

Just like doing a drive by shooting is different from shooting an intruder in your home.

Drug use by Biden's son was much earlier in his life. But I'm not surprised by your tactics.

Rather, trump was impeached for no reason other than the majority in the house, many of which were calling for his impeachment on day 1, finally thought they found something. The vote was strictly on party lines.

And, since the house majority got what they wanted, pelosi is no going to sit on the articles and not send them to the senate.

The american gov't.? You mean, Barack?

And, 'many allies'? Meaning, they didn't want their info delved into.

Thanks for playing.

As you are fond of saying: "I treat people the way they treat me", please understand, I will do the same. I will take the lefts attributes and partial truths, and do the same. And in the end? What do we get?

Trump.

Hey, why isn't pelosi sending the articles to the senate?

jc

Eh. A bunch of ado about nothing.

Typical liberal hysterics.

And the Senate will shut it down.

Y'all look weak.

The house Democrats overwhelming voted down any impeachment inquiry as lat as July this year. If their intent was to impeach him from day one, they wouldn't have done that. more Trumpian lies being spread.

You obviously either can't see the truth or wouldn't know the truth if it but you in the azz.

Cause they knew they had nothing then. Just as they have nothing now, based on pelosi not sending the impeachment articles to the senate.

But, hey, they found "obstruction of congress", and bribery.

BUt, hey, they finally got what they wanted, and what you wanted. A party line vote. They could've done it the first week trump was in office, because it was going to pass no matter what/when.

I have a feeling the dems hurt themselves with this. Send the articles to the senate.

You were the one that just days ago was peddling the conspiracy theory that the Russian investigation was based on the Steele Dossier. When the IG report came it, it was proven that the Russian investigation began three weeks before they even had the Steele dossier.

The senate has never removed a president from office and we all know Bill Clinton was guilty of perjury. So your latest assumption is meaningless as well.

And you once again ignore facts. The Democrats in the House rejected a vote to do an impeachment investigation as late as July of this year. If they wanted to impeach him from day one, they wasted a lot of time and the proof they didn't want to impeach him from day one exists in that July 19th vote not to.

But I know. facts have nothing to do with your beliefs. You just insist on blasting out right wind rhetoric.

When you block legal subpoenas issued by congress for wtnesses to testify and refuse to turn over documents, you obstructed congress. It's not complicated.

Obstruction definition;

the crime or act of willfully interfering with the process of justice and law especially by influencing, threatening, harming, or impeding a witness, potential witness, juror, or judicial or legal officer or by furnishing false information in or otherwise impeding an investigation or legal process.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/obstruction%20of%20justice

.

nice.
I see what you did there...

I was here a couple years ago and told you exactly what to expect for the Mueller report (which was nothing). I'm here to tell you again that impeachment is DOA in the senate. This is all nothing, a waste of time.

The fact you still believe your party's lies is kind of sad frankly. You know damn well nobody in the democrat party can even sniff beating Trump in 2020. You don't have a snowball's chance in hell!

Nothing has changed in the past couple months.

DEMOCRAT PARTY = DOES NOTHING, NO VIABLE CANDIDATES, NO MESSAGE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

DEMOCRAT PARTY = ORANGE MAN BAD.

One day you'll pull your head out of the sand. GL.

Well, I wouldn't say the dem's don't have a snowballs chance in hell of winning.

I WILL say this farce impeachment has helped trump, but by the same token, I'm sure the dems will be going after the ill informed voter, and the flat out no clue voter. The sheep.

And yet - if you look factually at who voted for Trump .... ah - but why bother, facts don't matter.

I looked at your article. It was hard to get passed the initial swipe at John Brennan saying Trump had acted treasonously.... after all Trump calls someone a traitor every other week. Most of the time it's a long serving well respected public servant.

Then the Dossier - and a claim that the entire Dossier had been debunked, which is hasn't. I guess maybe say it a thousand more times and maybe it'll be a bit truer?