DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump Impeachment 2.0

Peen isn't telling the entire story by any stretch of the imagination.

Think if you will about people robbing a bank. One guy goes inside and robs it. One guy is the out man. One guy is the getaway driver. They are holding an impeachment trial to get the guy who went inside the bank while his getaway driver and the lookout guy managed to get on the jury.

The first impeachment trial? Let's look at that for just a moment. When the president has the power to claim Executive Privilege in order to block every first hand account of what actually happened it makes it very hard to show the evidence. That's what happened. And everyone who did testify was punished by that administration.

Just want to make sure I respond to both of your posts

I agree with the dynamic you're talking about with the getaway driver. I think he should go down in flames this time around. I am skeptical that it happens though.

As far as the first trial, I'm not arguing that there were legitimate grounds, and to be honest, I think his relationship with Putin/Russia alone is far worse and more concerning than just about anything I've seen from a president in my lifetime.

Where I think it was dumb was on the tactical level. At that point in time, the Democrats needed a real smoking gun to actually get a conviction, and they knew that, and knew they probably wouldn't get the R's in the Senate to convict, which also likely happened because of the retaliation that you mention. In my mind, the tactics of it all obviously didn't lead to a conviction, which looked very unlikely in the first place, and it caused a recoil and further emboldening on Trump's side.

I guess my question to you would be, what is it you think Trump could do, other than maybe shoot someone with thousands of witnesses, that would make Republican senators ever convict Trump?

And I don't see the dems all that differently. There's no doubt Bill Clinton committed perjury. He obviously lied under oath. If that doesn't fall under the "high crimes and misdemeanors" category I don't know what would. But it's funny how Dems will say, "Bill Clinton got impeached for a blow job". They never talk about how he actually committed perjury.

But I think we must admit that we've gotten to the point in our country that a president can get away with almost anything and get away with it. Their own party will refuse to hold them accountable in almost any situation.

I didn't think they'd get the votes either, but (to me) that's not as important/impactful as why they didn't get the votes. The 'why' is politicians are going to politician.

Even if it were due to some sort of procedural loophole that got him out of it, I could deal with/wrap my brain around that one... but it wasn't. It came down to politicians not having the stones to do the right thing.

I don't disagree with that last point. I guess I never expected them to have the stones in the first place.

My answer to your question is that I honestly don't know. Something more than what happened the first time around. It needs a real smoking gun.

I was hoping that January 6th would be enough, and I think it definitely would have had a much better shot than what happened the first time around, but it looks like the R's are regressing, which is truly insane to me, considering those same R's legitimately had to shelter in place last month because of what the president was pedaling.

perjury murder potato Pahtahto

He's not speaking to the gravity of differences between the impeachable offenses.

His point is that arbitrary political affiliation has taken precedence over concrete evidence in impeachment trials, whichever the side, and that is a very dangerous thing.

Yeah, my point was what constitutes an impeachable offense. I think in both cases that burden is met yet in both cases their party excused the behavior based on political affiliation.

Conservative claims of online censorship 'a form of disinformation:' study

Claims that conservative voices are being censored online by social media platforms are not backed by evidence and are themselves a disinformation narrative, according to a report released Monday.

The New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights’ report concluded that anti-conservative bias claims, boosted by some top Republican lawmakers including former President Trump, are not based on any tangible evidence.

“The claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it. No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons or that searches are being manipulated to favor liberal interests,” the report stated.

Republicans have ramped up accusations that social media companies have an anti-conservative bias after Facebook and Twitter took action to ban Trump’s account following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Twitter says it has permanently banned the former president from its platform, while Facebook is leaving the final decision up to its independent oversight body.

The allegation of censorship has been key in Republicans’ attacks on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects social media platforms from liability associated with third-party content posted on their sites.

Despite the repeated accusations by Republicans, the report found that by “many measures, conservative voices — including that of the ex-president, until he was banished from Twitter and Facebook — often are dominant in online political debates.”

For example, the report highlighted the engagement on Trump’s Facebook page compared to now-President Biden’s page during the three months leading up to Election Day. Trump elicited 87 percent of the total 307 million post interactions between the two, compared to Biden’s 13 percent.

Additionally, the report noted that Fox News and Breitbart News led the pack in terms of Facebook interactions with posts by media organizations from Jan. 1 through Nov. 3 of last year. Fox News had 448 million interactions and Breitbart had 295 million; the closest behind them was CNN, at 191 million interactions.

With Biden in office, Republicans have continued to push back against Section 230 over the unfounded accusations of anti-conservative biases.

The report recommends the Biden administration work with Congress to update Section 230, rather than pushing for a repeal of the law as Trump sought before leaving office.

“The controversial law should be amended so that its liability shield is conditional, based on social media companies’ acceptance of a range of new responsibilities related to policing content. One of the new platform obligations could be ensuring that algorithms involved in content ranking and recommendation not favor sensationalistic or unreliable material in pursuit of user engagement,” the report stated.

Biden’s nominee to serve as the secretary of Commerce, current Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (D), said last week during a Senate confirmation hearing that the law needs some reform, indicating the administration is open to amending it.

Biden during his presidential campaign said Section 230 should be revoked, but he has largely not detailed plans moving forward.

The report also recommends the Biden administration create a new Digital Regulatory Agency. The agency would be charged with enforcing the responsibilities of a revised Section 230.

Additionally, it recommends the Biden administration pursue a constructive reform agenda for social media, including pressing the companies on improving and enforcing content policies.

As for social media companies, the report recommends the industry provide greater disclosure on content moderation actions, offer users a choice among content moderation algorithms, undertake more “vigorous” human moderation of influential accounts and release more data for researchers.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/53...ormation-report

What a bunch of losers. Reports are now out that many of the insurrection trump supporters he asked to attack the Capitol building didn’t even vote in the 2020 election. Lol

White House reviewing whether Trump should continue receiving intel briefings

The White House is conducting a review to determine whether former President Trump should continue receiving intelligence briefings now that he has left office.

Speaking at the White House press briefing on Monday, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said President Biden’s national security team is looking into the matter.

“It’s something that is under review,” Psaki said.

Former presidents typically have access to intelligence briefings after leaving office.

However, Democrats — and even some former Trump administration officials — have warned that the former president cannot be trusted with national security secrets, believing he could reveal sensitive information or seek to profit off of it.

Sue Gordon, who was principal deputy director of national intelligence during the Trump administration, urged in a recent op-ed that Trump be cut off from intelligence briefings, saying he would be “unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) began pushing for Trump to be cut out of the loop even before he left office on Jan. 20.

"There's no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing, not now, not in the future,” he said. “I don't think he can be trusted with it now, and in the future he certainly can't be trusted."

https://thehill.com/policy/national-secu...receiving-intel

I think he should be included. He never showed up anyways. They could send trump and his supporters on crazy wild geese chases. And if anything leaks we’ll know who to arrest.

How about the airwaves and cable TV?



By Eric Mack


CNN is making no mistake about it: It wants to censor and close Newsmax from broadcasting as a cable news channel.

Apparently jolted by the fact Newsmax has skyrocketed to become the 4th highest-rated cable news channel in the country, the liberal CNN is decrying what it calls Newsmax's "election denialism" and is seeking to have it "deplatformed" from cable and satellite systems across the nation.

Oliver Darcy, CNN's leftwing media critic, has been demanding cable operators drop Newsmax, which is currently carried by every major system in the nation. Newsmax is also streamed free by most OTT platforms and devices.

In a CNN column in early January, Darcy falsely claimed conservative media caused the protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

"After all, it was the very lies that Fox, Newsmax, and OAN spread that helped prime President Trump's supporters into not believing the truth: That he lost an honest and fair election," Darcy wrote.

Darcy's demands have been echoed on CNN's shows, including their Sunday media show "Reliable Sources" hosted by liberal media analyst Brian Stelter.

On this week's Sunday show, Stelter's guests focused on deplatforming Newsmax.

Previously, CNN had led efforts to deplatform President Donald Trump from Twitter.

"We are going to have to figure out the OANN and Newsmax problem," Alex Stamos, a former Facebook chief security officer, told CNN's Stelter. "These companies have freedom of speech, but I'm not sure we need Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and such bringing them into tens of millions of homes."

In a brazen call for censorship, Stamos echoed CNN demand conservative voices and news outlets be blacklisted and closed out of cable television and the Internet.

"We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences," Stamos said. "There are people on YouTube that have larger daytime audiences than CNN."

Darcy doubled down, advancing the McCarthy-like political witch hunt by tweeting a fresh demand cable operators which carry Newsmax consider closing down the outlet:

"Just a reminder that neither @Verizon, @ATT, nor @comcast have answered any questions about why they beam channels like OAN [sic] & Newsmax into millions of homes. Do they have any second thoughts about distributing these channels given their election denialism content? They won't say."

In his tweet, Darcy failed to note AT&T is the parent company of CNN, and by removing Newsmax from cable lineups it reduces serious competition for his network, especially as Newsmax continues to rapidly increase audience and is on a trajectory to overtake CNN in viewership.

While far-left activists jumped to support a potential silencing of Newsmax, others noted the censorship effort runs afoul of both freedom of speech and anti-trust laws.

Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer exposed the hypocrisy, if not double standard, of the suggestion of silencing conservative channels, tweeting:

"You knew it would happen. Some want to take conservative media off the air because they bought into Trump's election theories. On those grounds, shouldn't CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC be taken off the air because they bought into [Russian] collusion theories? This censorship must stop."

In a statement released Sunday, Newsmax said, contrary to Darcy's and Stamos' claims, Newsmax never denied the election results.

The network called all contested states for Biden as they were certified and accepted him as president-elect Dec. 14, after the meeting of the Electoral College.

Newsmax also noted, while it justifiably covered the president's allegations about the election, and interviewed his lawyers and supporters – as did Fox News and Fox Business News, it never said all allegations were true.

The network did note, after years of CNN falsely claiming the Steele Dossier was valid and the Russian collusion claim against Trump was credible, it was never held accountable for its misreporting. Newsmax never called for CNN to be shut down.

https://www.newsmax.com/us/cnn-cancel-culture-big-tech-censorship/2021/01/17/id/1006021/

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/01/08/...proval-1014098/

There may be some cred to a Twitter as an example to censor material they deem unsuitable, at least for now. In this day and age, Twitter platforms are media platforms IMO. Or at least nearing that point I am sorry to say.

There isn't for something like this.

We are walking dangerous ground when we start talking about Bill of Rights as if they need to not be there. TASS and Pravda isn't where we want to go.

I don't know who said it, but "You can give away your rights, but you have to fight to get them back".

I'll do you one better. Why does any President need to receive these briefings once they're out of office?

Pretty sure it's so they can be called upon to consult. I also think they may be the last emergency fall back in case of disaster... probably some secret memo.

Oh I think it's perfectly clear... Especially if you add up all the rhetoric he spewed since before the election.

Yes, I know. You made that clear in your first post.

"Russia, if you're listening."

Lindsey Graham threatens Democrats: If you call even one witness for impeachment trial, we’ll open up 'Pandora's box'


He threatened to call the FBI to testify


Phil Shiver


February 02, 2021




Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) warned Democratic colleagues Monday night that if they decide to call even one witness in the Senate's upcoming impeachment trial against former President Trump, they'll be opening up "Pandora's Box."

POLL: What scares you the most?

Last month, the Democrat-controlled House voted to impeach Trump a second time for "incitement of insurrection" after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 while Congress was in session. The process has now moved to the Senate, where a trial is set to begin next week.

Graham, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed that he looks forward to a speedy trial and acquittal of Trump. But he noted that should Democrats choose to turn it into a "political commercial" and prolong the business for "weeks and months" by calling witnesses, Republicans are prepared to play ball by calling the FBI to testify about security failures at the U.S. Capitol.

"If you open up that can of worms [by calling witnesses], we'll want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people actually pre-planned these attacks and what happened with the security footprint at the Capitol," Graham said.

"You open up Pandora's box if you call one witness," he continued. "I hope we don't call any and we vote and get this trial over next week when it starts."

Lindsey Graham repeats his warning not to call witnesses during the trial. He says if Democrats vote to call a sing… https://t.co/PpWSE4a8qQ
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn Torabi)1612226807.0

With the trial's Feb. 9 start date looming, Reuters reported Monday that the House Democrats in charge of impeachment proceedings in the Senate are expected to announce whether or not they will call witnesses by as early as Tuesday.

Democrats are expected to face an uphill climb toward a conviction, especially after 45 of the GOP's 50 senators voted in a procedural motion to object to impeachment proceedings last week, leading Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to call the prospect "dead on arrival." Democrats would need at least 17 GOP senators to declare Trump guilty in order to garner the two-thirds vote required to convict.


https://www.theblaze.com/news/graham-war...5Vf21BBMHchUGUI

I don't really understand how that's a threat.

I welcome the FBI,,

I don't understand why this is a threat.

Well we all know who rails against having witnesses. The guilty.

jc

I was listening to the Dan Abbrams Show on Potus radio yesterday and one of his callers had an interesting take on the impeachment trial and I was wondering what you guys thought about it. It goes as follows:

The Democrats are making a mistake by taking this Impeachment to trial. The reasoning being that there is almost no way that 17 republican senators will vote guilty. So trump will be spouting off "I was exonerated twice, see I did nothing wrong!"

Whereas, since trump has already been impeached a 2nd time, if it never goes to trial then it will always hang over him like a black cloud.

I had not thought of it that way and would love to here what both pro-trump and anti-trump posters think about it.

Lindsey Graham speaks with Trey Gowdy about his comment:

I think the decision to go to trial shouldn't be based on whether 17 spineless Republicans will or won't vote guilty - neither should it be made based on having a stigma hang over Trump.

The entire "Impeachment" process might be political in nature, which has been discussed before - but it should be based on facts and what's "right".

Did Trump provide the fuel that lead to the protest and the violence? Is it provable? If yes - then go to trial. If not then don't. End of.

Because we have spineless politicians who will vote party regardless of what's right or wrong, shouldn't determine what action is taken.

The way I see is there should be a public record of the evidence for people in future generations to look at. Either there is evidence to present or there is not. In this case there is a vast amount of evidence to present.

Trump is almost 75 years old. He isn't long on this earth to crow about anything. Let the people see the evidence and decide for themselves. By now it's already clear that the vast majority of Americans fully understand you can't believe a word the man says.

There needs to be a historical record.

All Presidents have a historical record.

Had the same thought...

I'll amend/edit my post to emphasize the 'need'. Sounds to me like former presidents automatically receive these. Per what you suggested, it should be easy for a former president to retain receipt of that info... but the default process should pretty much be that of any other employee leaving a job.

I'd be ok with waiting longer to send this to trial in the senate.

The longer this weighs on Trumps mind, the better I like it.

Also, as you can see, each day, more and more of those that attacked the capital are being charged and that means more and more evidence is being discovered. Most all is damning to Trump.

So the case keeps getting stronger and stronger.

Still, I don't think they'll ever get 17 Republicans to vote for conviction.

By the way, voting against conviction says to me that republicans think it's ok to incite insurrection.

Not like this one.

None of this is a surprise. It was expected that the Dems would invite trump to testify under oath and it was expected that that trump would decline. Next step, the impeachment managers need to decide if they are going to subpoena trump or not.

Key Democrat asks Trump to testify under oath for impeachment trial

David Knowles
Thu, February 4, 2021, 2:36 PM


Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., sent a letter Thursday to former President Donald Trump, inviting him to provide testimony under oath in regards to the impeachment trial that will begin in the U.S. Senate next week.

Raskin, the Democrats’ lead impeachment manager, said he was requesting Trump’s testimony in light of the response issued by the former president's lawyers to impeachment charge of "incitement of insurrection" for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“Two days ago, you filed an Answer in which you denied many factual allegations set forth in the article of impeachment,” Raskin wrote to Trump. “You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional offense. In light of you disputing these factual allegations, I write to invite you to provide testimony under oath, either before or during the Senate impeachment trial, concerning your conduct on January 6, 2021.”

On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers issued their response to the article, arguing that impeachment was not constitutional since Trump was no longer president and that his inflammatory statements at a rally that immediately preceded the storming of the Capitol by his supporters were protected by the First Amendment.

“It is denied that President Trump incited the crowd to engage in destructive behavior,” the legal team’s response stated. “It is denied that the phrase ‘If you don't fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore’ had anything to do with the action at the Capitol as it was clearly about the need to fight for election security in general, as evidence by the recording of the speech.”

Trump had exhorted his supporters to head to the Capitol to voice their displeasure with lawmakers who were set to certify the results of the 2020 election.

Raskin pressed Trump to testify no later than next Thursday.

“We would propose that you provide your testimony (of course, including cross-examination) as early as Monday, February 8, 2021, and not later than Thursday, February 11, 2021,” Raskin wrote. “We would be pleased to arrange such testimony at a mutually convenient time and place.”

Noting that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that Trump was not immune from legal proceedings while serving as president, Raskin told Trump that his refusal to testify could be read as an admission of guilt.

“If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021,” Raskin said in the letter.

In response, Trump lawyers Bruce Castor and David Schoen refused Raskin’s request, calling it a “public relations stunt.”

“Your letter only confirms what is known to everyone: You cannot prove your allegations against the 45th President of the United States, who is now a private citizen,” Castor and Schoen wrote.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/key-democrat-...-193646448.html

What a joke.

Humorous how you leftists can't keep Trump out of your brains even when he is a private citizen.

Trump is living rent free in your head and that to me is hilarious.

Oh and this Impeachment 10000000000.0 is going nowhere.

He hasn’t been out of office longer than a month, yet he’s somehow living rent free in our heads?

Man, that’s news to me. Apparently to the right, POTUS isn’t all that important of a job if the whole country can easily move on in less than a month.

I agree, that is every prosecutors dream... get the defendant to take the stand...