Tag Archives: Trump impeachment

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So, that’s why Chairman Schiff managed to keep his cool

It occurred to my wife and me this evening as news broke about the House Intelligence Committee’s report on its impeachment findings just why Chairman Adam Schiff was able to keep his cool while ranking member Devin Nunes kept ranting during the public hearings about so-called Democratic games.

Schiff knew what was coming, that the Intel Committee’s evidence would implicate Nunes as a key player in the impeachment drama involving Donald Trump, his lawyer Rudolf Giuliani, Ukraine and the sordid other characters.

It appears that Nunes had plenty of contact with Ukraine government officials, seeking Ukrainian help in digging up dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

So, while Nunes was preening and posturing about alleged nefarious Democratic motives in seeking to impeach Trump, he well might be involved in his own nefarious activity.

Schiff, experienced prosecutor that he is, kept his cool. He knew what would be revealed.

Well played, Mr. Chairman.

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Set to make impeachment history once again

Here we are, on the cusp of another politically historic event awaiting the U.S. House of Representatives.

The House Intelligence Committee is going to hand off to the Judiciary Committee, which then will decide whether to file articles of impeachment against Donald John Trump.

This shouldn’t be a close call. However, it’s likely to become a partisan vote, with Democrats voting to impeach the president and Republicans saying “no.”

I’m out here in the Peanut Gallery. What I have seen from the middle of Trump Country tells me that the president deserves to be impeached; he also deserves to be convicted in a U.S. Senate trial. The allegations leveled against him are far worse than anything that befell President Clinton in 1998 and rise at least to the level of what President Nixon faced in 1974 when he resigned.

House Republicans impeached Clinton for lying about an inappropriate relationship he had with a White House intern. Nixon quit before the House could impeach him for obstructing justice in the search for the truth behind the Watergate burglary in June 1972.

What does Donald Trump face? He is facing an accusation — which he more or less has admitted to doing — of soliciting a foreign government for a political favor. In exchange for the favor, which included digging up dirt on a potential political foe, the president would release weapons to Ukraine, which is fighting rebels backed by Russia.

The U.S. Constitution expressly forbids such activity. It cites “bribery” along with “treason” specifically as crimes for which a president can be removed from office. It isn’t treason, but it sure looks for all the world to me like bribery.

I fully expect to get some dipsh** responses from High Plains Blogger critics who think I’m whistlin’ Dixie with regard to the crimes I believe the president has committed. That’s fine. Let ’em gripe.

I stand by my assertion that Donald Trump has committed crimes that rise to the level of impeachment. They certainly are far more egregious than what ended up on President Clinton’s record.

The record as I’ve seen it pile up during the impeachment inquiry is replete with evidence of wrongdoing. The House and Senate Republican caucus, however, is equally replete with political cowardice among House members and senators who choose to stand with the president and refuse to stand for what they piously proclaim to be “the rule of law.”

And so, history is about to be made once again as one House panel passes the torch to another one. Let this lawful, constitutional and appropriate impeachment effort proceed.

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Expecting impeachment to drag this campaign into the ditch

If we try to project how this impeachment saga will play out, we ought to be left with a distressing prognosis.

It is that no matter how it ends, the upcoming 2020 presidential campaign is likely to be dragged into the deepest dietch you can imagine.

Donald Trump at this moment is likely to survive a trial in the U.S. Senate after the House of Representatives impeaches him for various high crimes and misdemeanors.

If you’re a Democratic challenger, you might want to talk about issues of the day. Things that ought to matter to Americans who will be voting for president of the United States. But then you’ll have to deal with Trump’s manic obsession with the impeachment.

He is unable to set impeachment into one cranial compartment while concentrating (more or less) fully on the upcoming issues debate. No way! He is obsessed with impeachment.

When the House impeaches him, my hope is that it is done soon. I also hope the Senate can dispense with the trial soon. I do not want the impeachment and trial to hang over the campaign. Alas, it will hang anyway, given Trump’s inability or unwillingness to put it into perspective in the event he survives the Senate trial.

I can imagine now that he is likely and quite willing to keep mentioning the impeachment as he campaigns for re-election. He will use the impeachment and trial as a sort of shield against legitimate criticism that could come from his political foe.

You know: his refusal to acknowledge climate change as the existential threat it has become; his continuing effort to pi** off our valued allies; Trump’s inability to cut the deficit as he promised he would do; the president’s poor choice of key aides and Cabinet members; the fact that so many top level positions remain vacant or are filled by “acting” Cabinet members or agency heads.

The president will ensure that we do not forget that the House impeached him and that the Senate “acquitted” him, although it might be on a technicality, given the high bar set by the Constitution for removal after a Senate trial.

Yep, the 2020 presidential campaign is heading for the ditch.

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History about to be made … again!

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is set now to pick up where the Intelligence Committee left off. It will finish the job that the Intel panel started with the inquiry into whether to impeach Donald J. Trump.

The House will convene its own public hearings and will hear witnesses confirm — and some will possibly contest — the allegations that have piled up around the president.

That he sought foreign help for a political favor; that he abused the power of his office; that he withheld military assistance in exchange for that political favor; that he obstructed the pursuit of the truth behind each of the allegations.

There might be multiple articles of impeachment filed by the Judiciary Committee. The House of Representatives will take a vote once the articles are approved by the Judiciary panel.

Then it goes to the Senate, where the president of the United States will be the third such individual to stand trial before the jury of 100 senators. And, yes, the likelihood of a conviction appears remote at this moment. But … one cannot take anything to the bank just yet.

It will be a historic hearing. It will be full of thrusts and parries. Democrats, in my view, hold the winning hand. Republicans are seeking to bluff their way past the opposition.

Both sides are dug in. However, I say all this in the moment. I maintain a glimmer — and that’s all it is — of hope that sanity and reason might prevail in the Senate, that senators on both sides of the great divide will realize what many millions of Americans have concluded already.

It is that Donald Trump’s ignorance, arrogance and narcissism make him unfit for high public office.

Let the proceedings continue with somber reflection and sober deliberation.

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Impeachment seeks to overturn election? Damn right! So what?

The most tiresome mantra coming from Donald J. Trump’s defenders is the one that suggests that the pending impeachment of the president by the House of Representatives is a “ploy” to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

To which I say: Yeah? So … what?

Of course it would “overturn” those election results. That’s what impeachments are intended to do, despite contentions from those who speak nobly of “defending the Constitution.”

Donald Trump has committed what I believe are impeachable offenses. He sought foreign government assistance to further his personal political future. He sought to sic that foreign government onto an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, intending to damage the political fortunes of a potential 2020 presidential campaign rival. He has obstructed justice. Trump has abused his power.

Impeachment must be the recourse that the House must follow.

Is it the aim of the impeachers to sully Trump’s reputation, to seek his ouster? Sure it is. When the House impeaches Trump, the Senate will put the president on trial. The Senate likely won’t boot him out, given the high bar set in in the Constitution to convict a president of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Then the president must campaign for re-election with the impeachment cloud dangling over his noggin. I hope he loses because of it. He doesn’t deserve to be president and shouldn’t have been elected — in my view — to the office in the first place.

Yes, I want the 2016 election results overturned by the election. It is not one bit different from what the GOP sought to do in 1998 when House members impeached President Clinton, who two years had won re-election with a smashing victory. And, let us not forget that President Nixon faced impeachment in 1974 by a heavily Democratic House just after being re-elected in 1972 in a historic landslide.

So what if this impeachment intends to “overturn the election”? It’s the potential natural consequence of what is about to transpire in the House of Representatives.

In the infamous words of acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney: Get over it!

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Why do they deny hearing what the witnesses have said?

The much-anticipated public hearing on the impeachment inquiry being conducted by the House Intelligence Committee produced a serious exercise in frustration and futility.

At least for me it did.

The Intel Committee took into the public domain what it had heard in private about whether Donald Trump sought a “favor” from Ukrainian government officials who could dig up some dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The term of art has become “quid pro quo,” the Latin phrase that translates to “something for something,” or “this for that.”

It is the basis for the pending impeachment of the president of the United States.

White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged in the press briefing room that there was a quid pro quo, and then he told us to “get over it.”

Then came the testimony before the House panel from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who said that “yes,” the president sought a quid pro quo. He heard him seek it in real time and told the committee what he heard from the president. He said everyone was “in the loop” regarding the quid pro quo.

The memo of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president even mentions the “favor, though.”

Why, then, do Republicans on the House committee and others on Capitol Hill keep saying there was “no quid pro quo”? What are they not hearing? Did they cover their ears when Sondland testified to that knowledge at the House hearings? Did they not hear Mick Mulvaney’s assertion of a favor and his scolding us to “Get over it”?

I know these are rhetorical questions. They won’t produce any answers. They simply serve to symbolize the futility and frustration that this impeachment inquiry has produced … so far.

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No need to wait for more witnesses; proceed with impeachment

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee has done its job. It has produced evidence to persuade millions of Americans — including me — that Donald Trump deserves to be the third president to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

So, with that I believe it is time for the House Judiciary Committee to begin drafting articles of impeachment. Then then panel needs to air it out in public, take a vote and if most of panel members agree with the articles to submit them to the full House for a vote.

Donald Trump has sullied the presidency, has committed violations of his oath, has committed impeachable acts … in my view! I know, there are others who think differently, which gets me to why I believe the time has arrived to get this matter settled.

After all we heard, the Republican resistance to impeachment seemingly has stiffened. If the GOP members of the House aren’t persuaded now to impeach this criminally negligent president, then they won’t be persuaded by anyone else who could come forward.

Almost anyone who has paid attention to this matter understands that it likely will be a partisan vote to impeach Trump in the House; there might be one or two Democrats who’ll vote “no.”

There might be a House vote completed by Christmas. Then it goes to the Senate, where the GOP resistance to doing the right thing is just as fierce as it is in the House.

Trump isn’t likely to be convicted in the Senate trial. Let’s put these individuals, all 535 of them in both legislative chambers, on the record. Do they endorse impeachment or do they oppose it? Put another way, do they stand for the Constitution or do they stand for the man who occupies the office of president, who in my mind has violated his oath to defend and protect it?

We must not have this Senate trial collide with the presidential election campaign. Several members of the Senate are running for president. They need to devote their energy to their effort to win their party’s nomination. Sure, they have a duty to administer justice in an impeachment trial. Let them do that duty and then release them to the campaign trail.

When should all this be completed? Hey, let’s try for, say, Easter.

We need not drag this process out any longer.

Let’s get on with it. Then let’s have that presidential — and congressional — election.

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Legal victory = political draw

One of the more fascinating talking points to emerge from the public hearings into the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump’s presidency focuses on the legal vs. political aspects of the proceeding.

The argument goes something like this: If this were strictly a legal matter, House Democrats would have enough compelling evidence to convict Trump of the high crimes and misdemeanors that have been alleged against him. But it isn’t a legal proceeding. It’s a political battle and on that score, Trump is likely to survive impeachment and a trial that would occur in the U.S. Senate.

House and Senate Republicans seem to be aligned along a single thought: Yeah, the president did something wrong, but it’s not impeachable, let alone enough of a reason to convict him and toss him out of office.

Their Democratic colleagues, obviously, see it differently. They believe they have sufficient evidence in hand to impeach and convict Trump on crimes relating to his solicitation of political help from a foreign government and his efforts to cover it up and obstruct the pursuit of justice.

But … this isn’t a criminal matter. It’s a political one. Which is where Trump holds the winning hand.

He has bullied Senate and House Republicans into standing with him. To oppose Trump in this political fight would incur his wrath, which has proven to be quite formidable. They fear the president’s revenge and the support he continues to enjoy among that base of American voters in key states and congressional districts.

Were this a legal fight that operated under the rules of legal justice, in my view this wouldn’t even be a close call. Trump would be drummed out of office, sent packing to Mar-a-Lago … where he no doubt would launch a full frontal Twitter assault on a system that robbed him of the glory he believes he deserves.

Sadly, it is not. It’s a political fight that figures to last beyond the impeachment and trial and into the 2020 presidential election.

That is where this fight is likely to be decided.

Oh, I do hope Americans can snap out of their Trump-induced stupor to rid this nation of this poisonous politician.

national news

Trying to grasp logic of POTUS’s resistance to inquiry

So help me, I am trying like the dickens to grasp the logic behind Donald Trump’s strategy in resisting the impeachment inquiry launched by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The president says he has done not a thing wrong; his phone call with the Ukrainian president was “perfect”; he calls the inquiry a sham, a hoax and a the worst witch hunt in U.S. history.

OK, then why in the world does he obstruct Congress’s efforts to question his key aides, former Cabinet officials, former legal counsel?

The president has employed the same strategy that he used in resisting Robert Mueller III’s probe into alleged Russian “collusion” involving the attack on our electoral system during the 2016 election. He said there was “no collusion, no obstruction,” yet he fought Mueller every step of the way.

Mueller determined that that was no provable conspiracy to collude with the Russians, but left the door open on the obstruction of justice matter.

So, here we are. The House Democratic caucus believes there’s reason to launch an inquiry into whether Trump sought foreign government help to promote his re-election. The House is inquiring into whether impeach Trump. The president says the House is on a fixing expedition. He says there’s nothing to expose.

Why, then, does he keep obstructing Congress? I must be missing something. Help me!

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Why did he vote against this resolution?

I am going to do something I don’t normally do.

I intend to write my congressman a letter. I want to ask him: Why did you vote against a resolution that seeks to do the very thing you and your colleagues demanded?

My congressman is a freshman Republican from Plano, Texas. He is an earnest young man. A Marine Corps veteran who served in Afghanistan. Van Taylor is not a loudmouth. He is a quiet House member. I know him a little bit and hope to get to know him better.

The House approved a resolution that lays down the groundwork for the impeachment inquiry that seeks to learn all the facts about the allegations surounding Donald Trump. Did he break the law by soliciting a foreign government for a personal political favor? I think he did. Congress needs to establish it before filing articles of impeachment, which I believe it will do eventually.

House Republicans accused Democrats of conducting a star chamber inquiry. The resolution aims to take away that complaint.

But every GOP House member who voted this week on the measure voted “no.” How come?

The inquiry will be made public. Trump’s legal team will get to cross-examine witnesses. It could become a terrific made-for-TV spectacle, which is right up Trump’s alley.

I don’t know if Rep. Taylor will answer my letter. I hope he does. His staff might see this blog post, for all I know.

I intend fully to keep  you apprised of what he says.

Or if he remains silent.