James Comey

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2019/12/19/keep-those-articles-here-top-dem-demands-quid-pro-quo-before-sending-impeachment-senate/

‘Keep Those Articles Here’: Top Dem Demands Quid Pro Quo Before Sending Impeachment To Senate
DECEMBER 19, 2019 By Chrissy Clark
Democratic House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn told CNN, if it were up to him, he would withhold articles of impeachment from the Senate indefinitely. Clyburn said he would only send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for if Democrat’s were promised a “fair” trial.

By “fair trial,” Clyburn means allowing new witnesses and deliberation to take place in the Senate. But, deliberations and witness testimony is a job meant for the House of Representatives. Clearly, Rep. Adam Schiff and House Democrats bungled their hearings and concluded with extremely weak articles of impeachment they know will get zero bipartisan support. Now, they want more witnesses called because they didn’t do their job well their first time.


“Why the delay Congressman?” CNN anchor John Berman asked.

“Well the delay is made necessary because the Majority Leader of the Senate has made it very clear that he is not going to be impartial, he is not going to be fair. He will collude, if you please, with the White House, at least the White Houses’s attorneys, in order to decide how he will go forward,” Clyburn said.

“How long are you willing to wait?” Berman asked.

“As long as it takes. Even if [Mitch McConnell] doesn’t come around to committing to a fair trial, keep those articles here, so, keep them as long as it takes,” Clyburn said.

“Are you suggesting it’s possible you will never transmit the articles of impeachment [to the Senate]?” Berman asked.

“If it were me, yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Clyburn said.

Suddenly, the Democrats’s strategy to impeach Trump looks like obstructing the process of impeaching Trump. As Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway wrote, “Preventing people from wasting their time on something that they don’t want to waste their time on is not a victory.”

Later in the interview, Clyburn said that the Senate should give Trump a fair trial, then proceed to hang him.

“Let’s give him a fair trial, and hang him,” Clyburn said.

THIS IS SICK

Listen to what Majority Whip James Clyburn just said about Trump:

Not only has the House Majority Whip said he wants to withhold articles of impeachment until the outcome is pre-determined in the Democrats favor, he’s now using incendiary language to do so.

Clyburn didn’t say “convict,” or “remove,” he said “hang him.” This is Democrats vocalizing what Republicans already know — Democrats want a quid pro quo before they send the passed articles of impeachment to the Senate. Even if it means avoiding their Constitutional duties.

[soonernvolved]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7809853/House-Democrats-begin-agitating-Nancy-Pelosi-HOLD-articles-impeachment-leverage.html

Mitch McConnell threatens to CANCEL Donald Trump's Senate trial if 'scared' Nancy Pelosi does not hand over 'slapdash' articles of impeachment - as Speaker slams him as a 'ROGUE leader' and president gloats he will be cleared by 'default'
Nancy Pelosi forced the Trump impeachment across the finish line Wednesday
Now the process moves to a U.S. Senate trial but Pelosi said she's in no hurry
She blasted Senate leader Mitch McConnell for saying he's not an 'impartial' juror, and declared she won't hand him the baton without a pledge of 'fairness'
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing for witness subpoenas that Republicans don't want to agree to
Impeachment trial can't start until Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy choose 'managers' to carry the House's case to the Senate
McConnell slammed Pelosi in a floor speech and warned the Senate's more patient pace will have a 'calming' influence after 'slapdash' impeachment
President Donald Trump warned that '[t]he Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it's Senate's call!'

Mitch McConnell threatened on Thursday to cancel Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate if 'scared' Nancy Pelosi refuses to send him the formal articles of impeachment that Democrats passed Wednesday night.

The Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority leader went to war over next steps in the impeachment process, with Pelosi slamming McConnell as a 'rogue leader'⁠—and he blasted her indictment of the president as 'slapdash' and 'unfair.'

The dispute exploded into the open the morning after Democrats voted to impeach Trump, with the president bragging he could prevaIl by 'default.'

'If the Do Nothing Democrats decide, in their great wisdom, not to show up, they would lose by Default!,' Trump argued on Twitter of his upcoming Senate trial, which is now in doubt.

Pelosi has to transmit the articles of impeachment and appoint 'managers' to prosecute the president. She offered no timeline, saying she wanted to see the Senate's plan for a 'fair trial,' effectively holding the articles over McConnell's and Trump's heads.

McConnell, who previously said he wanted to hold a trial in January, responded: 'It's beyond me how the Speaker and Democratic Leader in the Senate think withholding the articles of impeachment and not sending them over gives them leverage.'

'Frankly, I'm not anxious to have the trial. If she thinks her case is so weak she doesn't want to send it over, throw me into that briar patch.'

Meanwhile, Trump's lawyers are exploring the legal question of whether or not Trump has even been impeached since Pelosi hasn't sent over the articles, Bloomberg News reported.

They argue, based on how the impeachment process is laid out in the Constitution, an impeachment isn’t formalized until the House reports the charges to the Senate.



'Lawyers close to Trump are exploring whether Pelosi’s decision to temporarily withhold articles of impeachment from the Senate could mean that the president hasn’t actually been impeached. The case is largely rhetorical, but could provide WH and Senate Republicans leverage,' Bloomberg reported.

Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson are both labeled as 'impeached' even though neither president was convicted in their respective Senate trials.

The legal and historic argument was a president is impeached when the House approves articles of impeachment. But the additional element of the transfer of the articles to the Senate adds a legal question that could require a court answer if the articles aren't transmitted soon.

Meanwhile, McConnell and the president both blasted Pelosi for refusing to move to the next step, with Trump unleashing a storm of tweets and retweets and venting: 'PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT.'

The president also charged Democrats with being 'ashamed' of the impeachment articles.

'They don't want to put them in because they're ashamed of them,' he said Thursday in the Oval Office.

McConnell also criticized Democrats on the Senate floor, accusing them of creating what he called an 'unfair, unfinished product'— charges that stemmed from 'partisan rage.'

Calling Pelosi's work 'constitutionally incoherent,' he said impeaching a president on the basis of political disagreements would 'invite an endless parade of impeachable trials' in the future, making House leaders 'free to toss up a jump-ball every time they feel angry.'

'She's failed the country,' McConnell said.

'It was like the speaker called up Chairman [Jerrold] Nadler and ordered up "One impeachment, rushed delivery, please".'

Pelosi herself held a press conference after McConnell spoke and offered no hint on when she would move.

'Just to get this off the table right away, we impeached the president immediately and everybody was on to the next thing,' she said.

'The next thing will be when we see the process that is set forth in the Senate. Then we'll know the number of managers that we may have to go forward and who we would choose.'

And she grew testy as reporters pressed her for more details on when the two articles of impeachment will end up on McConnell's desk.

'I'm not going to answer anymore questions on this. Clearly you understand when we see what their process is we will know who and how many we want to send over, not until then. I'm not going to go there anymore,' Pelosi said.

Our founders, when they wrote the constitution, they suspected that there could be a rogue president. I don't think they suspected that we could have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time.
Nancy Pelosi
But she did react angrily to McConnell's speech, saying: 'I saw some - I didn't see it - but heard some of what Mitch McMconnell said today and it reminded me that our founders, when they wrote the constitution, they suspected that there could be a rogue president.

' I don't think they suspected that we could have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time.'

In the Senate, McConnell declared that 'their slapdash process has concluded in the first purely partisan presidential impeachment since the wake of the Civil War.'

Citing previous House votes that fell short of authorizing impeachment inquiries, he said Democrats had 'tried to impeach President Trump for being impolite to the press, for being mean to professional athletes, for changing President Obama's policy on transgender people in the military.'

'All of these things were high crimes and misdemeanors according to the Democrats,' he said.

McConnell cited Democrats' earlier pledges to impeach Trump as proof that Wednesday's vote 'was not some neutral judgment that Democrats came to with great reluctance. It was the predetermined end of a partisan crusade that began before President Trump was even nominated, let alone sworn in.'

House Democrats have begun pressing Pelosi to force the Senate to tailor the upcoming constitutional trial to their wishes—by refusing to send the articles of impeachment to McConnell until he agrees to their terms.

Frankly, I'm not anxious to have the trial. If she thinks her case is so weak she doesn't want to send it over, throw me into that briar patch
Mitch McConnell
McConnell called her bluff, saying she's afraid to hand him the baton because she knows the articles are weak.

'Pelosi suggested that House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate,' he will say, mocking her suggestion in a post-vote press conference that she'll hold the two articles over his head until he agrees to a 'fair' trial.

In response Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader accused McConnell of offering no defense of Trump's actions.

He renewed his call for witnesses at the trial saying: 'Is the president's case so weak that none of the President's men can defend him under oath?'

And echoing McConnell's criticism of 'the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history,' Schumer said the Republicans were 'plotting the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment trial.

A defiant Trump partially quoted the Senate's rules for impeaching President Andrew Johnson in 1868, saying in a tweet that '[t]he Senate shall set the time and place of the trial.'

'The Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it's Senate's call!' he warned, saying they would 'lose by default' if they decided to ignore whatever schedule McConnell sets.

'PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!' Trump tweeted in a standalone message.

Schumer this week demanded McConnell agree to swear in a list of trial witnesses that include senior Trump administration officials and Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, people who House Democrats decided not to subpoena during their impeachment inquiry.

McConnell said Schumer has been 'searching for ways the Senate could step out of our proper role and try to fix House Democrats' failures for them.'

George Washington is said to have told Thomas Jefferson that the U.S. Senate was designed to be a calming counterpoint to the more raucous House of Representatives, in the way a teacup's saucer 'cools' a hot beverage.

McConnell, famous for embracing a plodding style when key legislation is on his desk, leaned on the oft-quoted 'cooling saucer of democracy'—saying that the U.S. Constitution's framers 'built the Senate to provide stability' and '[t]o keep partisan passions from boiling over. Moments like this are why the United States Senate exists.'

Pelosi told reporters after adjourning the House of Representatives on Wednesday night that she's in no hurry to send the two articles of impeachment to McConnell for a trial. Her caucus passed them without any Republican votes, accusing Trump of abusing his power and showing open contempt for Democrats' investigation by blocking witnesses and document demands.

The Articles of Impeachment were approved Wednesday night with no Republican votes; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard voted 'present' instead of 'yes,' and two other Democrats bucked Pelosi to openly side with the GOP +10
The Articles of Impeachment were approved Wednesday night with no Republican votes; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard voted 'present' instead of 'yes,' and two other Democrats bucked Pelosi to openly side with the GOP

The Republican-led Senate owns the next chapter of the saga, a trial where Chief Justice John Roberts will preside. An unlikely two-thirds supermajority is required to convict the president and remove him from office.

McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, expects his Republican majority to exonerate Trump. But that can't happen until impeachment 'managers,' duos chosen by both parties, present the Senate with the twin impeachment articles.

Pelosi said Wednesday night that she won't be ready to let go of the process until McConnell demonstrates the trial will be 'fair'—and she's nowhere near convinced yet.

The Washington Post quoted Oregon Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer overnight saying he has talked to three dozen Democratic lawmakers who favor 'rounding out the record and spending the time to do this right.'

'At a minimum, there ought to be an agreement about access to witnesses, rules of the game, timing,' Blumenauer said of the upcoming Senate trial.

And an unnamed Democrat told the newspaper that Democrats are discussing 'serious concern about whether there will be a fair trial on the Senate side.'

Impeachment managers are appointed via House resolutions; Thursday is the last day the House will be in session until January 7.

'We have legislation approved by the Rules Committee that will enable us to decide how we send over the articles of impeachment,' Pelosi said. 'We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side.'

'So far we haven't seen anything that looks fair to us,' she warned. 'So hopefully it will be fairer. And when see what that is, we'll send our managers.'

'Let me tell you what I don't consider a fair trial,' Pelosi said as she read from a piece of paper an aide handed her.

'This is what I don't consider a fair trial, that Leader McConnell has stated that he's not an impartial juror, that he's going to take his 'cues' from the White House, and he is working in total coordination with the White House counsel's office.'

In Michigan, a sweat-glowing Trump said during a raucous campaign rally that he expects no drama.

'The Republican Party has never been so affronted, but they've never been so united as they are right now, ever. Never,' the president said.

'And I know the senators and they're great guys. And women too. We have some great women, we have great guys, they're great people. They love this counry. They're going to do the right thing.'

'Americans will show up by the tens of millions next year to vote Pelosi the hell out of office,' Trump boasted, calling for the restoration of a Republican House majority.

In theory Pelosi could sit on the paperwork indefinitely, leaving Trump in constitutional purgatory while blaming Senate Republicans for dooming the process with partisanship.

In the meantime, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is pressing McConnell for permission to call a list of witnesses who Democrats want to hear from.

House Democrats denied Republicans the ability to call witnesses of their choice in Intelligence and Judiciary Committee hearings during the impeachment process.

Pelosi's gambit could be resolved once Schumer has exhausted his leverage.

'We have done what we set out to do,' she said, adding that 'right now, the president is impeached.'

'We'll see what happens over there.'

[soonernvolved]

issuesinsights.com/2019/12/19/the-dems-real-impeachment-goal-sabotage-trumps-2nd-term/

Dems’ Real Impeachment Goal: Sabotage Trump’s Second Term

Why would House Democrats put forward articles of impeachment that are laughably weak and have no chance of removing President Donald Trump from office? Most of the speculation has been that the impeachment will nevertheless hurt Trump’s reelection chances. There’s another possibility that’s even more insidious.

Democratic Party leaders can’t possibly be unaware of the fact that their impeachment case has no merit. Despite the endless talk of bribery, extortion, campaign finance violations and other supposed crimes Trump has committed, not one of the articles of impeachment accuses Trump of breaking any of those laws, or any federal law for that matter.



Instead, they accuse Trump of an “abuse of power” and of “obstruction of Congress.” As Sen. Ted Cruz explained this week at a Heritage Foundation event, as weak as the first article is, “the second article is orders of magnitude weaker.”

“They’ve simply said that the mere fact that you assert a privilege is itself impeachable, without their bothering to issue a subpoena or litigating anything.

“If that is impeachable conduct,” Cruz went on, “all 45 presidents we have had in the United States have committed impeachable offenses.”

Mind you, this is in sharp contrast to the articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, which charged him with committing two felonies – perjury before a federal grand jury and obstruction of justice.



Note, too, that the Republican-controlled House rejected an article of impeachment accusing Clinton of “abuse of power.” Also, note that the two articles that did pass the House attracted five Democratic votes, which means that Clinton’s impeachment had infinitely more bipartisan support than the current circus.

Even so, the Republican-controlled Senate deemed the charges – for which there was plenty of direct evidence – as not worthy of removal from office.

To the extent that anything is certain in life, it is that Trump will not be removed from office based on the incredibly flimsy articles of impeachment the House approved Wednesday.

Democrats also can’t be unaware that impeaching Trump on these grounds won’t do anything to help their chances in 2020. If anything, it might make it harder for them to win the election, since it bolsters Trump’s case that the Deep State will do anything to kick him out of office, despite his successes.




The latest Gallup poll finds that Trump’s approval rating has climbed 6 points since the House opened the impeachment inquiry.

And as we noted in this space recently, support for removing Trump from office has collapsed.

At the end of October, almost half the public said it wanted Trump removed, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls. Now that number is 47%. And for the first time since the media started regularly polling on this, more say Trump shouldn’t be removed from office – 48% – than say he should.

Worse for Democrats, once the impeachment trial is over, they will have nothing left to talk about. The economy is doing well. The middle class is thriving. Trump is signing trade deals. The border is more secure than it was, even without the wall. The courts are filling up with conservative judges. Trump will be able to honestly say that he’s delivered on more campaign promises in his first term than many, if not most, of his predecessors.

So why bother with impeachment?

The clue is in how Democrats are framing the debate today. They are no longer claiming bribery or quid pro quo, since they had no evidence to prove such charges. They are simply charging that Trump invited a foreign government to interfere in the U.S. election.

Which is exactly what Democrats were claiming before the 2016 election. In early September 2016, when we were still writing for the now-defunct Investor’s Business Daily editorial page, we noticed something Hillary Clinton had told reporters on her campaign plane.



The headline on that editorial was, “Hillary Clinton Pre-Blames Russians For A November Loss.” Here’s what we wrote:

When a reporter aboard Clinton’s campaign plane asked if Putin is using cyberwarfare to help elect Trump, Clinton said … “I often quote a great saying that I learned from living in Arkansas for many years: ‘If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by itself.'” She then added, in case anyone didn’t get her point, that “I think it’s quite intriguing that this activity has happened around the time Trump became the nominee.”

She said that Trump “has generally parroted what is a Putin/Kremlin line.”

Clinton’s VP, Tim Kaine, basically accused Trump of ordering the hack on the DNC. “He has openly encouraged Russia to engage in cyberhacking to try to find more emails or materials, and we know that this cyberattack on the DNC was likely done by Russia,” Kaine said on Sunday. “A president was impeached and had to resign over an attack on the DNC during a presidential election in 1972.”

The Democratic Party has joined in. Sen. Harry Reid last week asked the FBI to investigate whether Russia was trying to “falsify election results” and hand the election to Trump.

We all know what happened next. As soon as Trump won the election, Democrats accused him of colluding with Russia to steal it from Clinton, and then hounded the White House about it for more than two years.



Well, now they are accusing Trump of trying to enlist Ukraine to do the same in 2020.

You can bet that if Trump does win in 2020, Democrats – and the press – will use this argument, or some other claims of foreign interference, to contend that Trump stole his reelection, too. The long-term implications of such a move are terrible to consider. Democrats don’t seem to care.

[kcrufnek]

Dec 19, 2019 16:18:46 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Right on cue, Adam Schiff is now after VP Pence:

Adam Schiff went on with Rachel Maddow last night to push their Trump-Ukraine conspiracy — something that was completely debunked everywhere after three weeks of testimony except on CNN, MSNBC and the fake news media.

During their conversation Schiff announced he was going after Vice President Mike Pence next and may have “acquired evidence” that the Vice President is hiding information in the House Ukrainian investigation.

Adam Schiff: Well, we have acquired a piece of evidence, classified by Jennifer Williams, something she alluded to in her open testimony. Then going back and looking through her records she found other information that was pertinent to that phone call that we asked her about and made that submission. There is nothing that is classified in the document but the vice president’s office has said they are going to classify… It is not proper to classify something because it would be embarrassing or incriminating. And that submission does shed light on the vice president’s knowledge. We think the American people should see it.

Jennifer Williams testified before Congress in November and offered nothing. She worked for Vice President Mike Pence. So now Schiff has Democrats thinking Williams holds the key to Pence’s impeachment.

Then President Pelosi will RULE!
These people are crazy!

Ahhhh. A cover up to a crime that was never committed. Genius!!

[soonernvolved]

Dec 19, 2019 22:46:38 GMT -6 kcrufnek said:

Dec 19, 2019 16:18:46 GMT -6 soonernvolved said:

Right on cue, Adam Schiff is now after VP Pence:

Adam Schiff went on with Rachel Maddow last night to push their Trump-Ukraine conspiracy — something that was completely debunked everywhere after three weeks of testimony except on CNN, MSNBC and the fake news media.

During their conversation Schiff announced he was going after Vice President Mike Pence next and may have “acquired evidence” that the Vice President is hiding information in the House Ukrainian investigation.

Adam Schiff: Well, we have acquired a piece of evidence, classified by Jennifer Williams, something she alluded to in her open testimony. Then going back and looking through her records she found other information that was pertinent to that phone call that we asked her about and made that submission. There is nothing that is classified in the document but the vice president’s office has said they are going to classify… It is not proper to classify something because it would be embarrassing or incriminating. And that submission does shed light on the vice president’s knowledge. We think the American people should see it.

Jennifer Williams testified before Congress in November and offered nothing. She worked for Vice President Mike Pence. So now Schiff has Democrats thinking Williams holds the key to Pence’s impeachment.

Then President Pelosi will RULE!
These people are crazy!

Ahhhh. A cover up to a crime that was never committed. Genius!!

Anything to get to President Pelosi.

[soonernvolved]

The New York Times reported tonight that federal prosecutor John Durham is investigating former CIA Director John Brennan’s role in the 2016 election. Durham has called for Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents.

www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/us/politics/durham-john-brennan-cia.html

The federal prosecutor scrutinizing the Russia investigation has begun examining the role of the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan in how the intelligence community assessed Russia’s 2016 election interference, according to three people briefed on the inquiry.

John H. Durham, the United States attorney leading the investigation, has requested Mr. Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on his inquiry. He wants to learn what Mr. Brennan told other officials, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.’s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates.

Mr. Durham’s pursuit of Mr. Brennan’s records is certain to add to accusations that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. The president has long attacked Mr. Brennan as part of his narrative about a so-called deep state cabal of Obama administration officials who tried to sabotage his campaign, and Mr. Trump has held out Mr. Durham’s investigation as a potential avenue for proving those claims.

Mr. Durham is also examining whether Mr. Brennan privately contradicted his public comments, including May 2017 testimony to Congress, about both the dossier and about any debate among the intelligence agencies over their conclusions on Russia’s interference, the people said.

[soonernvolved]

Kind of kills the narrative:

www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-top-impeachment-witness-democrats-have-not-impeached-trump

Democrats’ Top Impeachment Witness: Democrats Have Not Impeached Trump

Noah Feldman, one of the Democrats’ top impeachment witnesses against President Donald Trump, said in an op-ed on Thursday that Democrats have not yet impeached the president despite their vote last night.

Feldman’s op-ed at Bloomberg News comes as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering withholding sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate because she is worried that the political trial would be biased in favor of the president.

“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” Pelosi told reporters last night. “That would’ve been our intention, but we’ll see what happens over there.”


Feldman noted that “according to the Constitution, impeachment is a process, not a vote,” and that while a modest delay would not pose a problem, an lengthy delay would be a “serious problem.”

“Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial,” Feldman wrote. “Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.”

Feldman continued, “If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.”

Feldman noted that if Democrats do not send the articles of impeachment to the Senate that it would not only deviate from constitutional protocol but it would also “deny the president the chance to defend himself in the Senate that the Constitution provides.”


Federalist co-founder Ben Domenech picked up on this last night, tweeting: “What Pelosi wants to avoid is the outcome of any trial in the Senate: a bipartisan vote to acquit.”

Fox News reporter Chad Pergram added, “Some polling reveals that impeachment is really hurting Democrats. Perhaps this was Pelosi’s gambit all along. Impeach the President. Take a stand for the Constitution. But apply an emergency hand brake on impeachment by not sending the articles to the Senate.”

Democrats’ vote on impeachment last night was the first time in U.S. history that impeachment was a purely partisan event as only Democrats and one independent member of Congress voted for it while all Republicans voted against it and were joined by multiple Democrats.

Trump hammered Democrats on Twitter late on Thursday, writing, “Pelosi feels her phony impeachment HOAX is so pathetic she is afraid to present it to the Senate, which can set a date and put this whole SCAM into default if they refuse to show up! The Do Nothings are so bad for our Country!”

Pelosi feels her phony impeachment HOAX is so pathetic she is afraid to present it to the Senate, which can set a date and put this whole SCAM into default if they refuse to show up! The Do Nothings are so bad for our Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) December 19, 2019

Trump later added, “So after the Democrats gave me no Due Process in the House, no lawyers, no witnesses, no nothing, they now want to tell the Senate how to run their trial. Actually, they have zero proof of anything, they will never even show up. They want out. I want an immediate trial!”

So after the Democrats gave me no Due Process in the House, no lawyers, no witnesses, no nothing, they now want to tell the Senate how to run their trial. Actually, they have zero proof of anything, they will never even show up. They want out. I want an immediate trial!

— Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump)

[soonernvolved]

Interesting how more & more liberal Democrats are calling Pelosi out for what she is doing & how it's wrong:

www.dailywire.com/news/dershowitz-pelosi-delaying-a-senate-trial-is-unconstitutional

Calling out the Democratic Party for its far-left extremism, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz denounced House Speaker Pelosi’s plan to withhold sending the impeachment vote to the Senate for a trial as “unconstitutional.”

As noted by Fox News, the Harvard Law professor’s recent op-ed for Newsmax came in response to his colleague Laurence Tribe, who backed Pelosi in not allowing a Senate trial on impeachment.

“[Tribe] would withhold the trial until the Senate agreed to change its rules, or presumably until a new election put many more Democrats in the Senate. Under his proposal, there might never be a Senate trial, but the impeachment would stand as a final and permanent condemnation of President Trump,” Dershowitz wrote.


“It is difficult to imagine anything more unconstitutional, more violative of the intention of the Framers, more of a denial of basic due process and civil liberties, more unfair to the president and more likely to increase the current divisiveness among the American people,” he further argued. “Put bluntly, it is hard to imagine a worse idea put forward by good people”

Pelosi has not expressly stated if she would accept the Senate trial, though she did issue a statement demanding that Senate Republicans stop coordinating with the White House.

“Let me tell you what I don’t consider a fair trial,” Pelosi told reporters on Wednesday. “This is what I don’t consider a fair trial — that Leader McConnell has stated that he’s not an impartial juror, that he’s going to take his cues, in quotes, from the White House, and he is working in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office.”

Tribe echoed Pelosi’s call on Thursday when he said that the Senate’s demand for the House to pass along articles of impeachment violates the constitution.


“Senate rules requiring the House to ‘immediately’ present its articles of impeachment to the Senate clearly violate the constitutional clause in Article I giving each house the sole power to make its own rules,” Tribe tweeted on Wednesday. “It’s up to the House when and how to prosecute its case in the Senate.”

In response to this, Dershowitz said that Pelosi and the Democrats would be violating the president’s constitutional right to a fair trial.

“An impeached president has a right to be tried and acquitted by the Senate,” he wrote. “Denying him and the American people that fundamental right might serve the temporary interests of the Democratic party, and academics who support it, but would do violence to the rule of Constitutional law that is supposed to serve all Americans, regardless of party or ideology.”

Throughout the entire Mueller investigation, as Democrats were calling for the president’s impeachment over alleged Russian collusion, Dershowitz stood firm in his conviction that every American deserves civil liberties, including and especially Americans with whom he disagrees. Just by merely sticking up for President Trump’s rights as an American, Dershowitz claimed he faced intense scrutiny and ostracization from his liberal friends.


“I am a liberal Democrat in politics … but that is not good enough for some of my old friends on Martha’s Vineyard. For them, it is enough that what I have said about the Constitution might help Trump. So they are shunning me and trying to ban me from their social life on Martha’s Vineyard,” he wrote in an op-ed last year.

[soonernvolved]

www.zerohedge.com/political/house-senate-impeachment-impasse-would-mean-trump-wasnt-impeached-all-harvard-law-prof

House-Senate Impeachment Impasse Would Mean Trump Wasn't Impeached At All: Harvard Law Prof

While Nancy Pelosi threatens to withhold articles of impeachment passed Wednesday night by the House, Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman says that President Trump isn't technically impeached until the House actually transmits the articles to the Senate.



Feldman, who testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment proceedings earlier this month, argues in a Bloomberg Op-Ed that the framers' definition of impeachment "assumed that impeachment was a process, not just a House vote," and that "Strictly speaking, "impeachment" occurred – and occurs -- when the articles of impeachment are presented to the Senate for trial. And at that point, the Senate is obliged by the Constitution to hold a trial."

If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.

That’s because “impeachment” under the Constitution means the House sending its approved articles of to the Senate, with House managers standing up in the Senate and saying the president is impeached.

As for the headlines we saw after the House vote saying, “TRUMP IMPEACHED,” those are a media shorthand, not a technically correct legal statement. So far, the House has voted to impeach (future tense) Trump. He isn’t impeached (past tense) until the articles go to the Senate and the House members deliver the message. -Noah Feldman


Pelosi, meanwhile, won't transmit the articles until the Senate holds what she considers a "fair" trial.

Roughly modeled after England's impeachment procedures, the framers in Article I of the constitution gave the House "the sole power of impeachment," while giving the Senate "the sole power to try all impeachments."

Article II outlines says the president "shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

There's more:

But we can say with some confidence that only the Senate is empowered to judge the fairness of its own trial – that’s what the “sole power to try all impeachments” means.

If the House votes to “impeach” but doesn’t send the articles to the Senate or send impeachment managers there to carry its message, it hasn’t directly violated the text of the Constitution. But the House would be acting against the implicit logic of the Constitution’s description of impeachment.

A president who has been genuinely impeached must constitutionally have the opportunity to defend himself before the Senate. That’s built into the constitutional logic of impeachment, which demands a trial before removal.

To be sure, if the House just never sends its articles of impeachment to the Senate, there can be no trial there. That’s what the “sole power to impeach” means.

In closing, Feldman says "if the House never sends the articles, then Trump could say with strong justification that he was never actually impeached," adding "And that’s probably not the message Congressional Democrats are hoping to send."

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2019/12/20/ig-report-hints-james-comey-was-in-on-fbis-fisa-misconduct/

IG Report Hints James Comey Was In On FBI’s FISA Misconduct
The IG report concluded that several of Comey’s statements were inconsistent with statements from other federal officials, as well as evidence gathered as part of the FISA investigation.
Margot ClevelandBy Margot Cleveland
DECEMBER 20, 2019

When the Department of Justice inspector general released his report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse, coverage focused on the top-line findings contained in the executive summary. Then the news cycle whizzed by, leaving many details discussed throughout the 480-page tome unexplored.

One significant gap in media coverage concerns the potential complicity of former FBI Director James Comey in the FISA abuse—a possibility the IG report hints at in several spots. The first suggestion that something was amiss with Comey’s conduct came early in Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, when the IG’s office spoke of the methodology underlying the FISA investigation.


“Certain former FBI employees who agreed to interviews, including Comey and Baker, chose not to request that their security clearances be reinstated for their OIG interviews,” read the IG report. “Therefore, we were unable to provide classified information or documents to them during their interviews to develop their testimony, or to assist their recollections of relevant events.”

Taken alone, this perfunctory comment might have meant little, but the IG report would stress this point several more times throughout its 400-plus-page analysis of FBI misconduct.

Consider the Bruce Ohr Contradictions
For instance, according to the IG report, Baker said “he obtained more information regarding Ohr’s interactions with Steele during a Crossfire Hurricane leadership meeting with Comey and McCabe in spring 2017.” Baker further stated that “he learned that Ohr was providing to the FBI information that Ohr had received from Steele,” and, in Baker’s view, “this [was] not good.”

But Comey told the IG “he had no knowledge of Ohr’s communications with members of the Crossfire Hurricane investigative team and only discovered Ohr’s association with Steele and the Crossfire Hurricane investigation when the media reported on it.” Comey’s claims, though, conflicted with both Baker’s statements, and “notes taken by Strzok during a November 23, 2016 Crossfire Hurricane update meeting” that Comey attended.


Those notes referenced “a discussion at the meeting concerning ‘strategy for engagement [with Handling Agent 1] and Ohr’ regarding Steele’s reporting.” Strzok also told the IG that “he believed he informed FBI leadership that Ohr approached the FBI concerning his relationship with Steele and that Ohr relayed Steele’s information regarding Russia to the team.”

However, as the IG report explained, “because Strzok’s notes of the meeting were classified at the time we interviewed Comey, and Comey chose not to have his security clearances reinstated for his OIG interview, we were unable to show him the notes and ask about the reference in them to Steele and Ohr.”

The Same Happened with Loretta Lynch
The IG report also stressed Comey’s lack of a security clearance in discussing inconsistencies between his and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s statements to the IG. The report noted that “Lynch told the OIG that after one of her weekly security meetings at FBI Headquarters in the spring of 2016, Comey and McCabe pulled her aside and provided information about Carter Page, which Lynch believed they learned from another member of the Intelligence Community.”

Lynch further stated that Comey and McCabe informed her that “Russian intelligence reportedly planned to use Page for information and to develop other contacts in the United States, and that they were interested in his affiliation with the campaign.” According to the IG report, Lynch’s “understanding was that this information from Comey and McCabe was ‘preliminary’ in that they did not state that any decisions or actions needed to be taken that day.”


Lynch added that “they discussed the possibility of providing a defensive briefing to the Trump campaign, but she believed it was ‘preliminary’ and ‘something that might happen down the road,’” but that “she did not recall receiving any further updates on this issue following this conversation.”

The IG report noted that “Lynch’s recollection of what Comey and McCabe told her is consistent with information referenced in connection with the 2015 [Southern District of New York] indictment and subsequent conviction of a Russian intelligence officer referenced earlier in this chapter.” However, “Comey told the OIG that he did not recall having such a conversation with Lynch, and that he did not think it was possible for such a conversation to have occurred in the spring of 2016 because the FBI did not receive the [Friendly Foreign Government] information concerning Papadopoulos until late July.”

Further Inconsistencies in Comey’s Page Statements
Comey also told the IG that “he did not recall himself having any knowledge of Carter Page’s existence until the middle of 2016.” But, as the IG report stressed, Comey’s statements are called into question by “internal email communications” that reflect that in April 2016, the New York Field Office “prepared summaries of the information that ultimately led NYFO to open a counterintelligence investigation on Carter Page on April 6, 2016.” Those were provided to officials at headquarters “for a ‘Director’s note; and a separate ‘Director’s Brief’ to be held on April 27, 2016.”

Notwithstanding these inconsistencies, the IG report stressed, that the IG “was unable to question Comey further using classified details Lynch described to us because, as noted in Chapter One, Comey choose not to have his security clearances reinstated for our interview.”


The IG report then stresses twice more Comey’s lack of a security clearance as a reason investigators were unable to assess Comey’s level of knowledge of the facts misstated in the FISA applications. In discussing “the extent of FBI leadership’s knowledge as to each fact stated incorrectly or omitted from the FISA applications”—seven significant inaccuracies and omissions in total—the IG stressed that multiple factors made it difficult to assess the knowledge of the FBI hierarchy.

“These factors included, among other things,” the IG report noted, “limited recollections, the inability to question Comey or refresh his recollection with relevant, classified documentation because of his lack of a security clearance, and the absence of meeting minutes that would show the specific details shared with Comey and McCabe during briefings they received, beyond the more general investigative updates that we know they were provided.”

Comey Simply Can’t Recall So Many Things
However, while noting the IG’s inability to determine the “extent of FBI leadership’s knowledge,” the report highlighted reasons to believe such knowledge existed: “As the FBI’s senior leaders, Comey and McCabe would have had greater access to case information than Department leadership and also more interaction with senior [Counterintelligence Division] officials and the investigation team. Further, as described in Chapter Three, [Counterintelligence Division] officials orally briefed the Crossfire Hurricane cases to FBI senior leadership throughout the investigation. McCabe received more briefings than Comey, but both received oral briefings of the team’s investigative activities.”

The IG then reiterated this point later, stating that although they “found no evidence that Comey had been made aware of these issues at the time he certified the application,” there were multiple factors making it “difficult for us to precisely determine the extent of FBI leadership’s knowledge as to each fact that was not shared with OI and not included, or inaccurately stated, in the FISA applications.”

“These factors,” the IG explained, “included, among other things, limited recollections, the inability to question Comey or refresh his recollection with relevant, classified documentation because of his lack of a security clearance, and the absence of meeting minutes that would show the specific details shared with Comey and McCabe during briefings they received, beyond the more general investigative updates that we know they were provided.”

As these excerpts illustrate, the IG report concluded that several of Comey’s statements were inconsistent with statements provided by other individuals connected with the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, as well as other evidence gathered as part of the FISA investigation. Investigators with the IG’s office were unable to resolve the conflicts or to fully assess Comey’s complicity in the filing of the fraudulent FISA applications because Comey claimed limited recall and then refused to have his security clearance reinstated. That prevented the IG team from sharing documents with Comey to either refresh his recollection or to question him about statements made in those classified documents.

Gosh Darnit, I Just Can’t Remember
In short, then, Comey avoided the difficult questions and the possibility of having no satisfactory answers, by hiding behind the lack of his security clearance. Yet, because of the breadth and depth of Horowitz’s investigation, the contradictions in Comey’s testimony and his of gaming the classification system exposed in the IG report has gone unnoticed.

So much so, in fact, that Comey felt comfortable taking a victory lap immediately after the IG report released. But after telling Chris Wallace the IG report was a “vindication,” when pushed, Comey admitted the FBI did not handle the FISA process in a “thoughtful and appropriate way.” Yet, Comey portrayed himself as a mere “bystander” to the misconduct, telling Wallace:

I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI and Justice had built over 20 years. I thought they were robust enough. It’s incredibly hard to get a FISA. I was overconfident in those. Because he’s right. There was real sloppiness, 17 things that either should’ve been in the applications or at least discussed and characterized differently. . . I’m responsible for it. That’s why I’m telling you I was wrong. I was overconfident as director in our procedures and it’s important that a leader be accountable and transparent.

However, when asked what he knew about the FISA applications and the misrepresentations and omissions highlighted by Horowitz, Comey deflected, responding, “First, again, the report will speak for itself,” before claiming “I didn’t know the particulars of the investigation. As a director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people, you can’t run an investigation that’s seven layers below you.”

Barr Calls Comey Out on National Television
While Wallace did not call Comey out on his claim that the investigation was “seven layers below” him, Attorney General William Barr did a few days later when he joined Martha MacCallum for an exclusive interview. The Fox News reporter noted that Comey had claimed he “was seven steps removed from what was going on, the director doesn’t get involved in these kinds of things, the actual investigation.” “Do you believe that?” MacCallum queried.

“No,” Barr replied, “I think that one of the problems with what happened was it was run and bird-dogged by a very small group of very high-level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true.”

Barr also took issue with Comey’s premise that criticism of the FBI is an attack.

“One of the things that I object to is the tack being taken by Comey, which is to suggest that people who are criticizing or trying to get to the bottom of the misconduct are somehow attacking the FBI. I think that is nonsense,” Barr said. “We’re criticizing and concerned about misconduct by a few actors at the top of the FBI, and they should be criticized if they engaged in serious misconduct.”

Barr’s correct, of course. But the unanswered question is whether Comey was one of those “few actors at the top” who “engaged in serious misconduct.” The IG report didn’t answer that question, but dropped enough hints to suggest that it’s a real possibility.

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2019/12/19/6-reasons-pelosis-senate-obstruction-gambit-on-impeachment-articles-is-a-disaster/

6 Reasons Pelosi’s Senate Obstruction Gambit On Impeachment Articles Is A Disaster
If Nancy Pelosi truly thought Democrats had made the case that Donald Trump was an "urgent threat" to America, she wouldn't be refusing to send the articles of impeachment against him to the Senate for a full trial.
Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway
By Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway
DECEMBER 19, 2019
Immediately after impeaching President Donald Trump for allegedly obstructing the House and abusing his power as president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi obstructed the Senate’s constitutional obligation to hold an impeachment trial and abused her power by trying to steal power that belongs solely to the Senate under the Constitution. Pelosi told reporters on Thursday that she is in no rush to formally transmit to the Senate the articles of impeachment her party in the House had just approved. Here are six reasons Pelosi’s impeachment obstruction stunt undermines the entire basis of the Democrats’ effort to eject Trump from office.

1) After impeaching Trump for supposed obstruction of House, Pelosi moves to obstruct the Senate
Pelosi said she’ll wait to send over the articles until she finds out how the Senate will conduct the trial, which looks a lot like obstructing the Senate, given that the Constitution clearly states that the Senate has “the sole power to try all mpeachments.” The Constitutional process for impeachment is that the House impeaches and the Senate holds a trial to test the quality of the accusations and the guilt or innocence of the accused. Pelosi apparently wants to control the Senate process from her perch in the House, a power grab that looks a lot like an abuse of power.


What’s crazy about this is that one of the articles of impeachment against the President is that he must be removed from office for the “obstruction of Congress” by asserting his privilege and protecting executive branch communications. If Trump, asserting constitutional privilege as the head of the executive branch, has to be quickly removed from office because he’s not providing a single chamber of Congress what it wants, Pelosi is obstructing the Senate by asserting a privilege to not formally transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial, and abusing her power by demanding authority that under the Constitution belongs to the Senate, not the Speaker of the House.

2) After denying Trump any due process, Pelosi is now denying him a speedy trial
One of the big complaints about the House investigation was that the process followed by Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., denied the president any due process rights. It’s also why the investigation failed to get a single Republican to join with Democrats in their impeachment stunt.

After ignoring the principles of due process guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment, Pelosi’s gambit now is to deny Trump the principle of a speedy trial enshrined in the Sixth Amendment.

The common refrain is that Trump should not be above the law. That’s absolutely true. Nobody should be above the law. It’s also true that nobody is below the law. Over the last three years, however, the so-called Resistance has placed Trump below the law, the target of illegitimate and spurious investigations and impeachments with pre-ordained conclusions. That may be how politics is achieved, but it’s not how justice is achieved.


Police states levy charges, destroy the reputations of their target, deny the accused the ability to do their jobs and, importantly, the chance to ever get out from under the charges.

The "prosecutors office" says: "He's a dangerous criminal! We promise! He must be taken off the streets!"

But, they don't want a trial? They just want accused people convicted because they said so?

The "prosecutors office" now fancies themselves: accuser, judge & jury. pic.twitter.com/N9rPpLdark

— In_communicado_ (@in_communicado_) December 19, 2019

Democrats knew that Trump would never be removed from office based on the flimsy charges they put against him. They did hope to tarnish his name and harm him in the 2020 election — which is interesting, since their other charge against him is that he can’t conduct foreign policy or investigations that might in any way touch on a potential 2020 election opponent. If they want a cloud over him through the election, denying him the right to a speedy trial makes sure he can’t be acquitted as quickly as possible.

You might call this the Gitmo approach. By treating him as an enemy combatant instead of an American citizen with certain rights, the Democrats can continue to play politics with this indefinitely. Consider it the political version of indefinite detention. The only problem is that only the most hard-core Resistance find this approach fair or reasonable.

3) Pelosi has no leverage

Preventing people from wasting their time on something that they don’t want to waste their time on is not a victory. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would likely rather do anything other than waste his time on an impeachment process that House Democrats failed to manage well, and said as much on Thursday morning.

“Frankly, I’m not anxious to have the trial, if she [Pelosi] thinks her case is so weak she doesn’t want to send it over, throw me into that briar patch,” he told reporters.

Pelosi thinks that holding the articles of impeachment somehow gives her leverage to control how the Senate trial is conducted. But McConnell would probably rather chew gum and confirm judges and keep accomplishing his agenda rather than waste valuable time dealing with an impeachment that has zero chance of resulting in Trump’s removal from office. Pelosi’s threat simply has no weight. Plus, committees in the Senate can handle investigations and throw cold water on the Democrats’ impeachment narrative even without formally receiving the articles from the House.

4) Pelosi’s obstruction gambit shows her own lack of confidence in Schiff’s work product
McConnell’s plan, upon receipt of the articles, is to run the process the exact same way that Democrats ran the process during the Clinton impeachment. That plan was to receive the articles and hear the case for and against them before deciding on the next course of action. The next course of action could be to dismiss them, to vote them up or down, or to get more evidence to make a decision. Pelosi wants McConnell to agree to Democratic demands on the front end, before the House case is made.


If House Democrats had done their job properly and brought real articles of impeachment to a vote, they wouldn’t just have some Republican support, they could proudly deliver those articles of impeachment with a bow on the same day they voted on them.

They want more witnesses called because they know that they didn’t do their job even remotely well. It shows a cavalier approach to impeachment.

5) Refusing to transmit impeachment articles undercuts Democrats’ claim that Trump is an “urgent threat” to America
Democrats’ defense of their shoddy impeachment effort was that they had to rush through things in order to get Trump removed before the 2020 election. They claimed Trump was such an “urgent threat” to American national security and the U.S. constitution that he had to be charged and removed from office post-haste. That was never a particularly strong argument, but Pelosi’s attempt to indefinitely delay any resolution of the impeachment effort she rammed through the House shows it was an argument that her own party didn’t even believe. Delaying the transmission of the articles to the Senate for even a moment, let alone weeks or months, destroys Democrats’ claim about the urgent need for impeachment.

6) Democrats continue to destroy norms and institutions while claiming Trump is the real norm destroyer
The last three years of the Resistance–whether in the media, from Democrats, in the bureaucracy, or among NeverTrump activists — has been the story of the destruction of Constitutional norms and institutions. These activists regularly set dynamite at the base of every institution and norm and clack it off — all while decrying Trump as the real saboteur. Whether it was the Mueller probe, the abuse of civil liberties of Trump affiliates, the spurious effort to remove him via manipulation of the Electoral College or the 25th amendment, or the disgusting assaults on Brett Kavanaugh and his family, the Resistance has decided any use of presidential power by a president they don’t like is wrong and maybe even criminal.

Hillary Clinton made much of Trump’s statement during a presidential debate that he’d wait to see the outcome of the election and how it was run before saying he’d agree to the results. This impeachment, though, is the culmination of a multi-year refusal of Democrats to accept the results of the 2016 election. For all the accusations that Trump is destroying vital American norms and institution, it is the continued refusal of Democrats, media, and NeverTrump activists to accept the results of an election they lost that represents the gravest threat to our system of government.

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2019/12/19/why-impeachment-is-a-massive-blunder-for-nancy-pelosi/

Why Impeachment Is A Massive Blunder For Nancy Pelosi
Despite Wednesday's long-expected vote and the media cheer group accompanying it, impeachment is going terribly for the Democrats.
DECEMBER 19, 2019 By Christopher Bedford
Washington, D.C. — It’s been an ugly fall in Washington. Wet, dreary and deeply stupid. In the season we’re supposed to be shopping for the perfect gift for our loved ones, instead most of us are busily shopping for a reason to give America what they say she wants more than her two front teeth: impeachment.

But despite Wednesday’s long-expected vote and the media cheer group accompanying it, this is going terribly for the Democrats.


There’s a willful suspension of belief at work in the capital city. Self-proclaimed defenders of the Constitution make excuses for sloppy spying on a major candidate for president. Men who compare themselves to those at Valley Forge shift seamlessly from allegations of urine-soaked escapades to collusion with the Kremlin, from the Kremlin to Ukraine, and finally from quid-quo-pro to bribery to obstruction, with stopovers on NFL anthem protests and insults to “The Squad.” The speaker quotes the deceased Elijah Cummings in wondering, “When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked, in 2019,” did we impeach Donald Trump?

Media commentators in Washington and New York read D.C. bedtime stories about a majority of Americans backing their efforts– a statistic you would have to spend nearly all your time in New York or D.C. to remotely believe. When polls don’t fit that worldview, they’re discarded. “I don’t believe that poll for one second,” CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin balked when CNN political director David Chalian showed declining enthusiasm for a impeachment in a network poll. “David, that poll is wrong. Just because I said so.”

After the Robert Mueller Russia fiasco, it takes willful stupidity to think that a solid majority of Americans ever wanted to see this impeachment go through over a country some of them might recognize from a Risk game. But the delusions don’t end with the same polls that predicted President Hillary Clinton. From the nature of the impeachment to the lionization of its leader, media elites and their Democrat allies have misread this political situation more seriously than any since the eve of Trump’s election, when paragraphs of space were devoted to what catering reporters were eating as they awaited Her big win.

The New York Times served “an array of Greek food and Dallas BBQ” while giving Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning. Politico served chicken, shrimp and salads.

Three years later, Republicans across the board have rejected the impeachment proceedings as unjust, unfair, and undemocratic. Since Justin Amash, a libertarian who loves to disagree and gives the strong impression he annoyed classmates in his youth, became an independent five months ago, the ranks have closed. According to Wednesday’s conventional wisdom, though, this marks a new chapter in “three years of unshakable and at times irrational support for Trump.”

“Irrational.”

Democrats, the same article follows, are falling “almost uniformly” in line. Except for Democrat Reps. Jared Golden and Collin Peterson , who Wednesday voted against impeachment. And Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who voted present. And of course New Jersey’s Jeff Van Drew, who is telling colleagues he’s becoming a Republican in protest.

Understand that to the political press corps, a GOP that unanimously backed the president and opposed Pelosi is “at times irrational,” and three Democrats voting against their speaker and one defecting from the entire party is “almost uniformly” in line. This “conventional wisdom” is accepted by nearly the entire corporate media, and parroted to Americans forced to listen at airports and gyms across the country.

Amazingly, though, it is not nearly the greatest media distortion of even the day. For example, it is far surpassed by the worship, adoration and glorification of Madam Speaker, the Democrats’ leader in the fight.

“Her command of legislation, her control over her caucus, her ability to confront a historically hostile president and GOP-run Senate on equal terms are unparalleled,” Politico crows in a hard-hitting piece about the how the 79-year old congresswoman in office since Ronald Reagan was president “has roared back.”

“She’s the one person in Washington who can beat Trump at his own game,” Politico continues, “though she never wanted to play it.”

And the pews in the speaker’s church are just overflowing.

“Nancy Pelosi: An Extremely Stable Genius,” the New Yorker cheers.

“Political Grandmaster,” Vanity Fair crowns.

“Nancy Pelosi Has Trump Right Where She Wants Him,” Politico Magazine pretends.

“She May Not Acknowledge It, But Nancy Pelosi Is A Fashion Icon,” The Washington Post blogs.

“She,” a Food And Wine profile assures, “can also locate Paris’s best croissant.”

Casual readers will be forgiven for not knowing that the speaker has never actually beaten the president. Even on Wednesday when the addled, shaky pillar of Democrat might led impeachment, she seemingly failed to win the national argument and likely strengthened the president’s re-election prospects.

Just before the impeachment vote, while not agreeing to the number the White House asked for, Congress sent another $1.4 billion to build the president’s wall. The day after impeachment, Pelosi appears ready to pass the president’s trade deal. And since impeachment began, the president’s party gained more than 600,000 new donors and raised more than $10 million.

Of course, the president won’t be leaving office despite all the drama on CNN. Then, Washington is a town where Melania Trump is unfashionable and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a paragon of strength and health, so these things are to be expected.

It’s not hard to guess what my glorious city will be eating this Election Day.

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2019/12/20/nancy-pelosi-not-trump-is-provoking-a-constitutional-crisis/

Nancy Pelosi, Not Trump, Is Provoking A Constitutional Crisis
By refusing to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, Pelosi is asserting the primacy of the Democrat-controlled House over the GOP-led Senate.
John Daniel DavidsonBy John Daniel Davidson
DECEMBER 20, 2019
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision not to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial on the pretext that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t conduct the trial in a manner approved by House Democrats introduces a novel and dangerous dynamic to the impeachment of President Trump—namely, a constitutional crisis, not between the legislative and executive branches, but between the House and the Senate.

Under the Constitution, the House has the sole power of impeachment and the Senate has the sole power of conducting a trial. Although the Constitution doesn’t say the House must go through a formal process of “transmitting” the articles of impeachment to the Senate, precedent and Senate rules dictate that the Senate does not take up measures passed in the House until they have been certified and transmitted, and that it won’t take up an impeachment trial until the House appoints impeachment managers (or prosecutors) for the trial.


This Pelosi has refused to do. She is in effect asserting the primacy of the House over the Senate, insisting that the Senate conduct an impeachment trial on terms dictated by the House.

The pretext for her gambit are a few comments this week by McConnell that he’s “not an impartial juror,” and that he’s taking his cues from the White House. “The House made a partisan political decision to impeach,” McConnell said Tuesday. “I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not impartial about this at all.”

Of course, Pelosi and the other House Democrats have not been impartial, either. Pelosi seized on McConnell’s comments as evidence that any Senate trial would be a kangaroo court, a partisan and unfair show-trial whose outcome is predetermined. That is of course precisely what Republicans have said about House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, the outcome of which was inevitable from the moment it was announced.

As my colleagues Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway noted yesterday, “Pelosi apparently wants to control the Senate process from her perch in the House, a power grab that looks a lot like an abuse of power.” Likewise, her decision to withhold the articles of impeachment from the Senate and not appoint impeachment managers looks a lot like obstructing the Senate. House Democrats impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress—the very things Pelosi now appears to be doing.

What Would Democrats Consider a Fair Senate Trial?

What Pelosi hasn’t said is what she wants from McConnell. An apology? Assurances that he didn’t really mean what he said? She hasn’t yet indicated what procedures would meet her standard for fairness, only that she is working with House leaders and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to determine when the articles should be submitted.

Schumer has laid out a detailed plan for the Senate trial, proposing each side get equal time to lay out its case and calling on four top White House officials to testify, including Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security advisor John Bolton. It’s worth nothing that as a freshman senator in 1999, Schumer derided the notion of witnesses testifying in the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton as “political theater.”

Indeed, there was no witness testimony in Clinton’s impeachment trial. Senators had to rely on hearing excerpts from depositions of just three witnesses, and Democrats at the time objected even to this. In fact, in 1999 Schumer and every Senate Democrat except one voted to dismiss the articles of impeachment against Clinton without a trial.

It’s possible McConnell and Senate Republicans will take that route themselves, given the lack of evidence against Trump emerging from the House’s impeachment inquiry. Speaking on the Senate floor earlier this week, McConnell said the impeachment vote in the House “did not reflect what had been proven; it only reflects how they feel about the president. The Senate must put this right. We must rise to this occasion. There is only one outcome that is suited to the paucity of evidence, the failed inquiry, the slapdash case.” Later, he lambasted Democrats for being “too afraid to even submit their accusations to the Senate and go to trial.”

We’re In Uncharted Waters Now

It’s not just Pelosi driving this but the entire Democratic leadership. On Thursday, Democratic Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn said he would be willing to withhold the articles of impeachment from the Senate indefinitely—“as long as it takes.”

The problem for Pelosi and the Democrats is that they have thrust the nation into uncharted waters and provoked a showdown with the Senate without building up any credibility for their cause. Pelosi has said she “doesn’t care what the Republicans say.” Well, fine, but Republicans are saying what a growing number of Americans are thinking, which is that this impeachment is nothing but a cynical exercise in partisan politics.

The outcome of the House impeachment inquiry was pre-determined, and everyone knows it. So is the outcome of the eventual Senate trial.

Whatever one thinks of President Trump, almost no one thinks his impeachment has been fair, sober, and free from political bias. No one buys the play-acting of House Democrats dressed in black and insisting they are “prayerful” and “solemn” about impeachment—a fiction that was exposed when Pelosi had to silence the cheering that broke out among Democrats when she announced the passage of the first article of impeachment Wednesday night.

Nancy Pelosi forced to silence impeachment cheers from self-proclaimed “solemn” and “prayerful” Democrats pic.twitter.com/8khCTikx6C

— Steve Guest (@steveguest) December 19, 2019


Episodes like this, repeated ad nauseum for months now, are how you get polls showing that support for impeachment has fallen since Democrats opened their inquiry in October and that supermajorities of Americans now agree that impeachment is more important to politicians and the media than it is to them.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. Having conducted a thoroughly partisan impeachment inquiry in the House, Democrats want the Senate to pretend the process was fair and legitimate, and conduct a trial according to their terms. What if McConnell can’t get Pelosi to sign off on procedures for a Senate trial? Having denied Trump due process in the House, are Democrats also willing to deny him a speedy trial in the Senate, rights guaranteed to all Americans in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments?

We don’t know what will happen next, but we do know that Pelosi and the Democrats have introduced a new and virulent strain of partisanship to American politics, one they have relentlessly pursued since Trump won the 2016 election and that now risks provoking a constitutional crisis.

[soonernvolved]

thefederalist.com/2019/12/20/sean-davis-dem-impeachment-debacle-is-like-watching-a-bunch-of-monkeys-trying-to-hump-a-doorknob/

Sean Davis: Dem Impeachment Debacle Is Like Watching A ‘Bunch Of Monkeys Trying To Hump A Doorknob’

DECEMBER 20, 2019 By The Federalist Staff

Federalist cofounder Sean Davis joined “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Thursday to discuss Democrats’ impeachment debacle and the incoherent mess it has become. In speeches, Democrats claimed they impeached the president for America’s children.

Host Tucker Carlson said he thinks the Democrats have walked into a trap of their own making.


“It’s been such a debacle. It’s like watching a bunch of monkeys trying to hump a door knob. I have no clue what they’re doing right now,” Davis said. “They said it was an urgent threat to remove this president, we have to get rid of him. This whole thing culminated after we were hold that there’s this urgent threat and them doing exactly nothing and holding the impeachment articles over through the new year.”



Davis also said Democrats are in such a deep hole through both their rhetoric and actions, that he is not sure how they will dig themselves out. Davis also said he has sympathy for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because members of “The Squad” and other far lefties have bullied her into this impeachment process.

“I almost feel bad for Pelosi, because I don’t think she’s an idiot, I think politically she knows what she’s doing. And she basically got bullied into this by her own caucus. She was trying to avoid it for years, even though Dems wanted this from the beginning, and I think she finally lost control,” Davis said.

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thefederalist.com/2019/12/20/new-york-times-discovers-voters-are-paying-little-mind-to-impeachment/

New York Times Discovers Voters Are Paying Little Mind To Impeachment

DECEMBER 20, 2019 By Tristan Justice

The New York Times discovered this week that few people around the country seemed to pay much attention to the the House passing articles of impeachment Wednesday making President Donald Trump only the third president in history to be impeached.

“It was a momentous day in American history. But, by all indications, it was not a momentous day in the lives of most Americans,” the Times declared. “As history played out Wednesday amid the bombast and rancor of impeachment proceedings, many of them seemed intent on looking elsewhere.”


The Times reported on people across the country who remained focused on their day-to-day lives over the circus act unfolding in Washington. Counter to what many beltway insiders tend to believe, most Americans are not obsessing about politics, especially when they are as nefarious as the Democrats’ efforts to reverse the results of the 2016 election.

I saw this play out firsthand in the nation’s capital. When I clocked in for my part-time bar job at a local pub just two blocks from the White House, I first anticipated seeing each of the restaurant’s televisions tuned into the House impeachment debate as we did during last year’s infamous Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

Instead, the TVs were turned on to their typical channels: ESPN, Chive TV playing short random clips from the internet, and other various sports channels. Only one TV had the news turned on and at around 4 p.m. a guest had it changed to sports.

The fact is, Americans are smarter than Washington thinks and can recognize performative action versus something that can result in a tangible outcome such as the Kavanaugh hearings.

Justice Kavanaugh endured a bruising confirmation process. His ultimate success in reaching the nation’s highest court was by no means an easy task for Republicans. Kavanaugh’s nomination last year was hampered by uncorroborated and discredited allegations of sexual assault from more than 30 years ago that put the judge’s confirmation in serious jeopardy.

The hearings garnered wall-to-wall media coverage and captured the nation’s attention. According to Nielsen ratings data reported by Reuters, an estimated 20 million people across six networks tuned into Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The rushed impeachment proceedings launched by Democrats, on the other hand, have been nothing but a show-trial for Democrats culminating in a three-year campaign that began prior to Trump’s inauguration to effectively ban the president from the Oval Office. Even after the House passed the articles of impeachment by a partisan vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her intention to delay sending them to the Senate.

If the House passed articles of impeachment to “save the republic” from Trump but refuses to hand them over to the Senate for trial, then what was even the point? Her actions prove the Democratic efforts to be nothing more than a sham in a desperate attempt to resurrect their hopes of overturning the American voters in 2016 after the epic failure of the grand Russian collusion hoax.

So it should come as no surprise that only an estimated 13.8 million viewers tuned in the first public impeachment hearing held by the House Intelligence Committee across 10 networks, a stark decline from Kavanaugh’s 20.

The end result of the impeachment proceedings has always been clear. The Democratic-controlled House hungry for impeachment would pass the articles only for the president to be cleared of all charges in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The Constitution mandates a two-thirds majority to remove the president from office. That requires 20 out of the 53 Republicans in the Senate to join Democrats in their partisan efforts. In other words, Trump’s removal prior to inauguration day on 2021 is a pipe-dream for Democrats, and Americans can see right through it.

Multiple polls show voters roundly rejecting the Democratic impeachment campaign. According to Real Clear Politics’ latest aggregate of polls documenting public opinion on the proceedings, public support for impeachment has gone underwater since the opening of the House’s investigation in September.

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www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/trump-impeachment-if-impeachment-articles-are-not-delivered-did-impeachment-happen/

If Impeachment Articles Are Not Delivered, Did Impeachment Happen?

By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
December 19, 2019 5:44 PM

It’s hard to believe the Speaker’s latest stunt will go on for very long.
I’ll confess: Last night, when I was first told that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was toying with the idea of not delivering the two articles of impeachment voted by the House against President Trump, I assumed it was a joke.

For these last weeks, the Democrat-dominated chamber has been in a mad rush to impeach the president. Democrats even tacked on article two — “obstruction of Congress” — because, they told us, time could not be wasted engaging in the usual negotiation and litigation over legislative demands for executive branch information. Trump is a clear and present threat to “continue” undermining our elections, we were admonished. That’s why he needs to be impeached right now. That’s why the political class cannot responsibly leave his fate up to the sovereign, the People, who will vote in November.


But now that the deed is done, it’s . . . hey, not so fast.

Pelosi and Democratic leadership have convinced themselves there may be advantage in delaying the formal, ministerial delivery of the impeachment articles — as if Mitch McConnell were in as much a hurry to receive them as Democrats were to conjure them up. The thought is that this latest strategic petulance might pressure Senator McConnell into promising a full-blown trial, including summoning as witnesses top aides of the president whom the House didn’t bother to summon because tangling over privilege issues would have slowed up the works.

So it’s not a joke, but I still have to laugh. When I was a prosecutor negotiating plea deals, I always found the most pathetic defense lawyers were the ones who acted like they were playing with the House money when, in stark reality, it was they who needed something from me. Now here’s Pelosi trying to play hard to get with McConnell who, I imagine, couldn’t care less how long Democrats want to dither.

What we’ve just seen is the most partisan impeachment in American history, every step of it politically calculated. Obviously, if Democrats perceived advantage in stretching the process out, it would still be going on. There would be more witnesses; more 300- or 600-page committee reports to try to add heft and gravity to vague allegations of inchoate misconduct; more speeches about Trump as a threat to democracy and life as we know it; etc., etc.

To the contrary, Pelosi & Co. want this train wreck in the rearview mirror ASAP. The public is indifferent and polls are edging in Trump’s favor. On our local news this morning, the third impeachment of a president of the United States in American history couldn’t crack the top stories — it came in behind cold weather (in December) and the rescue of an elderly man in a gym by a couple of off-duty cops.

No one, of course, has to explain this to McConnell. In public, at least, he’s not a laughing-his-head-off kinda guy, but if he were, he would be.


It’s hard to believe the Speaker’s latest stunt will go on for very long. In the Senate this morning, the Democrats’ minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, renewed his demands about trial procedures, discovery, and witness testimony. There was no discernible hint of doubt that the House would soon deliver its impeachment articles, such as they are.

But since we’ll be playing trivial pursuit for a more few hours (days?), we might as well ask: As long as the House withholds the impeachment articles from the Senate, has Trump been impeached?

In the law, there are many situations in which an outcome is known, but it is not a formal outcome until some ministerial act is taken. A grand jury can vote an indictment, for example, but the defendant is not considered indicted until the charges are filed with the clerk of the court. A defendant can be found guilty by a jury, but there is technically no conviction until the judgment is “entered” by the trial court, usually months later when sentence is imposed. An appellate court can issue a ruling that orders a lower court to take some action, but the lower court has no jurisdiction to act in the case until issuance of the appellate court’s “mandate” — the document that formally transfers jurisdiction.

Plainly, Congress has similar ministerial acts of transference that must occur in order for legislation to pass. Were that not the case, Speaker Pelosi would not be talking about delaying the transfer of impeachment articles.

So it’s all well and good for the Speaker to hold up the works that Democrats, five minutes ago, were breathlessly telling us had to be carried out with all due haste. But many scholars take the position that the Constitution requires a trial if there has been an impeachment. If such a trial cannot properly occur unless and until articles of impeachment have been transferred from the House to the Senate, and Speaker Pelosi won’t transfer them, has President Trump actually been impeached?


Sure, it’s a stupid question . . . but we’re living in stupid times.

[kcrufnek]

So Tulsi says that Trump definitely committed crimes but she can't vote yes. She also can't vote no. She's not running for re election and she won't be running against Trump. So, what's the problem?

And will the five Senators running for pres recuse themselves so as not to obstruct?

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Dec 20, 2019 8:49:12 GMT -6 kcrufnek said:

So Tulsi says that Trump definitely committed crimes but she can't vote yes. She also can't vote no. She's not running for re election and she won't be running against Trump. So, what's the problem?

And will the five Senators running for pres recuse themselves so as not to obstruct?

Lol. Nope.

www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/19/elizabeth-warren-signals-shes-ready-to-take-impeachment-action-in-the-senate/

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Wednesday evening definitively stated that President Trump “abused our diplomatic relationships and undermined our national security for his own personal, political gain” and signaled that she is prepared to take impeachment action in the Senate.

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www.dailywire.com/news/pelosi-crows-trump-will-be-impeached-forever

Pelosi Crows: Trump Will Be ‘Impeached Forever’

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chortled that President Trump will be “impeached forever.”

Speaking in an interview with AP, Pelosi grinned, ”He just got impeached. He’ll be impeached forever. No matter what the Senate does. He’s impeached forever because he violated our Constitution,” adding, “If I did nothing else, he saw the power of the gavel there. And it wasn’t me; it was all of our members making their own decision.”

AP gushed, “Not since an earlier era of leaders — like Sam Rayburn, whose name is on a building at the Capitol, or Newt Gingrich, who defined a political movement — has the House speaker wielded such influence … Pelosi’s ability to steer the agenda is shaped in part by her decades in office. She immodestly calls herself a master legislator, but there’s truth in the brag — she brings more legislative experience to her job than those immediate predecessors.” AP quoted, Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public policy at Princeton, enthusing, “She has governed with force and authority … She is likely to go down in history as one of the most effective Speakers.”

Pelosi’s jubilation over impeaching Trump is at direct odds with her desire for Democrats to appear as if the affair were a dead-serious matter. The Daily Wire reported on Wednesday:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has attempted to paint the poorly-polling impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump as “solemn” and “somber,” done out of duty to the Constitution, despite leading Democrats openly admitting that the president must be impeached for political reasons. Keeping to the appearance, Democrats were reportedly given the instruction to avoid “cheering” and to “keep it solemn” during the impeachment vote on Wednesday.
“House Democratic leaders told caucus members not to cheer or applaud when today’s impeachment vote totals are announced, and Democratic members described the day as sad and solemn,” Axios reported Wednesday.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper before the impeachment vote, Pelosi protested:

I dare say this isn’t about politics at all. This is about patriotism. It’s not about partisanship. It’s about honoring our oath of office. This is the first president [that] has committed all of these things, as the constitutional experts said yesterday, nobody ever has even come close. Not Richard Nixon even came close to his dishonoring his own oath of office. So no, this isn’t —politics, it’s not even a consideration in this. This is about protect and defend the Constitution.
On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Pelosi, asserting:

Back in June, Speaker Pelosi promised the House would build an “iron-clad case.” Never mind that she was basically promising impeachment months before the Ukraine events, but that’s a separate matter. She promised an iron-clad case. And in March, Speaker Pelosi said this: “impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there is something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country.” By the Speaker’s own standards, the standards she set, she’s failed the country.

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www.zerohedge.com/political/luongo-pelosis-coup-attempt-now-open-warfare-there-will-be-casualties

Luongo: Pelosi's Coup Attempt Is Now Open Warfare, "There Will Be Casualties"

The Democrats declared war this week. Not on Donald Trump but on the United States and the Constitution.

What started as a coup to overturn the 2016 election has now morphed into a Civil War as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Fran-feces) presided over the passage of a bill which creates a clear Constitutional Crisis.

And that means we have multiple factions vying for control of our government, the definition of a Civil War.

In passing these articles of impeachment against President Trump Congress has arrogated to itself powers it does not have.

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www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/12/19/schumer-gop-senators-will-never-call-hunter-biden-to-testify-it-would-backfire/amp/

Schumer: GOP Senators Will Never Call Hunter Biden to Testify -- It Would 'Backfire'

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accused Republicans of bluffing about wanting to call 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden to testify in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

Schumer said, “I told McConnell today in our meeting if you have modifications if you think one of these witnesses is no good or you want to add another, you know, go right ahead. And there’s some argument that some may, well, if the Democrats have witnesses, then Republicans will ask for Hunter Biden. Make my day. Hunter Biden has nothing to do with the trial because he has no knowledge of what the president said of the charges.”

He added, “It’ll look like a circus, and they don’t want to do it. So this argument is a bogus argument to deter us from getting witnesses. I would bet my bottom dollar they’d never ask Hunter Biden to show up because it would backfire on them. It would make them look so unserious about this process that they would lose.”

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www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/20/blue-state-blues-senate-should-charge-nancy-pelosi-for-obstruction-of-congress/amp/

Blue State Blues: Senate Should Charge Nancy Pelosi with 'Obstruction of Congress'

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is refusing to transmit the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump that the House of Representatives passed on Wednesday evening to the Senate for a trial.

She is, in the words of the articles, guilty of “obstruction of Congress.” And unlike President Trump, Speaker Pelosi has no constitutional basis whatsoever for refusing the request of one of the two houses that make up the legislative branch.

For weeks, Democrats have insisted that the president needed to be impeached and removed from office as soon as possible. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), in his House Intelligence Committee report, declared: “Given the proximate threat of further presidential attempts to solicit foreign interference in our next election, we cannot wait to make a referral until our efforts to obtain additional testimony and documents wind their way through the courts.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) argued at the December 9 hearing on that report: “We agree that when the elections themselves are threatened by enemies foreign or domestic, we cannot wait until the next election to address the threat.” He made the point again during the House debate on impeachment Wednesday: “The threat is urgent. If we do not act — now — what happens next will be our responsibility as well as his.”

And Speaker Pelosi herself, opening House debate on the articles of impeachment Wednesday, declared: “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty.”

Yet just hours later, after House Democrats had done her bidding and impeached the president, Pelosi told journalists that she was not yet prepared to deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate. She claimed not to have decided yet who the House “managers” of the trial in the Senate would be.

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are both complaining that Republicans will not offer a “fair trial” in the Senate — that is, a fair trial for the prosecution, not for the president.

Yet even Schumer himself, in arguing for additional witnesses to be called in the Senate, told CNN as recently as Monday morning: “We’re not trying to be dilatory. We’re trying to have the kind of justice America is known for, which is swift but fair justice.”

Now, however, Pelosi is dragging her feet, amidst reports that she will not transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate until early January.

It is not clear why the Senate needs to wait: Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution says clearly: “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.”

Regardless of the formal transmission of documents, the Constitution allows the Senate to hold a trial as soon as an impeachment takes place in the House.

But Pelosi is claiming otherwise, apparently relying on the advice of left-wing law professors and the support of liberal legal analysts on cable news. She is no longer rushing the process; she is now obstructing it, knowing that there is no two-thirds majority for removal in the Senate, which may even dismiss the charges as unconstitutional.

Unlike Trump, who can cite text and precedent in resisting subpoenas, Pelosi’s delay is unlawful and unprecedented.

Nancy Pelosi is therefore guilty of obstruction of Congress.

She will fail, but just as the Democrats have told us for weeks that the president can be impeached for “attempting” to do something they consider wrong, Pelosi, too, can be held accountable to attempting to undermine the Constitution.

When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell loses patience and moves to dismiss the impeachment, he should add another charge — against Pelosi, for contempt.

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Hmmm, there are lawsuits awaiting for this one:

www.dailywire.com/news/nyt-we-spied-on-trump-with-smart-phone-tracking-data

NYT: We Spied On Trump With Phone Tracking Data

In an extensive report that is part of its “Privacy Project,” The New York Times revealed Thursday that it has gained access to cell phone tracking data for millions of Americans and was able to rather easily track the movements of regular Americans as well as high-profile and powerful figures, including President Trump himself — details of whose actions the Times published in a follow-up report.

In its initial report, titled “Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy,” the Times warns that if you were able to see the data which they obtained from a single private cell phone app company, “you might never use your phone the same way again.”

“The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so,” the Times explains. “The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers.”


The single data file the Times obtained is “by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists,” the Times claims, containing “more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.” That data covers a period of several months in 2016 and 2017, the Times notes.

Times researchers spent “months” analyzing the data, and in that time tracked cell phone activity involving some very famous names. “One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight,” the Times reports. “Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices’ owners to the residences indefinitely.” They also took some time to track the movements of participants at both pro-Trump and anti-Trump rallies.

Using the data — which the Times notes can be legally obtained by companies, who defend collecting the data because it is “anonymous” and app users give their “consent” to being tracked — the Times says they spent most of their attention “identifying people in positions of power”:

With the help of publicly available information, like home addresses, we easily identified and then tracked scores of notables. We followed military officials with security clearances as they drove home at night. We tracked law enforcement officers as they took their kids to school. We watched high-powered lawyers (and their guests) as they traveled from private jets to vacation properties. We did not name any of the people we identified without their permission.

The data set is large enough that it surely points to scandal and crime but our purpose wasn’t to dig up dirt. We wanted to document the risk of underregulated surveillance. Watching dots move across a map sometimes revealed hints of faltering marriages, evidence of drug addiction, records of visits to psychological facilities.


In a follow-up report titled “How to Track President Trump,” the Times reveals that it easily followed the movements of Trump — even providing a map of those movements — by simply identifying a cell phone owned by a person in his entourage:

The device’s owner was easy to trace, revealing the outline of the person’s work and life. The same phone pinged a dozen times at the nearby Secret Service field office and events with elected officials. From computer screens more than 1,000 miles away, we could watch the person travel from exclusive areas at Palm Beach International Airport to Mar-a-Lago.

The meticulous movements — down to a few feet — of the president’s entourage were recorded by a smartphone we believe belonged to a Secret Service agent, whose home was also clearly identifiable in the data. Connecting the home to public deeds revealed the person’s name, along with the name of the person’s spouse, exposing even more details about both families. We could also see other stops this person made, apparently more connected with his private life than his public duties. The Secret Service declined to comment on our findings or describe its policies regarding location data.

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www.dailywire.com/news/gabbard-wouldnt-vote-for-impeachment-former-cnn-anchor-calls-her-american-coward

On Thursday afternoon, former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien ripped Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for refusing to vote for the impeachment of President Trump on Wednesday, tweeting that Gabbard is an “American Coward.”

Gabbard, as a member of the Hawaii National Guard, served in a field medical unit in a combat zone in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and was deployed to Kuwait from 2008 to 2009.

Gabbard had simply voted “present” when the vote was taken. In the video to which O’Brien responded, she explained:


Here’s the deal. Politics should not be a zero-sum game, but tragically, that’s exactly what it has become, and it’s polluted the whole nature of our politics. The point of politics should not be about doing maximum damage to your opponents just to win, because all that’s happened, as has in the case of our current America, is that people get hurt and nothing gets done. My stance yesterday, my vote, was opting out of this zero-sum game mindset and back into one of negotiation and compromise. We are stuck right now in this terrible scenario where everyone is trying to exact maximum hurt from their opponent for a “win.”

She continued, “My ‘present’ vote was not passive; it was an active protest against the terrible fallout of this zero-sum mindset that the two opposing political parties have trapped America in. There’s no winning here. Everyone is losing. Our country is losing. If we, we, don’t break this stalemate we find ourselves in, America is done for. My vote and my campaign for president is about freeing our country from this damaging mindset so that we can work side by side to usher in a brighter future for all Americans.”

American Coward t.co/7RTJyKyqhO

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) December 19, 2019


The Daily Wire noted that according to the Star Advertiser, Gabbard said after the vote:

After doing my due diligence in reviewing the 658-page impeachment report, I came to the conclusion that I could not in good conscience vote either yes or no. I am standing in the center and have decided to vote Present. I could not in good conscience vote against impeachment because I believe President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing. I also could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting president must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.

In November, O’Brien slammed President Trump, as she told The Daily Beast, “What drives me more nutty than the president—who I think is obviously a terrible human being in a lot of ways—is the way in which the media does not know how to handle him. Quoting people who are saying lies is a really bad strategy. When President Trump says the moon is made of cheese, well, it’s not. … What drives me really crazy is to see all the mistakes the media makes around [the problem of], how do you report on somebody who’s a liar, who won’t hold press conferences in a place where you can ask real questions?”

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dailycaller.com/2019/12/20/takala-dershowitz-pelosi/

EXCLUSIVE Dershowitz: Pelosi Doesn’t Have The Impeachment Power She Believes

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the power she believes to prevent the Senate’s participation in impeachment proceedings, former Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz said Thursday.

“Whether the House wants it to be in the Senate or not, the matter is now properly before the Senate,” Dershowitz said in a call with the Republican National Lawyers Association. “The presiding officer of the Senate can set a trial date, convene the chief justice and begin the trial. So I don’t think that Pelosi has the power that she thinks she has, or that my colleague Larry Tribe thinks she has.”


Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe has suggested the House withhold the trial until the Senate changes its rules to be more favorable to Democrats, or until another election puts more Democrats in the chamber. “Senate rules requiring the House to ‘immediately’ present its articles of impeachment to the Senate clearly violate the constitutional clause in Article I giving each house the sole power to make its own rules,” Tribe wrote in a Dec. 18 tweet. He subsequently deleted the message. (RELATED: Despite Viewership Woes, CNN Retains Stranglehold On 58 Airports)

“I can imagine nothing more unconstitutional than a House impeachment without sending it to the Senate,” Dershowitz said. “It’s just unheard of. The Constitution provides that it is a two-step process, not a one-step process. It doesn’t say the president may be impeached, period, that’s the end of the matter. It says the president may be impeached, and if he’s impeached by the House, the Senate then gets to decide whether he should be removed.

“The idea that a stain would remain on the books, that the president would remain impeached, without an opportunity for the president to get acquitted by the Senate, is plainly unconstitutional,” he added. “It would be as if a prosecutor decided he had insufficient evidence to get a conviction, so he went after an ordinary citizen and said, ‘Look, I’m just going to indict him. Let the public know he’s indicted. For the rest of his life, he will stand indicted. But I have no intention of bringing him to trial. I will deny him his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. I’m going to let the indictment just hang out there.’ Obviously, no judge would tolerate that.”

Dershowitz said the president could seek to have the matter dismissed if it did not proceed to trial, but that it would “probably be a mistake” at this stage. “Could the president now go to the courts and say, ‘Look, while the constitution says the House is the sole judge of impeachment, they have now violated the Constitution’? The president’s legal team could theoretically go before the chief justice and seek to dismiss. (RELATED: Obama Wanted To Know Everything His Trump Spies Were Doing, And It Looks Like He Did)

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“The option that will probably be decided on is to make legal arguments, probably no witnesses, probably no experts, and leave it to the Senate whether to acquit or convict. It’s likely, based on the evidence that’s been presented thus far to the House, that there would be a vote of acquittal,” Dershowitz said. “Remember, you need two-thirds to convict. The reason we need two-thirds to convict is the framers did not want a partisan impeachment. They wanted an overwhelming consensus in favor of removing a president.”

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Op-Ed by Democrat lawyer who testified for impeachment in the House:

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-19/trump-impeachment-delay-could-be-serious-problem-for-democrats

Trump Isn’t Impeached Until the House Tells the Senate

According to the Constitution, impeachment is a process, not a vote.

By Noah Feldman
December 19, 2019, 4:35 PM EST

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.”

Now that the House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Donald Trump, what is the constitutional status of the two articles of impeachment? Must they be transmitted to the Senate to trigger a trial, or could they be held back by the House until the Senate decides what the trial will look like, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has hinted?

The Constitution doesn’t say how fast the articles must go to the Senate. Some modest delay is not inconsistent with the Constitution, or how both chambers usually work.

But an indefinite delay would pose a serious problem. Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial. Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.

If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.

That’s because “impeachment” under the Constitution means the House sending its approved articles of to the Senate, with House managers standing up in the Senate and saying the president is impeached.

As for the headlines we saw after the House vote saying, “TRUMP IMPEACHED,” those are a media shorthand, not a technically correct legal statement. So far, the House has voted to impeach (future tense) Trump. He isn’t impeached (past tense) until the articles go to the Senate and the House members deliver the message.

Once the articles are sent, the Senate has a constitutional duty to hold a trial on the impeachment charges presented. Failure for the Senate to hold a trial after impeachment would deviate from the Constitution’s clear expectation.

For the House to vote “to impeach” without ever sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial would also deviate from the constitutional protocol. It would mean that the president had not genuinely been impeached under the Constitution; and it would also deny the president the chance to defend himself in the Senate that the Constitution provides.

The relevant constitutional provisions are brief. Article I gives the House “the sole power of impeachment.” And it gives the Senate “the sole power to try all impeachments.” Article II says that the president “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Putting these three different provisions together yields the conclusion that the only way to remove the president while he is in office is if the House impeaches him and the Senate tries and convicts him.

The provisions say nothing about timing. Taken literally, they don’t directly say that articles of impeachment passed by the House must be sent to the Senate. But the framers’ definition of impeachment assumed that impeachment was a process, not just a House vote.

The framers drafted the constitutional provisions against the backdrop of impeachment as it had been practiced in England, where the House of Commons impeached and the House of Lords tried the impeachments. The whole point of impeachment by the Commons was for the charges of impeachment to be brought against the accused in the House of Lords.

Strictly speaking, “impeachment” occurred – and occurs -- when the articles of impeachment are presented to the Senate for trial. And at that point, the Senate is obliged by the Constitution to hold a trial.

What would make that trial fair is a separate question, one that deserves its own discussion. But we can say with some confidence that only the Senate is empowered to judge the fairness of its own trial – that’s what the “sole power to try all impeachments” means.

If the House votes to “impeach” but doesn’t send the articles to the Senate or send impeachment managers there to carry its message, it hasn’t directly violated the text of the Constitution. But the House would be acting against the implicit logic of the Constitution’s description of impeachment.

A president who has been genuinely impeached must constitutionally have the opportunity to defend himself before the Senate. That’s built into the constitutional logic of impeachment, which demands a trial before removal.

To be sure, if the House just never sends its articles of impeachment to the Senate, there can be no trial there. That’s what the “sole power to impeach” means.

But if the House never sends the articles, then Trump could say with strong justification that he was never actually impeached. And that’s probably not the message Congressional Democrats are hoping to send.

[soonernvolved]

Interesting, an Obama appointed Judge is going onto the FISA Court.

Roberts keeps showing how much of a letdown he is.

[soonernvolved]

dailycaller.com/2019/12/20/michael-rogers-john-durham/

Former NSA Director Cooperating With Durham Probe Of Russia Investigation: Report

Retired Adm. Michael Rogers, the former director of the National Security Agency, is cooperating with U.S. attorney John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, according to a new report.

The Intercept, citing four sources familiar with the matter, reports that Rogers has met voluntarily with Durham multiple times.


“He’s been very cooperative,” a former intelligence official familiar with the meetings told The Intercept.

The development comes after The New York Times reported Thursday that Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, has asked the CIA for emails, call logs and other correspondence from John Brennan, the former CIA director. (RELATED: Report: Durham Is Seeking John Brennan’s Emails, Call Logs)

The Intercept report does not say whether Rogers has provided any information that contradicts Brennan, the CIA, or the FBI.

In May, Attorney General William Barr tapped Durham to lead an administrative review of U.S. agencies’ investigation and intelligence-gathering activities related to the Trump campaign. Barr said at the time that he had questions about the FBI’s rationale for investigating whether Trump campaign advisers were conspiring with Russia in 2016.

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Barr said in a Fox News interview this week that Durham is looking at what happened before the FBI opened that investigation in July 2016, as well as what took place after Trump was elected.

According to The New York Times, Durham is interested in the CIA’s assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election specifically to help Donald Trump win the election.

The CIA and FBI assessed with a high degree of confidence that Russia meddled in the 2016 election in order to help Donald Trump win the election, rather than just to sow discord in the American political system. The NSA had only a medium degree of confidence in the theory.


Former CIA director John Brennan REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Rogers and Brennan took part in the Jan. 6, 2017 intelligence briefing where then-President-Elect Donald Trump was told of Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. Then-FBI Director James Comey and James Clapper, who led the Office of National Intelligence at the time, also took part in the briefing.


Comey stayed behind to brief Trump one-on-one about allegations from the Steele dossier.

Rogers has remained out of the public spotlight, unlike the other three intelligence community chiefs, since retiring from the NSA in May 2018. Comey has done numerous media interviews and embarked on a cross-country book tour since being fired by Trump in May 2017. Brennan is an MSNBC analyst, while Clapper is a CNN contributor.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment about The Intercept report.