To quote Wilford Brimley in Absence of Malice, “Amazing, the power of a subpoenee.”**
This is why Nancy Pelosi sucks at tactics, because in a formal Impeachment Hearing, you have Subpoena power – show up or go to jail – of a magnitude higher than you do in pre-impeachment investigation; also, once you have Impeachment Hearings, a lie you would normally tell as part of business is elevated to perjury and you go to jail for it.
Again, Pelosi and the other slo-Dems tell us they couldn’t impeach until it was more popular., But it wasn’t popular because there was asymetrical information determining public thought, in no small part because one side (R’s, Fox, Trumpers) was lying their asses off without consequence. Now that they can’t do that – and a lot of people are rescinding previous statements as they realize they’ll have to put their hand on a Bible and swear to tell the truth soon – the deluge of truth will be so ugly and unstoppable that it’ll be impossible to defend.
Again: Nancy Pelosi is bad at her job, a corporate suck-up and whiffed on this so badly – and if she’d had guts and had STARTED a true impeachment inquiry already on principle or because, I don’t know, it’s her goddamn job, we would have arrived at the point of subpoenas and perjury and legal consequence MONTHS AGO and ended this crap already. If people had been as blunt about this as they’re about to be months ago, Trump would have been hounded out of office. But Nancy Pelosi wanted to play nice and make sure she didn’t make people who already hate her dislike her more. And at the very least, if the Senate does refuse to find him guilty? Then you film each Republican senator saying “No,” and RUN THAT AS THE ATTACK AD 24/7: “Rand Paul thinks treason, threats and using the Government to punish your enemies is okay – do YOU?”
Nancy Pelosi is just the same as Joe Biden – they want this to be ended politely, with no follow-up that might harm their pensions sinecures and spheres of power. Fuck that. Bring on the Impeachment, then the laws to make sure this never happens again – Ending Citizen’s United, Ending Gerrymandering, term limits, etc – and if that messes with Pelosi or Biden’s tax-supported lifestyle, tough.
Do these witnesses have extra private security for the next week or so? We’ve seen people invoke Trump when committing acts of violence in the past. I don’t think the threat of someone taking a shot at the witnesses “to defend the President” or something similar is super high, but it’s also not zero.
Maybe that’s all part of the long con… Rudy is saving himself and trump by playing the crazy on air personality. Rudy can flip, but nobody will believe him sp be gets a slap on the wrist because he cooperated and the admin points abs laughs because our star witness is fucking Rudy.
Using his personal attorney. Who does not have the proper security clearance.
It’s in there. The GOP is trying very hard not to acknowledge that part. But Giuliani has repeatedly been asked about this and provided like like 10 different justifications, often in the same conversation. I expect it will become a larger part of it, but for the time being sensible people are trying to stress the clearest story of why its a bad thing. While the GOP are trying to find some way to claim it’s not a problem that will stick.
How so? We’re already having impeachment hearings. We’re about to get public ones. Later we’ll get the full adversarial hearings on specific articles/charges. And then we’ll have the trial in the Senate.
All will suffer from the exact same limitations on enforcing subpoenas and contempt findings as the House does currently. Because its still all the same congressional subpoena powers. The PR or justifications for refusing to comply may look a bit worse as it escalates, but all the laws and practicalities are the same.
Well he’s been playing crazy for 30 years then. Dude was giving pretty much the same kind of babbling, contradictory interviews back when he was the Mayor of NYC. And pretty much since he exited public office he’s been making a career out of bat shit conspiracy.
This isn’t new. I hear a lot of “what happened to Rudy Guiliani?” these days. Nothing, he’s always been like this. He just wasn’t in the national news constantly until 9/11.
What I was trying to state is that if you make stuff up on Fox News, it’s Monday; if you make it up during an Impeachment hearing deposition, it’s perjury. Giuliani has been lying/talking crazy left, right and center – but never under oath.
The PR or justifications for refusing to comply may look a bit worse as it escalates, but all the laws and practicalities are the same.
Comrade, the PR is the point, or at least the P part, the Public: As more and more ugly details are stated, live on television, by people who don’t want to go to jail for perjury, that will change the public’s mind, which will bring pressure to bear on Republicans. Because Trump’s support is a mile wide but an inch thick. Good presentation of a case for impeachment – not partisan hijinks but actual crimes and misdemeanors like extortion and witness tampering – : would be good for the country, both parties and the nation, because at a certain point, Trump’s actions will be revealed as not only indefensible but, also incontrovertible. By people under oath.
That part wasn’t in response to you. It was in response to some one wondering why more isn’t being made of Trump’s use of outside cronies to do this.
That’s nice. But what’s that to do with Congress’s inability to enforce their subpoenas without getting the courts on board? Cause that ain’t changing with a slightly different type of congressional hearing. Congress’s power to do those things is congresses power to do those things, and the apparatus still has it’s limitations and risks.
What Democrats fail to realize is that, while the accusations of abuse of office, bribery, emoluments, and multiple counts of obstruction of justice look bad for the president, House Republicans had far more restraint when the shoe was on the other foot. I mean when President Obama showed up in the briefing room wearing a tan suit, it took all of our willpower not to impeach him right then and there.
into this maelstrom strides HUGH HEWITT, man of the hour, to urge that MITCH MCCONNELL spare America of the devastation that an investigation into the DEMOCRATIC treachery must surely entail.
Americans who supported McConnell can be counted on to back him now if Senate Republicans decide that bogus articles of impeachment do not merit the Senate’s sustained attention. Peremptory dismissal — think of it as a motion for summary judgment — would serve future presidents of both parties even if it would deny Trump the high-profile political theater he delights in and almost invariably has succeeded in dominating since he came down the escalator. I’d love to see a competent defense team unravel Russiagate or Spygate or whatever you call the last three years of guerrilla political war waged by “the Resistance.”
Thinking this through…House votes for impeachment, and Senate will acquit.
It becomes a question of timing. Is it better to have done this quickly and a distant memory next year or better to have the climax come fresh before the 2020 elections?
I feel like it’s a media reporting problem. Some enterprising reporter should be able to pull all the assorted regulations around how government works. From requirements around clearances, employment, conflict of interest, accountability, records retention, etc. Just make a huge list that shows all of these rules and laws were broken the minute Rudy did anything, irrelevant to the content.
Even if he was sending flowers and candy as well wishes, it STILL broke a ton of rules.
The president is the president all the freaking time. There’s no distinction between doing stuff as a representative of government and doing stuff as a private citizen. It’s part of the job, don’t like then don’t be president. Just as we’re reminded daily, the president’s personal twitter account is official white house communication with no difference between it and the official government POTUS account.
Having a list would let people question if it’s OK to break all these rules? Force them to defend or dodge the question on what isn’t even a questionable thing. Nobody is claiming Rudy didn’t talk to anyone. It feels like a media policy intern could be doing this if any of the news organizations cared to put in the research at all.
I agree. The bulk of the media is still reporting things in a horse race mentality. The salient fact for the story is not what was done and whether it was bad. But what impact it will have on the popularity of the given parties involved. They report the arguments and tactics politicians present, then speculate on what impact that’ll have on some shifting, fictional every man. And how it shifts a preselected narrative.
It’s not “Donald Trump abused his power” or “Donald Trump ran a shadow foreign policy through his personal attorney to his own benefit, at the expense of the country”. It’s “Will the Ukraine call do x”. Then you get a Trump surrogate who says no, and a sensible person who explains that it should and it has to. And they fight. Then Wolf Blitzer comes on to tell you all about how this will effect purple spotted Jimmy Carter enthusiasts in the lower South West corner of Alaska are responding. Because you know the use of indefinite articles turned them all into Ron Paul supporters.
There is a world of difference between “Donald Trump did wrong” and “Donald Trump did a thing, is it wrong, will he get away with it?”. Journalists are increasingly saying the former, but the approach and the entire ecosystem are still built around the latter.
