Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
US launches first satellite into orbit; Libyan intelligence officer convicted of Pan Am 103 bombing; US Soldier executed for desertion during World War II; Norman Mailer born; Franz Schubert born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Demagogues rely on fear to consolidate power. But courage is contagious – that’s why we must join hands and fight back
Substantial media coverage over the last year, within Brazil and internationally, has been devoted to threats and attacks we each received, separately and together, due to our work – David’s as a congressman and Glenn’s as a journalist. These incidents have been depicted, rightfully so, as reflective of the increasingly violent and anti-democratic climate prevailing in Brazil as a result of the far-right, authoritarian, dictatorship-supporting movement of President Jair Bolsonaro, which consolidated substantial power in the election held at the end of 2018. [..]
When you live in a country where roughly half the population endured life under a military tyranny, you end up meeting many who risked so much to fight against it and fight for democracy. Brazil re-democratized in 1985 only after two decades of profoundly difficult struggle, protest, organizing and resistance. We personally know many people who were imprisoned or exiled for years for their fight against the dictatorship. Many of their friends and comrades were murdered by the military regime while they fought for the cause of Brazilian democracy.
Courage is contagious. Those are the people who inspire us and so many like us in Bolsonaro’s Brazil who are confronting state repression to defend the democracy that so many people suffered so much to bring about. Demagogues and despots like Bolsonaro are a dime a dozen. They centrally rely on intimidation, fear and the use of state repression to consolidate power. A refusal to give into that fear, but instead to join hands with those who intend to fight against it, is always the antidote to this toxin.
President Trump’s defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz — my professor at Harvard Law School — is flat-out wrong in his assertion that abuse of power is not a basis for impeachment. His position contradicts his own prior views, as well as the views of almost all legal scholars, something that Dershowitz himself admits. Just as important, his assertion flies in the face of the articles of impeachment voted against President Richard M. Nixon by the House Judiciary Committee — of which I was a member — in 1974. These articles did not charge Nixon with a crime, a fact Dershowitz willfully ignores.
Not one of the three articles adopted by the Judiciary Committee mentioned a criminal statute, charged Nixon with violating any criminal statute or described how his conduct met the standards set forth in any criminal statute.
It is not surprising that Dershowitz is trying to sweep the Nixon precedent under the rug. It completely demolishes his argument that a president may be impeached only for a criminal act. But it is wrong for Dershowitz to disregard that precedent and pretend it doesn’t exist, particularly because almost everyone agrees that the work of the Judiciary Committee against Nixon was a kind of gold standard — including Kenneth W. Starr, Dershowitz’s co-counsel in the Trump impeachment proceedings.
Even today, the Nixon precedent remains valid and powerful.
There’s a big difference between loyalty and fealty:
Loyalty is the most perfect form of mutual respect. It is a bond that goes two ways, and that is why it endures.
Fealty, on the other hand, must be endured. It is based on power, and ends the moment the one who commands it no longer has a grip on the one who is shackled by it.
My colleague Ashley Parker notes that while President Trump has a fixation on loyalty, he seems to have a singular inability to inspire it. A management style based on bullying never does. [..]
His personal lawyer Alan Dershowitz carried that concept to its absurdist end on Wednesday when he argued the following during Trump’s impeachment trial: “Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest. And mostly, you’re right. Your election is in the public interest. And if a president does something, which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
In other words, nothing Trump does is impeachable.
Given the fealty Trump demands from Republicans in the Senate, that might turn out to be true. His acquittal still appears to be a sure bet.
But the evidence of his unfitness to carry out the public trust will continue to emerge nonetheless. Bolton is not likely to be the last of those who step forward from the recesses of this White House to bear witness.
As the coronavirus spreads beyond China, the world is asking, “Are we on the verge of our next global pandemic?” We can be sure the virus will continue to spread, but we can’t predict how far or for how long or how bad the impact will be.
Here’s what we know for certain: We are living the consequences of being underprepared for the next big global epidemic. If we act now, we can prevent or blunt future epidemics and save millions of lives. The question isn’t if another pandemic will emerge, but when.
We have successfully addressed serious public-health challenges. After the United States realized it was falling behind in biomedical research in 1998, we doubled the budget of the National Institutes of Health. When the world faced the unprecedented devastation of HIV, we created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and helped turn the tide on the disease, building bridges with governments and communities around the world.
But when it comes to avoidable health crises such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Ebola and drug-resistant organisms, the U.S. and global response has been slow, haphazard and far too limited.
Yes, the parties are different: Republicans are lying and staging a cover-up, Democrats are fighting for the truth
Not that there was any doubt before, but it’s still stunning to see how the mainstream media’s addiction to false equivalences in the name of “balance” has withstood even the mightiest of trials, namely the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.
On Wednesday, America’s dumbest pundit, who is also among its most highly-paid, CNN’s Chris Cillizza, ejected this remarkably lazy tweet:
The “analysis” in his article was no better, accusing both parties of “reflexive partisanship” with no interest in “any sort of thoughtful conversation or debate.”
That analysis was only possible because Cillizza’s lack of self-awareness is so staggering that it can only be rivaled by that of Donald Trump himself. Nowhere does Cillizza actually note the content of the arguments, the persuasiveness of the arguments, or even any understanding of what those arguments might be. Physician, heal thyself — before accusing others of not being able to listen.
Of course, it’s screamingly obvious why Cillizza is ignoring all the actual content from Wednesday, in which senators were tasked with asking written questions of the House managers and Trump’s legal team on the question of whether to remove Trump from office. Any perusal of the actual content makes it hard, even for the mightiest of hacks, to maintain the illusion that “both sides” are morally equivalent.
I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the universe to it.
What happened?
It committed suicide.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s the end of the United States as a Republic and the beginning of a Fascist Dictatorship.
A referendum on merging the posts of Chancellor and President was held in Germany on 19 August 1934, after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg 17 days earlier. The German leadership sought to gain approval for Adolf Hitler’s assumption of supreme power. The referendum was associated with widespread intimidation of voters, and Hitler used the resultant large “yes” vote to claim public support for his activities as the de facto head of state of Germany. In fact, he had assumed these offices and powers immediately upon von Hindenburg’s death and used the referendum to legitimize this move, taking the title Führer und Reichskanzler (Führer and Chancellor).
President Trump’s legal team offered a startling defense Wednesday as senators debated his fate in the impeachment trial, arguing that presidents could do nearly anything so long as they believe their reelection is in the public interest.
The assertion from Alan Dershowitz, one of the attorneys representing the president, seemed to take GOP senators by surprise, and few were willing to embrace his argument. At the same time, Republican lawmakers were sounding increasingly confident about defeating a vote expected Friday over calling new witnesses in the trial, an issue that has consumed the Senate for the past several days.
…
Dershowitz’s remarks came in response to a question from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) about quid pro quos, one of the offenses Trump is alleged to have committed. Democrats impeached Trump last month on a charge of abuse of power, alleging he withheld military aid and a White House visit from Ukraine until Kyiv announced investigations into his political opponents, and also charged him with obstruction of Congress.
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” asserted Dershowitz.
The law professor went on to say that if a president were to tell a foreign leader he was going to withhold funds unless his foreign counterpart built a hotel with his name on it and gave him a million-dollar kickback, “That’s an easy case. That’s purely corrupt and in the purely private interest.”
“But a complex middle case is: ‘I want to be elected. I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was. And if I’m not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly,’ ” Dershowitz said. “That cannot be an impeachable offense.”
Dershowitz’s argument Wednesday extended a line of reasoning he had advanced earlier this week, when he contended that even if proved, the charges against Trump would not constitute impeachable offenses. Some GOP senators were quick to latch on to that earlier argument, especially in the wake of leaks from an unpublished book by former national security adviser John Bolton directly linking Trump to the conditioning of security assistance to Ukraine. Bolton wrote about a conversation in which Trump discussed delaying the aid until Ukraine announced politically charged investigations, including into former vice president Joe Biden, a front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and his son Hunter.
But Dershowitz’s new and more expansive line of defense left some Republicans uncertain how to respond, while infuriating Democrats.
“I couldn’t comment on that because I’m not a constitutional lawyer,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). He also insisted that he put stock in Dershowitz’s argument “only in the context of how it applies to the Ukraine, which has had corruption, and that the Bidens were there with an argument that you can’t say they had their hands clean.”
…
Meanwhile, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) slowly separated himself from a defense of Dershowitz — before slipping away from the conversation entirely.
“I think when you conflate all the issues, you can kind of, to a point when you’re asking a question in a silo, which is inconsistent with what we just heard today,” Scott said. “So I want to separate myself from that part of the conversation because ultimately, I think the premise itself is flawed and I don’t want to agree with that necessarily.”
Multiple Democrats, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), skewered Dershowitz’s argument to the point of mockery.
“His argument was beyond absurd. I thought he made absolutely no sense — because he essentially said that if President Trump believes his election is for the good of the American people that he could do whatever he wants,” Gillibrand said. “He is wrong, and I think he’s made a laughable argument that undermines the president’s case.”
…
Toward the end of the night, Democrats bridled over comments by Philbin responding to a question from Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) about Trump’s apparent public solicitation of Russia and China for compromising materials on his campaign rivals. Philbin argued that Trump’s remarks did not, in fact, represent a violation of campaign finance laws that make it illegal to accept or solicit a “thing of value” from foreign sources.
“Apparently it’s okay for the president to get information from foreign governments in an election — that’s news to me,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a House manager, as fuming Democrats accused Philbin of engaging in a wholesale rewrite of federal law to cover for Trump.
Over the course of two responses to those questions, Trump’s legal team made a remarkable claim. First, that if an action includes any element of public interest, it can’t be impeachable under the terms set by the House. And, second, if Trump thinks that his own reelection is in the public interest — which he certainly does — that’s a valid claim.
Trump attorney Patrick Philbin made the first point in response to the first question posed by Senate Republicans. He argued that the report from the House Judiciary Committee established that there must necessarily not be any legitimate public purpose to Trump’s requests from Ukraine’s government.
“If there’s both some personal motive but also a legitimate public interest motive,” Philbin said, “it can’t possibly be an offense because it would be absurd to have the Senate trying to consider, ‘Well, it was it 48 percent legitimate interest and 52 percent personal interest? Or was it the other way? Was it 53 percent and 40 —’ You can’t divide it that way.”
“They recognize that to have even a remotely coherent theory, the standard they have to set for themselves is establishing there is no possible public interest at all for these investigations,” he continued. “And if there is any possibility, if there is something that shows a possible public interest and the president could have that possible public interest motive, that destroys their case.”
There are some nuances to that, including the pointed distinction between the president having a possible public interest motive and, as Philbin articulated it, that the president could have that motive. Philbin argues there that if a public interest could be ascribed to Trump’s actions, he can’t be impeached. That itself is a remarkable claim.
In his response to Philbin, lead impeachment manager Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) rejected the idea that the House case necessitated an entirely personal benefit. Remember what’s at issue in the trial: Trump’s withholding of aid to Ukraine and denial of a White House meeting to Ukraine’s president, allegedly in the hopes of pressuring Ukraine into launching investigations of political use to him personally.
“If any part of the president’s motivation was a corrupt motive, was a causal factor in the action to freeze the aid or withhold the meeting, that is enough to convict,” Schiff said. “It would be enough to convict under criminal law.”
To that latter point, stealing money to give to the poor is still illegal.
Philbin’s argument, though, set an important floor for behavior that another member of Trump’s team, Alan Dershowitz, used as the basis for a remarkable argument.
Dershowitz admitted that there were situations in which personal benefit was impeachable, such as when a president benefited financially from his decision-making. But more broadly, Trump could have been acting in the public benefit simply by wanting to be reelected.
…
According to Dershowitz, this alone constitutes the sort of “possible public interest motive” that, per Philbin, makes it impossible to legitimately impeach the president.
It’s an obviously ridiculous argument. For example, soliciting foreign assistance for an election is a violation of federal law. Trump’s allies argue that his requests to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was something other than such a solicitation, but it’s easy to see how, under slightly different circumstances, that line would be much brighter. Had Trump, for example, asked Zelensky to have his eventual 2020 Democratic opponent arrested and detained — an obvious solicitation of benefit — it’s a clear violation of law. But Dershowitz would argue that it’s inherently unimpeachable, since all Trump wanted was to be reelected for the benefit of the country.
John Bolton has not yet testified or spoken anywhere in public about the Ukraine affair, but his unpublished manuscript is exerting a gravitational pull on the Senate trial of President Trump. The former national security adviser is reported to have written that Mr. Trump directly connected his freeze on military aid to Ukraine with his demand that the country’s president launch politicized investigations, including of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the former vice president. The result is that some Republican senators who previously insisted that there was no evidence of such a quid pro quo have now retreated to a new line of defense: Maybe there was but, if so, there is nothing wrong with it.
The new response has the advantage of acknowledging the mounting evidence that Mr. Trump used congressionally appropriated aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to intervene in the 2020 election campaign. “We basically know what the facts are,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) told Fox News on Tuesday. Yet Mr. Cornyn and other GOP senators are now arguing that the behavior is not an abuse of power, merely a routine presidential act. “Presidents always leverage foreign aid,” said Mr. Cornyn.
That contention is as dangerous as it is wrong. Presidents do occasionally wield U.S. assistance to advance foreign policy ends. But Mr. Trump was manifestly seeking a personal gain. An investigation of Mr. Biden was not a goal of U.S. foreign policy. There was no domestic probe of his actions and no evidence that he was guilty of wrongdoing. On the contrary, the proof that the then-vice president was pursuing official U.S. policy when he intervened in Ukraine is overwhelming.
Republicans are relying heavily on the arguments of one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, a criminal-defense specialist who has been offering constitutional interpretations sharply at odds with those of constitutional scholars. On Wednesday, he made the extraordinary claim that a president who executed a quid pro quo for his own personal political gain could not be guilty of an impeachable offense; only action for pecuniary return could qualify. Contradicting the position he took when President Bill Clinton was on trial, Mr. Dershowitz said that presidents cannot be impeached unless they commit criminal acts.
The implications of this position are frightening. If Republicans acquit Mr. Trump on the basis of Mr. Dershowitz’s arguments, they will be saying that presidents are entitled to use their official powers to force foreign governments to investigate any U.S. citizen they choose to target — even if there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Mr. Trump could induce Russia or Saudi Arabia or China to spy on Mr. Biden, or on any other of the many people subject to his offensive tweets. In exchange for any embarrassing information, the president might offer official favors, such as arms sales or a trade deal or the lifting of sanctions. Do Republicans really wish to ratify such presidential authority? Will they not object if the next Democratic president resorts to it?
Republicans are finally beginning to accept the facts of what Mr. Trump did — though all the facts will not be known unless they allow Mr. Bolton and other witnesses to testify. They must now draw the necessary conclusion from those facts: that what Mr. Trump did was wrong. After doing so, they could argue that the offense does not merit impeachment, or that any sanction should be delivered by voters. But a conclusion that the president did nothing wrong would inflict grave damage on our political system.
I have a bad feeling about this.
I mean it’s a remarkably dangerous precedent. I’m not kidding when I say I’m seriously thinking about evacuation plans.
Before you were national security adviser, before you represented the United States at the United Nations, you were a lawyer — a pretty good one, as I understand. As a member of the bar, you must have been pained and shaken to hear President Trump’s attorney Alan Dershowitz argue for the proposition that anything a president thinks he needs to do to get reelected — bribe or extort a foreign country, even — cannot be impeachable. This defies and defiles our constitutional system, one in which even the president is not above the law. It’s a proposition that would have boiled your blood had President Bill Clinton or President Barack Obama advanced it.
And yet here we are. The president asserts that he is king, and the spineless Republicans (who smear and insult you and mouth Russian propaganda) are too cowardly to oppose him. Meanwhile, your First Amendment rights to publish your account are being trampled on by a vague, overly broad and baseless assertion that your manuscript contains “Top Secret” materials. (And yet the president, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others have spoken to the contents of the same conversations you apparently will describe, thereby declassifying whatever they tried to classify.)
We have the perfect formula for tyranny: The executive claims unlimited power; his critics are muzzled. I do not think you spent decades in public life to allow this to play out before your eyes. What’s more, as you have surely realized in serving in this administration filled with toadies and careerists, you will, by acquiescing to White House demands, ensconce in power a president emotionally, temperamentally and intellectually unfit to serve, one who will now be convinced that he operates above and beyond any restraint on his power.
The moral and constitutional instincts that drove you to condemn the “drug deal” being cooked by Trump’s aides and to repeatedly tell your former employees to report their concerns to White House attorneys should now compel you to throw sand in the gears of a totalitarian-minded president. Your attorney certainly has run through some options for you, but let’s review them.
First, you could hold a news conference Thursday or agree to an interview, perhaps with Chris Wallace so that his Fox News audience would have a front-row seat. (A disclosure: I am a contributor to MSNBC.) You can explain without revealing anything remotely classified that Trump tied aid to opening bogus investigations into the Bidens; that Trump never pursued burden-sharing or anti-corruption efforts more generally before the scandal broke; and that Trump knew that the conspiracy theories justifying such bogus investigations were being advanced by Russian-connected stooges. Let the public know; do not allow the Senate to ignore damning evidence.
Second, you could call up the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees and ask to appear immediately in an open hearing. You can then, under oath, lay out what you know.
Third, you can do nothing, meekly accepting prior restraint on your free speech and remaining silent so that the Senate can escape confronting what it knows would be damning evidence of the president’s impeachable conduct. You can watch the party to which you belonged your entire adult life incinerate the constitutional system of checks and balances, separation of powers and limited government. You can become a silent accomplice in this assault on democracy.
Finally, you have gotten a taste of the heavy-handed intimidation techniques the president and his sycophantic enablers use to beat down critics. If someone as financially and professional secure as you capitulates, imagine how easy it will be for the Trumpists to crush dissent from ordinary Americans. Whether intended or not, you’ve burned your bridges with the Trumpian right and to the right-wing media that has on cue demonized you. Welcome to the “other side.” Whatever sense of disappointment and alienation you must feel from your former friends and colleagues, I can assure you it is temporary. You can now relish in the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to display true courage and patriotism, to go down in history with others who interposed themselves between wanna-be dictators and absolute power. But first, you have to do the right thing.
I spent a long time last night thinking about what needs to be in my Bugout Bag and family evacuation plans.
Update: Bolton should talk, even if it’s on Hannity.
So Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio gets pissed off at Rachel, loads up his .45, storms into the Studio and plugs her right between the eyes. On Camera. Great Television.
“She was hurting my re-election chances. Since I’m the Greatest Of All Time it’s in the National Interest.”
Trevor
Stephen
You, the douchebag.
Seth has gone from extremely focused to totally off point.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Tet Offensive begins: Nazi leader Adolf Hitler becomes Germany’s chancellor; Franklin D. Roosevelt is born; Hindu extremist assassinates Mahatma Gandhi; as “Bloody Sunday” begins; “The Lone Ranger” airs
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Now that we know John Bolton’s version of events, if the Senate does not allow him to testify, we will see one thing with crystal clarity: President Trump’s impeachment trial will not be a trial at all. It will be a blatant, shameless, unprecedented coverup that will go down in history as an unforgivable disgrace.
Senate Republicans reportedly complained they were blindsided by news reports, first in the New York Times, that Bolton’s impending memoir of his time as national security adviser will say Trump explicitly conditioned release of $391 million in military aid to Ukraine on the announcement of “investigations,” including one designed to smear former vice president Joe Biden. Blindsided? Really? Did they wear noise-canceling ear buds all last week while the House impeachment managers presented their case?
GOP senators know the truth of what happened. If they are indeed angry, the reason can only be that they believed direct evidence of the president’s guilt could be suppressed long enough for them to vote against witness testimony and give Trump the acquittal he demands in time for the Super Bowl.
For President Trump’s impeachment hearings to be anything other than a show trial at this point, four brave Republican senators need to break ranks and vote to hear new evidence and witnesses.
After former national security adviser John Bolton’s manuscript leaked, three GOP lawmakers now appear willing to do so: On Monday, Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) suggested their votes were in play. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said more definitively that he wants to hear from Bolton and that it’s “increasingly likely” other colleagues will support calling witnesses as well.
That juicy prediction has every pundit asking who else might join these three martyrs. Maybe Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) or some other dark horse? Who could that elusive fourth Republican senator possibly be?
To be honest, I don’t know the answer to that question. But I know what the answer should be: All of them.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — founded by Manhattan Project scientists who invented the nuclear bomb, with 13 Nobel laureates on its executive board — has just moved its Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight. This marks the most severe security threat in its history.
The scientists are sounding the alarm not due to subjective fears caused by a mercurial and uninformed president with his finger on the nuclear trigger, but from a dispassionate assessment of terrifying realities. “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers — nuclear war and climate change — that are compounded by … cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond,” reports the Bulletin. These dangers have become dire not simply because they are getting worse, but because “world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.” [..]
The Bulletin’s warning got far too little attention. There was no 24-7 coverage or analysis. Few politicians bothered to respond. But don’t be misled: This is the real deal, the true catastrophe. When history writes about the Trump administration, his tantrums and insults, his tweets and rallies, his ignorance and temper will no doubt be mentioned, but historians will surely focus on the lost years when this president didn’t just ignore these existential threats, but actively exacerbated them.
Search the transcript of Saturday’s impeachment trial, as President Trump’s lawyers began their opening arguments, and you’ll see there’s a name nowhere to be found: John Bolton, the former national security adviser.
The president’s lawyers made no mention of him. And now there’s no need to speculate why. Because the news about what’s in Bolton’s forthcoming book is out — and it shows that his testimony would be devastating to Trump.
The New York Times reported Sunday night that Bolton submitted his manuscript to the White House for pre-publication review four weeks ago. Which means, in all likelihood, that at least some members of the president’s defense team have known exactly what Bolton would say if called to the stand. Trump’s own lawyers have framed the removal question as turning on proof of the president’s true motives. Well, here’s a witness who can tell us what the president, in a face-to-face conversation, said he wanted. [..]
Trump’s lawyers complain that no witness talked to Trump about the linkage between the aid and the investigation. Well, here’s Bolton, ready, willing, and able to testify.
Trump himself claims that Bolton is lying. Well, there’s a tried-and-true way to find out if he is or is not.
Trump’s team isn’t focused on a legal defense of their client so much as creating viral content for Fox News
On Sunday, the New York Times released leaked revelations from John Bolton’s upcoming book about his stint as national security adviser to Donald Trump, which in a different world would have upended the president’s impeachment trial in the Senate. Bolton reportedly affirms in the book that Trump personally told him military aid was being withheld from Ukraine in an effort to force the Ukrainian president to announce investigations meant to bolster Trump’s conspiracy theories about Democrats. This revelation was received in the media as a big deal, because Trump’s defense team has been trying, laughably, to argue that Trump withheld the aid for some purpose other than cheating in an election. Bolton’s eyewitness account would seem to blow a hole through those efforts. [..]
In her 30-minute presentation Monday, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi dug into the repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory that Joe Biden got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired in order to stop investigations into Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden as a board member. Another Trump attorney, Eric Herschmann, also went on at length about the Bidens and Burisma.
By legal standards, this was an odd choice. The accusations of corruption against the Bidens have been debunked, over and over and over and over. Moreover, the entire reason Trump is getting impeached is because he tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into backing these false accusations, something Zelensky clearly didn’t want to do, likely because he knew they were false.
Instead of defending their client, in other words, Trump’s attorneys were perpetuating the very scheme that got their client into legal trouble to begin with.
This bizarre gambit makes more sense, however, if one understands what Trump’s team is actually doing. They’re not there to mount a legal defense of their client, who everyone knows is guilty anyway. What they’re doing is producing content for Fox News.
Why Lev Parnas Won’t Be Attending The Impeachment Hearings
He’s released on bail with a Ankle Monitor as a flight risk (to be fair he was nailed at the Airport fleeing the country) awaiting trial for his FELONY! which he committed in conspiracy with Rudy Guiliani and Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio.
Schumer gave him a golden ticket.
Unfortunately they are screening for electronic devices and it’s unclear if he’ll be granted admittance to the Gallery.
There will be extra excitement at President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Wednesday as indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is expected to attempt to attend the trial.
Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, asked for people to join them as they walk the half-a-mile from Union Station to the Capitol.
“Join Lev Parnas and the legal team tomorrow at 11:15 am, as we walk from Union Station to the Capitol, to watch the trial and speak out for witnesses and evidence,” Bondy posted on Twitter.
Bondy has been pushing a “Let Lev Speak” message on Twitter.
…
Earlier on Tuesday, The Daily Beast reported that Bondy had received tickets to view the trial from the gallery from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
However, it is unknown whether Parnas will be allowed to view the trial.
Senate rules bar electronic devices and Lev Parnas wears an ankle monitor as part of his bail agreement with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
The Daily Beast article is a little bit wrong about what’s going to happen today. This is the first of two eight hour days of written questions by Senators, read by the Chief Justice, with eight hours allotted to each side (directed at the House Managers and Attorneys alternating between sides as long as questions remain on either, with responses encouraged to limit themselves to no more than 5 minutes even if the reading the question takes longer) so if the Republicans are smart they’ll just sit down and shut up and this will all be over in a day.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen either
What may happen is another Republican “Extend and Pretend” as Moscow Mitch admits he doesn’t have the votes to simply shut things down against the wishes of 70% of the people.
So he’s going to slow things down until he can find them.
In a closed-door meeting after closing remarks, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told colleagues he doesn’t have the votes to block witnesses, according to people familiar with his remarks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them. Just four GOP senators would have to join with Democrats to produce the majority needed to call witnesses — an outcome McConnell has sought to avoid since it could invite new controversy and draw out the divisive proceedings.
An initial vote to allow witnesses, expected Friday, does not ensure witnesses would actually be called, since the Senate would have to subsequently hold separate votes on summoning each individual witness. And Trump’s ultimate acquittal still remains all but assured, since a two-thirds vote in the GOP-run Senate would be required to remove him.
But the debate over witnesses has roiled the Senate since the emergence of revelations Sunday in an unpublished book manuscript written by former national security adviser John Bolton. In the book, Bolton recounts a conversation with Trump in which the president described wanting to withhold military assistance from Ukraine until Kyiv announced investigations into some of Trump’s political rivals.
That would make Bolton the first official to provide a firsthand account of the alleged quid pro quo at the heart of House Democrats’ abuse-of-power charge against the president, one of the two articles of impeachment the House approved in December. The other charged Trump with obstruction of Congress.
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Since the Bolton revelations emerged, a handful of Senate GOP moderates have indicated a desire to hear from him. But foreshadowing disputes to come, many other Republican lawmakers disagree or say that they would allow testimony from Bolton only if they could also call witnesses they favor, such as Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company when his father was President Barack Obama’s vice president.
“All I can say, is I don’t need any more evidence, but if we do call witnesses, we’re not just gonna call one witness. We’re gonna call a bunch of witnesses,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
Democrats strongly oppose calling either of the Bidens or agreeing to any witness “trade,” as suggested by some Republicans. Other plans floated by GOP senators have drawn similar Democratic resistance, including the idea of getting the White House to release Bolton’s manuscript for senators to review. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called that proposal “absurd.”
Even before the vote on witnesses occurs, the Senate will spend 16 hours over Wednesday and Thursday engaged in what could be a revealing question-and-answer period, modeled on a procedure followed during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. The senators, who have been forced to remain silently in their seats throughout the eight-day trial, will be able to ask questions of the White House defense team or the House impeachment managers. The questions will have to be submitted in writing and will be read aloud by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is presiding over the trial.
The questions are likely to run the gamut from factual queries to potentially direct challenges aimed at lawyers on either side.
Democrats intend to ask questions about the revelations from Bolton, which White House attorney Jay Sekulow attacked on the Senate floor Tuesday. Without directly disputing Bolton’s claims, Sekulow read statements from Trump, the Justice Department, and a top aide to Vice President Pence denying or disputing them.
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Trump’s team wrapped up its opening arguments, having used about 11 of its allotted 24 hours. House Democrats used about 23 hours in presenting their case last week.
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Senate Republicans huddled in a meeting room debating the issue of witnesses. Although McConnell told colleagues he didn’t yet have the votes to defeat the initial witness vote, leaders feel they’re making progress toward that goal, according to officials familiar with the discussion.
Several Republican senators up for reelection this November and facing tough campaigns — including Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — indicated during the meeting that they were ready to vote against witnesses and proceed to the final vote, according to two people familiar with the discussion who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting.
But in a sign of the turmoil and internal dissent produced by the issue, Republicans floated a variety of ideas, including a suggestion from Graham and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) that the White House turn over the unpublished manuscript of Bolton’s book so senators can read it and assess the need to hear from the former Trump official.
One Republican encouraged Bolton to tell his story publicly, either in a congressional hearing or a media interview. “ ‘John, if you’ve got something to say, I’d rather have you say it sooner rather than later,’ ” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Tuesday, recalling what he said to Bolton in a discussion several weeks ago. Bolton answered by saying he would respond only to a Senate subpoena, Johnson said.
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The finale to Tuesday’s proceedings came so quickly that it took some senators by surprise. After a short break in the early afternoon, Cipollone announced he would be brief, but some senators missed the announcement as they were still returning from their restroom breaks, and many huddled in their respective cloakrooms, grabbing one last glimpse of their cellphones or a quick drink of coffee.
Less than 10 minutes later, as Cipollone closed his binder and announced the defense complete, senators gasped. “Oh my,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) could be heard saying.
The defense rested at 2:54 p.m.
Hearing witnesses would assist in finding the truth but that’s not what Republicans want because the truth is that Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio led a Criminal Conspiracy with his top Officials, Pence, Pompeo, Barr, Perry, and his Bagman Guiliani to Bribe and Extort Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukranian Sovereign Government in return for illegal interference in United States elections that personally benefited UCcBP.
Idiotic literalist text searching does not change the truth or the meaning of words.
The primary reason why Southern United States culture and Spartan culture are so similar is that both societies lived in existential fear their Slaves would rise up and murder them in their sleep.
Which is actually a pretty outstanding idea, that’s why John Brown tried to raid the Harper’s Ferry Army Depot- to steal the weapons and distribute them. It’s also why there’s a Second Amendment because the Southern Slave Holders wanted to be able to use armed Militias to hunt down runaway Slaves. C’mon, we call out the National Guard in Hurricanes. We’re talking Property Damage!
Damn Anarchists.
It is ironic on several levels, though none of them in the classical sense, that West Virginia is trying to steal away counties from Virginia again.
As Virginia’s new Democratic majority ushers through a raft of liberal proposals on issues including gun control and abortion, West Virginia’s governor is making an unusual proposal to disgruntled Virginians: Break away.
Gov. Jim Justice (R) on Tuesday endorsed a plan for conservatives unhappy with the new direction of their state legislature to demand ballot referendums in their cities and counties this November, through which they could express their desire for their county to leave Virginia and join West Virginia instead.
West Virginia was formed when a set of counties did just that during the Civil War, leaving Virginia after it left the Union. Those counties seceded from the secessionist state, forming the new U.S. state of West Virginia.
“West Virginia is an incredible state. … We’ve got great people. We’ve got four incredible seasons,” Justice said in his speech wooing wayward Virginians. “We’re a loving, good people. Faith-based people. People that really know the difference between right and wrong. … If you’re not truly happy where you are, we stand with open arms to take you from Virginia.”
University of Virginia constitutional law professor Richard C. Schragger said a county may leave one state and join another with the majority vote of both states’ legislatures and the U.S. Congress, according to the U.S. Constitution. Schragger predicted that while West Virginia’s legislature might welcome Justice’s proposal, Virginia’s remaining Republican lawmakers would be loath to let conservative counties break away. Virginia’s Democrats would probably oppose the secession also, he said, “as a matter of pride and … a sense of the historic integrity of the state.”
Schragger said the proposal, while constitutional, was unimaginable: “Not in a million years.”
Justice was accompanied during his speech by Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, a large evangelical college in Lynchburg, Va., who laid out details of the plan while Justice spoke in broad strokes about West Virginia’s welcome to all. Even though Lynchburg is about 100 miles from the West Virginia border, Falwell said he would vote for the city to leave Virginia for the purpose of “escaping the barbaric, totalitarian and corrupt Democratic regime in Richmond.”
“The threat from the radical left is real and spreading across the country. We have a rare opportunity to make history in our time by pushing back against tyranny,” Falwell said. He recalled that Kentucky was once part of Virginia and became its own state shortly after the American Revolution, and that West Virginia broke away from Virginia. “I hope history will also record, one day, how Virginia divided once again in our day.”
Falwell also proposed a more extreme alternative, which he said he has floated to “high-level folks in the federal government” but knows is not feasible: disenfranchising an enormous swath of Northern Virginia, by making any area where federal workers or contractors reside part of the District instead of Virginia.
The federal district with no vote in Congress or a state legislature, he said, should include “10 times” more suburban area than just Alexandria and Arlington — which a Republican state legislator recently proposed should be part of the District rather than vote in Virginia, although the jurisdictions form a significant part of Virginia’s tax base. “You have people intended by the founders to be in a federal district and not voting in any state, because they had a conflict of interest, voting in Virginia. That’s really what’s taken control of Virginia over from its residents,” Falwell said.
Virginia House Majority Leader Charniele Herring (D-Alexandria), the first African American and first woman to hold that position, called Falwell’s suggestion “laughable.”
“Individuals in Alexandria and Arlington are just as Virginian,” she wrote in an email, as those in rural counties like Loudoun, Frederick and Clarke. “So are hard-working members of our Federal Government that live in Virginia. Suggestions of giving up parts of our Commonwealth are laughable — our diversity is our strength.”
Virginia Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D), whose district includes Falls Church and parts of Alexandria and Fairfax County, reacted by saying, essentially, good riddance.
“Just when you think you have heard it all,” Saslaw said in a text message. “I am sure there are a fair amount of people who would be delighted with Falwell moving to West Virginia.”
Ironic how? Well, West Virginia is made out of Virginia that did not participate in the War For Slavery (Virginia was really big). Since the Civil Rights Movement and Partisan Realignment along Racist lines as a result of the “Southern Strategy” West Virginia, long a Democratic firewall, has turned bright Red Republican while Rebel Virginia on the other hand has turned a hazy shade of Democratic Blue.
Having campaigned in 2019 on promises to pass gun-control laws, Virginia Democrats are moving forward with legislation to “limit handgun purchases to once a month, ban military-style weapons and silencers, allow localities to ban guns in public spaces and enact ‘red flag’ laws so authorities can temporarily seize weapons.”
Although gun-control measures are favored in the cities and suburbs where most of the state’s residents live, nearly all of Virginia’s counties have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries.” In these counties, local officials have vowed to ignore new restrictions on guns on the grounds that they are unconstitutional (assuming for themselves the power of the judiciary).
On Jan. 14, the West Virginia House of Delegates passed a resolution urging those counties in Virginia to abandon the Old Dominion and join their state, just as the founders of West Virginia did during the Civil War. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. reiterated the message Tuesday during a news conference with Gov. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.).
However, this symbolic resolution of support for Virginia’s counties misinterprets history. West Virginia’s founders launched their own state government to challenge a small but powerful governing elite in Virginia. Their project was to expand democratic participation and challenge the authority of those who held the state hostage to minority interests. Today, it is the gun-control reformers, not the Second Amendment sanctuaries, that are following in the tradition of challenging powerful entrenched interests like the gun lobby to make the voice of the people heard.
Since 1830, western grievances had dominated Virginia politics. At three state constitutional conventions, western advocates mostly failed to eliminate special privileges enjoyed by slaveholders, largely concentrated in eastern Virginia. These advocates, later the founders of West Virginia, were not anti-slavery. They were anti-slaveholder. They thought that government in Virginia was undemocratic, serving eastern slaveholders’ special interests over those of the citizenry.
And they were right that slaveholders held a position of tremendous economic and political power. They benefited from a provision in the state Constitution that taxed slave property at a fraction of market value.
In a form of gerrymandering, Virginia’s legislature was also apportioned to suit slaveholders. Operating under the “mixed basis,” Virginia’s legislative districts were apportioned according to a ratio of white citizens and the value of all property they held. Factoring in property meant that eastern slaveholders, the wealthiest people in the state, received extra representation in the state legislature. A western delegate might represent 1,000 citizens, on average poorer and non-slaveholding, whereas an eastern delegate might represent just 500 citizens by virtue of their immense property of enslaved people. In a literal sense, slaveholders’ wealth earned them a more powerful vote.
Slaveholders argued that those with the most invested in the state deserved the most say in its government, but western reformers denounced the mixed basis as undemocratic. They wanted to replace it by simply using the white basis, or the white population size, to determine districts. Western leaders managed to negotiate the white basis for the lower house in 1850, but the mixed basis held for the Virginia Senate.
Westerners despaired at ever passing legislation if the Senate remained artificially packed with slaveholders. Although relieved at this limited victory, western politicians felt frustrated that they had to cut deals to achieve political equality among voters, which they saw as a nonnegotiable natural right. Western reformers also unsuccessfully campaigned for the secret ballot. They argued that viva voce voting (in which a voter had to publicly proclaim his choice) pressured poorer citizens to vote in lockstep with their wealthier neighbors, from whom they might earn wages, rent land or draw loans.
The regional tension culminated in 1861, when eastern delegates outvoted western ones to bring Virginia into the Confederacy. Richmond mobs then chased the overwhelmingly pro-Union western delegates out of the city. Western reformers could have held their tongues and silently hoped for a Union victory, or they could have fled to the North. Instead, they seized a chance to implement their reforms in a new state.
They were prepared to first simply eliminate slaveholders’ special privileges, but instead adopted gradual emancipation to appease President Abraham Lincoln. Even so, they remained concerned that the wealthy might find ways to disadvantage poorer citizens with less of a voice. Article I of the West Virginia Constitution guaranteed that “Every citizen shall be entitled to equal representation in the Government, and in all apportionments of representation, equality of numbers” would be respected.
Remembering slaveholders’ tax breaks in Virginia, the West Virginia Constitution also mandated that “taxation shall be free and equal throughout the State, and all property, both real and personal, shall be taxed in proportion to its value.”
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These westerners had revolted at tremendous risk to ensure a government that would be responsive to the will of all citizens. These roots are why it is so perplexing that West Virginia would invoke its founding as a rationale to thwart a voter mandate on gun control in 2020.
Today, Virginia’s legislature is doing precisely what West Virginia’s founders wanted it to do in the antebellum era: be responsive to its citizens. At a time when most of Virginia’s voters support each gun-control measure planned by the legislature (86 percent of voters favor background checks, for example), West Virginia’s resolution is tipping the scales in favor of special interests over the people, ultimately doing a disservice to the founders it claims to venerate.
Now you could take this as the Sumter of the Second War but I say- “So what?” Acela baby!
Pretty much to form. Republicans have no defense and nothing to say, they were stupid to waste the time and they are being stupid again today when if they could stop their Showboating and Verbal Diarrhea they could chop 2 days off the schedule which they say they want to do.
Except they’re lying again because Moscow Mitch doesn’t have his votes in a row.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
President George W. Bush warns terrorists still threaten United States; bomb rocks an abortion clinic in Birmingham; “The Raven” is first published; Ty Cobb named hall of famer; Oprah Winfrey is born.
