Trump’s legal team filed its trial brief today. It’s a better written, expanded version of the answer they filed Saturday. Check out these two comments from the brief: “Trump acted properly” when he rejected all subpoenas and requests for information. (p. 37) “No witness with direct knowledge testified that Trump conditioned a presidential meeting on …
A few days ago, Senator Marsha Blackburn Tweeted one of the Republican talking points: As an excuse not to call witnesses, Blackburn says that the “Senate’s job” is to review what the House sends to them from the impeachment inquiry. The problem: That’s not how the Constitution defines the Senate’s job. It’s also not how …
This is the first official statement of Trump’s defense team. You can read it here. It’s the same exact nonsense the House Republicans spouted all through the inquiry. Almost like they all used the same talking points. It’s pure Trump: A rapid, continuous (and exhausting) stream of absurdity and lies. One lie can be managed. …
Note: During the next few weeks, I may do more than one blog post per day. Later today, for example, we will have the House trial brief and the Defense answer to the Articles. I’ll likely do Over the Cliff Notes (name given by a clever Twitter follower) for both. Let’s talk about the difference …
Trump has hired Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr to his defense team. This morning, he tweeted this: The defense seems to be: Trump wasn’t wrong. What’s wrong is the law. Trump can do as he pleases with foreign policy. This effectively obliterates checks and balances and reduces Congress to carrying out the president’s commands. Two …
A Republican talking point is there are no underlying crimes in the Articles of Impeachment. This is from Rep. Mark Meadows: In fact, Democrats have lots of first hand witnesses. The Senators can add Lev Parnas and John Bolton to the list if they want more. In response to the nonsense about no underlying crimes, …
Giuliani’s associate, Lev Parnas, turned a pile of documents over to the House investigators. Last night, the House released the first tranche. Occasionally the text messages are hard to read. (I put too many on a page) You can read the originals here. I updated my timeline with the new documents. If you need a …
[Note: I was working on this when the Parnas Document Dump happened, so I set this aside. I’ll post this now, and then later today post a thread on the Parnas docs. I’m currently doing that work on Twitter. So you’ll get two posts today.] Cynicism is as destructive and dangerous as lying from the …
The morning opened with the news that Trump, after strike that killed Soleimani told associates he was under pressure to deal with Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate In other words, Trump was: Making foreign policy decisions based on personal benefit, and Ordering a military …
Doug Collins says that Democrats are in love with terrorists. Mark Levin says Democrats hate America. Mitch McConnell says he wants to enact the Clinton Senate trial rules. They know these are lies. Spoiler: They’re trying to destroy. The “again” in MAGA signifies reactionist politics (as opposed to conservative politics) Reactionaries want to take us …
