There was some panic today on Twitter when Sec. Pompeo defied Congress and refused to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Sadie asked: No, and creating this kind of panic and expectations is doing a great deal of damage. This is not a criminal trial in which the “defendants” can refuse to turn over evidence and …
Impeachment and Removal is not a Criminal Proceeding. Read More »
MoatSnakeHat said: Part of this is to get the results Trump wants. Trump wants to undermine the findings in the Mueller Report to rehabilitate himself (and Russia!) He also wants undermine factuality by persuading enough people that Ukraine hacked the DNC server. Undermining truth and factuality (controlling the narrative) is what would-be totalitarian leaders do. …
Because they have common goals. Putin would like: Civil War in the U.S. Ukraine blamed for the 2016 DNC hack. U.S. to become a Russian style oligarchy. Trump wants to BE a Russian style oligarch. America’s far right wing has been talking about Civil War for some time. See this Washington Post article. And: Trump’s …
. . . partly because Trump lost control of the narrative. First, let’s be clear on what Trump and Giuliani tried to do. In addition to inviting a foreign country to help sway the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf, Trump (at Russia’s behest) tried to get Ukraine to admit that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked the …
First, a few words about impeachment, then a bit about what to expect in the next few months. Then Q and A. I suspect things will move quickly: The House will vote on Articles of Impeachment by the end of the year, maybe by Thanksgiving A Senate Trial will likely occur in early 2020. A …
All information taken from the Whistleblower Complaint. For purposes of this post, I will assume everything can and will be corroborated. Note: Many of the events described here are easily corroborated by contemporaneous reporting. Timeline: Late 2018: Giuliani spoke via Skype with Shokin (former Ukrainian Prosecutor General). January 2019: Giuliani met Lutsenko ( Ukrainian Prosecutor …
The Zelensky-Trump phone call was released by the White House and is here. In his riveting testimony last February before the House Committee on Oversight, Cohen explained how Trump pulls people in and gets them to lie and cheat for him. Cohen quotations from here. Trump doesn’t order anyone to lie or commit crimes. He’s …
To prepare for what’s coming, here’s brief roundup of my posts on impeachment, followed by questions and my answers. I selected the questions I get most often. Spoiler: The real question right now is whether the GOP will continue to shield Trump, or whether the Biden-Ukraine scandal is the tipping point. To prepare for what’s …
(Spoiler: The Whistleblower Case May Be Their Shot) Ruthie, thank you. I’ve been trying to explain this for a while. Remember when Nancy Pelosi suggested that Trump was trying to goad the House into impeaching him. Chris Hayes suggested the idea was insane. I argued that Trump wanted it all over then, before all the …
Will Trump get away with this latest outrage? [The Whistleblower scandal] Answer: It depends Spoiler: It looks to me like lots of Trump critics are giving the Republican leadership a good reason to continue shielding Trump. “What?” you ask. Stick with me here. I’ll say at the outset that the whistleblower case is exactly what …
