The House Judiciary officially opened up the impeachment probe today arguing in a new filing that future requests for information, including Mueller grand jury information, falls under the disclosure exception for a “judicial proceeding” because the committee is officially probing whether to proceed with impeachment.
It has started. Nancy signed off on the language, and all future requests by the JC can now be directed as part of their Constitutional duty of checks, balances, and impeachments.
If they do it, this is the right way to do it, IMO. Don’t make it a big spectacle – make it much more about paperwork and court filings than televised hearings.
Running in tandem, I’m wondering what’s going on the intel side of things. All those redacted pages that they can see, but we can’t. And they seem all over solemn and quiet compared to the Goober Gomert and Nonesuch Nunes we were seeing. Did they see something that made them so subdued and sober? Might that have something to do with why it seems so many Dems are climbing on the train?
Asymmetric information war: Trump and Barr are feeding information to ‘whoever they want’
Daily Kos
OK, this is Daily Kos Some reluctance with using such a decidedly partisan site, my people are human too. The video clip from Fox Gnaws is supplied. You can listen here:
Not good. Would be comforting to think that friend asahi is channeling his inner Eeyore. Sure don’t look like it.
I ask myself, if I were in Trump’s shoes, what would I do? I would turn it into a spectacle. I would say “You wanna impeachment? Then impeach me. Let’s get it on.” I would aim to attack and pressure the House Democrats. Most of the country’s already moved on from the Mueller investigation, which is presumably what the articles of impeachment would be based on. So I would probably be tweeting about it and talking it up in interviews incessantly.
This idea that we can start impeachment hearings and somehow keep it low profile while calling them impeachment proceedings seems really dangerously naive to me. People are operating on the assumption that Trump wants to keep impeachment out of sight, but I don’t see it that way. There’s no way to keep impeachment low-profile - because it’s fucking impeachment. If I were Trump - and obviously I’m not - I would accept that impeachment is going to be the talk of the town, and indeed the talk of the country. And I would enlist my House allies to put pressure the Democrats move faster than they want to move. And if the economy goes down, if something bad happens, I’d have them blame Democrats for “creating a distraction” over a “fake” investigation. That’s obviously not how I see it, but that’s how I would react if I were Trump. He could put democrats on the defensive - with impeachment. If you think Democrats look like pussies now, it could get even worse. They could look like divided, confused, unfocused, squabbling, identity politicking pussies who are talking about everything except what the voters in this country think matters to them.
This is his strategy-- to take over the agenda and dominate. To make the fight serve HIS aims and goals. Smart people (like Nancy Pelosi) have the intestinal fortitude to resist this and keep control of their side of the fight.
Thump LOVES a fight. He jumps into the pit and beckons-- actually *dares *those who started the fight to jump in with him and go a few rounds. Just like the trolls here. Most people can’t resist that, especially when insults are involved. Grownups OTOH shrug, walk away, and fight only on their own ground and their own terms. They refuse the bait.
I think **asahi *is right: thump will try to co-opt this and I only hope the committee can resist and go on about their “boring but important” business.
I do not think it is an original observation that if all the breaking stories from March to September 2017 were instead revealed through the Mueller report, the political situation for Individual-1 would be very different.
“Trump tower meeting? ‘I Love It?’ Firing Comey like that? Manafort selling campaign data? Holy fucking shit, and that’s just 12 pages! How long is this thing? Fuck, we gotta get rid of this guy.”
What happens when this number reaches 118? This number would mean that a majority of the House Democratic Caucus have positioned themselves against the party’s/Pelosi’s position on impeachment/an impeachment inquiry.
Personally, I think impeachment is going to happen.
Given such numbers would most likely reflect an equal proportion of the voting population, I imagine Granny Nancy would, reluctantly, bend to the people’s will. With grave reservations, no doubt, they would examine the questions of where to dig the hole, and selecting an appropriate headstone.
I saw this last night. He makes the case beautifully. And also about how the Democrats need a person people can’t wait to go the polls for. As he said about voting for Obama, “I can’t believe we’re gonna do this today”.
So, he’d rather have the publicity and something to make a movie about, rather than actually getting trump out of office. He’d rather see another four years of trump, then?
Remember, Mitch will see to it there there will be no trail. Fox will see to it that the hearings are misrepresented to the MAGA folks. Very few people will stay glued to match it in Cspan and the ones that do have already made up their mind. It will be a totally pointless show hearing.
Moore offers a non-D.C. perspective. As he points out earlier in the linked video, being “an angry white guy, over the age of 50, [with] a high school education”, means that, in Moore’s own words, “I’m his [Trump’s] base”. Moore also predicted, against most people’s expectations, that Trump was going to win in 2016. So I think his views are worth listening to.
A vote was held in the house a couple of short weeks ago on impeachment proceedings. 90 Democrats voted to impeach. The resolution was tabled (failed). Cut to the Mueller testimony and a dozen Democrats joined the pro-impeachment side and numbers appear to be growing. My questions is this: Did these new dozen Democrats not bother reading the report? Did they learn something they didn’t know before? What about Mueller’s testimony compelled them to switch?
My point is this: Every Republican, with the exception of one or two, are lined up and bent over in front of Trump regardless of what he says or does. There is virtually zero dissent in the ranks. Democrats, for all their justified outrage, and preponderance of evidence, can’t seem to all get on the same page and present a united front. It’s fucking amateur hour. That’s why Republicans and Trump get their way every fucking time. Because Democrats are a useless bunch of prevaricating, hand wringing, mealy-mouthed (with a few exceptions), ineffectual fucking wankers.