Michael Steele, former chairman of the GOP:
“Dude! You realize she’s testifying LIVE?! Amb. Yovanovitch will respond to this tweet…yup, there it is. You just made her case of intimidation. Is no one in the room with you?”
sps49sd, can you directly respond to these responses to you above? In my mind, the really tear apart the point you made, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
Anyway, to the posters here in general, do you think those tweets would actually lead to an additional witness tampering or intimidation charge? Because that would be awesome.
I think it may as it was so public.
Josh Marshall makes the argument that the request for such an investigation was itself the essence of corruption. See post #4631.
Here’s the actual tweet:
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.
Asinine, childish and wildly inappropriate, absolutely, but I’m not seeing the intimidation. Unless merely speaking publicly about someone while they’re testifying is automatically (in a legal sense) considered intimidation.
I think we’re well past the point of pretending to be shocked by anything president fucking moron did, or is likely to do next.
Schiff said it was intimidation. And it was, obviously. This is specifically the very reason why the State Department chose not to issues a statement in her support: that if they had done so, Yovanovitch was in danger of damaging tweets from the President which would undermine the State Department’s letter of support.
>My understanding- and I’m sure 6+ Dopers will correct any misapprehension- is there is a concern that Schiff held discussions with the whistleblower and then denied it. Also, the identity could help settle whether the person actually heard anything or is repeating what others have said.
Reuters says an unnamed source corroborates Schiff? Oh goody.
Factcheck.org and the WaPo disgree.
And your “everything… has been confirmed” is
- bullshit
- unrelated to whether they heard anything directly.
Nah, that was locker-room talk. And he was just kidding around. He doesn’t even know the woman. She’s nasty.
Ken Starr on Fox:
‘“The president was not advised by counsel in deciding to do this tweet. Extraordinarily poor judgment… Obviously this was quite injurious.”’
https://twitter.com/poniewozik/status/1195369929811406855?s=20
I thought she was riveting. And compelling. And fucking brilliant. It was radio, so I don’t know if there were any visual special effects. Like bears balancing plates on sticks or something.
My bold.
In fairness, he was probably on the toidy. 
“Your Honor, as proof that my client couldn’t possibly have robbed that bank, here is video of him entering the same bank the week prior and not robbing it.”
One of the best things about my daily news summary email from the NY Times, is that they recap the previous night’s late night TV hosts best moments. And last night, they all jumped on the “pizzazz” argument. To paraphrase: “what is this…an impeachment inquiry, or an episode of Dance Moms?” or: “impeachment hearings are like family reunions. If they’re sexy, something’s gone horribly wrong.”
No, the “concern” among the GOP is that their president is well on his way to being impeached. They are desperately throwing anything and everything against the wall to see if they can find anything for their base to latch onto to disregard the entire process. Schiff does not matter. He is not the source of any facts. He is simply presenting those facts that are well corroborated. The GOP is finding it hard to directly discredit these witnesses or the facts that have been established, so the only move left is to try to attack the process and gum up the works with bullshit.
Hard to say, given that he regularly does this to everyone he has any disagreement with, I doubt the intention is to sway her testimony. Is “I’m going to kill you and your family” a prosecutable death threat if you make it 50 times a day to anyone who even bumps against you on the street.
Fucker can’t help himself. Intimidate and insult a witness while she’s on the stand. He’s all class, except for the C and the L.
Yes, and unfortunately the world has a pretty good idea of what Trump considers a Letter to Penthouse.
On the other hand, I think the Republicans will try to use the call the establish that there was an open invitation from Trump for Zelensky to visit the WH so it couldn’t possibly be used as leverage. But I like your version better
Apparently the White House didn’t check their own story before releasing this transcript. The readout from the transcript previously stated that Ukrainian corruption was the topic of the call, and there is absolutely no mention of that in this “transcript”.
I disagree. I think if you occupy a position of ultimate duty, trust and authority, you have a responsibility to avoid making statements that can inflame the passions of others and could cause them to harm the object of your displeasure. To do otherwise is a classic abuse of power.
If the rebuttal argument is that Trump suffers from a lack of impulse control so severe that he just can’t help himself, well… that’s an indictment on the sad state of Republicans who consider him to be presidential material. It should be repudiated in full. There has never been a person less qualified or suited to hold the office he currently occupies.
Sorry to keep picking at this, but how is it “obviously” intimidation? It’s for sure a clumsy, wildly inappropriate attempt to *discredit *the witness, but it’s not like he’s saying “She better shut up if she knows what’s good for her.”
Unless, as I said before, any communications like this are legally considered intimidation.
Don’t get me wrong – if this is in fact an impeachable offense all by itself, I hope they impeach him for it and hope the charges stick. I just want to understand the legalities of the offense.