Yeah, I’m not seeing a difference. It’d be like debating whether Nixon decided to bug his opponents or one of his staffers gave him the idea. It’s trivial.
I’m completely willing to accept that Rudy is whispering nutty conspiracy theories in Donald’s ear, and Trump laps them up, because in his addled brain they should be true since they are to his advantage. And I also bet that Putin is confirming similar nonsense when he and Trump surreptitiously speak, in part because Russia is responsible for some of the misinformation.
I just don’t get the “it’s not impeachable” defense at all. He cheated in the 2020 election. If you cheat in an election, you don’t get to say that we should all have to rely on the tainted election to decide your fate.
Apparently nothing that happens in the 18 months before an election – even if it’s an effort to cheat in that election – counts anymore. See: Merrick Garland.
Having glanced at it, Nunes seems to have been smart enough, this time around, to let someone smarter than himself do most of the writing.
But, on the whole, it seems to be 110 pages of denial. I’ll leave it to someone else to hunt through it for something like evidence of innocence. My feeling is like that’s liable to be an effort of futility.
I haven’t read it but as I understand it the Republican strategy is to claim that he had legitimate concerns that the Ukraine was corrupt. Never mind that all of his actions and words were more about finding out if the bidens were corrupt. That’s their story and they’re evidently going to stick to it.
A) The Fed circuit judge says, nope: you have to respond to the subpoena, like right now.
B) The Fed appeals court has put the case on “administrative hold”, arguments scheduled for Jan 3.
Does that mean that McGahn must testify now, or has the can been kicked to Jan 3? It’s two different courts.
IANAL, so I could be wrong, but my reading of it is something along the lines of, DOJ’s arguments are so weak and unlikely to succeed on appeal that McGahn has to testify NOW. Part of the reasoning seems to be that since he already testified under oath for Mueller there is little or no harm that can happen if he appears before a congressional committee exercising their constitutional investigative authority.
The entire opinion seems to me a big slap down to Barr and pretty much says the idea of all encompassing immunity for the executive is bullshit.
I await input from any of our lawyers to correct me if I have this wrong.
Sit back and realize that the Republican party’s actual defense is that Trump was so singularly concerned about Ukrainian corruption that he enlisted the Ukrainian government to investigate corruption in the United States. In what world does this make any sense?
I’m not a smart man, and not a Constitutional scholar by any means, but I don’t think Reich is correct about that “in cases of impeachment” clause. I think it means a president can’t pardon to prevent an impeachment, not that impeachment is some magical button that makes those “unpardonable offenses.”
I could be wrong, but that’s how I always read that.
So it appears the President doesn’t understand his trial in the Senate will be run by House Democrats acting as the prosecutors. Moscow Mitch won’t be doing anything other than acting as a juror.
