The Trump Impeachment Inquiry

[silenus]

My Congressmonkey is a hardline Tea-Partier who is retiring after this term. He already has me down as a nut-ball leftist based on my previous communications with his office. I doubt he’ll be much help here.

[JohnT]

Naw, don’t call others. But call Nancy @ times and tell her team you support the fight. It’s just the polite thing to do.

[bobot]

?House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel of New York, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California, and Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings of Maryland wrote a letter demanding Pompeo turn over documents related to Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“The subpoenaed documents shall be part of the impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees," they wrote, setting a deadline of Oct. 4 for Pompeo to produce the documents. “Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry.”

Pompeo subpoenaed by House Democrats over Trump-Ukraine scandal

[bobot]

Software won’t allow edit.
The ? at the beginning should be a "

[KidCharlemagne]

1. Under no circumstances will Trump resign
2. Unless there is an absolutely unequivocal smoking gun (and I never cease to be amazed at what the Republicans are willing to consider equivocal) the Republicans will absolutely not defect because Trump’s base won’t defect.

[HMS_Irruncible]

@Aspenglow

No way he resigns. As someone else upthread (apologies for not recalling who) pointed out, there will be pardon-proof state arrest warrants awaiting him even if Pence decides to sacrifice his entire political future (such as it is) and pardon him for the federal crimes.

I agree there’s no way he resigns, and for those same reasons, it’s very dangerous for him to even hold the 2020 elections. I also don’t see him running away either.

What keeps me up at night is… and I’ve said it elsewhere… whatever Trump’s other shortcomings, the man is a wizard at corrupting people (and/or identifying corrupt allies). When I look at how McConnell, Barr, Graham have all fallen in line to lick his boots, when I look at the conservative-packed SCOTUS, if I am Trump then I am thinking there must be a way to mobilize his toadies to delay, disrupt, or invalidate the 2020 election.

More than half my predictions fall flat, but here’s another one - should Trump lose, we’ll be litigating the outcome of the 2020 election well into the spring of 2021. I hope I’m wrong (on the shorter side, not the longer).

[silenus]

Now Trump is meeting with the NRA to try to deal with his legal problems over impeachment. I wonder how that will work out for him.

[bobot]

For a so-called rich dude, he sure begs for financial help a lot.

[HMS_Irruncible]

@silenus

Now Trump is meeting with the NRA to try to deal with his legal problems over impeachment. I wonder how that will work out for him.

Oh. Well, the NRA is definitely flush with cash and not embroiled in chaotic mismanagement scandals, so this is indeed a very canny move.

[Jack_Batty]

… in return for the support, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation …

.

NRA ain’t afraid of no Quid Pro Fucking Quo.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

OMFG

:eek:

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Oh, by the way… did y’all see this yet?

For Ukraine help, Giuliani turned to unlikely Florida fixers

When President Donald Trump wanted Ukrainian authorities to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden, Rudy Giuliani turned to a pair of Soviet-born business partners from Florida who made more than a half-million dollars in political donations to Republicans while facing lawsuits from disgruntled investors over unpaid debts.

Documents show Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman used wire transfers from a company they controlled to make a $325,000 donation to a Trump-allied political action committee in 2018. That was on top of $100,000 in earlier donations to Trump and GOP candidates that helped the relatively unknown entrepreneurs quickly gain access to the highest levels of the Republican Party — including face-to-face meetings with the president at the White House and Mar-a-Lago.

The article details the donations and when they were made. It then details some of the meetings they had with Giuliani, Don Jr. and then-Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko.

And then it mentions this:

Campaign finance watchdogs first raised concerns about the source of the $325,000 donation to America First Action, a political action committee supporting Trump’s re-election, shortly after it was first disclosed last year.

The May 2018, donation, among the largest the committee received that quarter, was reported to have been made by Global Energy Producers LCC. Other campaign finance disclosures list Parnas as the CEO of the company and Fruman as president.

But there is little public evidence that Global Energy Producers was ever a thriving enterprise that could generate the income to account for its outsized political giving. The company has no listed office address or phone number, no announced deals or contracts, and a bare bones one-page website that features only a countdown clock that long ago ticked down to zeros.

Details of the source of the funds only emerged earlier this year as part of a long-running, unrelated lawsuit involving the estate of a Navy veteran from New York who accused Parnas of defrauding him out of nearly half a million dollars in loans and investments in a Hollywood movie project that turned out to be a mirage.

Then there is more about the lawsuit.

Sure sounds like Trump took laundered Russian money. And then sought help from those same people. Just like he’s doing with the NRA right now, too. I mean, we all know the NRA is laundering Russian money, right? That hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice, has it?

[Alessan]

@Euphonious_Polemic

I wonder what the odds are of Trump jetting off to Russia, Saudi Arabia or Israel.

Yeah, no … Israel has an independent judiciary and an extradition agreement with the United States. Even if Netanyahu is still in power when Trump arrives, there is nothing he can do to keep him here.

[Lance_Turbo]

Congressman Mark Amodei (R - NV) is the first Republican to support impeachment inquiry.

Note: Amodei won his seat in 2018 by 16.4 points (58.2% to 41.8%).

[Lance_Turbo]

To avoid confusion…

Justin Amash (I - MI) already supported the impeachment inquiry. He was a Republican a couple months ago but left the party in July 2019.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

Looks like Giuliani is prepared to refuse to testify:

“I consider them a joke. A sad joke. They have no legitimacy. I would think of challenging their subpoena on the grounds that they’re not a legitimate committee,” Giuliani said.

Question; Can Giuliani reasonably claim that he is acting as Trump’s personal lawyer when he does work that has nothing whatsoever to do with Trump business?

Prediction: Giuliani will go to jail. Whether or not Trump throws him under the bus - he’s going to spend some quality prison time in the not too distant future.

[D_Anconia]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

Congresspeople don’t give much credence to messages from people outside their district, do they?

I don’t think they do. I don’t know what happens with phone calls, but for online messages, they ask for your address/zip code, presumably to determine if you’re in their district.

[iiandyiiii]

@Lance_Turbo

Congressman Mark Amodei (R - NV) is the first Republican to support impeachment inquiry.

Note: Amodei won his seat in 2018 by 16.4 points (58.2% to 41.8%).

That’s absolutely enormous news, IMO. Just amazing that this happened so fast. Will he be the first of many? Stay tuned!

[Lance_Turbo]

@iiandyiiii

That’s absolutely enormous news, IMO. Just amazing that this happened so fast. Will he be the first of many? Stay tuned!

Keep in mind that he supports letting the impeachment process play out. He has not said that would vote to impeach.

Reporter: Can you envision a scenario where you would support impeachment?
Amodei: Well if there were facts that support it, of course I would.

[Dr.Colossus]

Hey gang! Long time no see. The last few days have driven back to the forum to lurk and learn.

I was hoping someone could help outline some details of how impeachment works for a dumb-dumb like me.

For example:

-Is the official impeachment underway? Or does the “impeachment inquiry” eventually result in a floor vote for ACTUAL impeachment?

-Are subpoenas under an impeachment inquiry more enforceable than all the gobs of subpoenas the GOP have laughed at and ignored so far?

I saw that Dems in charge are “considering” enacting a “long-dormant rule allowing them to jail or fine people who disobey subpoenas.” Is the ability to jail uncooperative witnesses NOT inherent? I thought at some point the Sergeant at Arms would bring out that Mace of Liberty and start smacking heads at some point. When’s that going to happen?

-What is to stop anyone (such as Pompeo) to simply not comply? What recourse is there?

-What happens if this is a belly-flop? Will Dems have hamstrung or invalidated any future investigations if this all turns out to be not entirely impeachable?

-Will they have the ability to subpoena the classified servers?

-Can Trump and Co just consider everything the Dems ask for as “privileged” or “classified?”

I see they are already playing the “it was on the classified server because we classified it.” What’s to stop them from classifying everything and shield it from investigation? (I keep hearing Trump has ultimate say-so over what’s classified or not after he unilaterally “declassified” his satellite twit-pic).

I’m sorry to be so ignorant but I was very young when Clinton was impeached, so I am not familiar with the ins and outs of all this. I’m particularly confused because of the discrepancies between Reps yelling “if you want to impeach, put it to a floor vote” vs an impeachment inquiry vs an “official” impeachment inquiry.

Thanks all. Good to be back.