:dubious:
I don’t think that’ll happen.
Thinking of what will happen has become an unreliable metric.
Lawyerly-types on Twitter have been saying this all along. This thread makes the case, for example.
Honestly, what’s the point of fighting for Trump’s financial documents in various courts if they don’t plan on using them? Sure it would be nice to embarrass Trump if the documents show he is worth far less money than he claimed or paid zero taxes for a rather long stint (both of which I wouldn’t bet against) but they’re not just trying to get them for the optics alone, I don’t think.
I’d much rather have the House send the Senate a handful of articles of impeachment on several different charges than just one. That makes it a lot harder for Republicans to talking point their way out of the process and also harder for McConnell to jam it through and be voted on without much testimony or debate.
Thanks for the dope on Qrazytown. 
It’ll be nice one day when they all wander off and fixate on some other nonsense.
I’m actually starting to think that the Chamber of Commerce Republicans are ready to dispose of Trumpelstilskin, he having served his purpose. “Thanks for the tax cut, the judges, and the deregulation … but this tariff stuff really hurts our bottom line. It’s nothing personal, Donnie – it’s just business.” Odd, when my cynicism proves to be the primary source of my optimism … or maybe I’m just not drinking enough beer and watching enough Dancing with the D-List.
It depends on the specifics. You’re right that with a lot of articles, the Republicans can’t counter all of them. But they can focus on a few, distract from the others, and leave the public with the sense that it’s all just a mess. So the House needs to make sure that they are ready and able to defend every article, and most importantly win the public perception doing it.
I think that means you leave off the Stormy Daniels payments, and unfortunately, leave off the obstruction documented in the Mueller report. Those have already been litigated in public. Things like the current election meddling, bribes disguised as empty room bookings by foreign governments, and money laundering are all valid.
In short, don’t limit the articles to Ukraine, but don’t expand them to include everything.
We’ll have to see but, personally, I feel like they’ve already lost it. They’ve got the smoking gun, so far as that goes, and the Republicans aren’t impressed.
Schiff screwed up by trying to do the same thing as he did before, with Russia, and preach to the people. He’s going for quick soundbites that sell a story. That swings the polls for a week or two but, then, everyone is over it and you’ve just succeeded at normalizing a crime because you decided to play games with the accusation rather than treat it like a crime.
Schiff should have focused on getting access to documents and quietly built up a full and complete portfolio of wrongness before doing anything publicly or allowing and public information to go live (let alone do as he likely did and leak the information to the press). This should all have been Trump fighting to keep things under wraps, in the courts. Instead, Schiff is releasing transcripts of partisan cherry-picked text messages, helping to paint the image of a crooked hit job.
He could have tracked down the real transcripts of Trump’s call and the other ones on that classified system. He could have hit us with three scandals at once rather than just the one - and the one at an incomplete state. There was no need for this and no advantage to it.
Pelosi put too much confidence into Schiff’s experience as a prosecutor. If he was a good one, back in the day, he ain’t now.
I, of course, hope that the ball will start moving back in the right direction but if people are nitpicking the meaning of text messages rather than citing criminal law any making it clear why it’s criminal to use government resources for selfish purposes, let alone using them to corrupt the Presidential election, it’s fair to say that this train is off the rails and it probably isn’t going to go back.
My bet is still on Elijah Cummings.
Along similar lines, I would also like to add that Biden ain’t helping himself or anyone with his handling of this. If the man wants to defeat Trump and become President, he needs to come down hard on the concept that “crime is bad”. If his son broke the law, then his son should go to jail. If Biden himself broke the law, he should go to jail. If Joe, Hunter, and Donald all broke the law, all three should be headed to jail. End of story. This isn’t a game of competing to see who can make the other look other most dirty. This is just a group of people who have all had criminal accusations made against them.
The course of dealing with criminal activity is to report them to the FBI. The President can ask Congress to pass a targeted, one-off law that allows the FBI to make public all information about their investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden on this topic.
But, likewise, he should do the same to himself.
If Trump wants to insinuate criminality then he should put up or shut up. Talk is cheap. If he thinks that Biden is corrupt and he knows that he’s clean then it’s all win for Trump.
Biden should throw the gauntlet.
If the Democrats focus on just a few, the response will be “is that all you’ve got??”
If the Democrats load up, the response will be “You are just throwing everything at the wall to see what will stick-how pathetic!”
There is a term I use occasionally for situations like this-“Autowrong”, in which it doesn’t matter what is done or said because the response will be tailored to whatever is said or done to reflect the “wrongness”.
Imho, watch Texas. The GOP is doing some A/B testing with Cruz and Cornyn, and the way one of them flips tells us how the GOP is reacting:
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Cruz is mildly above the fray, not saying much about this issue at all… at least, not in a way which is getting him noticed. He’s slamming Dems, but silent about the issue which is causing impeachment.
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Cornyn is all-in the pro “America is not a sovereign nation anymore” train, going full CT, upping his Trumpiness from a 6.5 to an 11 over the past two weeks.
If one of these guys switch their tune, that may signal the end of any internal GOP debate which may be occurring.
Is it possible that Rudy made more money from Ukrainian interests than Hunter Biden ever did? Seems likely:
(Possible paywall, try incognito mode in your browser)
Rudy has done decades worth of work for Ukrainians that hasn’t been disclosed. Someone should ask Trump to investigate his lawyer.
I’m sure he’ll get his lawyer right on that.
I’m wondering who they will get to play Bill Taylor in the movie.
Federalist Papers, #45:
“GREAT BRITAIN, IF YOU ARE LISTENING, I THINK YOU WILL BE REWARDED MIGHTILY BY THE PRESS IF YOU LOOK INTO JEFFERSON’S PRIVATE LIFE”
But isn’t that pretty much what Mueller and his team did? And that didn’t turn out very well. I thought Schiff et al were trying to do the opposite, move fast and keep to one, or a few, easily understandable offenses so they would actually and finally stick. There’s got to be some way to break through the Trump admin “wall of b.s.” obfuscation machine.
Before reaching congress or the public, the Mueller report was allowed to be filtered through the Trump bullshit machine. I hope House Dems can at least prevent anything similar from happening here.
Is Bill Taylor the whistleblower?
Sadly I think that in the future, you’ll be posting:
“Well, I didn’t think THAT would happen.”
Unfortunately it seems so is the truth.
I’d rather be dead by my own hand than that.
What I am saying is that, in my opinion, I would need to know that there were no grounds for an investigation of the Bidens/Burisma before I convict the President of abusing his authority by pressuring Ukraine (and now China) to investigate the Bidens/Burisma.
This is what it would take to convince me on this one count, and furthermore I think at least some Republican senators agree with me. I don’t see why it’s so controversial, this is something that can definitely be resolved by a House inquiry. I don’t see what the problem is when I condition legal judgement on the presence or absence of relevant evidence, unless you want to argue that to actually investigate the Bidens/Burisma and to ask foreign countries to help is an abuse of power regardless of the reasons.
Well, I disagree with you. Democrats should convince Republicans because they need the Republican vote to convict. That is, if conviction is a goal.
If Democrats simply want to impeach and have no intention of seeing it through, that would be grandstanding in my opinion. I like to expect more from the Democratic party.
~Max