Sure, the defense theory is that the timing of the whistleblower and related press is a complete coincidence, it had nothing to do with Mr. Trump’s decision to release the hold, end of story.
~Max
I
Its a show, point they are trying to make is that its all trivia and insignificant. Which works as long as you don’t listen. Because Schiff and Co. made a case that is solid, verified and testified. Perhaps one can disagree, but no reasoning mind would dismiss it out of hand, too many documents, too many reliable witnesses.
They are trying to tamp down and undermine the prevailing sentiment among voters that yeah, they do want the facts, they do want to know. And if this contempt backfires, this will make it a whole lot worse.
“Oh, your Senator? Yours didn’t listen, he already made up his mind. Sure, swore he wouldn’t, did anyway.”
Mr. Trump wasn’t the one that went to Ukraine to play detective, so could you explain what you mean when you write “what he did”?
Sage Rat had originally argued that Mr. Trump’s actions were a dereliction of his duties and thus unconstitutional, because Mr. Trump is not a law enforcement officer, and I assume Sage Rat’s argument is that Mr. Trump’s actions would only have been constitutional if he were a law enforcement officer. It is still not clear which particular actions we are talking about, and thus it is unclear if the defense theory addresses this.
I can only guess that you two think only law enforcement officers can request a foreign nation to investigate something. But law enforcement officers work for the president, and foreign law enforcement officers work for the foreign president, so I see no reason that our president and their president can’t talk to eachother about the work of their respective underlings, or to arrange some sort of cooperation.
~Max
I’m not a royalist, because not only do I prefer elections to monarchy, I dislike our current president.
~Max
Nope, sorry. I found something about Guatemala in '18 but it looks like that was in response to the migrant caravan, not actually corruption.
~Max
John Roberts must be the most bored man on the planet.
I want to know how my senator is behaving. My state’s one of those that’s been gerrymandered into a red state despite the actual population makeup. My senator often shows up on TV spouting nonsense. I’d like to be able to call him out if he can’t even sit still and listen for a few hours at a time and pretend that all this matters.
Chain of command is mandatory in orgs like LE and the military for obvious reasons. Sometimes you even get “topped” for violating it, depending on the theater of the violation. It has to do with protocol: both going up the chain and going down.
It was not appropraite if he is sandbagging his own foreign office about it, and holding up our money.
So the WB is only in this as an excuse about the date of disbursement? No they had big plans for him. He was a bad person. Part of a plan.
But you are giving him the biggest benefit of the doubt possible on each issue, and then exceeding it. That sounds royalist or even trumpist.
He is a king who says stuff and then minions rationalize it, or make it into a grid of unreality. Why?
I’m pretty sure you don’t have a real job. “Libertarian hacker”?
Roberts has listened (on the 21st) to members of Trump’s defense team speaking outright lies.
https://www.thenation.com/article/cipollone-impeachment-lies/
In addition to the blatant lying, Roberts is also witnessing the Senators’ contempt for the ‘stay silent’ instructions read out by the Sergeant at Arms each day. (They may not be gabbing in the chamber, but they’re gabbing plenty outside, including giving FoxNews interviews.) Plus he gets to watch them get up and leave, or if seated, play with fidget spinners or work crossword puzzles.
So I’m guessing that Roberts is not so much bored, as he is disgusted. Imagine anyone conducting themselves this way in a Supreme Court oral-argument session!
Besides, even if it’s not being entered as evidence into this trial - we know that Rudy Guliani, who was instrumental in this off-the-books investigation, has always specifically claimed he was working for the President in a personal capacity. And that’s in documented in contemporaneous writings, although I guess we don’t know if they’ll be able to admit those documents.
And I don’t think private citizen Donald Trump has any more authority to ask Ukraine for a favor than private citizen Max S. or private citizen Ann Hedonia does.
Go check out his Twitter account. If it’s like my senator’s account, people that are watching will notice him being inattentive or leaving the room, and post it and call him out. And they’ll also notice when he tweets when he should be listening.
And you can scold him and blow off some steam while you’re there. It makes always me feel a little better.
ETA: I’m a little confused. I know they gerrymander house seats, but how do you gerrymander a Senate seat? Doesn’t each state get two that serve the entire state?
Sorry, Ann, but under the “idiot king” doctrine if there is any exculpatory explanation for anything he ever did, you need to prove that he was not thinking about it (at the time you are trying to demonstrate his crime occurred). Thanks for trying. Good luck in the future.
Thinking about it, I think that the strongest argument that the Democrats could and should make is to the Republicans about the result if they vote to back Trump.
If you help a murderer to hide the body, you’re complicit. That murderer knows that you did it. He holds that over you.
Today, to at least some extent, the Senate holds control over Donald Trump.
After this trial, they will not. He will own them. And not only will he own them, they will have set the precedent of zero compliance with Congress and okayed it, doubling up on the damage.
If they take this path, they aren’t failing to punish Donald Trump for being the corrupt moron that he is, they’re giving him the keys to the kingdom. And he’ll still be that same corrupt moron. Every Republican senator is choosing to slit his own throat, and to do it with a knife carved out of frozen feces.
So, now the Republicans embark on a point by point rebuttal, refuting all the witnesses, documents, etc? Or do they just issue a Declaration of Nunh-UH and call it a day?
I’m guessing it will be like the Kavanaugh hearing but longer. Just one big primal scream aimed at whipping the base up into a frenzy.
I would expect that they’ll repeat what they wrote.
To summarize: They’ll assert a reality that uses cherry-picked facts, presented out of context, which are convenient to them and completely ignore everything else. Any facts which are inconvenient or damning do not exist.
It is the Trump mantra. Assert the reality you desire and when the little kid steps up to point out the emperor’s nudity, the emperor ignores him and everyone else ignores him since it’s not like they didn’t all already know.