That said, I’m comfortable to claim from the chapter headers that those remaining parts wouldn’t stand Constitutional scrutiny.
This is contentious. What they’re trying to argue is not contentious - basically that Congress has no power of oversight, that the President can do anything he wants, that the President isn’t being accused of impeachable offenses, and impeachment is unconstitutional - and that’s unmitigated nonsense.
Granted, the second one isn’t complete complete nonsense, but given the silliness of most of their Constitutional arguments which I have seen to date, I’m going to pan their version on simple style points, sight unseen.
this will be like the OJ trial except shorter and we know the outcome. On second thought we thought we knew the outcome of the OJ trial but we were wrong.
There’s the theory that the Senate is something akin to a trial jury, and there’s another theory that the Senate is there to provide a political trial with Senators representing the will of their constituents.
Many Republicans have already publicly declared that they have zero intention of serving as unbiased jurors, that they are acting purely in a political capacity. If that’s the case then none of these jury-tainting arguments matter. They should be declaring their intent on TV, we should be feeding back our opinions to them, we should watch the proceedings on TV to be held accountable for what we’ve asked them to do.
Can’t have it both ways. You’re either bound by the rules and protections of an impartial juror, or else you owe us full transparency and accountability for whatever political exercise you intend to conduct.
Not sure why Trump is hiring big name high dollar lawyers. He could choose random lawyers from all across the US and the outcome would be the same. Or random people who are not lawyers
I fully agree with Josh. Trump is going to be acquitted, so the real object of this proceeding, from the Dems’ POV, should be to put the GOP Senators on trial in the court of public opinion.
For those GOP Senators who are up for re-election (or up for election, in McSally’s case) this fall who might be vulnerable, make sure their constituents know how crazy Mitch’s rules are, and that they voted for them; make sure their constituents know that they voted against allowing witnesses; make sure their constituents know that they repeatedly voted to turn the presiding Chief Justice into a figurehead and a puppet of Mitch McConnell.
And make sure their constituents know now that that’s how they’re likely to roll, so they can see it happening in real time.
Do you honestly think they’re going to get paid? They know he’s a deadbeat who will stiff them but they want to play on the big stage so they work for free. Yeah, we know the outcome is preordained so Ernest T Bass could present the case and still win.
I’ve moved from having the faintest hope of acquittal to hoping the stench of the “trial” moves the needle on some of the close Senate races so that next year at this time Chuck Schumer is Majority Leader.
McConnell: We’re going to read out my rules, then debate then for two hours. Schumer will offer amendments, then we’ll debate them for two hours. Then we’ll take a break.
Then we’ll hold a vote to ignore Schumer.
Paraphrased. He didn’t say wil hold a vote on the resolutions Schumer offers. He said well vote to table any resolutions Schumer offers.
They are the fox crew. tv personalities never go away or lose. donnie is in fantasy land and thinks that dershowitz can’t be dislodged from his intellectual perch (because it never happens on tv) and so he will be safe. He is basing his defense on how he feels after a good fox hit by one of his supporters, so his defense will have to be put on by those supporters.
Schiff is making an elaborate logical argument for witnesses and documents. But, his argument is not the issue. The only issue is what action will ensure that first the Senate and second the Presidency remain under Republican control after 2020. Unless Trump is an asset in achieving those goals, he needs to be removed. This is the last chance for the Republicans to take control, dump Trump and blame the Dems.
My local ABC news just interrupted the coverage for local news. I sent them a message on Facebook and asked them if they were just trying to cover up Trump’s crimes so we can’t see what is happening, and they assured me, Oh, I can watch it on their website. So I switched over to NBC.
I noticed that NBC is labeling Individual 1’s lawyers as White House defense. No, they are Individual 1’s defense, they don’t work for the White House.
One of them does. Pat Cipillone, White House lawyer. The same lawyer that several administration officials went to in order to voice their concerns about the Ukraine matter. He told then he’d look into it and told then not to talk about it.
They voted down the first amendment to call for documents and witnesses before they finish presenting arguments on a straight party line with no defectors.
