Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roma_Victrix
They did, did they? Which clear evidence is that again? Refresh my memory. Name specifics, please.
In either case, it is undeniable that the military aid was withheld from Ukraine for months on end. Even the Trump White House tacitly admitted to this, with the open public admission of it last month by Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.
I watched the circus in its entirety, including the aggrandizing introduction of the Democrats "witnesses" and their plaintive cries of impartiality. It was clear that they were there because they disagreed with Trump's policy and that they thought they should be the ones making foreign policy decisions based on their experience and superior intellect. Sadly, for them, Their job is not to make policy, but to implement the President's foreign policy objectives. If they had a problem with carrying them out they should have resigned.
For the record, the military aid was not held up for months, it was 55 days and the reason was because there was an election in Ukraine and other issues at the time.
As to Acting Ambassador Bill Taylor's assertion that he was certain that the phone call was based on a quid pro quo demand by Trump: it was hearsay and an assumption on his part. He did not hear the phone call and both before and after it he admitted that in his meetings with the Ukrainians they told him every thing was fine. In fact, the Ukrainians did not find out that the aid had been held up until August 29th. They weren't even scheduled to receive the aid until the end of September, but actually received it early.
It was pointed out the in the past two years that Trump had been far more helpful to them than Obama ever was. In regards to the aid, these things don't just happen, the deliveries and subsequent depletion of our own reserve supply has to be taken into effect. that is the reason they are scheduled over a year or two in advance in many cases. What did you think? Were you under the assumption that the anti tank rockets would be pulled off the shelf and sent there overnight. With the rocket attacks on the Saudi oil complexes there were plenty of reasons to insure that our own supply needs should be insured first.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roma_Victrix
That example is kind of extraordinary, isn't it? Kennedy's back channel was used to avert a literal nuclear apocalypse, mutually assured destruction, and laying waste to civilization itself. Meanwhile, in the example we have right now, why did Trump seem to desperately need Zelensky to publicly announce investigations into the Bidens and Burisma? How on Earth is that comparable to something as grave as a nuclear missile crisis? You're reaching here pretty hard, I must say. :surprise:
It isn't extraordinary. In that case the Russians were under the impression that Kennedy was spineless. Kennedy knew that the Russians would take Hammer at his word when he said Kennedy meant business. They did and did not try to break the blockade. If Kennedy had used the policy community there would have been a good chance of a leak because virtually everyone in that community disagreed with his decision.
On the public announcement issue: it is based on hearsay, not fact.
These back channels are often used by Presidents in order to prevent leaks or to send a message. Trump sent Giuliani because he had a reputation for being tough on crime and corruption. He was just the man to send to send a message that Trump meant business on the issue of cutting down on the corruption in Ukraine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roma_Victrix
That's the funniest part about all of this, if any of it can be found to be amusing. Trump had his sights on the wrong guy. Biden is already fading and his financial war chest is small compared to that of Bernie Sanders, who has by far the largest pool of individual donors among any 2020 Democratic candidate.
HaHaHa! See Gaiden's comment below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gaidin
It should be noted, you're missing the domino effect. Every Senator in the race, including Sanders, will not be able to actively campaign, for being forced to be inside the beltway 6 days a week for what some are taking a rough guess would be 4-8 weeks should the House manage to vote this through. Biden is one of the two high polling candidates that would be able to still keep his campaign moving in a worthwhile fashion. The other being Buttigieg.
A rather astute assessment.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
I’m still wondering. Why Ukraine, and not the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? Surely our own legal system could have handled this.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Well, delicacies like this have been delivered before by far brighter US-Presidents. I wonder if the impeachment of the Orange changes much about it.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
“The way [law and order] tends to devolve is when [Democrats] claim they are protecting the rule of law by following the rule of law, and then [Republicans] claim that following the rule of law is itself undermining democracy. Kevin McCarthy is articulating the latter position. The only defense [of Trump] he can offer is that it is somehow, nonspecifically illegitimate or undemocratic to investigate the President. Whether you subscribe to an originalist or a progressive reading of the Constitution, there is no plausible, legally valid interpretation of the Constitution that says there’s anything improper about the way this investigation has been unfolding. This is subject to Senate and House rules, and they have been followed.”
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Fortunately you Northern Americans can only be tortured with an embarrassing fool like Trump twice. Squeeze out the orange, unhinge the unhinged, i do not care. Get rid of that individual as soon as you can.
And then take two steps back and have a closer look.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
I'm telling myself: go ahead, be cynical. I just can't resist...Biden is the favorite child of the right wing faction of the Democratic party. I wonder what would happen if Sanders was called Biden. Let' suppose that Trump pressed another country to investigate Sanders-or Warren...I'm convinced that there would be no impeachment.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Incredible! The Republicans might want to consider recalling George Kent for more questioning and here's why. Last night I was scrolling through news items looking for more information on yesterday's hearing and I came across a Lou Dobbs interview of Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing. Both are lawyers retired from the federal government and are long time Washington insiders so I gave it a look.
They claimed that Kent shut down an investigation of an "anti-corruption center" in Ukraine that was funded jointly by the US State Department and George Soros under the Obama Administration. My reaction was that DiGenova had gone bat**** crazy or was simply trying to stir up a right wing reaction.
Now today I find out that Soros and Obama's state department actually did fund the center (which was apparently created to help Soro's business interests in Ukraine. It seems that Kent worked closely with Obama's Assistant Secretary Of State Victoria Newland who is scheduled to testify next week at the hearing. It could get real interesting folks. I know there are some here who routinely deride AT, but you really should read this article. If true, it just might blow the lid off of all the corruption that has been kept from public view.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...rge_soros.html
It seems the Democrats have engineered themselves into a pickle of a situation.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Quote:
Originally Posted by
swabian
Fortunately you Northern Americans can only be tortured with an embarrassing fool like Trump twice. Squeeze out the orange, unhinge the unhinged, i do not care. Get rid of that individual as soon as you can.
And then take two steps back and have a closer look.
Well, precedent counts for alot in American law and politics. If Trump and his goons can successfully defy precedent (per the Constitution, Congressional procedure, relevant case law, etc), he can get away with pretty much anything. Impeachment is supposed to be the fail-safe against misbehavior by the Chief Executive. If Republicans can manage to delegitimize the very concept of Executive accountability vis a vis Congressional oversight, they can finally have the theocratic pay to play banana republic they’ve been pining after for decades.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ludicus
I'm telling myself: go ahead, be cynical. I just can't resist...Biden is the favorite child of the right wing faction of the Democratic party. I wonder what would happen if Sanders was called Biden. Let' suppose that Trump pressed another country to investigate Sanders-or Warren...I'm convinced that there would be no impeachment.
Maybe.
I think Trump's been clumsy (he's staggeringly bad at foreign policy, his cheap real estate tricks fall flat with Putin et al and the niceties of diplomacy are beyond him) and that opens the door to impeachment. Clinton was impeached for sexual misconduct because he was too smart to leave any evidence of his financial shenanigans (if any) around Whitewater (the original target of Ken Starr's brief).
Because this is a political vote (I mean in every sense, its not in a normal legal court situation, and getting Republicans to cross party lines is the crux of the Senate vote) Pelosi won't pull the trigger unless there's enough "outrage" at Trump in the media to sway Republicans against him.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
I dunno. I think maybe my favorite part was when Taylor told Ratcliffe to do his damn job.
Quote:
Representative John Ratcliffe of Texas demanded that Mr. Taylor and Mr. Kent weigh in on whether the president should be impeached for what he said on the July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky.
“Are either of you here today to assert there was an impeachable offense in that call?” Mr. Ratcliffe demanded. “Shout it out — anyone?”
Mr. Taylor reiterated a statement he had made earlier, saying he was not there to take sides, but to share what he knew.
“I’m not here to do anything having to do with to decide about impeachment,” the ambassador said. “That is not what either of us are here to do. This is your job.”
Witnesses from State Department don't decide if facts reach Impeachable level. Representatives do. And they vote Yea or Nea as such.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
So did Trump stop security assistance needed by an important american partner which has Russian proxy troops on its soil? Stop security assistance needed by an important american partner which has lost thirteen thousand of their own people in conflict? Did he with hold that security assistance in the most blatant and gross way, in a meeting? In order to extort information that is evidently completely false information against a political rival that not even his own Department of Justice will roll up in a case vis a vis the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?
Rather than pursuing anything vis a vis the national interest with respect to the Ukrainian interest President, Trump was trying to extort information he could use against Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Despite the fact they could be charged under American corruption laws and tried in American Courts, he tried to push this Ukraine.
The stakes are extraordinary, people are still dying while this aide was withheld. The notion that he'd have released it had he not have come under pressure of the whistleblower report and congress is a god damn joke.
But...nevermind all this. The message to the world. We're now fairweather friends. You just don't care. After Russia has Ukraine. After North Korea has South Korea(yea, you forgot the 4 billion rent raise here). When we get tired of helping, go deal with it yourself, or go die. Nevermind what Russia or China gets out of it.
That's...if you don't get your meeting with the president.
This is why impeachment allows for a pattern of behavior and not just an indictment of a crime.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gaidin
I dunno. I think maybe my favorite part was when Taylor told Ratcliffe to do his damn job.
Witnesses from State Department don't decide if facts reach Impeachable level. Representatives do. And they vote Yea or Nea as such.
Hahaha! They met with Schiff and his staff secret "hearings" before they testified at the open hearings. They were hardly impartial "witnesses".
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gaidin
So did Trump stop security assistance needed by an important american partner which has Russian proxy troops on its soil? Stop security assistance needed by an important american partner which has lost thirteen thousand of their own people in conflict? Did he with hold that security assistance in the most blatant and gross way, in a meeting? In order to extort information that is evidently completely false information against a political rival that not even his own Department of Justice will roll up in a case vis a vis the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?
Rather than pursuing anything vis a vis the national interest with respect to the Ukrainian interest President, Trump was trying to extort information he could use against Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Despite the fact they could be charged under American corruption laws and tried in American Courts, he tried to push this Ukraine.
The stakes are extraordinary, people are still dying while this aide was withheld. The notion that he'd have released it had he not have come under pressure of the whistleblower report and congress is a god damn joke.
But...nevermind all this. The message to the world. We're now fairweather friends. You just don't care. After Russia has Ukraine. After North Korea has South Korea(yea, you forgot the 4 billion rent raise here). When we get tired of helping, go deal with it yourself, or go die. Nevermind what Russia or China gets out of it.
That's...if you don't get your meeting with the president.
This is why impeachment allows for a pattern of behavior and not just an indictment of a crime.
Yeah, except the aid wasn't scheduled to be delivered until the end of September and was actually delivered ahead of time. Ukrainians died because Obama gave them blankets and MREs. Trump gave them anti-tank rockets.
The real thing to note hear is Trump's tweet about Yavonovitch's career failures as a diplomat while she was testifying. The press initially called it "witness intimidation", but it couldn't have been because she would have been unaware of it during her testimony. It's pretty clear that Trump was trying to keep the impeachment hearings going so that it would go to the Senate where the Republicans could call up their witnesses and a real investigation would take place.
The news media briefly grabbed onto it and suddenly let it die. Maybe they are finally clued into the fact that the Dems don't really want this to go much further and Trump is trying to keep it going.
So yeah, let's take it to the Senate where a real investigation can take place about the "witnesses" testimony.
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/201...ury-testimony/
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
The aid was unfrozen because Democrats and a handful of GOP Senators started asking questions and demanding answers.
Also,
Quote:
The problem was not bureaucratic, the Ukrainians were told. To address it, they were advised, they should reach out to Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, according to the interviews and records.
The timing of the communications, which have not previously been reported, shows that Ukraine was aware the White House was holding up the funds weeks earlier than acknowledged.
It also means that the Ukrainian government was aware of the freeze during most of the period in August when Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and two American diplomats were pressing President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to make a public commitment to the investigations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/u...peachment.html
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
I still like how BW considers depositions “secret”. That’s cute.
He should look up who put the rules in place.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Quote:
Originally Posted by
swabian
Well, delicacies like this have been delivered before by far brighter US-Presidents. I wonder if the impeachment of the Orange changes much about it.
And what do you judge "brightness" by? Commitment to endless wars overseas? Spying on their own citizens?
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Also, still waiting on why Barr isn't opening up an investigation via the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Is Barr that corrupt? Not that he isn't corrupt and not just Trump's lapdog, but you'd think that would make it easier for him to do that via America's legal system.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Legio_Italica
The aid was unfrozen because Democrats and a handful of GOP Senators started asking questions and demanding answers.
Also,
Strange. The Times published that story on Oct. 24, but in Taylor's official questioning the date is August 29th. Of course, the Times is famous for not being careful with the facts.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Trump's popularity is not budging. It is slowly returning back to the normal levels (~41-42%) he enjoyed in his whole presidency.
Thinking about it, do we actually think the people that voted for him to lock a political rival in prison would turn on him because he tried to do that to a different rival?
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
Quote:
Originally Posted by
alhoon
Thinking about it, do we actually think the people that voted for him to lock a political rival in prison would turn on him because he tried to do that to a different rival?
No. That is why the MAGA cult must be defeated, not pandered to.
Re: US House Speaker Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry
So is no one going to mention that Trump-appointed Ambassador Sondland specifically said there was quid pro quo? And that everyone at the highest level knew? And that it came by order of Trump ? And that it was specifically about digging up dirt on Biden? That the reason it didn't go through proper inter-agency channels is because they were conducting a political investigation for personal gain using government resources? That Dr. Hill specifically noted that the entire narrative magatards and other Republicans ave been parroting non-stop is entirely, irrevocably, not even wrong - but fictional? And works to benefit the Russians?
Or that Roger Stone, Trump's longtime and close friend, was found guilty onall counts of lying to Congress?
I'm sorry but I fail to see how anyone could think of Trump as anything but a criminal. A flagrantly narcissistic, glaringly idiotic one, but a criminal nonetheless?