The post Sen. Blackburn: Our job is to review impeachment, not expand it first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 12. –Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans moved closer to handing President Donald Trump an impeachment trial without witnesses, evidence, or documents. Such a trial will likely result in the acquittal or the dismissal of charges that the president desperately craves. After passing charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, then holding them back from the Senate for three weeks in the name of preventing such a sham trial, Democrats now themselves appear ready to go along with the Republican plan.

First, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday that he has the votes he needs to proceed to his desired Senate trial format, in which any vote on witnesses would be delayed until after the cases had been presented. As Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has previously noted, this is a simple ruse. McConnell has already promised to follow up the initial argument phase of the trial by holding a vote to end it before any new witnesses or documents can be brought to light through subpoenas.

McConnell, that is, has pledged to prevent the public from hearing testimony under oath from crucial witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton, who on Monday offered to testify and who has said he has information directly relevant to the charges that the president blocked security aid to Ukraine to pressure that nation’s leadership to announce an investigation of Joe Biden.

As Schumer has noted, holding a trial without witnesses would amount to replaying the House impeachment hearings, rather than actually trying the case against the president. “It is not the Senate’s job to put the House impeachment proceedings on a weeklong rerun on C-SPAN,” Schumer said.

As Schumer further noted in a floor speech on Tuesday, Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial had witness depositions in the Senate, and Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial had 41 witnesses. “A trial isn’t a trial without evidence. A trial without all the facts is a farce,” Schumer argued. “If the president is ultimately acquitted at the end of a sham trial, his acquittal will be meaningless.” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had promised to withhold the articles of impeachment until Senate leadership offered a clearer picture of what that trial would look like, as a strategy to try to prevent Republicans from rigging the proceedings to protect Trump.

And now, having established the central importance of having a real trial with witnesses, the Democrats are apparently ready to give up and let McConnell run things his way. “I think the speaker should send the articles regardless [of whether there will be witnesses],” Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters on Tuesday. “I think the time has passed. She should send the articles over.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Schumer all but confirmed that this phase of impeachment had ended. “The speaker has said all along that she wanted to see the arena in which she was playing when it came to a trial so that she could appoint impeachment managers,” Schumer said. “Now it’s becoming clear that Mitch McConnell wants to do everything he can to avoid a fair trial, so she has some idea of what’s happened.”

The New York Democrat further argued that Pelosi’s temporary delay tactics had “helped our case” even if it was time to move on.

McConnell, meanwhile, was making it clear exactly how that trial would go, telling reporters he had the votes to block witnesses in the first phase, with potential swing Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney confirming that they supported his plan.

Faced with McConnell’s disciplined strategy to protect Trump, it seems, the Democrats have decided to give up on the Senate and hope they can win in the court of public opinion. “We have always known that leader McConnell would not be for a fair trial,” Schumer said during the press conference. “He said that from the beginning.”

Schumer now says that forcing votes on witnesses at the end of an initial trial presentation might still work to pressure vulnerable senators to come along, after having argued for days that McConnell’s plan was a “poorly disguised trap.”

“If we leave the question of witnesses and documents until after all the presentations are complete, leader McConnell will argue that the Senate has heard enough, and we shouldn’t prolong the trial any longer,” Schumer said last week. “At that point, you can be sure he’ll label anyone who wants to subpoena evidence as a partisan who wants to drag the whole affair out.”

Now Democrats appear to be barreling full steam ahead into this very trap and hoping that pressure that hasn’t worked thus far will work at the end of opening presentations.

“Many of [McConnell’s] colleagues are very, very worried about going home and saying they are not for witnesses and documents,” Schumer said. “They’re afraid to say yes [to witnesses], because they know Donald Trump will be furious at them. They’re afraid to say no because they know their voters, their constituents will be furious at them. They’re stuck.”

For the time being, though, they’ve sided with McConnell. There seems to be little reason to believe that will change in the next couple of weeks even if the polling shows the public wants witnesses. A FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos impeachment tracking poll released last week showed that 57 percent of respondents supported witnesses, confirming previous polls.

In the same poll, though, 52 percent of respondents opposed Democrats seeking to delay the trial. So the decision to move ahead under terms dictated by McConnell may have seemed necessary, from a poll-watching standpoint. Still, it’s impossible not to see it as a capitulation to a defeat in the Senate—one which Trump will tout as a complete exoneration.

And while the last phase of the impeachment fight was about convincing the public that a trial matters, and that it ought to include witnesses, the next phase will be about trying to convince the public to hold Republicans accountable where the Democrats could not. Democrats think they can make the case that potentially vulnerable senators like Collins, Colorado’s Cory Gardner, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, and Arizona’s Martha McSally have shirked their duty.

A Senate Democratic aide pointed to fresh surveys from a Democratic pollster that indicated that these four at least would be viewed unfavorably in their home states if they blocked witnesses and documents. But that polling took place in a context where Democrats were actively fighting for impeachment, rather than yielding to McConnell themselves.

On Monday we got the first taste of what Democratic efforts to target these senators might look like with the release of a super PAC ad in Arizona going after McSally. The campaign portrayed McSally wearing a golden arches fast food franchise branded uniform labeled “McSally’s.” It accused her of flip-flopping (like a burger!) on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and of being dismissive of the Ukraine scandal.

The ad leaned heavily into soft drink imagery, showing a cartoon cutout of a fast-food uniformed McSally selling “souvenir cups” featuring a previous quote of the senator’s calling the Ukraine investigation a “kamikaze mission” for Democrats. The idea is that the voters should keep holding that against her, even after the Democrats let the impeachment trial crash and burn.

Update, Jan. 8, 2020, at 12:10 p.m.: On Tuesday evening, Pelosi sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter to fellow members of the House indicating that before transmitting articles of impeachment to the Senate, she wanted to see the specific resolution McConnell was proposing. “It is important that he immediately publish this resolution, so that, as I have said before, we can see the arena in which we will be participating, appoint managers and transmit the articles to the Senate,” Pelosi said. McConnell has said consistently that he’d like to use the 1999 Bill Clinton impeachment resolution as a template and said on Tuesday, “We’ll be glad to show [the resolution] to you when we unveil it.”

Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/democrats-surrender-impeachment-trial.html

The post Democrats Are Mobilizing Their Plan to Lose the Impeachment Trial first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., arrives at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Jan. 10, 2020. Pelosi hasn’t relayed the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial three weeks since President Donald Trump was impeached on charges of abuse and obstruction. Last night, she led the Democrat-controlled House in passing a measure limiting Trump’s ability to take military action against Iran after he ordered the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Republican Conference chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., speaks with reporters as lawmakers leave the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Jan. 10, 2020. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday the House will take steps next week to send articles of impeachment to the Senate for President Donald Trump’s Senate trial. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Laura Albinson of Pasadena, Md., displays a message for members of the House as they leave the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Jan. 10, 2020. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday the House will take steps next week to sent articles of impeachment to the Senate for President Donald Trump’s Senate trial. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, does a tv news interview just outside the House chamber, Friday, Jan. 10, 2020, at the Capitol in Washington. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has not yet relayed the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial three weeks since President Donald Trump was impeached on charges of abuse and obstruction. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will take steps next week to transmit the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, ending a three-week standoff but confronting the Senate with only the third trial in U.S. history to remove a chief executive.

In a letter to her Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said Friday she was proud of their ″courage and patriotism” and warned that senators now have a choice as they consider the charges of abuse and obstruction against the president.

“In an impeachment trial, every Senator takes an oath to do ’impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws,‴ Pelosi wrote. “Every Senator now faces a choice: to be loyal to the President or the Constitution.”

The trial could begin next week. The Constitution gives the House the sole power to impeach a president, but the Senate the ability to render a verdict when it convenes as the Court of Impeachment.

Pelosi was particularly upbeat Friday as she strode through the Capitol, despite the mounting pressure on her to quit delaying the trial. Her decision to end the showdown with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not fully bring closure to the question of whether the Senate will consider new witnesses, as some want, shifting pressure on senators to decide.

Trump swiftly signaled his intention of blocking any testimony from John Bolton, the brash former national security adviser who could be a wildcard witness in the trial. Bolton has said he would appear before the Senate if he received a subpoena.

At the same time, a key centrist GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, whose vote is among those most-watched, announced Friday she was in discussions with other Republicans on a strategy that would allow the Senate to hear new testimony.

While the rules of the Senate trial remain unsettled, the outcome is not. Trump is widely expected to be acquitted of the charges that he abused power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, then obstructed Congress in its investigation. No president has ever been removed by the Senate.

“Ridiculous,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham about the speaker’s gambit. “Nancy Pelosi will go down as the least successful speaker of the House in the history of our nation,” he said.

Asked if he would invoke executive privilege to block Bolton’s testimony, Trump said, “Well I think you have to for the sake of the office.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been working closely with the White House on strategy, said Friday afternoon that the Senate is “anxious to get started.”

Republicans have the leverage, with a slim 53-47 Senate majority, if McConnell can keep GOP senators on board with his strategy. So far, they are supportive of modeling the trial after the one used in the last presidential impeachment, of Bill Clinton, 20 years ago. It set out a path for starting the trial and voting on witnesses later.

Despite McConnell’s wishes for a speedy trial, some Republicans in his caucus have indicated that they are open to witnesses. It takes just 51 senators to set the rules, and Democrats have been trying to win over wavering GOP senators to vote with them on hearing new testimony.

“I am hopeful that we can reach an agreement on how to proceed with the trial that will allow the opportunity for witnesses for both the House managers and the President’s counsel if they choose to do so,” Collins said. “It is important that both sides be treated fairly.”

Since the House vote on Dec. 18 to impeach the president, the showdown between Pelosi and McConnell, the two power centers in Congress, has consumed Capitol Hill and scrambled the political dynamics.

The speaker declined to send the articles to the Senate until she knew there would be a fair trial with witness testimony. She also asked McConnell for details on the trial structure she could decide who to appoint as impeachment managers. McConnell rebuffed all over her demands.

On Friday, Pelosi ended the stalemate by saying she had asked House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler to be prepared to bring to the floor next week a resolution to appoint managers and transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate. She did not announce a date for the House vote.

McConnell indicated Friday the trial would start soon. “We’ll get about it as soon as we can,” he said.

Transmittal of the documents and naming of House impeachment managers are the next steps needed to start the Senate trial. Yet questions remain in the Senate on the scope, format, and duration.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is eager to test Senate Republicans, especially those like Collins who are up for re-election in 2020, with votes to compel testimony from Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others who have so far resisted appearing before Congress.

“Senate Democrats are ready for the trial to begin and will do everything we can to see that the truth comes out,” Schumer said.

Bolton, who was present for several of the internal White House discussions about Ukraine policy that were at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment case, is among the most compelling of four witnesses suggested by Schumer.

The former national security adviser clashed with the president’s Ukraine policy, saying he didn’t want to be part of any “drug deal” being cooked up. He called Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who others have testified was orchestrating an alternative foreign policy outside of official channels, a “grenade” that was going to go off.

Chuck Cooper, an attorney for Bolton, declined to comment.

The House impeached Trump in December on the charge that he abused the power of his office by pressuring Ukraine’s new leader to investigate Democrats, using as leverage $400 million in military assistance for the U.S. ally as it counters Russia at its border. Trump insists he did nothing wrong, but his defiance of the House Democrats’ investigation led to an additional charge of obstruction of Congress.

On a July telephone call with Ukraine’s new president, Trump asked his counterpart to open an investigation into Democrat Joe Biden, who is running for his party’s presidential nomination, and his son Hunter while holding up military aid for Ukraine. A Ukrainian gas company had hired Hunter Biden when his father was vice president and the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden.

It’s still unclear who Pelosi will appoint as impeachment managers to prosecute the case in the Senate.

Nadler, D-N.Y., and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., will most likely lead the team.

What was more certain is that the group will be more diverse than the 1999 team in Clinton’s trial, who were all male and white. Pelosi is expected to ensure the managers are diverse in gender and race, and also geographically.

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Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Darlene Superville and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

Source: https://apnews.com/5bc4445d8fbfbe3a45fb012a3beaa829

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