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impeach trump

see imperial presidency

no merri

see ukraine 2 also ukrn tag

see sedition caucus, trump coup

see fox 4: hanity tucker and ingram core/ wall defense, holds base (grafix override verbal testimony/nuance/negative)

bret k won by loud; jordan, nunes, scalise whip sciff stunt pizzagaetz

intel comm, judiciary, oversight comms

bak 1119

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interesting impeachment commentary:  unit exec --> divine rt of kings?! what happened to limited govt?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-the-trump-presidency-is-reversing-history

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How the Trump presidency is reversing history

Written by Common Dreams December 22, 2019

History never exactly repeats itself. But sometimes it reverses itself. It is doing that now. As Thucydides, the father of scientific history, observed, history can provide us with a road map to travel forward and backwards as we try to understand why human beings and human societies act as they do. In the hands of a Thucydides, the markers for our travel with history are fixed and clear. But mostly we move through our lives with little certainty, seeing the past dimly in front of us, even if we use history carefully and wisely, but mostly with the future behind us, unseen and unforeseeable.

Right now the reversal we have in mind is the movement from late twentieth-century liberal democracy to seventeenth-century autocracy. Moving forward from 2019 is looking a lot like moving backward from 1689. In that year 330 years ago, King William III became the first undeniably limited or constitutional monarch of England through the creation and promulgation of the English Bill of Rights....

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1219 note: mueller investigation was circumscribed (how/why) and went by doj memo that sitting prez could not be indicted [djt will later claim cannot be invesigated?]; mueller carefully laid out obstruction of justice then expected house to do its const duty to investigate/impeach; and actually mueller report is being revisited as impeach docs prepared?

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https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/06/impeachment-defense-bill-jim-inhofe-067150

11/06/2019 07:43 PM EST

Annual defense policy legislation would be in jeopardy if House Democrats move forward with the impeachment of President Donald Trump, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned on Wednesday.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/senate-prepares-a-mock-trial-with-a-stacked-deck-of-jurors/

dc rept

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Senate prepares a mock trial with a stacked deck of jurors

Written by Terry H. Schwadron / DC Report November 27, 2019

Donald Trump now says he wants a public trial, an impeachment trial—so long as he has loaded dice among majority Republican senators.

Sure, and I want to go to Vegas with an iron-clad agreement to win at the gaming tables.

Trump called into a Fox & Friends airing to argue that a trial would clear him, of course, and allow the public airing of his grievances about 2016 election interference by Ukraine—the stuff of conspiracy theorists—and to bring the real villains, the Bidens, to account.

I have questions.

Neither Republican nor Democratic senators have been holding back much on their opinions about the outcome of an impeachment trial unless they are Republicans facing a tough re-election in states less tomato-red than Kansas or Mississippi. And so, as the senators split exactly along party lines on the question of whether Trump should remain in office, we’re approaching the idea of an impartial jury trial as if we’re walking into the back room at Rick’s Casablanca bar.

Any minute now, we can expect that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will start begging futilely for various rule requests from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about how to conduct such a trial before Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Then McConnell can quote the very imperialism he and others saw in Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) running the House Intelligence Committee and simply sit on his hands—or his majority’s hands.

But by then, it almost assuredly will be too late, since key Republicans already have started meeting with Trump in the White House to discuss just what kind of an impeachment trial he would like to see. Can you imagine any other jury members meeting with the accused perp before the trial begins to determine who they would like to see as witnesses, to pre-determine how many days the trial will last, to see if their rules comport with the accused criminal’s idea of what he would like to see happen?

In the Senate

The amazing thing is that the Senate seems to lack 51 votes to simply decide magically that the charges that Trump abused his office and obstructed justice in seeking to hold up a White House meeting and military aid for agreement by a vulnerably new Ukrainian president to commit publicly to open investigations for Trump’s personal political advancement. Republicans like Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Joanie Ernst of Iowa and Cory Gardner of Colorado apparently are making it known behind the scenes that they at least want the cover of an actual trial, making instant dismissal impossible.

Instead we will look forward to about two weeks of trial, according to Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), just long enough for Republicans to call and unmask the whistleblower, to confront Schiff for perceived, unduly aggressive handling of committee hearings and unfounded reports that he had met with the whistleblower and Joe Biden, whose candidacy for president was the target of Trump’s demand for Ukrainian investigation.

I’m waiting to hear Schumer at least try to challenge the impartiality of Senate jurors. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) may even be a witness for Trump, to report on meetings he had with Ukrainian leaders. How does he then sit as a juror on the validity of his own testimony? For that matter, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) was in some of the same meetings, with the opposite takeaway, also sitting as a juror.

Five senators are running to be the Democratic opponent to Trump. Do we truly expect that they will be impartial here?

Where’s the Outrage?

What is startling in these prospects for a circus trial is exactly the vehemence of the House Intelligence Committee Republicans who attacked that body’s attempt at fact-finding for failing to include their partisan efforts to unearth the whistleblower and call the Bidens. This is exactly the same, with a different majority rule—and now it is perfectly fine?

Since the outcome of the trial is a foregone conclusion, should we already be focusing more on what happens to the underlying Constitutional principles here? Are the Republicans at all worried about the expanding power base of presidential reach and the diminution of Congressional oversight? Are they prepared to accept that when a Democrat wins next November?

Worse, are the rest of us ready for a Trump re-election with an impeachment victory under his belt to resist any questions about what his administrations do with policy or personnel appointments?

Oh, I know, the check here is that should Trump win re-election, he is sure to run afoul of the Constitution again—and become the first president to be impeached twice.

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House committee sues AG Barr in wake of judge’s ruling that declared ‘presidents are not kings’

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement November 26, 2019

The House Oversight Committee wasted no time in filing a lawsuit against Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, suing both Trump appointees for failure to respond to subpoenas demanding documents.

Declaring “President Trump and his aides are not above the law,” Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney on Tuesday announced, “I am filing this enforcement action today because the Trump Administration’s brazen obstruction of Congress must not stand.”

Politico reports Maloney is seeking documents related to the 2020 Census, and the Trump administration’s attempts to add a citizenship question to the constitutionally-mandate survey.

That question was the brainchild of a Republican strategist, now deceased, who wrote it would depress participation in the Census by minorities, effectively granting Republicans greater representation in the House and other areas – including where $675 billion in federal funds are spent.

One federal judge declared if the citizenship question made it onto the census, “hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people will go uncounted.”

The Trump administration has ignored many subpoenas from House Democrats. On Monday a federal judge ruled former White House Counsel Don McGahn could not ignore a subpoena and must testify before Congress.

“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her 118-page ruling Monday.

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kurt v

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/a-gop-picked-witness-just-buried-republicans-bogus-conspiracy-theories-about-joe-biden/

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impeachment is a pivotal moment in our history but the press still covers it like a horse race

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an 1119

...Depending on who your ask, the testimony so far has been either “very damaging” to the president or “the worst show on earth.”  It was “substantive, but it wasn’t dramatic.”

The views expressed in that first sentence are courtesy of the two conflicting faces of Fox news, represented by Chris Wallace (“very damaging ) and Sean Hannity (the “worst show” part).

The opinion in the second is the assessment of an analysis posted on NBCNews.com written by Jonathan Allen, a Washington-based national political reporter.

“There’s time for Democrats to tell a more compelling version of the story,” Allen writes, “keeping in mind that the attention span of most Americans doesn’t match that of most C-SPAN viewers.”

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_inquiry_against_Donald_Trump

An impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump began after U.S. president Donald Trump and other top government officials pressured the leaders of Ukraine and other foreign nations to publicly announce investigations of former U.S. vice president and leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter[1][2] and release alleged evidence that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.[3][4][5] The inquiry revolves around a phone call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky implying that U.S. military aid to Ukraine was to be withheld until Zelensky gave in to the aforementioned demands.[1][3][6] These allegations have been corroborated by many witnesses, including U.S. top-envoy-to-Ukraine Bill Taylor,[7] Laura Cooper (the top Pentagon official overseeing Ukraine-related U.S. policy),[8] former White House official Fiona Hill[9] and at least six additional White House officials.[10][11] The reports implicate Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani—as well as Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, and others—in taking part in a quid pro quo campaign to pressure the Ukrainian government to take actions which would be helpful to Trump's 2020 presidential campaign.[10] Based on the alleged abuse of power of the presidency by Trump to advance his personal political interests,[12][13] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated the impeachment inquiry on September 24, 2019.[14][15][16] Additional alleged misconduct was reported in the days after the announcement,[12] with Trump subsequently publicly urging Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens.[17][18]

A whistleblower's complaint which revealed the phone call was given to Congress on September 25, 2019, and released to the public the next day.[19] The White House corroborated several of the allegations, including that a record of the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky had been stored in a highly restricted system.[20][21] A non-verbatim transcript confirms that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and release evidence that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,[3] and repeatedly urged him to work with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr on those matters.[22][23] On October 9, the White House officially responded to the impeachment proceedings in a letter from Counsel Pat Cipollone to Pelosi that it would cease all cooperation with the investigation due to concerns including that there had not yet been a vote of the full House and that interviews of witnesses were being conducted behind closed doors.[24][25] A few days later, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Trump had withheld military aid to Ukraine over its supposed corruption, but that there had been no quid pro quo.[26]

During the depositions, Ambassador Taylor testified that he had been told that U.S. military aid to Ukraine and a Trump–Zelensky White House meeting were dependent on Zelensky publicly announcing investigations into the Bidens and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.[4] Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council's Director of European Affairs, testified that he had heard the phone call and that he had shared his concerns about the president's remarks with a White House lawyer.[27] On October 31, 2019, the House voted 232–196 to establish procedures for public hearings,[28] which started on November 13.[29] As hearings began, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff asserted that Trump may have committed bribery, which is specifically mentioned in the Constitution as an impeachable offense.[30][31][32]

Background

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1119 devin nunes in opening of impeach raise dems use of steele doss, he met w/ rudy?!

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an 1119

Here’s why Republican impeachment theatrics — as buffoonish as they are — serve a purpose for the GOP

Rep. Jim Jordan, ABC's "This Week" Screengrab

Written by Alex Henderson November 15, 2019

Liberal and progressive pundits — and some Never Trump conservatives as well — have been highly critical of the silly, buffoonish theatrics that Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Rep. Devin Nunes of California and other far-right House Republicans brought to the first public testimony in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. But then, Jordan and Nunes weren’t trying to win over liberals, progressives or anti-Trump conservatives on Wednesday, November 13, when they aggressively attacked the testimony of two diplomats: Ambassador William B. Taylor (top U.S. ambassador to Ukraine) and the U.S. State Department’s George P. Kent (deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs). They were playing to Trump’s hardcore MAGA base, pushing emotional buttons rather than relying on substance.

For that matter, Jordan and Nunes weren’t trying to win over independents either. They were preaching to the converted, determined to show pro-Trump voters that they still have their backs.

Rep. Adam Schiff, Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, knew what he was doing with Taylor and Kent’s testimony — and that testimony made a strong case for impeaching Trump. Schiff and other House Democrats showed exactly why Trump deserves impeachment: during a phone conversation on July 25, Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating a political rival — former Vice President Joe Biden — as well as his son, Hunter Biden. The testimony demonstrated that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine and made an investigation of the Bidens a condition of that aid.

Jordan and Nunes never disproved anything that Taylor or Kent had to say. Instead, they angrily insisted that the entire impeachment inquiry is one big fabrication on the part of partisan Democrats — and the way in which they said it was more important than the substance (of lack thereof) of what they were saying. Their inflammatory rhetoric, while short on facts, was clearly designed to fire up the MAGA base as much as possible.

During the testimony, Jordan and Nunes both promoted the ludicrous Crowdstrike conspiracy theory, which claims that the real interference in the 2016 presidential election came not from the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin, but from the Ukraine government. Never mind the fact that former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his in-depth report for the Russia investigation, made it abundantly clear that Russian officials aggressively interfered in the 2016 election.

Nunes referenced “Ukrainian election meddling” more than once. But when Kent was asked if there was any evidence of Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election, the U.S. State Department diplomat responded, “To my knowledge, there’s no factual basis” for that claim. Kent even said, “To be honest, I had not heard of Crowdstrike” until after he read the transcript of Trump’s July 25 conversation with Zelensky.

Evidently, Kent doesn’t spend a lot of time listening to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ “Infowars” show.

Nunes indignantly insisted that Trump’s July 25 conversation with Zelensky was perfectly innocent, asserting, “We’re supposed to believe that President Trump committed a terrible crime that never actually occurred.”

Jordan asserted that it is horribly unfair that Schiff hasn’t told him the identity of the intelligence whistleblower who made the complaint that led to the impeachment inquiry. But the whistleblower’s identity, at this point, is irrelevant because Taylor’s testimony backed up everything in the whistleblower’s complaint.

Saying that Nunes and Jordan’s theatrics were silly and devoid of substance, however, is not saying that they weren’t effective as far as reaching the people they were intended to reach: the MAGA base. And so many of their talking points have been echoed in the right-wing media: the impeachment inquiry is a sham, Trump’s conversation with Zelensky was perfectly innocent, Crowdstrike is a real concern, Democrats are pursuing impeachment because they refuse to accept the 2016 election results.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has described Trump’s rhetorical style as a form of “gaslighting”: Trump and his sycophants will repeat nonsense over and over — and the goal is to overwhelm those who are listening. The type of “gaslighting” that Robinson describes works well if one watches Fox News religiously, lives in a Trumpian bubble and never seriously listens to what anti-Trump voices have to say.

That type of “gaslighting” was very much in evidence on November 13 with Nunes, Jordan and other House Republicans. Their theatrics were clearly aimed at the far-right Fox News/AM talk radio/Breitbart News audience. It’s easy to debunk much of what they Nunes and Jordan have had to say about the impeachment inquiry, but for those House Republicans, such theatrics serve a purpose: whipping the MAGA base into a frenzy at every turn and giving them reasons to get to the polls in November 2020. And one need only spend some time watching Fox News to see that it’s working.

an 1119

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Russian state media is outing the alleged whistleblower after Rand Paul’s reckless outbursts: report

Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story November 6, 2019

President Donald Trump’s allies are trying to retaliate against the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the Ukraine scandal. And no one is doing so more enthusiastically than Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who tweeted out a link to a right-wing article in Real Clear Investigations that purported to reveal the whistleblower’s name, occupation at the CIA, and photograph.

Thus far, although that article has been live for several days, the mainstream media has ignored it, resisting any effort to spread information about the whistleblower that would compromise their federal legal protections and open them up to reprisal or threats.

But according to The Daily Beast, there is one group of media outlets that is eagerly promoting Paul’s reckless attempt to out the whistleblower: Russian state media.

Not only did sites like Russia Today, TASS, and Rossiya-1 disseminate this same information shortly after Paul did, one of the sites falsely claimed that the original source was the Washington Post rather than Real Clear Investigations, apparently to give the information more legitimacy.

This, notes The Daily Beast, marks the latest in a long string of efforts by Russian propaganda networks to boost Trump and attack the impeachment investigation — which in addition to attempting to remove a president Russian officials broadly think is strategically useful to them, also centers on his apparent efforts to extort the government of Ukraine, a nation which Russia is violently occupying and from which they are annexing land.

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https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/impeachment-probe-looking-into-mulvaney-involvement-with-ukraine-before-trump-phone-call-report/

according to a report at the Daily Beast, Democrats are asking questions about acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s curious decision to hold up a weapons shipment to Ukraine before Donald Trump’s phone call with President Zelensky.

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The report notes that Mulvaney, in his other job as head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), held up the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine even after the Trump administration had approved the sale...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/these-democratic-senators-could-actually-vote-to-save-trump-heres-what-theyve-been-saying/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/fox-news-guest-calls-impeachment-a-secret-ritual-conducted-by-a-cult-headed-by-high-priestess-pelosi/

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Fox News guest calls impeachment a ‘secret ritual’ conducted by a ‘cult’ headed by ‘high priestess’ Pelosi

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement October 30, 2019

Fox News Business channel’s Maria Bartiromo Wednesday morning interviewed pro-Trump guest Lee Smith who told the top anchor the House impeachment inquiry is a “secret ritual” where Speaker Pelosi is the “high priestess” and Chairman Schiff the “high priest.”

“Here is how I see what we’re calling the impeachment process, inquiry — I see it as a secret ritual conducted by a cult,” Smith told Bartiromo (video below). “I mean, they’re doing most of this in secret. And I think it’s worthwhile thinking of Speaker Pelosi as the high priestess of the cult, and Adam Schiff as a high priest of the cult.”

“And the purpose of the cult is to protect the swamp and what the swamp has done,” he adds.

Smith appears to not understand how investigations are conducted, or how President Trump has grown the swamp.

Smith is author of the book, “The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History,” which is currently number one on Amazon’s list of Political Commentary & Opinion books. It does not appear to be listed as fiction.

The Amazon page for his book says he was given “unprecedented access to Congressman Devin Nunes, former head of the House Intelligence Committee, to expose the deep state operation against the president–and the American people.”

Last year The Daily Beast ran a profile of Maria Bartiromo, declaring: “Once a titan of apolitical financial reporting, Bartiromo has made an unmistakeable pivot toward conspiratorial and occasionally alt-right-assisted Trump cheerleading.”

Eric Kleefeld

@EricKleefeld

Fox Business guest: "Here is how I see what we're calling the impeachment process, inquiry — I see it as a secret ritual conducted by a cult … And I think it's worthwhile thinking of Speaker Pelosi as the high priestess of the cult, and Adam Schiff as a high priest of the cult."

Embedded video

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charaCTER assassination on all witnesses eg vindman, taylor ...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/dont-sleep-on-the-gop-strategy-republican-attacks-on-impeachment-process-have-a-clear-goal-in-mind/

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Don’t sleep on the GOP strategy: Republican attacks on impeachment ‘process’ have a clear goal in mind

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon October 28, 2019

President Trump left the safe bubble of his properties and his rallies to venture out into a world where people don’t cheer ecstatically whenever he appears. He attended the fifth game of the World Series on Sunday night at Nationals Park in Washington, and was lustily booed by the crowd, some of whom also held up impeachment banners and chanted “Lock him up.” Trump is not used to that sort of thing and he had a hard time hiding his discomfort.

Look how Trump’s face changes when he realizes an entire stadium is booing him pic.twitter.com/E46rzbzmbl

— Arlen Parsa (@arlenparsa) October 28, 2019

He probably thought he was going to be received as a hero since earlier in the day he’d announced that U.S. Special Forces had staged a raid in Syria that led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Who has been declared dead several times before, to be fair.) No doubt he was gravely disappointed to turn on the TV and see that the impeachment inquiry that is bedeviling him remains at the top of the news. If he had it in his head that wagging the (“beautiful, talented”) dog would tamp down impeachment talk, by the time he got into his jammies on Sunday night he must have realized that it didn’t work.

Last week we saw the absurd protest staged by Trump’s favorite court jester, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and several dozen other GOP members of Congress who stormed the secure facility where witness depositions are taken in private session. They made a big show of claiming that the process is being used improperly by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif,, because Republicans like Gaetz are not allowed in the room to ask questions and transcripts are not being released to the public.

This is ridiculous, of course, since all members of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, of both parties, are allowed to participate and ask questions. According to the Washington Post, Republicans, led by Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., have been quite active during these long depositions. Mostly they seem to be trying to find out the name of the CIA whistleblower, and to further conspiracy theories about Ukraine supposedly working with Hillary Clinton to sabotage Trump in the 2016 election. They also want to know if these witnesses are loyal to Trump because, as we know, anyone who fails to declare fealty to him cannot be trusted to tell the truth. With his usual dignity and grace, Trump recently suggested that at least some of these witnesses were “human scum.”

Meanwhile, we had Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., fatuously declaring that the impeachment inquiry is unfair and offering a resolution to condemn it in the Senate. That was a meaningless gesture, more or less designed as a test vote to reassure the president that he doesn’t have to worry about being convicted in an impeachment trial. As of Sunday, only three Senate Republicans had failed to sign on.

But some of them have gone even further, such as Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he believes Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi want to give Trump “a fair and impartial firing squad.” (Kennedy sees himself as a clever and colorful character.)

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas just went for it:

What if, just what if, the Obama administration, including the leadership of the Justice Department and FBI unlawfully coordinated with the DNC and the Clinton campaign to “go after” an opposing presidential campaign? No problemo?

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) October 25, 2019

That’s odd, considering that Cornyn signed the recent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence findings confirming that Russia was behind the 2016 election interference. So he knows better. But he’s up for re-election in Texas next year and is playing to the big rube in the White House, who was no doubt pleased.

The Beltway conventional wisdom, repeated like a mantra dozens of times a day, is that the Republicans aren’t winning on the facts of impeachment so they are reduced to attacking the process. That assumes this is some sort of wild Hail Mary pass without any hope of accomplishing anything. Pundits and analysts marvel at the fact that the White House doesn’t have an “impeachment war room” and that the president serves as his own communications director, assuming that means the process is thoughtlessly chaotic and purposeless. Axios reports that an informal impeachment meeting now takes place daily in the White House, but it doesn’t appear to be geared toward a disciplined response to the onslaught of revelations because that’s simply not possible. Donald Trump is uncontrollable and there’s no use even trying.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a plan. It might not be fully articulated or laid out in a PowerPoint presentation. But for all of Trump’s many failings he does have one talent: personal survival. He has been dancing as fast as he can his whole life, and he is highly skilled at getting out of trouble.  In this case, we can see how he thinks he’s going to do that, because he has already done it once during his presidency.

People underestimate how well the “No collusion, no obstruction” and “Witch hunt!” strategy worked with the Mueller investigation. When Robert Mueller took that job he was considered the single most honorable, straight-arrow lawman in the nation, and was widely praised by prominent members of both parties. But through sheer repetition, echoed by his media minions, Trump managed to convince millions of people that Mueller, a lifelong Republican, and his team of prosecutors were a bunch of vengeful Democratic hacks out to take him down for partisan reasons. With the help of Attorney General William Barr, that narrative was reinforced upon the release of Mueller’s report, and it solidified the “witch hunt” meme that Trump and his supporters continue to push to this day.

I think most people who aren’t in the TrumpWorld bubble were taken aback that the Mueller report didn’t pack a bigger punch. After all, it laid out a case that the president had welcomed election interference by a foreign adversary on his behalf, and then repeatedly broke the law trying to cover it up. But Democrats in the House seemed unimpressed and the public more or less shrugged it off. True or not (and of course it wasn’t), “no collusion, no obstruction” pretty much stuck.

Trump and his henchmen are running the same game with the impeachment inquiry into Ukraine. They’re denigrating the witnesses, attacking the investigation as a partisan witch hunt, and saying that Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president was “perfect” over and over again. It is apparent that they expect the president to be impeached in the House, but they will acquit him in the Senate — not on the merits of the case, but because the process was supposedly illegitimate.

The point is to rally their white working-class voters by stoking their rage and resentment, and trying to convince what remains of their white college-educated vote to stay the course. Imagine the feral, frothing-at-the-mouth Lindsey Graham of the Kavanaugh hearings leading the charge, with a smirking Mitch McConnell by his side. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Tom Cotton will give soaring speeches railing against the Democrats’ illegal crusade to depose the duly elected president, echoing the Trump’s robotic messages once again. Perhaps there will be a couple of defectors who vote to convict — Mitt Romney and one or two others — but nonetheless, Trump will be acquitted and will spin it as “total exoneration” once again.

Will it work? Who knows? If I had to guess I’d say it won’t be persuasive to the Independent and suburban voters he’s going to need to eke out another win in the Electoral College. But it’s a mistake to assume that Trump and the Republicans are flailing around without any purpose, and attacking the process for lack of any other options. They’re doing this because it’s worked before, and they figure they might just get away with it again.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/at-american-priority-conference-speakers-sowed-distrust-peddled-conspiracy-theories-and-called-for-civil-war

Joshua Feuerstein took the main stage at the American Priorities Festival and Conference at the Trump Doral National Miami resort to deliver a message: the Civil War was here.

Feuerstein, a former evangelical pastor, used his sermon voice to recall the original Civil War, which he called the “turning point of America,” the battle of Gettysburg, which he deemed the “turning point of the war,” and the men who fought in Pickett’s Charge, which he labeled “the turning point of Gettysburg.” He paced the stage in his navy blue suit, passing by the large red “AMP” letters on the screen behind him, and painted a picture of heroic men and hand-to-hand combat during Pickett’s Charge. “Those men did not think it anything special,” he said.

“I need you to know that 2020 is a civil war that will change the face of America forever,” Feurestein said, his voice rising, as the crowd began to applaud. “And it’s God, ladies and gentlemen, it’s God that calls the qualified, that qualifies those that are called, that are willing to step up in the moment that matters, that has greatness thrust upon them. And tonight, together here in this place to say that we are willing to fight, we may think ourselves insignificant, but that we will stand together in 2020, and we will win the war that will change the face of America.”

Feurestein’s declaration of war wasn’t the only one at the conference. Earlier in the evening, evangelicalPastor Mark Burns had called for war; “We’ve come to declare war!” he said, and attendees in the back of the ballroom replied with “War! War!” 

Over three days, speakers at the pro-Trump conference sowed seeds of distrust in nearly every American institution imaginable and cited conspiracy theories to bolster their case for the use of such civil war rhetoric, as they perpetuated sentiments of victimization and loathing. The conference could have been dismissed as a meeting of the fringe, but big-ticket speakers like Don Trump Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders lent legitimacy to the conference,as did more respectable Republican groups like the Leadership Institute, which held a series of trainings in side rooms. By the time Don Trump Jr. took the stage on Friday evening, he simply invoked themes hammered into the audience throughout the day using subtler language, and it worked the crowd into a frenzy.

In this Trumpian, upside-down world, it’s hard to understand where one has landed until you take one conspiracy at face value: the “deep state.” The so-called deep state is supposedly comprised of supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in high-rank positions in different government agencies who aim to sabotage Trump at every opportunity and eventually overthrow him. Originating on the fringe, the conspiracy theory has now entered the mainstream GOP and has become a staple of right-wing media messaging. At the American Priority Conference, the speakers legitimized the deep state, and layered more conspiracy theories on top. 

Perhaps most telling was the “Unmasking the Russian Hoax” panel with Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a right-wing “investigative” organization, conservative activist Ned Ryun, George Papadopolous, who went to federal prison for making false statements to FBI agents about the timing of his contact with Russian intermediaries in 2016, and Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager and author ofTrump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency. Tracy Beanz, abooster of the QAnon conspiracy theory, moderated the panel.

In Fitton’s world, bad actors had been planning a coup before Trump was even elected.

“Anytime you heard the word impeachment, you can substitute the word coup, because that’s what’s going on here,” Fitton said. “It began during the campaign, when they weaponized intelligence agency against Trump, people like George [Papadopoulos], and who knows who else, to protect Hillary Clinton, to protect Barack Obama, and as Mr. Strzok said, to have an insurance policy if Mr. Trump won.”

The “insurance policy” Fitton references isa conspiracy theorybirthed on 4chan message boards that Democrats had a ready-to-go scheme to impeach Trump if he won.Amplified by right-wing media, the conspiracy theory has reached the White House and influenced the president’s policy making.

“They [Congress] weren’t getting the traction they needed, so the intelligence agencies, it looks like, that were targeting him to begin with, came up with another smear operation,” Fitton continued. “They had a leak they wanted to get out on this Ukrainian conversation, but they recognized doing it would be illegal, so they gussied it up in a whistleblower complaint and illegally communicated classified information, it looks like, with Adam Schiff and lied about it. And now it’s led to the coup operation of President Trump.“

Papadopoulos floated the deep state theory as well. “Some of the same spies that went after Michael Flynn in 2015 were after me in 2016,” he said. As for the whistleblower report, Papadopoulos noted that it came out when WIlliam Barr was, he said, trying to investigate the previous administration. “This was a preemptive strike by the deep state,” Papadopoulos said, suggesting that it was an effort by deep state actors to protect themselves.

Lewandowski focused on the FBI.“I look at the fact that they spied on American citizens who were participating in the political process, because they didn’t like our politics,” Lewandowski said.  “What we know see over the course of the last three and a half years is that Jim Comey, and Andy McCabe, and the lovers, Dr. Page, which Trump talked about last night, James Baker who is the general counsel at the FBI, they use their badges and guns to go after American citizens because they don’t like our politics.” 

The bad actors need to punished, the panelists agreed. “People have to go to jail,” Ryun said, to which an audience member yelled: “Barack Obama!” 

According to the panelists, the media was among the bad actors, conspiring with Democrats. “The media intentionally wanted to brainwash all of you. They wanted to create chaos and division, and attempt a silent coup,” Papadopoulos said.

Later that evening, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA  warmed up the stage for Don Trump Jr.He zoomed in on the Jussie Smollett story, an actor who apparentlystaged a hate crime against himself, claiming it was indicative of the Democratic situation and “Democratic privilege,” where Democrats, like Smollett, are never prosecuted for wrongdoings. Kirk used the Smollett story to sow doubt—if Smollett fabricated a hate crime, what else could they lie to you about?—and bolster another debunked conspiracy theory that Adam Schiff changed the whistleblower laws just before the whistleblower filed his complaint.

“Guess what happens when we don’t hold them accountable? What happens is Congressman Adam Schiff then flies his staffer up to Ukraine, changes the whistleblower laws, uses a friend that he has in the CIA, and then do it all over again, just with a different country,” Kirk said. 

Kirk then moved on to other supposed deep state actors. “If [Trump] would’ve won and did the typical Republican thing … maybe the deep state actors would’ve just stayed at bay. But the fact that they’re relentlessly going after him should give you renewal and confidence that this president actually doing what he said he was going to do,” Kirk said.

When Don Trump Jr. walked out onto the stage Friday night following Kirk, he wasted no time in getting to the Smollett story and attacking Schiff and the media.“Adam Schiff is the Jussie Smollett of Congress on steroids,” he said as his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, stared at him adoringly from her chair on stage. “And he gets away with it because people in the media protect him.”

“On paper, 2020 should be over, but it’s not, because we’re not in a fair fight,” Trump Jr. said, claiming that “the mainstream media has made a conscious decision to be the marketing team of the opposing party.”

While Trump Jr. didn’t go as far as to call for civil war or double down on the deep state, he didn’t need to. His presence lent legitimacy the conspiracy theories floated all day.  It’s this very type of environment that civil war rhetoric on the right has grown. In early October, it appeared to reach Trump himself, who went as far as toquote Fox News contributor Pastor Robert Jeffress on Twitter saying, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” 

In an upside-down world, where a deep state is conniving to imprison administration officials just doing their jobs, continues to get away with spying and crimes, and stages a coup against a democratically elected president, calling for a civil war doesn’t seem like that big of a leap.

==

Metaxas: 'It's the End of America' if Investigations Against Trump Don’t Stop

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/with-propaganda-channel-fox-news-creating-firewall-for-trump-critics-says-mass-mobilization-needed-to-oust-president/

no lnx

With ‘propaganda channel’ Fox News creating firewall for Trump, critics says mass mobilization needed to oust president

Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams October 23, 2019

A new survey released Sunday reveals just how impenetrable President Donald Trump’s level of support among regular Fox News viewers is, and suggests that a mass mobilization among those who support impeaching and removing Trump from office may be the only way Congress will finally hold him to account.

The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) polled 2,000 people and found that among Republican voters who use Fox News as their regular news source, 55 percent said that no action taken by Trump could cause them to oppose him.

The findings bolstered the president’s statement, made during the 2016 election, that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and [he] wouldn’t lose any voters.”

But the results varied for Republicans who don’t regularly turn to Fox for their news; only 29 percent of them said there was nothing Trump could do to lose their approval, and only 39 percent said they strongly approve of the president.

Ninety percent of Republicans who don’t watch Fox regularly said they don’t support impeachment and removal of Trump from office, compared to 98 percent of those who do watch Fox.

The former number “is overwhelmingly high,” Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent wrote, “but suggests that among this group, at least, Trump could suffer losses on the margins as the inquiry turns up worse revelations.”

As journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, Fox News is “not just a conservative news outlet. It is a propaganda channel for the president and his party, and there is no liberal or centrist equivalent to it.”

Mehdi Hasan

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@mehdirhasan

This is what a lot of well-meaning liberals don’t understand about Fox - it’s not just a conservative news outlet. It is a propaganda channel for the president and his party, and there is no liberal or centrist equivalent to it. https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1186288529938104320 …

Lili Loofbourow

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@Millicentsomer

“The poll ... finds that an astonishing 55% of Republicans who watch Fox News as their primary news source say there is almost nothing Trump could do to lose their approval. By contrast, only 29% of Republicans who don’t cite Fox as their primary source say this.” https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1186286472128880641 …

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Hasan later highlighted an on-air remark from Fox News host Mark Levin that “there hasn’t even been a hint of scandal” since Trump took office as further proof that the network offers “just pure and endless propaganda.”

@mehdirhasan

I said it last night and I will say it again: Fox News doesn’t even pretend to be a news channel anymore and is now just pure and endless propaganda on behalf of this scandal-ridden President. https://twitter.com/jasonscampbell/status/1186627394708365315 …

Jason Campbell

@JasonSCampbell

Mark Levin: "While [Trump's] been president there hasn't even been a hint of scandal. Not a hint."

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Trump notoriously watches several hours of Fox News on a daily basis and has been known to regularly speak with host Sean Hannity after Hannity ends his nightly show.

As Sargent wrote in the Post, the network’s coverage of Trump’s recent plan to host next year’s G7 summit at his resort in Doral, Florida—a violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause—played a role in reversing the president’s decision:

Trump pulled the plug on his corrupt scheme to host the Group of Seven summit at his Doral resort after getting informed that some moderate Republicans—the ones he needs to keep in line on impeachment—didn’t want to defend it, amid indications that it would become part of the case for impeachment. He also witnessed some Fox News personalities disapproving of it…That’s when Trump concluded the jig was up on Doral, the New York Times reports.

According to Sargent, with both Trump and his most loyal supporters tuning in to Fox News on a regular basis, the network serves to reassure his base that Trump has done nothing wrong to deserve the impeachment inquiry House Democrats have initiated, while protecting the president from real accountability:

It’s difficult to say whether Republicans watch Fox because they’re already in lockstep with Trump, or whether they’re inclined that way because of what Fox tells them. But these things seem to reinforce one another—and that may prove a significant factor in keeping GOP lawmakers in line behind him.

[…]

This hermetically sealed-off version of reality has created a space in which Republicans are backing Trump because he’s only done right.

In recent days, Trump critics including New York Times columnist David Leonhardt and Crooked Media editor Brian Beutler have argued that with Fox News at the president’s disposal and Fox‘s Republican viewers showing no sign of abandoning Trump, the president is essentially protected from impeachment unless a mass mobilization is begun by the at least 50 percent of Americans who do support his removal.

“The Fox effect is protecting Trump from removal, and mass mobilization is likely the only way for impeachment supporters to overcome it,” Beutler tweeted.

Leonhardt on Sunday wrote that Fox‘s hold on Republican voters makes it increasingly unlikely that their Republican representatives in Congress will defect and announce their support for impeachment.

“Protest may be more important than in the past, because the elite institutions that helped bring down Richard Nixon, like political parties and the national media, are weaker today,” he wrote.

A mass protest “can wake up more Americans to the gravity of the situation,” Leonhardt added. “It can mobilize progressives to work as hard as they did during the 2018 midterms. It can confront congressional Republicans with their cowardice.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/beyond-parody-matt-gaetz-and-dozens-of-his-gop-colleagues-try-to-barge-into-secret-hearing-in-latest-anti-impeachment-stunt/

...more than two dozen House conservatives rail on Schiff and the process outside the closed impeachment proceedings, and have now entered the SCIF - and they are bound to be kicked out bc they don’t serve on the three committees conducting the probe. It is being led by Matt Gaetz...

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hnn 1019

difference between Nixon and Trump is Fox Newsby Nicole Hemmer

Fox News shields President Trump. But his love for their conspiracies might bring him down.

Impeachment is the latest chapter in the battle between democracy and white supremacyby Carol Anderson

The connections aren’t as obvious, but America’s front lines remain the same as they’ve always been.

mma 1019

As the last credible journalist to have a daily show on Fox News, Shep Smith probably should have resigned a long time ago. The network has been a right-wing propaganda network for years, and under Trump has turned into regime TV. On Friday, he finally did resign, and initial reports have indicated that his actions were driven by how bad the network has gotten.

Smith's resignation comes shortly after Fox News executives reportedly sided against him in an on-air feud with Fox News host Tucker Carlson over the seriousness of Trump's behavior in regards to Ukraine. In the end, Carlson said thatSmith was giving partisan opinion and not news. The entire episode was extremely telling: Tucker Carlson portrayed Smith's show -- at first implicitly and then explicitly -- as leftist fake news, much the same way he does nightly with CNN and MSNBC, even teaming up with close Trump ally Joseph diGenova. And Fox News executives were fine with it.

Smith's departure is a disaster for Fox News. As Media Matters' Matt Gertz wrote in the wake of Smith's announcement, "Smith’s willingness to push back against the misinformation rampant elsewhere on the network had made him extremely valuable to Fox. It provided the network’s executives with a fig leaf they could wave whenever critics argued that Fox was nothing more than a propaganda apparatus on behalf of the president and his allies. That fig leaf is gone. Fox belongs to the Seans Hannity and Lous Dobbs. And now, everyone knows it."

Gird your loins: Fox News is about to get even worse.

==

cf rhet

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/trump-attacks-congresswoman-tlaib-for-suggesting-democrats-jail-lawbreaking-white-house-officials/

...Trump is off and tweeting on Sunday morning, turning his ire on Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) after she admitted that Democrats are considering detaining White House officials who are refusing to comply with subpoenas.

According to a report from The Hill, Tlaib, “revealed in a new interview that House Democrats have discussed jailing allies of the president who do not comply with congressional subpoenas, an escalation of the House’s efforts to force White House compliance with an impeachment inquiry.”

After Trump’s digital director Dan Scavino tweeted out a link to the story with the comment, “Sounds about right. COUP!” Trump responded with, “A despicable human being!”...

==

mma

Sinclair personalities push anti-impeachment propaganda

10/04/19 11:20 AM EDT

Right-wing media label impeachment inquiry a “coup” driven by Democrats

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/trumps-false-and-dangerous-coup-claim-comes-fox-news-and-conservative-talk-radio

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/is-the-gop-really-willing-to-burn-our-republic-to-the-ground-in-order-to-maintain-its-hold-on-power

...

Gaslighting for Beginners

The standard GOP gaslighting on Ukrainegate is beautifully exemplified by the columnist Marc Thiessen, a regular contributor to the Washington Post and a living rebuttal to the canard that the media leans left. Thiessen writes: “There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking foreign heads of state or intelligence officials to cooperate with an official Justice Department investigation.”

True. If this were a legitimate investigation aimed at advancing US national interests, rather than an illegal personal crusade to benefit Donald J. Trump. The attempt to spin it as the former is at the heart of the Republican counter-strategy, but it doesn’t hold a thimbleful of water.

It’s hardly worth the figurative ink required to dismantle all the dishonesty in his statement, but just as an exercise:

The DOJ “investigation” that Bill Barr is heading—aimed at undermining the US Intelligence Community’s conclusion that Russian aided Trump in the 2016 election—is itself a partisan sham and abuse of power. Citing it as justification for Trump strongarming Kiev is a circular argument and master class in graft. Team Trump’s contention that its interest in Ukraine was and is an altruistic campaign against generic “corruption” is laughable, especially coming from the most corrupt presidency in modern US history. The only “corruption” Trump referred to in the Zelensky call was the fairy tale of Biden’s wrongdoing. (Even if one believes Hunter Biden was unethically trading on his father’s position, Joe Biden was in no way complicit in that…..and by the by, that is the entire stock-in-trade of the Trump children.) Only the willfully blind could fail to recognize Trump’s true motive as regards Ukraine—damaging a political rival, and using the full might of the US presidency to do so, which is the very epitome of the corruption in its own right.

Of course, it has grown tedious to point out that if Barack Obama had phoned a foreign leader and demanded an investigation of Tagg Romney while holding US military aid for ransom, he would already be the GOP poster child for a new version of “Strange Fruit,” covered by Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.

But Thiessen’s disgraceful apologia represents mainstream conservative thought in the age of Donald, where seldom is heard a discouraging word. Never, in fact.

To that end, I was admittedly shocked to see some Republicans, including those twin pillars of hypocrisy Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham (to the extent that a pillar can be spineless and flaccid) push back over Trump’s unconscionable betrayal of our Kurdish allies this week. Why the GOP is willing to risk incurring Trump’s wrath over that and not, say, over selling our country out to the highest bidder, remains a mystery. But no elected Republican, not even Mitt Romney, who is what passes for a GOP profile in courage these days (we’re grading on a sliding scale), has really stood up to the president in the way that his actions call for. And I am not confident that sufficient numbers will do so should it come down to an impeachment trial in the Senate.

(On the subject of Syria, and adding to the madness, at a time when Trump desperately needs the fealty of Senate Republicans, why did he choose this moment to piss off even Moscow Mitch and Leningrad Lindsey? More proof that he doesn’t think strategically at all, only impulsively, despite repeated efforts to credit him for such.)

But even this rare sighting of the elusive Republican vertebrate in the wild has a dark side, as noted by the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie in what may have been the most incisive observation of the week. In addressing this question of why Republicans stick with Trump so submissively, the conventional wisdom is that it’s a Faustian bargain. But Bouie argues convincingly that it’s really something much simpler and uglier: they agree with him.

"Trump has taken an ax to domestic spending programs for the poor—his Agriculture Department just :{proposed:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: new cuts to food stamps; he signed a tax cut that funnels trillions to the highest earners; and he stacked the federal judiciary with right-wing ideologues. It’s hard to imagine a better outcome for a conservative politician."

Bouie points to the pushback on Syria as evidence that this narrative that the GOP fears the wrath of Trump and his base is wrong. They will in fact stand up to him when they wish….and not only on foreign policy but on tariffs and economic issues as well. So perhaps we should take those Republicans at their word when they say they don’t think blackmailing foreign powers for personal gain with US tax dollars is a problem.

As long as it’s a Republican who does it.

...

==

Over the past several weeks, many of Donald Trump's defenders have worked to shield the president from allegations related to the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry. However, many of these right-wing figures sang a different tune on impeachment not too long ago. Conservative media repeatedly called for Barack Obama's impeachment throughout his tenure, that now – in the face of a president that has publicly asked for foreign governments to dig up dirt on political opponents – seem especially ludicrous.

This week, Media Matters' Parker Molloy compiled some of the reasons right-wing media called for the impeachment of President Obama.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/the-web-of-crazy-that-may-bring-down-a-president/

no lnx

The web of crazy that may bring down a president

"Tump refuses to honor John McCain" by cizauskas is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon October 4, 2019

Last weekend, for the first time, one of Donald Trump’s former insiders appeared on television and openly discussed the metastasizing Ukraine scandal in clear and concise terms. Former homeland security adviser Tom Bossert appeared on ABC’s “This Week”:

This Week

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@ThisWeekABC

Former Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert on impeachment inquiry against Pres. Trump: "It is a bad day and a bad week for the president and for this country if he is asking for political dirt on an opponent." https://abcn.ws/2mhOgOy

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@ThisWeekABC

Tom Bossert says Pres. Trump needs to "move forward" from focus on 2016 collusion allegations: "If he continues to focus on that white whale, it's going to bring him down. Enough." https://abcn.ws/2ojcGb3

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Bossert was talking about two of the strands of what turns out to be a convoluted set of interlocking conspiracy theories, all of which involve Rudy Giuliani and all of which are, quite frankly, completely nuts.

There’s the one about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and the “Black Ledger,” which forms one strand of the ludicrous “Ukraine framed Russia to help Hillary Clinton” 2016 collusion theory. Manafort knows his way around Ukraine and Giuliani has reportedly been consulting with him in prison, where Manafort is serving time for various felonies he committed during his work there.

The “CrowdStrike scandal” mentioned by Bossert intersects with the “Black Ledger” theory. This one holds that the security firm that first identified the Russians as being behind the Democratic National Committee hack was actually owned by a Ukrainian (it isn’t and never has been) and was in on the plot — as were the FBI and the DNC, including murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich, who supposedly did the actual hacking as an “inside job.” All of it is utter nonsense. (The New York Times’ Scott Shane did a nice report on how Trump got hooked on this stuff.)

There’s also Attorney General William Barr’s “investigation of the investigation” which has him gallivanting all over the globe trying to prove that the CIA had it in for Trump and set up the bogus Russia investigation to trap him. This must also means that Robert Mueller was in on the scheme, since his team indicted a whole bunch of Russians.

As I said, Rudy Giuliani is at the center of all of these conspiracy theories, working under the influence of a couple of Ukrainian conmen in Florida with the full participation of his client, the president of the United States. They are both wallowing in the right-wing fever swamps and it’s as fetid and poisonous as Chernobyl during the meltdown.

Of course, there is also the other big Ukraine scandal that has gotten Trump into such hot water: the alleged influence-peddling extravaganza around Joe and Hunter Biden. As is his wont, Trump has blurted out a confession of wrongdoing, admitting that he asked the Ukrainian president to gather some dirt on his potential political rival as Trump was inexplicably holding up promised military aid. On Thursday, he said it again, adding that he thinks China should investigate the Bidens as well — in the same breath that he made new threats about the ongoing trade war.  He just can’t quit self-impeaching.

Later on Thursday evening, the House Intelligence Committee released transcripts of Trump’s Ukraine and EU ambassadors and envoys texting back and forth about Trump’s “crazy” quid pro quo, which makes clear that they were all aware of what was going on and were either trying to document their displeasure or cover the whole business up. They worked very hard to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a statement saying his government was taking up the investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden. in exchange for a visit to the White House and the release of nearly $400 million in military aid. To his credit, Zelensky didn’t do it, perhaps understanding that he was dealing with people who were unreliable.

Unlike all the other Ukraine scandals, this Biden conspiracy didn’t spring from the right-wing fever swamps, nor did Rudy Giuliani “uncover it” as he likes to brag he did. This one was a professional hit job carried out by the same team that brought you “Clinton Cash,” the book about the Clinton Foundation that formed the basis of the “Crooked Hillary” campaign.

This time it was a book called “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” by “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer, who is now an editor at Breitbart News and president of the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit he founded with Steve Bannon and right-wing billionaire Rebekah Mercer. Its purpose is clear enough: To launder far-right smears and dirty tricks.

I wrote about this gang back in 2015 for Salon when Schweizer gulled the New York Times and the Washington Post into partnering with him on the Clinton story, apparently convincing them that the man who wrote “Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Ruined the Global Economy and Will Do It Again if We Don’t Stop Them” was a straight journalist just looking for a little accountability.  The book was a huge success at what it set out to do: Tar Hillary Clinton as a corrupt criminal. Why not do it again with Joe Biden, who everyone knew was likely to run against Trump in 2020?

This time, with the notable exception of a couple of dubious stories in the New York Times, the media didn’t bite on the Biden story with quite the same eagerness. Bloomberg’s Joshua Green points out in this article on the subject that while it didn’t catch on in the mainstream press, it was huge in the conservative media, which apparently bothered Bannon a great deal. After all, the GAI was formed to push its smears into the mainstream.  Stories that exist only in the conservative bubble simply don’t have the same power to move the broader electorate.

Green notes that because Trump mainlines conservative media, he saw the story as very beneficial to his cause, adding that “what differentiates Trump from other power-consumers of conservative media is that he’s the president and was willing to use his governmental powers to attack a political rival.” Indeed he was. And it was a big mistake — it finally got the Democrats off the dime on impeachment.

Schweizer denies working with Giuliani or the White House. But then, he didn’t have to. He planted the seeds and then Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the Trump and Rudy show made it grow. Green writes:

[T]here’s no question the anti-Biden effort has boomeranged on Trump, who is suddenly under siege from the Democrats’ fast-moving impeachment inquiry. … At this point, no one can say what effect all this will have on the 2020 election. But it looks increasingly like it won’t be the one that Biden’s antagonists, from Trump to Schweizer, were aiming for.

It’s possible this will end up hurting Joe Biden, as these smears almost always do. But it’s hurting Trump even more. And to be honest, I’m not sure that Schweizer and company care that much. If a pain in the neck like Donald Trump gets caught in the crossfire I doubt they’ll lose any sleep over it. Political hitmen aren’t sentimental. They just move on to their next assignment.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

also morrison oz

Trump asked British Prime Minister Johnson to help him discredit Mueller’s report and the Russia investigation

Alex Henderson

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Ever since 1796, Congress has struggled to keep presidents in check

The Conversation

George Washington, hero of the American Revolution and the country’s first president, in 1796 withheld documents the House of Representatives had requested from him.

==

meanwhile, back at the ranch...

no lnx

Mike Pompeo is targeting Hillary Clinton’s emails in massive investigation: Bombshell Washington Post report

Royalty-free stock photo ID: 287370860 NEW YORK CITY - JUNE 13 2015: former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton formally announced her intention to seek the 2016 Democratic nomination for president during a rally on Roosevelt Island

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement September 29, 2019

While claiming that the impeachment inquiry into alleged misconduct by Donald Trump is a “witch hunt,” the administration is focusing attention on investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to a bombshell report published by The Washington Post on Saturday.

“The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said,” the paper reported.

The scope of the investigation is staggering.

“As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials,” the paper noted. “Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.”State Department investigators began contacting the former officials about 18 months ago, after President Trump’s election, and then seemed to drop the effort before picking it up in August, officials said.”

The investigation is causing yet another abuse of power scandal for the embattled administration.

“To many of those under scrutiny, including some of the Democratic Party’s top foreign policy experts, the recent flurry of activity surrounding the Clinton email case represents a new front on which the Trump administration could be accused of employing the powers of the executive branch against perceived political adversaries,” The Post explained. “The existence of the probe follows revelations that the president used multiple levers of his office to pressure the leader of Ukraine to pursue investigations that Trump hoped would produce damaging information about Democrats, including potential presidential rival Joe Biden.”

Read the full report.

mma 919

House Democratic leaders announced this week that they are opening a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s communications with Ukraine, and right-wing media is working overtime to spin the narrative positively for the president.

Over the past week, details have emerged regarding a whistleblower complaint that involves Trump’s communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Additional reporting confirmed that Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pushed Zelensky to target former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The right-wing media-fueled conspiracy theory behind that request has been thoroughly debunked. BOSSERT

Now that the whistleblower complaint has been declassified and released to the public, right-wing media has latched on to the assertion that the complaint is based on “hearsay” and therefore not credible, even though the complaint referenced “more than half a dozen U.S. officials” who acted as witnesses to “various facts related to this effort.”

Right-wing media is also insisting that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is moving forward with impeachment only because she has caved to the progressive left; that the inquiry is merely political theater by Democrats; and that this is just the latest in a long list of attempts by the Democratic Party, the elite, and the “deep state” to oust a successful president. These talking points are nearly identical to the ones issued by the White House to minimize the gravity of the impeachment inquiry.

On Fox & Friends, Jason Chaffetz insisted that “this is the deep state fighting back against a disruptive, unconventional president who is cleaning out this, this swamp.”

Fox News contributor and Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway insisted multiple timesthat the complaint is an effort by the mainstream media and Democrats to destroy Trump, comparing it to the Mueller report.

Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade asserted that “the whistleblower – according to our sources – has a political agenda,” asking, “Is that a whistleblower, someone who doesn’t – how do you blow the whistle on a president on a conversation you weren’t on?”

Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson, a serial plagiarist, claimed the complaint has “no evidence,” is “unverified” and “uncorroborated,” and is being “used to launch a fraudulent investigation.”

Conservative radio host and QAnon supporter Bill Mitchell claimed that “this whole thing is hearsay” and addedthat “we are witnessing the end of the Democrat Party as we know it.”

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619 80 MOC impeach free sp 4 ppl

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Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), the Assistant Speaker of the House and fourth-highest-ranking House Democrat, has officially come out in support of an impeachment inquiry against President Trump. Rep. Luján’s support brings significant power to the ever-growing impeachment movement, with 130 Members of Congress and more than half of the Democratic caucus now favoring an inquiry.

wow

will boost impeachment efforts? momentum?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/jimmy-carter-flatly-says-trump-is-not-a-legitimate-president-he-was-put-into-office-because-the-russians-interfered/

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At this very moment, Trump and allies of his administration are blocking more than 20 Democratic congressional probes. Historians, professors, and legal experts have explained that the administration's actions are unprecedented and that the administration's stonewalling of oversight could quickly set new precedent for unchecked executive power for years after Trump is gone.

Right-wing media have provided extensive cover for the Trump administration. Brian Kilmeade said, "So there are countless investigations. ... And for the most part, the White House looked at all of this and said this is out of control." Jeanine Pirro stated, "The only constitutional crisis is the one created by Obama administration officials of a false collusion." Jesse Watters, simply claimed, "All presidents refuse to hand things over to Congress."

There's a real cost to normalizing this blanket stonewalling. As law professor David Alan Sklansky said, “Our system depends on some commitment by both parties and by all public officials to continuing a constitutional order.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/unfathomable-evil-recognizing-unfathomable-evil-trumps-possible-pardons-of-war-criminals-provoke-outrage/

Progressives, human rights advocates, and journalists responded with outrage on Saturday to a New York Timesreport that President Donald Trump “has requested the immediate preparation of paperwork needed to pardon several American military members accused or convicted of war crimes.”

Unnamed U.S. government officials told the Times that on or around Memorial Day, Trump may pardon multiple servicemembers involved with “high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder, and desecration of a corpse.”

As the newspaper reported:

The requests are for Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs, who is scheduled to stand trial in the coming weeks on charges of shooting unarmed civilians and killing an enemy captive with a knife while deployed in Iraq.

They are also believed to include the case of a former Blackwater security contractor recently found guilty in the deadly 2007 shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis; the case of Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010; and the case of a group of Marine Corps snipers charged with urinating on the corpse of a dead Taliban fighter.

“These are all extremely complicated cases that have gone through a careful system of consideration,” Gary Solis, a retired military judge and armor officer who served in Vietnam, told the Times. “A freewheeling pardon undermines that whole system."

Solis warned that pardoning servicemembers accused or convicted of war crimes “raises the prospect in the minds of the troops that says, ‘Whatever we do, if we can get the folks back home behind us, maybe we can get let off.'”

The news on Saturday came after Trump, earlier this month, pardoned former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, who was convicted of murdering an Iraqi prisoner in 2008. As Common Dreams reported at the time, human rights advocates decried that decision as “a presidential endorsement of a murder that violated the military’s own code of justice.”

The Timesreport—on which the White House and Justice Department declined to comment—was met with similar condemnation.

The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer, who spoke out against Trump’s pardon of Behenna, tweeted, “This incentivizes the commission of war crimes by our opponents and allies, and in doing so puts U.S. servicemembers at greater risk.”

Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth said, “Think of the horrible message that sends to would-be war criminals around the world.”

Murtaza Mohammad Hussain, a reporter at The Intercept, denounced Trump’s expected move as “a huge injustice to those whose lives they destroyed and a message that America will tolerate war crimes.”

Their criticism was echoed by others, including journalist Ryan Devereaux, who suggested that “if you were to make a list of ‘top notorious U.S. war crimes of the post-9/11 era’ it would look a lot like the president’s pardoning plans.”

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519 1st burr then Fox News viewers unleash furious attacks on GOP’s Amash for impeachment talk: ‘This chump is toast’

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

According to Amash, Trump's actions and behavior meets the "threshold" for impeachment.

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pelosi and dem leaders back off, wait for mueller, says unnec divisive; sev dem prez cands eliz w say yes; many other dems say watergate style tv nat'l to educate the ppl

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/trumps-second-term-would-be-terrifying-heres-why/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-a-watergate-era-psychological-study-explains-why-dead-enders-may-finally-turn-on-trump

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/what-are-we-waiting-for-nyt-columnist-david-leonhardt-calls-for-trumps-immediate-removal-from-office-in-scathing-editorial/

rashid t calls for

In a powerful and lengthy piece, up this afternoon, titled The People vs. Donald J. Trump and subtitled “He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for?”

He begins with a very blunt paragraph:

The presidential oath of office contains 35 words and one core promise: to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Since virtually the moment Donald J. Trump took that oath two years ago, he has been violating it.

The column is too long to go through all of the points Loenhardt raises, but let me below the break offer some key information.

After going through only SOME of the chaos we have experienced under Trump, Leonhardt offers this paragraph, in response to his own question as offered above in the subtitle:

The easy answer is to wait — to allow the various investigations of Trump to run their course and ask voters to deliver a verdict in 2020. That answer has one great advantage. It would avoid the national trauma of overturning an election result. Ultimately, however, waiting is too dangerous. The cost of removing a president from office is smaller than the cost of allowing this president to remain.

He is careful in what he is offering.  As he notes in PART of one key paragraph:

Before we get to the how of Trump’s removal, though, I want to spend a little more time on the why— because even talking about the ouster of an elected president should happen only under extreme circumstances. Unfortunately, the country is now so polarized that such talk instead occurs with every president.

He then reminds us of calls within Congress for impeachment moves against each of the past two Presidents.

He makes clear that neither Trump’s ideology — which in some cases he finds abhorrent — nor even some of his more noxious actions such as cutting health insurance or deporting undocumented aliens rises to the necessary level for impeachment.

Leonhardt tells us

The negligence and perfidy of President Trump — his high crimes and misdemeanors — can be separated into four categories. This list is conservative.

It does NOT (at least at this point) include either collusion with Russia (not necessarily as yet proven) or his cavalier — lazy — approach to the performance of his job.

It instead focuses on demonstrable ways that he has broken the law or violated his constitutional oath.

Let me list the four categories as each appears, in bolded section heading:

Trump has used the presidency for personal enrichment.

Trump has violated campaign finance law.

Trump has obstructed justice.

Trump has subverted democracy.

Leonhardt explains in detail, with supporting material, each of these assertions.

Let me offer the first and last brief paragraphs on just the last point, the subverting of democracy:

The Constitution that Trump swore to uphold revolves around checks and balances. It depends on the idea that the president is not a monarch. He is a citizen to whom, like all other citizens, the country’s laws apply. Trump rejects this principle. He has instead tried to undermine the credibility of any independent source of power or information that does not serve his interests.

No other president since Nixon has engaged in behavior remotely like Trump’s. To accept it without sanction is ultimately to endorse it. Unpleasant though it is to remove a president, the costs and the risks of a continued Trump presidency are worse.

Leonhardt then poses the question of What Now? and proceeds to answer it.

It is not that he is calling for moving immediately to impeachment — he points out all the reasons that would be both ineffective and counterproductive.

Instead, he argues for a “smarter approach” which he decribes as

a series of sober-minded hearings to highlight Trump’s misconduct. Democrats should focus on easily understandable issues most likely to bother Trump’s supporters, like corruption.

He thinks that can move both Congressional Republicans and some of Trump’s base.One key is whether the conditions can be clarified as representing electoral jeopardy for Republicans, as two Senators up in 2020, Cory Gardner and Susan Collins, are already giving some indication by appearing to break with the President on his “wall” as a condition for reopening the government. As he writes:

It’s not only that Trump is unfit to be president and that Republicans know it. It also may be the case that they will soon have a political self-interest in abandoning him. If they did, the end could come swiftly. The House could then impeach Trump, knowing the Senate might act to convict. Or negotiations could begin over whether Trump deserves to trade resignation for some version of immunity.

Let me stop at this point.  Note that Leonhardt does not explicitly call for impeachment, but rather for aggressive hearings, especially on the four topics on which he focuses, as a means of galvanizing the political pressure to either move towards impeachment or possibly force the President to resign in return for some limited immunity.

Trump already hates both The New York Times and The Washington Post, and continues to try to demean and undermine both.  Unfortunately for him, both have real impact on political opinion, even still within some segments of the Republican party.  Leonhardt is a major columnist for the former.  Which is why I think this column will have some resonance, especially given the challenge of this final paragraph:

Throughout his career, Trump has worked hard to invent his own reality, and largely succeeded. It has made him very rich and, against all odds, elected him president. But whatever happens in 2019, his false version of reality will not survive history, just as Nixon’s did not. Which side of that history do today’s Republicans want to be on?

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8/23/18

Michael Cohen's guilty plea, President Donald Trump has potentially been implicated in serious criminal acts.

And conservative New York Timescolumnist Bret Stephens — who, while never a fan of Trump, was up until this point skeptical of taking serious action against his presidency — has come to one conclusion: Trump needs to be impeached.

"The Constitution's standard for impeachment is 'Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,'" Stephens wrote in a new op-ed for the Times. "The standard is now met."

"As a candidate," Stephens continued, "Trump is credibly alleged to have purposefully conspired with Cohen to commit criminal acts ... It also means that, as president, Trump allegedly sought to conceal the arrangement by failing to note in his 2017 financial disclosure forms his reimbursements to Cohen. The president most likely continues to lie to the American people about the nature and purpose of these payments."

Stephens then invoked the words of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — now one of Trump's major political supporters in Congress — from the 1990s, during the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton, who drew a parallel between Clinton's sex scandal and Watergate by saying that Richard Nixon "cheated the electoral system" whereas Clinton "cheated the legal system":

To conservatives reading this column, ask yourselves the following questions:

If breaking the law (by lying under oath) to conceal an affair was impeachable, why is breaking the law (by violating campaign-finance laws) to conceal an affair not impeachable?

If “cheating the electoral system” (by means of a burglary) was impeachable, why is cheating the electoral system (by means of illicit hush money) not impeachable?

If cheating “our institutions” (by means of an “assault” in “every way” on the legal system) is impeachable, why is cheating those institutions (by means of nonstop presidential mendacity and relentless attacks on the Justice Department and the F.B.I.) not impeachable?

Stephens lays out the cold, hard facts of the situation and politics, in a way that Republicans in Congress have desperately sought to ignore. With more legal problems for Trump and his associates on the horizon, like a potential deposition and testimony in the Stormy Daniels lawsuit and a second, potentially more revelatory Manafort trial, the reality of what Trump is accused of, and the choice our nation faces, is impossible to brush aside.

fallout from President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen’s plea deal and former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s guilty verdict continues to grow, could President Trump be next? We speak about the possibility of impeachment with Democratic Congressmember Al Green, who introduced articles of impeachment against Trump last year, and Ron Fein, legal director at Free Speech for People. He is the co-author of the book “The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump.”

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