The Trump Impeachment

[Joe]

Kasich backs impeachment. I expect a strongly worded tweet.

[Tero]

CNN
Washington (CNN) — Career diplomat George Kent told congressional investigators in his closed-door testimony this week that Rudy Giuliani asked the State Department and the White House to grant a visa to the former Ukrainian official who Joe Biden had pushed to have removed when he was vice president, according to four people familiar with Kent's testimony.
Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, testified that around January 2019 Giuliani requested a visa for former Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin to travel to the United States. Shokin had been pushed out of his position as Ukraine's top prosecutor in 2016 after pressure from Western leaders, including Biden, over concerns that he was not pursuing corruption cases.
Giuliani has previously told CNN he wanted to interview Shokin in person because the Ukrainian promised to reveal dirt on Democrats.

Kent told congressional investigators the State Department had objected to the request, and State did not grant the visa. Giuliani, Kent said, then appealed to the White House to have State reverse its decision. Shokin's visa was never granted, although Giuliani eventually spoke with Shokin over Skype.

The incident reveals how Giuliani's work to dig up dirt on Democrats went much further than previously understood -- and included an attempt to directly influence the actions of the federal government. Concerns that Giuliani was inappropriately involved in shaping and driving the administration's Ukraine policy form a significant part of the intelligence community whistleblower's complaint, which prompted the ongoing impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump.
Giuliani did not reply Friday to questions from CNN. The White House did not respond to request for comment. Kent's lawyer declined to comment for this story.
When asked about the matter, a State Department said that visa records are confidential under US law and the department does not discuss the specifics of individual cases.

Generally, visa applicants are required by US law to be interviewed by a consular officer at a US diplomatic mission. A visa application can be denied for a number of reasons, including if the reviewed information falls "within the scope of one of the inadmissibility or ineligibility grounds of the law," the State Department's website says.
In their January 23 Skype interview, Shokin provided information, Giuliani has told CNN, about supposed coordination between Democrats and people in Ukraine, as well as claims about Biden's son Hunter Biden, who had sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings. Shokin's successor as prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, did travel to the US and spoke with Giuliani about these claims later.

Related Article: Giuliani's journey to the center of Trump's impeachment battle started with a phone call in 2018
Details from those interviews were included in a cache of documents Giuliani delivered to the State Department earlier this year, in hopes that the administration would investigate those claims. The State Department inspector general eventually turned the documents over to congressional investigators.

According to a write-up of his interview with Shokin included in the documents, Giuliani claimed that Shokin "believes the current Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch denied his visa" and noted that Yovanovitch was "close to Mr. Biden." In her recent testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Yovanovitch said she has met Biden "several times over the course of our many years in government, neither he nor the previous Administration ever, directly or directly, raised the issue of either Burisma or Hunter Biden with me."

Giuliani's efforts to push a smear campaign against Yovanovitch ultimately led to her removal from her post in May.
But Shokin also had a damaged reputation among plenty of US and European diplomats. Dogged by criticism he had not pursued corruption aggressively enough, Shokin was forced to resign as Ukraine's top prosecutor in 2016 after both internal pressure and pressure from Western governments and financial institutions.

[Brian Peacock]

So there often seems to be four sources to these 'leaks' from behind closed doors. Is that because one person spills the beans and then three people corroborate it I wonder?

[Tero]

173 Republicans want to condemn Schiff for...er...doing his job
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019 ... pproaches/
there are 197 republicans and 234 democrats

[Tero]

And they are doing the vote:
WASHINGTON — Republicans are planning to try to force a vote on the House floor Monday evening on a resolution to censure House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., accusing him of conveying a “false retelling” of the phone conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president that’s at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
NBC
This will convince the 40% that Trump is innocent even though they don't care if he is or not.

Just like the Kavanaugh circus.

[L'Emmerdeur]

I wonder how far one can extend the 'it's not illegal to ...' line of argumentation.

Apparently just as far as you need. Somewhere in Florida, cheers may be heard.

'Former Acting Attorney General: "Abuse of Power Is Not a Crime"'

Following Tuesday’s devastating House testimony by acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor about President Trump allegedly coercing the Ukrainian president to do his political bidding, former Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker defended the president by claiming “abuse of power is not a crime.”

With House Democrats reportedly looking to focus their impeachment inquiry on a basic “abuse of power” narrative going forward, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham brought Whitaker on her primetime show Tuesday night to provide a counter-argument.

Predicting Republican “payback” in the future if Democrats are successful in impeaching and removing the president, Whitaker went on to complain about the “secret testimony” in the House hearings before claiming that it is too close to the 2020 election for impeachment.

“It’s corrosive and yet those that are perpetrating it cast themselves as the white knights,” Ingraham replied, seemingly referring to Taylor, among others. “They are saving the republic from the man whose policies they disagree with so vehemently.”

Whitaker, meanwhile, blasted the “global elitists and careerists” who are upset with Trump for “upsetting the apple cart” of the “world establishment,” claiming Trump is “being punished for this.” He then called on Democrats to hold public hearings to make their case for impeachment.

[pErvinalia]

[L'Emmerdeur]

Hmm, OK.

'Ex-envoy says release of Ukraine aid was contingent on public vow to investigate Bidens'

A former U.S. ambassador provided lawmakers Tuesday with a vivid, detailed and what some lawmakers called “disturbing” account of the way President Donald Trump wanted to put the new Ukraine president “in a public box” by demanding a quid pro quo at the center of the impeachment probe.

In a lengthy opening statement to House investigators, former ambassador William Taylor described the way Trump’s demand that “everything” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wanted, including vital military aid to counter Russia, hinged on making a public vow that Zelenskiy would investigate Democrats going back to the 2016 U.S. election as well as a company linked to the family of Trump’s potential 2020 Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

[Joe]

You mean there was a quid pro quo? I'm shocked, shocked...

[Joe]

Judge rules DOJ must turn over Mueller grand jury material to House Democrats

A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Justice Department must turn over former special counsel Robert Mueller's grand jury evidence to the House Judiciary Committee, a groundbreaking victory for Democrats in their effort to investigate whether President Donald Trump should be impeached for obstructing the long-running Russia probe.

In a double victory for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Judge Beryl Howell — the chief federal judge in Washington — ruled that the impeachment inquiry Democrats have launched is valid even though the House hasn't taken a formal vote on it. The decision rejects arguments by DOJ and congressional Republicans that a formal vote is necessary to launch impeachment proceedings.

"Even in cases of presidential impeachment, a House resolution has never, in fact, been required to begin an impeachment inquiry," Howell determined, dismissing GOP arguments as unsupported.

Republicans had claimed that the House Judiciary Committee cannot begin impeachment proceedings without a formal vote of the House — and that even if it could, Pelosi is not empowered to simply grant that authority to the Judiciary Committee. But Howell rejected the arguments out of hand.

"These contentions are, at worst, red herrings and, at best, incorrect," ruled Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

[pErvinalia]

Nasty Democrat judge.

[Brian Peacock]

I wonder how far one can extend the 'it's not illegal to ...' line of argumentation.

Apparently just as far as you need. Somewhere in Florida, cheers may be heard.

'Former Acting Attorney General: "Abuse of Power Is Not a Crime"'

...

It's heartening to see the influence Ratz has had on the wider world, with the perspective of our erstwhile Republican strategist gaining ground in the body politic. We can now say it's official: there's nothing illegal about abusing one's power or position. At worst 'abuse of power' is morally neutral, at best it epitomises rectitude. I mean, if something is not wrong then it must be right, right? This is clearly true because the direction one's moral compass points is always determined by an external force - all we have to do in order to be seen as a morally righteous person is agree or disagree with someone else; we don't have to put any effort into forming and maintaining a moral perspective ourselves. Yet another of Capitalism's glories is that we can now buy into a moral perspective like any other off-the-shelf commodity. And when that one no longer works, or if we just fancy a change, then we can just buy another one.

[Tero]

Impeachment is losing momentum. Just do it. Never impeaching makes Democrats look weak.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/10/26/politi ... cnn.com%2F

[Tero]

1F40E36B-9D59-4658-B3CD-1F73538D2DCB.jpeg (68.64 KiB) Viewed 2936 times

[Tero]

CNN
Few people, even those closest to him in the White House, grasped exactly what the President of the United States seemed to believe: that Ukraine, a nation consumed over the past five years by a crippling armed conflict with Russia, had found a way to conspire against him during the 2016 election, and to collude with his rival, Hillary Clinton, by hiding the Democratic National Committee’s email server and feeding her allies dirt about Trump. It was an idea Tom Bossert, his first homeland-security adviser, described as a “completely debunked” conspiracy theory. Few saw in his Ukraine outbursts anything more than the effusions of a cable-news showman.

https://time.com/5691641/trump-conspira ... /?amp=true