The Impeachment Trial of President Donald J. Trump

[Warren Zevon]

#WalkAway

 

[B-Man]

 

WELL, THAT WHOLE IMPEACHMENT THING IS CERTAINLY GOING SWIMMINGLY:

 

 WashPost-ABC Poll: Trump begins reelection year more competitive against Democrats than he was three months ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘They’ve Taken Their Best Kill Shot And Missed’: Geraldo Rivera Says Impeachment Is Doomed.

 

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[Bob in Mich]

14 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

 

A MERE TECHNICALITY: 

 

Dershowitz: Democrats’ case meritless because no crime committed.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Dershowitz, a member of Trump’s defense team, said Democrats had not made a sufficient case to charge the president with a crime as they presented their arguments in 24 hours over three days.

 

“The conduct has to be criminal in nature — it can’t be abuse of power, it can’t be obstruction of Congress,” he said referring to the two charges laid out in the articles of impeachment against Trump. “Those are precisely the arguments that the framers rejected.”

 

 

To be fair, Democrats reject the Framers and the Constitution for a whole lot of things.

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I know full well that a defense lawyer's job is to offer up the best possible defense for his client.  That is the job.  I couldn't do that job.  It would bother my conscience to no end to know I let a guilty person walk away unpunished, especially a violent criminal.  

 

I would love to hear Dershowitz' reply as to whether he ever feels any responsibility for allowing people he knows are guilty to escape justice.  If the freed criminal victimizes innocent folks again, would he ever have second thoughts?  Did he ever fear OJ may repeat?

[Rob's House]

8 hours ago, Deranged Rhino said:

So which one is cultish and unwilling to accept reality? 
 

I can prove what I said — you cannot prove the inverse. The media spent three years telling you what was false was actually true — while calling trump a liar. 
 

Cognitive dissonance hurts. But you can work through it if you’re willing to be honest and reassess what you think you know. 

 

I can make the case:

 

We called him a racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobe, rapist, pervert, foreign operative, and traitor, and you still support him.

 

What more do we have to make up before you'll open your eyes?

[Warren Zevon]

4 minutes ago, Bob in Mich said:

 

I would love to hear Dershowitz' reply 

 

He said he wore underwear during his massage at Epstein's mansion - a true hero

[Bob in Mich]

8 minutes ago, Foxx said:

are you saying you don't want to investigate things yourself, that you would rather have your opinions fed to you? because... that's what it sure sounds like.

 

No, please don't make up my words.  What I am saying is exactly what I typed.  Nothing more or less.  If you want to discuss something, why make it a project for others to engage? 

 

Again, if you have a point for discussion, what is it?

 

[Rob's House]

5 minutes ago, Bob in Mich said:

 

I know full well that a defense lawyer's job is to offer up the best possible defense for his client.  That is the job.  I couldn't do that job.  It would bother my conscience to no end to know I let a guilty person walk away unpunished, especially a violent criminal.  

 

I would love to hear Dershowitz' reply as to whether he ever feels any responsibility for allowing people he knows are guilty to escape justice.  If the freed criminal victimizes innocent folks again, would he ever have second thoughts?  Did he ever fear OJ may repeat?

 

Practicing criminal defense carries deep responsibilities that put one in a unique position to do things they may find distasteful in order to serve a higher purpose.

 

If you determine that only the innocent are worthy of a legal defense, you undermine the entire criminal justice apparatus, and constitutional protections of the accused go by the wayside.

[B-Man]

 

If you are observant, you’ve probably noticed a pattern with media “bombshells” involving Donald Trump. They usually boil down to something we’ve already known spun in a way to make it seem newly nefarious. Stamp it as a “scoop” or “breaking news” and away we go.

 

Last night, another supposedly major story dropped from The New York Times. It’s from John Bolton’s upcoming book and was leaked to Maggie Haberman. We’ll just start with the headline and move into the body of the article, as the two are disconnected in some ways.

 

 

 

What’s not said in this headline is important, but to be fair, it does at least leave things vague enough that it’s not outright false. The obvious implication here is that Trump told Bolton to hold up aid, that Ukraine was threatened with said hold up, and that it proves a quid pro quo solely to get Joe Biden. That just so happens to be the narrative the media have inferred as well and are running with.

 

 

Sounds really bad, right?

 

The problem is that the actual meat of the article on that matter is much less sensational than is currently being portrayed by every blue-check mark journalist gasping on Twitter right now. Here’s what’s really being alleged.

 

 

What appears to have happened is that Trump told Bolton that he preferred to not send the aid to Ukraine until they turned over materials dealing with the Russia investigation. Let me repeat that: the Russia investigation.

 

While the Times then desperately tries to tie that to Biden to push the favored political narrative, it’s clear by how this is written that there’s no actual mention of politically targeting the Bidens. If that were in the manuscript, they would not have left it so ambiguous.

 

In short, Trump let a subordinate know that he was skeptical of Ukraine’s actions on fighting corruption and that he wanted to see them hand over materials relevant to investigating 2016 election interference before he released the aid. Nowhere in this article is there any indication that Ukraine was bribed, nor that they even knew the aid was on hold.

 

https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/01/27/another-bombshell-involving-trump-and-john-bolton-dropped-last-night-here-are-the-details/

 

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[Rob's House]

30 minutes ago, Gary Busey said:

 

 

If Jim Acosta says he has multiple sources you can take that to the bank.

 

And by bank I mean landfill.

[Tiberius]

Bolton sounds like he was a witness to abuse of power. Let's hear him testify! 

 

Stop the cover up! 

[Warren Zevon]

 

[Bob in Mich]

7 minutes ago, Rob's House said:

 

Practicing criminal defense carries deep responsibilities that put one in a unique position to do things they may find distasteful in order to serve a higher purpose.

 

If you determine that only the innocent are worthy of a legal defense, you undermine the entire criminal justice apparatus, and constitutional protections of the accused go by the wayside.

 

Rob, I didn't say the guilty should not be defended.  What I said is I couldn't do that job as my conscience would bother me if I knowingly set the guilty free....especially violent criminals.

[B-Man]

 

 

WHERE’S WALDO WHISTLEBLOWER?

PHILBEN: I want to touch on one last point before I yield to one of my colleagues. That relates to the whistleblower. The whistleblower who we haven’t heard that much about who started all of this. The whistleblower we know from the letter that the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community sent that he thought that the whistleblower had political bias. We don’t know exactly what the political bias was because the Inspector General testified in the House committees in an executive session, and that transcript is still secret. It wasn’t transmitted up to the House Judiciary Committee. We haven’t seen it. We don’t know what’s in it. We don’t know what he was asked and what he revealed about the whistleblower. Now you would think that before going forward with an impeachment proceeding against the President of the United States that you would want to find out something about the complainant that had started all of it because motivations, bias, reasons for wanting to bring this complaint could be relevant, but there wasn’t any inquiry into that.

 

Recent reports, public reports, suggest that potentially the whistleblower was an Intelligence Community staffer who worked with then Vice President Biden on Ukraine matters, which if true would suggest an even greater reason for wanting to know about potential bias or motive for the whistleblower. At first when things started, it seemed like everyone agreed that we should hear from the whistleblower including Manager Schiff. I think we have what he said.

 

SCHIFF (tape): Yes, we would love to talk directly with the whistleblower.

 

We’ll get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower.

 

We don’t need the whistleblower.

 

PHILBIN: What changed? At first Manager Schiff agreed we should hear the unfiltered testimony from the whistleblower, but then he changed his mind and he suggested that it was because now we had the transcript. But the second clip there was from September 29th which was four days after the transcript had been released. But there was something else that came into play, and that was something that Manager Schiff had said earlier when he was asked about whether he had spoken to the whistleblower.

 

SCHIFF (tape): We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.

 

PHILBIN: It turned out that that statement was not truthful. Around October 2nd or 3rd, it was exposed that the Manager Schiff’s staff at least had spoken with the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed the complaint and potentially had given some guidance, some sort to the whistleblower. After that point it became critical to shut down any inquiry into the whistleblower. During the House hearings, of course Manager Schiff was in charge. He was chairing the hearings. That creates a real problem from a due process perspective, from a search for truth perspective, because he was an interested fact witness at that point. He had a reason, since he had been caught out saying something that wasn’t truthful about that contact, he had a reason to not want that inquiry. It was he who ensured that there wasn’t any inquiry into that.

 

 

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[Tiberius]

“The Room Where It Happened”

 

How appropriate ?

[Deranged Rhino]

42 minutes ago, Bob in Mich said:

 

No, I will not go back to Kavanaugh hearing articles looking for some vague connection.  If you want to make a point for discussion, please just state your point.

“No I will not think for myself! How dare you ask me to do something I’ve proven I’m incapable of doing!” 
 

  

 

Sums up why Bob is so, so lost in a perfect two sentences. 

[B-Man]

 

 

[BillsFanNC]

They've got him this time. I'm absolutely sure of it. 

 

?

[Tiberius]

1 minute ago, BillsFanNC said:

They've got him this time. I'm absolutely sure of it. 

 

?

He is good at being a criminal, that's for sure 

[Bob in Mich]

7 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

“The Room Where It Happened”

 

How appropriate ?

 

You forgot to mention the big oval surrounding the title words on the book cover.  Hmmm, that may be a clue....what could that oval mean?

[Rob's House]

7 minutes ago, Bob in Mich said:

 

Rob, I didn't say the guilty should not be defended.  What I said is I couldn't do that job as my conscience would bother me if I knowingly set the guilty free....especially violent criminals.

 

Maybe. It's hard to say until you've been in that position.

 

I had a friend with that mindset who had no qualms about sending the guilty up the river until he did an internship at the public defender's office.

 

He still wanted to be a prosecutor, but had a much different perspective after that experience.

 

Not all criminals, event violent offenders, are truly dangerous people that society needs to be protected from. Some are, but some are not.

 

I too would have reservations about defending someone I thought would pose an imminent danger if released, but that's not always readily apparent, and it's not necessarily ethically or morally preferable to deny that person a good defense, even if you think he belongs in prison.

 

When those cases do arise it's more often a case of mitigation rather than outright exoneration. If they've got the right guy they can usually prove it. If not, subverting constitutional protections to prevent a guilty person from escaping punishment is unethical.

 

Certainly one can choose not to represent a particular client, but it's not necessarily ethical to pawn those cases off on others if you take your duties seriously. It can be a difficult choice with no easy answer.

 

What should always be considered is that the power of the state to prosecute is immense, and if we deny constitutional protections to some, we effectively deny them to all.