Free Republic

The challenge is becoming increasingly clear for House Democrats prosecuting President Donald Trump’s impeachment case as the Senate convenes for a second day of arguments in the landmark trial. No matter how overwhelming the evidence confronting Trump, it becomes less compelling when presented again and again, day after day, as Democrats try to convince not just fidgety senators but an American public deeply divided over the Republican president in an election year. The team led by Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of House Intelligence Committee, constructed a gripping account of Trump’s political pressure on Ukraine and attempt to cover up...

Schiff warns of Russian attack on US mainland, the need to protect 2020 election in Day 2 of Trump's Senate impeachment trial. The Russians could attack the U.S. and removing President Trump from office is necessary to preserve the integrity of the 2020 election. Those were the claims Wednesday from Democrat Adam Schiff on Wednesday during Day 2 of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. The lengthy arguments from Schiff and other House Democrats broke little new ground, if any. Trump's lawyers sat by, waiting their turn, as the president blasted the proceedings from afar, jokingly threatening to face off with the...

House Judiciary Chairman Adam Schiff said that President Trump’s alleged misconduct can’t be proven at the ballot box but only through his impeachment. The California Democrat is one of the House’s impeachment managers and made the remarks during his opening statement on Wednesday. “If not remedied by his conviction in the Senate and removal from office, President Trump’s abuse of his office and obstruction of Congress will permanently alter the balance of power among the branches of government,” the 59-year-old congressman said. Schiff accused Trump of attempting to “use the powers of the presidency to cheat in an election.” “For...

Back in the 1930's, there was a Hollywood character acter named Grady Sutton. He often played a dim witted, gullible sort. One of his big roles was as Og Ogleby in W.C. Fields filmsThe more I watch Schiff, the more I think he is Sutton re-incarnate

House Democrats launched into lengthy arguments that broke little ground, if any, in President Trump's impeachment trial Wednesday -- as the head impeachment manager, California Rep. Adam Schiff, suggested that Russians could attack the U.S. and insisted that removing Trump from office was necessary because the integrity of the 2020 election could not be "assured." Trump's lawyers sat by, waiting their turn, as the president blasted the proceedings from afar, threatening jokingly to face off with the Democrats by coming to "sit right in the front row and stare at their corrupt faces." The challenge before the House managers has...

President Donald Trump tried to paint pursuer Adam Schiff as a pitiful Looney Tunes character Wednesday as Democrats sketched out their case against him in his impeachment trial – while a team of lawmakers used their own color TV snippets to ensnare the president. Flying back from Switzerland, Trump retweeted a cartoon short in the style of a Coyote and Road Runner cartoon. His aide Dan Scavino had earlier tweeted it out during the president's trip overseas. The 90-second sketch did its best to ridicule the impeachment trial that Democrats have described as a serious affair with grave stakes for...

RUSH : Folks, in a normal and sane world, Adam Schiff would have just stepped in it. We got the sound bite coming. I got a note saying that Schiff just said — and he’s doing his opening argument here as House manager number 1. He said, “We cannot trust the ballot box.” Now, where do you start with this? Well, you start with Russia and these people still trying to convince people that Trump colluded with Russia and stole the 2016 election and is already working with Putin via Ukraine to steal the 2020 election. This is their case....

California Rep. Adam Schiff kicked off the House Democrats' three-day opening case against President Trump by accusing him of trying to "cheat" in the 2020 election through his Ukraine dealings, following a raucous first day of impeachment trial speeches in the Senate that lasted into the middle of the night. Trump "attempt[ed] to use the powers of the presidency to cheat in an election," Schiff, the top House Democratic impeachment manager, said in kicking off the House's case against Trump. He argued the only remedy is impeachment -- going so far as to question the legitimacy of this year's presidential...

RUSH: The Democrats now have 24 hours to make their case, two 12-hour days, ’cause the first day, the rules debate was yesterday. Twenty-four hours. Have you ever heard of any criminal trial with an opening argument, an opening statement of a week or four days. Twenty-four hours. And here’s the rub. They don’t have a case. They don’t have a crime. They don’t have an impeachable offense. And yet they’re going to take 24 hours to present what they are going to try to convince people are crimes and impeachingable offenses. I don’t know how people are gonna put...

RUSH: Now, you could be mistaken if you are confused. Greetings, my friends. Great to have you with us. It’s Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and yet another three-hour excursion into broadcast excellence. Telephone number here if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882. Now, today is supposed to be the start of the opening arguments in this so-called impeachment trial. Never mind the Democrats could not wait, they turned a debate that was supposed to be about whether to call witnesses before or after opening arguments into their opening arguments. They did their opening argument yesterday as part...

The first day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was largely taken up with procedural issues. Senators argued over and then adopted an organizing resolution laying out the rules under which the trial will proceed. In his opening statement, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., charged that the resolution proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was “partisan,” a “national disgrace,” and a “dark day in Senate history.” All of this heated rhetoric was based on Schumer’s misleading claim that McConnell’s resolution was unfair and significantly different from the resolution governing Bill Clinton’s trial. Yet the resolution adopted...

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is hypocritical in decrying the impeachment trial as unfair, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said Wednesday, arguing that Schiff did not allow Republicans to call witnesses during the House's proceedings. Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with host Steve Doocy, Stefanik said that Schiff's comments on Capitol Hill Tuesday show that the Democrats' case is flimsy so they are "scrambling at this point." Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, is serving as the impeachment trial manager of the House Democrats' case. Speaking on the Senate floor during a marathon 12-hour first day, Schiff said that if the House...

President Trump slammed the House impeachment managers prosecuting the case against him as “sleazebags” during an impromptu press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday -- while saying he'd "love" to attend his ongoing Senate trial back home. In the hastily called press event before Trump was to return to Washington, the president delivered an unsparing assessment of impeachment proceedings, which moved into full swing a day earlier and will resume later Wednesday with opening arguments. While making clear he's reluctant to approve any new witnesses to testify, he floated -- perhaps playfully -- the idea...

Barely two weeks after Donald Trump took office, Eric Ciaramella – the CIA analyst whose name was recently linked in a tweet by the president and mentioned by lawmakers as the anonymous “whistleblower" who touched off Trump's impeachment – was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues. Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom Ciaramella was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues. And both expressed anger over Trump’s new...

The White House fired back at Trump's impeachers Monday, taking aim at their far-fetched legal arguments and their dishonesty. Trump's lawyers called the Democrats' grounds for impeachment a "made-up theory." They singled out House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff for "lying," violating "basic fairness" and "concocting" the whistleblower complaint. The White House brief is Trump's battle plan for his trial, which begins in earnest Wednesday. The brief also serves as a warning to Democrats that if they succeed in their demand for witnesses, then Schiff will be called to testify about his role in engineering the whistleblower complaint and then denying...

by Joe Callen | Washington Editor A bombshell new report is derailing the Democrats' momentum against President Trump on Day One of the Senate impeachment trial. The article -- in the left-leaning Politico of all places -- on Tuesday night alleges that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff appears to have “mischaracterized” evidence that was used in House Democrats’ impeachment investigation. But Republicans are calling the report "soft-pedaling", insisting that Schiff "fabricated evidence" in a naked attempt to "frame" Trump. Either way, the shocking late-night report has thrown the Democrats' Senate plan into complete chaos. The stunning report focuses on...

Desperate Democrats trotted out the same baseless and absurd arguments they’ve been making for months at the opening of President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate Tuesday, in their endless campaign to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election. The soporific debate over what procedures to adopt proved a tepid bore (with some exceptions) as Democrats introduced an endless stream of amendments that were destined to go nowhere fast. The first votes made it clear that Republican senators would adopt Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s resolution setting forth the order and parameters of the trial: openhttps://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-jarrett-in-trump-impeachment-trial-democrats-continue-inflammatory-accusations-with-no-basis-in-facting statements first, then written...

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, one of the House impeachment managers, said the question of whether witnesses are heard in President Trump's Senate impeachment trial may have to be settled by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who will be presiding over the trial. But, he warned that witnesses like Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden's son, are "immaterial" and would constitute an "abuse" of the Senate trial. **SNIP** One of the names that's been floated for Republicans is Hunter Biden, who was on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was vice president. "It would certainly...

House Democrats prosecuting the Trump impeachment case took aim Tuesday at White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, claiming in a stunning letter that the lead member of the president's defense team is actually a “material witness” to the charges in both articles and demanding that he disclose all “first-hand facts and information” before proceedings begin. The impeachment "managers" said they need that information in order to weigh potential “ethical” issues or conflicts of interest concerning his defense of the president. Just hours before Senate trial proceedings were set to resume, the impeachment managers claimed that during the House inquiry they gathered...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday that the National Security Agency is withholding "potentially relevant documents" from Congress regarding Ukraine just as President Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial is set to start. "The intelligence community is beginning to withhold documents from Congress on the issue of Ukraine," Schiff told ABC's "This Week." "They appear to be succumbing to pressure from the administration. The NSA in particular is withholding what are potentially relevant documents to our oversight responsibilities on Ukraine, but also withholding documents potentially relevant that the senators might want to see during the trial." "That is...