Posted on 12/20/2019 2:45:05 PM PST by bryan999
The White House is considering making the argument that President Trump has not officially been impeached, given that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate, two sources involved in the president's impeachment defense told CBS News.
The House voted to impeach Mr. Trump on two articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — on Wednesday. However, Pelosi told reporters on Thursday that the House would wait to deliver the articles until the Senate had laid out the rules for the trial.
"When we see the process that's set forth in the Senate, then we'll know the number of managers we'll have to move forward, and who we would choose," the California Democrat said. The House must vote on a resolution designating impeachment managers to prosecute the case against Mr. Trump in the Senate before delivering the articles.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
When a session of Congress ends, all unresolved bills die. That will be January 3(?) 2021. If she doesn’t deliver the Articles by then, can’t after.
i like it ... but add that Schitt and Nadler have to be the only “witnesses”, subject to cross examination by POTUS legal team.
I'm being repetetive here, but I don't see this as a failure of senate rules. If anything, it is absence of hosue rules (and this came up hard in the "rules committee" hearing on impeachment, how biased the house process was).
The DEMs are violating axiomatic norms of conduct. Not the least of which is all the hoaxes, plus the bad faith construction of the July 25th call.
It's akin to blaming the rules for the conduct of criminals. Some people just don;t know how to behave in polite society, and it's a fools errand to try to get good behavior by passing more rules.
Pelosi is really only hurting Bernie, Klobuchar, booker and warren. The longer this goes on the closer to Iowa and other states happen. I wonder if Biden asked her to do this. Wouldn’t put it past him at all. He’d be free to campaign while the senators are locked up for six days a week.
This whole thing is surreal. I can see it going to the Supreme Court, since it’s a question of constitutional interpretation.
Donald Trump writes the history books these days.
> “Was Clinton impeached?”
The chattering classes have been saying that for so long that it’s become ingrained in the lexicon.
No one defended Clinton as a President that was subjected to a failed impeachment that did not remove him, and then argued he was left unimpeached.
No one defended Clinton because he had indeed committed crimes but those crimes were adjudged (mostly Trent Lott) to not rise to the Constitutional standard for removal. He was a scoundrel and people were sick of the whole affair so as it surfaced from time to time that he was an impeached President, no one bothered to say that was not quite the case. Of course, the Democrat media didn’t cover any such arguments for such a characterization. It was dropped.
To say Trump is an impeached President, is to say Scott Walker is a recalled Governor.
The precise characterization is that President Trump suffered a partisan meritless attempt to impeach him as a ploy to keep him from prosecuting corruption in government and beyond.
I think he will win and history will be written that he survived a failed attempt to impeach him because I don’t think the impeachment process ends with a vote in the House. I think a vote to impeach in the House is exactly that, a vote to impeach. The process does not end there, it is continued in the Senate. If it never gets to the Senate, then it can be nullified and made void as if it never happened.
I have also stated that holding back the articles of impeachment reserves to the Democrats a tactical parliamentary maneuver to stop all business in Congress for when they actually do decide to send over the articles to the Senate. For example, if RBG goes comatose, the replacement nomination process is auto-stopped by filing the articles with the Senate as the Senate must focus only on impeachment and nothing else. So this is a tactical weapon for them, a delay tactic and as some of them say a leverage instrument. A Senate deadline neutralizes that weapon.
I’ll repeat, a Senate deadline neutralizes their gaming of the system.
I also posited that there are some really sinister parties in the background that think nothing of launching a coup under the color of law and that includes taking out Pence.
In Summer 2018 I was at a dog park in Seattle where some antifa looking characters were bunched together about 30 yards from where I was sitting. I heard them talking and one of them was on a cell phone. I heard clearly “But then we have to take out Pence.”
So it became a plausible scenario that the puppet masters behind Pelosi are aiming not only to blackmail US Senators (as in corruption proceeds or Epstein entrapment evidence) but to somehow take out Pence and then install Pelosi as President and Commander-in-Chief where she would be in charge of the US Army, calling up the National Guard, and directing that history would record that a Dictator was removed and his fascist followers were being rounded up.
Two days after I posted this on FR and social media, Schiff makes a veiled threat towards Pence.
For sure I am not the only one thinking these types of things but I refuse to believe the Democrats are so stupid. I believe they are organized to make a real coup d’etat under color of law. Once they secure a legal basis for taking power, they will write history whichever way they will.
Americans will be shocked and in denial. It has certainly happened in other countries but it is difficult for Americans to bnelive it could actually ever happen here.
The recent state gun control laws in Virginia and the defiance displayed is not necessarily unrelated. The hundreds of millions of guns in the US are problematic for a coup but a coup that is conducted under a quasi-legal basis needs only to control the DC Metro Area at the beginning while seizing control of the US Army and the Virginia National Guard. These military forces will be highlighted by the Democrat media as ready to put down insurrection of right-wingers and rogue paramilitary groups. If they get that far, I see no impediment for their launch of a crackdown on any vociferous Trump supporters.
But again, a Senate deadline on impeachment nips in the bud their available time to get ready.
I know it sounds unbelievable but then look at what they have already done and stop being naive, these people are insane but they call us insane, and they are going for the jugular and it is imperative that we not sit back and laugh at them for being so stupid as to think they can get the Senate to convict POTUS.
I tend to think it is unlikely the coup will turn 20 US Senators against the President in impeachment proceedings but then I read such horrors as Lawrence Tribe suggesting the Senate impeachment vote can be a secret vote giving vulnerable Senate members cover to vote to impeach.
This will most likely not happen. But for sure it is HOW THEY THINK. And we should be aware of what they are up to.
You are correct, the House is violating norms. And they are violating reason. As has been pointed out they called him a cancer, a grave threat to the country, to our allies, to the world. To use your word it is axiomatic - if you impeach the POTUS that means you think he has committed Bribery, Treason or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors and that he must be removed. So delaying the process makes absolutely no sense if you sincerely believe that. Why allow such a person to remain in office?
She is abusing the power of impeachment for political exploitation. Accordingly she must be held to account. She must pay a price. I think the Senate can make her pay one.
Why do you refer to him that way?
The America-hating Democrat/ Left Party can say Trump has been impeached and he hasn’t been adjudged not guilty of the false charges. Their base is so whacked out and ignorant they’ll believe anything!
Quid pro quo was at the heart of their reason to begin impeachment proceedings. That being the case why is that charge not identified as one of the two resolutions? Simple answer is, Trump was not guilty of quid pro quo. Another simple answer is Trump is not guilty of anything
Go, Trump, Go!
Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, published an opinion piece in Bloomberg on Thursday arguing against the House Democrats withholding the articles of impeachment, thus preventing the Senate from holding a trial.
"Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution:
The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment.
The Senate must actually hold a trial," he argues. "If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president.
If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
PS: Please check my tagline.
“The Senate has the freedom to make up it’s [sic] own rules about how impeachment is done within the few requirements the constitution places on them.
It’s time for Trump and the Republicans to do something bold and put these bitches in their place.”.
I proposed this morning that the Senate call for trial by combat, Trump vs. Pelosi with double bit axes. No champions allowed.
The managers only present the impeachment to the Senate.
They then act as prosecutors?
This whole hoax is a load of malarkey,
and it’s being flummoxed by the perpetrators.
> “I do understand Feldman’s point. And I even agree to a point. But it feels like hair splitting”
To most Americans it seens like splitting hairs but to lawyers and officials holding power, it is a critical point that allows then to pivot power to create momentum towards a planned destination.
You see, with Pelosi trying to game the system (she’s doing it to buy time for rough guys to lean on targets), Feldman is signaling to her that McConnell can set a DEADLINE and declare impeachment ‘aduentum mortuis’ or dead on arrival. McConnell can then get the Senate to nullify and void Pelosi’s impeachment articles.
The Democrats are trying to say “but we need more witnesses!” and as Dan Bongino brilliantly summarizes, they have voted two articles of impeachment and yet they are not done with voing for impeachment? What?
So McConnell can take the published articles of impeachment and set a DEADLINE for a formal delivery by the House to the Senate. If the deadline is not met, the articles are dead.
Some Democrats say but we can impeach him as many times as necessary.
McConnell said in his excellent floor speech that the Democrats have actually tried before to impeach him and this is the 7th attempt where a vote actually passed on two flimsy meritless partisan articles that are unconstitutional on their face.
But Democrats have a plan, and HOW THEY THINK is they need time to ‘lean’ on compromised GOP Senators (Sen. Ratcliff says there are compromised GOP Senators but doesn’t directly name them but one for is likely Sen. Burr. I don’t like to say that but Sen. Burr may be one of the 20 they need to convict. Let’s pray there won’t be 20 or more.).
Ok, now before we get all panicked about this scenario of what Democrats are up to, we should be calmed by the fact that this won’t likely happen, that POTUS’s people are not sitting back waiting for the Democrat’s next move.
The next move was circulated by CBS that POTUS is considering he is NOT IMPEACHED if the articles are not delivered to the Senate and POTUS’s lawyers are following up with McConnell to plan a deadline on the articles and a procedure to dismiss, acquit, or nullify and void them.
Well when I heard them say that they need “more witnesses” my first reaction was, they voted to impeach without even hearing from all the witnesses? But we already knew that, they denied many of the GOP witnesses and denied the GOP their official minority party day and constantly interrupted or refused lines of questioning. Which was sham enough. But it also undermines their own case. They know they don’t have a case.
But this is part of my point. They continue to hog the spotlight and control the narrative by delaying. I agree McConnell needs to take control one way or another for a lot of reasons.
Focusing only on the political reasons here, the Dems have had this spotlight for 3 years with attack after attack. This impeachment may be their last best shot before the election. So of course they want to drag it out. It is imperative for the GOP to take control of the narrative and I understand why Trump wants a trial so he can get his story out. I understand McConnell doesn’t want to make it a spectacle (though it already is one), but the politically right thing is to allow Trump ample time to make the case to the American people, to “rehabilitate his image”. Support for impeachment has dropped, and it should drop further if they allow Trump leeway to present the case as he needs to.
As for compromised Senators, well, that goes two ways I’m sure. It is a pandora’s box if blackmail enters into it.
The Senate can’t ‘void’ any action of the House.
If the House delivers their articles and managers, then Trump has indisputably been impeached.
Of course, the Senate can then do as they wish with the articles.
Simply enact rules that the Dems dont like and the vote to impeach never goes to the Senate and becomes impeach.
No they can’t ‘void’ actions in the House. But they can refuse to accept the articles as “not ripe”, or “expired/frivolous”, or both.
As for ripeness, the issue of “contempt of Congress” is one that still needs adjudication by the courts. The House issued subpoenas and the Office of POTUS challenged their validity. The courts are supposed to resolve this dispute. It isn’t contempt to take up a lawful legal challenge in the courts. They could reject this article out of hand.
Of course, I understand your point, they can’t really reject it until it is offered.
But I still say they can enact broad general rules that state “Impeachment is the most serious penalty Congress can effect, therefor any vote for impeachment by the House that is not submitted formally within 10 days shall be deemed frivolous and will not be considered.”
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