The Impeachment Process Has Officially Begun (2 Viewers)

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    Andrus

    Andrus

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    By Laura Bassett

    After months of internal arguing among Democrats over whether to impeach President Donald Trump, the dam is finally breaking in favor of trying to remove him from office. The Washington Post reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would announce a formal impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, following a bombshell report that Trump illegally asked Ukraine’s government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, one of his political opponents. (He essentially admitted to having done so over the weekend.)

    “Now that we have the facts, we’re ready,” Pelosi said Tuesday morning at a forum hosted by The Atlantic. At 5 p.m. the same day, she was back with more. "The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the constitution, especially when the president says Article Two says I can do whatever I want," referring to the segment of the Constitution that defines the power of the executive branch of the government. Pelosi's message was that checks and balances of those branches are just as central to the Constitution. And one more thing: "Today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry," she said at a conference broadcast on Twitter by the Huffington Post. ...

    Read the Full Story - InStyle
     
    Saw this on the five thirty eight.

    1574314586513.png
     
    Guys, there is no evidence whatsoever that Rudy Giuliani wanted the President of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden to help Trump in the election.

    Except for all of his repeated public statements about it (there are always tweets with these morons).





    And he told the Failing New York times that he was going to do that!



    But we are supposed to believe that his client didn't know that Rudy was demanding these things on his behalf? And that the clear requests during the Perfect Call and the withholding of aid until the press found out about it was an unrelated coincidence and not an attempt to force Ukraine to do what Giuliani had been asking for months at Trump's direction? Because Trump denied it in a phone call after a whistleblower complaint had been filed? Sure, Jan.
     
    Fiona Hill is testifying this morning. Here's her relevant bio:

    Hill worked in the research department at the John F. Kennedy School of Government from 1991 to 1999, and at the National Intelligence Council as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia from 2006 to 2009. In 2017, she took a leave of absence from the Brookings Institution, where she was director for the Center on the United States and Europe, while serving on the National Security Council. Hill is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the board of trustees of the Eurasia Foundation.[2]

    As of 2017, Hill was the Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council. In this role, she was the lead interagency coordinator for U.S. foreign policy relating to Europe and Russia.[citation needed]

    Hill served as an intelligence officer under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from 2006 to 2009. She was appointed in April 2017 by Donald Trump as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on his National Security Council staff.[2][3]

    Hill decided to step down from her position in August 2019.[4] Hill was replaced by Tim Morrison,[5] a position from which he later resigned on October 31, 2019.[6][7][8]
    Click to expand...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Hill_(presidential_advisor)
     
    LA - L.A. said:
    Here:
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    I wasn't as clear as I should have been: I was only making a very general point, and perhaps arguing against the notion that the WB is not material.

    I don't think Trump has any "right" to face the WB in the impeachment process.
     
    superchuck500 said:
    McDonnell doesn't analyze "thing of value" (note that the statute that would apply to the Zelenksy matter. In Menendez, the district court refused to dismiss 201(b) charges that involved donations to a SuperPAC and donations to a legal defense fund because they were valuable to Menendez even though he wasn't the recipient. What's important about that is that while the exchange was for donations, the district court explained that the value to Menendez was that the SuperPAC's function was to try to get Menendez re-elected. That's not the same as purely financial value (as in, line the pockets).

    The other charges against Menendez that were dismissed were on the "official act" prong - as the exchange related to Mendendez's possible future advocacy for the donor, should the opportunity arise.


    I think you're right, at least for making the analogy to the federal criminal statute, that "anything of value" requires further analysis. It's not dispositive for impeachment purposes, but if 201(b) is going to be a guidepost, it's relevant. I'll have to spend some more time researching that point - and "thing of value" is used in other statutory schemes that could shed light on it.

    But given the context and Trump's interest, I think we can all agree that it was obviously seen as valuable.
    Click to expand...
    Right. I was just reading Turley as making a more general point about the courts' interpretation of the public bribery statute: that unlike what a lot of people are saying the courts don't give broad leeway to prosecutors, in part because of the nature of politics itself. He just used McDonnell, perhaps the most recent high profile case, as an example.

    Regardless - I think the statutory route is problematic for another reason: it doesn't highlight what I think bothers most people: that it is a foreign state involved in the deal. The Constitutional use of "bribery" can (at least I think).
     
    cuddlemonkey said:
    Did Holmes just say that Sondalnd helped to keep everyone out of the meeting that Sondland previously claimed was a purely Ukrainian decision?
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    Yes, as I felt yesterday, borne out today, Sondland is still not being fully honest and his divulsion that he still has a positive and hopefully going forward good relationship with the president in his position lends me to believe he is trying to walk a fine line in protecting himself but still protecting the president.

    And I think Bolton testifying could very realistically get him a criminal charge.
     
    Hill is going to be pretty damaging from what I heard of her opening statement this morning - which she's reading right now.
     

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