Category: News & Comment

McConnell’s Coordinating with Trump’s Impeachment Defense Renders the Verdict Moot

Jon Ponder
McConnell on Fox News with Hannity: “There’s no chance the president will be removed from office.”

On Thursday, as the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump were being debated by the House Judiciary Committee, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) met privately with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to discuss rigging Trump’s Senate trial to guarantee acquittal. As has become routine in the Trump era, this brazenly corrupt act was not meant to be kept secret. A few hours later, McConnell was on Fox News boasting about it to Sean Hannity, the right-wing outlet’s most strident propagandist.

McConnell told Hannity he would remain in “total coordination” with Trump during the trial. “There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this,” McConnell said. “There’s no chance the president will be removed from office.”

[…]

House Announces Two Articles of Impeachment against Trump

Jon Ponder

After 77 days of formal investigation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with the chairs of the investigative committees, announced Democrats’ intent to impeach Donald Trump on two charges: abuse of power related to his attempt to extort the government of Ukraine into announcing an investigation into the son of Trump’s political rival, former V.P. Joe Biden, and obstruction of Congress related to his refusal to provide witnesses and documents for the investigation.

[…]

Trump’s Sordid History of Accepting, Requesting, and Encouraging Foreign Interference in US Elections

Buck Banks
Susan Walsh/AP

Here’s a good one from David Corn at Mother Jones

One of the key lines in the House Democrats’ impeachment report distills the Trump-Ukraine scandal to a simple idea: “[T]he impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection.”

And in the report’s preface, the Democrats place Trump’s Ukrainian caper within the larger context of foreign intervention in US elections, namely Russia’s covert attack on the 2016 contest, which was mounted in part to help Trump win the White House: “we were struck by the fact that the President’s misconduct was not an isolated occurrence, nor was it the product of a naïve president. Instead, the efforts to involve Ukraine in our 2020 presidential election were undertaken by a President who himself was elected in 2016 with the benefit of an unprecedented and sweeping campaign of election interference undertaken by Russia in his favor, and which the President welcomed and utilized.”

The point was clear. Trump muscling Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to produce political dirt that could influence the 2020 election for Trump’s personal advantage was a continuation of Trump’s behavior in 2016. This contextualization brings back into the spotlight Vladimir Putin’s clandestine assault on American democracy—and how Trump encouraged and exploited that attack. So now, as Trump is under scrutiny for pressing Ukraine to influence the 2020 race, it’s a good time to review all the ways that Trump aided and abetted a foreign adversary’s scheme to subvert a US election the last time the nation was choosing a president.

Read the whole sordid history here.

What to Read: Angry White House Staffer on Twitter, Friday Afternoons

Pensito Editors

Every Friday late in the afternoon, East Coast time, an anonymous Twitterer with the handle @AngrierWHStaff but known simply as “Angry Staffer” answers questions from readers about goings-on behind the scenes at the Trump White House. Because the writer is anonymous, it’s impossible to verify what Angry says — and yet it all has the ring of plausibility.

One of Angry’s central thesis is that Trump will resign before the next election, either later this month or by March. We can only hope!

Check out Angry’s website HERE.

[…]