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“I am saying what the president has admitted to and said it’s perfect — it’s perfectly wrong. It’s bribery. … The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections. That’s bribery.”
— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at her weekly press conference, reported by Politico. The speaker’s remark is one of her strongest statements yet on the scandal engulfing Trump that is threatening his presidency. Bribery is one of the specific crimes spelled out in the Constitution as an impeachable offense.
“They’re trying to stop me, because I’m fighting for you. And I’ll never let that happen.”
— The White House shared a video of President Trump slamming the impeachment inquiry as the “single greatest scam in the history of American politics.”
“Remarkable information related to Russia and Putin and Trump’s deference to Putin — whether witting, unwitting or half-witting — continues to be revealed. Turkey’s Syrian adventure-invasion with Trump’s permission; his disdain for Ukraine through his whole presidency; and serving Russia’s interest there (as opposed to established US policy) suggest more reporting again is called for.”
— Carl Bernstein in an email to CNN
“Trump can do away with the traditions and niceties of the office, but he can’t get away from the Constitution. During Watergate, many people feared that if a president collapsed, America is broken. But the lesson of Nixon is that the Constitution is durable and the country can handle it.”
“Republicans started out saying he didn’t do it. Then he said he did it, but there is no quid pro quo. But then they said there might be quid pro quo, but it’s not an impeachable offense They are just trying to provide enough of smokescreen, so when the Senate doesn’t convict they can say he shouldn’t have been impeached in the first place.”
— Political strategist Robert Shrum, quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
“I think it’s never a good practice for us to ask a foreign country to investigate an American. It’s just not a good practice. Having said that, there’s no insistence on that call. There are no demands on that call. It is a conversation between two Presidents that’s casual in nature.”
— Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in an interview on the Today Show.
“It is sad to see the level of desperation that some people are willing to go through to protect someone who has been probably the most corrupt, unethical, most unpatriotic president we’ve ever had.”
— Sen. Kamala Harris, talking about Republican lawmakers on Morning Joe.
11,000
“The Republican National Committee paid to generate thousands of calls to the congressional offices of nearly three dozen House Democrats in recent weeks, an effort that was aimed at both shaping opinion around the impeachment inquiry and tying up the phone lines of the elected officials, according to two people briefed on the effort,” the New York Times Reported. “The fact that the calls to congressional offices, estimated to number 11,000, were partly intended to jam the phone lines of House Democrats — potentially thwarting access to government offices — was described at a recent dinner of more than a dozen Republican aides, advisers and elected officials …”
“When you talk to elected Republicans privately, they can’t stand the president. They know the president is a lawless person and basically a criminal.”
— Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci told Yahoo News that he believes that GOP lawmakers will pressure President Trump to leave office by March.
89%
A new Gallup poll finds 89% of Democrats currently say President Trump should be impeached and removed from office. That compares with 71% of Democrats who in 1974 said the charges against Nixon warranted his removal from office. Among Republicans, 92% reject Trump being impeached and removed from office while just 7% are in favor of it. Under Nixon, a smaller 59% of his fellow Republicans opposed his removal from office while 31% endorsed it.
