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House Impeachment Inquiry

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PhantomWolf said:
I wish that Schiff would allow Hunter to testify just to shut up the Republicans and take away their talking points.
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Needs to be said more than once.
There's your mistake right here. You think this or that would shut the Republicans up or take the wind out of their sails. It won't. Surely you can see the pattern by now?

The only move that cut them short was when Jordan was going on about the whistle blower and he was reminded all Trump has to do is come in and "sit right there" and testify.
 
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I just saw a Republican (missed his name) on Cuomo actually push the 'Crowdstrike-secret DNC server in Ukraine 2016 election interference' nonesense. It was pathetic.

ETA: the Repub was Rep. Tom Yoho (FL). He also questioned Yovanovitch's loyalty; she was born in Canada and had immigrant parents. When Cuomo called him on it, he tried to backtrack but the implication was clear.
 
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"All I ask from my men was their complete loyalty. If I had that, then for all I cared they could sit around the whole day drinking beer in their underpants." - every Republican
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
The only move that cut them short was when Jordan was going on about the whistle blower and he was reminded all Trump has to do is come in and "sit right there" and testify.
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THIS in spades. Keep offering them things you KNOW they can't take up

If you maintain that the President has done nothing wrong then let him come to the House and testify on his own behalf.

If you don't like 2nd hand, 3rd hand, 4th hand evidence, the let the President allow those with first hand evidence come to the house and testify that he has done nothing wrong.

If you want documentary evidence, then let the President lift his block on document releases and allow them to be presented to the hearing..

This is what you do to silence them. Just like "Gym" Jordan, they won't have an answer.
 
kellyb said:
Yeah. I'm not really caring about it, but it definitely does demonstrate that the FT article is about something which was widespread info at the time.



Nobody seemed to actually care much, tho, besides Trump (and apparently some person in Ukrainian gov.)
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Most of the rest of the world was dreading a trump win. For reasons that have subsequently been proven to be totally justified. Trump isn't a lose cannon, he's a loose nuclear arsenal.
 
kellyb said:
Actually, it looks like there were more:
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446




https://observer.com/2017/01/ukraine-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-election/


That one mostly just rips off the politico article.

I only looked for a minute and can probably find more. But it was just considered a non-issue, it really looks like. Interesting as trivia, more or less, unless you're Donald Trump or one of his supporters.
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What these articles are missing are how Ukraine attempted to interfere in the election. The gist of the article is that a private Ukrainian citizen, who worked for the DNC, became worried about Paul Manafort’s activities in Ukraine, especially after becoming involved with the Trump campaign.

The article makes it clear that the government of Ukraine supported Clinton, but only ever describes publicly supporting her and criticizing Trump. That is a far cry from what Russia did and what Trump claims Ukraine did. I mean, it is almost literally nothing. It’s not hacking the DNC servers. It’s not conducting a covert social media disinformation campaign. It’s not having secret meeting with promises of providing dirt on political opponents.
 
The other reason not to call Hunter Biden is that that allows the Republicans to frame what the impeachment is about. It's not about Biden. Biden is irrelevant. The Republicans are trying to re-frame it into being about Biden. They shouldn't be allowed to.

Hunter Biden is not on trial. Nor is Joe Biden. And it doesn't matter to the impeachment hearing whether both of them are guilty as sin of whatever charges the GOP want to throw at them. The hearing is about Trump withholding aid from Ukraine against not only the interests of Ukraine but also against the interests of the US for personal political gain. If both Bidens were the worst people on Earth who have committed every single crime on the statute books, that wouldn't alter Trump's actions.

If the GOP wants to put the Bidens on trial, they should begin their own investigations into them and then bring the relevant charges. This particular proceeding is about Trump's actions, and should remain so.

smartcooky said:
THIS in spades. Keep offering them things you KNOW they can't take up

If you maintain that the President has done nothing wrong then let him come to the House and testify on his own behalf.

If you don't like 2nd hand, 3rd hand, 4th hand evidence, the let the President allow those with first hand evidence come to the house and testify that he has done nothing wrong.

If you want documentary evidence, then let the President lift his block on document releases and allow them to be presented to the hearing..

This is what you do to silence them. Just like "Gym" Jordan, they won't have an answer.
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Yes, it's noteworthy that there seem to be plenty of people willing to testify under oath that the president acted in the way it is alleged he acted, and none whatsoever willing to testify under oath that he did not. It's not like the GOP haven't been allowed to call witnesses. It's that they want to call witnesses who are irrelevant to the proceedings in order to try to make the proceedings about something else.
 
Ziggurat said:
First off, the charge is ridiculous on its face. Criticism isn't intimidation.
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Agree, to a point.

But this is, allegedly, the most powerful person on the planet belittling a witness against him in an ongoing proceeding, literally while their testimony was in progress. Can you honestly say that’s not intimidating? When asked, Yovanovitch said she found it “extremely intimidating”, so regardless of Trump’s intent, it had an intimidating effect. And it certainly broadcasts that anyone daring to testify against the president can expect similar attacks.

Maybe not the strongest article of impeachment, but it shouldn’t be dismissed lightly or ignored out of hand either.
 
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I think just a few years ago, the leader of the free world smearing a witness during testimony would have felt a lot more clearly like witness tampering.

But Trump has been very successful at lowering the bar, even among his critics it doesn't feel that bad because of how unprofessionally and criminally he conducts himself on a daily basis.

When I first read the tweet, it did feel like a stretch. But the more I think of it, that's largely because of how low we'd sunk.

Remember when it was an outrage that Obama said a police officer who arrested a Black Harvard professor in his own home who broke no laws "Acted Stupidly". Can you imagine the republican reaction if Obama had been tweeting smears of witnesses against him in real time?

Unfortunately, the new bar is where it is, and Democrats aren't as good at spin as the GOP. In my opinion that's largely because when you care at least somewhat about truth and keeping the institutions of government intact, you're playing with one hand tied behind your back. I do think if they harp too much on those tweets as "imtimidation" they'll be seen as stretching definitions and lose credibility. I sort of wish they had framed their criticism in different wording because that tweeting is WILDLY unacceptable.
 
Ziggurat said:
Schiff is a hack who will say anything, no matter how stupid it is.

First off, the charge is ridiculous on its face. Criticism isn't intimidation. Second, even a moment's consideration will reveal he doesn't actually believe his own accusation for a second. You can't be intimidated by something you don't even know about. And she wouldn't have known about Trump's tweets during her testimony if Schiff hadn't drought them to her attention. So if they were actually intimidating, then telling her about the tweets might intimidate her. But that's obviously not what Schiff would want from any witness hostile to Trump. The only reason Schiff read her those tweets is because Schiff knew the tweets wouldn't intimidate her, because they aren't actually intimidating.
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No. Schiff read the tweets because he correctly believed that Trump bullying a long-serving career Foreign Service Officer would make her appear more sympathetic, which in turn neutered the Republican plan to attack her. It worked because Republican questioning went soft after that.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Agree, to a point.

But this is, allegedly, the most powerful person on the planet belittling a witness against him in an ongoing proceeding, literally while their testimony was in progress. Can you honestly say that’s not intimidating? When asked, Yovanovitch said she found it “extremely intimidating”, so regardless of Trump’s intent, it had an intimidating effect. And it certainly broadcasts that anyone daring to testify against the president can expect similar attacks.

Maybe not the strongest article of impeachment, but it shouldn’t be dismissed lightly or ignored out of hand either.
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It isn't intimidating because she says its intimidating. That's not how it works. It's intimidating if it intimidates. Her testimony shows no sign that she was intimidated. Her response to Schiff only demonstrates she is willing to play Schiff's game.

And think for a moment about the precedent Schiff is trying to set here. He's trying to make any witness against the president above criticism. That is a very bad precedent to set.
 
Craig4 said:
No. Schiff read the tweets because he correctly believed that Trump bullying a long-serving career Foreign Service Officer would make her appear more sympathetic, which in turn neutered the Republican plan to attack her. It worked because Republican questioning went soft after that.
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That doesn't contradict anything I said. It's perfectly in line with it: Schiff was just posturing for appearances, there was no actual intimidation involved.
 
Ziggurat said:
It isn't intimidating because she says its intimidating. That's not how it works. It's intimidating if it intimidates. Her testimony shows no sign that she was intimidated. Her response to Schiff only demonstrates she is willing to play Schiff's game.

And think for a moment about the precedent Schiff is trying to set here. He's trying to make any witness against the president above criticism. That is a very bad precedent to set.
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I'm sorry, I thought you understood that this was the politics section.
 
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