Impeachment
January 23, 2020 — Scott Johnson
We have to take note of Melanie Zanona’s illuminating Politico article “Schiff may have mischaracterized Parnas evidence, documents show.” Subhead (understated): “Unredacted material shows he may have referred [Ed.: strongly suggests he referred would be more like it] to the wrong ‘Mr. Z.'” One thing we know about House Intelligence Committee Chairman and impeachment manager Adam Schiff: the man has a strained relationship with the truth, but it doesn’t bother
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January 23, 2020 — Scott Johnson
John posted the video of Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s imputations of “treachery” and “cover-up” to the Senate in the case that it failed to adopt the Dems’ trial management resolutions on Tuesday. Chief Justice Roberts admonished both sides — the House impeachment managers and White House counsel — in words that were obviously aimed at Nadler. Nadler’s shtick did not go down well with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham. The
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January 22, 2020 — John Hinderaker
President Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans have set records, for reasons that are easy to understand. And the current impeachment farce has united Republican politicians, as well as the party’s rank and file, behind the president. Much could be said about this, but for now, let’s go with a few tweets. Rand Paul is one of the most independent of Senate Republicans and has clashed with the president from time
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January 22, 2020 — John Hinderaker
I haven’t spent a minute watching the absurd impeachment proceedings in the Senate, and I don’t intend to. My time has value, and I refuse to let the Democrats dictate, on the feeblest of pretexts, how I spend it. If, like me, you have seen references to a dust-up between Democrat Jerrold Nadler, one of the Democrats’ Managers, and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, with
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January 22, 2020 — Steven Hayward
This special edition of the Power Line Show offers a panel discussion on impeachment that I hosted and moderated yesterday before a packed house at Berkeley Law School. Its purpose was not to rehash or thrash out the specific issues of the Trump impeachment as much as to illuminate what the founders had in mind when they wrote impeachment into the Constitution, and what we have learned from the two
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January 22, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The impeachment of President Trump has never been about actually removing him from office. The Democrats have always known they would fall 15 to 20 Senate votes short of accomplishing that. The impeachment is, and always has been, about the 2020 election. Thus, there is now precedent for impeaching a president to gain advantage in an upcoming election. This won’t be the last time it happens. The Democrats hoped through
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January 22, 2020 — Scott Johnson
With the impeachment trial impending, the Government Accountability Office released its “opinion” that President Trump’s brief hold on aid to Ukraine was “illegal.” It is the sort of perfectly timed hit from the deep state that has become so predictable it should produce groans, if not disgust. Whatever, I doubt it is to be taken at face value. Alan Dershowitz argues in the valuable Gatestone column, for example, “Trump Had
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January 22, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Behind the impeachment of President Trump lies the “whistleblower” whose identity the mainstream media have carefully guarded. The Democrats have classified it Sensitive Compartmented Information. This must explain why the media have blacked out this particular back story. At RealClearInvestigations, Paul Sperry has refused to abide by the blackout “rules.” He explores the back story in his deeply reported 4,000-word investigative account “Whistleblower Was Overheard in ’17 Discussing With Ally
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January 21, 2020 — Scott Johnson
NewsBusters has compiled the video clip below documenting the Democrats’ media adjunct in operation for the Clinton impeachment. It provides a striking illustration of what has become a persistent phenomenon. NB’s Bill D’Agostino has the accompanying story in “Hypocritical ‘News’ Media Have Done a Complete Flip-Flop on Impeachment.” Drawing on the old “That’s no lady, that’s my wife” joke, we might say “That’s no flip-flop, that’s the Democratic Party line.”
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January 21, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The trial of President Trump in the Senate on the impeachment articles preferred by the House is scheduled to begin this afternoon. Piercing the rhetorical fog, we observe that this is the Seinfeld impeachment. If the farce isn’t quite about nothing, it is the farce in which nothing happened. Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler lead the House impeachment managers. Each in his own way gives us the impeachment case in
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January 20, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
A hundred years ago, give or take fifty, I was part of a team that competed for my high school on a quiz show called “It’s Academic.” During one of our matches, I correctly provided the answer “Bye Bye Blackbird” to a question about a song written in the 1920s. Afterwards, I joked with a teammate that I had been reluctant to press the buzzer and answer the question because
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January 20, 2020 — Scott Johnson
President Trump filed his 110-page impeachment trial brief with the Senate today. The Wall Street Journal has linked to the brief in its article on it and also posted it online here. I have uploaded the document to Scribd and embedded it below. The trial brief was anticipated in Trump’s Answer to the impeachment articles filed in the Senate late last week. I posted the Answer in “Trump responds, harsh
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January 19, 2020 — Scott Johnson
President Trump has filed a short but sweet six-page Answer to the two articles of impeachment forwarded by the House to the Senate last week. I have embedded a PDF of the Answer below. Trump’s brief is to follow tomorrow. The House impeachment managers filed their 111-page brief last week. It is accessible online here. As Politico put it, the House brief “featured a slate of evidence that has emerged
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January 19, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The Dems have no shame in pursuing a fraudulent case for impeachment fraudulently. No shame at all. I thought they had reached the limit in justifying their haste in the House proceedings by the alleged emergency presented by President Trump, and then sitting on the articles of impeachment for a month for some ulterior purpose. That was not the limit. After Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed the solemn and prayerful nature
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January 18, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
New evidence from Lev Parnas has Democrats more insistent than ever that the Senate impeachment trial include testimony from witnesses who did not appear before the House. Parnas joins the ranks of John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney as key witnesses the Dems say they need testimony from. Even the Democrats can’t deny that Parnas is a problematic witness. He appears to be a crook with a motive to lie. However,
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January 18, 2020 — Scott Johnson
According to Politico, the “bombshells” keep falling in the impeachment farce, this time courtesy of the indicted Lev Parnas. Bombshells “keep falling on my head/And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed/Nothing seems to fit.” How come all the things that Parnas asserts “had to happen” didn’t have to happen before the aid flowed? Oh, well. What we seem to have here, beginning with the
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January 17, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Today comes the news that President Trump is adding Judge Kenneth Starr and Professor Alan Dershowitz to his defense team in the Senate impeachment trial. Both men are greatly to be admired. Judge Starr is the distinguished former appellate judge, special prosecutor, and recent author of the excellent impeachment memoir Contempt. Professor Dershowitz is a man of high principle who has shed many old friends in his defense of free
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