God I hope this whole impeachment thing is a deep state operation utilizing Trump Derangement Syndrome, otherwise the left, or at least the Democrats have lost their minds
Do tell... I am hoping I am not misunderstanding you, because it sure seems you are blaming the cops for the bank robber robbing the bank.
In addition to reinforcing the Constitutional authority of Congress to investigate the Executive and to hold the President accountable to the Constitution, eleven months from the next election, there is the urgency to discourage, if not to prevent this president from using the powers of his office to benefit him personally by attempting to gain political advantage in the coming election, as conditioning military aid authorized by Congress to a foreign country under military attack by Russia on a requirement the leader of the country under Russian attack agree to announce investigation of the President's strongest political adversary, Joe Biden!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/20/other-knife-gordon-sondland-stuck-trumps-back/
By Philip Bump - November 20, 2019 at 12:12 p.m. EST
...In addition to directly alleging a quid pro quo that was well-known within the administration, Sondland’s testimony undercut Trump’s claims in another, quieter way. At several points in his testimony, he suggested it was only the announcement of investigations that was a priority for the White House.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) asked Sondland at one point to clarify the outline of the quid pro quo.
“He had to get those two investigations if that official act was going to take place,” Schiff said.
“Correct,” Sondland replied. “He had to announce the investigations. He didn’t actually have to do them, as I understood it.”...
...“Well, they would have to announce that they were going to do it,” Sondland replied.
“Right, because they — because Giuliani and President Trump didn’t actually care if they did them, right?” Goldman asked.
“I never heard, Mr. Goldman, anyone say that the investigations had to start or had to be completed,” Sondland said. “The only thing I heard from Mr. Giuliani or otherwise was that they had to be announced in some form. And that form kept changing.”
“Announced publicly?” Goldman asked.
“Announced publicly,” Sondland replied.
“And you, of course, recognized that there would be political benefits to a public announcement as opposed to a private confirmation, right?” Goldman asked.
“Well, the way it was expressed to me was that the Ukrainians had a long history of committing to things privately and then never following through,” Sondland replied. “So President Trump presumably — again, communicated through Mr. Giuliani — wanted the Ukrainians on record publicly that they were going to do these investigations. That’s the reason that was given to me.”
“But you never heard anyone say that they really wanted them to do the investigations,” Goldman said, “just that they wanted them to announce them.”
“I didn’t hear either way,” Sondland replied.
Goldman later pointed to testimony from acting Ukraine ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. in which he recalled Sondland saying that Ukraine needed to be in a “public box.”
“It goes back to my earlier comment that — again, coming from the Giuliani source, because we didn’t discuss this specifically, President Trump — that they wanted whatever commitments Ukraine made to be made publicly so that they would be on the record and be held more accountable,” Sondland said. “Whatever those commitments were."
It’s an interesting evolution in Sondland’s responses. It’s clear he understands the difference between an investigation that’s announced and one that’s completed. It also seems clear that he understands how the investigations might be politically useful....
..Another possibility, of course, is that Sondland was under the impression that the investigations were in fact secondary to the announcement of the investigations. That’s a potentially significant development, strongly bolstering the idea that the intent of the investigations was purely political. The announcement itself would serve Trump in the way the late-October announcement of the reopening investigation into Hillary Clinton helped Trump in 2016. That reopening went nowhere, but the political damage had been done.
There were other, more significant components to Sondland’s testimony. But the significance of his suggestion that the call for investigation was simply a public relations move and nothing more shouldn’t be underestimated. If true, it severely undercuts Trump’s already shaky defense about what he wanted from Ukraine’s president....
This is by George Conway, legal scholar and spouse of the President's 2016 campaign manager and current prominent political advisor.:
https://twitter.com/JohnWDean/status/1202306453513494528
https://www.vox.com/2019/12/6/20998714/rudy-giuliani-quid-pro-quo-tweets-ukraine-biden
But Giuliani’s tweet reveals the hollowness of that talking point. “Corruption” is just a stand-in word for “Biden.” He doesn’t even try to hide it.
December 6, 2019
.....But Giuliani’s tweet reveals the hollowness of that talking point. “Corruption” is just a stand-in word for “Biden.” He doesn’t even try to hide it.
https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1202704722857267200
Even though Giuliani’s tweet gives up the game, White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley appeared on Fox News on Friday, still claiming that Trump “didn’t press [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky on anything other than getting to the bottom of corruption in his country. We know that.”
HOGAN GIDLEY TODAY: Trump "didn't press Zelensky on anything other than getting to the bottom of corruption in his country. We know that"
But if Giuliani’s tweet isn’t enough to convince you otherwise, consider that the word “corruption” doesn’t appear even once in the summaries of the Trump-Zelensky calls released by the White House.
Of course, the notion that arguably the most personally corrupt president in American history ever had good-faith concerns about corruption abroad was hard to believe from the get-go — some might say as hard to believe as Attorney General William Barr’s claim that he couldn’t find an available room in the Washington, DC, area for his $30,000 holiday party anywhere other than the Trump International Hotel just blocks from the White House.
Verifiable facts support the opposite. If every effort is not made to halt reinforcing Trump for breaking his solemn oath of office, the vow to "preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States, so help me God," Trump's obstruction of the Mueller investigation and of Congress's unambiguous constitutional authority to investigate and to hold the the Executive branch accountable will result in the Executive being unaccountable to his oath, to the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/turley-impeachment.html
Trump Blocked Key Impeachment Witnesses. Should Congress Wait?
At the first House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, Republicans’ witness said lawmakers were rushing the process and should instead let court fights over access to witnesses play out.
By Charlie Savage - Dec. 4, 2019
.....When a president systematically blockades congressional subpoenas and instructs current and former aides not to provide documents and testimony, that is another basis to impeach, argued another witness, Michael J. Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor and author of “The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis.”
“In this situation, the full-scale obstruction of those subpoenas, I think, torpedoes separation of powers and, therefore, your only recourse is to, in a sense, protect your institutional prerogatives, and that would include impeachment,” Mr. Gerhardt testified.
Notably, Mr. Turley — who said he had not voted for Mr. Trump — did not assert the president did nothing wrong, as hard-core supporters of the president have done. He said that a now famous call in which Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to announce investigations that could benefit him politically “was anything but perfect,” and that Congress had a legitimate reason to scrutinize it.
But, he argued, it is premature to rush forward with impeachment while Congress has yet to obtain potentially knowable facts about what Mr. Trump said to his aides about withholding a White House meeting and $391 million in military aid that Ukraine desperately needed to shore up its defenses against Russian aggression....
...“There remain core witnesses and documents that have not been sought through the courts,” Mr. Turley wrote, adding that the House “is moving forward based on conjecture, assuming what the evidence would show if there existed the time or inclination to establish it.”
But Mr. Turley made only a passing reference in his written statement to the problem that has bedeviled impeachment investigators: The White House has directed top aides to Mr. Trump not to cooperate with the House, while asserting that they are immune from being subpoenaed to testify about their discussions with the president....
