Enjoy the theater, and here is who is making his case:
"Who are David Schoen and Bruce Castor, Trump’s impeachment trial lawyers?" by Charlie Savage New York Times, February 8, 2021
WASHINGTON — When former president Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial opens, two defense lawyers will be thrust into the national spotlight: David I. Schoen, an Alabama-based civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, and Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia.
Schoen, 62, graduated from Boston College Law School and has had an eclectic, decades long legal career. He has done extensive work on public interest and civil rights cases in the South about matters like police and prison violence and ballot access. Among his many cases, he played a significant role in a class-action lawsuit that challenged Alabama’s foster care system and led to improvements, and he represented the Ku Klux Klan in successfully challenging a law that forbade its members from marching while wearing hoods and without paying a fee. The American Bar Association honored Schoen in 1995 for his volunteer legal efforts. He has also worked as a criminal defense lawyer, representing an array of sometimes notorious clients, including accused mobsters, rapists, and killers. An outspoken supporter of Israel, he has also sued Palestinian terrorists and brought a lawsuit against Simon & Schuster for purported misrepresentations in former president Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”
Richard Cohen, the former president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that while he thought Trump deserved to be convicted, he considered Schoen “a good lawyer and a good person” who is attracted to complex and challenging cases and is not afraid to take on sometimes unpopular clients. An observant Jew, Schoen requested that Trump’s impeachment trial be paused if it continues past sundown Friday, to allow him to observe the Sabbath until it ends Saturday evening. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, and the Senate majority leader, said he would “accommodate” the request, which could prolong what both sides had hoped would be a quick proceeding.
Hey, when the pressure is on, Chuck delivers!
Castor, 59, who did not respond to a request for an interview, brings a different set of experiences. After earning his law degree from George Washington University, he served two terms as the elected district attorney in Montgomery County and a later stint as the Pennsylvania solicitor general. He has since worked as a criminal defense lawyer. He is most famous for his unapologetic defense of his decision in 2005 not to prosecute Bill Cosby after a Temple University employee, Andrea Constand, accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her. Castor lost reelection to an opponent who had criticized his handling of the case and went on to charge Cosby with aggravated indecent assault. Castor was recommended to Trump and his advisers by his cousin, Stephen R. Castor, a House Republican staff lawyer who helped lead the president’s early defense against his first impeachment in 2019. Stephen Castor clashed with Democrats over Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine into announcing a corruption investigation into Joe Biden, his political rival.
Which is why Biden plans to steer clear of Trump’s impeachment trial, because he himself may face the same fate, and back when the Globe called Cosby the face of evil!
If one didn't know better, one would think the Globe itself is racist!
The forces that drew Schoen to the world of Trump trace to the 1990s, when he represented two organized-crime convicts. Arguing that prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence that would have helped the defense, Schoen tried to overturn their convictions but failed. Andrew Weissmann was one of those prosecutors. When the special counsel leading the Russia investigation, Robert Mueller, hired Weissmann as a deputy, he became a favorite target of Trump allies seeking to discredit the broader inquiry. Schoen criticized Weissmann on Fox News and other conservative news outlets. The relationship drew closer after Mueller’s office won convictions of Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime friend and adviser, for crimes like lying to Congress and witness tampering. Schoen was handling Stone’s appeal before Trump granted him clemency. Schoen said he believed he had been recommended to the president for the impeachment trial as a result of that connection.
OMG, not that Doug Schoen.
He's a DEMOCRAT!
Of course, there is no longer any reason to watch Fox anymore.
Castor and Schoen must now defend the former president against a charge of “incitement of insurrection” related to the riot at the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6. The case focuses on Trump’s months long campaign to make his followers believe the falsehood that he had won reelection but was denied victory because of fraud, and his exhortations to his supporters at a rally in Washington shortly before the riot. Together, Castor and Schoen are expected to argue that the Senate lacks constitutional jurisdiction to try former officials (even though it has done so before), and that Trump’s incendiary language before the riot fell short of what could yield an incitement conviction in a criminal court because of the First Amendment.
Well, consider the source hurling charges of falsehoods.
The whole world knows Trump won in a landslide and it was stolen from him in the wee hours of the morning when we were taking a two-hour nap.
Went to bed with a red map and woke up to blue.
Yeah, must have been a mirage.
It has been reported that Trump and his original legal team, led by Butch Bowers, parted ways because of a clash over whether his defense should focus on his false claim that the election was stolen, but Schoen said he had begun working with Bowers several days before most of the team departed, and that explanation for what happened was not accurate. He said there had been a miscommunication, but he declined to offer further detail other than to insist that “the president hasn’t pushed any agenda on this thing.”
False claims?
Like WMD in Iraq?
So he now has the Second Team defending him, and strangely, both the lawyers and the pre$$ are infamous for parsing words.
I believe you know the persecutors, 'er, prosectors quite well as they make their case for conviction and marshal outrage against Trump.
Who will NOT be at the defense table:
"Using connections to Trump, Dershowitz became a force in clemency grants" by Kenneth P. Vogel and Nicholas Confessore New York Times, February 8, 2021
WASHINGTON — By the time George Nader pleaded guilty last year to possessing child pornography and sex trafficking a minor, his once strong alliances in President Donald Trump’s inner circle had been eroded by his cooperation with the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s team and its connections to Russia.
My eyes nearly fell out of my head when I saw this in the upper-righthand corner of page A4, for it means da Dersh might be in some trouble fro the NYT to bring this up!
So as Nader sought to fight the charges and reduce his potential prison time, he turned to a lawyer with a deep reservoir of goodwill with the president and a penchant for taking unpopular, headline-grabbing cases: Alan Dershowitz.
Dershowitz told Nader’s allies that he had reached out to an official in the Trump administration and one in the Israeli government to try to assess whether they would support a plan for Nader to be freed from U.S. custody in order to resume a behind-the-scenes role in Middle East peace talks, and whether Trump might consider commuting his 10-year sentence.
Free a pimp to the powerful, huh?
That's American JU$TU$ all right!
Dershowitz helped craft a proposal — which Nader’s allies believed he was floating at the White House in the final days of the Trump presidency — for Nader to immediately “self-deport” after his release from a Virginia jail. Under the plan, Nader would board a private plane provided by the United Arab Emirates to return to the Gulf state, where he holds citizenship and has served as a close adviser to the powerful crown prince.
Given the nature of Nader’s crimes and his cooperation with the Russia investigation, his bid for clemency was a long shot that did not work out, but Dershowitz’s willingness to pull a range of levers to try to free him shows why he emerged as a highly sought-after and often influential intermediary as Trump decided who would benefit from his pardon powers.
Many of Dershowitz’s clients got what they wanted before Trump left office, an examination by The New York Times found. The lawyer played a role in at least 12 clemency grants, including two pardons, which wipe out convictions, and 10 commutations, which reduce prison sentences, while also helping to win a temporary reprieve from sanctions for an Israeli mining billionaire.
Who would that be?
His role highlighted how Trump’s transactional approach to governing created opportunities for allies like Dershowitz — an 82-year-old self-described “liberal Democrat” who defended the president on television and in his first impeachment trial — to use the perception that they were gatekeepers to cash in, raise their profiles, help their clients or pursue their own agendas.
This is a FARCE!
Dershowitz received dozens of phone calls from people seeking to enlist him in clemency efforts.
The cases in which he did assist came through family members of convicts, defense lawyers enlisting him because they thought he could help their court cases as well as their clemency pushes and Orthodox Jewish prisoners’ groups with which he has long worked.
In a series of interviews, Dershowitz — who in a career spanning more than half a century has represented a roster of tabloid-magnet clients accused of heinous acts, including O.J. Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein — cast his defense of Trump and his clemency efforts as a natural extension of his work defending individual rights against a justice system that could be harsh and unfair.
“I’m just not a fixer or an influence peddler,” he said.
Then why did they drop the case and how were the flights?
Dershowitz said his efforts on behalf of Nader reflected “a multifaceted approach to these problems. So I don’t separate out diplomacy, legality, courts, executive, Justice Department — they’re all part of what I do.”
He helped get pardons for Dinesh D’Souza, "Scooter" Libby, and Rod Blagojevich, and someone has to do it, right?
It is difficult to determine how much money the work brought Dershowitz.
In one case, he was paid by the family of Jonathan Braun, whose 10-year sentence for drug smuggling was commuted by Trump in his final hours in office, but after The Times reported that Braun had a history of violence and threatening people, Dershowitz said he donated the fees to charity, but Dershowitz — who volunteered examples of Trump seeking his advice while in the next breath protesting that he was “not a Trump supporter” and had no more influence with Trump than with past presidents — obtained something that his defenders and detractors alike described as especially important to him: renewed political relevance and an increased reputation as a power player, particularly in the Jewish community.
Some don't live up to their reputation (the Globe featured that on the front page today).
Dershowitz emerged as a favorite of Trump from his early days in office as a result of his criticism of the investigation being carried out by special counsel, Robert Mueller. Dershowitz, an ardent supporter of Israel, was invited to the White House in 2017 for two days of private talks about a Middle East peace plan being assembled by Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and other officials.
Dershowitz was invited back to the White House last year, when Trump unveiled the peace plan, and for a Hannukah party in 2019 where Trump signed an executive order Dershowitz had helped draft targeting anti-Semitism on college campuses. The week after the Hannukah party in 2019, Dershowitz attended a Christmas Eve dinner at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where he said Trump lobbied him to join his impeachment legal defense team. Dershowitz said he decided to join as a matter of principle and noted that he had also consulted with President Bill Clinton’s legal team during his impeachment.
Dershowitz acknowledged taking advantage of his access to push for clemency grants, starting with the invitation to the White House for talks about the Middle East peace plan. He used the opportunity to urge Trump to grant clemency to Sholom Rubashkin, the kosher meatpacking executive convicted in 2009. Rubashkin’s case had become a cause in Orthodox Jewish circles, and Dershowitz had worked on it on a pro bono basis. A few months after Dershowitz made the case to Trump in the White House, Rubashkin was free.
So that's why Biden is opening the flood gates for immigrants without testing them.
That outcome emboldened a network of prisoners’ rights and clemency groups associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Jews. Dershowitz and one of the Jewish groups with which he has worked closely, the Aleph Institute, were central players in the network. As word spread of their successes, they were inundated with requests from Orthodox Jewish prisoners and their families. Late last year, Trump called Dershowitz to ask about clemency grants he was advocating with the Aleph Institute for Mark A. Shapiro and Irving Stitsky, the New York real estate investors convicted in the $23 million fraud. Dershowitz cast the cases as emblematic of the trial penalty.
Yeah, we know Trump let out a bunch of JewiSh criminals, but the pre$$ doesn't focus on those -- nor does it focus on the Jewi$h $upremaci$m that is Chabad-Lubavitch for that is the one supremacism you are forbidden to mention (risking my blog probably).
Dershowitz had written op-eds in Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal denouncing the trial penalty and citing unnamed cases. One matched the details of Shapiro and Stitsky, who were each sentenced to 85 years in prison after they turned down plea agreements of less than 10 years. Dershowitz said one or both of the articles had circulated in the White House, and Trump had asked him about the trial penalty.
“He was very interested” in the penalty, Dershowitz said, and also “the concept of the pardon power being more than just clemency, but being part of the system of checks and balances for excessive legislative or judicial actions.”
Stitsky had no prior relationship with Trump, but last year, friends of Stitsky helped retain a Long Island law and lobbying firm, Gerstman Schwartz, that did. One of the firm’s partners had parlayed previous New York public relations work for Trump into a new Washington lobbying business after he became president, and Stitsky’s new lawyers also tapped into the pardon-seeking network by working with Dershowitz and the Aleph Institute.
Trump commuted the sentences of Shapiro and Stitsky.
Way to DRAIN the $WAMP, Donny-boy, you f**king traitor!
In another case championed by Dershowitz and the Aleph Institute, Trump commuted the 20-year sentence of Ronen Nahmani, an Israeli-born Florida man convicted in 2015 of selling synthetic marijuana. The appeal to the White House, which Dershowitz helped devise, included an assurance that Nahmani would leave the country and never return — a framework that Dershowitz said served as a model for Nader’s case.
Dershowitz was enlisted to help Nader by Joey Allaham, a Syrian-born New York restaurateur and business owner, who paid Dershowitz to consult on Middle East issues, including working with Nader.
After Nader was arrested in 2019, Allaham connected Dershowitz to Nader’s criminal defense lawyer, Jonathan S. Jeffress, who paid Dershowitz at an hourly rate.
Nader’s team grew to include the lobbyist Robert Stryk, who filed a disclosure statement saying he was working to win a presidential commutation, and the lawyer Robin Rathmell, who filed a clemency petition at the Justice Department citing Nader’s help to the United States in Middle East relations. Nader’s allies had also used that argument in the early 1990s in an effort to win a reduced sentence when he pleaded guilty to a different child pornography charge.
Dershowitz said he thought it would help Nader’s current case if the U.S., Israeli and Emirati governments would vouch for his assistance to the United States in the region, and if Nader would pledge to leave the country upon his release.
Dershowitz told Nader’s allies that he made one call last year to a Trump administration official who handled Middle East policy and who was discouraging about the idea. He also called Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, who was noncommittal. After that, Dershowitz said, he shifted his efforts on behalf of Nader to focus almost exclusively on his fight to reduce his sentence in the courts.
“That was 99% of the effort,” Dershowitz said, “because the clemency effort directed at commutation was always so uphill considering the nature of the crime that it was never realistic.”
Nader’s allies had a different impression of Dershowitz’s efforts.
“We understood that Dershowitz was seeking clemency on behalf of Nader,” Jeffress said, “and that he was rejected for the sole reason that Nader had cooperated in the Mueller investigation.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
A FLASHBACK (for those who have forgotten):
(besides the Russian ambassador, Flynn, at the request of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, contacted several other foreign officials to urge them to delay or block a UN resolution condemning Israel over its building of settlements, says evidence from e-mails which were obtained from someone who had access to transition team communications -- meaning the Obama administration was spying on the opposition worse than Nixon ever did)
.... but facilitating Israeli interference in the during the 2016 transition:
(According to prosecutors, he discussed with Kislyak an upcoming UN Security Council vote on whether to condemn Israel’s building of settlements. At the time, the Obama administration was preparing to allow a Security Council vote on the matter. Mueller’s investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry. Investigators have learned that Flynn and Kushner took the lead in those efforts. Mueller’s team has e-mails that show Flynn saying he would work to kill the vote, the people briefed on the matter said. According to the filings, Flynn consulted with multiple senior Trump officials during the transition. One adviser, described in court documents as a “very senior member” of the transition team, directed Flynn in December to reach out to Kislyak and lobby him about a United Nations resolution on Israeli settlements. People familiar with the investigation identified the adviser as Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell declined to comment.)
.... but facilitating Israeli interference in the during the 2016 transition:
(According to prosecutors, he discussed with Kislyak an upcoming UN Security Council vote on whether to condemn Israel’s building of settlements. At the time, the Obama administration was preparing to allow a Security Council vote on the matter. Mueller’s investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry. Investigators have learned that Flynn and Kushner took the lead in those efforts. Mueller’s team has e-mails that show Flynn saying he would work to kill the vote, the people briefed on the matter said. According to the filings, Flynn consulted with multiple senior Trump officials during the transition. One adviser, described in court documents as a “very senior member” of the transition team, directed Flynn in December to reach out to Kislyak and lobby him about a United Nations resolution on Israeli settlements. People familiar with the investigation identified the adviser as Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell declined to comment.)
"The information collected last summer was considered credible enough for intelligence agencies to pass to the FBI, which during that period opened a counterintelligence investigation that is ongoing. It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials actually tried to directly influence Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn. Both have denied any collusion with the Russian government on the campaign to disrupt the election. John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, testified Tuesday about a tense period last year when he came to believe that President Vladimir Putin of Russia was trying to steer the outcome of the election. He said he saw intelligence suggesting that Russia wanted to use Trump campaign officials, wittingly or not, to help in that effort. He spoke vaguely about contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials, without giving names, saying they “raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”
Brennan pedaled the Steele dossier to McCain and Reid so they could send it up through channels.
I was told Kushner was a focus in Russia investigation because he wanted a secret communications channel with Kremlin, but it is common for senior advisers of a newly elected president to be in contact with foreign leaders and officials, it is common and not improper for transition officials to meet with foreign officials, and “Jared has had meetings with many other foreign countries and representatives — as many as two dozen other foreign countries’ leaders and representatives.”
Besides, the Kennedys did it.
Then there is the question of why Mueller was probing Kushner's finances, but his private attorney, Clinton lawyer and 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick downplayed the news as Jared proclaimed that he did not collude with Russians (how about that grin, huh? He knows he is untouchable).
Related:
"Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor. At the time, the emissary was also promoting a secret plan to use private contractors to destabilize Iran. The meetings, which have not been reported previously, are the first indication that countries other than Russia may have offered assistance to the Trump campaign....."
I'm sorry, NYT, SAY AGAIN?
The contractor is Erik Prince (brother of Betsy DeVos, and did you know she is 14th in line of succession to the president) of Blackwater fame, the specialist is Joel Zamel, whose company employs several Israeli former intelligence officers specializing in collecting information and shaping opinion through social media and was paid up to $2 million, and the emissary would be the infamous Israeli fixer and interventionist George Nader, a convicted pedophile with a shadowy past, who frequently met with Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn.
Brennan pedaled the Steele dossier to McCain and Reid so they could send it up through channels.
I was told Kushner was a focus in Russia investigation because he wanted a secret communications channel with Kremlin, but it is common for senior advisers of a newly elected president to be in contact with foreign leaders and officials, it is common and not improper for transition officials to meet with foreign officials, and “Jared has had meetings with many other foreign countries and representatives — as many as two dozen other foreign countries’ leaders and representatives.”
Besides, the Kennedys did it.
Then there is the question of why Mueller was probing Kushner's finances, but his private attorney, Clinton lawyer and 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick downplayed the news as Jared proclaimed that he did not collude with Russians (how about that grin, huh? He knows he is untouchable).
Related:
"Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor. At the time, the emissary was also promoting a secret plan to use private contractors to destabilize Iran. The meetings, which have not been reported previously, are the first indication that countries other than Russia may have offered assistance to the Trump campaign....."
I'm sorry, NYT, SAY AGAIN?
The contractor is Erik Prince (brother of Betsy DeVos, and did you know she is 14th in line of succession to the president) of Blackwater fame, the specialist is Joel Zamel, whose company employs several Israeli former intelligence officers specializing in collecting information and shaping opinion through social media and was paid up to $2 million, and the emissary would be the infamous Israeli fixer and interventionist George Nader, a convicted pedophile with a shadowy past, who frequently met with Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn.
There is more, but I rest my case.
Turns out Russian interference is really ISRAELI interference, and I WOULD BE WORRIED if I were him (thank God I'm not)!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Divisions harden in Senate as it prepares to receive impeachment article" by Catie Edmondson New York Times, January 24, 2021
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers on Sunday burrowed into dueling positions over the impending impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump, deepening the schisms in an already divided Senate a day before the House will deliver its charge to lawmakers there.
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the only Republican who voted to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, said Sunday that he believed that the former president had committed an impeachable offense, and that the effort to try him even after he left office was constitutional.
“I believe that what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense,” Romney said on “State of the Union” on CNN. “If not, what is?,” but even as Romney signaled his openness to convicting Trump, other Senate Republicans made clear that they opposed even the idea of a trial and would try to dismiss the charge before it began. Taken together, the comments underscored the rift that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and the ensuing fallout have created in the Republican conference, as senators weighed whether they would pay a steeper political price for breaking with the former president or for failing to.
Although the House will transmit the article of impeachment Monday, Senate leaders agreed Friday to delay the trial for two weeks, giving President Biden time to install his Cabinet and Trump’s team time to prepare a defense, but the plan also guarantees that the trial will dominate Biden’s crucial first days in office, and it could inflame partisan tensions even as the president is pushing a message of unity.
Some Senate Republicans, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have grown increasingly worried that if they do not intervene to distance themselves from Trump, their ties to the former president could hurt the party’s political fortunes for years. Others, skirting the question of whether Trump committed an impeachable offense, have argued that holding a Senate trial for a president who has already left office would be unconstitutional and would further divide the nation.....
They are going to shoot him down before acquitting him.
"Republicans waver on punishing Trump as impeachment trial looms" by Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro The Associated Press, January 25, 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats delivered the impeachment case against Donald Trump to the Senate late Monday for the start of his historic trial, but Republican senators were easing off their criticism of the former president and shunning calls to convict him over the deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol.
It’s an early sign of Trump’s enduring sway over the party.
The nine House prosecutors carried the sole impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection” across the Capitol, making a solemn and ceremonial march to the Senate along the same halls the rioters ransacked just weeks ago, but Republican denunciations of Trump have cooled since the Jan. 6 riot. Instead Republicans are presenting a tangle of legal arguments against the legitimacy of the trial and questioning whether Trump’s repeated demands to overturn Joe Biden’s election really amounted to incitement.
What seemed for some Democrats like an open-and-shut case that played out for the world on live television, as Trump encouraged a rally mob to “fight like hell” for his presidency, is running into a Republican Party that feels very differently. Not only are there legal concerns, but senators are wary of crossing the former president and his legions of followers — who are their voters. Security remains tight at the Capitol.
Arguments in the Senate trial will begin the week of Feb. 8, and the case against Trump, the first former president to face impeachment trial, will test a political party still sorting itself out for the post-Trump era. Republican senators are balancing the demands of deep-pocketed donors who are distancing themselves from Trump and voters who demand loyalty to him. One Republican, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, announced Monday he would not seek reelection in 2022, citing the polarized political atmosphere.
For Democrats the tone, tenor and length of the upcoming trial, so early in Biden’s presidency, poses its own challenge, forcing them to strike a balance between their vow to hold Trump accountable and their eagerness to deliver on the new administration’s priorities following their sweep of control of the House, Senate and White House.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said failing to conduct the trial would amount to a “get-out-jail-free card” for others accused of wrongdoing on their way out the door. Republicans appear more eager to argue over trial process than the substance of the case, he said, perhaps to avoid casting judgment on Trump’s “role in fomenting the despicable attack” on the Capitol.
Schumer said there’s only one question “senators of both parties will have to answer before God and their own conscience: Is former President Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection against the United States?”
Oh, now it's no longer a trail based on evidence but a matter of conscience and faith!
WHAT a SHAM!!
On Monday, it was learned that Chief Justice John Roberts is not expected to preside at the trial, as he did during Trump’s first impeachment, potentially affecting the gravitas of the proceedings. The shift is said to be in keeping with protocol because Trump is no longer in office.
Instead, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D- Vt., who serves in the largely ceremonial role of Senate president pro tempore, is set to preside.
Let's hope he isn't drunk by the end of the day.
Leaders in both parties agreed to a short delay in the proceedings that serves their political and practical interests, even as National Guard troops remain at the Capitol amid security threats on lawmakers ahead of the trial.
The start date gives Trump’s new legal team time to prepare its case, while also providing more than a month’s distance from the passions of the bloody riot. For the Democratic-led Senate, the intervening weeks provide prime time to confirm some of Biden’s key Cabinet nominees.
A few days later it morphs into a bloody incursion.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., questioned how his colleagues who were in the Capitol that day could see the insurrection as anything other than a “stunning violation” of the nation’s history of peaceful transfers of power. “It is a critical moment in American history,” Coons said Sunday in an interview.
An early vote to dismiss the trial probably would not succeed, given that Democrats now control the Senate. The House approved the charge against Trump on Jan. 13, with 10 Republicans joining the Democrats. Still, the mounting Republican opposition to the proceedings indicates that many GOP senators will eventually vote to acquit Trump. Democrats would need the support of 17 Republicans — a high bar — to convict him.
Biden himself told CNN late Monday that the impeachment trial “has to happen.” While acknowledging the effect it could have on his agenda, he said there would be “a worse effect if it didn’t happen.”
Biden said he didn’t think enough Republican senators would vote for impeachment to convict, though he also said the outcome might well have been different if Trump had six months left in his term.
In a Monday evening scene reminiscent of just a year ago — Trump is now the first president twice impeached — the lead prosecutor from the House, this time Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, stood before the Senate to read the House resolution charging “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
One by one, Republican senators are explaining their objections to the unprecedented trial and scoffing at the idea of trying to convict Trump now that he’s no longer in office.
Rand Paul of Kentucky said that without the chief justice presiding the proceedings are a “sham.” Joni Ernst of Iowa said that while Trump “exhibited poor leadership,” it’s those who assaulted the Capitol who “bear the responsibility.” New Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said Trump is one of the reasons he is in the Senate, so “I’m proud to do everything I can for him.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is among those who say the Senate does not have the constitutional authority to convict a former president.
Democrats reject that argument, pointing to an 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who had already resigned and to opinions by many legal scholars. Democrats also say that a reckoning of the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812, perpetrated by rioters egged on by a president as Electoral College votes were being tallied, is necessary.
They have to go that far back, huh?
That is when the Democrats were the party of SLAVERY!
A few GOP senators have agreed with Democrats, though not close to the number that will be needed to convict Trump.
Mitt Romney of Utah said he believes “what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense. ... If not, what is?” Romney was the only Republican senator to vote for conviction when the Senate acquitted Trump in his first impeachment trial.....
"Nearly all GOP senators vote against impeachment trial for Trump, signaling likely acquittal" by Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim The Washington Post, January 26, 2021
WASHINGTON - All but five Republican senators backed former president Donald Trump on Tuesday in a key test vote ahead of his impeachment trial, signaling that the proceedings are likely to end with Trump’s acquittal on the charge that he incited the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The vote also demonstrated the continued sway Trump holds over GOP officeholders, even after his exit from the White House under a historic cloud caused by his refusal to concede the November election and his unprecedented efforts to challenge the result.
Trump's trial is not scheduled to begin until Feb. 9, but senators were sworn in for the proceedings Tuesday, and they immediately voted on an objection raised by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., questioning the constitutional basis for the impeachment and removal of a former president, but Democrats argue that Trump must be held accountable for the riot, which saw the Capitol overrun and claimed the lives of one police officer and four rioters. Paul's argument, they said, suggests that presidents can act with impunity late in their terms.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that the Republican argument is "flat-out wrong by every frame of analysis - constitutional context, historical practice, precedent and basic common sense."
The final vote was 55 to 45 to kill Paul's objection, with GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania joining all 50 Democrats.
The largely partisan vote indicated that, nearly three weeks after the Capitol attack, much of the GOP anger over Trump's actions immediately before and during the siege has faded. Notably, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. - who previously said Trump had "provoked" the Capitol mob - voted to back Paul and Trump, who has reached out to senators directly and through intermediaries to marshal support for his defense.
Convicting Trump would require support from 67 members of the 100-member body. The Democratic-led House has already impeached Trump a historic second time. If convicted in the Senate, the former president could be barred from holding future office with a subsequent majority vote.
Paul had sought to muster at least 34 votes in support of his objection to signal that there were enough senators with constitutional misgivings to secure an acquittal. After the vote, Paul declared that "the impeachment trial is dead on arrival."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has been advising Trump on his defense, said Tuesday that he considered 45 votes to be "a floor, not a ceiling" for an acquittal vote.
"He just needs to keep doing what he's doing, and the trial will be over in a couple of weeks," he told reporters.
Got your popcorn?
A few senators who voted with Paul disputed that Tuesday's vote was a foolproof indication of the trial's outcome. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, for instance, told reporters he wanted to hear further debate on the constitutionality question but had not yet decided whether to convict Trump, but several other Republicans, including Collins, drew the conclusion that a Trump acquittal was now fait accompli. "Just do the math," she said.
Before the vote, Republican senators met for a private lunch where they heard from Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has argued that a former president cannot be tried for impeachment.
Exiting the lunch, Turley said that he had presented a nuanced argument - that the benefits of condemning a now-departed president were "outweighed by the cost" of setting the precedent that Congress could retrospectively impeach and remove former presidents, creating a new political weapon.
The theory has gained traction among Republicans as a way to side with Trump while sidestepping the question of whether he "incited" the violence at the Capitol - the allegation that is at the heart of the impeachment effort.
Already been impeached, so WTF?
It's whether to convict now.
They can't even report that accurately!
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he hoped that Tuesday's vote would prompt Democrats to reassess if it was even worth having a trial. "I hope my colleagues... look at it from the standpoint, is it wise to do this?" he said. "I would hope we would end this now. It's just not wise. It's not healing. It's divisive."
Democrats and many legal scholars have balked at the argument that a former president - or any former official - cannot be convicted of impeachment.
"The theory that the Senate can't try former officials would amount to a constitutional get-out-of-jail-free card for any president who commits an impeachable offense," Schumer said. "It makes no sense whatsoever that a president - or any official - could commit a heinous crime against our country and then defeat Congress' impeachment powers by simply resigning, so as to avoid accountability and a vote to disqualify them from future office."
I'm still waiting for them to impeach Bush over all the war crimes.
Oh, right, they are complicit collaborators in those endeavors.
Schumer and other have raised the precedent sent in 1876, when Secretary of War William Belknap resigned a matter of moments before the House was set to vote on his impeachment on corruption charges. The House impeached Belknap anyway, and the Senate proceeded with a trial in which Belknap was acquitted.
McConnell did not speak before Tuesday's vote or release any statement squaring his vote with his previous statements critical of Trump's behavior. In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack and the House impeachment, McConnell communicated to his GOP colleagues that he was open to supporting a conviction.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the majority whip, said Tuesday's vote indicated that many Republicans consider the trial to be on "a very shaky foundation" but have not necessarily ruled out a vote to convict. "I, as a juror, am going to wait until the trial commences and hear the arguments on both sides," he said, "and I think that's where the leader is."
The former president's aides also have started putting GOP senators on notice about the impending trial vote asserting that Trump will continue to be in a force within the Republican Party. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said Brian Jack, a political aide to Trump, called him over the weekend to stress that Trump had no interest in starting a third party and that his political activity post-presidency would be with the GOP. "I would say it wasn't out of the blue," Cramer said of the call, first reported by Politico. "I think it was strategic."
That's where I am with this.
Among the other key Republicans who aired constitutional concerns Tuesday was Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the longest-serving GOP senator. He raised qualms about the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who is constitutionally mandated to preside over the impeachment trial of a sitting president, has opted not to appear at Trump's second trial. "That would send a pretty clear signal to me what Roberts thinks of the whole thing," Grassley said.
Rather than Roberts, presiding over the trial will be Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. - the Senate president pro tempore and longest-serving senator. While Leahy pledged Monday to act fairly in the role, the image of a Democrat presiding over the trial of a GOP former president led several Republicans to cry foul. "Brazenly appointing a pro-impeachment Democrat to preside over the trial is not fair or impartial and hardly encourages any kind of unity in our country," Paul said Tuesday. "No, unity is the opposite of this travesty we are about to witness."
A few Republicans, however, said they believed that the trial of a former president is in fact constitutional. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told reporters Tuesday that, in her view, "impeachment is not solely about removing a president, it is also a matter of political consequence."
OMFG, she JUST ADMITTED it is ALL POLITICAL!
Despite the broad constitutional concerns among Republicans, it appeared Democrats had little intention of canceling or curtailing the trial.
Some, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the vote Tuesday suggested that House impeachment managers needed to make an even more detailed case against Trump - calling witnesses and presenting evidence attesting to the depravity of his behavior leading up to and during the events of Jan. 6.
Blumenthal said he believed that the trial would rekindle the anger many Republicans felt in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol assault: “They were in a different frame of mind than today when they were voting on the motion to dismiss,” he said, “and I want to bring back the feelings of revulsion and terror that were caused on that day.”
That would be DaNang Dick, the guy who lied about being in Vietnam when he was riding a desk in Connecticut, and what kind of sick fu*k says something like that?
Other Democrats suggested that Republicans were simply trying to avoid contending with the political consequences of rendering a judgment on Trump's conduct.
"They don't want to argue the merits," said Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich. "We have a president who incited a violent attack on the United States Capitol, and on our very democracy, so it's absolutely critical that we call that out and make sure that future presidents understand that this is completely unacceptable behavior and will never be tolerated by the American people."
Actually, we are now being told there is evidence detailing coordination of an assault long before Trump started speaking (smells like a limited hangout for the whole staged and scripted event).
Schumer on Tuesday said Trump's behavior - which included spreading baseless theories about the November election being stolen, pressuring state officials to change vote tallies, encouraging supporters to rally in Washington as Congress certified the electoral college on Jan. 6, and then calling that day for ralliers to march to the Capitol - amounted to "the most despicable thing any president has ever done."
“I believe he should be convicted,” he said.....
Then he must be dismissed from the jury pool for bias before the case has even been presented.
Wow, the Senate has turned into a kangaroo court worthy of Communi$ts!
Also see:
Just in case you forgot:
"What riot? Amnesia sets in among Republicans in Washington" by Liz Goodwin Globe Staff, January 30, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Senate is careening toward its second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which is scheduled to begin Feb. 8 and will provide a vivid reminder of the violent takeover of the Capitol that resulted in five deaths, but Republicans — some of whom initially showed willingness to push for consequences for Trump — have swiftly closed ranks around a new message: Let it go, and that may be exactly what happens, as neither Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, nor members of his party appear willing to hold Trump accountable, underscoring the former president’s continued hold over the party even after he lost his job and social media megaphone, but now that Trump is out of office, some legal scholars have suggested an impeachment trial could be unconstitutional — an argument many Republicans have swiftly adopted as they seek a way out of the politically unsavory prospect of convicting a figure who remains popular among the base. If Trump were convicted, the Senate could prevent him from running for president again.
The Globe reporter is not concerned about the censorship at all, meaning they have likely secured their place as the Party Mouthpiece going forward.
Some GOP senators suggested this week that losing the election is punishment enough for Trump; others pointed out that impeaching a former president would set a bad precedent that could set off a cascade of political retaliation for electoral losers. On Tuesday, all but five Republicans supported a motion declaring the trial unconstitutional, previewing how few might even consider a vote to convict Trump.
Among those voting for the unsuccessful motion were minority leader Mitch McConnell, who has not spoken to Trump for weeks and earlier signaled an openness to conviction, and Senator Lindsey Graham, who hours after the riot declared of Trump that “enough is enough,” but has since cozied back up to him.
“We’re going to need Trump and Trump needs us,” Graham said this week.
After you abandoned him?
Related:
"South Carolina Republicans on Saturday issued a formal censure to U.S. Rep. Tom Rice to show disapproval over his vote in support of the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump. Rice was among 10 GOP representatives who joined Democrats on Jan. 13 in voting to impeach Trump for his role in the violence a week earlier at the U.S. Capitol. A Senate trial is expected in February. A day after his vote, Rice — who represents South Carolina’s 7th District, an area that voted heavily for Trump — told The Associated Press “it hurts my heart” to have gone against the president, but he decided to back impeachment after seeing what he characterized as Trump’s inaction during the Capitol Hill riot. State party-level censures aren’t common in South Carolina. The GOP in 2009 issued one to then-Gov. Mark Sanford after he fled the state for five days to visit a lover in Argentina. In 2009 and 2010, several county-level Republican parties censured U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham for his willingness to work on bipartisan deals, with one county deriding Graham’s “condescending attitude” to the party’s grassroots organizers. The censure is a symbolic expression of disapproval that some warn could have electoral consequences for Rice, who has represented the 7th District since its creation in 2012. Long a reliable backer of Trump’s policies, Rice campaigned with the president and, according to FiveThirtyEight, voted 94% of the time in favor of Trump-backed legislation — the highest percentage among South Carolina’s current delegation. In his only primary since first elected in 2012, Rice won with 84% of the vote. He’s been reelected each time with at least 56% of votes cast. Now, Rice is all but sure to face at least a handful of primary challengers, with one formally creating an exploratory committee this past week. Rice told the AP he knew he’d likely face a difficult primary and that the impeachment vote could potentially cost him his seat: “If it does, it does,” he said."
Good for them, and it looks like Lindsey got the message!
The collective shirking from holding Trump accountable is a measure of his continued appeal to the Republican base, even as federal authorities are arresting dozens of supporters for their actions on Jan. 6 and the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert warning of potential terror attacks from right-wing militants. Some of the 10 House Republicans who voted with Democrats to impeach Trump have stoically conceded they may very well lose their seats over the move.
The alert warned of politically motivated violence by members of the Michigan militia and a Tennessee man, and the DoJ watchdog is going to investigate possible improper efforts by officials to alter the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election after they plotted with Trump in an effort to overturn Georgia’s election results and Trump made another call to Georgia (they won't investigate this though).
So as Trump seeks to remain a political force, new targets are emerging on the far right and federal law enforcement officials are examining a number of threats aimed at members of Congress as the second trial of former President Donald Trump nears, including ominous chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside of the U.S. Capitol, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.
Such a movement must be countered by a global alliance(!) against the growth and spread of neo-Nazism and white supremacy and the resurgence of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and hate speech sparked partly by the COVID-19 pandemic with investigations of fellow members of Congress (they can start with this asshole).
“The quiet hope is that he just goes away without having to publicly rebuke him and anger the base,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and former spokesman for Senator Mitt Romney when he ran for president. “Even at this stage, voting to convict the president all but guarantees you a primary that could end your career in the Senate.”
He has.
Hasn't made a peep since he left, and were it not for this trial he wouldn't be an issue.
Hmmmm.
What are they distracting us from?
That was evident Thursday when hundreds of Trump supporters attended a rally in Cheyenne, Wyo., hosted by Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, an ardent Trump ally, to protest Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach the former president, and Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House who said during the House impeachment debate that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Jan. 6 attack, traveled to Palm Beach, Fla., to pay court to him this week. After the McCarthy meeting, Trump’s political organization boasted in a statement: “His endorsement means perhaps more than any endorsement at any time.”
Related:
"Former president Donald Trump and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, had a “very good and cordial” meeting Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to a statement from Trump’s Save America PAC. At the top of the agenda was Republican efforts to retake control of the House in 2022. McCarthy has been a vocal promoter of Trump’s false claims that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and he threw his support behind a Texas lawsuit aiming to overturn Biden’s win. McCarthy was initially critical of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot, but he has since tempered his criticism. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Jan. 15 shows Trump’s disapproval rating is at its highest measurement since summer 2018. Sixty percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency — with 52 percent “strongly” disapproving — while just 38 percent approve; nonetheless, Thursday’s statement from the Save America PAC claimed, falsely, that the former president’s ratings are soaring. According to the statement, Trump told McCarthy he plans to play a role in GOP efforts to retake the House....."
Those damn fools still don't get, and is there anyone out there who believes a WaCompo-ABC News poll?
With the votes to convict on the Republican side clearly not there, some Democrats are pushing for a speedy trial of just one week, compared to the three weeks they spent on Trump’s first impeachment trial in early 2020. The short timeline means lawmakers would not have time to gather evidence using subpoena power to find out what Trump knew before the rally about the crowd’s intentions.
That's what you do when you have presented no evidence!
Instead, they would likely rely on the mountain of publicly available video and other evidence that shows rioters citing Trump’s words to justify their violent breach of the Capitol. That’s just fine with many Democrats who want to move on the policy matters on their agenda.
That could BACKFIRE since much of it shows the understaffed (on purpose) police letting them in and getting all chummy with them.
“I would hope that we deal with that as quickly as possible to start addressing the needs of working families,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said on Wednesday about the trial.
Others, though, are emphasizing the gravity of the situation, urging that if the Senate does not convict, then there should be criminal proceedings brought against Trump.
Isn't that an unconstitutional situation called double jeopardy?
“This is much, much more serious than anything we’ve ever seen in our lifetime and it’s really the purpose of having articles of impeachment in the Constitution,” said Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia. “We want to make sure that no one ever does this again, never thinks about doing this again — sedition and insurrection.”
He's the guy who has the fate of the filibuster in his hands as he grooms his daughter for his seat!
President Biden has stayed out of the debate, saying he would leave it to senators to decide what to do about the trial.
That is a LIE since not was reported above that they definitely should have it!
If Republicans do stick together and vote to acquit Trump, that could leave a major political question unresolved at a time when the country is struggling to move past the ex-president’s lies about electoral fraud and attempts to hang onto power after he lost.
“What’s going to happen is Trump is going to say, ‘I’m the victim of a partisan vendetta in impeachment’ and he’ll be able to hog the headlines and then at the end he’s going to be acquitted,” predicted Bruce Ackerman, a constitutional scholar at Yale Law School. “So then he’ll run around and say, ‘I’m not guilty! I was right all along.’”
How can he do that when he is not in control of that?
Ackerman has urged lawmakers to rally around a bipartisan compromise that avoids that scenario — a censure vote based on a provision in the 14th Amendment that bars people from holding office if they participated in a rebellion or insurrection against the United States. In this scenario, the Supreme Court ultimately would hear the evidence for and against the charge and make a decision, removing that judgment from the political arena of Congress.
Collins and Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat, attempted to drum up support for that route this week, but it has not appeared to get much traction.
“I’ve heard some rumblings, but not serious discussion,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a Republican.
No matter the result, the impeachment trial will be a reminder — and a reliving — of Jan. 6, which could forestall the efforts of some lawmakers hoping that voters will forget it ever happened.
“They can turn a blind eye to it all day long, but it doesn’t change facts on the ground,” said Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who endorsed Biden in 2020. “The damage and the carnage that was created by their incitement of insurrection — you don’t get to walk away from that.”
They never even started a fire like the BLMs.
The pressure is on back home to convict and preserve democracy(!) as Trump steals the loot meant for his defense after the campaign to subvert the election — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power, according to the New York Times.
UPDATE:
Also see:
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NEXT DAY UPDATES:
I don't know what the Boston Globe is smoking, but they are saying Trump will probably walk away without punishment for inciting the insurrection because this nation inoculates white supremacy from guilt and the the American citizen is the ultimate jury.
(hiccup)
He's reportedly furious at the representation he is getting.
"Biden administration asks Trump-appointed US attorneys to resign" by Matt Zapotosky Washington Post, February 9, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday asked the remaining US attorneys appointed by former President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate to submit their resignations, sparing only two federal prosecutors who are conducting politically sensitive probes, including of President Biden’s son, according to a Justice Department news release and other officials.
The resignations will not necessarily take effect immediately. The US attorneys were told on a conference call they would be allowed to stay until Feb. 28 and transition out, people familiar with the matter said. Still, the move generated criticism from both sides of the political aisle.
Illinois’ two Democratic senators, Richard Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Tammy Duckworth, said in a joint statement that they were disappointed they were not consulted before the administration asked for the resignation of the US attorney in Chicago, John Lausch, whose office has been pursuing a corruption case that has raised questions about a powerful state Democratic lawmaker.
’'While the President has the right to remove US Attorneys, there is precedent for US Attorneys in the Northern District of Illinois to remain in office to conclude sensitive investigations,’' the senators said. ’'We believe Mr. Lausch should be permitted to continue in his position until his successor is confirmed by the Senate, and we urge the Biden Administration to allow him to do so.’'
Some conservatives questioned the move’s timing — which came just as impeachment proceedings against Trump began. Ian Prior, who was a Justice Department spokesman in the Trump administration and now tracks moves in the Biden Justice Department, noted that when Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general, asked for resignations from US attorneys appointed by President Barack Obama, Democratic leaders cried foul.
Everyone knows the Communists, 'er Democraps, are arrogant hypocrites whose effluent pooh doesn't stink.
’'The Biden Administration, like the Trump Administration before it, has the absolute right to request resignations of incumbent US Attorneys,’' Prior said. ’'What will be frustrating to conservatives, however, is that Democrats, pearl clutching columnists, and cable news pundits tried to spin it as a ‘threat to democracy’ when Trump did it, but will now say ‘all is well’ since it’s Biden sending the pink slips.’'
Biden was inevitably going to select his own US attorneys and move out those appointed by his predecessor. His asking for resignations signals, though, that he intends to purge those sympathetic to Trump sooner rather than later, as many on the left had wanted.
Notably, the administration exempted from the move the US attorney for Delaware, David C. Weiss, whose office is investigating Hunter Biden, the president’s son, for possible tax crimes.
A Justice Department official said that Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson had on Monday asked Weiss to stay on in his current role. The official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said Connecticut US Attorney John Durham would also be able to continue his review of the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election. That is because the former attorney general, William Barr, appointed Durham as a special counsel, and he will remain in that role even after stepping down as US attorney, the official said.
Still waiting on Durham, yup.
Bobby Christine, the US attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, whom Trump controversially installed last month to also lead the office in Atlanta, announced he was leaving the government entirely. Christine was moved in as Trump waged a pressure campaign against officials in Georgia to support his unfounded claims of election fraud there, though he recently resigned from his role in Atlanta.
When Sessions asked the 46 remaining Obama administration US attorneys to submit their resignations in March 2017, some Democrats questioned the move. Then-Senate minority leader Charles Schumer of New York, for example, said that “the president is interrupting ongoing cases and investigations and hindering the administration of justice.’’
The Trump administration insisted at the time that it was acting normally, and that a similar step was taken at the start of Bill Clinton’s administration. Almost all the US attorneys under Sessions left immediately. Other administrations, including those of Obama and George W. Bush, eased out US attorneys gradually while seeking replacements.
Yeah, I remember John Conyers thundering at Rove on Democracy Now back in the day.
"Fox News invokes free-speech rights as it defends itself in defamation suit by voting-machine maker" by Nick Turner and Erik Larson Bloomberg, February 9, 2021
Fox News has told a judge that its reporting on the voting-technology company Smartmatic Corp.’s alleged role in Donald Trump’s bogus election-fraud conspiracy is protected by the First Amendment.
Smartmatic, which makes voting systems and software, is seeking $2.7 billion in damages in its lawsuit, which claims Fox News harmed its reputation with reports in November and December suggesting it had helped rig the 2020 election to ensure President Biden’s victory.
In a motion to dismiss the suit, filed Monday evening, Fox Corp. argued it had a right to report details of the alleged conspiracy — which is unsubstantiated —and broadcast the views of Trump’s attorneys “whether those lawyers can eventually substantiate their claims or not.”
“When a sitting president and his surrogates claim an election was rigged, the public has a right to know what they are claiming, full stop,” Fox said in its filing. “When a sitting president and his surrogates bring lawsuits challenging election results, the public has a right to know the substance of their claims and what evidence backs them up, full stop.”
Smartmatic filed the suit on Thursday against Fox News and some of its high-profile commentators and guests, including Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell. The suit accuses them of executing a coordinated disinformation campaign aimed at convincing the public there was rampant election fraud.
Neither Powell nor Giuliani have filed motions to dismiss, and neither responded to messages seeking comment. Powell previously denied Smartmatic’s claims.
Another election technology company, Dominion Voting Systems Inc., made similar claims in separate lawsuits filed earlier against Giuliani and Powell. Dominion has sent cease-and-desist letters to numerous news outlets and individuals suggesting potential lawsuits in the futre, including against Fox and Trump.
The bogus conspiracy theory claimed that both Smartmatic and Dominion played a role in flipping millions of votes to Biden, in cahoots with thousands of corrupt Democrats and foreign communists.
The false claim that the election was stolen helped spur a deadly insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol on Jan. 6 and Trump’s second impeachment by the US House, which alleged he incited the riot. His trial before the Senate started Tuesday.
In its filing with the court, Fox said Smartmatic had also failed to allege in its complaint that the reports it broadcast were made with “actual malice” toward the company — a standard in defamation suits.
Fox’s attorney, Kirkland & Ellis partner Paul Clement, said in a statement Monday that Smartmatic’s suit is “fundamentally incompatible with the reality of the modern news network.”
Smartmatic says the allegations broadcast by Fox hurt its ability to conduct business in the United States and around the world.
The Smartmatic suit also named Fox hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro, accusing them and Fox of deliberately spreading false claims that Smartmatic had fixed the election. Last week, Fox canceled Dobbs’s nightly show but said it was part of changes that had already been in the works for its post-election lineup.....
Fox has lost all credibility with me, even if Tucker delivered a scathing monologue last night regarding the shifting goalposts of CV while questioning the vaccines.
It's stupid to continue reading the Boston Globe.
Related:
I'm told it’s a long video, nearly two hours long, but jampacked with information and proves the case.
Of course, the fraud is to be ensconced in law here in Ma$$achu$etts.
"A former labor leader and Obama administration official was elected Tuesday to serve as chair of the US Postal Service board of governors, marking the first step in a potential shakeup under President Biden. Ron Bloom replaced a former Republican National Committee chair, Robert “Mike” Duncan, who remains on the governing board as critics call for firing embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and increasing racial and gender diversity. All six current board members are men. DeJoy, a prominent Republican fund-raiser and supporter of former President Trump, has come under heavy criticism for changes he made before the election that led to widespread delivery delays and other problems recently. The Postal Service also dealt with a dismal on-time performance during the holidays because of a crush of mail and packages that was exacerbated by the pandemic....."
Also see:
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The crisis that has led to more than 81,000 drug overdose deaths during the 12-month period ended in May 2020, the highest 12-month death count on record, has been totally subsumed by CV.
Related:
"A surge in the number of U.S. residents who have died of a drug overdose — 81,230 in the 12 months ending last May — set a record for the most such deaths in a one-year span, according to a report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, drug overdose deaths jumped by 18 percent from the previous year....."
It is no laughing matter.
Nor is this:
"Military struggles to answer how many extremists are in ranks" by Missy Ryan, Paul Sonne and Razzan Nakhlawi Washington Post, February 9, 2021
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faces an early test as he races to advance a major initiative targeting far-right extremism in the ranks, a challenge that officials acknowledge is complicated by the Pentagon’s lack of clarity on the extent of the threat following the US Capitol riot.
Austin’s highly unusual order for a military-wide “stand-down,” slated to pause normal operations in coming weeks so troops can discuss internal support for extremist movements, underscores the urgency of the task ahead for the former four-star general, who last month became the nation’s first African American Pentagon chief.
It's another BIDEN PURGE!
The Jan. 6 events at the Capitol, in which Trump supporters stormed Congress in an attempt to prevent President Biden from taking office, laid bare the appeal of white supremacist and anti-government groups among some veterans and, in smaller numbers, currently serving troops. The involvement of individuals with military links follows several incidents in which troops have espoused support for racist or extremist movements on social media or to their peers.
The military’s planned stand-down comes as part of a larger Pentagon effort to reckon with its troubled history of racial discrimination, sexual assault, and other internal scourges that officials say harm troops, threaten military values, and damage recruitment and retention.
PFFFFFFT!
Even as they seek to get the effort off the ground, Pentagon officials are grappling with legal and institutional issues that have posed an impediment to addressing extremism in the past.
"We don’t know the full breadth and depth of this," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters this month. "It may be more than we’re comfortable feeling and admitting, and probably a lot less than the media attention surrounding it seems to suggest it could be, But where is it? It’s just not clear."
Officials attribute support in the military for far-right movements among troops to larger trends in American society, but experts say the stakes are particularly high for the military, which imbues specialized training and skills that could make far-right groups more powerful, and dangerous.
"What you want is for people who are trained with safeguarding the population in some capacity, who have military weapons training, to be better than the rest of the country at resisting, at not being susceptible, to propaganda, to ideological radicalization," said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University.
An academic analysis published in 2011 by the Justice Department’s Terrorism Research and Analysis Project found that right-wing terrorists have been significantly more likely to have military experience than other terrorists indicted in US courts.
Last month, Pentagon officials said the FBI had informed them about 68 domestic extremism cases in 2019 involving current or former troops.
Current rules permit troops to join extremist organizations, so long as they don’t become "active" members who fundraise, recruit or take part in other prohibited activities.
Those would be the PSYOPS INFILTRATORS and INSTIGATORS behind most of the events!
The Pentagon’s performance on this issue may constitute a key metric in the Biden administration’s effort to demonstrate a break with president Donald Trump, who was seen as tolerating and at times fueling far-right currents, which often overlapped with his political base.
For Austin, it represents both a political and management challenge, as he seeks to marshal the Pentagon’s vast bureaucracy and handle sensitivities around personal freedoms as he steps into his new role. The former combat commander, who was the first African American to hold a number of military jobs as he rose up the ranks, has said relatively little in public about his own experiences as a Black man in the US military.
First among the challenges for Austin and his aides is the lack of centralized means of documenting and tracking incidence of extremism in military units.
Historical data from outside the government has suggested a correlation between military experience and right-wing terrorism, but official statistics provide only a fragmentary picture......
That's all I ever get in the Party propaganda sheet called a paper.
Related:
"President Joe Biden’s choice to the lead the Office of Management and Budget apologized Tuesday for spending years attacking top Republicans on social media as she tried to convince senators she’ll leave partisan politics behind if confirmed. Neera Tanden also admitted to spending “many months” removing past Twitter posts, saying, “I deleted tweets because I regretted them,’' but she refused to say she did so to help her nomination. “I know there have been some concerns about some of my past language on social media, and I regret that language and take responsibility for it,” Tanden, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and president of the center-left Center for American Progress, told a Senate committee. “I deeply regret and apologize for my language,” she later added. Tanden would be the first woman of color to lead the OMB. Her nomination needs approval from the Senate, which has moved fairly quickly to OK many of Biden’s choices for powerful posts. That’s despite it being divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats hold the majority, thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. None in the party have yet opposed Tanden, meaning she’s likely to be approved, but Republicans have signaled the process may trigger a political battle unseen with other Biden nominees, given her history of criticism of GOP lawmakers. Republican Ohio Senator Rob Portman noted that, despite trying “to cover what you said” by deleting tweets, copious “harsh’' criticism’' and “personal attacks about specific senators” endured. He said that included Tanden’s calling Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton ’'a fraud” and tweeting that “vampires have more heart” than Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. Tanden said she recognizes “that this role is a bipartisan role, and I know I have to earn the trust of senators across the board.”
Well, trust, once lost, is hard to restore, and it turns out she has tweeted more over the past four years than even former president Trump, the hateful Clinton hack.
Yeah, just saying sorry is okay for leftist terrorists.
Also see:
That's why they are pushing the vaccines on us and shipping them to community health centers beginning next week as Walgreens and Uber partner on transportation to the vaccination sites (be sure to wear your mask made by Ford).
Related:
That's a buried brief, like so many, and I've been told by the pre$$ we are clamoring for them.
Saint Steven Brandenburg, 46, of Grafton, is a hero as Massachusetts is in the midst of a campaign to vaccinate millions of people in an effort to bring an end to a pandemic that has sickened hundreds of thousands and caused nearly 15,000 deaths in the state, and the DPH said 55,659 people were estimated to have active cases of the potentially deadly virus.
"Estimated to have active cases of the potentially deadly virus."
What weasel wording, huh?
Sure looks like consolidation on the way the Communi$m to me.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Let the Games begin:
"In the days since the president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee ignited a fierce backlash by asserting that women talk too much in meetings, more than half of the Japanese public agreed in a poll that he was “not qualified” to lead. One of Japan’s most prominent Olympic hopefuls, Naomi Osaka, said his comments were “really ignorant.” Editorials in two of the country’s largest newspapers called for him to resign, yet after making a brief apology, the Tokyo 2020 chair, Yoshiro Mori, 83, remains the face of Japan’s effort to pull off the most important event on the international sports calendar....."
Was good enough for Tanden, so why are the Japanese so intransigent?
The New York Times release nearly sent me into orbit.
So this is what the "fact-finding mission" found?
Looks like WAR to ME:
"China sent warplanes into the Taiwan Strait over the weekend, a show of force to the Biden administration that signals Beijing’s plans to maintain pressure on Taiwan even as it calls for a reset with the United States. While such drills have been common and sometimes larger in recent years, the timing of this effort, just days after a new American administration took office, drew notice in both Taipei and Washington. Taiwan’s military said it sent radio warnings to the Chinese planes, put defense missile systems on alert and dispatched patrol aircraft to monitor them. Ned Price, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement released on Saturday that the United States “notes with concern the pattern of ongoing P.R.C. attempts to intimidate its neighbors, including Taiwan,” referring to the People’s Republic of China. “We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure against Taiwan and instead engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected representatives.”
"Also on Saturday, the Theodore Roosevelt, an American aircraft carrier, entered the South China Sea with its accompanying strike group on what the Navy described as “routine operations” to “ensure freedom of the seas.” While Chinese military officials did not necessarily plan drills with the new American administration in mind, the timing could have value for Beijing, said Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official responsible for China and now a research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. “I think it’s a mistake to assume that everything is a signal,” he said, “but certainly the operation is both militarily expedient in terms of training and experience but also a very useful political signal to not only Taiwan but of course the new Biden administration.”
Also see:
That means another Hollowcau$t™ against Jews with the Iranians as the new Nazis!
Time to PLAY BALL!
