My favorite part today was when a Republican said Zelensky himself said no pressure was put on him by Trump. He said this multiple times.

A Democrat responded with something like, “of course Zelensky would say that...he’s a politician and is lying”.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
We're way beyond simply proving Trump innocent.

That's not where the burden of proof lies.

quote:

The focus should be to inflict major, long lasting, damage to the Dem party.

That is exactly right.

Everybody knows that Trump is not guilty of anything. "Vindicating" him is like proving that Mother Theresa was not a hooker.

But getting all these traitors up on the stand under oath would be the nuclear bomb of "damage." The MSM has kept the wraps on Joe and Hunter's corruption. Getting them up on the stand would blow the lid off.

What is happening in America right now goes well beyond President Trump. They can't lay a finger on him, and he will be re-elected. But if they are not punished-- and punished hard-- for turning "impeachment" into a political weapon, our Republic is doomed. No election will be real. They will go on and "impeach" every Republican elected.

But I've had about enough of being told that I'm wearing a tin foil hat-- which will probably be repeated. I think I'll go read a book-- The Empire of the Summer Moon" is great.

Apparently Trump wants to mount a vigorous defense and see some people answer questions under oath and see who gets weak in the knees. He knows he's not done a damn thing wrong and he wants to face his accusers under oath. I for one don't blame him one bit.

White House and Senate GOP disagree on procedures for Senate trial.

The White House and Senate Republicans disagree on procedures for the Senate impeachment trial, a top White House official said after emerging from an hour-plus meeting with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“We are having a lot of good conversations with Senate Republicans,” Eric Ueland, Trump’s chief legislative negotiator, told reporters Thursday after he and White House counsel Pat Cipollone met with McConnell on Capitol Hill. “We’ll continue to do that here over the next few days and weeks as we work through all these issues and priorities the president’s outlined when it comes to where we should go on these articles.”

The House is expected to vote on and approve two articles of impeachment next week before departing Washington for Christmas. House Democrats are charging Trump with abusing the power of his office in dealings with Ukraine and obstructing Congress.

Among the key areas of disagreement is whether to call witnesses during the trial and, if so, how many.

The White House and Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have said calling witnesses is the only way to wage the vigorous defense the president is demanding. But McConnell and a growing number of Republicans oppose witness testimony, worried it would introduce unpredictability into a trial while also drawing out impeachment proceedings unnecessarily. There also is the challenge of whether Republicans can muster the 51 votes required to summon witnesses, as required under impeachment rules.

The president’s team, led by Cipollone, has not closed the door on winning support from Senate Republicans for witnesses.

“This is part of good robust collaborative communications that we’re having with our partners up here in the Senate. We’re going to keep working on that here in the next few days,” Ueland said.

Sen. John Cornyn, a McConnell ally, is floating a compromise that might bridge the divide if the majority leader fails to convince Trump to drop his demand for witnesses. The Texas Republican said that witnesses could be called to give depositions, either before the impeachment trial begins in early January or even as it unfolds.

Including depositions in the trial format and subpoenaing witnesses for interviews would still require the support of at least 51 senators.

“From my perspective, that would mean a pretty efficient presentation,” Cornyn said. “Witnesses would be deposed and excerpts presented rather than call live witnesses, which might rival the three-ring circus in the House of Representatives.”

McConnell in recent days has moved to discourage both Trump and Senate Republicans from calling witnesses.

The majority leader has explained that, in his view, a drawn-out trial is not in the president’s interest, nor that of his conference, especially since there is virtually no chance of 67 votes materializing to convict the president and expel him from office. For some Senate Republicans, such as Martha McSally of Arizona, Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Susan Collins of Maine, among others who could face difficult 2020 reelection bids, the impeachment issue carries enormous political risks, something McConnell is aware of.

Republicans who agree with McConnell are hopeful that Trump will embrace this strategy.

“We understand that the president has to mount his own defense, and we respect that,” said Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

Link

Oh, yes, having this person and that testify in the impeachment trial would be the thing which would bring down the left. Sure. You bet. Nuclear bomb. Got it.

I didn't say anything about "vindicating" President Trump. I said that we need to get this over with ASAP and move on, but you want to draw it out because it would be "devastating". You're dreaming.

I don't think "over with quickly" and calling witnesses and exposing the Dems to the world as lying hacks are mutually exclusive. In political terms, 2 weeks of hearings isn't very long, I'd call that "quickly" but it will give enough time to expose to all how big of a sham this is and how Schiff and the so-called "whistleblower" were lying from the start (destroying them while questioned under oath) and how there is no evidence. Look how badly the televised hearings went for the Dems, with hand-picked and coached witnesses, so-called expert legal scholars and no Repub power to call anyone of their own or do much of anything or even prepare. It was still a bloodbath.

If the Republicans basically just open and shut it for lack of evidence, while the technical right course of action in a perfect world, the Dems and MSM will make huge hay out of saying the Repubs are corrupt and refused to even have a real trial and are just covering up Trump's corruption.

I'm with Trump, we need a spectacle. We need to totally embarrass them, expose them and hurt them (both the candidates running and Biden in particular) in order to prevent this political weaponization of impeachment from happening again. This will save time in the long run as it will save us from another, and another...

It's like the scene in Jack Reacher, "Just remember, you wanted this..."

Yeah, it would be like the last ten minutes of the old Perry Mason TV show. Adam Schiff would snap under pressure and blurt out all his crimes while having to be restrained by bailiffs, then, we go to commercial. Come on.

Let's wrap up this fiasco and move on.

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:
I don't think "over with quickly" and calling witnesses and exposing the Dems to the world as lying hacks are mutually exclusive. In political terms, 2 weeks of hearings isn't very long, I'd call that "quickly" but it will give enough time to expose to all how big of a sham this is and how Schiff and the so-called "whistleblower" were lying from the start (destroying them while questioned under oath) and how there is no evidence. Look how badly the televised hearings went for the Dems, with hand-picked and coached witnesses, so-called expert legal scholars and no Repub power to call anyone of their own or do much of anything or even prepare. It was still a bloodbath.

If the Republicans basically just open and shut it for lack of evidence, while the technical right course of action in a perfect world, the Dems and MSM will make huge hay out of saying the Repubs are corrupt and refused to even have a real trial and are just covering up Trump's corruption.

I'm with Trump, we need a spectacle. We need to totally embarrass them, expose them and hurt them (both the candidates running and Biden in particular) in order to prevent this political weaponization of impeachment from happening again. This will save time in the long run as it will save us from another, and another...

It's like the scene in Jack Reacher, "Just remember, you wanted this..."

This is my thoughts on it. Doesn't even need to be two weeks. I'd be happy with two days. Call up WB#1, Schiff, lil Biden, whoever would cause and embarrassment and discourage anyone from trying this BS again. I would like to have it cost D's seats. That is the only way it makes sense to me. I don't know all the ins/outs of the situation, but whatever helps defeat D's in 2020 is the path I want to take. I'd love to get a little revenge, but in the end I really just want to take back seats and that's all I care about. So strategize away Senate and do whatever is most effective, but make sure whatever you do D's end up with egg on their face.

Adam Schiff has had free rein. Now it's our turn.

"Our turn" is the first Tuesday in November, 2020.

The biggest problem is that it is political theater and not in the legal system. In the legal system, you want to end it ASAP. A summary judgement, a plea, a quick trial and a not guilty verdict, whatever. Heck, in the legal system we have both no crime and no admissible evidence save a transcript and a few 1st hand statements refuting the not-crime allegations.

Here we have just have Dems violating every tenant of due process, controlling the narrative, and getting all their shots in.

No, there won't be a Perry Mason moment where anyone goes to jail, but if they aren't made to pay a political price for this...there is no "moving on." We will just be moving on...to their next attempt, and the next...until they either lose the House or win 2020 or win 2024. They have already said as much.

I assume that the "prosecution", the Dems will get to go first and present their case at the Senate trial. Under anything remotely resembling fair rules, the cross on these "witnesses" will be withering. When they rest, instead of no witnesses they at least need to call Schiff and WB#1 who were the origination of this whole scam. If they are to0 chicken to call COL Jessup and try to get him to admit to ordering the Code Red (er, I mean Hunter and Joe Biden), I'm ok with that.

Not along current lines of discussion, but I laughed my ass off watching this. For those who don't know who this guy is, Tim Pool is a journalist/blogger that is a disenfranchised lefty. He's usually fair on whatever he's covering.

I'm am not yet tired of winning.




Link to original video: https://youtu.be/X2yh2Erf3Mg

Hank "Guam might tip over" Johnson is in favor of impeaching Trump because.....He's tall.


Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...daI&feature=youtu.be

I'll see Johnson and raise a Jordan and Gaetz

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Again, I asked you for specifics and you produced speculation. You don't know of any such "corruption" on the Republican side, related to this matter.

How many allies does the President have? And some of you guys want to execute them as well. And then, who in Washington will be left?

I think they're referring to the article in Conservative Treehouse that came out recently where they cite a OANN investigative series by Chanel Rion.
https://theconservativetreehou...-bury-investigation/

Rush mentioned it a few days ago too...

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/d...o-investigate-biden/

RUSH : No, I have not forgotten. Here is the One America News Network story. We had a caller say, “Rush, Lindsey Graham said that when they get to the trial in the Senate there aren’t gonna be any witnesses. They’re just gonna say not guilty and move on, nothing to see here. Rush, how come the Republicans don’t want to do the same thing the Democrats do and literally nuke the Democrats when they bring this case forward? Why would we just want to slap it away and say nothing to see here?”

And he talked about how Senator Graham talked big during the Kavanaugh hearings and promised all kinds of hearings and how the hell that happened and what have we got so far. (Raspberry) Well, the caller’s not alone. I mean, I’ve heard that from a number of people. So I come across — actually this is a story from the Conservative Treehouse. These people have done some incredible analytical reporting on the coup.
They have dug deep on all of the FBI shenanigans that Devin Nunes has uncovered. They have done some incredible work on timelines. And they have analyzed at Conservative Treehouse the story that One America News Network produced.

” In a fantastic display of true investigative journalism, One America News journalist Chanel Rion tracked down Ukrainian witnesses as part of an exclusive OAN investigative series. The evidence being discovered dismantles the baseless Adam Schiff impeachment hoax and highlights many corrupt motives for U.S. politicians. Ms. Rion spoke with Ukrainian former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko who outlines how former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch perjured herself before Congress.

“What is outlined in this interview is a problem for all DC politicians across both parties. The obviously corrupt influence efforts by U.S. Ambassador Yovanovitch as outlined by Lutsenko were not done independently.
“Senators from both parties participated in the influence process and part of those influence priorities was exploiting the financial opportunities within Ukraine while simultaneously protecting Joe Biden and his family. This is where Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham were working with Marie Yovanovitch.”
This was the One America News Network story. “Imagine what would happen if all of the background information was to reach the general public? Thus the motive for Lindsey Graham currently working to bury it. You might remember George Kent and Bill Taylor testified together.

“It was evident months ago that U.S. chargé d’affaires to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, was one of the current participants in the coup effort against President Trump. It was Taylor who engaged in carefully planned text messages with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland to set-up a narrative helpful to Adam Schiff’s political coup effort.
“Bill Taylor was formerly U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (’06-’09) and later helped the Obama administration to design the laundry operation providing taxpayer financing to Ukraine in exchange for back-channel payments to U.S. politicians and their families.”

So the allegation here is that American taxpayer dollars, i.e., foreign aid, whatever you want to call it, was sent to Ukraine in exchange for some of it coming back to America to U.S. politicians and their families. And the key to this is that to make this work they had to make sure that what Biden was doing with his kid was not exposed because it would expose everything else going on like it. In other words, that Biden and his kid were not a one-off.
“In November Rudy Giuliani released a letter he sent to Senator Lindsey Graham outlining how Bill Taylor blocked VISA’s for Ukrainian ‘whistle-blowers’ who are willing to testify to the corrupt financial scheme.”

Rudy is in Ukraine even now. The Democrats in this committee can’t believe it. They’re characterizing it as Rudy is still trying to rig the 2020 election, they say. That’s not what Rudy is doing. I’ll tell you what has become abundantly clear is that Donald Trump knows exactly what he’s doing with Ukraine, and he knows exactly what he’s trying to expose, and it remains the administrative state. He’s trying to blow it up.

When he says that he’s draining the swamp, he literally is draining the swamp. And Ukraine did meddle in the 2016 election. There are seven different Drive-By news stories documenting it. And Ted Cruz literally took Chuck Todd to school on it yesterday on Meet the Press. I’ve got the audio of that if I have a chance to get it in here.
But back to the One America News Network here. “In November Rudy Giuliani released a letter he sent to Senator Lindsey Graham outlining how Bill Taylor,” the ambassador to Ukraine, “blocked VISA’s for Ukrainian ‘whistle-blowers’ who are willing to testify to the corrupt financial scheme.”

In other words, there are people in Ukraine who have been found willing to come to the United States, tell everybody what went on, and the ambassador blocked visas. Rudy has discovered this and sent a letter to Lindsey Graham as committee chairman in the Senate to expose this. I’m just gonna read the next. You can do with it what you want.

This from the One America News report: “Unfortunately, as we are now witnessing, Senator Lindsey Graham, along with dozens of U.S. senators currently serving, may very well have been recipients for money through the aforementioned laundry process. The VISA’s [sic] are unlikely to get approval for congressional testimony, or Senate impeachment trial witness testimony. U.S. senators write foreign aid policy, rules and regulations thereby creating the financing mechanisms to transmit U.S. funds,” money, foreign aid, what have you.

“Those same senators then received a portion of the [money] back through their various ‘institutes’ and business connections to the foreign government offices; in this example Ukraine (ex. Burisma to Biden).” Now, this sounds like the way the Clintons did it, and it sounds the way any number of people do it. You don’t have to be a senator. You don’t have to be a member of Congress. You can be a cabinet secretary. You could be anybody that is involved some way in the money chain, in the appropriations process.

So let me create a hypothetical that’s based on nobody that I know and nothing I know. I’m just gonna make it up like the Democrats are doing in their hearings today. Let’s say we have a secretary of defense who wants a portion of all of the money allocated to defense contractors. Well, very tricky. I mean, you can’t ask these defense contractors to pay a little to your personal bank account, wire the money. How do you do it? One way would be for your spouse to set up a foundation or a consultancy.

And you could make it contingent upon getting the contract that a certain amount of money must go to the consultancy group or to the foundation. It would have the imprimatur of legality, but you would hope that it would never be learned or discovered. And in that way, the defense contractor would get the government contract, and a percentage of it (or however you make the financial arrangements) would go to the spouse, foundation or, better yet, even consultancy firm to make it look like the consultancy firm had been hired to help procure the contract.
That’s one way it could be done. So what this story is alleging is that similar things like this have been in place. Folks, the U.S. Treasury, do you know how much money goes through that entity? (chuckles) We’re talking trillions of dollars. Do you wonder why the two wealthiest counties in America now are suburbs of Washington? I mean, say what you want about people being devoted to ideas and policy, but there’s one thing universal that makes the world go ’round, besides sex, and that’s money and getting it.

It’s very hard to get you a job that pays you millions of dollars. People just… Salaries like that — other than in movies or athletics, sports — it just doesn’t happen. So how do you amass that kind of money when you can’t get a job that’s gonna pay you that? Well, if you have other mechanisms where people aren’t really paying anything, or maybe paying your consultancy firm or donating to your foundation or what have you. But if you put yourself near that entity that sees trillions of dollars pass through it every week…

Not just every year, every month. So the story basically is that there are Ukraine witnesses willing to testify to this but that they will not be granted visas to come here because nobody wants to hear from them. Now, you do with that what you want. I have no idea whether any of this is true. But One America News published it. Conservative Treehouse saw the report and analyzed it, printed their analysis and these names. McCain, the McCain foundation, McCain…
In fact, in the story there’s a picture of McCain and Lindsey Graham at a meeting with Marie Yovanovitch, and the story makes clear that Yovanovitch lied through her teeth about some things during her testimony. But, anyway, that’s what I referenced. We had the caller asking about why there’s so little Republican action on these never-ending Democrat abuses. I had remembered reading the story.

Tony.

I’m just scanning the latest posts and haven’t read everything in depth as I’m out of town for work. But I have to agree with the boss on this. No matter what would come out of the dems being forced to testify they would just lie about it. The media would back them up. The sheep would believe them. And we still win in November. Best get it done and move on.

^^^^

Except unless we take back the House there is no moving on. They will just do it again, they have already said as much.

Inflicting max damage in a Senate trial will have a direct affect on certain vulnerable House members getting re-elected.

They need to be punished as severely as possible. Trump's #1 promise was "drain the swamp." If the RINOs are now waffling on calling witnesses, he's hit a nerve. I'd posit a drawn out trial in the Senate is "moving on" to the extent it helps expose these swamp rats and get rid of them!

Moving on to a Dem controlled House refusing to do anything isn't going to produce any results anyway. It isn't like they are going to pass some meaningful immigration reform bill or a budget or anything.

With a Senate impeachment trial the MSM will be in a real pickle. No other news to report on and they will have a very hard time trying to spin what is coming out of an even remotely fair process. It will be like swirling the drain...

Houston DIM rep al green said there is no limit on how many times they can impeach Trump, if this doesn’t work there are other things they might impeach him for later. This should really help the voters love the Dems, there only jobs while Trump is in office is to come up with BS reasons to throw him out. Personally, I think they should pay the taxpayers back for all the millions they wasted on this crap, including their salaries for not doing what they were hired to do.

'This is a coup attempt': Giuliani says he believes in 'deep state'

https://www.washingtonexaminer...lieves-in-deep-state

President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that he believes there is an internal effort in the State Department to have Trump removed from office.

In a Thursday interview with Sinclair’s Eric Bolling, the 75-year-old former New York City mayor was asked if he believes in the existence of a “deep state” conspiracy.

“Is there a deep state? Is there a concerted effort within the organization, within the [State] Department and or the FBI to take down President Trump?” Bolling asked.

“Oh yes,” Giuliani responded. “State Department is filled with them.”

“It isn’t that they disagree with his policies, and even that they try to undermine his policies a bit. That’s been going on for years,” he continued. “They want to get him out of office. Any way they can. How you can miss that this is a coup attempt is beyond being intelligent.”

Giuliani went on to say that he believes Democrats are leading “the coup.” He said that the FBI and law enforcement has “become intimidated by the press.”

“Unless I’m a courageous prosecutor, I know that if I investigate Rudy Giuliani, the New York Times are going to love it,” he said. “But if I would open an investigation into Joe Biden for a bribe that he admitted on tape … If I were to prosecute Biden, I’d get attacked as, ‘You’re doing it to help Trump,’ ‘You’re interfering in the election.’”



House Democrats introduced articles of impeachment against President Trump last week relating to his July 25 phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. During the call he asked the foreign leader to investigate Biden and his son Hunter.

Giuliani was recently in Ukraine to collect information. While in Ukraine, he met with Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who wants to form a bilateral investigation between the two countries to look into corruption in Ukraine. Derkach is also looking to build a corruption case against Hunter Biden.

Giuliani is under federal investigation by prosecutors in New York and is being investigated along with two of his recently indicted associates over his consulting business.

Well, Rep. Al Green is right on one thing--there is no limit on how often Impeachment can be tried. And I've no doubt that a Democrat-controlled House might try it again.

flashguy