House Votes for Impeachment

Along strict party lines.

At the New York Times, "A Divided House Endorses Impeachment Inquiry Into Trump":

The U.S. House has voted to endorse the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Here's what happened:
– The final vote was 232 to 196
– All 194 Republicans voted against the measure
– 2 Democrats voted against it

See how each member voted here: https://t.co/sXjbFXSyEW pic.twitter.com/4WXJZToZ6c

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 31, 2019

WASHINGTON — A bitterly divided House of Representatives voted Thursday to endorse the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry into President Trump, in a historic action that set up a critical new public phase of the process and underscored the toxic political polarization that serves as its backdrop.

The vote was 232-196 to approve a resolution that sets out rules for an impeachment process for which there are few precedents, and which promises to consume the country a little more than a year before the 2020 elections. It was only the third time in modern history that the House had taken a vote on an impeachment inquiry into a sitting president.

Two Democrats broke with their party to vote against the measure, while Republicans — under immense pressure from Mr. Trump to shut down the impeachment inquiry altogether — unanimously opposed it.

Minutes after the vote, the White House press secretary denounced the process as “a sham impeachment” and “a blatantly partisan attempt to destroy the president.”

Practically speaking, the resolution outlines the rights and procedures that will guide the process from here on out, including the public presentation of evidence and how Mr. Trump and his legal team will be able to eventually mount a defense.

But its significance was more profound: After five weeks of private fact-finding, an almost completely unified Democratic caucus signaled that, despite Republican opposition, they now have enough confidence in the severity of the underlying facts about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine to start making their case for impeachment in public...

Right.

Nobody really thinks Trump's going to be impeached AND removed from office. Democrats don't even believe that. It's a scam, sham, wam-bam.

See HuffPo:

New HuffPost/YouGov impeachment polling: Just 30% of Americans think it's even somewhat likely that Trump will be impeached and removed. https://t.co/5PRvT3mG89

— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) October 31, 2019

'House Democrats may be thinking that the argument against executive privilege is stronger if the whole House has voted or that by demonstrating a better standard of procedural regularity, they may influence the judge to avoid the case without reaching the merits...'

A great piece, at Althouse, "Maybe they hope it will be voted down! Suddenly, House Democrats want a formal vote on impeachment."

And ICYMI: "Unconstitutional Impeachment."

Unconstitutional Impeachment

David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley, at WSJ, "This Impeachment Subverts the Constitution":

This is a very nice piece. https://t.co/Wn3B419Qdp

— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) October 27, 2019

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed committees investigating President Trump to “proceed under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry,” but the House has never authorized such an inquiry. Democrats have been seeking to impeach Mr. Trump since the party took control of the House, though it isn’t clear for what offense. Lawmakers and commentators have suggested various possibilities, but none amount to an impeachable offense. The effort is akin to a constitutionally proscribed bill of attainder—a legislative effort to punish a disfavored person. The Senate should treat it accordingly.

The impeachment power is quasi-judicial and differs fundamentally from Congress’s legislative authority. The Constitution assigns “the sole power of impeachment” to the House—the full chamber, which acts by majority vote, not by a press conference called by the Speaker. Once the House begins an impeachment inquiry, it may refer the matter to a committee to gather evidence with the aid of subpoenas. Such a process ensures the House’s political accountability, which is the key check on the use of impeachment power.

The House has followed this process every time it has tried to impeach a president. Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment was predicated on formal House authorization, which passed 126-47. In 1974 the Judiciary Committee determined it needed authorization from the full House to begin an inquiry into Richard Nixon’s impeachment, which came by a 410-4 vote. The House followed the same procedure with Bill Clinton in 1998, approving a resolution 258-176, after receiving independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report.

Mrs. Pelosi discarded this process in favor of a Trump-specific procedure without precedent in Anglo-American law. Rep. Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee and several other panels are questioning witnesses in secret. Mr. Schiff has defended this process by likening it to a grand jury considering whether to hand up an indictment. But while grand-jury secrecy is mandatory, House Democrats are selectively leaking information to the media, and House Republicans, who are part of the jury, are being denied subpoena authority and full access to transcripts of testimony and even impeachment-related committee documents. No grand jury has a second class of jurors excluded from full participation.

Unlike other impeachable officials, such as federal judges and executive-branch officers, the president and vice president are elected by, and accountable to, the people. The executive is also a coequal branch of government. Thus any attempt to remove the president by impeachment creates unique risks to democracy not present in any other impeachment context. Adhering to constitutional text, tradition and basic procedural guarantees of fairness is critical. These processes are indispensable bulwarks against abuse of the impeachment power, designed to preserve the separation of powers by preventing Congress from improperly removing an elected president.

House Democrats have discarded the Constitution, tradition and basic fairness merely because they hate Mr. Trump. Because the House has not properly begun impeachment proceedings, the president has no obligation to cooperate. The courts also should not enforce any purportedly impeachment-related document requests from the House. (A federal district judge held Friday that the Judiciary Committee is engaged in an impeachment inquiry and therefore must see grand-jury materials from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, but that ruling will likely be overturned on appeal.) And the House cannot cure this problem simply by voting on articles of impeachment at the end of a flawed process.

The Senate’s power—and obligation—to “try all impeachments” presupposes that the House has followed a proper impeachment process and that it has assembled a reliable evidentiary basis to support its accusations. The House has conspicuously failed to do so. Fifty Republican senators have endorsed a resolution sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham urging the House to “vote to open a formal impeachment inquiry and provide President Trump with fundamental constitutional protections” before proceeding further. If the House fails to heed this call immediately, the Senate would be fully justified in summarily rejecting articles produced by the Pelosi-Schiff inquiry on grounds that without a lawful impeachment in the House, it has no jurisdiction to proceed.

The effort has another problem: There is no evidence on the public record that Mr. Trump has committed an impeachable offense. The Constitution permits impeachment only for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Founders considered allowing impeachment on the broader grounds of “maladministration,” “neglect of duty” and “mal-practice,” but they rejected these reasons for fear of giving too much power to Congress. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” includes abuses of power that do not constitute violations of criminal statutes. But its scope is limited.

Abuse of power encompasses two distinct types of behavior. First, the president can abuse his power by purporting to exercise authority not given to him by the Constitution or properly delegated by Congress—say, by imposing a new tax without congressional approval or establishing a presidential “court” to punish his opponents. Second, the president can abuse power by failing to carry out a constitutional duty—such as systematically refusing to enforce laws he disfavors. The president cannot legitimately be impeached for lawfully exercising his constitutional power.

Applying these standards to the behavior triggering current calls for impeachment, it is apparent that Mr. Trump has neither committed a crime nor abused his power. One theory is that by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Kyiv’s involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential corruption by Joe Biden and his son Hunter was unlawful “interference with an election.” There is no such crime in the federal criminal code (the same is true of “collusion”). Election-related offenses involve specific actions such as voting by aliens, fraudulent voting, buying votes and interfering with access to the polls. None of these apply here.

Nor would asking Ukraine to investigate a political rival violate campaign-finance laws, because receiving information from Ukraine did not constitute a prohibited foreign contribution. The Mueller report noted that no court has ever concluded that information is a “thing of value,” and the Justice Department has concluded that it is not. Such an interpretation would raise serious First Amendment concerns.

Equally untenable is the argument that Mr. Trump committed bribery...

More.

'The impeachment nightmare that House Democrats are so eagerly plunging the country into now is merely another outbreak of that party’s inability to accept the voters’ verdict of 2016...'

From Andrew Malcolm, at McClatchy, "Clinton and Russia didn’t take down Trump, so Democrats try Ukraine and impeachment":

Week's Most-Read Column--Remember Clinton was so shaken by Trump's upset win she couldn't compose herself to concede election night? The Dem #impeachment effort began that same night https://t.co/BJNhvr6E4N pic.twitter.com/MNA8nKophd

— Andrew Malcolm (@AHMalcolm) October 5, 2019

Donald Trump’s unlikely victory was so shocking for Hillary Clinton and her lazy, overconfident campaign team and supporters that she was emotionally unable to compose herself for a concession speech until the next day.

Which suggests to many that voters made the correct choice for commander in chief, even if they have real doubts about Trump.

Clinton and her crowd have never recovered. Even before Trump took the oath and could perform an actual high crime or misdemeanor in office, an impeachment campaign was underway.

Now, billionaire Tom Steyer and noisy segments of that Democratic caucus have finally succeeded in forcing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch the preliminary impeachment inquiry, which — news flash! — has actually been playing out in the House Judiciary Committee since mid-summer. The Ukraine phone call is the cover story for a foregone impeachment conclusion.

It’s never surprising anymore that politicians alter their tune with each day’s changing climate. Here’s Pelosi last March:

“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

Here’s Pelosi last week: “Right now, we have to strike while the iron is hot.”

The president’s high crime she professed to see even before the July Ukraine phone transcript emerged was Trump pressuring Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. Ukraine’s president has denied any quid pro quo or feeling any pressure from Trump.

Here’s an amazing irony that somehow hasn’t attracted the same volume of media attention: That same Joe Biden is currently on the presidential campaign trail, boasting that, in fact, as a sitting vice president he did threaten Ukraine with a quid pro quo loss of aid if it didn’t fire the prosecutor investigating an energy company that was paying Biden’s son $50,000 a month for something. Biden succeeded.

This latest assault on Trump was sparked by a whistleblower alleging, albeit secondhand, that the president personally was pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, a possible opponent next year. Turns out, the informant is a CIA employee, giving credence to a prescient 2017 warning from Sen. Chuck Schumer when Trump first criticized intelligence agencies.

“Let me tell you,” Schumer said, “You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

Realistically, neither of these impeachment inquiries will accomplish anything. That is, beyond drowning out any other attempts at newsmaking to impress voters...

More.

Angry Joe Biden (VIDEO)

Boy, ask him about his influence peddling and does he really get pissed off.

https://t.co/Z2vEL3JckT

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 4, 2019

President Trump Warns Speaker Pelosi: White House Won't Cooperate Until Full House Votes on Impeachment

This is how it's done.

At the Epoch Times, "White House to Send Pelosi Letter Refusing Compliance With Demands Until Impeachment Inquiry Vote."

Hannity: Release the Biden-Ukraine Phone Transcript (VIDEO)

Hannity's on it:

What Did Adam Schiff Know and When Did He Know It?

Here's the great Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "Schiff’s Shifty Timeline":

"The timeline of this orchestrated campaign is another knock to the legitimacy of the so-called impeachment inquiry."
https://t.co/FdwJ9kgtQh via @WSJ

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) October 4, 2019

If the latest impeachment push continues to backfire, Democrats can thank their duplicitous House Intelligence chairman, Adam Schiff.

The New York Times reported this week that the “whistleblower” who set off the latest inquisition provided an “early warning” to Mr. Schiff’s committee that he or she was filing a complaint over Donald Trump’s July 25 call to Ukraine’s president. The media is now at pains to stress that whistleblowers do sometimes reach out to Congress, that all “procedures” were followed, and that what really matters is the accusation that Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

Actually, it matters a great deal that Mr. Schiff knew about this early and withheld it deliberately from both the public and his House colleagues. He used his advance information to lay the groundwork steadily for later exploitation of the issue. He went so far as to charge the White House with a coverup—of a complaint he already knew about. The timeline of this orchestrated campaign is another knock to the legitimacy of the so-called impeachment inquiry. If the public can’t trust Mr. Schiff to be honest about the origins of his information, why should they trust his claim that the information itself is serious?

RTWT.

Five Observations on the Politics of Impeachment

From Sean Trende, at RCP:

Why no one should be confident about who will benefit from impeachment:https://t.co/6dt6Xsk9Ih

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) October 2, 2019

Plus:

When reading impeachment polls, it is important to read the question wording carefully. That Monmouth poll that some see suggesting plurality support for impeachment is about an impeachment inquiry (q11X). Impeachment itself is at 44-52 (q4) for now.https://t.co/t2slQcAxxA

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) October 2, 2019

Trump's Campaign Cashes In

Who didn't see this coming?

The Democrats are deranging themselves to political oblivion.

At LAT, "Trump’s reelection campaign cashes in on impeachment woes."

Laura Ingraham on Democrats' Impeachment Hysteria (VIDEO)

I don't watch Fox as much as I used to, but I did tune into Tucker, Hannity, and Ms. Laura this week.

It's positively sane compared to CNN, which I also watched. (I rarely ever watch MSNBC; the last time was when I tuned into Maddow the day the Mueller report dud landed, and I could barely sit through.)

Patriot Anna Timmer Blasts Rep. Justin Amash at Grand Rapids Town Hall (VIDEO)

This was a viral moment on social media, and the woman appeared on Fox News as well.

Thank you all for the love! Unexpected and greatly appreciated. This is a wrap for me for the week, but I'll be back in the Twitter game on Monday!

— Anna Timmer (@VeritasSola) June 2, 2019

The Cable-Social Media Feedback Loop

Jonathan Martin is on to something I think, but few reporters outline current politics as such: the powerful role activist media plays in current partisan campaign mobilization.

Check this tweetstorm for the NYT piece, via Memeorandum, "You Don't Have to Be in Des Moines.' Democrats Expand Primary Map, Spurred by Social Media."

NEW: Morning from San Fran, where 14 (!) Dem candidates have gathered for the Calif Dem convention

At the same time, Biden is in...Ohio tonight.

How and why the 2020 race went national - and IA & NH have lost their stranglehold >>https://t.co/Sp2Azp600m pic.twitter.com/YLhPIgFXIe

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 1, 2019

Hope you’ll read the story, but this map from @jsonkao really paints the picture:

the Dem candidates have already visited over 30 states + territories for non-fundraising events.

And the year isn’t halfway done https://t.co/Sp2Azp600m pic.twitter.com/8qNLXPqzee

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 1, 2019

It’s not *just* Super Tuesday.

The nature of Dem coalition & Trump has made ‘20 the mirror of ‘08:

Obama spent 89 days in Iowa and won the nom in part bc he showed there he could win rural whites. Now the candidates must prove they have a message for, and can win, non-whites.

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 1, 2019

It’s hard to overstate how central the cable-social media feedback loop has become to this primary. Staff judge events in part on if cables went live from venue. And they’re fixated on creating settings& moments that can go viral.

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 1, 2019

Warren has won plaudits for her meaty policy proposals, but no candidate besides Biden has benefited as much from Trump. Why?

Because cable TV drives polling and cable is fixated on Mueller

After Warren called for impeachment her cable mentions soared and polling followed...

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 1, 2019

...and then Warren helped herself w a good turn at, wait for it, a *cable* town hall just 3 days after calling for impeachment post-Mueller report

It’s no accident polls show she’s doing best of any non-Biden candidate among the most engaged Dems: they’re glued to cable/social

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 1, 2019

BUT: The early states still thin the field@davidplouffe warns that campaigns are making a mistake if IA and NH aren’t their “the north star”

“If you need to come in third but you came in fifth you’ll say, ‘Shit, if only I had spent three or four more days in Iowa.’”

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 1, 2019

AND:

the new rules from the DNC on debate access will only incentivize candidates to focus more on breaking thru on TV and spending more on social/TV https://t.co/Sp2Azp600m

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 2, 2019

Trump's Base is Bolstering G.O.P. Before the Midterms

From Ronald Brownstein, at CNN, "Beating Republicans in November will be harder than Democrats thought":

Despite all his provocations, the GOP coalition is consolidating around Trump to maintain power in DC. To retake power in November, it increasingly appears Dems will need to match their intensity. https://t.co/gYRAG1xOmn

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) May 22, 2018

(CNN) It's become a numbing Washington ritual. Donald Trump shatters a traditional boundary on the exercise of presidential power. Or he uses inflammatory language that stirs racial animosities. Or he's hit by new revelations in the overlapping investigations into his campaign's contacts with foreign governments in 2016 and his own tangled financial and personal affairs before the presidency.

As each of these bombshells detonate, sometimes within hours of each other, congressional Republican leaders then react with little more than a shrug. Even more important, the vast majority of the Republican electoral coalition increasingly responds the same way.

All of these dynamics played out multiple times this past week. Trump shattered boundaries by openly demanding the Department of Justice investigate the ongoing special counsel examination of his campaign and by privately pressuring the US Postal Service to raise rates on Amazon, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post, which Trump considers an enemy. He used George Wallace-like language in describing members of the MS-13 gang as "animals." And he faced the startling revelation that during the 2016 campaign his son Donald Trump Jr., who had earlier convened with Russians offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton, also met with emissaries of Middle Eastern governments offering to help in the election.

After all that, Republicans responded this week with the sort of silence usually expected from the crowd at the 18th hole of a golf tournament.

The Trump paradox

The elimination of any distance between Trump and the conventional Republican interests that controlled the party before him has happened so incrementally it can be difficult to discern from day to day. But it remains one of the central political dynamics of 2018. Over the long term, Trump's success at stamping his polarizing brand on the GOP remains a huge electoral gamble for the party because it risks alienating the young, well-educated and diverse groups growing, rather than shrinking, in the electorate.

But in the near-term, the GOP's choice to ally so unequivocally with such a unique president may have the paradoxical effect of producing a much more conventional midterm election than seemed possible earlier this year. And that means for Democrats to secure the gains they seek in November, they will need to overcome the typical challenges they face in a midterm election far more than they expected even only a few months ago.

In both 2010 and 2014, the two midterm elections under Barack Obama, Democrats suffered huge losses. Each time the party faced similar problems. The biggest was a collapse in turnout among young voters, and a smaller, but still significant, decline among minorities. In both 2010 and 2014, the share of the vote cast by young adults 18-29, a strongly Democratic-leaning group, was fully six percentage points lower than in the presidential race just two years earlier, according to exit polls...

More.

Democrats' Push to Remove Trump May Lead to Midterm Disaster

Well, that's for sure.

From Jeffrey Toobin, at the New Yorker, "Will the Fervor to Impeach Donald Trump Start a Democratic Civil War?"

The midterms are far from a lock. His autocratic pronouncements only inflame. Be smart and focus. Will the Fervor to Impeach Donald Trump Start a Democratic Civil War? https://t.co/LotVRT03rx

— aemachmedia (@aemachmedia) May 21, 2018

Richard Nixon Resignation 40 Years Ago Today

Here's the archived report from the Washington Post, August 9, 1974, "Nixon Resigns."

At the video, historian Kenneth Davis offers a very interesting discussion of the impeachment, the history, and how it could happen again:

VIDEO: Sarah Palin — 'It's Time to Impeach' President Obama

Governor Palin, at Breitbart, "EXCLUSIVE—SARAH PALIN: 'IT'S TIME TO IMPEACH' PRESIDENT OBAMA."

And tonight's interview with Sean Hannity:

George Will: Obama Worse Than Nixon

At the Washington Post, "Obama’s unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon’s":

President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.

Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”

He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. . . . It looks like there may be some better ways to do this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”

Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.

The ground's well trod here. Obama won't be impeached. Congressional Republicans are timid. And besides, it's so 1990s. We've got a transformational presidency. Impeachment? Nah. For the rubes.

More at the link.

Ezra Klein 'may turn out to be one of the stupidest people ever to be given column inches in a printed medium of any variety...'

Jeff Goldstein slams WaPo's juicebox moron, "BREAKING: The Scandals are Falling Apart!":

The fact is, Klein is right, but not for the reasons he wants us to believe. That is, his premise — that a scandal is only a scandal if high-level political figures fall — is true. But his implication — that because Obama and Holder and Hillary Clinton likely won’t fall, we aren’t in the midst of any scandals — is cynical, disingenuous, and largely exactly what you’d expect out of a useful idiot who fancies that he’s respected by those whose approval he so longs for.

The truth is, Obama and Holder and Hillary Clinton likely won’t fall because they will find protection in the arms of the ruling class, while lower-level functionaries will act as fall guys and scapegoats. And that’s because it is, as I’ve been saying, not a real two-party system any longer, but rather the ruling class vs. the rest of us.

Congress never pressed the IRS issue. Boehner is resisting calls to impanel a special committee on Benghazi, and the AP, once they get over the butt hurt of realizing that, for all the cover they’ve given progressives, ObamaCo just really isn’t all that into them, will go right back to fluffing up the President, rationalizing to themselves that they are making a sacrifice to the greater good. There has been no special prosecutor called for in the House to look into the IRS; the Senate is giving us Carl Levin and Max Baucus as investigators — two men who themselves engaged in the very conduct that politicians are now pretending to be outraged by.

So let’s not be coy: if the scandals fall apart it won’t be because no scandals existed, as Klein wants to pretend. Instead, it will be because the ruling class and their parasitic fluffers like Klein care more about the furtherance of big government statism than they do about truth or justice or the people they ostensibly represent or keep informed while working diligently to do neither.

Well, I'd add further that Klein's also wrong on the basic facts at hand. But read his idiocy at Goldstein's click through. These scandals indeed reach up to the highest levels, contra the juicebox moron. And top players have lied on the record, from the president on down. As more whistle-blowers come forward we may approach smoking gun territory. The pathetic press lapdogs will still cover for the administration, but voters are not fools. The ultimate reckoning will come at the polls next year and in 2016. Never let a scandal go to waste.

#IRS Scandal Started at the Top

From Kim Strassel, at the Wall Street Journal:

Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

But that's not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

RTWT.

The WSJ crew is just hammering this criminal clusterf-k administration.