On September 24th, 2019, Nanci Pelosi did what everyone expected was some exceptional political posturing -- initiating a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
The initial "charge," such as it was, was "betraying his oath of office and the nation's security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain." This, amusingly, was after it was discovered and widely reported on that the DNC had contacted the very same foreign power to attempt to tarnish Trump.
Specifically, this was all based on a rumor that Trump had asked the Ukraine to investigate how a prosecutor investigating Joe Biden's son for corruption had gotten fired, and withheld foreign aid until they had agreed. (He did ask the leader of the Ukraine to investigate what happened with the prosecutor, but did not hold up any foreign aid nor threaten anything of the like.)
Around this time, Trump did something they could not, and still cannot, understand: He publicly turned over all the documents. The transcript of the phone call they claimed showed him committing the crime of blackmailing the Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden for him was released, showing that Trump did nothing wrong. The only reaction the radical left had was arguing over the definition of "transcript" and spouting off a conspiracy theory about official state documents being edited.
At the same time, old video evidence of Joe Biden publicly bragging about blackmailing the Ukraine into NOT investigating his son came to light. Yes, this is exactly what they're accusing Trump of doing. The left is nothing if not subtle. Right after this, evidence came to light that Pelosi, Kerry, and Romney's kids had similar fake jobs in the Ukraine, getting paid ungodly amounts of money and embezzling US foreign aid to the Ukraine -- all things that Trump's Attorney General has openly discussed investigating.
By releasing the transcripts, the DNC was tripped up. Instead of being able to leak information from their secret investigation until November 2020, they were forced to play their hand publicly.
And they had no hand to play. The impeachment accusations came from second and third hand sources -- watercooler talk from Unelected Deep State Analysts with Trump Derangement Syndrome, outraged that President Trump refused to obey them when they felt they had a better idea as to how to run Foreign Affairs. Other allegations included that supposedly, the telepathic DNC members working in the state department knew what Trump was thinking (despite him literally saying the exact opposite) or could tell that Trump would do something even worse -- maybe something actually illegal -- in the future, and boy howdy, the imaginary Trump in their minds was a right bastard.
(As an aside, the name of the whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, has been censored across pretty much all social media, a test run of whatever censorship they're going to enact in the next few months to try and swing the election.)
At the same time, the DNC performed significant amounts of partisan political fuckery to do this all publicly, but unofficially -- preventing the GOP from bringing forth witnesses or questioning the DNC's witnesses, or even reading the double plus secret evidence the DNC supposedly had. Those GOP that did get access to the evidence have confirmed it's a 3 pound 5 ounce nothingburger.
The charges have since mutated, with them initially being changed to "bribery" -- as "bribery" focus groups easier and is easier to spew out on Twitter.
On December 18th, 2019, along party lines and with bipartisan opposition, they finally drafted their articles of impeachment -- first for "Abuse of Power" and second for "Obstruction of Congress." Neither are actually crimes nor are they impeachable offenses, even if they were true -- which the DNC has provided no evidence of, explaining that it's the Senate's job to investigate and find the evidence.
Narrator: It is not the Senate's job to investigate and find the evidence.
The "Obstruction of Congress" charge is particularly egregious, as they are claiming that Trump, by reaching out to the courts to act as mediators in his dispute over the rules with Pelosi, was obstructing her. In other words, Pelosi's stance is that the President must obey her, even if she's being a batshit insane drunk. Many legal scholars, including Alan Dershowitz, have pointed out that this is absolute bullshit.
The latest development as of this writing on December 21th, 2019, is that Pelosi is demanding that the GOP recuse itself, allowing the DNC to reshape the Senate in order to make the process "fair" -- by creating a Kangaroo court. The GOP is refusing outright, as the Senate's role during this is very specifically to take the charges and all the evidence gathered from the house -- which is none -- and vote yes or no on impeachment. They need 2/3rd majority to vote yes, and the DNC does not have the votes.
Pelosi is refusing to send over the articles of impeachment until the GOP allows her to stack the Senate against Trump, an act that Dershowitz as well as Noah Feldman, the DNC's own star legal expert witness, has said is unconstitutional and "a problem," as Trump isn't impeached until the articles have been filed. Meanwhile, the DNC has put the House on vacation until the new year, while the Senate is exploring options including forcing the articles over without Pelosi's ok. Trump and the Senate have both went to the SCOTUS to ask them if any of this is constitutional.
tl;dr: Trump may have found where the Swamp was embezzling US Foreign Aid. Many politician's children working fake jobs for huge amounts of money in the Ukraine, blatantly selling influence. This caused the DNC to freak out and try and headshot Trump. They missed. The Democrats appear to have committed political suicide, making Trump a Martyr and only realizing in the aftermath that they didn't actually get rid of him or even weaken him in any way. They also appear to realize they fucked up and are trying to slow walk it back, keeping the "he's impeached!" victory while not actually having to let anyone read the evidence or have a trial on it.
@Yotsubaaa did a great writeup here with links to various winner posts: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/nancy...kraine-phone-call.61583/page-135#post-5606264
And @Yotsubaaa did a new version very late on the 21st of December: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/presi...chment-megathread.61583/page-260#post-5754920
Which are too big to quote here.
www.nytimes.com
https://archive.fo/oVGIv
WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House would initiate a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, charging him with betraying his oath of office and the nation’s security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain.
Ms. Pelosi’s declaration, after months of reticence by Democrats who had feared the political consequences of impeaching a president many of them long ago concluded was unfit for office, was a stunning turn that set the stage for a history-making and exceedingly bitter confrontation between the Democrat-led House and a defiant president who has thumbed his nose at institutional norms.
“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” Ms. Pelosi said in a brief speech invoking the nation’s founding principles. Mr. Trump, she added, “must be held accountable — no one is above the law.”
She said the president’s conduct revealed his “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”
Ms. Pelosi’s decision to push forward with the most severe action that Congress can take against a sitting president could usher in a remarkable new chapter in American life, touching off a constitutional and political showdown with the potential to cleave an already divided nation, reshape Mr. Trump’s presidency and the country’s politics, and carry heavy risks both for him and for the Democrats who have decided to weigh his removal.
Though the outcome is uncertain, it also raised the possibility that Mr. Trump could become only the fourth president in American history to face impeachment. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached but later acquitted by the Senate. President Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of a looming House impeachment vote.
It was the first salvo in an escalating, high-stakes standoff between Ms. Pelosi, now fully engaged in an effort to build the most damning possible case against the president, and Mr. Trump, who angrily denounced Democrats’ impeachment inquiry even as he worked feverishly in private to head off the risk to his presidency.
Mr. Trump, who for months has dared Democrats to impeach him, issued a defiant response on Twitter while in New York for several days of international diplomacy at the United Nations, with a series of fuming posts that culminated with a simple phrase: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” Meanwhile, his re-election campaign and House Republican leaders launched a vociferous defense, accusing Democrats of a partisan rush to judgment.
“Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage,” Mr. Trump wrote. “So bad for our Country! For the past two years, talk of impeachment had centered around the findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections and Mr. Trump’s attempts to derail that inquiry. On Tuesday, Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, told her caucus and then the country that new revelations about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, and his administration’s stonewalling of Congress about them, had finally left the House no choice but to proceed toward a rarely used remedy.
“Right now, we have to strike while the iron is hot,” she told House Democrats in a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol. Emerging moments later to address a phalanx of news cameras, Ms. Pelosi, speaking sometimes haltingly as she delivered a speech from a teleprompter, invoked the Constitution and the nation’s founders as she declared, “The times have found us” and outlined a new stage of investigating Mr. Trump.
At issue are allegations that Mr. Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to open a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and his son. The conversation is said to be part of a whistle-blower complaint that the Trump administration has withheld from Congress. And it occurred just a few days after Mr. Trump had ordered his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has confirmed aspects of his conversation with the Ukrainian leader in recent days, but he continues to insist he acted appropriately.
The president said on Tuesday that he would authorize the release of a transcript of the conversation, part of an effort to pre-empt Democrats’ impeachment push. But Democrats, after months of holding back, were unbowed, demanding the full whistle-blower complaint and other documentation about White House dealings with Ukraine, even as they pushed toward an expansive impeachment inquiry that could encompass unrelated charges.
President Trump’s personal lawyer. The prosecutor general of Ukraine. Joe Biden’s son. These are just some of the names mentioned in the whistle-blower’s complaint. What were their roles? We break it down.
Ms. Pelosi told fellow Democrats that Mr. Trump told her in a private call on Tuesday morning that he was not responsible for withholding the whistle-blower complaint from Congress. But late Tuesday, the White House and intelligence officials were working on a deal to allow the whistle-blower to speak to Congress and potentially even share a redacted version of the complaint in the coming days, after the whistle-blower expressed interest in talking to lawmakers.
Although Ms. Pelosi’s announcement was a crucial turning point, it left many unanswered questions about exactly when and how Democrats planned to push forward on impeachment.
The initial "charge," such as it was, was "betraying his oath of office and the nation's security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain." This, amusingly, was after it was discovered and widely reported on that the DNC had contacted the very same foreign power to attempt to tarnish Trump.
Specifically, this was all based on a rumor that Trump had asked the Ukraine to investigate how a prosecutor investigating Joe Biden's son for corruption had gotten fired, and withheld foreign aid until they had agreed. (He did ask the leader of the Ukraine to investigate what happened with the prosecutor, but did not hold up any foreign aid nor threaten anything of the like.)
Around this time, Trump did something they could not, and still cannot, understand: He publicly turned over all the documents. The transcript of the phone call they claimed showed him committing the crime of blackmailing the Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden for him was released, showing that Trump did nothing wrong. The only reaction the radical left had was arguing over the definition of "transcript" and spouting off a conspiracy theory about official state documents being edited.
At the same time, old video evidence of Joe Biden publicly bragging about blackmailing the Ukraine into NOT investigating his son came to light. Yes, this is exactly what they're accusing Trump of doing. The left is nothing if not subtle. Right after this, evidence came to light that Pelosi, Kerry, and Romney's kids had similar fake jobs in the Ukraine, getting paid ungodly amounts of money and embezzling US foreign aid to the Ukraine -- all things that Trump's Attorney General has openly discussed investigating.
By releasing the transcripts, the DNC was tripped up. Instead of being able to leak information from their secret investigation until November 2020, they were forced to play their hand publicly.
And they had no hand to play. The impeachment accusations came from second and third hand sources -- watercooler talk from Unelected Deep State Analysts with Trump Derangement Syndrome, outraged that President Trump refused to obey them when they felt they had a better idea as to how to run Foreign Affairs. Other allegations included that supposedly, the telepathic DNC members working in the state department knew what Trump was thinking (despite him literally saying the exact opposite) or could tell that Trump would do something even worse -- maybe something actually illegal -- in the future, and boy howdy, the imaginary Trump in their minds was a right bastard.
(As an aside, the name of the whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, has been censored across pretty much all social media, a test run of whatever censorship they're going to enact in the next few months to try and swing the election.)
At the same time, the DNC performed significant amounts of partisan political fuckery to do this all publicly, but unofficially -- preventing the GOP from bringing forth witnesses or questioning the DNC's witnesses, or even reading the double plus secret evidence the DNC supposedly had. Those GOP that did get access to the evidence have confirmed it's a 3 pound 5 ounce nothingburger.
The charges have since mutated, with them initially being changed to "bribery" -- as "bribery" focus groups easier and is easier to spew out on Twitter.
On December 18th, 2019, along party lines and with bipartisan opposition, they finally drafted their articles of impeachment -- first for "Abuse of Power" and second for "Obstruction of Congress." Neither are actually crimes nor are they impeachable offenses, even if they were true -- which the DNC has provided no evidence of, explaining that it's the Senate's job to investigate and find the evidence.
Narrator: It is not the Senate's job to investigate and find the evidence.
The "Obstruction of Congress" charge is particularly egregious, as they are claiming that Trump, by reaching out to the courts to act as mediators in his dispute over the rules with Pelosi, was obstructing her. In other words, Pelosi's stance is that the President must obey her, even if she's being a batshit insane drunk. Many legal scholars, including Alan Dershowitz, have pointed out that this is absolute bullshit.
The latest development as of this writing on December 21th, 2019, is that Pelosi is demanding that the GOP recuse itself, allowing the DNC to reshape the Senate in order to make the process "fair" -- by creating a Kangaroo court. The GOP is refusing outright, as the Senate's role during this is very specifically to take the charges and all the evidence gathered from the house -- which is none -- and vote yes or no on impeachment. They need 2/3rd majority to vote yes, and the DNC does not have the votes.
Pelosi is refusing to send over the articles of impeachment until the GOP allows her to stack the Senate against Trump, an act that Dershowitz as well as Noah Feldman, the DNC's own star legal expert witness, has said is unconstitutional and "a problem," as Trump isn't impeached until the articles have been filed. Meanwhile, the DNC has put the House on vacation until the new year, while the Senate is exploring options including forcing the articles over without Pelosi's ok. Trump and the Senate have both went to the SCOTUS to ask them if any of this is constitutional.
tl;dr: Trump may have found where the Swamp was embezzling US Foreign Aid. Many politician's children working fake jobs for huge amounts of money in the Ukraine, blatantly selling influence. This caused the DNC to freak out and try and headshot Trump. They missed. The Democrats appear to have committed political suicide, making Trump a Martyr and only realizing in the aftermath that they didn't actually get rid of him or even weaken him in any way. They also appear to realize they fucked up and are trying to slow walk it back, keeping the "he's impeached!" victory while not actually having to let anyone read the evidence or have a trial on it.
@Yotsubaaa did a great writeup here with links to various winner posts: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/nancy...kraine-phone-call.61583/page-135#post-5606264
And @Yotsubaaa did a new version very late on the 21st of December: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/presi...chment-megathread.61583/page-260#post-5754920
Which are too big to quote here.
Nancy Pelosi Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry of Trump
Faced with new allegations against President Trump and administration stonewalling, Democrats have ended months of caution.
WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House would initiate a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, charging him with betraying his oath of office and the nation’s security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain.
Ms. Pelosi’s declaration, after months of reticence by Democrats who had feared the political consequences of impeaching a president many of them long ago concluded was unfit for office, was a stunning turn that set the stage for a history-making and exceedingly bitter confrontation between the Democrat-led House and a defiant president who has thumbed his nose at institutional norms.
“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” Ms. Pelosi said in a brief speech invoking the nation’s founding principles. Mr. Trump, she added, “must be held accountable — no one is above the law.”
She said the president’s conduct revealed his “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”
Ms. Pelosi’s decision to push forward with the most severe action that Congress can take against a sitting president could usher in a remarkable new chapter in American life, touching off a constitutional and political showdown with the potential to cleave an already divided nation, reshape Mr. Trump’s presidency and the country’s politics, and carry heavy risks both for him and for the Democrats who have decided to weigh his removal.
Though the outcome is uncertain, it also raised the possibility that Mr. Trump could become only the fourth president in American history to face impeachment. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached but later acquitted by the Senate. President Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of a looming House impeachment vote.
It was the first salvo in an escalating, high-stakes standoff between Ms. Pelosi, now fully engaged in an effort to build the most damning possible case against the president, and Mr. Trump, who angrily denounced Democrats’ impeachment inquiry even as he worked feverishly in private to head off the risk to his presidency.
Mr. Trump, who for months has dared Democrats to impeach him, issued a defiant response on Twitter while in New York for several days of international diplomacy at the United Nations, with a series of fuming posts that culminated with a simple phrase: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” Meanwhile, his re-election campaign and House Republican leaders launched a vociferous defense, accusing Democrats of a partisan rush to judgment.
“Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage,” Mr. Trump wrote. “So bad for our Country! For the past two years, talk of impeachment had centered around the findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections and Mr. Trump’s attempts to derail that inquiry. On Tuesday, Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, told her caucus and then the country that new revelations about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, and his administration’s stonewalling of Congress about them, had finally left the House no choice but to proceed toward a rarely used remedy.
“Right now, we have to strike while the iron is hot,” she told House Democrats in a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol. Emerging moments later to address a phalanx of news cameras, Ms. Pelosi, speaking sometimes haltingly as she delivered a speech from a teleprompter, invoked the Constitution and the nation’s founders as she declared, “The times have found us” and outlined a new stage of investigating Mr. Trump.
At issue are allegations that Mr. Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to open a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and his son. The conversation is said to be part of a whistle-blower complaint that the Trump administration has withheld from Congress. And it occurred just a few days after Mr. Trump had ordered his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has confirmed aspects of his conversation with the Ukrainian leader in recent days, but he continues to insist he acted appropriately.
The president said on Tuesday that he would authorize the release of a transcript of the conversation, part of an effort to pre-empt Democrats’ impeachment push. But Democrats, after months of holding back, were unbowed, demanding the full whistle-blower complaint and other documentation about White House dealings with Ukraine, even as they pushed toward an expansive impeachment inquiry that could encompass unrelated charges.
President Trump’s personal lawyer. The prosecutor general of Ukraine. Joe Biden’s son. These are just some of the names mentioned in the whistle-blower’s complaint. What were their roles? We break it down.
Ms. Pelosi told fellow Democrats that Mr. Trump told her in a private call on Tuesday morning that he was not responsible for withholding the whistle-blower complaint from Congress. But late Tuesday, the White House and intelligence officials were working on a deal to allow the whistle-blower to speak to Congress and potentially even share a redacted version of the complaint in the coming days, after the whistle-blower expressed interest in talking to lawmakers.
Although Ms. Pelosi’s announcement was a crucial turning point, it left many unanswered questions about exactly when and how Democrats planned to push forward on impeachment.
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Well now I know what I'm doing later.
