I completely believe this and fully recognize that I’m Charlie Brown gearing up to kick the football. At some point, I’m going to join the WAAF crowd and give up all faith in our institutions. BUT NOT YET.
All the preemptive LOLs at me and people of my ilk.
Roberts’ interpretation of the Senate being overrun by politics is likelier to be that the Dems are abusing impeachment than anything else.
There are probably 10-15 Republican senators smarter than Roberts and I don’t mean that as a compliment to the senators.
We’ve had three impeachments in 200 years. Not a lot in my opinion. As long as the House and the Executive Branch are controlled by the same party, there will be no impeachments. As long as the Senate isn’t overwhelmingly controlled by the opposite party, there will be no presidents removed from office. I just don’t see the likelihood of routine impeachments/removals. But rubber-stamping the idea that sitting Presidents can be as corrupt as all hell and nothing can be done about it is a bridge too far. The counter-argument to routine impeachments is routine corruption and destruction of Democracy as we have known it. Roberts knows Trump will not be removed. There’s really nothing in it for him to disallow witnesses. And if he does WAAF.
fwiw, I think Roberts won’t vote at all in the 50/50 scenario–which means it fails because it did not get the majority of votes. Seems more likely it’s either 49 or 52 to me though since I’d say literally nobody wants to get pointed out as the deciding vote in any direction.
Yeah. That’s possible. But is the rule that he must cast the deciding vote or is it an option? Not really a great hiding spot for him when he knows that abstaining is equivalent to voting no. That’s why a 50-50 split Is really the worst case scenario. Collins, Murkowski and Romney would be better off voting against witnesses than voting yes if it means a tie. This is why we’ve heard that if they can get four to flip, they may get a handful more to give them cover.
So Martha McSally thinks the remedy for “a rushed, partisan House impeachment with no due process” is a rushed, partisan Senate trial with no witnesses?
Cool, let me go ahead and give some more money to Mark Kelly, you hack.
This isn’t a good faith argument by the Republicans, so I wouldn’t worry about analyzing it.
imagine a trial where the defense can openly collude with the jury to decide whether the prosecution gets to call material witnesses and the judge flat out dgaf
I think Roberts probably votes yes on witnesses if it comes to it. He has a little cover in that senators would still have to vote Yes or no on each witness. Now if it comes to him voting on a specific witness, all bets are off.
Dumb question:
Why hasn’t Lev Parnas been mentioned as a possible witness? Is it because of the legal shit he’s involved in? Or is it just because he’s too radioactive and they already have evidence that he’s made public?
Because he’s a Russian agent funding their PACs with Firtash money that is provably loaned by Putin.
I wonder what threats Trump is making behind the scenes to keep senators in line?
CNN is reporting that Chief Justice Roberts is not allowing questions that come close to revealing the whistleblower. Apparently Rand Paul was pissed because one of his questions was blocked.
I’m taking that as an absolute win
There is zero chance we get more than 50 votes for witnesses. More than likely, we get 47 with Mittens voting yes and Manchin voting no. The only chance this country has to ever recover from the damage already done and the damage that will be perfectly ok to occur after this ‘trial’ is for Roberts to insert himself in this somehow, and he just isn’t going to do it. As soon as this is over, there will be much worse things happen to help reelect Trump ‘because it’s an election year and it is now alright for the POTUS to do anything illegal as long as it’s to get reelected.’ We will be no better than the most corrupt country in the world, whatever that is nowadays.
The Republicans are studying the playbook for the Kobe Bryant rape case to find ways to leak an accuser’s name.
Roberts obviously votes yes if it comes to that.
I read an article saying there is disagreement about whether Roberts could even break a tie. The Chief Justice broke ties in the Johnson impeachment trial, but not clear that he had a mandate to do so.
So I’ve not being paying much attention to all this because of how utterly boring it is and how little anything will change but am I right that the dems have once again gotten themselves in the position where they are begging to be saved by not just a republican (like mueller), but one of the worst pieces of human scum ever to walk the earth? Allowing this genocidal maniac to speak is the democrats win condition?
Yes and no. The Democrats don’t honestly believe that if Bolton testifies, the Republicans will suddenly decide to convict Trump. They know acquittal is a foregone conclusion.
What they really want at this point is to back Republicans - especially those up for re-election this year - into a corner. One of the big GOP talking points has been “but but but you don’t have witnesses that actually heard directly from Trump that he did what you say he did.”
Well, Bolton (among others) is that witness. If he went in front of the Senate and said, “Yeah, Trump told me that he withheld military aid because he wanted an investigation announcement,” then there’s no more denying it happened. That would force Republicans to decide if they really want to still acquit when it’s overwhelmingly obvious Trump is guilty, the big bomb-drop coming from a staunch Republican.
They would still acquit, but it could hurt them further politically. And you never know, some might vote to convict, provided they still had enough total “no” votes to acquit.