Shocking News: Trump Impeachment

More than half of House Democrats support launching impeachment proceedings against US President Donald Trump, media tallies showed Friday, a milestone that progressives hope will move Speaker Nancy Pelosi off of her resistance to opening an inquiry.

Of the 235 voting Democrats, 118 have publicly stated their support for beginning the procedures aimed at removing Trump from office, with the symbolic threshold being crossed when congressman Ted Deutch of Florida came out in favor on Thursday.

Momentum has steadily built in the days since former special counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress about his two-year investigation of Russian election interference and potential obstruction of justice by Trump.

Deutch became the 23rd Democratic lawmaker to support the proceedings since Mueller went before Congress and, in Deutch’s words, “confirmed the damning conclusions of his report.”
The Mueller report details how Russia interfered in “sweeping and systematic fashion” in Trump’s favor during the 2016 US presidential election campaign.

It sets out how the Trump campaign welcomed that help and repeatedly lied about it.

Democrats argue that Mueller also provided evidence for 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice by the president.

Surpassing the 50 percent threshold could be key because Pelosi has repeatedly stated her opposition to impeachment in part because the bulk of her caucus remained against launching proceedings.

Instead, she prefers letting the several ongoing House investigations of Trump and his administration take their course.

In June, when Pelosi was asked whether she would support an impeachment inquiry if a majority of Democrats backed it, she declined to answer a hypothetical.
“It’s not even close in our caucus,” Pelosi said while adding that impeachment was “not off the table.”

Pelosi has regularly noted that impeaching Trump would almost certainly lead to an acquittal in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority and allow Trump to claim vindication and fire up his core supporters as he seeks re-election.

Some House Democrats argue that it is their constitutional duty to take action when they see evidence of presidential wrongdoing, regardless of the political ramifications.

Meanwhile, congressman Will Hurd, the only African-American Republican in the House and the only Republican representing a district on the US-Mexico border, announced he will not seek re-election in 2020.

Hurd joins five other Republicans, several of them in swing districts, who announced their retirements in the last two weeks, a blow to party efforts to reclaim the House majority.

source: usa.inquirer.ne

Impeachment unsettled as Democrats enter post-Mueller moment

WASHINGTON — Midway through the first year of their House majority, Democrats have yet to vote to impeach President Donald Trump. And maybe they never will.

The House recessed Friday for a six-week summer break without opening impeachment proceedings, the Democrats no closer to taking a vote than they were when they swept to power at the start of the year, a searing blow to liberals in the aftermath of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s halting testimony on Capitol Hill.


Yet, the House Judiciary Committee filed a fresh lawsuit Friday, its lawyers arguing they need documents from the Trump administration as they pursue questions of impeachment. It mentions the word impeachment 76 times.

The committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, said his panel is pressing ahead with investigating the president, with or without a formal House vote.

“I think too much has been made of the phrase impeachment inquiry,” Nadler said Friday.

“We are using our full Article I powers to investigate the conduct of the president and to consider what remedies there are,” he said, referring to the Constitution. “Among other things we will consider are obviously recommending articles of impeachment.”

The action underscores the tensions among a House majority that’s trying to have it both ways, preserving the idea of impeachment while avoiding a potentially risky vote.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed back criticism that she’s “running out the clock,” as about 100 Democrats in the 435-member House favor opening an impeachment inquiry, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

“We will proceed when we have what we need to proceed, not one day sooner,” Pelosi said Friday during her weekly news conference.

“Everybody has the liberty and the luxury to espouse their own position,” she said, “and to criticize me for trying to go down the path in the most determined positive way.”

Pelosi said she has “no complaints” against those pushing for impeachment. Their advocacy, she said, “only gives me leverage.”

With the House unable, or unwilling, to impeach Trump, it intensifies the pressure on the party to figure out how to defeat the president in the 2020 election.

House Democrats capped their 200th day in the majority with a long list of bills — on raising the minimum wage, strengthening immigration protections — that give voters a view of how their party would govern in the White House. An outside group started running ads, including on Fox News this week, to promote their agenda.

“These people are clowns,” Trump said Friday in remarks at the White House. “The Democrats are clowns.”

As if to shore up the left flank, Pelosi met earlier Friday with liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in an apparent easing of tensions with the “squad” of newcomers as they pursue shared goals.

Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesman called it a “very positive and productive meeting about progressive priorities.”

Pelosi said, “What we’re advocating for is a progressive agenda for our country.”

Yet no sooner had Pelosi stepped away from the podium than members of the Judiciary Committee stepped up to declare they were essentially well on their way to impeachment proceedings.

“This is an impeachment investigation,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., “whether we should recommend articles of impeachment to our caucus.”

Freshmen Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, said, “I think especially as folks go home, my hope is that, in addition to talking about all the important kitchen table things that we all came here to work on, that there is an honest discussion within our own communities about whether we can continue to tolerate a lawless president.”

Asked whether he favored impeachment, Nadler took a long pause. 



“We may decide to recommend articles of impeachment at some point, we may not, it remains to be seen,” Nadler said.

The committee’s court filing Friday was an effort to obtain secret grand jury material underlying Mueller’s report.

The court petition is among a half-dozen legal actions the House is taking against the Trump administration as part of Pelosi’s step-by-step strategy of building a case against the president. The Democrats contend that Trump is obstructing Congress’s constitutional ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch by withholding documents and preventing witnesses from testifying.

Democrats, including Pelosi, often note that the third article of impeachment against Richard Nixon was his obstruction of Congress.

Next week, Nadler is expected to file a lawsuit to try to enforce a subpoena against Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel and a key Mueller witness. It challenges the administration’s claim that its former employees have “absolute immunity” from testifying before Congress.

So in some ways the House is well on its way to impeachment without having to vote on it, as it conducts investigations and files lawsuits to build its case.

“Impeachment isn’t a binary thing that you either are or you aren’t,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa.

“What we’ve been saying and what we’ve been doing is starting a process where we’re engaging in an investigation to see if we should recommend articles of impeachment,” she said. “It’s a process. We started it some months ago in some ways.”

Catering to centrist Democrats, the dozens of lawmakers who helped secure the House majority, the strategy protects those who come from districts where Trump is popular and may not want to have to take a vote on impeachment. Yet it infuriates the liberal flank, the core of the party’s activists.

After Mueller testified, Pelosi assembled Democrats behind closed doors and offered the path forward. 



Pelosi told them that if they wanted to come out publicly in favor of impeachment, to do it in a way that did not make it a moral imperative. The next morning, she delivered a similar message, telling lawmakers to say what they want about impeachment, but to do it in way that doesn’t challenge other Democrats’ views.

The comments were relayed by three people familiar with the private meetings. They were unauthorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some Democrats grumbled that the investigations were becoming “endless,” according to one of the people.

But others say Democrats were elected to the House in large part because voters want them to stand up to Trump. If they don’t, they say their majority faces potential blowback in 2020.

“I think the ramifications are simply that we will have the ball and we fumbled it,” said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. “I think we need to do the appropriate thing regardless of the outcome.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Democrats to prepare subpoenas for full Mueller report

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee will prepare subpoenas this week seeking special counsel Robert Mueller’s full Russia report as the Justice Department appears likely to miss an April 2 deadline set by Democrats for the report’s release.

The Judiciary panel plans to vote on subpoenas Wednesday, a day after the deadline. The chairmen of several House committees asked for the full report last week after Attorney General William Barr released a four-page summary laying out the report’s “principal conclusions.” Barr said in a letter to the House and Senate Judiciary committees on Friday that a redacted version of the full 300-page report would be released by mid-April, “if not sooner.”

The planned committee vote, announced Monday morning, would not automatically issue subpoenas but authorize House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Democrat-New York, to send them.

The panel will also vote to authorize subpoenas related to a number of President Donald Trump’s former top advisers, including strategist Steve Bannon, Communications Director Hope Hicks, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, White House Counsel Donald McGahn and counsel Ann Donaldson. Donaldson served as McGahn’s chief of staff before both left the administration.

The five were probably key witnesses in Mueller’s probe of possible obstruction of justice. The meeting notice says they “may have received documents from the White House relevant to the special counsel investigation, or their outside counsel may have, waiving applicable privileges under the law.” The subpoenas would be related to documents where executive privilege was waived “and related matters,” the notice says.

The former White House advisers were included in a massive document request the committee made last month. Nadler sent requests to 81 people connected to Trump’s political and personal dealings as he launched a wide-ranging investigation into possible obstruction of justice, public corruption and abuses of power.

Democrats have said they will not accept a redacted version of the report, which is what Barr is preparing. Barr said in the letter Friday that he is scrubbing the report to avoid disclosing any grand jury information or classified material, in addition to portions of the report that pertain to ongoing investigations or that “would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties.”

Democrats want all of that information, even if some of it can’t be disclosed to the public. They are citing precedents from previous investigations involving presidents and also information disclosed about the Russia investigation to Republicans last year when they held the House majority.

Barr wrote in his summary that the special counsel did not find that Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election. He said Mueller reached no conclusion on whether Trump obstructed the federal investigation, instead setting out “evidence on both sides” of the question.


Barr himself went further than Mueller in his summary letter, declaring that Mueller’s evidence was insufficient to prove in court that Trump had committed obstruction of justice to hamper the probe.

Democrats say they want to know much more about both conclusions and they want to see the evidence unfiltered by Barr. /atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Mueller concludes Russia-Trump probe; no new indictments

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday turned over his long-awaited final report on the contentious Russia investigation that has cast a dark shadow over Donald Trump’s presidency, entangled Trump’s family and resulted in criminal charges against some of the president’s closest associates.

The comprehensive report, still confidential, marks the end of Mueller’s probe but sets the stage for big public fights to come. The next steps are up to Trump’s attorney general, to Congress and, in all likelihood, federal courts.

The Justice Department said the report was delivered by a security officer Friday afternoon to the office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and then it went to Attorney General William Barr. Word of the delivery triggered reactions across Washington, including Democrats’ demands that it be released publicly before long and Republicans’ contentions that it ended two years of wasted time and money.

Barr released a letter noting his plans to write his own account of Mueller’s findings. The White House released a statement saying it had not seen or been briefed on the special counsel’s document.

What happens next is “up to Attorney General Barr,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

Barr said he could send his account to Congress quickly.

“I am reviewing the report and anticipate that I may be in a position to advise you of the special counsel’s principal conclusions as soon as this weekend,” Barr said in his letter the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees. He pledged a commitment to transparency.

The attorney general said the Justice Department had not denied any request from the special counsel, something Barr would have been required to disclose to Congress to ensure there was no political inference in the independent probe.

With no details released at this point, it’s not known whether Mueller’s report answers the core questions of his investigation: Did Trump’s campaign collude with the Kremlin to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of the celebrity businessman? Also, did Trump take steps later, including by firing his FBI director, to obstruct the probe?

But the delivery of the report does mean the investigation has concluded without any public charges of a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia, or of obstruction by the president. Mueller is not recommending any further indictments in the Russia probe, a Justice Department official confirmed Friday. That person, who described the document as “comprehensive,” was not authorized to discuss the probe and asked for anonymity.

It’s unclear what steps Mueller will take if he uncovered what he believes to be criminal wrongdoing by Trump, in light of Justice Department legal opinions that have held that sitting presidents may not be indicted.


The mere delivery of a confidential report set off immediate demands from Democrats for full release of Mueller’s findings.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared it “imperative” to make the full report public.

The top congressional Democrats said, “The American people have a right to the truth.”

Democrats also expressed concern that Trump would try to get a “sneak preview” of the findings.

“The White House must not be allowed to interfere in decisions about what parts of those findings or evidence are made public,” they said in a joint statement.

Barr has said he wants to make as much public as possible, and any efforts to withhold details will prompt a tussle between the Justice Department and lawmakers who may subpoena Mueller and his investigators to testify before Congress. Such a move by Democrats would likely be vigorously contested by the Trump administration.

The conclusion of Mueller’s investigation does not remove legal peril for the president. Trump faces a separate Justice Department investigation in New York into hush money payments during the campaign to two women who say they had sex with him years before the election. He’s also been implicated in a potential campaign finance violation by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who says Trump asked him to arrange the transactions. Federal prosecutors, also in New York, have been investigating foreign contributions made to the president’s inaugural committee.

No matter the findings in Mueller’s report, the investigation has already illuminated Russia’s assault on the American political system, painted the Trump campaign as eager to exploit the release of hacked Democratic emails and exposed lies by Trump aides aimed at covering up their Russia-related contacts. Over the 21-month investigation, Mueller has brought charges against 34 people, including six aides and advisers to the president, and three companies.

The special counsel brought a sweeping indictment accusing Russian military intelligence officers of hacking Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democratic groups during the 2016 election. He charged another group of Russians with carrying out a large-scale social media disinformation campaign against the American political process that also sought to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

Closer to the president, Mueller secured convictions against a campaign chairman who cheated banks and dodged his taxes, a national security adviser who lied about his Russian contacts and a campaign aide who misled the FBI about his knowledge of stolen emails. 


Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, pleaded guilty in New York to campaign finance violations arising from the hush money payments and in the Mueller probe to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal. Another Trump confidant, Roger Stone, is awaiting trial on charges that he lied about his pursuit of Russian-hacked emails ultimately released by WikiLeaks. It’s unclear whether any of the aides who have been convicted, all of whom have pleaded guilty and cooperated with the investigators, might angle for a pardon. Trump has left open the idea of pardons.

Along the way, Trump lawyers and advisers repeatedly evolved their public defenses to deal with the onslaught of allegations from the investigation. Where once Trump and his aides had maintained that there were no connections between the campaign and Russia, by the end of the probe Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was routinely making the argument that even if the two sides did collude, it wasn’t necessarily a crime. The goalpost shifting reflected the administration’s challenge in adopting a singular narrative to fend off allegations.

Equally central to Mueller’s work is his inquiry into whether the president tried to obstruct the investigation. Since the special counsel’s appointment in May 2017, Trump has increasingly tried to undermine the probe by calling it a “witch hunt” and repeatedly proclaiming there was “NO COLLUSION” with Russia. But Trump also took certain acts as president that caught Mueller’s attention and have been scrutinized for possible obstruction.

One week before Mueller’s appointment, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, later saying he was thinking of “this Russia thing” at the time.

He mercilessly harangued Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing from the Russia investigation two months before Mueller was named special counsel, a move that left the president without a perceived loyalist atop the probe. And he helped draft a misleading statement on Air Force One as a Trump Tower meeting between his eldest son and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was about to become public.

The meeting itself became part of Mueller’s investigation, entangling Donald Trump Jr. in the probe. Mueller’s team also interviewed the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, multiple times.

Even as Trump blasted Mueller’s team, his White House and campaign produced thousands of documents for the special counsel, and dozens of his aides were interviewed. The president submitted written answers to Mueller regarding the Russia investigation, but he refused to be interviewed.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Special Counsel Mueller’s Toll: Six Top Trump Aides (So Far)

Former Trump campaign Paul Manafort was hit Thursday with the longest sentence yet arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, 47 months in prison.

Since taking over the probe in May 2017, Mueller has filed charges against six former senior aides and associates of Trump. Of them, five — including Manafort — have pleaded guilty or been convicted. The sixth, longtime Trump political consultant Roger Stone, was arrested and charged only in January.




Here are the top Trump associates who have been charged:

Paul Manafort

Manafort, 69, a veteran Republican political consultant, was Trump’s campaign chairman for several months in 2016.

He was charged in two separate cases, one in Alexandria, Virginia and the second in Washington, with a range of crimes arising from his decade working for wealthy Moscow-allied politicians in Ukraine. Those crimes include money laundering, tax evasion and bank fraud.

He was convicted by a jury in the Alexandria case and then entered a plea deal in the Washington probe. But he was then charged with lying to investigators, invalidating his plea deal.

While his cases are not directly related to Russian election meddling, Manafort’s cases revealed he had multiple Russian contacts during the election campaign and shared campaign data with one, raising suggestions of collusion.

His case could also figure in allegations of obstruction against Trump, who some suspect dangled a pardon for Manafort in exchange for not revealing information that would damage the president.

Michael Flynn

Trump’s former national security advisor Flynn, 60, was investigated over his contacts with Russia’s ambassador and actions working for Turkey during and after the campaign.

Eventually he was charged in a plea deal with prosecutors for lying to the FBI, and has reportedly cooperated in the investigations as he awaits sentencing.

Michael Cohen

Cohen, 52, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and fixer, was sentenced to three years in prison in December after pleading guilty to tax evasion, violating campaign finance laws, and making false statements to Congress, implicating Trump and the White House in some of those crimes.

He is to report to prison on May 6, following his testimony to several committees in Congress investigating Russia and Trump.

Rick Gates

Gates, 46, was Manafort’s business partner in Ukraine and deputy chairman on the Trump campaign. Threatened with many of the same crimes Manafort was charged with, he reached a plea deal to lesser charges of lying to the FBI and financial fraud, and testified against Manafort at his trial. He continues to cooperate while awaiting sentencing.

George Papadopoulos

Papadopoulos, 31, served on Trump’s foreign policy advisory team and tried to set up meetings with Russian officials including Vladimir Putin. He was sentenced to two weeks in prison after admitting he lied to the FBI.

Roger Stone

Stone, a longtime Republican campaign consultant and Trump friend, was arrested on January 25 and charged with seven counts including obstruction, lying to Congress and witness tampering. The investigation has focused on Stone’s alleged contacts with WikiLeaks, which published materials stolen from the Democrats by the Russians during the campaign. Stone pleaded not guilty.

Other indictments

Several other minor figures in Mueller’s investigation have been charged and convicted in plea deals.

Mueller has also charged 25 Russians with conspiracy related to meddling in the 2016 election, including a group of hackers from the GRU, Moscow’s military intelligence bureau, and a group of social media experts from Russia’s Internet Research Agency troll farm. All are believed to be safely in Russia and not expected to go on trial. In June 2018, Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked with Manafort in Ukraine and allegedly has ties to Russian intelligence, was charged with obstruction of justice.

source: usa.inquirer.net