Impeachment

[Upthorn]

It feels really bad to say "impeaching Donald Trump is a waste of time" but really guys, you have so many bigger fish to fry.

In addition to removing a sitting person from office, impeachment can be used to permanently bar an individual from public office. It requires only a simple majority, instead of two thirds, but has been interpreted to require a separate vote, rather than being automatic if the vote to punish meets the thresh-hold.

[Mongrel]

There increasing speculation that it wouldn't be Trump himself, but Ivanka who might run in 2024.

('cause it sure as fuck wouldn't be Don. Jr! Heyo!)

[Yoji]

I would hope that impeaching him now would set an example for any future American despots. Because if a mob storms Congress at Trump's direction and the people who work there don't do anything about it, then impeachment is just filler for textbooks.

[nosimpleway]

Impeaching Trump keeps him from running again. I for one would like that tiny bit of security in my life.

It also fucks him out of the sort of lifelong post-presidency benefits like the pension and the Secret Service detail, which I'm also cool with.

[Mongrel]

It also fucks him out of the sort of lifelong post-presidency benefits like the pension and the Secret Service detail, which I'm also cool with.

Oh wow, really?

Huh, that'd be great!

[Thad]

wow Thad fucking necroing a thread?

that's MASSIVELY hypocritical of you considering you temp banned yyler one time

*looks around*

...okay, I don't see Bal anywhere; I think we're good.

Impeaching Trump keeps him from running again. I for one would like that tiny bit of security in my life.

It also fucks him out of the sort of lifelong post-presidency benefits like the pension and the Secret Service detail, which I'm also cool with.

And for all that Republicans haven't seen as much repudiation as we'd like, they have lost the White House and both houses of Congress because of Trump's unpopularity. Attack ads juxtaposing the attack on the Capitol with "Congressman Schmendrick* voted to let Donald Trump run for president again, just two weeks after he sent an army of white supremacists to attack the US Capitol" seem like they might hurt Congressman Schmendrick when he's up for reelection in two years. (And while the electorate tends to have a pretty short memory, I don't see this being forgotten any time soon. Especially since, as I've said, I don't see Trump going away; he's going to keep making noise and calling attention to himself, and running against Trump has worked out pretty well for the Democrats so far.)

I mean yeah don't get me wrong I've got no illusions that there are some districts, and some states, where "Congressman Schmendrick voted to let Donald Trump run for president again, just two weeks after he sent an army of white supremacists to attack the US Capitol" will be seen as a positive. Josh Hawley ain't gonna lose any sleep over it (though I think he may have -- and I'm saying may have, I'm not taking anything for granted at this point -- torpedoed his presidential aspirations), but the lady who just won by six votes might feel some pressure.

I'd be surprised to see Trump convicted in the Senate. I wouldn't be surprised to see Republicans lose their seats two or four years from now because they didn't support impeachment.

So, in summary: a second impeachment (1) is unquestionably the right thing to do, (2) if successful, would prevent Trump from running for president in 2024, and also take away a bunch of his other taxpayer-funded perks, and (3) would force Republicans on record as supporting or opposing Trump at a time when either choice stands to do considerable harm to their careers, to a considerably greater degree than even the past four years.

* okay, probably something less Yiddish

[Bal]

[Thad]

Oh no, he was hiding in the bushes!

[Mongrel]

Oh no, he was hiding in the suspicious-looking tomb that always has those eyes peeking out!

[Thad]

Maeve Reston: Trump loses his impeachment team amid unfaltering loyalty from the GOP (CNN, autoplay video)

No real surprises here. Lawyers don't want to deal with him, but it would require a hell of a reversal to get enough GOP votes to convict. (Specifically, it would require 12 of the 45 senators who just voted to halt the impeachment trial to vote to convict him in it.)

[Thad]

Heather Digby Parton at Salon goes into more detail about what's happened: the 45 Republicans who voted not to hold an impeachment trial at all are trying to weasel out on a technicality so they won't have to take any stance Trump's actual actions; their vote was based on the premise that you can't impeach a president who's already left office.

Trump, of course, is having none of it, and is gearing his entire defense toward doubling down on all the shit that he's getting impeached for. That's why his legal team quit.

According to both the New York Times and the Washington Post, Trump insisted that his lawyers mount a defense focusing on "his baseless claims about election fraud." Bowers informed Trump they could not do it. The reason for that, of course, is that they would have to lie and like many of the lawyers Trump has employed since the election — other than the unhinged legal freakshow of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis — they refused to break the law on his behalf or participate in his propaganda campaign to undermine the election results.

(Links omitted.)

[Friday]

So is it even going to come to another Senate vote? Do we at least get to have those 45 reds go on record as bootlicking shitfuckers?

[Thad]

Yes. 45 votes is enough to acquit, but not enough to stop the trial from happening in the first place.

It's not like these guys have any shame in the first place, and I don't see any realistic scenario where they vote to convict. But having Trump's people (and maybe even Trump himself) get up there and incriminate him and then make Republicans vote to acquit is still a good thing to do.

[Thad]

Trump's defense team seems competent. They seem to have convinced him not to testify, and they're sticking with "you can't impeach a president after he's out of office" and "his speech was protected by the First Amendment" as their defense. Those aren't good arguments, but they're good enough; 45 Senate Republicans have already signaled "you can't impeach a president after he's out of office" is the line they want to use to avoid having to actually having to take a stance on anything he said or did.

This was also the strategy his previous team, the ones who quit, were pushing. So either the new team has convinced him to change his mind, or all those reports that the old team quit because he refused to agree to their strategy were wrong and the later reports that it was about money were right.

[Brantly B.]

Kamala Harris's last month in office is going to involve actual murders.

[Thad]

Wait, who's committing the murders in this hypothetical? And who's getting murdered?

Because if your implication is "this sets the precedent that a Democratic president can do whatever they want on their way out the door," then, well, that kind of assumes the people who just confirmed Amy Coney Barrett give a shit about being consistent.

Or that they're the ones being murdered. In which case it's not like they're being hoist on their own petards or anything, just murdered.

[Thad]

Trump's defense team seems competent.

That take aged well.

(Seriously though all they have to do is not piss off 16* Republicans so badly that they vote to convict, and so far they're meeting that threshold. That's the bar for competence here and no matter how embarrassing Castor's performance, he's still cleared it.)

* In the last impeachment trial, every Democrat plus Romney voted to convict; I'm assuming we'll get at least that many this time. Which is 16 short of what we need.

[Thad]

They've voted in favor of calling witnesses.

Democrats and Republicans both get to call an equal number of witnesses, but the catch is that each witness has to be deemed relevant by a majority vote. So, much as I'm sure the Republicans want to call Hillary Clinton, that shit ain't gonna fly.

Much as the outcome of this is a foregone conclusion, there's still a value to calling witnesses. There's information we don't know yet, as well as reports we've seen in the press but which haven't been verified under oath. When did Trump learn about the riot, how did he react when he first heard about it, and what series of events led up to him finally posting that "Go home (but I love you and you're special and the election was stolen)" video?

Conviction ain't gonna happen, but this process still has value. We want to document what happened on January 6 as thoroughly as possible, and get that information out in front of whoever's willing to see it. We want to make what happened as clear as possible, and make what the Republicans are doing right now as clear as possible too.

[Mongrel]

They've voted in favor of calling witnesses.

Democrats and Republicans both get to call an equal number of witnesses, but the catch is that each witness has to be deemed relevant by a majority vote. So, much as I'm sure the Republicans want to call Hillary Clinton, that shit ain't gonna fly.

Much as the outcome of this is a foregone conclusion, there's still a value to calling witnesses. There's information we don't know yet, as well as reports we've seen in the press but which haven't been verified under oath. When did Trump learn about the riot, how did he react when he first heard about it, and what series of events led up to him finally posting that "Go home (but I love you and you're special and the election was stolen)" video?

Conviction ain't gonna happen, but this process still has value. We want to document what happened on January 6 as thoroughly as possible, and get that information out in front of whoever's willing to see it. We want to make what happened as clear as possible, and make what the Republicans are doing right now as clear as possible too.

The news this afternoon is saying they've voted not to call witnesses.

Dumb dumb dumb dumb.

[Blossom]

The vote to allow calling witnesses passed, the Dems just then didn't call any. Why risk this cutting into the vacation, right?