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“The age of impeachment” — 46 Comments

  1. I was fooled far too many times by “BOMBSHELLS” during the Russia collusion period so I will treat this Bolton-book episode with extreme caution. One rule-of-thumb that lawyers apply is that, never ask a question for which you don’t know the answer. If Dems insist on bringing Bolton it could backfire on them.

  3. One GOP senator remarked how this is a repeat of the Kavanaugh hearing in that he expected each day a new “bombshell” to be brought forward. Note how the TImes break was ascribed to anonymous sources. It could also be Bolton hyping his book. If so, then Trump was right to fire the scumbag.

    I do note that right on schedule our favorite RINO, Romney immediately took the bait and sided with his Dem friends about this “new” information. Of course Collins also joined in that chorus. These two really ought to just switch parties.

  6. Bombshell – just another of their duds I suspect.

    Bring on Bolton, and the Bidens and others for that matter as witnesses. If they truly had the goods on Trump, or something even close, they would have revealed it before now. The Bolton play is either:

    1. A desperate move to revive a failing impeachment effort
    2. A ploy to pimp Bolton’s book
    3. Designed to extend the trial and keep Bernie, and Liz, in Washington rather than campaigning in Iowa and NH, presumably benefiting Biden

    Or all three.

    I am immune to bombshells, especially such weak ones. In order for the worst of the Bolton leaks to be true, Trump, Pence, Zelensky, Zelensky’s foreign minister, and the four people that transcribed Trump’s call would all have to be wrong and/or lying.

    A pathetic effort, really.

  7. Neo, the second and third links in your post go to the same place.

    Didn’t Collins vote to confirm Kavanaugh? If so, that counts for something.

  8. Bolton is rep’ing his book through the same agent who rep’d Comey, thus the similar rollout. Bolton’s book will be much ado about nothing also.

  10. Mass media attacks help trigger borderline-insane woke assassins to go after the president.

    However, headline after headline suggesting that “now we’ve got him” tend to un-trigger these people. After all, why go after the president if your side is pulling victory from the jaws of defeat? Oh, and while all the democrats concentrate on their impeachment fest, more and more regulations can be quietly re-adjusted away from left-wing priorities without the media noticing and generating court cases to block them.

    I would be happiest if the polls remain uncertain about who wins the 2020 presidentlal election all the way up to the vote.

  11. A couple days ago I made a few comments describing my lack of enthusiasm for Collins, so I’m not surprised to her make an excuse to side with the democrats again.

    But at least she represents a left-leaning state.

    Mitt Romney has no such excuse.

    Pathetic.

  12. Admittedly I haven’t read every detail of this latest Bolton stuff but even if what he says happened is true then how is that so horrible because he in the end did not do it. This seems like a cousin of the Trump thought about firing Mueller thing. This is why a president has advisers to bounce things off of and if everything talked about but not done is impeachable then look out and that’s assuming this actually happened. Thoughtcrime here we come.

    This whole thing is so ridiculous.

  13. According to the NY Times the WH has had a manuscript of Bolton’s book since December 30th and they didn’t tell McConnell who is none to pleased that they didn’t share that info with him. There is a chance the Senate will have witnesses now. I think they should – it is a trial after all. If Trump did nothing wrong then the GOP should not be afraid to have witnesses.

  15. Maybe Trump did tell Bolton there was a link, but Ukraine DID get the money and before the deadline.

    Whatever Trump said is irrelevant.

    Look at what Trump DID, not what he SAID.

  16. If we have witnesses liets bring Barrie and ask him if he spoke to the Ukraine PM and told him to fire the prosecutor

  17. The American Conservative Union produces scores on congressional voting. In the last Congress, there were three Democrats coded by the ACU as having voted correctly more than 16% of the time over the course of their years in Congress and 14 Republicans who voted correctly less than 81% of the time over their career in Congress. Two of the Democrats (Nelson of Florida and Donnelly of Indiana) have left Congress, as have three of the Republicans (John McCain, Corker of Tennessee, and Cochran of Mississippi). Collins has for two decades been at the inflection point, to the right of all the Democrats and to the left of all the other Republicans bar her Siamese twin, Olympia Snowe. As of now, only one Democrat (Manchin of West Virginia) has a score anywhere near hers. Whether this is what she actually thinks or whether it’s the result of careful tacking to the wind, who knows? However, it’s a consistent disposition. (Both Collins and Snowe have had more conservative voting records than Collins’ predecessor Wm. Cohen, who was an actual Rockefeller Republican, not a temporizer).

  19. I am think this stuff is getting ready to settle in for the long haul, not a quick vote to cut if off and it’s nuts because the Dems will never have the 2/3rds so this will become a long made for TV mostly daytime show which fewer people will care to watch as it drags on.

  20. I watched some of Dershowitz who I guessed might be interesting, but he was intensely boring for ten minutes and my attention span lapsed. But I’m a tough audience. I also have no interest whatsoever in hearing about what a wonderful person Kobe Bryant allegedly was once in a while. I don’t care.

  21. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/385490.php

    January 27, 2020
    WHAT?! Alexander Vindman’s Identical-Twin Brother Is the Deep State Official In Charge of Reviewing Bolton’s Book for Declassification… You Know, the Same Book That Was Just Leaked to the Media During the Impeachment Trial
    Incredible.

    Charlie Kirk
    ?
    @charliekirk11
    You can’t make this up:

    Who was in charge of reviewing all NSC publications—including John Bolton’s new “bombshell” book that just leaked to the New York Times?

    Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s twin brother

    Why do either of the Vindman brothers still work at the White House?

  22. I thought Pat Bondi’s presentation today absolutely and totally destroyed any Democrat argument that there was no legitimate concern–and this already an issue long before Trump appeared on the scene–about the problem of widespread corruption in the Ukraine, and about the propriety and look of Hunter Biden being on the board of Burisma, at the same time as his VP Father Joe was the Obama Administration’s point man on U.S. relations with the Ukraine.

    I also thought that Ken Star’s thoughtful, low key presentation was also very effective.

  23. If I was writing the movie screenplay, here is my plot, with uncredited but appreciated contributions from the bullpen at Neo’s:

    Suppose that, at one time, Trump floated the idea of a genuine quid pro quo with Ukraine, but his advisers rightly shot it down.
    Bolton and Trump parted company as described in the news (there is still debate on whether he quit or was fired; it doesn’t really matter).

    All politicians and senior officials, I would presume, have their memoirs in draft from the moment they get elected or appointed to a top slot (just like the NYT has celebrity obits on file, updated from time to time as needed; it’s backfired on them occasionaly, IIRC, but it’s the only efficient way to be able to publish eulogies instantly).

    The Impeachment Happens, but slowly enough to get the sting lined up.

    Trump wants to get at least one of the Bidens on the stand (don’t we all?) and knows the Dems will balk.
    But, if he can bait them with a witness they really, really want, they will bite.

    Here’s where my speculation gets going:

    Bolton may not like The Donald, but he loves the US, and detests Joe Biden (surely he does?), and is willing to be the stalking horse.
    They can’t tell McConnell because, even though they trust him, DC is a leaky sieve; you never know who will end up hearing things they shouldn’t hear.
    They also want to see which way the Senators are going to jump when they read the leaked “bombshell.”

    Bolton updates his memoir with a passage on the Ukraine about the (as we see it) discarded suggestion, but worded ambiguously enough for the Democrats to read it the way they want, as they do with everything.
    The hyperventilating publisher is given an exclusive to Bolton’s tell-all.
    The Good Guys know that Vindman’s brother will get the draft and leak it (they may even push to be sure he is the NSC reader assigned).

    Bolton volunteers to testify if subpoenaed, but never really indicates what he will say; however, based on the “firing” everyone assumes he will shaft Trump.
    The Dems, prompted by the leak, triumphantly insist on calling him as a witness, yielding to the trade.
    Bolton takes the stand, and he then clarifies that everyone in the upper-levels of the WH knew Trump was NOT going to do the quid pro quo thing.
    Chaos ensues.
    The GOP calls either Biden, it doesn’t much matter which.

    Mission accomplished.

    Roll credits.

  26. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/385501.php
    January 27, 2020
    John Bolton’s Close Ally Fred Fleitz Turns Against Him, Charging That His Book Is Unethical

    After noting that executive privilege exists so that presidents can speak candidly with advisers without having to be guarded about every statement and question — something that Bolton is undermining for his own personal benefit — Fleitz notes that Robert Gates avoided doing this before Obama’s 2012 election.

    From Ace’s source link:
    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ambassador-bolton-withdraw-your-book-fred-fleitz

    Presidents must be able to candidly consult with their advisers without worrying they will leak these discussions to the press or obtain high-dollar book contracts to publish them. A book by a former national security adviser ahead of a president’s reelection bid may set a dangerous precedent since it could discourage future presidents from seeking advice from expert advisers on sensitive national security matters.

    This is why executive privilege exists: to allow the president and other senior officials to keep certain communications and internal deliberations private if disclosing them would disrupt the functions or decision-making processes of the executive branch.

    I haven’t seen Bolton’s book manuscript and I don’t know what’s in it. I take Bolton and his staff at their word that they did not leak the manuscript to the New York Times. But I believe they are still responsible for this leak since Bolton’s explosive book was sent to the leak-prone National Security Council for a security review in December 2019 so the book could be published in the spring of 2020. It also is inexplicable how such a sensitive manuscript could be sent to the NSC in the middle of the impeachment process. Under such circumstances, a leak of the manuscript was all but certain.

    If a manuscript of this sensitivity was to be published at all, this should happen after the election, not in the spring of 2020.
    …
    Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who stepped down in June 2011, published a devastating book titled “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” that detailed the incompetence of Vice President Joe Biden and the Obama National Security Council staff. But because he did not want his internal knowledge of the workings of the Obama administration and his interactions with President Obama to affect the outcome of the 2012 presidential election, Gates did not publish his book until January 2014.

    I understand Fleitz’s “high moral ground” position, but I thought at the time that Gates should have released his critique of Obama before the election so that it would influence the voters, who needed to know the truth about what was going on in that rat’s den.

    However, Bolton should have volunteered to testify to the House, or not fight a subpoena, if he thought Trump had erred, rather than pushing a book at this time that was certain to leak. It’s not as if he didn’t know the impeachment was going on, and although the publication date was possibly calculated to be after the trial, no one of his station could have had any doubt about it leaking once anyone at the publisher’s or elsewhere saw the draft.

    Unless, of course, that was The Plan all along (see screenplay pitch above).

  27. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/democrat-impeachment-managers-military-aid-ukraine-deroy-murdock

    In fact, Nadler, Lofgren, and Jeffries are working tirelessly to dislodge President Trump for delaying aid to Ukraine when they themselves voted to stop such relief, dead in its tracks.

    On July 26, 2018, all three voted against the Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which included $250 million in security assistance to Ukraine. Despite Lofgren’s assertions to the contrary, such funds turned out not to be “unanimous, forceful, and unwavering,” with Lofgren herself among those undermining the very same unanimity that she ballyhoos.
    …
    Even worse, Nadler opposed $300 million in aid to Ukraine when he voted against the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Astonishingly, Nadler’s vote was on December 11, 2019, two days after he chaired a Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing and exactly one week before he was the House floor manager for the December 17 debate and December 18 votes on articles of impeachment.

    While 40 other Democrats rejected the NDAA, which contained the aid to Ukraine, 188 Democrats endorsed this bill. If Ukraine is a necessary condition for America’s national security — so much so that President Trump’s hold on this aid triggered Nadler to co-direct the effort to pry him from office — why didn’t Nadler join 188 of his Democrat colleagues and vote Yea? The bill passed overwhelmingly, 377-48. Yet Nadler found himself on the losing side of this measure, huddled among those who turned their thumbs down on Ukraine.

  28. AesopFan, I like your screen play. You should consider writing some political thrillers. Scott Adams might agree with your plot. He believes the POTUS is playing four dimensional chess. Such a plan would certainly put the “resistance” on trial. That would be a good thing. Unfortunately, most citizens have apparently tuned the whole thing out. It would be a wonderful drama to us, but few would watch it.

    I think Dershowitz hit the nail on the head today. Even if Trump did demand that Ukraine perform some investigation in order to get foreign aid, it isn’t a crime. In fact, it’s the way foreign policy is conducted all the time. Does the fact of Joe Biden being a potential candidate for president render him immune from investigation of his activities as a Vice President? Hardly. And Joe’s act of demanding the Ukraine do a favor and fire a prosecutor or they wouldn’t get one BILLION in loan guarantees was an act he bragged about at a conference. Joe was practicing foreign policy with a quid pro quo. Standard practice, right? Yep. Except that it looks very shady because the investigator was investigating Burisma where his son had a high-paying sweetheart deal. Maybe there was nothing to it. But don’t voters have a right to know the facts? Trump has been investigated repeatedly, both as a candidate and as President. It’s what the press is supposed to do. Except the press is now mostly an arm of the Democrat party. So only the Republicans get investigated and the Dems skate.

  30. Time to apply the 48-hour-rule to Bolton’s book leak:
    https://www.redstate.com/stu-in-sd/2020/01/27/impeachment-trial-the-democrat-media-leak-playbook-exposed/

    Hmmm. First, we learn that nobody at the NY Times has seen the manuscript, and that their story was based on unknown sources. Next, DoJ disputes what the NY Times claimed was in the manuscript about Bolton informing AG Barr after the phone call. And finally, WH Chief of Staff Mulvaney disputes another claim made in that article.

    When will we see the NY Times issue a “correction of the record”? Not until after the Senate votes on the subject of witnesses, after which point the story will have reached its expiration date from a political benefit-to-Democrats point of view.

  31. RTWT.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/474471-democrats-can-read-minds

    Democrats could be correct on all counts.

    But I think that from a practical standpoint, it’s difficult to prosecute a serious case based almost solely on the idea that you claim to know what the other guy was thinking.

    Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) is an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, author of The New York Times best-sellers “The Smear” and “Stonewalled,” and host of Sinclair’s Sunday TV program, “Full Measure.”

    My only complaint (and it applies to lots of news pundits) is that she lays out all the Democrats’ arguments as if they were true, before getting to her rebuttal and the punch line.

    This just lets them cherry-pick quotes and say, “See, X agrees with us!”
    plus reminding the reader of what the Democrats claimed.

    Bad rhetoric.

  33. I’m going to pretend I care now.

    Is this a good place to pretend to care? Jesus effing Christ do I not care. But I want to credibly care. How can I help?

  34. Explanatory refinement to my screenplay:
    The Democrats will clamor to have Bolton testify and will readily agree to the one-for-one witness deal, thinking that the GOP will be too afraid to actually let that go through; thus, their consternation when the WH raises no objection to Bolton appearing, and they realize they have been suckered into taking the bait and have already agreed to put a Biden on the stand as well.

  35. My screenplay- the witless GOP agrees to run through the potential minefield of John Bolton’s testimony, because that’s what the left wants them to do. They will also let the democrats avoid any potential problems such as testimony from anyone who could possibly give answers to questions the left doesn’t want answered, like Hunter Biden.

    Never underestimate the jaw-dropping, mind-numbing incompetence of the Republican party. Never.

  36. “Never underestimate the jaw-dropping, mind-numbing incompetence of the Republican party. Never.”

    Redundant I’m sure but it bears repeating.

  37. I’m thinking of the timing of the Bolton leak. The Dem argument was completely annihilated in just two hours on Sat, and they had to anticipate it would only get worse for them on Monday. So what do they do but leak the Bolton “bombshell” on Monday morning. They have absolutely no scruples and will do and say anything to survive as the swamp creatures they are.

  38. Is it just me, or does the steady parade of “breaking news bombshells” and “unverified sources” and sudden witnesses resemble the Kavanaugh hearings?

  39. Cappy:

    You beat me to it. This is all just Kavanaugh Part II. Delay as long as possible in the hope that something substantial will turn up, or at least until the American public shouts “enough already!”

    On the question of a trade — “you get one witness and we get one witness” — I don’t think the Republican side should call a Biden. What are we going to learn that we don’t know already? I think they should call Eric Ciaramella. By name, not “the whistleblower.” That would force the Dem’s hand, as they’d have to say “hey, you can’t call him, he’s the whistleblower!” Or they’d say nothing, in which case he’d walk in and plead the fifth. I would think Senator Cruz or one or two other Republicans could make him look like a weasel on the stand. Might be a good trade for Bolton.

  40. Wall St Journal says it “doubts” Bolton is, in effect, a cockroach. But I believe him to be inherently insubordinate and would not have him as an underling, no way.

  41. Cappy, It’s EXACTLY like the Kavanaugh hearings.

    Also, I haven’t really been following this, so I could be completely off base, but :

    The NYT reported that Bolton wrote that somebody said something – IOW, it’s a report about a report about a conversation – IOW again (IOW squared ?), it’s hearsay about hearsay (about hearsay ? hearsay cubed ?)

  42. Watching Dershowitz was very calming, reassuring and interesting. But consider, I also watched every single Dem debate, so my boredom threshold might be abnormal.

  43. The anti-Trump nothing burger is too empty for me to watch.
    I don’t want witnesses, but it’s also not a disaster for the GOP.
    I don’t want this silly impeachment, but it’s no disaster for Trump.

    What I do want is for Trump to win in 2020, with a majority GOP House and Senate, and start impeachment against each of the 4 FISA judges who abused their authority and were derelict in their duty in signing off on the illegal FISA spying.

    But what of these things will happen? Nov. can’t come soon enough.

  44. B’rer McConnell says: “Please, B’rer Schiff, don’t make me call witnesses! Please, B’rer Schumer, don’t make me call witnesses! Please, B’rer Nadler, don’t make me call witnesses!”

    To bad for them “Song of the South” is strictly verboten.

  45. Psalms 146:9
    “The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.”

    Inside the Blue echo chamber they really believe they have the country with them.

    They don’t.

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