Free Republic

In Trump Trial, Can Chief Justice Roberts Call Witnesses Without Senate Approval? Jan 31st, 2020 By Thomas Jipping Deputy Director, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies GianCarlo Canaparo Legal Fellow Key Takeaways Most Republican senators oppose calling witnesses, but it would take only four Republican senators siding with Democrats to open Trump’s trial to witness testimony. Should they fail to get enough Republican support for witnesses, Democrats are trying to find another way to call witnesses in the impeachment trial. It appears that neither Democrats nor their allies are interested in making serious arguments in favor of impeachment. Copied As...

Yes, I know that as of last night, Chuck Schumer was saying that he doesn’t believe he has enough Republican votes in the Senate to allow witnesses to be called and new evidence admitted in the impeachment trial. And Cocaine Mitch is looking more and more confident that he can keep enough of his caucus inside the corral to make sure it doesn’t happen. But nothing is written in stone until the vote actually takes place once the Q&A portion of the trial is complete.The Democrats would need four GOP votes to make it happen, getting them to 51....

The headlines going around this evening, all to the effect that “McConnell doesn’t have the votes!”, are misleading when you read down into the stories themselves. Republicans sound much calmer and more resolute about ramming through an acquittal verdict without witnesses than they did 24 hours ago, in the first flush of the NYT’s story on Sunday night about Bolton’s book. McConnell doesn’t have the votes yet but as of Tuesday night Collins and Romney remain the only two Republicans willing to say it’s highly likely they’ll vote to call witnesses. Murkowski is interested in hearing from Bolton but...

Senate Republicans emerged from a closed-door caucus meeting on Tuesday voicing renewed confidence that they will bypass a nasty witness fight in the impeachment trial. “The consensus is that we’ve heard enough and it’s time to go to a final judgement,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told reporters. Asked if the trial proceedings should go past Friday, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), another member of Senate GOP leadership, said it “shouldn’t.” “We’re kind of confident,” Thune added. The chamber is expected to vote Friday on whether to allow new witnesses or documents in President Trump's trial. If they skip witnesses, that will...

What a handy time for a leak. There stood the Trump defense team, ready to lay out the rationale for why investigating Ukrainian corruption was a thoroughly fitting pretext for sending aid money—not despite the prospect of Biden family involvement, but in fact because of it. By what logic is an American president supposed to turn a blind eye to misdeeds because a political rival may lie at the root? The defenders laid out their case dutifully Monday, from Ken Starr’s historical walk through impeachments past to Pam Bondi’s enumeration of Hunter Biden’s curious connections to the previous examples of...

Several days ago we anticipated a potentially important point we hoped would start the impeachment defense for President Donald Trump. Today, attorney Patrick Philbin delivered. The issue is a critical constitutional component that needed emphasis, and it is good to see pundits finally starting to realize the significance. White House Counsel Patrick Philbin explains why House subpoenas were illegitimate: the subpoena power was never authorized; the initiating subpoena power was never voted on. Additionally, and specifically by design, absent a penalty for non-compliance, which factually makes a subpoena a ‘subpoena’, the Executive Branch had no constitutional pathway or process to...

During an interview with MSNBC during their Senate impeachment trial coverage on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that the Senate not getting witnesses during its impeachment trial is more likely than them getting witnesses. Schumer stated, “[H]ow it will have to happen is not one person doing it, but a couple of them, when they talk privately say, maybe we should do it and get a group together of five or six or seven, and they do it together. Is that certain to happen? Not at all. Is it more [likely] than not? I’d have to say...

Senate Democrats are dismissing chatter about attempts at an agreement that would guarantee former national security adviser John Bolton testifies in President Trump's impeachment trial in exchange for former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden also testifying. The idea has been floated by conservatives, who argue there should be "witness reciprocity." But Democrats shot down such talk, saying Trump allies are demanding an irrelevant witness in exchange for one with firsthand knowledge of Trump's actions. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), asked about a potential swap, argued that "witnesses should have something to do with and direct knowledge of...

Last year, Democrats rushed through the impeachment hearings because they claimed the evidence was overwhelming and impeachment had to be done immediately. Today, they’re bellyaching about the need for more witnesses and evidence in order for there to be a fair trial. This is, of course, after the Democrats didn’t allow the president any of his own witnesses during the House impeachment inquiry, and chose not to subpoena more witnesses in favor of getting the vote to impeach over with, so, as Nancy Pelosi has said, President Trump would be “impeached for life.” As White House counsel Pat Cippollone noted...

A fateful step. Having raised the hopes of anti-Trumpers back home in Maine this way, she’ll annoy them even more now if she changes her mind and votes not to call anyone. She has to follow through.Trump fans will be angry, of course, but she has two trump cards (no pun intended) she’ll play for them. One is that she’ll vote to let the president call a witness or two as well. And the second is that she will, in the end, vote to acquit him. She’s trying to walk a tightrope here. Agreeing in principle to call witnesses...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman and House Impeachment Manager Jerry Nadler (D-NY) stated that the House didn’t hear from “many” of the witnesses they should have during their impeachment proceedings, but they “heard from enough witnesses to prove the case beyond any doubt at all.” Nadler also said that it is a “travesty” that some members of the Senate don’t want to hear from any witnesses whatsoever in the Senate trial. Nadler said, “We brought the articles of impeachment. Because, despite the fact that we didn’t hear from many witnesses we should have heard from,...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sent a public warning shot on Monday night, saying that if Republicans support Democrats' impeachment witness requests then he will force votes during the trial on calling witnesses conservatives want to hear from. "My colleagues can’t have it both ways. Calling for some, while blocking others," Paul tweeted referencing a Politico report on a similar private warning his gave GOP colleagues against supporting Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer's request that former national security adviser John Bolton testify. "If we are going to give a platform to witnesses the Dems demand, I look forward to forcing votes...

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that Democrats will force votes on witnesses at the start of the impeachment trial even as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has secured enough support to delay the decision until mid-trial. "Make no mistake, on the question of witnesses and documents, Republicans may run but they can't hide. There will be votes at the beginning on whether to call the four witnesses we've proposed and subpoena the documents we've identified," Schumer said. He added that "America and the eyes of history will be watching what my Republican colleagues do." "If every Republican...

When Shakespeare wrote that “All the world’s a stage … and one man in his time plays many parts,” he could have had in mind Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). In 1999, Schumer famously opposed witnesses in the trial of President Bill Clinton as nothing more than “political theater.” Now Schumer has declared that witnesses and a full trial are essential for President Donald Trump, and that any trial without witnesses would be the “most unfair impeachment trial in modern history.”

The opening hearing at the House Judiciary Committee's President Donald Trump impeachment inquiry featured testimony from four experts who are well respected as legal scholars, but largely unknown by the general public. U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the committee, said that the hearings were intended to investigate the "historical and constitutional basis for impeachment." Democrats called three legal experts to testify at the inquiry, while Republicans only called one legal expert. All four witnesses are highly qualified experts in constitutional law.

It was evident several weeks ago that U.S. chargé d’affaires to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, is one of the current participants in the coup effort. It was Taylor who engaged in carefully planned text messages with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland to set-up a narrative helpful to Adam Schiff’s political coup effort. Bill Taylor was formerly U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (’06-’09) and later helped the Obama administration to design the laundry operation providing taxpayer financing to Ukraine in exchange for back-channel payments to U.S. politicians and their families. Today Rudy Giuliani has released a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham outlining how Bill...

Giuliani reminded the DC swamp that he previously cleaned up mafia in New York and asked them, “Do you honestly think I’m intimidated?” RUDY GIULIANI: “I discovered a pattern of corruption that the Washington press covered up for years! I’m also going to bring out a massive pay-for-play scheme under the Obama Administration that will devastate the Democrat Party. Do you honestly think I’m intimidated? Giuliani presented a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham with evidence of a Democrat criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Donald Trump from being President.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A young gunman opened fire in an El Paso, Texas, shopping area packed with as many as 3,000 people during the busy back-to-school season Saturday, leaving 20 dead and more than two dozen injured. ~snip~ Adriana Quezada, 39, said she was in the women’s clothing section of Walmart with her two children when she heard gunfire. “But I thought they were hits, like roof construction,” she said of the shots. Her 19-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son threw themselves to the ground, then ran out of the store through an emergency exit. They were not hurt,...

Just out on Netflix, Paul Greengrass's new film, 22 July, takes its title from the date in 2011 on which a lone maniac named Anders Behring Breivik murdered seventy-seven people in Norway. But only the first third or so of the movie covers the actual events of that date – the massive explosion Breivik set off in a parked panel truck outside the major government building in Oslo, killing eight, and the shootings he then carried out at the ruling Labor Party's annual summer youth camp on the nearby island of Utøya, which took sixty-nine lives. The second third of...

Given that the Senate now has the Supplemental Report and they will view it today the press is already going bonkers over the "potential witnesses" that were not interviewed. We need to make sure we add ours. So here is the list that I know of as of this morning. Feel free to add any I overlooked. :) Steww Pid Haywood Jableauxme Amanda Hugnkiss Hugh G. Rection represented by the Law firm of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe Hugh Jorgen Buster Hyman