![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Remember: there is no law in this country.
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Addy Baird [Buzzfeed News]
twitter.com/addysbaird
https://twitter.com/addysbaird/status/1223309775250886656
Murkowski statement: “I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed."
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Conservative Pastor Says Jesus Would Have 'Beat The Crap' Out of John Bolton
Schumer On John Bolton Book Revelations: 'This Is Stunning'
https://www.newsweek.com/conservative-pastor-says-jesus-would-have-beat-crap-out-john-bolton-1484767
A conservative evangelical pastor has lamented not physically assaulting former National Security Adviser John Bolton when he had the chance, while insisting that Jesus Christ would have "beat the crap out of" Bolton for disobeying President Donald Trump.
Rodney Howard-Browne, who has previously visited the White House to "lay hands" on Trump, lashed out at Bolton over recent news that the former ambassador's upcoming book may confirm the existence of a quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukraine—the central issue in Trump's impeachment trial. The preacher suggested on Twitter that Bolton was a traitor deserving of physical punishment for not remaining loyal to Trump.
"You are a slime ball of the highest order," tweeted Howard-Browne on Wednesday, apparently addressing Bolton. "I should have knocked your sorry butt through the door of the Oval Office into the rose garden when I saw you. I would have gladly been arrested ... what a Benedict Arnold ... I am glad you were fired!!!"
Bolton was also accused of being a "globalist sellout" who is "disloyal to the President and loyal to the deep state." Howard-Browne has long been a proponent of conspiracy theories concerning a supposed "deep state" desperate to launch attacks against Trump, who he has compared to the Sylvester Stallone action hero character Rambo.
The preacher also claimed that Jesus Christ would have launched a violent attack on Bolton over the alleged betrayal.
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Trump’s border wall, vulnerable to flash floods, needs large storm gates left open for months
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trumps-border-wall-vulnerable-to-flash-floods-needs-large-storm-gates-left-open-for-months/2020/01/30/be709346-3710-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html
NACO, Ariz. — President Trump's border wall probably will require the installation of hundreds of storm gates to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over, gates that must be left open for months every summer during "monsoon season" in the desert, according to U.S. border officials, agents and engineers familiar with the plans.
The open, unmanned gates in remote areas already have allowed for the easy entry of smugglers and migrants into the United States.
At locations along the U.S. southern border where such gates already are in operation, Border Patrol agents must manually raise them every year before the arrival of the summer thunderstorms that convert riverbeds into raging torrents that carry massive amounts of water and debris, including sediment, rocks, tree limbs and vegetation. Trump's wall, which features 30-foot metal bollards spaced four inches apart, effectively acts as a sewer grate that traps the debris; when clogged, the barriers cannot withstand the power of the runoff.
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Did the Pentagon Really Just Award a $400 Million Contract to a Guy Trump Liked on Fox News?
[This is from December 3rd. Yesterday, a big section of the wall fell over in the wind. I have no idea if it's this company but I hope to the gods that it is.]
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/border-wall-contract-trump-fisher-industries-fox-news.html
The Washington Post reported Monday night that the Pentagon had awarded a $400 million border wall contract to a North Dakota company named Fisher Sand and Gravel. That contract, to build a segment of the wall across a wildlife refuge in Yuma County, Arizona, raised some eyebrows. According to the Post:
----
[REMEMBER: The plan is to split the coalition by going after transgendered people first. Then it'll be bisexual people. Then it'll be everybody.]
Iowa GOP files bill to remove transgender people from the state’s Civil Rights Act
Iowa would become the first state to give civil rights protections to transgender people - or any class at all - and then take them away.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/01/iowa-gop-files-bill-remove-transgender-people-states-civil-rights-act/
Republican lawmakers in Iowa filed a bill that would remove transgender people from the state’s civil rights protections, which could make it the first state to give civil rights protections to transgender people – or any class at all – and then take them away.
A group of nine state representatives introduced HF 2164, which they describe as “an act removing gender identity as a protected class under the Iowa Civil Rights Act.”
-----
Texas AG won't defend state agency in gay marriage suit, citing beliefs
Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley has refused to marry same-sex couples for years, and is suing the Texas Commission on Judicial Review over her censure.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/texas-ag-won-t-defend-state-agency-gay-marriage-suit-n1126731
The Texas attorney general is declining to defend the state agency charged with disciplining judges in a lawsuit filed by a justice of the peace who was warned over her refusal to marry same-sex couples.
The justice, Dianne Hensley, sued the Commission on Judicial Misconduct last month after it issued a nonbinding warning over her yearslong refusal to marry gay couples while continuing to marry heterosexual couples.
The attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican, said he will not defend the commission in the lawsuit because its actions conflict with his views of the Constitution.
"We believe judges retain their right to religious liberty when they take the bench," his spokesperson, Marc Rylander, said in a statement.
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Lamar Alexander unwittingly makes the case for Trump’s censure
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/31/lamar-alexander-unwittingly-makes-case-trumps-censure/
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) tried to explain his decision to reject witnesses in what now becomes a sham trial not only designed to acquit President Trump but also to shield him from damning evidence:
* There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; he said this on television on October 3, 2019, and during his July 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of Ukraine. There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a ‘mountain of overwhelming evidence.’ There is no need to consider further the frivolous second article of impeachment that would remove the president for asserting his constitutional prerogative to protect confidential conversations with his close advisers.
* The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) explained that in Alexander’s tortured statement finding Trump’s conduct “inappropriate,” he in essence rejected both the “perfect call” and “So what?” defenses from Team Trump:
* Alexander’s reasoning is as exasperating as it is cowardly: The president has lied about his intent, sought to extort a foreign power to benefit his own reelection and put himself above the national interest — but just let the voters decide.
He writes himself, the Senate and the impeachment clause out of the Constitution not because the president is innocent, but because the most egregious conduct in presidential history is undeserving of the Senate’s rebuke? He seems not to buy the frightful argument from Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz that anything the president does to achieve his own reelection is legitimate, but the result is equally horrifying: There is no sanction for doing so.
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‘Anyone surprised? Anyone?’: Murkowski buried for ‘no’ vote on witnesses despite Cipollone Ukraine complicity
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/anyone-surprised-anyone-murkowski-buried-for-no-vote-on-witnesses-despite-cipollone-ukraine-complicity/
In what might be the one of the worst cases of political bad timing in U.S. Senate history, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) announced she would vote with her party and against impeachment witnesses in the trial of Donald Trump just moments after the New York Times implicated White House counsel Pat Cipollone in the president’s Ukraine scandal.
Murkowski’s decision to help shut down the trial in the GOP-majority Senate as quickly as possible kept Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from having three GOP lawmakers (the other two are Utah’s Mitt Romney and Maine’s Susan Collins) call for witnesses.
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Michael S. Schmidt
twitter.com/nytmike
https://twitter.com/nytmike/status/1223290139679567872
EXCLUSIVE: Bolton book contains new, earlier, allegation of Trump's involvement in pressure campaign. Trump asked Bolton to call Zelensky to ensure he would meet w/Giuliani. Cipollone and Mulvaney were in room. w/[twitter.com/]maggieNYT
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Trump Told Bolton to Help His Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Book Says
The president asked his national security adviser last spring in front of other senior advisers to pave the way for a meeting between Rudolph Giuliani and Ukraine’s new leader.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/us/politics/trump-bolton-ukraine.html
WASHINGTON - More than two months before he asked Ukraine's president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security advisor, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president's personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who is now leading the president's impeachment defense.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton to call Volodymyr Zelensky, who had recently won election as president of Ukraine, to insure Mr. Zelensky would meet with Mr. Giuliani, who was planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the investigations that the president sought, in Mr. Bolton's account. Mr. Bolton never made the call, he wrote.
The previously undisclosed directive that Mr. Bolton describes would be the earliest known instance of Mr. Trump seeking to harness the power of the United Staes government to advance his pressure campaign against Ukraine, as he later did on the July call with Mr. Zelensky that triggered a whistle-blower complaint and impeachment proceedings. House Democrats have accused him of abusing his authority and are arguing their case before senators in the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have said he did nothing wrong.
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Joseph A. Bondy
twitter.com/josephabondy
https://twitter.com/josephabondy/status/1223331368618418176
Below is the letter Stephanie Schuman (twitter.com/LeafLegal) and I sent to Senator McConnell earlier today, (202) 224-2541, summarizing the testimony Lev Parnas would be able to provide, were he called as a witness. #LetLevSpeak #AmericansDemandWitnesses #CallTheWitnesses #LetBoltonTestify
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ANALYSIS: Why give anything to the Senate?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/live-blog/trump-impeachment-trial-senate-votes-loom-witnesses-trump-s-fate-n1127261/ncrd1127686
administration witnesses appear to give testimony on a wide range of topics.
While there are a number of levers the Senate can use to put pressure on a recalcitrant administration to force the production of witnesses and documents, issuing subpoenas — and the threat that non-compliance could lead to prosecution — always has been one of its biggest hammers.
But Senate Republicans have heavily criticized House Democrats for having done, as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., put it, “little to pursue” witnesses who were subpoenaed. In doing so, Rubio and other Republican senators have essentially advised Trump and future presidents of both parties to ignore Senate subpoenas — or at least fight them in court — because they’re not really serious attempts to get information. The Senate has no power to impeach a president who flouts subpoenas or seeks to tie them up in courts for obstructing Congress.
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McConnell has received campaign donations from Trump's impeachment defense team
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/mitch-mcconnell/2020/01/29/trump-impeachment-mcconnell-has-received-donations-defense-team/4608054002/
Several members of President Donald Trump's impeachment defense team recently gave money to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's 2020 reelection campaign, a Courier Journal analysis of campaign finance data found.
Ken Starr, who famously prosecuted former President Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial before joining Trump's team, gave the maximum individual contribution allowed — $2,800 — to the McConnell Senate Committee on July 31, 2019.
This wasn't Starr's first donation to McConnell, however. The lawyer and former Baylor University president is a longtime Republican who has given to every McConnell reelection campaign since 2002.
Another member of the president's impeachment defense team, Robert Ray, gave a total of $5,600 to the McConnell Senate Committee through two separate donations — one for the primary election, one for the general — on Sept. 30, 2019.
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Lisa Murkowski Can’t Fix Democracy, but She Can Fix a Trial
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/lisa-murkowski-fixed-trump-impeachment-trial.html
On Friday, as House managers began making their formal arguments urging the Senate to call new witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, Sen. Lisa Murkowski confirmed that the debate couldn’t make a difference. In a statement, she declared that she was voting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to close the trial with no witnesses or document production, giving Republicans the 51 votes they needed to shut it down.
The night before, Sen. Lamar Alexander had issued a statement nudging the door shut on witnesses and documents, arguing that they were unnecessary because Trump had already been proved guilty, and that he would nonetheless refuse to remove him. Murkowski managed to outdo even that breathtaking display of cynicism.
...
What carried Murkowski beyond the standard Republican impeachment cynicism, though, was her willingness to acknowledge the purely political motives behind her vote. If Murkowski were to have supported calling witnesses, it would have produced a 50-50 Senate tie, forcing Chief Justice John Roberts to decide whether to break it or not. The self-styled umpire of American justice would have had to choose whether to personally side with the president, joining a one-party vote against what opinion polls say are the preferences of large numbers of the American people, or to oppose him. Murkowski said she would vote against witnesses in part because she didn’t want Roberts placed in this bind.
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Senate rejects witnesses in Trump trial, ensuring acquittal
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/trump-trial-could-end-soon-alexander-says-no-to-witnesses/
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate narrowly rejected Democratic demands to summon witnesses for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial late Friday, all but ensuring Trump’s acquittal in just the third such trial to face a president in U.S. history. But senators considered pushing off final voting on his fate to next week.
The vote on allowing new witnesses was defeated 51-49 on a near party-line vote.
Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah voted along with the Democrats for witnesses, but that was not enough.
Despite the Democrats singular focus on hearing new testimony, the Republican majority brushed past those demands to make this the first impeachment trial without witnesses. Even new revelations Friday from former national security adviser John Bolton did not sway GOP senators, who said they’d heard enough.
That means the eventual outcome for Trump will be an acquittal “in name only,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a House prosecutor, during final debate. Some called it a cover-up.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called Friday night’s results “a tragedy on a very large scale.” Protesters’ chants reverberated against the walls of the Capitol.
But Republicans said Trump’s acquittal is justified and inevitable.
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Addy Baird [Buzzfeed News]
twitter.com/addysbaird
https://twitter.com/addysbaird/status/1223309775250886656
Murkowski statement: “I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed."
-----
Conservative Pastor Says Jesus Would Have 'Beat The Crap' Out of John Bolton
Schumer On John Bolton Book Revelations: 'This Is Stunning'
https://www.newsweek.com/conservative-pastor-says-jesus-would-have-beat-crap-out-john-bolton-1484767
A conservative evangelical pastor has lamented not physically assaulting former National Security Adviser John Bolton when he had the chance, while insisting that Jesus Christ would have "beat the crap out of" Bolton for disobeying President Donald Trump.
Rodney Howard-Browne, who has previously visited the White House to "lay hands" on Trump, lashed out at Bolton over recent news that the former ambassador's upcoming book may confirm the existence of a quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukraine—the central issue in Trump's impeachment trial. The preacher suggested on Twitter that Bolton was a traitor deserving of physical punishment for not remaining loyal to Trump.
"You are a slime ball of the highest order," tweeted Howard-Browne on Wednesday, apparently addressing Bolton. "I should have knocked your sorry butt through the door of the Oval Office into the rose garden when I saw you. I would have gladly been arrested ... what a Benedict Arnold ... I am glad you were fired!!!"
Bolton was also accused of being a "globalist sellout" who is "disloyal to the President and loyal to the deep state." Howard-Browne has long been a proponent of conspiracy theories concerning a supposed "deep state" desperate to launch attacks against Trump, who he has compared to the Sylvester Stallone action hero character Rambo.
The preacher also claimed that Jesus Christ would have launched a violent attack on Bolton over the alleged betrayal.
-----
Trump’s border wall, vulnerable to flash floods, needs large storm gates left open for months
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trumps-border-wall-vulnerable-to-flash-floods-needs-large-storm-gates-left-open-for-months/2020/01/30/be709346-3710-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html
NACO, Ariz. — President Trump's border wall probably will require the installation of hundreds of storm gates to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over, gates that must be left open for months every summer during "monsoon season" in the desert, according to U.S. border officials, agents and engineers familiar with the plans.
The open, unmanned gates in remote areas already have allowed for the easy entry of smugglers and migrants into the United States.
At locations along the U.S. southern border where such gates already are in operation, Border Patrol agents must manually raise them every year before the arrival of the summer thunderstorms that convert riverbeds into raging torrents that carry massive amounts of water and debris, including sediment, rocks, tree limbs and vegetation. Trump's wall, which features 30-foot metal bollards spaced four inches apart, effectively acts as a sewer grate that traps the debris; when clogged, the barriers cannot withstand the power of the runoff.
-----
Did the Pentagon Really Just Award a $400 Million Contract to a Guy Trump Liked on Fox News?
[This is from December 3rd. Yesterday, a big section of the wall fell over in the wind. I have no idea if it's this company but I hope to the gods that it is.]
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/border-wall-contract-trump-fisher-industries-fox-news.html
The Washington Post reported Monday night that the Pentagon had awarded a $400 million border wall contract to a North Dakota company named Fisher Sand and Gravel. That contract, to build a segment of the wall across a wildlife refuge in Yuma County, Arizona, raised some eyebrows. According to the Post:
----
[REMEMBER: The plan is to split the coalition by going after transgendered people first. Then it'll be bisexual people. Then it'll be everybody.]
Iowa GOP files bill to remove transgender people from the state’s Civil Rights Act
Iowa would become the first state to give civil rights protections to transgender people - or any class at all - and then take them away.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/01/iowa-gop-files-bill-remove-transgender-people-states-civil-rights-act/
Republican lawmakers in Iowa filed a bill that would remove transgender people from the state’s civil rights protections, which could make it the first state to give civil rights protections to transgender people – or any class at all – and then take them away.
A group of nine state representatives introduced HF 2164, which they describe as “an act removing gender identity as a protected class under the Iowa Civil Rights Act.”
-----
Texas AG won't defend state agency in gay marriage suit, citing beliefs
Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley has refused to marry same-sex couples for years, and is suing the Texas Commission on Judicial Review over her censure.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/texas-ag-won-t-defend-state-agency-gay-marriage-suit-n1126731
The Texas attorney general is declining to defend the state agency charged with disciplining judges in a lawsuit filed by a justice of the peace who was warned over her refusal to marry same-sex couples.
The justice, Dianne Hensley, sued the Commission on Judicial Misconduct last month after it issued a nonbinding warning over her yearslong refusal to marry gay couples while continuing to marry heterosexual couples.
The attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican, said he will not defend the commission in the lawsuit because its actions conflict with his views of the Constitution.
"We believe judges retain their right to religious liberty when they take the bench," his spokesperson, Marc Rylander, said in a statement.
-----
Lamar Alexander unwittingly makes the case for Trump’s censure
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/31/lamar-alexander-unwittingly-makes-case-trumps-censure/
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) tried to explain his decision to reject witnesses in what now becomes a sham trial not only designed to acquit President Trump but also to shield him from damning evidence:
* There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; he said this on television on October 3, 2019, and during his July 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of Ukraine. There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a ‘mountain of overwhelming evidence.’ There is no need to consider further the frivolous second article of impeachment that would remove the president for asserting his constitutional prerogative to protect confidential conversations with his close advisers.
* The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) explained that in Alexander’s tortured statement finding Trump’s conduct “inappropriate,” he in essence rejected both the “perfect call” and “So what?” defenses from Team Trump:
* Alexander’s reasoning is as exasperating as it is cowardly: The president has lied about his intent, sought to extort a foreign power to benefit his own reelection and put himself above the national interest — but just let the voters decide.
He writes himself, the Senate and the impeachment clause out of the Constitution not because the president is innocent, but because the most egregious conduct in presidential history is undeserving of the Senate’s rebuke? He seems not to buy the frightful argument from Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz that anything the president does to achieve his own reelection is legitimate, but the result is equally horrifying: There is no sanction for doing so.
-----
‘Anyone surprised? Anyone?’: Murkowski buried for ‘no’ vote on witnesses despite Cipollone Ukraine complicity
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/anyone-surprised-anyone-murkowski-buried-for-no-vote-on-witnesses-despite-cipollone-ukraine-complicity/
In what might be the one of the worst cases of political bad timing in U.S. Senate history, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) announced she would vote with her party and against impeachment witnesses in the trial of Donald Trump just moments after the New York Times implicated White House counsel Pat Cipollone in the president’s Ukraine scandal.
Murkowski’s decision to help shut down the trial in the GOP-majority Senate as quickly as possible kept Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from having three GOP lawmakers (the other two are Utah’s Mitt Romney and Maine’s Susan Collins) call for witnesses.
-----
Michael S. Schmidt
twitter.com/nytmike
https://twitter.com/nytmike/status/1223290139679567872
EXCLUSIVE: Bolton book contains new, earlier, allegation of Trump's involvement in pressure campaign. Trump asked Bolton to call Zelensky to ensure he would meet w/Giuliani. Cipollone and Mulvaney were in room. w/[twitter.com/]maggieNYT
-----
Trump Told Bolton to Help His Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Book Says
The president asked his national security adviser last spring in front of other senior advisers to pave the way for a meeting between Rudolph Giuliani and Ukraine’s new leader.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/us/politics/trump-bolton-ukraine.html
WASHINGTON - More than two months before he asked Ukraine's president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security advisor, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president's personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who is now leading the president's impeachment defense.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton to call Volodymyr Zelensky, who had recently won election as president of Ukraine, to insure Mr. Zelensky would meet with Mr. Giuliani, who was planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the investigations that the president sought, in Mr. Bolton's account. Mr. Bolton never made the call, he wrote.
The previously undisclosed directive that Mr. Bolton describes would be the earliest known instance of Mr. Trump seeking to harness the power of the United Staes government to advance his pressure campaign against Ukraine, as he later did on the July call with Mr. Zelensky that triggered a whistle-blower complaint and impeachment proceedings. House Democrats have accused him of abusing his authority and are arguing their case before senators in the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have said he did nothing wrong.
-----
Joseph A. Bondy
twitter.com/josephabondy
https://twitter.com/josephabondy/status/1223331368618418176
Below is the letter Stephanie Schuman (twitter.com/LeafLegal) and I sent to Senator McConnell earlier today, (202) 224-2541, summarizing the testimony Lev Parnas would be able to provide, were he called as a witness. #LetLevSpeak #AmericansDemandWitnesses #CallTheWitnesses #LetBoltonTestify
-----
ANALYSIS: Why give anything to the Senate?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/live-blog/trump-impeachment-trial-senate-votes-loom-witnesses-trump-s-fate-n1127261/ncrd1127686
administration witnesses appear to give testimony on a wide range of topics.
While there are a number of levers the Senate can use to put pressure on a recalcitrant administration to force the production of witnesses and documents, issuing subpoenas — and the threat that non-compliance could lead to prosecution — always has been one of its biggest hammers.
But Senate Republicans have heavily criticized House Democrats for having done, as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., put it, “little to pursue” witnesses who were subpoenaed. In doing so, Rubio and other Republican senators have essentially advised Trump and future presidents of both parties to ignore Senate subpoenas — or at least fight them in court — because they’re not really serious attempts to get information. The Senate has no power to impeach a president who flouts subpoenas or seeks to tie them up in courts for obstructing Congress.
-----
McConnell has received campaign donations from Trump's impeachment defense team
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/mitch-mcconnell/2020/01/29/trump-impeachment-mcconnell-has-received-donations-defense-team/4608054002/
Several members of President Donald Trump's impeachment defense team recently gave money to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's 2020 reelection campaign, a Courier Journal analysis of campaign finance data found.
Ken Starr, who famously prosecuted former President Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial before joining Trump's team, gave the maximum individual contribution allowed — $2,800 — to the McConnell Senate Committee on July 31, 2019.
This wasn't Starr's first donation to McConnell, however. The lawyer and former Baylor University president is a longtime Republican who has given to every McConnell reelection campaign since 2002.
Another member of the president's impeachment defense team, Robert Ray, gave a total of $5,600 to the McConnell Senate Committee through two separate donations — one for the primary election, one for the general — on Sept. 30, 2019.
-----
Lisa Murkowski Can’t Fix Democracy, but She Can Fix a Trial
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/lisa-murkowski-fixed-trump-impeachment-trial.html
On Friday, as House managers began making their formal arguments urging the Senate to call new witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, Sen. Lisa Murkowski confirmed that the debate couldn’t make a difference. In a statement, she declared that she was voting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to close the trial with no witnesses or document production, giving Republicans the 51 votes they needed to shut it down.
The night before, Sen. Lamar Alexander had issued a statement nudging the door shut on witnesses and documents, arguing that they were unnecessary because Trump had already been proved guilty, and that he would nonetheless refuse to remove him. Murkowski managed to outdo even that breathtaking display of cynicism.
...
What carried Murkowski beyond the standard Republican impeachment cynicism, though, was her willingness to acknowledge the purely political motives behind her vote. If Murkowski were to have supported calling witnesses, it would have produced a 50-50 Senate tie, forcing Chief Justice John Roberts to decide whether to break it or not. The self-styled umpire of American justice would have had to choose whether to personally side with the president, joining a one-party vote against what opinion polls say are the preferences of large numbers of the American people, or to oppose him. Murkowski said she would vote against witnesses in part because she didn’t want Roberts placed in this bind.
-----
Senate rejects witnesses in Trump trial, ensuring acquittal
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/trump-trial-could-end-soon-alexander-says-no-to-witnesses/
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate narrowly rejected Democratic demands to summon witnesses for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial late Friday, all but ensuring Trump’s acquittal in just the third such trial to face a president in U.S. history. But senators considered pushing off final voting on his fate to next week.
The vote on allowing new witnesses was defeated 51-49 on a near party-line vote.
Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah voted along with the Democrats for witnesses, but that was not enough.
Despite the Democrats singular focus on hearing new testimony, the Republican majority brushed past those demands to make this the first impeachment trial without witnesses. Even new revelations Friday from former national security adviser John Bolton did not sway GOP senators, who said they’d heard enough.
That means the eventual outcome for Trump will be an acquittal “in name only,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a House prosecutor, during final debate. Some called it a cover-up.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called Friday night’s results “a tragedy on a very large scale.” Protesters’ chants reverberated against the walls of the Capitol.
But Republicans said Trump’s acquittal is justified and inevitable.
