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Pelosi to Announce Trump Impeachment Inquiry
Speaker Nancy Pelosi late Tuesday said that she supports a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, according to a Democratic lawmaker. The purported reason is the allegation that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden. No actual evidence has been released of any wrongdoing in this matter. From The Hill:
Pelosi is expected to make her announcement at 5 p.m. on the House floor after meetings with Democratic chairmen of six committees investigating Trump and his administration and with the full Democratic Caucus.
“As soon as we have the facts, we’re ready,” Pelosi said Tuesday at The Atlantic Festival. “Now we have the facts, we’re ready … for later today.”
More than two-thirds of House Democrats publicly support launching an impeachment inquiry. Pelosi has not been among those backing an inquiry.
On Tuesday alone, more than a dozen lawmakers — including close Pelosi ally Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) — have come out in support of an impeachment inquiry in the aftermath of reports about the phone call with Zelensky.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump acknowledged he had withheld about $400 million in U.S. military aid for Ukraine just days ahead of the July 25 phone call.
Democrats have demanded the release of the call’s transcript, which Trump already cleared for distribution. “You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call,” Trump said on Twitter Tuesday morning. “No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!” .
Published in General
What facts, Wha–did I miss something?? This is terrible. If there is nothing in the transcripts, I guess they’ll infer something from his wording. Yeah, that works . . .
They’ve wanted for months to have hearings going on – preferably impeachment to balance the Clinton experience – during the election cycle, and now they have a reason / pretext.
Can somebody explain to me in very short words of one or two syllables why, even if Trump did what they say he did, it’s a bad thing?
I honestly don’t see the problem.
Meanwhile, Bill Weld decides to out-do Nancy, and suggests that Trump should be executed.
I hope this hurts them for a generation. Maybe two.
The idea that Trump would slip-up and do something impeachable, after the Mueller Report went through everything with a fine-toothed comb, is kind of hard to believe. I know we’re all supposed to think he’s the dumbest president ever, but why do something stupid this late in the game? When he’s been under a microscope for over two years? It doesn’t add up.
That’s because you’re looking at it rationally. That’ll get you in trouble every time.
One of the greatest threats to political stability in this country is Democrats’ intolerance of opposition. They have not accepted the legitimacy of Republican victory in presidential elections for a generation.
When Mueller’s “investigation” failed, an equivalent effort was inevitable.
You can’t take Bill Weld literally, but you do have to take him seriously.
If Trump was using distribution of appropriated funds as a bargaining chip to force the Ukrainian government to launch an investigation into an active political opponent and his family it would be an abuse of his power, for his personal gain. On top of just being a dereliction of duty, as it would be his job to execute the will of the Congress in the distribution of those funds. It would be like Trump refusing to release education department funds allocated by Congress to the City of New York unless the local DA started an investigation into Bill DeBlasio. I mean there isn’t any difference in the circumstance.
But any way. Yay Trump Impeachment. Go DEEP STATE!!! Hope they nail the S.O.B. to a wall (well an artistically designed steel slat fence at least).
Do they understand that an investigation will not begin and end with Trump’s phone call?
If Trump is supposed to have asked them to investigate the younger Biden, wouldn’t it be important to know if they had previously looked into Biden’s actions, and if so why did they stop? Did VP Biden really make threats to the Ukraine government while part of the so-called “scandal free” Obama administration?
They don’t want someone like Biden as the face of their party. Strategically, the Dem’s probably think they can kill two birds, Trump and Biden, with one stone.
If the worst of what they are alleging is true, which is a big “if” at this point, since no actual evidence has yet been produced, I think it’s pretty bad. The allegation is that Trump used his diplomatic position as president, as a negotiator in foreign relations, to pressure a foreign country to investigate a domestic political rival – not in pursuit of our country’s best interest, but in his personal, political best interests. Imagine Obama had, in 2010 or 2011, used the diplomatic leverage of the US (withholding aid, changing a stance on a treaty negotiation, or whatever), not to advance US interests, but to pressure them to investigate and hopefully dig up dirt on Mitt Romney. That would be a major abuse of power.
Again, there may not be evidence of this. I’m not saying Trump did this. I’m only trying to help explain why, if he did it, it would be a legitimate scandal.
Not only did he, he bragged about it! There’s video. We’re through the looking glass now.
They couldn’t announce this inquiry on Monday, because the Swedish teen was speaking at the U.N., and they didn’t want to step on that day’s climate change narrative with impeachment talk.
I’m still trying to figure out if you’re the Democrats how you square the circle on this between getting Trump and not completely scuttling wacky-but-lovable Uncle Joe’s campaign. I don’t think even the best spin masters are going to be able to claim that Trump must be impeached over this, while Biden should be the next president, even though he’s on video bragging about forcing the firing of the same Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into the company Hunter Biden’s connected with (of course, if you’re Liz, Bernie or some of the other Democratic hopefuls, that’s actually a double-bonus here, but it’s hard to see Pelosi or the others in the Democrats’ leadership seeing that as a win-win for 2020).
Democrats continue to demonstrate that they are not prepared to govern, nor all that interested in actual governance. A bunch of noisy showboating that causes me to pay less and less attention to “news” media, as the “news” media continues to obsess over the noisy showboating and in the process ignores real news.
Well, if he truly asked the head of a foreign government to investigate the son of a political rival and work through his personal attorney in the matter or forgo promised military aid to fight the Russians, I’d say it was a bad thing. (please note the IF in my sentence.)
That’s it mark me down as Never Weld. Weld used to be a prosecutor. He should no the difference between an abuse of power (what it seems Trump is being accused of) and treason. This is not a serious person. It should actually scare Conservatives/Republicans that this type of person wants to be President. Bogus Treason accusations to call for the death of a sitting President.
Does the Republican Party have the power to kick out a candidate (not allow them to run as a Republican)?
Regardless of any potential (but not treasonous) wrong doing by Trump, Weld is an embarrassment.
Is Nancy chairing the Trump 2020 campaign? If this is accurate it sure looks that way.
Full speed ahead you wonderful Democrat morons!
While I don’t yet have a comfortable level of confidence in my working theory of the political antifragility that has been imposed on Mr. Trump by three years of non-stop, in our faces, impeachable, pseuo-events from the Democrat-Media complex, I do have high confidence in the idiocy of Speaker Pelosi and the leadership team around her. That confidence is bolstered every time she opens her mouth on camera…and this “inquiry” (and beyond) should ensure a whole lot of that.
It might surprise people to hear that I have a different point of view.
If I understand the timeline correctly, Mueller testified on July 24, 2019. His testimony was hardly the block-buster that Democrats had hoped for. The next day Trump made his phone call to new Ukranian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
I think that the supposition is that Trump felt that in dodging the Mueller Investigation, Trump became so cocky that he really stepped in it this time. https://www.thedailybeast.com/dodging-mueller-made-trump-cocky-enough-to-get-himself-impeached?ref=home
What will happen next? I suggest that Trump immediately release the tapes and let people come to their own conclusions. Trump says he is going to release the transcripts. I will believe that when I see them. Trump promised to release his taxes and he didn’t. Trump said that he planned to be interviewed by Mueller and that never happened.
In Watergate, after Nixon released the tapes, everything fell apart very, very quickly. Strong Nixon supporters suddenly deserted him. See the story about Republican Representative Charles Wiggins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc3AMbGvNs8
It’s like the email deal. Those were actual accounts of how the Clinton campaign was going to screw Bernie. This is the same deal where in a different age the discussion would be about how a sitting VP tried to work the system to benefit his son. We are FUBAR, OMGWTF and every other abbreviation for being f****d.
Gary, are you still considering voting for Joe Biden, and if so, how does his interactions with the Ukrainians while vice president, in getting a prosecutor fired who was looking into a company paying his son $50,000 a month, differ from Trump’s current dealings with the Ukrainians?
and this is the problem of taking too long to write a response on breaking news- multiple versions of my point already made
The wonder of impeachment proceedings in an election year. Or will they get it all done in 2019?
They need an inquiry to give them culpable deniability that they’re calling for impeachment.
A show trial in hopes that people will rally and if they don’t, well they shouldn’t be punished at the ballot box, it was just an inquiry to impeach.
I think that there is a strong argument that the two scenarios are opposite each other. https://thebulwark.com/truth-lies-and-the-nonsense-trump-biden-ukraine-false-equivalency/ Its bottom line is as follows:
(1) Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, did take consulting work for a Ukrainian oil company, Burisma, that was under investigation by a Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, for the work under the prior Russian-allied regime. This is where the true part of the Trump disinformation comes to an end.
(2) The problem was that Shokin actively stood in the way of international investigations that the U.S. and other democratic reformers were pursuing.
(3) Vice President Biden, U.S. diplomats, and our E.U. allies all called on the prosecutor to be fired so the corrupt oligarchs could be investigated MORE AGGRESSIVELY. This includes the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine calling out by name Mykola Zlochevsky, the oligarch who ran the company Hunter Biden worked for, as someone this prosecutor was letting off the hook.
(4) Donald Trump was allegedly pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate a domestic political foe on a bogus conspiracy for personal gain. Joe Biden was pressuring the Ukrainian government to root out corruption in their own country and bring about democratic reforms.
(5) For the kids in the back:
PRESSURING A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT TO INTERFERE ON YOUR BEHALF IN DOMESTIC ELECTIONS = VERY BAD.
PRESSURING A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT TO INVESTIGATE CROOKS = GOOD.
I think it is important to note that there 170 members of the House that have stated that they support impeachment or “are open to it”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/impeach-trump-tracker-representives-calling-for-impeachment-inquiry-democrats-independents-republicans-house/
Not sure how many are in the fully support group and how many are just willing to talk about it.
This could be much ado about nothing. They are 48 members short of a majority vote. IF the transcripts show this to be making a mountain out of a mole hill, then this will go exactly no where.
If the Democrats were smart, they would focus on a laser beam about just this one issue and not all of the rest of the stuff about Trump. They would send out a subpoena for the tape, go to court if it isn’t produced, and then go through the Federal Courts asap. If you will recall, Nixon didn’t want to release the Watergate tapes but wanted to give transcripts instead. Nixon lost before the Supreme Court in a 8-0 vote.
I don’t think that the Democrats are that smart. I think that they will want to throw in the kitchen sink. But the kitchen sink didn’t get traction after the Mueller Report came out.
Trump says he will release the transcript.
Trump also said that he would release his taxes after the audit was over.
Trump also said that he wanted to be interviewed by Mueller.
I will believe it when I see it.
So you’re essentially willing to give Biden the benefit of the doubt here that he had no ulterior motives in pressuring the firing of Shokin, but not grant the same thing to Trump, pending release of the transcript? (and why would a Ukrainian company hire Hunter Biden at $50,000 a month?)