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Dueling Legal Experts
CBS had two legal analysts on their morning show, the question before them was: did the House do enough to move forward with impeachment?
The “conservative” on the panel was Kim Wehle of the Bulwark. She said in no uncertain terms that the Democrats had enough to move forward. That was basically all she had to add. No context, no pointing our the weakness, just remove Trump. So basically what you would expect from the Bulwark.
The other expert was Jonathan Turely. Mr. Turley is not a Republican and does not seem to particularly like Trump. He is not a guy who drank the Trump Kool-Aide and thinks Trump can do no wrong. He did not think that the Democrats did enough. This was the narrowest impeachment with the thinnest record. Every direct conversation before and after the whistleblower Trump said he did not want anything. He also points out that the rules change when the Senate is in charge. Hunter Biden might be the first witness called and this might end up being the trial that Trump wants.
He claims that whether it is on purpose or not this whole thing seems designed to fail.
When I heard that last bit that this was designed to fail, my first thought was that this was over the top. Why would the Democrats set this whole thing in motion knowing it would fail?
My next thought was, of course they had to know it would fail. To move the Senate they had to show a fair and open process. The treatment of the Republicans on the committee was enough to harden Republican opinions. Why would they set up this type of hyper-partisan hearing and limit Republican witnesses and questions and expect the Republican Senate would be ok with this?
I have no clue what the master plan is here, so maybe Mr. Turely is right. Maybe this was never designed to succeed.
Published in General
Maybe to raise the level of attention and knowledge about the Bidens dealings to knock Joe Biden out of the race?
Sure that could be a reason. But an awful lot of the run of the mill Democrats do not want Bernie or Warren to win. Those guys who voted for impeachment to move forward and are Democrats from Trump districts, are not looking to knock off the “centrist” to hand this to Warren.
If these swing districts are too turned off by Warren’s hard left views, these House members will loose their seats.
I agree, but that doesn’t equate to them supporting Biden and control of the House at present is in the hands of the radicals, led by the Squad. There is a struggle to find a candidate who could beat the President but so far it has failed. The real vote on impeachment has not happened yet so those swing district Democrats may yet say no.
That’s so weird, isn’t it?, regarding Kim Wehle’s reliance on a simple declaration of her interpretation. I don’t understand how it could be that a responsible adult could ignore observable reality and openly declare her wishes to be truth. No observations to relate, no chain of reason, just a simple declaration. What kind of pampered juvenile mind is that?
But it seems familiar, a ghost of a deja vu. I don’t recall where, but I might have encountered the same phenomenon elsewhere. Might have been just the other day. Where was that? Driving me crazy. I’ll go for a walk, maybe it’ll come back to me.
I am one who believes that Trump probably tried to do the worst of what he’s accused of trying to do – use the leverage of holding up aid to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into Burisma.
But I’ve got a running politics dialogue with a lefty friend of mine that’s been going on for nearly 20 years and I’ve been telling him since this started that the most amazing thing about it is the shockingly consistent pattern of strategic mistakes here on the part of Schiff and his cronies. A non-exhaustive list of the strategic mistakes they’ve made would include:
I have been and remain mystified about what they could possibly have been thinking. Maybe just that their friends in the media would provide enough air cover? Anyway, the thing seems to be going sideways on them already.
But they really have no choice but to proceed. Imagine the backlash from the base if they fail, now that they’ve started, to do the main thing their base elected them to do – impeach the president.
I won’t predict it but it is now possible to imagine – where it wasn’t before – Republican control of both chambers of Congress as well as the White House in 2020.
I doubt you’ll need to wait long. Maybe even on this very post.
I think that by “designed to fail”, Turley meant that the case is weak. There is no deeper motive or 8D going on. The clock was running out on the 119th Congress to impeach Trump and when the Meuller report was dude, the Dems used their only opportunity. It might still work. All the media is on the Dems side and Deep State is helping and there is bi-partisan effort to hide the corruption/kickbacks from international spending. I think they will settle for censure and declare victory and obstruction until the next election. It is a good political move.
Impeachment hearings have happened 2-3 times (depending on where you place Nixon) in the history of the Country. I would have thought that before announcing this would go forward, or having that first vote, they would have had a really clear plan.
This is the charge and these are the witnesses. They did not talk to a bunch of witness (whether Republican witnesses, Dem witnesses or neutral) and they have continually shifted the “charges”
I really would have expected better. I disagree with them but there are some intelligent Democrats.
I wonder what will happen with their base if they continue and totally fail to impeach. What I mean is that they not only don’t get Republican Senators on board, but also get the “general public” turned against impeachment. Will the base support them because they tried or abandon them because they are incompetent?
This is all about fund raising. Washington runs on loot. Without impeachment the money would dry up. And if the Democrats were to lose the House in 2020 they would likely have it back in 2022.
Is it a good political move?
The republicans running next year all get to ask that simple question, what has the Dem House done for you, to help your life?
The answer does not seem to exist. They have used all their capital on investigations and impeachments. They have made it much harder to reach a deal on any other issue with Trump and the Republican Senate.
Ok, that actually makes sense. I heard stories about how the DNC was not doing well with fund raising.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/11/dnc-falls-further-behind-gop-in-october/
Maybe this is just a cash grab. Succeeding or failing has more to do with the Bank Statement then with whether Trump is removed.
That’s reasonable. But they have surely damaged Biden. As a matter of fact, they have strengthened the effort to look more deeply into Ukraine corruption. I think Joe Biden, prior to the election that Hillary Clinton lost, may have essentially decided he was done with politics. There’s no Obama endorsement yet. The more visibility on Burisma and Ukraine corruption makes me wonder how Biden allowed his son and others in his circle to join that corruption unless he was thinking he was no longer involved in a Presidential contest.
I think they hoped to dirty Trump up enough to beat him next year. Nancy does not have control of her caucus. It’s the old story of “There goes the Mob. I am their leader, therefore I must follow them!”
The far left has now driven the party to be anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, anti-Economics, in favor of the suicidal “Green Nude Eel,” and other crazy positions, like gender fluidity.
To win a primary among these nuts, the candidates have to adopt extreme positions and hope they are forgotten in the general election. Nixon was hated by the left as much as Trump is but, against McGovern, he won 49 states. We’ll see.
I agree with the fund raising theory. The other unanticipated consequence of this hearing show is the reversal of the Chevron decision in the Supreme Court. Cleta Mitchell has a great column on that.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/22/impeachment-charade-proves-its-high-time-to-end-court-deference-to-biased-federal-agencies/
Remember she defended Tea Party members against the IRS attacks.
We have now witnessed House Democrats trotting out career federal employees who have apparently engaged in gripe sessions about President Trump’s conduct of foreign policy because they disagree with it. Somehow, the president’s views, described very clearly during the 2016 campaign, run afoul of the views of the smart people in the career ranks of the foreign service.
Before these hearings, most people had never heard of the “interagency consensus,” which is apparently the foreign policy position of the United States toward every country in the world that is agreed to by career federal personnel, notwithstanding the contrary views of the elected president of the United States.
This entire episode, and many more, should cause us to rethink certain legal principles related to federal employees that have governed us for decades.
In particular, the hearings provide ample grounds to overturn the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, in which the court articulated a principle that federal agency decisions should receive deference in federal litigation because of the “expertise” of the federal agency in matters involving the agency. Known popularly as Chevron deference, it presupposes that the agency and its employees are not only experts, but are philosophically neutral in the discharge of their duties.
What we’ve seen during the Rep. Adam Schiff hearings is that “experts” in federal agencies exhibit bias and political philosophies of their own. They are not neutral.
Powerful argument before a conservative Court.
Why should we accept Inspector General Horowitz’s finding of no such bias in the DoJ and FBI if there is such a consensus in place for foreign policy? Horowitz may just be part of the DoJ consensus, so much so that he can’t even see it. It’s not just Horowitz, he has an 500 person organization, mostly lawyers I presume.
In the beginning of this latest impeachment effort, I presumed that it was because Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sick, and Democrats were afraid that Trump might get to replace her with a less communist judge. They figured they could block a nomination from a president who was actively being investigated for impeachment. Or something.
Then she lived longer than expected, the election is coming up, and Democrats find themselves in an uncomfortable situation, holding an empty bag.
On the other hand, it may just be typical leftist rage from typical leftists. Maybe they’re not as smart as I give them credit for.
The left just accomplished another “own goal.”
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2019/11/25/boomerang-liberal-watchdog-group-publishes-foia-documents-target-giuliani-fail-realize-documents-detail-bidenukraine-corruption/
They got some documents they thought would embarrass Giuliani. Instead, it proved that the Ukraine thing is real and involves the Bidens.
“Mr Lutsenko stated that there was also a payment of $900,000 to Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC for consulting fees. Hunter Biden is a partner in Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC along with Devon Archer and the dates of this transaction are approximately anywhere from January to December 2015. According to Mr. Lutsenko the $900,000 invoice was for services rendered for lobbying by Joe Biden.”
The full release of documents from the State Department can be viewed on AmericanOversight.org here.
The Keystone Kops with another win.
How did you feel when Republicans failed to repeal and replace ObamaCare? Point being, I think bases on both sides expect results. I do not think miserable failure will help the Dems with their base.
I think you’re right, but they still could have done a more competent job of it. If I’m right, Trump handed them the club to beat him with. And they’ve made a mess of it.
Cato,
When your maxim ceases to be “Justice, Justice, ye shall pursue” and becomes “facts don’t matter only the narrative matters” it tends to distort all of your perceptions. They are just doing what got them to where they are. Did they care whether Kavanaugh’s accusers had a shred of credibility? Did they care whether the clumsy Russian trolls could have moved the American electorate a micron in the first place? Did they care that all of Trump’s policies massively damaged the Russian position both militarily and economically thus making the idea of Trump in league with Putin ridiculous?
Kicking up enough resentment and fear to get yourself elected can get you elected. However, when you actually need to start governing your complete lack of critical reasoning skills tends to be a handicap.
So it goes.
Regards,
Jim
I’m not sure it’s going to get them elected this time either. As with Kavanaugh, too many people see through the narrative. Not the base on the left certainly, but the all important center, seems to be seeing through this one.
Cato,
Agreed.
Regards,
Jim
I don’t think it was designed to fail. I think the Democratic Party is made up of dimwits. They are trying to accomplish something, although whatever it is has as much intelligence behind it as the Green New Deal.
Hence the quotation marks. . .
Jonathan Turley is always worth hearing from. He is not a fan of Trump’s but he always offers logical, well thought out opinions. The Bulwark never has anything worth paying attention to because it is always based on a never-Trump agenda.
The whole thing is designed to flip the Senate. They knew they will not beat Trump in the election but hope to hold the house and flip the Senate and then impeach.
As they say, when the facts don’t favor your election, pound the table. Voters fall for that stuff.
Wehle’s midset shows the situation the people at The Bulwark have created for themselves, in that their mission statement has become to oppose Trump at every turn. That means they can’t offer up an angstrom of criticism for Adam Schiff and his hearing, where Jonathan Turley can, even though his feelings about Trump are also strongly negative.
(The silliness of The Bulwark was also put on display today by Bill Kristol, who — to give him a small bit of credit here — has not deleted his most loopy tweets of the past 2 1/2 years. But it’s going to be fun to see him further explain the “True Conservatives for Warren” mindset behind this one:)
Bill Kristol must be smoking some good stuff.
I think they need to hurry up, impeach Trump, and kick him out. Just so the American people / Trump followers truly understand how much the rest of the country hates them. How much Democrat corruption is not only tolerated but celebrated, encouraged and protected.