Acquitted

 

“A conviction would have also set the stage for a vote to bar him from serving in public office again.” The outcome leaves the populist forces in the field and the old GOP party in the dust.

Up next: the battle to define conservative politics as Biden faces a new world.

Donald Trump acquitted of incitement of insurrection in second Senate impeachment trial

The US Senate votes to acquit former president Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, with less than two thirds of senators finding him guilty of incitement of insurrection.

Republicans senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania all voted guilty.

The ancien regime needed a Blue Tsunami to effect a restoration. But they achieved a mild and perhaps doubtful electoral surf despite a maximum effort. The impeachment was a second chance at pursuit. Its failure means the populists will be back.

Trump and the Democratic leader’s age means a new cast of characters will be coming on for Season 2. The Blue failure to smash the populists means people are now refiguring the odds. Expect new political startups.

The reason why threats to go after Trump in court are pointless is because the Biden administration, like every incumbent, will soon be on the political defensive. New challenges are going to put Biden between the hard rock of the left and even more obdurate reality.

Victor Davis Hanson Discusses Impeachment and Leftist Goals During Biden Administration

“It’s like a public-shaming like the Communist Party used to make people wear dunce caps,” Hanson says.

In Mail-In Impeachment Vote, Senate Convicts Trump 8275 To 3

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a historic move, the U.S. Senate decided to switch to voting by mail for Trump's second impeachment trial. After all the votes were counted by an intern in a back room with no cameras, the Senate ruled to convict President Trump of incitement to violence by a vote of 8275 to 3.

"Our holy democracy has spoken," said Senator Chuck Schumer. "Do not ask any questions or you are a blasphemer against the sacred sacredness of our vote. Everyone can go home now!"

A couple of troublemaking Senators attempted to overthrow the Constitution by bringing up the point that there are only 100 Senators, making it impossible to arrive at a tally of 8275 to 3, but they were quickly removed from the Senate Chambers and condemned for "attempting to suppress the votes of people of color."

The Senate then moved on to other business, passing universal healthcare by a margin of 320,000 to 4. 

Take impeachment as seriously as Nadler takes a diet

Funeral marches are bad television.

On Wednesday, House leaders walked the impeachment papers to the Senate. And in case you may have missed that, on Thursday, House leaders again walked the impeachment papers to the Senate. It was the most exercise Jerry Nadler had since he heard rumors they were giving away free donuts at the House gym....

The redundant impeachment marches were walks of shame that reminded everyone of the failure of Mueller to pin anything related to Russian collusion by President Donald John Trump, his family, or his associates.

Democrats have been pushing an impeachment for 3 years with terrible television featuring ugly, smug, little people with a DMV attitude toward government service.

Trump's Lawyers Formally Answer Articles of Impeachment

The president's legal counsel formally responded to the two articles of impeachment leveled against the president, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The deadline for House Democrats to file their trial brief was 5 p.m EST on Saturday. The president's answer to the two articles was due just an hour later. ..
"The articles of impeachment submitted by House Democrats are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president," ..."This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months away. This highly partisan and reckless obsession with impeaching the president began even before his election and continues to this day."

Trump's counsel argued the impeachment articles are "constitutionally invalid on their face" and are the result of a "lawless" House inquiry that violated basic principles of fairness and due process.

"The Articles of Impeachment now before the Senate are an affront to the Constitution of the United States, our democratic institutions, and the American people. The Articles themselves -- and the rigged process that brought them here -- are a transparent political act by House Democrats. They debase the grave power of impeachment and the solemn responsibility that power entails. They must be rejected."

...
"In order to preserve our constitutional structure of government, to reject the poisonous partisanship that the Framers warned against, to ensure one-party political impeachment vendettas do not become the 'new normal,' and to vindicate the will of the American people, the Senate must reject both Articles of Impeachment. In the end, this entire process is nothing more than a dangerous attack on the American people themselves and their fundamental right to vote."

House Dems attend Trump's holiday party amid impeachment

See who attended.

Instapundit: "Bad ratings for the Schiff Show"

Quinnipiac: Opposition to impeachment and removal reaches 51%, highest number since September

Yuriy Lutsenko says Yovanovitch perjured herself before Congress

Ukraine President Zelensky Says (Again) There Was No Quid Pro Quo

Who are you gonna believe, the guy on the other end of the call or the Slimeball Media and the corrupt Democrats?

Once again, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied again that President Trump withheld military aid in order to pressure him to investigate the Bidens or Ukrainian election interference.

Sondland And The Quid Pro Quo That Wasn’t

.@RepAdamSchiff, I believe this is what you call a “checkmate." After hearing this, Ambassador Sondland shouldn't have any problem making his plane. Watch and share! https://t.co/x1eMmJAnh0

— Brian Babin (@RepBrianBabin) November 20, 2019

“Participation Trophy” Crisis

It occurs to me that out of all the sources of misery we experience lately, there is a pattern of surprise, of lots of build-up before a payoff that falls short, and then a frenzy of scapegoating afterward. And this is all done by creative persons and creative groups who didn’t expect the disappointment, in fact who apparently hadn’t even factored in failure as a possibility. They weren’t particularly stupid or incompetent — they just never seriously considered that their delivery could bomb. That they’d ever be sent back to the drawing board. That there’d ever be a moment of judging or assessment at all. Their attitude seems to be “I worked really hard on this, so, ya know…uh, here. Now where’s my bonus?”

The Democrats want to define Trump being president as a high crime and misdemeanor

That pretty much sums it up.

I think the outrage the left feels towards Trump boils down to two main issues. The first is that he’s president at all, and does what presidents do with all the attendant powers of a president. The second is that he is not afraid to use those powers in ways that stand to harm the Democrats and their interests and/or the Deep State and its interests.

They find this state of affairs unconscionable. So they redefine whatever Trump does that they don’t like and/or that may harm them politically as unacceptable, unprecedented, offensive, and even at times criminal.

And always, always impeachable.

Impeachment Hearings: New Whine in an Old Battle

The Diplomad

You saw Ambassador Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent all in a knot because the President had an "irregular" channel he used to conduct foreign policy in Ukraine. Wow! I didn't realize that we had elected Taylor and Kent!

Let me put it in nice simple terms so that the Swamp Beings will understand: The President sets and conducts foreign policy, not State, not the NSC, not the DOD, not any other alphabet agency. He does not have to go through State or NSC to conduct said policy; he does not have to consult with Kent or Taylor or anybody else on Ukraine or any other aspect of foreign policy.

All Presidents have used "irregular" channels going back at least to Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House. All have used messengers and negotiators outside the established bureaucracy for different diplomatic missions. There is nothing unusual or illegal or impeachable for doing this. The bureaucracy doesn't like it, so what?

The Impeachment Hearings Are the Beginning of the End

Never count your chickens before they hatch, but this sounds right.

When all of this impeachment hysteria has at last come to a close, when the last gasps of 2016 denial have finally subsided, Adam Schiff and the Democrats can attempt to answer the next great question: What have you been doing for the past three years? The impeachment distraction has provided a rather tenuous excuse for doing nothing else. Nothing in terms of working with the president. Prescription drugs, USMCA, and illegal immigration have sat undisturbed on the sidelines while they have recklessly pursued an undemocratic fantasy. The kickoff to an election season is probably the single worst time to have to answer for that. Beginning with the impeachment hearings the Democrats are in serious trouble, but they’re too deeply invested to turn back now. Any way forward, they lose.

Schiff Directing Witnesses Not To Answer GOP Questions

This tells you all you need to know about the fake impeachment hearings.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is overseeing the ongoing illegitimate impeachment inquiry set in motion by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is reportedly telling witnesses testifying not to answer questions asked by Republican lawmakers.

Trump's Vindication May Lead to Restoration of the Constitution

Via Instapundit

We thought the Mueller Report might bridge our lamentable partisan divide, since it found no evidence of the president’s purported collusion with Russia, but, weirdly, that report was spun to suggest a lack of presidential cooperation with that probe that was somehow the criminal act of obstruction of justice. Oddly, that notion dissipated quickly, and, before we knew it, we were in the current impeachment frenzy with the president accused of using the power of his office to intimidate a foreign leader into venally serving the president’s personal political ends.

The impeachment and removal effort, nakedly political as it is, is doomed to failure. This is because the president’s exercise of diplomatic relations is protected by the Constitution itself, and as even the great liberal criminal law scholar Alan Dershowitz has made clear, it cannot possibly amount to a high crime or misdemeanor. Moreover, the signs are now evident (from the fact that 50 Republican Senators have condemned the secretive and one-sided proceedings now underway in the House), that a Republican-controlled Senate will never vote by a two-third’s majority to remove Mr. Trump.

And, here's the Hail Mary pass

If the revelations of wrongdoing are as dramatic as expected, they just might shock Americans into realizing that the 2020 elections ought to be about returning this country to more honest, and, perhaps, more modest federal government, and restoring the original Constitutional doctrines of federalism and separation of powers.

One can only hope.

CrowdStrike and the Impeachment Frenzy

In his telephone conversation with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, President Trump requested Ukraine’s help in getting “to the bottom of” the Russian collusion narrative and the role of CrowdStrike, a private computer security company, in propagating that story. Lost in the volcanic eruption of faux outrage and condemnation aimed at the president by the Democrats and their wholly owned media subsidiary, this reference to CrowdStrike indicates that the Justice Department’s investigation of the counterintelligence operation against candidate and president-elect Trump may be hot on the trail of exposing what could well be a seminal lie that the Democratic National Committee’s computer server was hacked by Russian operatives. To understand why, consider the following:

On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release stolen computer files that pertained to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Two days later, CrowdStrike, which was working for the DNC, announced that it had detected Russian malware on the DNC’s computer server. The next day, a self-described Romanian hacker, Guccifer 2.0, claimed he was a WikiLeaks source and had hacked the DNC’s server. He then posted online DNC computer files that contained metadata that indicated Russian involvement in the hack.

On July 22, 2016, just days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks published approximately 20,000 DNC emails.

Much to the embarrassment of Hillary Clinton, the released files showed that the DNC had secretly collaborated with her campaign to promote her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination over that of Bernie Sanders. This caused the Clinton campaign serious political damage at the Democratic convention.

Well after the convention, Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s public relations chief, said in a March 2017 Washington Post essay that she worked assiduously during the nominating convention to “get the press to focus on … the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary.”

In their breathless coverage of the Russian hacking story, the media downplayed the very odd behavior of the DNC, the putative victim. For, when the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI learned of the hacking claim, they asked to examine the server.

But the DNC refused.

Why would the purported victim of a crime refuse to cooperate with law enforcement in solving that crime? Was it hiding something? Was it afraid the server’s contents would discredit the Russia-hacking story?

The answers to those questions began to emerge thanks to a July 2017 memorandum to President Trump by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), an organization of former CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, and military intelligence officers, technical experts, and analysts.

VIPS has a well-established record of debunking questionable intelligence assessments that have been slanted to serve political purposes. For example, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, VIPS courageously and correctly challenged the accuracy and veracity of the CIA’s intelligence estimates that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that he posed a threat to the United States. Similarly, VIPS has condemned the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on suspected terrorists. In short, VIPS can hardly be described as either a right-wing cabal or a group carrying water for the Republican Party.

In its analysis of the purported DNC hack, VIPS brought to bear the impressive talents of more than a dozen experienced, well-credentialed experts, including William Binney, a former NSA technical director and cofounder of the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center; Edward Loomis, former NSA technical director for the Office of Signals Processing; and Skip Folden, a former IBM information technology manager. As the French would say, these are l’hommes sérieux, as are the other computer-system designers, program architects, and analysts with whom they investigated the Clinton-DNC hack story.

As set forth in its memorandum, VIPS’ investigative findings were nothing short of stunning.

First, VIPS concluded that the DNC data were not hacked by the Russians or anyone else accessing the server over the internet. Instead, the data were downloaded by means of a thumb drive or similar portable storage device physically attached to the DNC server....

Who Does the Whistleblower Know?

Aside from the congratulations, it seems Trump asked Zelensky for two things: an investigation into Crowdstrike, the company that performed the forensic examination of the DNC servers in lieu of the FBI, and cooperation in investigating the Biden's — pere et fil's — involvement in the suspended prosecution of Ukrainian company Burisma, which employed Hunter Biden. This is what is supposed to have been "crazy" and "frightening" and left WB2 "visibly shaken."

Now, what could have been so emotionally charged in that call? The transcript seems relatively low-key: no shouting, no screaming, and if there were any threats they were phrased very diplomatically.

It seems to me — and this is just a plausible inference, I'm not asserting it's the truth — it seems to me that the only people who would be "visibly shaken" by that would be someone who already has guilty knowledge of Crowdstrike, Burisma, or both.

Now, look at the really just astonishing irregularity of the "impeachment inquiry": not just refusing to take it to the floor of the House, but the secrecy, the selective cherry-picking of releases, and the plan to prevent Republican members — not to mention the nation — from learning anything about either WB1 or WB2.

I think the most plausible inference is that the whistleblowers are connected to Biden's campaign, or to the DNC, and were shaken by the possibility of Biden and Crowdstrike being investigated because they know there is something there to be found.

Bingo! The most reasonable explanation of why anyone would have been "visibly shaken" by the phone call are those who are afraid that efforts to uncover facts about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and the Biden bribery would be devastating to the Democrats and Obama.

Recuse yourself!

Don’t senators running for POTUS have a conflict of interest regarding possible impeachment of an opponent?

Shouldn’t they recuse themselves if it came to the Senate?

Wouldn’t anyone so positioned against a defendant be barred from serving as a judge or jury in a court of law?

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) October 2, 2019

If Impeachment proceeds it will be because the FBI, CIA and DOJ conspired against the elected leader of the country

If, in the end, the House votes to impeach President Trump, the executive branch will have in effect impeached its titular head. The bureaucracies, especially the security services, will have revealed themselves as active players in determining their own leadership.

Think of the bureaucracy as the new Praetorian Guard.