The Impeachment Trial of President Donald J. Trump

Again, the current concern about the absence of witnesses and documents concerns the absence of witnesses and documents that the President specifically and completely barred from the House impeachment inquiry's review, and hence, if they are to factor into this impeachment/trial process, would have to appear in the Senate's trial. That means the current witnesses and documents issue has NOTHING to do with House managers (who are advocates, not witnesses) the President's counsel (who are advocates, not witnesses), reports filed with the House inquiry, video clips of House inquiry witnesses, or the Trump-Zelenskyy call read out (a document which itself says it's not a "transcript"). The current concern has ONLY to do with witnesses who were NOT allowed to appear before the House inquiry (John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney, for example) and documents the White House refused to turn over to the House.

In THAT sense - in the sense of the claim about witnesses and documents that is actually the subject of concern here - it is clearly NOT "a bold lie" to say there are no witnesses and documents in this trial. Were there witnesses and documents in the House inquiry? Yes. Did John Bolton or Mick Mulvaney testify before the House inquiry? No. Did the State and Defense Departments or the OMB release all relevant cables and emails to the House inquiry? No. Should those people testify in the Senate trial? Should those documents be released to the Senate trial? Yes... but only if you want to know the whole truth of what happened. My best guess is that you and your fellow Trumpsters, as well as most every GOP senator doesn't want to know WHOLE truth; you're satisfied with the partial truth you know now. Am I correct?

Based on what crime? What impeachable offense?

The adolescence of your vocabulary of objection never matures. I admire your rhetorical consistency.

Your post doesn't deal with the substance of my previous post, which was that taking the matter through the courts would very likely take months, perhaps years.

The president has openly and on White House grounds solicited Ukraine's and China's investigations into one of his chief political rivals. That's the solicitation of foreign interference in American elections, which is wrong and which reports the president's intention to cheat in the next election.

I'm crestfallen to say so, but you might be right about the electoral chances of our "current pool."

1. IF there were/are signs of corruption with the Bidens (though two Ukrainian investigations found no Biden wrongdoing in the matter) or any other U.S. citizen, the president should take the matter to the FBI - first choice - or some other authorized investigatory arm of the Department of Justice. The president should NOT send his personal attorney to lead the U.S.' "check" of purported corruption.
2. IF there were signs of corruption with the Bidens, the president should have sought MORE THAN MERELY AN ANNOUNCEMENT of a Ukrainian investigation of the Bidens. You have yet to address directly what I think is a central question in this matter: If Mr Trump was serious about possible corruption in the Bidens' actions, why did he only press for an announcement of an investigation? Why didn't he insist on an investigation itself?
3. More broadly, what was AT MINIMUM an appearance of a conflict of interest for the president to seek a foreign country's investigation of his potential opponent in the November election should have kept him away from taking any action on the matter himself (in law they call it recusal). It doesn't matter that he's the president. The fact that Biden was a potential rival and the fact that Mr Trump didn't take ANY action on the matter until AFTER Biden entered the race should have compelled him to recuse based solely on how he had to have known it would look for him to be asking for a probe on a potential opponent only after that opponent entered the race. He should have turned the matter over to the FBI. He didn't do that because those Ukraine efforts were never about justice or corruption. They were about trashing Biden on the sly, with foreign help solicited by non-state actors such as Giliani and Parnas.
4. I've asked you several questions in various posts on this matter that you have yet to address, my assumption is because you don't like the answers. But I will offer one of those questions here: Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board in April 2014 and left at the end of his term in April 2019. If Mr Trump was SO concerned about the corruption of Biden's actions, why didn't he say or do anything about it in 2017 or 2018? Why did he wait til April 2019, at the end of Biden's five year board term and after Hunter's dad, Joe, entered the presidential race, to express concern about that "corruption"? And why in July 2017 and May 2018 did Mr Trump's own Department of Defense certify Ukraine's compliance with the corruption fighting expectations tied to their receipt of defense aid?

No one - including the president himself - should get a pass on corruption. But Mr Trump's actions were not about corruption.

I agree.

Do you have any idea when your answers to the questions I posed to you in previous post will happen? Namely...

• If Mr Trump was serious about possible corruption in the Bidens' actions, why did he only press for an announcement of an investigation? Why didn't he insist on an investigation itself?
• If Mr Trump was SO concerned about the corruption of Biden's actions, why didn't he say or do anything about it in 2017 or 2018, since Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board in April 2014 and left in April 2019? Why did he wait til April 2019, at the end of Biden's five year board term and after Hunter's dad, Joe, entered the presidential race, to express concern about that "corruption"? And why in July 2017 and May 2018 did Mr Trump's own Department of Defense certify Ukraine's compliance with the corruption fighting expectations tied to their receipt of defense aid?

1. Where is the evidence that he only pressed for an announcement? The transcript shows something different.
2. Zelensky was a new president. New issues would be raised then. The old government apparently was already corrupt so you are going to ask them to investigate their own corruption? We saw how well that worked with the Obama admin didn't we?

The issue is intent. There is NO evidence that the president's intent in pressuring Ukraine or inviting China to conduct an investigation of the Bidens was to encourage those countries to clean up their domestic corruption. If Mr Trump had a concern for corruption in other governments, surely he would have made that clear in other public policy pronouncements, but he hasn't. His intent in pressuring Ukraine and inviting China to conduct investigations was solely to achieve political advantage. THAT made his requests solicitations of foreign interference in our elections. THAT made his actions corrupt.

Wolfgang, I ask you the question I posed to @reformed: If Mr Trump was so concerned about the "corruption" of Hunter Biden's seat on the Burisma board, why didn't he say or do anything about it in 2017 or 2018? Why was it only after Joe Biden entered the presidential race in April 2019 that Mr Trump said or did ANYTHING about the Biden "corruption"? And if it was Mr Trump's official government position that Ukraine should investigate its own corruption, why did he enlist his private attorney, Mr Giuliani, to lead the pressure campaign campaign, the private attorney who in a formal letter to the Ukrainian president made clear that he was acting NOT as a representative of the American government, but in his capacity as Mr Trump's private attorney?

You claim that Dr Epstein made his remarks "only a few days ago," but the fisheaters.com post to which you provided a link was created on July 19, 2019, six-plus months ago.

My general rule is that any "news" story that gets a lot attention from fringe partisan websites on either end of the political spectrum require additional scrutiny. When I reviewed Mr Epstein's testimony, such scrutiny bore fruit.

• He spoke of the potential electoral consequences of social media manipulation - Facebook, Google, etc. That's EXACTLY what the Russians did in 2016. To my review of his testimony, Dr Epstein did not deny Russian interference.
• He said it would have made a partisan electoral difference had Mark Zuckerberg sent out a "Go vote" message only to Democrats. Perhaps. But then he said Zuckerberg didn't do that! I agree there are serious issues related to social media companies' involvement in political campaigns. Russia proved the need for review of that involvement by its manipulation of false accounts, etc, in 2016. But it's rich to say "if something that didn't happen had happened, that would have been bad!" Yes, and if 5,000 people had been killed last week by invading Martians, THAT would have been bad too!
• Dr Epstein's star claim - that 2.6 million 2016 election votes were swayed due to search results manipulation - was based on his own 2017 paper on the voting habits of just 21 undecided voters (out of 95 total voters)! As THIS ARTICLE points out, Dr Epstein's is a minority view in the professional community.

I agree social media companies have significant issues to engage related to their presence in elections. Russian manipulation of those companies' services in 2016 is exhibit A in support of my view. Your claim that "meddling with US elections happens not via Russia, but is entirely domestic and homemade," however, is blatantly and inarguably false.

With all due respect, Wolfgang, it really doesn't matter whether you think so. As the Mueller report showed in painful detail, the fact is the Russians leveraged social media platforms to interfere in the 2016 election in support of Mr Trump's candidacy. The Russians didn't need to "[control] the technical means" behind Facebook. They used the services available to everyone to create and then leverage fake accounts. And that's not true because I happen to "think so." It's true because it's a fact.

Please quote for me from the video to help me understand how Dr Epstein knew Google WOULD HAVE INTERFERED in the election had they thought Clinton might have lost. I heard him talk about the company's confidence in her election chances, and I understand how Trumpsters seized on his words to distract from the truth of what happened in Russia's interference in the election, but I didn't hear Dr Epstein say how he knew they would have interfered had they thought she might lose.

And again, what he the doctor feared could have happened... didn't happen. That matters.

I suppose the Russians might have taken a few scattered actions in favor of Secretary Clinton, but I've never heard or read this interpretation of the report, one that is difficult to square with a critical conclusion found in the report's executive summary of its part I, on the Russian intervention:

But I am open to correction! Please quote from the report if you find support for the possibility you raise.

Correct. Mr. Trump has been acquitted forever. Now the only question for historians, future presidents, and every American citizen is whether it's worse to be impeached forever for having lied about a sexual affair - something people do every day in this country, sadly - or to be impeached forever for having abused your power by holding up vital foreign aid to an ally at war with one of our adversaries so as to solicit that ally's investigations into your domestic political rival, and for refusing the release of a SINGLE document or the testimony of EVEN ONE of the people in your White House who had first-hand information about your conduct - things only presidents of the United States can do.

No, my claim is not a "LIE," because the claim of my previous post was very clearly about the articles of impeachment:

The president was impeached for not complying with SUBPOENAED document requests. He was NOT impeached for releasing or not releasing the read out on the July 25 call, a document that was never subpoenaed but I presume is at least one of the "documents of first hand knowledge" to which you're referring.

But as always, I am open to correction! Prove your claim that I "LIED." Please identify the SPECIFIC document SUBPOENAS with which the White House complied. If my claim is a LIE, you will be able to name at least one. If you can't name at least one document subpoena the White House fulfilled, then perhaps your claim is a conservative partisan... well, you know.

The House subpoenaed John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney and others. They did not appear. To my knowledge and contrary to your claim, the president did NOT officially invoke a claim of executive privilege to stop White House people from testifying at the House impeachment inquiry. Instead, he directed them not to appear, and in court his attorneys made the remarkable claim of "absolute immunity," the absurd contention that Congress has no absolutely no investigatory authority when it comes to the White House. [As always, I am open to correction. I'll welcome the links you provide that prove your claim that president did officially claim the privilege to stop his people from testifying at the impeachment inquiry.] Even had he asserted the privilege, my understanding is that it must be asserted on a question-by-question basis. There is no such thing as blanket privilege that can keep a witness from appearing when subpoenaed.

I did not move the goal post at all. I simply pointed out to you, via a quotation from an earlier post, that my subject was and remains the actions for which the president was impeached. He was impeached for not complying with a single subpoena for documents or witnesses. Your reference to "documents of first-hand information" that had been released, therefore, was always irrelevant because none of those released documents had been subpoenaed, and therefore were not a subject of the second impeachment article.

You're correct that I didn't use the word "subpoena" in my original post, but, with all due respect, I didn't think I needed to given how well informed on these matters you have claimed to be. I assumed, it seems incorrectly, that you knew the second impeachment article concerned subpoenaed witnesses and documents.

How many of those other countries had their aid "paused" as Mr Trump asked them to launch investigation(s) of his domestic political rivals? Please be specific.

Yes, the aid was re-started... AFTER HE GOT CAUGHT! Only after the whistleblower account became known and Congress announced its intention to investigate did the aid resume, LONG after many in the president's inner circle pleaded with him to resume it.

And your argument that there was no announcement, so therefore the claim is a "non-starter" is without merit. If a would-be bank robber runs from the teller window after brandishing a gun and demanding money, but BEFORE receiving any money, do you claim that person is not guilty of a crime because he or she didn't actually get any money? It's the intent, not just the result, that matters here. Mr Trump INTENDED to pressure Ukrkaine into announcing investigations into his political rival. (New reporting today suggests Mr Giuliani even raised Biden investigations to President Zelenskyy's predecesor, but was rebuffed.) That fact has not been contradicted because it can't be contradicted. It's simply true.

What is this about? More witch hunting on the way?