ADAM SCHIFF

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Feinstein says she’s a maybe on acquitting Trump as his defense team ends impeachment arguments"


By Molly O'Toole, Jennifer Haberkorn and Eli Stokols, Los Angeles Times

28 JANUARY 2020

Just after President Trump’s defense lawyers ended arguments in their Senate trial Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein suggested she could vote to acquit him, despite serious concerns about his character.

“Nine months left to go, the people should judge."

"We are a republic, we are based on the will of the people — the people should judge,” Feinstein said Tuesday, after the president’s team finished a three-day presentation in his defense.


“That was my view and it still is my view.”

Still, she indicated that arguments in the trial about Trump’s character and fitness for office had left her undecided.

“What changed my opinion as this went on,” she said, is a realization that “impeachment isn’t about one offense."

"It’s really about the character and ability and physical and mental fitness of the individual to serve the people, not themselves.”

Asked whether she would ultimately vote to acquit, she demurred, saying, “We’re not finished.”

After those remarks were published, Feinstein issued a statement saying she had been misunderstood.

“Before the trial I said I’d keep an open mind."

"Now that both sides made their cases, it’s clear the president’s actions were wrong."

"He withheld vital foreign assistance for personal political gain."

"That can’t be allowed to stand.”

Feinstein’s original remark went further than any of her fellow Democrats in suggesting that she might vote for acquittal.

Several Democrats have not ruled out voting for acquittal.

But only two Democrats were considered truly up for grabs because of the strong support for Trump in their states: Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Doug Jones of Alabama.

Manchin told CNN on Saturday that Trump’s team did a “good job” in its initial arguments, “making me think about things.”

He said separately on Fox, “I am totally undecided.”

Feinstein’s comments came after final arguments from Trump lawyers in which they broadly dismissed the elephant in the Senate chamber: a leaked firsthand account from John Bolton, the former national security advisor, that the president directly tied aid to Ukraine to his demands for the country to investigate political rival Joe Biden.

Feinstein told reporters that her office had received roughly 125,000 letters in support of the impeachment last week, and about 30,000 against it.

“There is substantial weight to this,” she said, “and the question is: Is it enough to cast this vote?”

The revelation on Sunday from a draft manuscript of Bolton’s upcoming book, undercut the president’s defense and splintered Republicans, leaving a few of them calling for Bolton and other witnesses to testify.

GOP leaders have opposed calling witnesses, which would prolong the trial and introduce potentially damning testimony, upending White House and Senate Republicans’ plans for Trump’s quick acquittal.

The trial is heading into a crucial stage.

On Wednesday senators are planning to start their public questioning of both the defense team and the Democratic House impeachment managers, with key votes on whether to call witnesses.

The outcome of a vote on allowing witnesse, expected Friday, remained uncertain after a closed-door strategy session of Senate Republicans on Tuesday afternoon.

“No clear conclusions,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.).

After the Trump team initially sidestepped the Bolton reports in their arguments Monday, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow urged the Senate on Tuesday to ignore the recent reports.

Impeachment, Sekulow said, “is not a game of leaks and unsourced manuscripts."

"That is politics unfortunately.”

Alexander Hamilton, he continued, “put impeachment in the hands of this body, the Senate, precisely and specifically, to be above that fray.”

The Senate, Sekulow said, should “end the era of impeachment for good.”

Alan Dershowitz, a veteran defense attorney, was the only member of Trump’s 10-person team to mention Bolton’s name Monday, the first full day of the lawyers’ presentation.

While Trump has argued that his July 25 call with the Ukrainian president that prompted the impeachment inquiry was “perfect,” Dershowitz at one point suggested a different defense tack, arguing essentially, so what?

“Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense,” Dershowitz told the Senate in his first appearance at the trial.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) echoed that argument Tuesday, suggesting that even if Democrats could get the necessary four Republican votes for a majority in favor of subpoenaing Bolton or other witnesses, it wouldn’t make much of a difference given that the Republican-majority Senate will almost certainly vote to acquit the president.

“To me, it seems like the facts are largely undisputed; I don’t know what additional witnesses will tell us,” Cornyn said of Bolton.

“We know what the facts are, and the question is whether the facts meet the constitutional standard of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’”

Trump’s lawyers have continued to assert that Trump had “done nothing wrong” and was genuinely interested in combating corruption in Ukraine when he directed that nearly $400 million in security assistance and a White House meeting with its president be withheld as he pushed the new government to announce probes of Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company when his father was vice president.

The president’s lawyers have said that House Democrats didn’t provide any firsthand witnesses or direct evidence to prove their charges that Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate his potential rival in the 2020 presidential election and then obstructed Congress to cover it up.

Bolton, a combative conservative and a hawk on national security, declined a House invitation to testify but subsequently said he would do so at the Senate trial if subpoenaed.

However, the White House issued a blanket order blocking officials and documents, calling the impeachment process illegitimate.

The Bolton allegations have fractured the largely united front that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had maintained.

Several mostly moderate Republicans who’d been open to calling witnesses have now become more so.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) made an impassioned speech during a party lunch Monday arguing for Bolton to be called, leading to a direct attack from colleague Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.).

Afterward, Romney told reporters that “it’s increasingly likely” that there will be enough votes to subpoena Bolton.


Underscoring the chaos the Bolton report has unleashed, other once-resistant Republicans seemed to shift their position on witnesses.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the president’s closest allies in the Senate, initially opposed calls for any witnesses, whether the Bidens or Bolton.

He seemed to reverse himself Monday after the Bolton reports, and Tuesday he supported a proposal by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) that Bolton’s manuscript be made available for senators to read in a classified setting known as a SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.

The idea could be viewed as a way of getting Bolton’s information to the Senate without his public testimony.

Each senator would have “the opportunity to review the manuscript and make their own determination,” Graham tweeted.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate minority leader, rejected the proposal as “absurd.”

“It’s a book,” Schumer said of Bolton’s manuscript, which is set to publish in March.

“There’s no need for it to be read in the SCIF unless you want to hide something.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) questioned Bolton’s motivations for wanting to testify, and the timing of the leak.

“Democrats have spent a lot of time imagining what the president’s motives are,” Paul said.

“Someone ought to spend some time imaging what John Bolton’s motives are other than making millions of dollars to trash the president.”

And Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) quipped, “I’m sure Mr. Bolton would rather I’d bought the book.”

Other Republican senators indicated they’d continue taking their cue from the president’s team.

Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, pushed unproved theories that the Bidens engaged in corruption in Ukraine.

Kenneth W. Starr, the prosecutor whose four-year investigation ultimately led to the impeachment of Democratic President Clinton, claimed that the impeachment process itself is being abused for political ends.

As Trump’s defense team wrapped up, the war over witnesses is likely to be reflected in senators’ written questions to the president’s lawyers and the Democratic House managers.

They have up to 16 hours on Wednesday and Thursday for questions, which will go back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, to be read aloud by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Roberts said on Tuesday that lawyers on both sides should adhere to Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s guidelines in the Clinton trial of a five-minute cap on answers.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate minority whip, said he had whittled his nearly 30 questions down to nine.

Democratic leaders have collected draft questions to “avoid duplication and pick the ones in sequences that make sense in terms of delivering a message,” he said.

Schumer said Democrats’ questions would give House managers a chance to rebut the Trump lawyers’ claims.

Several questions are expected about Bolton, with Republicans focusing on why the House didn’t push harder to get his testimony.

Both Republicans and Democrats have also suggested they have questions about Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who was central to the dealings in Ukraine.

“I want to confirm that Rudy Giuliani was working personally for the president and not on behalf of the United States of America,” said Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.)

Manchin has said he would also like to hear from Trump’s White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, based on testimony during the House impeachment investigation about his dealings with Trump on Ukraine policy.

It remains unclear what sort of agreement Republicans and Democrats could reach on calling witnesses, with additional testimony carrying risks for both sides.

Many Republicans have said they would agree to calling Bolton only if the Bidens are also subpoenaed, while Democrats say they won’t be any part of any such “trade,” because the Bidens are irrelevant to the charges against Trump.

“I’ll make a prediction: [There will] be 51 Republican votes to call Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the whistleblower,” Graham warned.

“If people want witnesses, we’re going to get a lot of witnesses.”

Durbin called the idea of bargaining over testimony — “‘Well, we’ll give you one material witness for one relevant witness’” — “baloney.”

Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.) said that agreeing to call Biden in exchange for Bolton would make Democrats “complicit” in Trump’s original scheme to smear Biden.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) argued Tuesday morning against any witnesses.

“When you open the door a little you’ll never satiate the appetite that House managers have for witnesses,” Cramer said.

“It’s as though they want to go fishing in the United States Senate and they’re going to fish until they catch one.”


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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR January 29, 2020 at 11:09 am

Paul Plante says:

And yes, as an American citizen, I say that Jack Bolton, the author of the tell-all coffee table book full of salacious gossip Jack has picked up in his years of being a political hanger-on in Washington that has brought Jack back into the political spotlight from the obscurity he was cast into on his ignominious exit from the White House, and good riddance, SHOULD BE called as a witness in Trump’s impeachment trial, and he should be asked this series of questions:

Question No. 1: Acting on the assumption that what you thought you heard the president say about aid to Ukraine might be in some way true, given that the United States Constitution as written gives the president considerable discretion when it comes to foreign military aid (“The conduct of the foreign relations of our government is committed by the Constitution to the executive and legislative [branches] . . . and the propriety of what may be done in the exercise of this political power is not subject to judicial inquiry or decision.” Oetjen v. Cent. Leather Co., 246 U.S. 297, 302, 38 S. Ct. 309, 62 L. Ed. 726 (1918)), in what way do you think the president’s alleged actions violated the provisions of the United States Constitution which give the president of the United States of America this discretion?

Question No. 2: As the national security advisor, what discretion did the United States Constitution give you over foreign policy and foreign military aid?

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

"Trump trial gets more pointed with Bolton book at the center"


By LISA MASCARO, ERIC TUCKER and ZEKE MILLER, Associated Press

29 JANUARY 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's impeachment trial shifted swiftly to pointed, back-and-forth questioning Wednesday as Republicans strained to contain the fallout over John Bolton's forthcoming book, which threatens their hopes of ending the trial with a quick acquittal.

The day started simply enough.

Three Republican senators asked Trump’s legal team: If there was more than one motive for Trump’s conduct in Ukraine, as he pushed for political investigations of Joe Biden, should the Senate still consider the Biden pressure an abuse of power?

White House lawyer Pat Philbin responded there’s nothing wrong with the president acting on a personal as well as national interest.

He declared the charge against Trump “absurd.”

Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer sparked lively debate asking whether the Senate could really render a fair verdict without calling Bolton or acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to testify.

“There's no way to have a fair trial without witnesses," responded Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democrat leading the prosecution for the House.

“Don't wait for the book."

"Don't wait 'til March 17, when it is in black and white to find out the answer to your question,” Schiff told the Senate.


That publication date is now in doubt.

The White House on Wednesday released a letter to Bolton's attorney objecting to “significant amounts of classified information" in the manuscript, including at the top secret level.

Bolton and his attorney have insisted that the book does not contain any classified information.

The White House action could delay the book's publication if Bolton, who resigned last September — Trump says he was fired — is forced to revise his draft.

Wednesday's questions ping-ponged in a spirited hours-long debate, a last gasp at closing arguments from the House prosecutors and Trump's defense ahead of critical voting this week.

Fielding the written questions, Chief Justice John Roberts asked them of Trump's accusers and defenders.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell privately told senators he doesn't yet have the votes to brush back Democratic demands for witnesses now that revelations from Bolton have roiled the trial.

Republican ideas for dealing with Bolton and his book were fizzling almost as soon as they arose — among them, a witness “swap” with Democrats or issuing a subpoena for Bolton's manuscript.

GOP senators are sternly warned by party leaders that calling Bolton as a witness could entangle the trial in lengthy legal battles and delay Trump's expected acquittal.

Philbin made exactly that case in his response to Democrats' first question: “This institution will effectively be paralyzed for months on end,” he said.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Main tried to give fresh momentum to a one-for-one witness deal saying it's “very important that there be fairness, that each side be able to select a witness or two.”

But Democrats dismissed those offers, especially as Republicans want to draw Joe Biden's son, Hunter, deeper into the proceedings.

“It's irrelevant."

"It's a distraction,” said Schumer.

Bolton writes in a forthcoming book that Trump told him he wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until it helped with investigations into Democratic rival Joe Biden.

That assertion, if true, would undercut a key defense argument and go to the heart of one of the two articles of impeachment against the president.

“I think Bolton probably has something to offer us," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

She met privately Wednesday with McConnell.

Trump disagreed in a tweet Wednesday in which he complained that Bolton, after he left the White House, “goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book."

"All Classified National Security.”

The uncertainty about witnesses arises days before crucial votes on the issue.

In a Senate split 53-47 in favor of Republicans, at least four GOP senators must join all Democrats to reach the 51 votes required to call witnesses, decide whom to call or do nearly anything else in the trial.

Collins, Murkowski and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney signaled an interest in calling Bolton or other witnesses and questions and answers at times appeared directed directly at them.

One Democrat, the centrist Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said he wouldn't have a problem hearing from Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, but doubted it will happen.

Most Republican senators don't want to call Bolton and most Democrats would rather avoid dragging the Bidens further into the impeachment proceedings.

The Bidens were a focus of defense arguments though no evidence of wrongdoing has emerged.

One person watching from the sidelines Wednesday was Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who arrived at the Capitol saying, “I want to testify."

Parnas, who has turned over evidence for the proceedings, cannot enter the Senate with his court-ordered electronic-tracking device.

Protesters swarmed the Capitol complex throughout the day, many demanding a fair trial.

The two days set aside for questions, Wednesday and Thursday, also allow each side more time to win over any undecided senators pondering the witness issue. In the meantime, all will have the opportunity to grill both the House Democrats prosecuting the case and the Republican president's defense team.

Trump faces charges from Democrats that he abused his power like no other president, jeopardizing Ukraine and U.S.-Ukraine relations by using the military aid as leverage while the vulnerable ally battled Russia.

The second article of impeachment says Trump then obstructed the House probe in a way that threatened the nation's three-branch system of checks and balances.

Republican senators lobbed questions that furthered Trump’s team legal argument that the House presented a shoddy case and that the president's actions are well within his rights and do not rise to impeachable offense.

Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz wanted to know, Does it matter if there was a quid pro quo?

Trump’s celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz argued that every president believes his interest and the public interest combine, and such quid pro quo's made in one’s political interest are not necessarily corrupt.

“It cannot be impeachable if it's a mixed motive that combines personal interest and the public interest," Dershowitz told them.

Schiff's response mentioned one particular senator: He asked his audience to imagine what would have happened if then-President Barack Obama asked the Russians to dig up dirt on then-candidate Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee?

“All quid pro quos are fine?" Schiff asked.

The next president, he said, “can ask for an investigation of you.”

Far from trying to overturn the 2016 election as Trump's team argues, impeachment is needed to protect the 2020 election, Schiff argued.

The president's legal team tried to lock up its case Tuesday.

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow addressed the Bolton controversy head-on in closing arguments by dismissing the former national security adviser's manuscript as “inadmissible."

Democrats say Trump's refusal to allow administration officials to testify only reinforces that the White House is hiding evidence.

The White House has had Bolton's manuscript for about a month, but its release caught senators off guard.
___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR January 28, 2020 at 9:48 pm

Paul Plante says :

And talk about zany antics and positively bizarre plot twists to keep hold of our imaginations during this Democrat impeachment circus, these Hollywood script writers staging this whole show first had Adam Schiff saying in his most officious voice that the Trump defense team presented a weak case as to why the weak case against Trump was a really weak case, which I thought kind of interesting from an intellectual conundrum point of view, where the smarmy and unctuous Hollywood, California Democrat Adam Schiff seems to be saying that he won because even though his weak case was constructed out of cobwebs and dust with a glue distilled from pig **** as a binding agent to hold his house of cards together, the Trump lawyers failed to lay it totally flat, which makes Schiff a better lawyer than they are, which will be a fantastic line in the script when they get the movie version out, with Brad Pitt playing Adam Schiff in the starring role.

But for the best bizarre plot twist of the day, and I have to say it is a good one, the Hollywood scriptwriters provided us with this absolute gem in the Bloomberg story “Senators Question Lawyers Starting Wednesday: Impeachment Update” by Steven T. Dennis and Laura Litvan on 28 January 2020, to wit:

Democrat Joe Biden said GOP Senator Joni Ernst’s comments a day earlier show that Republicans are using the impeachment trial to harm his campaign for the presidential nomination.

“She spilled the beans,” Biden told reporters in Muscatine, Iowa.

“She just came out and flat said it.”

“You know the whole impeachment trial for Trump is just a political hit job to try to smear me because he is scared to death of running against me.”

end quotes

Now, isn’t that just great for a complete turn-around for the narrative here?

All this time, we thought that it was the Democrats who were impeaching Trump to help out goofy old Joe Biden’s chances in the 2020 presidential election, and now, what we are learning from Joe himself is that the Republicans are really the ones who rigged this whole impeachment trial, not Adam Schiff and the Democrats, who we thought were the ones who rigged the impeachment trial, so that they san use the impeachment trial to actually help Trump, by hurting Joe’s chances by smearing him, when we all thought the Democrats were using the impeachment trial to smear Trump.

Masterful script writing, people!

Some of the best bizarre twists and turns I have come across in a political intrigue suspense novel in a long, long time.

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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MARKETWATCH

"Schumer warns of reckoning for Republican senators who vote against witnesses in impeachment trial"


By Victor Reklaitis

Published: Jan 31, 2020 1:09 p.m. ET

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top Democrats on Friday slammed an upcoming vote that looks set to result in a quick end to President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

The New York lawmaker was responding to Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander’s announcement on Thursday night that he would not vote Friday to hear witnesses in the Senate trial.

“It’s deeply disturbing that on something of such importance to the future of our democracy, a few of my Republican colleagues announced last night they’d vote against hearing additional evidence,” Schumer said at a news conference.

“It’s clear where the American people stand on the issue."

"Republican senators who decide to go against the will of the people will have to reckon with it.”


Since Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, Alexander was seen as the key swing vote for or against calling witnesses.

“I would note that even in Sen. Alexander’s statement announcing his opposition to additional evidence, he said that it was proven that the president did what he was accused of,” Schumer added.

In announcing his decision late Thursday, Alexander said: “There is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense.”

“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation,” the retiring Tennessee lawmaker also said.

“But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.”

Even if the Senate somehow ends up voting for witnesses and documents later Friday, that’s widely expected only to prolong the trial, rather than lead to Trump’s ouster.

That helps explain why the stock market hasn’t reacted much to impeachment-related developments.

A two-thirds majority of the Senate — or 67 senators — must vote to convict the president to remove him from office.

On Friday, Schumer aimed to portray the trial as bogus unless it involves witnesses such as John Bolton, the former national security adviser.

“If my Republican colleagues refuse to consider witnesses and documents in this trial, the president’s acquittal will be meaningless, because it will be the result of a sham trial,” the New York Democrat said.

Democratic lawmakers’ push to remove Trump from office has centered on his pressure on Ukraine’s president to announce investigations into Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son, as well as into an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.

Trump, charged with both abuse of power and obstructing Congress, has frequently criticized Democrats’ efforts, saying in a fiery December letter that “more due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.”

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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thelivyjr wrote: Fri Jan 31, 2020 1:40 p U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report


The report is the culmination of an investigation that began in September 2019 and intensified over the past three months as new revelations and evidence of the President’s misconduct towards Ukraine emerged.

Sustained by the tireless work of more than three dozen dedicated staff across the three Committees, we issued dozens of subpoenas for documents and testimony and took more than 100 hours of deposition testimony from 17 witnesses.

To provide the American people the opportunity to learn and evaluate the facts themselves, the Intelligence Committee held seven public hearings with 12 witnesses — including three requested by the Republican Minority — that totaled more than 30 hours.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Republicans Block Impeachment Witnesses, Clearing Path for Trump Acquittal"


Michael D. Shear and Nicholas Fandos

1 FEBRUARY 2020

WASHINGTON — The Senate brought President Trump to the brink of acquittal on Friday of charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress, as Republicans voted to block consideration of new witnesses and documents in his impeachment trial and shut down a final push by Democrats to bolster their case for the president’s removal.

In a nearly party-line vote after a bitter debate, Democrats failed to win support from the four Republicans they needed.

With Mr. Trump’s acquittal virtually certain, the president’s allies rallied to his defense, though some conceded he was guilty of the central allegations against him.

The Democrats’ push for more witnesses and documents failed 49 to 51, with only two Republicans, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, joining Democrats in favor.

A vote on the verdict is planned for Wednesday.

As they approached the final stage of the third presidential impeachment proceeding in United States history, Democrats condemned the witness vote and said it would render Mr. Trump’s trial illegitimate and his acquittal meaningless.

“America will remember this day, unfortunately, where the Senate did not live up to its responsibilities, when the Senate turned away from truth and went along with a sham trial,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.

“If the president is acquitted, with no witnesses, no documents, the acquittal will have no value because Americans will know that this trial was not a real trial.”


Even as they prepared to vote against removing him, several Republicans challenged Mr. Trump’s repeated assertions that he had done nothing wrong, saying they believed he had committed the main offense of which he was accused: withholding nearly $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats.

Still, those Republicans said, they were unwilling to remove a president fewer than 10 months before he is to face voters.

“If you are persuaded that he did it, why do you need more witnesses?” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, a critical swing vote on the issue whose late decision to oppose considering new evidence all but sealed Mr. Trump’s swift acquittal.

“The country is not going to accept being told that they can’t elect the president they want to elect in the week the election starts by a majority for a merely inappropriate telephone call or action.”


“You don’t apply capital punishment for every offense,” Mr. Alexander added.

The vote signaled the end of a saga that has consumed Washington and threatened Mr. Trump’s hold on the presidency for the past five months, since the emergence in September of an anonymous whistle-blower complaint accusing him of using the levers of government to push Ukraine to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election.

Senators recessed the trial for the weekend and will return Monday for closing arguments, with a vote on the verdict on Wednesday.

The timetable will rob Mr. Trump of the opportunity to use his State of the Union address scheduled for Tuesday night to boast about his acquittal, a prospect he has relished for several weeks.

Instead, he will become the second president to deliver the speech during his own impeachment trial.

The senators adopted the plan by a partisan vote on Friday night, but only after Democrats tried once last time to subpoena four administration officials, including the former national security adviser John R. Bolton, and a collection of documents relevant to the case.

At the White House, Mr. Trump raged against a process he has dismissed from the start as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax,” preparing to make Democratic attempts to remove him a centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

“No matter what you give to the Democrats, in the end, they will NEVER be satisfied,” the president wrote on Twitter.

“In the House, they gave us NOTHING!”

The outcome of the final vote was not in doubt.

It would take a two-thirds majority — 67 senators — to convict Mr. Trump and remove him from office.

The president has insisted that he did nothing wrong, calling a July telephone conversation in which he asked the president of Ukraine to investigate his political rivals “perfect” and the impeachment inquiry a “sham.”

For months, he has demanded that his allies deliver nothing less than an absolute defense of his actions.

But while they were poised to acquit him, several Republicans offered words of criticism, instead.

Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said that “some of the president’s actions in this case — including asking a foreign country to investigate a potential political opponent and the delay of aid to Ukraine — were wrong and inappropriate.”

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who challenged Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016, suggested that he did not necessarily consider the president innocent, either.

“Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a president from office,” he said.

“I will not vote to remove the president because doing so would inflict extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to our already divided nation.”

Not every Republican senator thought Mr. Trump acted improperly.

“For three-plus years, Democrats have been trying to parse every one of his words, add their traditional view and find themselves often perplexed,” said Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota.

“Part of the problem is that most of America likes the straight talk and occasionally forgives if he doesn’t say exactly the right thing.”

Reflecting the depth of the country’s divisions, both sides were already looking past the trial to begin framing the fight over Mr. Trump’s conduct ahead of the November election.

The first voting of the season is Monday in Iowa.

With the threat of conviction removed, Mr. Trump enters the election season as the first impeached president in modern history to face voters.

But his expected acquittal is also likely to leave the president emboldened.

He will argue that Democrats, unelected bureaucrats and the mainstream news media have targeted him because of their disdain for his supporters, and that his fight for political survival is theirs as well.

Democrats, too, planned to capitalize on the impeachment fight by urging voters to punish Republicans for refusing to demand a more thorough trial and for sticking with Mr. Trump despite evidence of his misdeeds.

But they faced the risks of a potential backlash.

After resisting impeachment for months, Speaker Nancy Pelosi embraced it amid revelations of Mr. Trump’s actions toward Ukraine last fall.

In doing so, she calculated that her party could not fail to act against a president whose actions it saw as clearly outrageous.

But she confronted what she knew to be an unmovable reality in the Senate, where Democrats were certain to fall far short of removing him.

Senate Republicans made a wager of their own that it was better to withstand the short-term criticisms rather than to allow the proceeding to stretch on and risking damaging revelations.

In doing so, they are strapping their political fate to that of a polarizing president who enjoys unparalleled loyalty among conservative voters.

The Republican victory was sealed on Friday just moments after the debate was gaveled open and Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, issued a statement saying that a vote for additional witnesses would only extend what she called a “partisan” impeachment.

Still, she lamented that the Senate trial had not been fair and that Congress had failed its obligation to the country.

Ms. Murkowski did not indicate how she would vote on the final articles of impeachment, which she denounced as “rushed and flawed.”

But she offered an unusually sharp rebuke of the institution in which she serves, appearing to cast blame on both parties and both chambers of Congress for letting excessive partisanship overtake a solemn responsibility.

“Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate,” she said.

“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,” Ms. Murkowski added.


Speaking from the well of the Senate before the vote, the Democratic House managers made a final, urgent appeal for additional witnesses during a two-hour presentation on Friday.

They warned senators that a refusal to hear new evidence would ensure that Mr. Trump would never be held accountable and would undermine the nation’s democratic order and the public’s faith in the institutions of government.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead House manager, seized on a New York Times report published in the hours before the vote to hammer home his point.

The article revealed that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Bolton last May to assist in his pressure campaign on Ukraine.

“The facts will come — out in all of their horror, they will come out,” Mr. Schiff said.

“The witnesses the president is concealing will tell their stories,” he added.

“And we will be asked why we didn’t want to hear that information when we had the chance."

"What answer shall we give if we do not pursue the truth now?”


Mr. Trump’s defense team vigorously argued the opposite view, telling senators they had all the evidence they needed to dismiss the charges before them, and warning that calling new witnesses would set a dangerous precedent by validating a rushed and incomplete case presented by the House.

“The Senate is not here to do the investigatory work that the House didn’t do,” said Patrick Philbin, a deputy White House counsel.

Reporting was contributed by Carl Hulse, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Catie Edmondson, Emily Cochrane and Patricia Mazzei.

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR January 28, 2020 at 9:48 pm

Paul Plante says :

And talk about zany antics and positively bizarre plot twists to keep hold of our imaginations during this Democrat impeachment circus, these Hollywood script writers staging this whole show first had Adam Schiff saying in his most officious voice that the Trump defense team presented a weak case as to why the weak case against Trump was a really weak case, which I thought kind of interesting from an intellectual conundrum point of view, where the smarmy and unctuous Hollywood, California Democrat Adam Schiff seems to be saying that he won because even though his weak case was constructed out of cobwebs and dust with a glue distilled from pig **** as a binding agent to hold his house of cards together, the Trump lawyers failed to lay it totally flat, which makes Schiff a better lawyer than they are, which will be a fantastic line in the script when they get the movie version out, with Brad Pitt playing Adam Schiff in the starring role.

But for the best bizarre plot twist of the day, and I have to say it is a good one, the Hollywood scriptwriters provided us with this absolute gem in the Bloomberg story “Senators Question Lawyers Starting Wednesday: Impeachment Update” by Steven T. Dennis and Laura Litvan on 28 January 2020, to wit:

Democrat Joe Biden said GOP Senator Joni Ernst’s comments a day earlier show that Republicans are using the impeachment trial to harm his campaign for the presidential nomination.

“She spilled the beans,” Biden told reporters in Muscatine, Iowa.

“She just came out and flat said it.”

“You know the whole impeachment trial for Trump is just a political hit job to try to smear me because he is scared to death of running against me.”

end quotes

Now, isn’t that just great for a complete turn-around for the narrative here?

All this time, we thought that it was the Democrats who were impeaching Trump to help out goofy old Joe Biden’s chances in the 2020 presidential election, and now, what we are learning from Joe himself is that the Republicans are really the ones who rigged this whole impeachment trial, not Adam Schiff and the Democrats, who we thought were the ones who rigged the impeachment trial, so that they can use the impeachment trial to actually help Trump, by hurting Joe’s chances by smearing him, when we all thought the Democrats were using the impeachment trial to smear Trump.

Masterful script writing, people!

Some of the best bizarre twists and turns I have come across in a political intrigue suspense novel in a long, long time.

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR January 30, 2020 at 7:39 pm

Paul Plante says :

With coffee-table book writer and salacious gossip-monger Jack Bolton now coming onto the scene here in a bid to convince the United States Senate and the American people that his superior in the Executive branch who was picked by the American people, like it or not, to be Jack’s superior, was not competent to be Jack’s superior, in Jack’s superior judgment, which should alone be grounds to convict and remove Trump from office in what would be a fair trial for Adam Schiff, Charley “Chuck” Schumer and the Democrats, this Schiff COLLOSSUS of an impeachment circus is now reminding me of the court-martial scene from out of the book The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk where Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, the captain of the destroyer minesweeper U.S.S. Caine, an obsolete warship converted from a World War I-era destroyer, has been relieved of duty by his crew of junior officers during a typhoon, which crew of junior officers had deemed the ship captain the Navy appointed over them to be too incompetent to handle and save the ship in that storm.

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR January 31, 2020 at 10:56 am

Paul Plante says :

And for those who like to think for themselves and have the back story to this IMPEACHMENT FARCE and CIRCUS COLLOSSUS from the pen of the smarmy and unctuous Disneyland, California Democrat Adam Schiff himself, in his official flowery impeachment language, it is as follows:

U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report


The impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.

As described in this executive summary and the report that follows, President Trump’s scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign.

The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.

During a July 25, 2019, call between President Trump and President Zelensky, President Zelensky expressed gratitude for U.S. military assistance.

President Trump immediately responded by asking President Zelensky to “do us a favor though” and openly pressed for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory.

In turn, President Zelensky assured President Trump that he would pursue the investigation and reiterated his interest in the White House meeting.

Although President Trump’s scheme intentionally bypassed many career personnel, it was undertaken with the knowledge and approval of senior Administration officials, including the President’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.

In fact, at a press conference weeks after public revelations about the scheme, Mr. Mulvaney publicly acknowledged that the President directly tied the hold on military aid to his desire to get Ukraine to conduct a political investigation, telling Americans to “get over it.”

President Trump and his senior officials may see nothing wrong with using the power of the Office of the President to pressure a foreign country to help the President’s reelection campaign.

Indeed, President Trump continues to encourage Ukraine and other foreign countries to engage in the same kind of election interference today.

However, the Founding Fathers prescribed a remedy for a chief executive who places his personal interests above those of the country: impeachment.

Accordingly, as part of the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in coordination with the Committees on Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs, were compelled to undertake a serious, sober, and expeditious investigation into whether the President’s misconduct warrants that remedy.

In response, President Trump engaged in an unprecedented campaign of obstruction of this impeachment inquiry.

Nevertheless, due in large measure to patriotic and courageous public servants who provided the Committees with direct evidence of the President’s actions, the Committees uncovered significant misconduct on the part of the President of the United States.

As required under House Resolution 660, the Intelligence Committee, in consultation with the Committees on Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs, has prepared this report to detail the evidence uncovered to date, which will now be transmitted to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration.

end quotes

Given all of that, especially the part about Trump “fearing” goofy old Joe Biden, who right now is trailing barmy Bernie Sanders in Iowa as of last night, and the multitude of words that follow in Adam’s prolix presentation above here, which does go on and on and on and on like this FARCE we have been getting battered with since January of 2019 when the Democrats made it clear that they thought the sitting president of the United States was in the words of an illustrious and very well-respected Democrat a “mother******” and they were going to find some kind of dirt from somewhere to impeach him with, which they have done, how the hell much more “evidence” and how many more “witnesses” do we have to endure before this STUPID SHOW being crafted by the best screenwriters Hollywood has to offer is finally over?

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Re: ADAM SCHIFF

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

"How Republicans Scotched the Idea of Impeachment Witnesses"


Michael C. Bender, Lindsay Wise, Siobhan Hughes, Rebecca Ballhaus

1 FEBRUARY 2020

WASHINGTON — At the White House on Sunday evening, as the phones started ringing nonstop and emails flooded in, President Trump took aim at the cause of the alarm: John Bolton, his former national security adviser.

Mr. Bolton’s recollection in his forthcoming book — that Mr. Trump had put a hold on Ukraine aid to press Kyiv to open an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden — had just leaked.


The information ran counter to a key Trump defense that he had held up the aid because of broad corruption concerns, and it turned up the heat on some Republicans to extend the trial by calling witnesses.

As White House aides scrambled to figure out how to respond, Mr. Trump recalled that Mr. Bolton once told him he wanted to be national security adviser because he worried he couldn’t win the Senate confirmation required for many other senior jobs.

“I should have seen that as a red flag,” Mr. Trump said, according to an aide in the room.

“But instead, I did the guy a favor, took him at his word that this was a good fit, and this is what he did to me?”

Mr. Bolton didn’t respond to a request to comment.

For the first time, Republican plans for a quick Senate impeachment trial were under threat of derailment.

The White House and GOP leadership in the Senate swung into a political good-cop, bad-cop routine to keep the trial on track for a fast acquittal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R. Ky.), aided by White House liaisons, exercised a behind-the-scenes campaign in the chamber to keep his members from panicking and breaking en masse from Mr. Trump.

Mr. McConnell’s office even advised the president’s legal team throughout the process on which arguments were important to be made on the floor to resonate with certain undecided senators.

Mr. Trump stayed largely on the sidelines, heeding advice he had received directly from Mr. McConnell to give fence-sitting Republican senators — who were wary both of crossing the president and appearing browbeaten by him — the space to make their own decisions.

But he engaged in some political saber-rattling with tweets about the need for a speedy trial resolution and criticism of Mr. Bolton, which was amplified by conservative allies in the media.

“Once he got over being p---ed about this whole thing,” an administration official said, “he could see the wisdom of sitting still and letting the Senate come to its conclusions.”

The strategy didn’t prove immediately effective.

In a private meeting at lunchtime Monday, Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) made an impassioned speech to his colleagues about the need to hear from Mr. Bolton.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) floated the possibility of bringing in Mr. Bolton and a witness who would appeal to Mr. Trump.

Mr. McConnell’s message to senators then was to stay calm and be patient.

He had framed the handling of the trial as a bigger threat to the party’s Senate majority than to the president, and stressed on Monday that there was plenty of time before senators would have to decide, people familiar with the matter said.

At the White House, Mr. Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the Oval Office, when asked about Mr. Bolton’s allegations, Mr. Trump said: “False.”

His lawyers, arguing his case in the Senate, made only brief mention of the issue.

That night, the consequences of crossing Mr. Trump started to come into focus for Republicans.

On his primetime Fox News show, Tucker Carlson called Mr. Bolton a snake.

Lou Dobbs, a host on Fox Business News, referred to Mr. Bolton as a “tool for the radical” Democrats.

By Tuesday, it was clear to Republicans in the White House and the Senate that Mr. Bolton’s account in his draft manuscript, first reported two days earlier by the New York Times, had to be more forcefully addressed, officials said.

White House officials spoke out against Mr. Bolton, as did Trump allies in the Senate.

Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.), who considers Mr. Bolton a close friend, patrolled the Senate hallways gripping a printout of talking points matching those pushed by the White House.

Other Republican senators bristled, however, unwilling to make a call on who might not be telling the truth between the president and Mr. Bolton, a prominent and longtime conservative in Washington.

On Tuesday afternoon, all 53 Republican senators gathered in an ornate room near the Capitol Rotunda.

Mr. McConnell was clutching a card — apparently a tally of Republican votes on the witness question — marked with “yeses,” “noes” and “maybes.”

He told them the vote count wasn’t where it needed to be, according to people familiar with the meeting, and struck an ominous tone, saying the future of the country and the Constitution were at stake.

People close to Mr. McConnell were struck by his intensity.

They felt that he had moved the needle.

The lone senator Mr. McConnell wasn’t focused on persuading at the meeting was Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who faces a tough re-election fight.

She had made it clear to the leader and her GOP colleagues from the beginning that she wanted a vote on witnesses and documents.

Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who face competitive races in the fall as well, also addressed their colleagues in the meeting.

Other GOP senators, including Mike Lee of Utah, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, all lawyers, made the legal case against witnesses.

Reports that the GOP had yet to secure the needed votes to prevent witnesses increased the tension and suggested for the first time that Mr. Trump’s trial could prove much longer — and potentially more volatile — than at any time since it began almost two weeks before.

Mr. McConnell kept up his cajoling on Wednesday, repeating his argument that the trial wasn’t just about the president, but about preserving the GOP Senate majority, and the sooner it ended the better.

He also said that adding witnesses would bog down the Senate in battles over executive privilege — the right of the president to prevent advisers from sharing some information — when the outcome of the trial wasn’t in doubt.

There were signs that the strategy was starting to tamp the momentum for witnesses.

Mr. McConnell met that morning with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who was one of the handful viewed as potentially in favor of calling witnesses.

“I’m not going to be discussing the witness situation right now,” she said afterward.

Mr. Toomey, who had earlier floated the idea of calling witnesses for both sides, shifted position, telling reporters he didn’t believe that new witnesses could change the outcome of the trial.

But the vote was “still uncertain” as of Wednesday evening, according to Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the GOP whip.

In the White House, the rapid-response communications team, led by Adam Kennedy, deputy communications director, unearthed video of an interview Mr. Bolton gave to Radio Free Europe in August before he left the national security post in which he described Mr. Trump’s interactions with Ukraine as “very warm and cordial” — suggesting it undermined his book excerpt.

Club for Growth, a conservative group that has aligned itself with Mr. Trump, aired a television ad attacking Mr. Romney for siding with Democrats on the need for more witnesses, and referring to Mr. Bolton as a “spotlight-seeking blowhard.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump strolled the halls of the West Wing.

“We’re doing good, I think,” he said in a brief exchange with The Wall Street Journal.

When asked about the vote for witnesses, he said: “Whatever it is, it is.”

By Thursday lunchtime, GOP support for witnesses was on a knife edge.

With Mr. Romney in favor, Ms. Collins a likely, two other GOP senators — Ms. Murkowski and Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — became pivotal.

With their 53-47 Senate majority, the Republicans could afford three defections, down to a 50-50 Senate vote, figuring Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wouldn’t use his power to intervene to break the tie.

At lunch with his colleagues that day, Mr. McConnell didn’t reveal where the vote tally stood.

Mr. Alexander, who is retiring, shook his head when asked afterward if he had made a decision.

“There’s been no clear declaration of who’s still stewing on it,” said Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana.

“It’s going to be very, very close.”

Mr. McConnell met with Mr. Alexander in the leader’s office at dinnertime on Thursday.

He had one tactical advantage in keeping the Tennessee senator onside: a half-century of friendship and Mr. Alexander’s rule of thumb to be upfront with the majority leader about whether he would vote against the party.

In the Senate chamber, Ms. Murkowski asked the White House legal team why the Senate shouldn’t call Mr. Bolton.

The lawyers responded that House Democrats could have subpoenaed Mr. Bolton, but chose not to.

House Democrats have said that Mr. Trump directed administration officials not to testify before the House.

An hour and a half later, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) had persuaded Ms. Murkowski to reframe the question, in effect asking: Even if Mr. Bolton’s account was accurate, would Mr. Trump’s actions amount to an impeachable offense?

Mr. Trump’s lawyers said late Thursday that it wouldn’t be.

It was a subtle signal that she might be leaning against the need to hear from Mr. Bolton or other witnesses.

Ms. Collins said Thursday evening that, as expected, she would vote for witnesses.

But later Mr. Alexander, while terming Mr. Trump’s actions on Ukraine inappropriate, said he saw no need for witnesses.

On Friday around lunchtime, Ms. Murkowski said she, too, saw no need for witnesses, effectively scotching the prospect.

Senators on Friday afternoon narrowly voted 51-49 not to have witnesses, the first impeachment trial in U.S. history to exclude them.

Write to Michael C. Bender at Mike.Bender@wsj.com, Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com, Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com and Rebecca Ballhaus at Rebecca.Ballhaus@wsj.com

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