I am done being wishy-washy. Impeach him. Now

[struggle4progress]

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
APRIL 24, 2019 02:11 AM
UPDATED 1 HOUR 54 MINUTES AGO

... A press secretary is not supposed to flat-out lie, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders admitted to Robert Mueller’s investigators that she did when she claimed “countless” members of the FBI told the White House they had lost confidence in Comey. Since the report’s release, Sanders has denied that her admission means what it means. In effect, she’s now lying about lying.

An attorney general — the people’s lawyer — is not supposed to act as defense counsel for the president as William Barr has at every step, from the misleading summary of Mueller’s report he released in March to giving the White House a sneak peek at Mueller’s findings, to defending Trump’s behavior on the excuse that he was “frustrated and angered.”

And a president is not supposed to ask an FBI director for personal loyalty, not supposed to pressure an FBI director to end an investigation, not supposed to fire an FBI director for refusing to do so, not supposed to intimidate witnesses, not supposed to ask aides to lie and commit dubious acts, not supposed to, in other words, behave like some low-rent Queens thug ...

https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article229614904.html

[struggle4progress]

1. Bad time to impeach? What history says.

By Aaron Blake
April 23 at 4:34 PM

... The limited history of impeachments suggests that this is something that could be dealt with and wrapped up in four months or less — well before any Democratic primary votes are cast and even before most of the primary debates. In some ways, if Democrats want to move past impeachment and focus on other things, one of the best ways might be to just get on with it.

The first president to be impeached was Andrew Johnson ... That’s three months and two days between impeachment and the trial’s conclusion.

The timeline for Clinton’s 1998-1999 impeachment was somewhat similar ... If you only cover the period between actual impeachment and acquittal, it’s less than two months ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/23/no-time-impeach-trump-history-disagrees/?utm_term=.7317a1cf803e

[struggle4progress]

2. Maxine Waters: We're going to have to impeach

... “Mueller kicked the impeachment ball to the Congress. The Constitution gives the responsibility to Congress to impeach an unfit president - 'high crimes and misdemeanors.' What more do we need?” ...

https://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/maxine-waters-we-re-going-to-have-to-impeach-1504538179642

[Stuart G]

16. It is only a question of time. "When to impeach?"...not..."If to impeach?"

[struggle4progress]

3. Hillary Clinton: Anyone but Trump would have been indicted

April 23, 2019, 4:26 PM EDT / Updated April 23, 2019, 8:24 PM EDT
By Allan Smith

Hillary Clinton believes the only thing that prevented President Donald Trump from being indicted as a result of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is the fact that he's president.

Clinton addressed the portion of Mueller's nearly 450-page report that dealt with whether Trump obstructed justice. She said that if "any other person ... engaged in those acts" described in the report, they "would certainly have been indicted."

But because of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel memo that states a sitting president cannot be indicted, Clinton said Mueller punted the issue to Congress — something she said Mueller made clear he was doing.

"If you read that part of the report, it could not be clearer," she said, adding, "But we do have checks and balances in America, and there is this thing called the Congress. I mean, you could not be more explicit than, 'Please, look at this, you might conclude that this does not rise to an impeachable offense, that's your job, but I'm giving this to you'" ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-congress-could-have-obligation-bring-impeachment-charges-n997746

[struggle4progress]

4. Hillary Clinton says Nancy Pelosi is 'right to be cautious' on impeaching Trump

By JORDYN PHELPS, BENJAMIN SIEGEL and KATHERINE FAULDERS
Apr 23, 2019, 7:06 PM ET

... Clinton, who is also a former senator, said Pelosi is “right to be cautious” about impeaching Trump, saying impeachment “shouldn’t be a preordained conclusion” based on “partisan political purposes.”

“The Mueller report is part of the beginning. Not the end. It’s the end of the beginning. There’s so much more we should know and act upon,” Clinton said during a moderated discussion with TIME on Tuesday ...

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-donald-trump-bit-concerned-impeachment/story?id=62554307

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

9. No time for caution... impeach the Obstructionist-in-Chief now!!

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!
Welcome to the revolution!!!

[struggle4progress]

5. 'We have very good reason' to impeach Trump, Kamala Harris says

BY ANDREW SHEELER
APRIL 23, 2019 03:49 PM, UPDATED APRIL 23, 2019 03:49 PM

... “I think we have very good reason to believe that there is an investigation that has been conducted which has produced evidence that tells us that this president and his administration engaged in obstruction of justice,” Harris said during that CNN event ...

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article229599629.html

[struggle4progress]

6. Pelosi: Dems may get to impeachment, but 'we're not there yet'

BY CRISTINA MARCOS - 04/23/19 05:20 PM EDT

... "I do believe that impeachment is one of the most divisive forces, paths that we could go down to in our country. But if the facts, the path of fact-finding takes us there, we have no choice. But we're not there yet," Pelosi said at the Time 100 Summit.

"It may be a place that the facts take us. We shouldn't impeach for a political reason, and we shouldn't not impeach for a political reason," Pelosi added ...

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/440295-pelosi-dems-may-get-to-impeachment-but-were-not-there-yet

[struggle4progress]

7. GOP congressman Peter King 'almost hopes' Democrats push for impeachment

BY JASON LEMON ON 4/23/19 AT 2:59 PM EDT

... “As a Republican, I almost hope the Democrats go ahead with this,” he said, “because I think it’s gonna explode on them, against them politically. As an American though, I think it’s bad for the country,” he added. “And I think there’s a number of Democrats who realize that it’s both bad for the country and bad for them” ...

https://www.newsweek.com/peter-king-impeachment-democrats-trump-fox-news-1404012

[struggle4progress]

8. Former Trump transition team member says it's time to impeach Trump

By Mike Moffitt, SFGATE Updated 12:21 pm PDT, Tuesday, April 23, 2019

A law professor who has worked on every Republican presidential transition team for the past 10 years — including Donald Trump's — is calling on Congress to impeach the president.

In a first-person article for The Atlantic, J.W. Verret of the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School said that after reading the Mueller report twice over the weekend, he concluded that "enough was enough."

Verret joined the Trump transition team in August 2016, but left two months later after it became apparent that the candidate's views on immigration, trade and financial regulation clashed with his own ...

https://www.seattlepi.com/politics/article/Former-Trump-transition-team-member-says-it-s-13788659.php

[struggle4progress]

10. Trump tweet about impeachment confuses political conclusions with legal ones

April 23, 2019, 2:33 PM EDT
By Steve Vladeck, professor at the University of Texas School of Law

It seems increasingly likely, notwithstanding (or perhaps because of) special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, that there will never be widespread agreement about whether President Donald Trump engaged in any criminal activity arising out of Russian interference in the 2016 election — and the subsequent investigation into that interference. Perhaps with that in mind, the tweeter-in-chief took to social media on Monday to declare that “Only high crimes and misdemeanors can lead to impeachment. There were no crimes by me (No Collusion, No Obstruction), so you can’t impeach.” Fortunately for the president, he’s not taking my constitutional law class. If he were, he’d be in serious danger of failing ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-tweet-about-impeachment-confuses-political-conclusions-legal-ones-ncna997641

[struggle4progress]

11. Lindsey Graham tells Trump to 'expect impeachment proceedings'

Dave Maclean

A senior Trump ally says he expects impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump - despite Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi attempting to steer party members away from the move.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, chair of the senate judiciary committee, made the prediction on Twitter on Tuesday morning.

He declared that the ‘radical left’ is now in charge of the Democratic Party, meaning attempts by House Speaker Ms Pelosi to avoid divisive impeachment proceedings will fail ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/lindsey-graham-trump-impeachment-twitter-today-a8882811.html

[struggle4progress]

12. Investigation is the new impeachment

By Philip Bump
April 23

Democrats like to point out that former president Barack Obama was the subject of repeated, ongoing investigations into the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. Whenever President Trump has complained about the investigations he faces, including, at times, suggesting they were somehow without precedent, the numerous probes of Benghazi are offered as a counterexample.

Those investigations, including the Select Committee on Benghazi that was formed in late December, were initiated in part out of concern about how the attacks had unfolded and in an effort to determine how similar events could be prevented. But the Republican members of Congress who launched them also understood the political value of holding Obama’s feet to the fire — as well as those of Hillary Clinton, Obama’s first secretary of state.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told Sean Hannity in October 2015, about a year before Clinton would appear as the Democratic nominee on the 2016 presidential ballot. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping” ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/23/investigation-is-new-impeachment/?utm_term=.b25739091896

[struggle4progress]

13. More Democrats making case for impeachment

By RYAN BORT

... Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) reinvigorated the prospect last Friday when she joined fellow presidential candidate Julián Castro in calling for the House to take action to remove the president from office. “The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty,” she wrote on Twitter. “That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States.”

Momentum continued to build over the weekend, with House Judiciary Chairman Committee Jerry Nadler (D-NY), House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) all said .. that they could be open to the idea. “History would smile upon us for standing up for the Constitution,” Cummings said when asked whether Senate Republicans striking down the effort to impeach Trump should be considered ...

Trump, meanwhile, is living on another planet ...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-trump-impeachment-825841/

[struggle4progress]

14. Trump Threatens to Get His Cousins If Democrats Keep Threatening Impeachment

Stephen A. Crockett Jr.
28 minutes ago

... the president is threatening to go to the Supreme Court, where he put Neil Gorsuch and Brett “I Like Beer” Kavanaugh, if Democrats look to impeach his lying, Russian-stuffed ass ...

Trump is worried Democrats are going to use the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to bounce his ass from the White House, but like cockroaches or family members who don’t know when they’ve overstayed their welcome, Trump won’t leave. For some reason, and possibly because Trump believes that he’s a dictator, he thinks that the Supreme Court is his personal court set to take up issues that annoy him ...

Basically, the Trump administration is corrupt AF ...

https://www.theroot.com/trump-threatens-to-get-his-cousins-if-democrats-keep-th-1834272770

[struggle4progress]

15. Threat to go to court over impeachment defies 1993 ruling

By The Associated Press
Updated April 24, 2019 12:22 PM

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he'll go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court "if the partisan Dems" ever try to impeach him.

But Trump's strategy could run into a roadblock: the high court itself, which said in 1993 that the framers of the U.S. Constitution didn't intend for the courts to have the power to review impeachment proceedings. The Supreme Court ruled that impeachment and removal from office is Congress' duty alone ...

Trump's threat to "head to the U.S. Supreme Court" would seem to face an uphill battle. In his 1993 opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that a federal judge's appeal of his impeachment was not reviewable by courts. He said the framers of the Constitution "did not intend for the courts to have the power to review impeachment proceedings" ...

https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/president-trump-court-threat-impeachment-1.30187744

[struggle4progress]

17. Trump on Democratic investigations: 'We're fighting all the subpoenas'

Amanda Holpuch in New York
Wed 24 Apr 2019 12.46 EDT

4m ago
12:46
Kaitlan Collins, a White House reporter for CNN, tweeted that a former Trump campaign aide, Michael Caputo, had a White House meeting with Trump today. She said Caputo hasn’t spoken with the president or been to the White House in two years ...

1h ago
11:34
Just before boarding the presidential helicopter, Marine One, Trump responded to questions about the Mueller report, proclaiming: “we’re fighting all the subpoenas” ...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/apr/24/trump-news-today-live-mueller-report-impeachment-2020-democrats-biden-latest-updates

[struggle4progress]

18. George W. Bush's top speechwriter is now calling for Trump's impeachment

After the Mueller report detailed President Trump's failure to take what Michael Gerson calls "a criminal plot by a hostile foreign government" to the FBI, the chief speechwriter for former President George W. Bush writes that "House leaders should lay the groundwork for impeachment." This move strays from politics' usual goals of "partisanship" and "endless fundraising," Gerson continues in his Monday op-ed for The Washington Post, but adds that this choice will "echo across the decades."

As Gerson describes in the Post, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report "shows that Trump and members of his campaign team were willing — actually, eager — to cooperate with Russian attempts to subvert a presidential election." Trump also "ordered subordinates to lie about their ties to the Russians," Gerson continues, going on to decry Attorney General William Barr for "provid[ing] cover for those deceptions." Yet Congress, Gerson writes, is "punting" its "responsibility" to hold Trump accountable for these actions. It's time for impeachment, Gerson finishes, because "the honor of the presidency now depends on the actions of Congress."

Gerson has previously authored Post op-eds saying Trump is a "Russian stooge" and a "danger to democracy" ...

https://theweek.com/speedreads/837268/george-w-bushs-speechwriter-now-calling-trumps-impeachment

[struggle4progress]

19. Making his own impeachment more likely

By Greg Sargent
April 24 at 10:14 AM

Nancy Pelosi has rebuffed pressure to initiate an impeachment inquiry by arguing that there are other means of holding President Trump accountable for his corruption and wrongdoing — a goal that the House speaker herself has cast as imperative for protecting our democracy.

“We all firmly agree that we should proceed down a path of finding the truth,” the House speaker recently wrote in a letter to House Democrats. “It is also important to know that the facts regarding holding the President accountable can be gained outside of impeachment hearings.”

... But what happens if the White House will not allow Congress to get access to the “facts” that are necessary to carry out the task of “holding the President accountable”? ...

... If the White House continues down this path, it will make it still harder for House Democrats to resist an impeachment inquiry. Because if they launch one, their legal case for doing things such as compelling McGahn’s testimony and getting Trump’s returns will get even stronger than it already is ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/24/how-trump-is-making-his-own-impeachment-more-likely/?utm_term=.0dcb3b080694

[struggle4progress]

20. Trump deserves impeachment, but failure would harm Constitution

Apr 24, 2019
by Michael Sean Winters

I was wrong. I thought that someone like Attorney General William Barr would not misrepresent the findings of the Mueller report on Russian meddling in the 2016 investigation. He did.

I was also wrong to think that Mueller's statement — repeated by Barr, that while his report did not exonerate President Trump of the charge of obstruction of justice, he was not recommending action one way or the other, but leaving that determination to the attorney general and Congress — was the result of the difficulty in proving intent, especially because the president so often behaves like a 4-year-old. The report clearly indicates that the president wanted to obstruct justice. His top aides were unwilling to act on his orders because doing so would have involved them in criminal activity. The lack of actual obstruction was the result of his aides acting on their own, ignoring the president.

I was not wrong to think that impeachment remains a bridge too far. The president's actions certainly warrant impeachment proceedings in the House and conviction in the Senate. But, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, is as indifferent to constitutional norms in his way as the president is in his. A failure to convict the president, despite ample evidence of lying and disregard for the law, would be seen as a vindication of the president.

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi said "He isn't worth it" in explaining her desire to avoid impeachment, it was to this reality that she was speaking. Trump has endangered so many democratic norms already. Whether the Democrats were to pursue impeachment or not, either decision will also devalue the impeachment process itself, even though it was designed precisely for situations like this. He isn't worth it. And, let history be as unkind to McConnell as it will be to Trump ...

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/trump-deserves-impeachment-failure-would-harm-constitution

[struggle4progress]

21. Packed room at a 'Need To Impeach' town hall meeting in Pleasanton CA

By Lisa Amin Gulezian
Wednesday, April 24th, 2019 2:49AM

PLEASANTON, Calif. (KGO) -- The word "impeachment" was passed around like a salad course at a town hall meeting in Pleasanton.

Activist billionaire Tom Steyer hosted the event, the same day he released a new television ad, where he says, "I'm Tom Steyer and we can't let this president destroy the public trust."

Tuesday night, he asked constituents to put pressure on Congress to act and move toward impeaching President Trump.

"Our goal is to put evidence in front of the American people so they can insist this corrupt President be brought to account and be removed from office as fast as possible" ...

https://abc7news.com/politics/packed-room-at-a-need-to-impeach-town-hall-meeting-in-pleasanton/5267657/

[struggle4progress]

22. Could Donald Trump be impeached?

Kadhim Shubber, Fan Fei and Niki Blasina 13 HOURS AGO

... Any attempt to remove Mr Trump would be a bitter, partisan affair, because the president has solidified the Republican base behind him.

So far, polls suggest the public has a limited appetite for removing Mr Trump through impeachment, despite his relative unpopularity. Recent polling has shown that around a third of voters support impeachment, while 48 per cent oppose it ...

https://www.ft.com/content/d39317d6-b51a-11e8-bbc3-ccd7de085ffe

[struggle4progress]

23. Democrats weigh principle against popularity

Apr 23, 2019 6:35 PM EDT

... Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif.: ... The point I tried to make to my colleagues is that, for months, we have heard some people say that there is this tremendous downside to initiating an impeachment process, that it would be bad for the country, that it would be politically unwise.

Now that we have received the Mueller report, and now that we know that the president of the United States is an unindicted co-conspirator known as Individual 1 in an illegal campaign finance conspiracy that extended into his presidency, just on what we already know, I think the burden has shifted to the downside of not acting.

The Constitution created our impeachment authority for exactly this kind of circumstance. And it's really damaging to the country and to our institutions if we punt on something like this ...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/on-impeachment-democrats-weigh-principle-against-popularity

[struggle4progress]

24. Republican who worked to impeach Nixon challenging Trump for the presidency

Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about his work on impeaching Richard Nixon and how it shapes his view of what's in the Mueller report as he prepares to challenge Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.
April 23, 2019
<video>
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/republican-who-worked-to-impeach-nixon-challenging-trump-for-the-presidency-1504967235915

[Poiuyt]

25. Nice collection of articles

Thank you!

[OnDoutside]

26. Rick Wilson makes a very valid point that should be understood by all those calling for impeachment.

Link to tweet