I don’t have a great deal of time this morning but I want to post a few random observations about the impeachment inquiry. First, it is completely possible that the complaints that are being made about President Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky have merit and the impeachment inquiry is completely and utterly partisan and politically motivated. Indeed, given the personalities involved I would be very much surprised if that were not the case. Since I attempt to be fair at all times and I do not wish to be put in the position of defending Trump, I will concentrate on the politics rather than on the merits.
The calendar will not be the Democrats’ friend. If the inquiry is pushed through in a matter of weeks so as to put the hot potato in the Senate’s hands as quickly as possible, that will leave Mitch McConnell with a choice. Slow or fast? Imagine that he decides for slow. Of the 19 Democrats still seeking their party’s nomination for president, six are sitting senators. If they choose not to campaign while the trial is proceeding, a prolonged trial would put their campaigns in jeopardy. If they elect to campaign rather than participate in the trial, that calls into question the seriousness of the whole proceedings.
Update
I don’t think the House Democrats realize yet how much Adam Schiff has hurt their cause. His imagined phone conversation between Trump and Zelensky, characterized as “satire” by Rep. Schiff, has become canonical with some, is not supported by the transcript of the actual conversation, and demonstrates not only bias but animus. As such he is not a good standard-bearer.
Both President Trump and President Zelensky deny that a quid pro quo was involved which means that, by definition, there was no quid pro quo
Yes, I think the sad reality is “the merits” are subsumed by partisanship in almost all cases nowadays.
I am waiting to see how much coordination or direction occurred between the whistleblower and Schiff – now that they are preemptively leaking Schiff talked to the whistleblower before the complaint was filed.
Reminds me most of the Kavanaugh hearings and a bit of the Steele dossier. At first the reveal seems out of the blue; and then the more is known and that the reveal was planned for months.
Update of the update of the update –
So as Curious alludes to, and its not a leak, its the NYT’s reporting, despite repeated claims in various venues by Schiff that he, his staff and the intelligence committee did not have any access or knowledge of the so-called whistleblower’s assertions…………he lied.
Further, Devin Nunez has said that they got inklings in the days before this went viral that something was up, and then Democrats launched a tweet storm. Shorter: it was orchestrated.
Anyone who’s even trying just a little bit already knew Schiff is a bald faced liar. But if played correctly this is a gift to Trump. His temper may have him overplay his hand.
The Dems are already spinning that they only knew “the general outlines” of the whistleblowers claims. Bullshit. This person is supposedly CIA and knows what to do, and is trained to not deal in hearsay. They didn’t need to go to Adam Schiff, he of the never realized Russia, Russia, Russia secret evidence.
This stinks, and I for one am not in the least bit surprised.
This is getting very weird. If Rep. Schiff had heard from the “whistle-blower” what he or she was blowing the whistle on before the regulations were relaxed to cover secondhand information, is he or she covered by the change in the regulations?
“This is getting very weird. etc”
I wouldn’t overthink it. All this contortionist legal analysis and parsing of words misses the point. I’m sure people think I’m off base, but again, this has nothing to do with Biden, only superficially to do with Trump, other than dirtying him up. Its about the 2016 election and the Barr/Durham investigation. It will destroy Obama’s reputation, destroy HRC and potentially send CIA and FBI officials to jail.
And new on the scene, HRC is running. Oh, she’s running. Gratuitous comments about her marriage bravery. Hitting the talk circuit. She’s running. But it goes up in smoke if the 2016 election investigation takes her out. Its nuclear war on Trump and Barr. When do they start in on Durham?
From what little I’ve read so far, the whistleblower went to a staffer, who told him/her to get a lawyer and file an IG complaint. Which makes sense as the whistleblower report was written like a lawyerly piece of intelligence analysis.
I would be very surprised if the whistleblower gave the staffer any specifics because they would be classified and the whistleblower doesn’t have the authority to disclose them. Someone working in the IC would know that such an unauthorized disclosure would be illegal, career ending and also undercut their own credibility when it came to their allegations against the President.
One small comment; “The calendar will not be the Democrats’ friend”.
The key is which calendar. House Democrats incentive is to have impeachment before the primaries; but not so early that impeachment can go sour before those primaries ( whether its acquittal, Senate republicans investigating and poking holes all over — the key is Democrats lose control of the process once impeachment moves to the Senate).
Believe House Democrats when they say they are not looking at how impeachment affects the Presidential race.
The language in Schiff’s tweets prior to the filing of the whistleblower complaint show an uncanny resemblance to its wording. So uncanny that the only reasonable explanation is he either saw the complaint before it was filed or participated in its writing. Which so little resembles the actual words of the transcript that it is extremely unlikely that that transcript was leaked to them. They created a narrative and threw it against a barn wall thinking it would stick, sure that Trump like typical Republican politicians would hunker down, circle the wagons, and refuse to release the transcript, leaving the initiative to the Democrats. They still haven’t learned in almost three years that Trump not only isn’t a politician but doesn’t act like one, and think that because the MSM always covers for them that their flimsy narratives will be never questioned. It’s like watching Black Adder the First, always astounded that their cunning plans keep falling apart.
Tars is right, in that the Democrats were caught off guard when Trump released the transcript, almost immediately. To most, the conversation was far from sensational, once it was put out for public consumption. So, that’s why Schiff resorted to changing the wording (a rendition that was put out on social media) until he was challenged and had to reframe his opening statement as a face-saving â€parody.â€
Schiff, like Drew has said, is a long-standing liar. Here in CA, where I live, he and a republican (John Campbell) were featured together on a NPR show, giving their different perspectives on issues. Schiff would submit numbers and data points that Campbell never heard before. When his staff would check what Schiff had said it was discovered, over and over again, that he just made stuff up. Campbell eventually refused to be on that program with Schiff, finding it impossible to dialogue with someone who continually lied!
I don’t think much has changed with Schiff, except his image is everywhere, and his microphone now reaches a national audience, where he can do far more damage than just misleading Californians.