Having received his goose-stepping orders from criminal Resident Donald Trump, aka Fuhrer of the Republican Reich, Bought Bitch Midnight Moscow Mitch has released the Impeachment Rule he received from his Fuhrer’s lawyers. Thus, he issues the proclamation: “Enter the kangaroos!”
During the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, now one of the major new additions to Donald Trump’s legal team, argued that a president under investigation for criminal conduct must not be permitted to use governmental authority to embargo witnesses or hide the evidence against him. Starr’s arguments before Congress as a prosecutor decades ago apply directly to the upcoming Senate trial of Donald Trump, and the assiduous efforts of Mitch McConnell and his fellow GOP Senators to engineer a sham trial.
Start with McConnell, who for weeks has insisted that the Senate will “exactly” follow the procedures employed during the trial of Bill Clinton. Under those rules, the Senate formally admitted into evidence the entirety of the extremely comprehensive record assembled by Starr’s team, and then decided whether to call additional witnesses after the parties presented their opening arguments and answered questions from the legislators.
Given that Trump has schemed to withhold potentially key witnesses and evidence, leaving the record far from complete, following the “Clinton Rules” in the Trump case makes little sense. Furthermore, on the eve of the trial Monday, McConnell laid out his proposed rules, which do not follow a key provision of the Clinton procedures. Instead of automatically admitting the House’s materials into evidence, McConnell proposes that the Senate vote on which portions, if any, of the documents and testimony assembled by the House to admit. Under the McConnell Rules, which a Republican majority is near certain to pass, the Senate will literally be able to reach a verdict without admitting any of the materials incriminating the president into evidence. [emphasis added]
Inserted from <The Daily Beast>
This has me so upset, that I made a typo in the graphic. Here are three video clips to shed more light on this travesty.
Schumer calls on 4 GOP members to ‘resist McConnell’s cover-up’
Bernstein: ‘Midnight Mitch’ and Senate embracing coverup
McConnell’s Impeachment Rules Designed To Hide The Facts: Katyal
This may be the most important article I have published. Here’s the bottom line. The differences between this sham and the Clinton trial are as follows: The Clinton Trial admitted the entire House record at the outset. The Trump* travesty lets Republicans decide whether or not to admit the House record. In the Clinton Trial, Senators debated by the light of day. In the Trump* travesty, Senators will debate in the wee hours so voters don’t see what they are doing. Unlike the Clinton trial, the Trump* travesty is designed to prevent the prosecutors from presenting witnesses and documents. Unlike in the Clinton trial, the Trump* travesty gives Republicans the prerogative to vote for dismissal at any time.
On February 4, the criminal Resident Trump* is scheduled to give the State of the Union address. He is desperate for the opportunity to lie that he was “proven innocent”, which he is not, and will never be. Therefore Bought Bitch Midnight Moscow Mitch is in extreme cover-up mode.
This will put the onus on us to try to expose everything Republicans cover up. I’ll do my best to do my share. Please join me!
RESIST!!
14 Responses to “Enter the Kangaroos!”
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This action by the R’s is really over the top.
Making rules as they go along, and nothing is too bad to cover up for the likes of dt
& his treasonous horrible behavior. Nefarious creatures, all !!!
He (and they) make me ill. I join you in your exposing all that they R’s do.
Good post, Tom. Thx.
Australia is not to be blamed for the term “kangaroo court,” which is a home-grown American invention, hopping up in the 1840s and 1850s. It’s thought to have come from the image of itinerant judges of the time “hopping” around, and being less interested in justice than in clearing the docket so they could move on. It is nice to hear Senator Schumer display a spine, something he often leaves to Speaker Pelosi, I assume because the does it si well – as his face often shows when she is doing it.
Bernstein’s “Midnight Mitch” is a good one indeed. It’s also a good point that Clinton could (and did) focus on the doing the work of the job, and Orange Judas cannot.
Katyal’s point that American citizens are the primary victims of the scheduling of proceedings into the middle of the night is right on as far as it goes However, I can’t help but feel that a large number of American citizens are victims, not so much of a kangaroo court, but of their own incuriosity, cult beliefs, and willingness to be deceived.The investigative hearings in the House, the content of the Articles, and in particular the mountains of evidence which have come out ad are coming out even now, are available to the American people in videos and in transcripts and in articles for anyone who will spare a cursory look. But they will b=not reach, let alone convince, those who will not see. If you think there is a Senator of either party or no party who is not aware of the evidence, from direct sources or from staff research, I disagree. The fact that they are making up such far fetched excuses for it also shows that they know damned well what happened. How can they hide what cannot be hidden? They can’t. The best they can do (and they are determined to do it) s to avoid getting the truth into the official record. I don’t believe that their success, to the extent they succeed, can possibly be permanent. Perhaps I’m wrong – but if so, then we had better prepare for invasion.
Update (published approximately 11:25 am Pacific time)
Mitch McConnell blinks and dials back Senate rules on excluding evidence and midnight hearings
As squirrely as he is acting, though (and yes, I know today is National Squirrel Day), who knows.
I understand that the term”Kangaroo Court” is not of Oz’ invention, but I’m hoping that this court gets burned. Sorry.
No, there is no senator who does not know what evidence has been brought out, nor what Moscow M. is trying to do.
There was an attempt at hope published on Raw Story, I think, the other day. It proposed that even if asshole skates by freely, there is some history that indicates that that very injustice may, eventually, energize a movement to cleanse us of the Fascist right. The creation of the#BlackLivesMatter movement after the killing of Trayvon Martin, and the #MeToo movement, were offered as examples.
If there is no hell,may there be created one, just of Moscow Mitch and his cronies!
This is Not Happy-Trying to be positive Mitch, signing off.
I have read – possibly on Politics Plus – that, if the ass-kissers in the Senate refuse to allow impeachment to go forward, they will bring down on the GOP the wrath of pissed-off voters. If a failure to convict tRump leads to an election bloodbath in 2020, very few people will be surprised.
SOME UPDATES:
We won a couple of small, but not insignificant, victories today – possibly due to pressure from moderate republicans.
Rather than two days of 12-hours each, there will now be three days of 8-hours, for each side.
And the evidence from the House inquiry is being admitted without requiring a vote.
I think if McConnell prevails in preventing any and all new evidence and witnesses, it could come back to bite him.
There’s more than nine months before election, and look at how much additional information has come out since the House finished their Impeachment inquiry, but Pelosi held onto the Articles for a few weeks.
And NONE of that new information has been helpful to *Rump – NONE of it!
You just know there’s going to be more info like that come or leak out over the next 9+ months, and NONE of it is going to be exculpatory for Donnie.
Since 70% of Americans WANT there to be witnesses and new evidence, if have republicans refuse – but then later have it drip-drip-drip out over the summer campaign months – that will NOT help them in difficult re-election battles (Collins and Gardner come immediately to mind).
Personally, I think there WILL be witnesses & new evidence admitted.
Apologies accepted on behalf of the 30+ wallabies (a small type of kangaroo) on my lot for the derogatory “kangaroo court”; they’ve assured me they would do a much better and fairer job than what Mitch & the Republicans make of it.
As JD and Nameless have already reported, Mitch has taken some of his most extreme measures back, though I think that was the whole purpose of it. By compromising just a little he can hold on to everything else and give the base the illusion and talking points that this is “not a sham”. And of course, everything else is blamed on the Democrats.
Surprised? Not at all. Angry? Not really. Hopeful? Not in the least, the outcome is carved in stone. That’s what I’ve been hearing newsreaders say in four different languages. The whole world knows what’s going on, except for Trump’s voters.
Great post. Appreciate your details and videos.
This whole impeachment deal is despicable with what the R’s are doing. Why on Earth do they not give a damn about the rights of country???
To know that they are covering up the no good bas*ard, makes me angry.
I pray that the Democrats can get through this and be able to provide new evidence and have witnesses.
So we can get tRump out NOW.
How many years have we been saying that McTurtle can not be trusted under any conditions? How many times did Harry Reid have his teeth handed to him by McTurtle? McTurtle aka Bought Bitch Moscow Mitch could never and should never be trusted. I knew, as I am sure you all knew, that Bought Bitch Moscow Mitch would never allow a fair and proper “trial”.
I agree with Lona — “By compromising just a little he can hold on to everything else and give the base the illusion and talking points that this is “not a sham”.” — It is all in the optics.
I also agree with Lona — “The whole world knows what’s going on, except for Trump’s voters.” Trump is on display for the whole world to gawk and laugh at him. He likes to see himself as a victim but the real victims are the American people.
Question: With John Roberts presiding over the “trial”, does he have any latitude as to the admissibility of evidence and witness testimony as would happen in a criminal court?
Roberts has no authority at all. In fact the last amendment Democrats proposed after midnight was to give the authority on whether to admit documents and witnesses to Roberts. Republicans voted it down in a strict party-line vote. If Roberts tried to assert himself, the outcome would still be up to a majority of Senators. Bought Bitch Midnight Moscow Mitch have the Republican majority goose-stepping in lock-step. The only issue that could come up is a tie vote in the Senate. There could be a Constitutional crisis between Roberts and Pence over who gets to break the tie.
I think Pence becomes a member of the Senate and gets a vote, and therefore if there’s a tie, it’s Roberts who must break it. Of course I could be wrong, but I read that somewhere.
There is a precedent. Chief Justice Salmon Chase in 1868 cast the tie-breaking vote in President Andrew Johnson‘s impeachment trial. That means it should be Roberts, but BBMMM would fight like hell to make it Putin’s Pence.
Thanks all. I think what happened is that Bought Bitch Midnight Moscow Mitch released the rules he got from the White House. They were such an obvious cover-up that vulnerable Republican Senators threatened to vote against the rules. He had to edit them to make the travesty a little less obvious.
Happy Hump Day! 🐪