Impeachment spotlight turns to key question: Whether to call witnesses
"Lev Parnas: 'President Trump Knew Exactly What Was Going On.' | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC"
Yovanovitch was being monitored? If there were honest brokers heading State and Justice this allegation would be being investigated.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is one of a handful of Republican senators who are pushing to hold a vote on whether to call witnesses later in the impeachment trial for President Trump. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
By Seung Min Kim, Elise Viebeck and Robert Costa Jan. 15, 2020 at 11:32 p.m. GMT+11
The impeachment trial of President Trump, expected to open in the Senate on Thursday, is shining an intense spotlight on a handful of Senate Republicans who hold the power to decide a key question: whether to call witnesses.
On one end, a group of influential swing GOP senators — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — are pushing to hold a vote on whether to call witnesses later in the proceedings. Democrats have vowed to exert pressure on the group to break with their party on witnesses and other issues, such as obtaining documents.
At the same time, the Senate’s right flank is increasingly making the case to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other GOP leaders for a more aggressive posture in defense of Trump. In a private meeting with McConnell on Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) argued that if Democrats press the case for potentially damaging witnesses — such as former national security adviser John Bolton — the GOP should insist on incendiary witnesses of their own, such as Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, according to two GOP officials familiar with the discussion.
In the meeting, which was also attended by Sens. John Cornyn (Tex.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), McConnell appeared receptive to Cruz’s pitch, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The discussions were first reported by Politico.
“We should hear the arguments, we should ask our questions, and then we should vote on whether we need additional evidence. And I think that’s a fair and impartial way to go about it,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), center, said Tuesday. (Gabriella Demczuk for The Washington Post)
McConnell was receptive to the idea since it could enable the GOP to frame their position as being both supportive of the president and open to witnesses, one of the officials said. Cruz then talked up the idea at a broader lunch of all GOP senators, the officials said, and received encouragement.
The push by Cruz — and McConnell’s willingness to embrace an aggressive posture just days before the trial is set to begin in earnest — shows how Senate Republicans are working to balance the party’s moderate wing, which has worked in recent weeks to shape GOP discussions over the trial, with its vocal conservative faction.
Cruz has long said Trump should be able to get the kind of witnesses he wants in a trial, while Democrats have balked at the prospect of having the Bidens or other GOP-sought witnesses testify, arguing that doing so would allow Trump to divert attention away from his own alleged wrongdoing. Trump prevented people with firsthand knowledge of his relations with Ukrainian officials from testifying during the impeachment inquiry in the House.
VIDEO - Schumer says impeachment trial must have witnesses Speaking to journalists on Jan. 14, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) insisted any impeachment trial of President Trump must have witnesses. (The Washington Post)
“People can express their own view if they’d like,” Romney said Tuesday. “I intend to be as impartial as the oath requires.”
Despite their role as potential swing GOP votes in a narrowly divided Senate, the group of moderates has yet to defect in any significant fashion from party leaders, who in turn have been willing to accommodate the group’s requests as Republicans finalize a measure that will set the parameters of the trial.
In a nod to the moderates, there is expected to be a provision guaranteeing a vote on whether the Senate could consider subpoenaing witnesses, according to two GOP officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the resolution has not been made public. Collins had indicated last week that she wanted to ensure senators will get to vote on the ability to call witnesses.
McConnell said Tuesday that both parties would get a say on witnesses, telling reporters: “I can’t imagine that only the witnesses that our Democratic colleagues would want to call would be called.”
GOP leaders are confident that once voting begins to set the scope of the trial — called an organizing resolution — that no Republicans will defect, with the moderates placated by a guaranteed decision on witnesses later.
That calculus could change once the Senate goes through the grind of opening arguments and a litany of questions, and if key GOP senators become dissatisfied that they hadn’t gotten enough information from the trial proceedings. Though the likes of Romney, Collins, Murkowski and Alexander have been the most closely watched, other endangered Republicans on the ballot this year — such as Sens. Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Martha McSally (Ariz.) — are also being scrutinized.
For weeks, Democrats have pushed for four current and former administration officials to testify, including Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Bolton, who could shed more light on whether Trump withheld military aid and a White House visit from Ukraine to force its president to investigate his political rivals, said last week that he would be willing to testify before the Senate if subpoenaed.
Romney said this week that he presumes he will vote in favor of hearing from Bolton, although he added that his view could change depending on what he hears from the trial. He also said Tuesday that he doesn’t “plan to put a list together” of desired witnesses. Last week, Murkowski said she would be “curious” as to what Bolton would have to say, but she had not made a commitment on whether she wants to hear from the former White House official.
“I won’t know until we get there,” Murkowski said this week. “I need to hear first from both sides. I’ll only be able to formulate my questions [while listening] to the questions and responses from members. We’ll all have the opportunity to weigh in. That’s what we’re trying to do is make sure that we all have a guaranteed opportunity [to weigh in].”
Others, like Collins and Alexander, have declined to specify which witnesses, if any, they would like to hear from and probably will not until after the first phase of the trial is over.
“We have a constitutional responsibility here. Just because the House was a circus doesn’t mean the Senate needs to be,” Alexander said Tuesday. “So we should hear the case, not dismiss it. We should hear the arguments, we should ask our questions, and then we should vote on whether we need additional evidence. And I think that’s a fair and impartial way to go about it.”
White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland on Tuesday declined to say whether the administration was paying any special attention to the requests of the four senators and other potential swing votes, suggesting that officials were watching all Republicans as the trial progresses.
“We are very cognizant of all 53 members and their priorities, needs, objectives,” he said. “And we are continuing to engage in robust work and robust conversations and partnership with a lot of Senate and House GOP members up here, as we have for the last several months.”
Collins, who is up for reelection this year, is poised to join three other Republicans in voting for a resolution curbing Trump’s military authority in Iran.
The impeachment trial is also reminiscent of other high-stakes votes in which Collins and Murkowski, in particular, have wielded considerable power.
In fall 2018, Collins and Murkowski were the final undecided swing votes during the confirmation battle over then-Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual misconduct during his teenage and young adult years. (He denied the allegations.) Collins ultimately fell in line, while Murkowski — in a dramatic 11th-hour announcement — said she could not support the nominee.
Kavanaugh was confirmed on a near party-line vote of 50 to 48 on Oct. 6. That day, Trump told The Washington Post that Murkowski would “never recover from this.”
In July 2017, both Collins and Murkowski defied their party on health care, dooming Republican efforts to fully undo the Affordable Care Act. They were joined by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.); together, the three sunk a measure that would have killed key funding and protections provided by the law.
Five months earlier, Collins and Murkowski voted in concert against Trump’s education secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos, who they deemed unqualified. Vice President Pence was summoned to the Capitol to break a 50-to-50 tie on the nomination, a first.
The two senators have already shown a willingness to buck their party on impeachment, refusing in October to sign on to a resolution that condemned the House inquiry. Romney joined them in declining to support the measure.
Romney has maintained his own independent streak since he joined the Senate early last year, criticizing Trump on trade, opposing a judicial nominee who called former president Barack Obama an “un-American impostor” and leading the charge against Herman Cain as a potential member of the Federal Reserve Board.
As of mid-2019, Romney had voted against Trump more than any other Senate Republican, while Collins holds that distinction now, according to a ranking by FiveThirtyEight. More recently, Romney has been one of the loudest Republican critics of Trump calling on Ukraine and China to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, the issue at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.
Meanwhile, Alexander, a close McConnell ally, is a veteran of the chamber and one of its remaining institutionalists who also has bucked the president, including to reject Trump’s emergency declaration issued last year to redirect federal funding for his border wall. He is retiring after this term.
“Any four people could be powerful,” Graham said. “I respect them all.”
Impeachment: What you need to read
[...]
Seung Min Kim is a White House reporter for The Washington Post, covering the Trump administration through the lens of Capitol Hill. Before joining The Washington Post in 2018, she spent more than eight years at Politico, primarily covering the Senate and immigration policy. Follow
Elise Viebeck is a political enterprise and investigations reporter. She joined The Washington Post in 2015. Follow
Robert Costa is a national political reporter for The Washington Post. He covers the White House, Congress, and campaigns. He joined The Post in January 2014. He is also the moderator of PBS's "Washington Week" and a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Follow
Senator Schumer: Everything In These Impeachment Trial Rules Is Rigged | Morning Joe | MSNBC
Lev Parnas: 'President Trump Knew Exactly What Was Going On.' | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Jan 22, 2020
MSNBC
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, discusses Mitch McConnell's rules for the president's impeachment trial in the Senate, saying the GOP is so afraid of facts coming out they want facts presented in the early hours of the morning. Aired on 01/21/20.
First day today, to early morning, we know now McConnell won all votes. All Democrat rule amendments were defeated. Unless i missed something early while napping.
-
Rep. Jerry Nadler: Mitch McConnell, GOP Are Covering Up For The President | Morning Joe | MSNBC
Jan 22, 2020
MSNBC
House Judiciary Chair, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-NY, says Sen. Mitch McConnell and the GOP don't want evidence to appear before the American people because they are covering up for the president. Aired on 01/21/20.
Dershowitz on impeachment reversal: I am much more correct right now
Jan 21, 2020
CNN
CNN's Anderson Cooper and Jeffrey Toobin ask Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Trump's impeachment defense team, about his changing view on the subject.
‘I think it’s really sad that the country pays attention to these ludicrous arguments’
VIDEO
RUSH EXCERPT: of Tribe's at end of above YouTube
TRIBE: “It’s his legal arguments. He’s perfectly entitled to defend the president, although I don’t like he pretends he is defending the Constitution instead of the president. He is not the Constitution’s client. But I don’t want this to make — to be a feud with Alan. The stakes here are enormous. We’ve got a president who was shaking down a foreign government for his own benefit, for his own reelection. He was using taxpayer money to do it. He is engaged in the kind of abuse that Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, any of our framers would have said requires that we end the presidency, especially when the abuse goes to meddling in the next election. And when Alan Dershowitz or anybody, although I don’t know anybody else who really does it, comes up and says well, it’s an abuse but it’s not a crime or crime-like, and therefore we can’t remove him for it. That really — that’s disgusting. There is no basis in the Constitution or in our history for that. It means that if Abraham Lincoln had said oh, Hell, let The South go, or give it to some — let’s give it to France, that wouldn’t have been a crime, but surely it would been impeachable. Alan in his own book — his own book gives the example if Putin decided to give Alaska, the Trump decided to give Alaska back to Putin, that might be terrible, but it wouldn’t be impeachable. Well, that is just bs. And I think it’s really sad that the country pays attention to these ludicrous arguments. They wouldn’t pay attention but for the fact that he is star on Fox News and he used to do a lot of criminal defense work. That’s fine, and he was a great teacher, and he used to be a good colleague. But right now he’s selling out, basically, selling out, I don’t think for money, but just for attention.” https://grabien.com/story.php?id=269473
Giuliani associate Lev Parnas convicted in campaign finance fraud case
"Lev Parnas: 'President Trump Knew Exactly What Was Going On.' | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC"
Lev Parnas and an unidentified woman leave the federal courthouse following closing arguments in his trial on Thursday in New York. (Stefan Jeremiah/AP)
By Shayna Jacobs Yesterday at 4:36 p.m. EDT
NEW YORK — Lev Parnas, a Florida businessman who is an associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani's, was found guilty on Friday of using funds from a foreign investor to try to influence political candidates through campaign donations.
It took the federal jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan less than a day to find that Parnas committed fraud through donations to several state and federal candidates that were bankrolled by a Russian financier. Parnas was also found guilty on counts related to a $325,000 donation in 2018 to a joint fundraising committee that supported then-President Donald Trump.
Prosecutors told the jury that the illegal fundraising efforts documented in text messages and other trial evidence gave Parnas access to elected officials and candidates. They showed photos of Parnas with Trump and Giuliani, who was the president’s personal lawyer, schmoozing at high-end political fundraisers.
Prosecutors also said Parnas lied to the Federal Election Commission about the source of the hefty 2018 donation, which he said in filings was from his start-up company Global Energy Producers. The company was in fact not profitable and not functioning as a real business, prosecutors argued. The donation was actually sourced through a mortgage refinance loan obtained by Parnas’s business partner, Igor Fruman, the jury found.
Fruman — whose alleged role in the events was regularly discussed in testimony at the trial — pleaded guilty last month to one count of soliciting foreign campaign contributions. He’s due to be sentenced early next year.
Outside the courtroom after the verdict on Friday, Parnas said: “I’ve never hid from nobody. I’ve always stood to tell the truth.”
Parnas faces a total maximum of 45 years in prison when he’s sentenced.
While Parnas’s trial did not directly relate to Giuliani or Trump, the guilty verdict still provides a legal coda to a precarious moment in Trump’s presidency: his first impeachment trial. Parnas, a Ukrainian native, was recruited to help Giuliani seek damaging information on Joe Biden and his son Hunter before the 2020 election. Trump was accused of threatening to withhold badly needed aid to Ukraine if officials there did not announce a criminal investigation into the Bidens.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested on the campaign-finance charges in October 2019, not long after news broke of a phone call in which Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to open a Biden investigation. Once a Trump fan, Parnas turned on the president after being arrested, offering documents and assistance to congressional Democrats and apologizing for his role in Giuliani’s scheme.
Parnas is also slated to face a second trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan for charges related to defrauding investors in what prosecutors say was another sham company — Fraud Guarantee.
The venture purported to offer a service to other companies that protected them from fraud. But prosecutors allege that Parnas and another man, David Correia, were actually stealing from their investors. Correia has pleaded guilty to charges related to his role in that case.
As of now, Parnas will not be sentenced until after that trial.
In the trial that wrapped up this week, prosecutors alleged that Parnas used money from Russian financier Andrey Muraviev to try to curry favor with candidates he believed could help him and Fruman win licenses to operate cannabis businesses.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Cordell Scotten noted that Parnas’s own former assistant, who testified under an immunity agreement with the Justice Department, said Parnas knew the laws he was skirting by concealing the true source of donations to candidates in several states where cannabis had recently been legalized.
“Parnas was told again and again that he couldn’t donate someone else’s money, and he couldn’t donate except from a citizen or a legal resident,” Scotten said.
One donation at issue in the trial was $10,000 in Fruman’s name that went to Adam Laxalt, the former attorney general in Nevada, who had ties to Trump and filed lawsuits on his behalf to try to overturn the election results in his state. Laxalt lost a race for Nevada governor in 2018.
Prosecutors say Muraviev sent two $500,000 payments that were meant to be infused into campaign coffers for people seeking offices such as governor and state attorney general. Parnas and Fruman allegedly used some of the money to pay bills.
Parnas’s lawyer Joseph Bondy argued Thursday in summations that the case was “absurd” and that Parnas wasn’t hiding his activities.
Andrey Kukushkin, who was also on trial for allegedly conspiring to use Muraviev’s money to get licenses for marijuana businesses, was convicted on multiple counts.
His attorney Gerald Lefcourt argued in summations that his client was unaware of Parnas’s maneuvering in political circles and that he “never intended to do anything illegal.”
Lefcourt said Parnas and Fruman thought Kukushkin was a “rube .?.?. someone they could get over on” to help them get to Muraviev’s money.
Kukushkin, who faces up to 10 years incarceration total, is slated to be sentenced on Feb. 16.
Parnas and Kukushkin are both naturalized U.S. citizens.
Rosalind S. Helderman in Washington and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Five Questions about Geoffrey Berman’s Removal [...] And, of course, the southern district also has been engaged in the current investigation of another presidential lawyer, Rudy Giuliani .. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/10/politics/giuliani-fruman-parnas-finances/index.html .. —a matter that has been quiet recently, but about which there is no indication that the office has wrapped up its work. So there’s enough water under the bridge that it’s possible Berman’s removal was simply revenge. [...] A third key—and related—question: Did Berman feel political pressure with respect to any investigation? P - When Preet Bharara was removed as the head of the southern district office at the beginning of the Trump administration, he refused to resign in response to a request from the attorney general—a decision that seemed odd to me at the time. I did not understand it until Bharara told the back story some time .. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/that-time-president-trump-fired-me-with-leon-panetta/id1265845136?i=1000392484145 .. later—a back story that included efforts by the president to court him and call him directly on the telephone. In that context, and in the context of Comey’s similar stories, Bharara’s actions made a great deal of sense: fearing political pressure with respect to the performance of his job, he refused contact with the president and refused to step down when asked. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=156426737
Lev Parnas names these people as all being involved in Giuliani's drug deal and I bet he's got the receipts. P - GOP Super Pac, America First. Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, Lindsey Graham, Devin Nunes, Nunes staffer Derek Harvey, Journalist John Solomon, Joe diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Rudy Giuliani and others. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153599570
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