AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — In Washington, Republicans were dealing with a burgeoning crisis in their ranks, with high-profile resignations and bitter infighting over how to deal with an erratic and isolated president. But at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting on Friday, most party members were operating in a parallel universe.
In a chandelier-adorned ballroom at the seaside Ritz-Carlton here, there was no mention of President Trump’s disruption of the coronavirus relief package or his phone call to the Georgia secretary of state demanding that he help steal the election, both of which contributed to Republicans’ losing control of the Senate.
And while the R.N.C. chair, Ronna McDaniel, condemned the attack on the Capitol, neither she nor any other speaker so much as publicly hinted at Mr. Trump’s role in inciting a mob assault on America’s seat of government.
Even as the president faces a possible second impeachment proceeding, this collective exercise in gaze aversion was not the most striking part of the meeting. More revealing was the reason for the silence from the stage: Party members, one after another, said in interviews that the president did not bear any blame for the violence at the Capitol and indicated that they wanted him to continue to play a leading role in the party.
“I surely embrace President Trump,” said Michele Fiore, the committeewoman from Nevada, where Republicans have lost two Senate races and the governorship since 2016. Ms. Fiore, who was sporting a Trump-emblazoned vest, said the president was “absolutely” a positive force in the party.
The fealty to Mr. Trump was made plain on Friday when the state chairs and the committeemen and women who make up the R.N.C.’s governing board unanimously re-elected Ms. McDaniel, Mr. Trump’s handpicked chair. They also reappointed her co-chair, Tommy Hicks, who was first appointed to his post because of his friendship with the president’s eldest son.
Mr. Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over the loss of the White House, the House and the Senate in a single term and will be the first since Andrew Johnson to boycott his successor’s inauguration. That hasn’t yet fazed the Republican rank and file. ...
... Privately, a group of Republican officials, mostly those from the pre-Trump establishment wing of the party, said that they were appalled by the president’s conduct and that Ms. McDaniel had been candid about the party’s difficulties behind closed doors.
These Republicans predicted with more hope than confidence that once Mr. Trump was out of office, the ardor for him in the conservative base would cool.
Er, why would we want Trump to resign so that he can be pardoned by Pence? Resignation or lack thereof no longer matters; what matters is that he be convicted by the Senate so that he can no longer think of running again in 2024.
Trump legal vets torn over new impeachment defense
The crew that rallied behind the president in late 2019 is divided as House Democrats rush to impeach him once more.
Alan Dershowitz, the Trump-allied celebrity attorney, argued that President Donald Trump’s encouragement of this week’s Capitol riots was “constitutionally protected” speech.
The legal team that defended President Donald Trump from impeachment is rushing to his side as it happens again.
With House Democrats pushing to impeach the president before he leaves office, Alan Dershowitz, the Trump-allied celebrity attorney, argued that Trump’s encouragement of this week’s Capitol riots was “constitutionally protected” speech. He said it would be his “honor and privilege” to take on the legal defense.
“It's not a high crime or misdemeanor. What he said was protected by the First Amendment and it's not subject to removal under the 25th Amendment,” Dershowitz told POLITICO. “He's not unable to govern, he's not incapacitated and I think grave dangers to the constitution are being posed by those partisans who want to weaponize the Constitution for political purposes.”
Others who were at Trump’s side when he was impeached in late 2019 issued similar objections to the notion that the president had committed an impeachable offense once more. Jay Sekulow, Trump’s longtime attorney who represented him during the 2019 trial, warned that instituting articles of impeachment now, with just days left in Trump term, would be “a gigantic mistake.”
“You could impeach him but he’s never going to be there for the trial. They’ll never have a trial in the Senate,” Sekulow said on his radio show. “Why would you put the country through that when the man’s term is over with and you got the ultimate victory your candidate is going to be the president of the United States?”
But the sentiment articulated by Dershowitz and Sekulow wasn't shared across the spectrum. And, indeed, some lawyers who previously represented the president said the case currently being presented against him is stronger than the one he ultimately fended off in a Senate trial.
“Unlike the last time, where they didn't even charge a crime, I could imagine that you could draft an article of impeachment that would actually make a legal argument that the president aided or abetted or actually elicited a riot,” said Robert Ray, a member of the president’s defense team during the last impeachment. ...
... In August 1974, four days before Nixon resigned, Mary C. Lawton, then the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, issued a terse legal opinion stating that “it would seem” that he could not pardon himself “under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” But she did not explain what transformed that principle into an unwritten legal limit on the power the Constitution bestows on presidents.
Is there a way Trump might try to engineer a more clearly legal pardon for himself?
Yes. He could get Vice President Mike Pence to do it for him, using the 25th Amendment.
This part of the Constitution provides a mechanism for temporarily making the vice president the “acting president” when a president is disabled from carrying out his duties. In 2002 and 2007, for example, when President George W. Bush was preparing to be sedated for colonoscopies, he briefly handed the powers of the presidency to Vice President Dick Cheney. ...
Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory, even after a mob broke into the Capitol, are getting blasted by critics in their home districts who demand that they resign or be ousted.
Protesters, newspaper editorial boards and local-level Democrats have urged the lawmakers to step down or for their colleagues to kick them out. The House and Senate can remove members with a two-thirds vote or censure or reprimand with a majority.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn “needs to be held accountable for his seditious behavior and for the consequences resulting from said behavior,” a group of Democratic officials wrote in a letter asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to expel the North Carolina freshman who took his oath of office on Jan. 3.
Cawthorn said he had a constitutional duty to vote against Biden. He condemned the violence in Wednesday's attack, but compared it to last summer's protests over police brutality. Those demonstrations never breached a government building during official business. ...
Pelosi and other Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing to have President Donald Trump impeached for encouraging the insurrection and refusing to act to stop the violence. But they have been quiet about whether lawmakers who backed the untrue claims of voter fraud that led to the melee should be punished.
Most previous expulsions have been for members who backed the Confederacy during the Civil War or for taking bribes.
In St. Louis on Saturday, several hundred people protested against Sen. Josh Hawley, the first-term Missouri Republican who led efforts in the Senate to overturn Biden's election. The protestors painted “RESIGN HAWLEY” in large yellow letters in the middle of the street.
A caravan of about 40 cars circled Sen. Ron Johnson’s office in Madison, Wisconsin, urging him to resign. Johnson initially supported Trump's baseless claims of election fraud, but after the riot, he voted in favor of Biden's win. Johnson condemned the violence but did not back off voter fraud allegations.
The editorial boards of two of Wisconsin's biggest newspapers called for Johnson to resign, joining with editorials published across the country that targeted GOP politicians.
The Houston Chronicle, long a critic of Sen. Ted Cruz, said in an editorial that the Republican knew exactly what he was doing and what might happen when he took to the Senate floor to dispute the election results.
“Those terrorists wouldn’t have been at the Capitol if you hadn’t staged this absurd challenge to the 2020 results in the first place,” the newspaper wrote. ...
"Is there a way Trump might try to engineer a more clearly legal pardon for himself?
Yes. He could get Vice President Mike Pence to do it for him, using the 25th Amendment.
This part of the Constitution provides a mechanism for temporarily making the vice president the “acting president” when a president is disabled from carrying out his duties. In 2002 and 2007, for example, when President George W. Bush was preparing to be sedated for colonoscopies, he briefly handed the powers of the presidency to Vice President Dick Cheney. ..."
Is this is a suggestion that, should Trump be whisked off for an unplanned colonoscopy at Walter Reed before Jan 21, Mike Pence might just pardon him while he was under anesthesia. Maybe this could be done on the QT.
11 comments:
In Capital, a GOP Crisis. At the RNC Meeting, a Trump Celebration
NY Times - January 8
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — In Washington, Republicans were dealing with a burgeoning crisis in their ranks, with high-profile resignations and bitter infighting over how to deal with an erratic and isolated president. But at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting on Friday, most party members were operating in a parallel universe.
In a chandelier-adorned ballroom at the seaside Ritz-Carlton here, there was no mention of President Trump’s disruption of the coronavirus relief package or his phone call to the Georgia secretary of state demanding that he help steal the election, both of which contributed to Republicans’ losing control of the Senate.
And while the R.N.C. chair, Ronna McDaniel, condemned the attack on the Capitol, neither she nor any other speaker so much as publicly hinted at Mr. Trump’s role in inciting a mob assault on America’s seat of government.
Even as the president faces a possible second impeachment proceeding, this collective exercise in gaze aversion was not the most striking part of the meeting. More revealing was the reason for the silence from the stage: Party members, one after another, said in interviews that the president did not bear any blame for the violence at the Capitol and indicated that they wanted him to continue to play a leading role in the party.
“I surely embrace President Trump,” said Michele Fiore, the committeewoman from Nevada, where Republicans have lost two Senate races and the governorship since 2016. Ms. Fiore, who was sporting a Trump-emblazoned vest, said the president was “absolutely” a positive force in the party.
The fealty to Mr. Trump was made plain on Friday when the state chairs and the committeemen and women who make up the R.N.C.’s governing board unanimously re-elected Ms. McDaniel, Mr. Trump’s handpicked chair. They also reappointed her co-chair, Tommy Hicks, who was first appointed to his post because of his friendship with the president’s eldest son.
Mr. Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over the loss of the White House, the House and the Senate in a single term and will be the first since Andrew Johnson to boycott his successor’s inauguration. That hasn’t yet fazed the Republican rank and file. ...
... Privately, a group of Republican officials, mostly those from the pre-Trump establishment wing of the party, said that they were appalled by the president’s conduct and that Ms. McDaniel had been candid about the party’s difficulties behind closed doors.
These Republicans predicted with more hope than confidence that once Mr. Trump was out of office, the ardor for him in the conservative base would cool.
We may have 2 GOP Senators - Sasse and Murkowski. 15 more GOP Senators and we can both impeach and convict this traitor.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/gop-sen-toomey-calls-trump-offenses-impeachable
We may have 3 GOP Senators for impeachment and conviction. 14 more to go.
Er, why would we want Trump to resign so that he can be pardoned by Pence? Resignation or lack thereof no longer matters; what matters is that he be convicted by the Senate so that he can no longer think of running again in 2024.
Heard on the net...
Trump lining up lawyers for impending impeachment defense...
Giuliani of course. Also, Dershowitz and Sekulo presumably.
Trump legal vets torn over new impeachment defense
via @politico - January 8
Trump legal vets torn over new impeachment defense
The crew that rallied behind the president in late 2019 is divided as House Democrats rush to impeach him once more.
Alan Dershowitz, the Trump-allied celebrity attorney, argued that President Donald Trump’s encouragement of this week’s Capitol riots was “constitutionally protected” speech.
The legal team that defended President Donald Trump from impeachment is rushing to his side as it happens again.
With House Democrats pushing to impeach the president before he leaves office, Alan Dershowitz, the Trump-allied celebrity attorney, argued that Trump’s encouragement of this week’s Capitol riots was “constitutionally protected” speech. He said it would be his “honor and privilege” to take on the legal defense.
“It's not a high crime or misdemeanor. What he said was protected by the First Amendment and it's not subject to removal under the 25th Amendment,” Dershowitz told POLITICO. “He's not unable to govern, he's not incapacitated and I think grave dangers to the constitution are being posed by those partisans who want to weaponize the Constitution for political purposes.”
Others who were at Trump’s side when he was impeached in late 2019 issued similar objections to the notion that the president had committed an impeachable offense once more. Jay Sekulow, Trump’s longtime attorney who represented him during the 2019 trial, warned that instituting articles of impeachment now, with just days left in Trump term, would be “a gigantic mistake.”
“You could impeach him but he’s never going to be there for the trial. They’ll never have a trial in the Senate,” Sekulow said on his radio show. “Why would you put the country through that when the man’s term is over with and you got the ultimate victory your candidate is going to be the president of the United States?”
But the sentiment articulated by Dershowitz and Sekulow wasn't shared across the spectrum. And, indeed, some lawyers who previously represented the president said the case currently being presented against him is stronger than the one he ultimately fended off in a Senate trial.
“Unlike the last time, where they didn't even charge a crime, I could imagine that you could draft an article of impeachment that would actually make a legal argument that the president aided or abetted or actually elicited a riot,” said Robert Ray, a member of the president’s defense team during the last impeachment. ...
This crew of Trump enablers is proof that Shakespeare got it right - "first you kill the lawyers".
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/heres-why-republicans-should-support-impeachment-of-donald-trump/
Kevin Drum notes why Republican Senators should support the impeachment of Trump.
Can Trump Pre-emptively Pardon Allies or Himself?
NY Times - January 7
... In August 1974, four days before Nixon resigned, Mary C. Lawton, then the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, issued a terse legal opinion stating that “it would seem” that he could not pardon himself “under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” But she did not explain what transformed that principle into an unwritten legal limit on the power the Constitution bestows on presidents.
Is there a way Trump might try to engineer a more clearly legal pardon for himself?
Yes. He could get Vice President Mike Pence to do it for him, using the 25th Amendment.
This part of the Constitution provides a mechanism for temporarily making the vice president the “acting president” when a president is disabled from carrying out his duties. In 2002 and 2007, for example, when President George W. Bush was preparing to be sedated for colonoscopies, he briefly handed the powers of the presidency to Vice President Dick Cheney. ...
Lawmakers who voted against Biden get blasted back home
AP via @BostonGlobe - January 10
Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory, even after a mob broke into the Capitol, are getting blasted by critics in their home districts who demand that they resign or be ousted.
Protesters, newspaper editorial boards and local-level Democrats have urged the lawmakers to step down or for their colleagues to kick them out. The House and Senate can remove members with a two-thirds vote or censure or reprimand with a majority.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn “needs to be held accountable for his seditious behavior and for the consequences resulting from said behavior,” a group of Democratic officials wrote in a letter asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to expel the North Carolina freshman who took his oath of office on Jan. 3.
Cawthorn said he had a constitutional duty to vote against Biden. He condemned the violence in Wednesday's attack, but compared it to last summer's protests over police brutality. Those demonstrations never breached a government building during official business. ...
Pelosi and other Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing to have President Donald Trump impeached for encouraging the insurrection and refusing to act to stop the violence. But they have been quiet about whether lawmakers who backed the untrue claims of voter fraud that led to the melee should be punished.
Most previous expulsions have been for members who backed the Confederacy during the Civil War or for taking bribes.
In St. Louis on Saturday, several hundred people protested against Sen. Josh Hawley, the first-term Missouri Republican who led efforts in the Senate to overturn Biden's election. The protestors painted “RESIGN HAWLEY” in large yellow letters in the middle of the street.
A caravan of about 40 cars circled Sen. Ron Johnson’s office in Madison, Wisconsin, urging him to resign. Johnson initially supported Trump's baseless claims of election fraud, but after the riot, he voted in favor of Biden's win. Johnson condemned the violence but did not back off voter fraud allegations.
The editorial boards of two of Wisconsin's biggest newspapers called for Johnson to resign, joining with editorials published across the country that targeted GOP politicians.
The Houston Chronicle, long a critic of Sen. Ted Cruz, said in an editorial that the Republican knew exactly what he was doing and what might happen when he took to the Senate floor to dispute the election results.
“Those terrorists wouldn’t have been at the Capitol if you hadn’t staged this absurd challenge to the 2020 results in the first place,” the newspaper wrote. ...
Hmmm.
"Is there a way Trump might try to engineer a more clearly legal pardon for himself?
Yes. He could get Vice President Mike Pence to do it for him, using the 25th Amendment.
This part of the Constitution provides a mechanism for temporarily making the vice president the “acting president” when a president is disabled from carrying out his duties. In 2002 and 2007, for example, when President George W. Bush was preparing to be sedated for colonoscopies, he briefly handed the powers of the presidency to Vice President Dick Cheney. ..."
Is this is a suggestion that, should Trump be whisked off for an unplanned
colonoscopy at Walter Reed before Jan 21, Mike Pence might just pardon
him while he was under anesthesia. Maybe this could be done on the QT.
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