Senate Republicans say GOP unity during the upcoming House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings will be critical to setting the tone ahead of a likely Senate trial.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said if House Republicans unanimously vote against impeachment, that would make it “less likely any senator would jump ship.”
One senior GOP senator said that if House Republicans stay unified against articles of impeachment, the Senate Republican Conference will do the same.
They put forward a shifting array of arguments to defend the president against impeachment — some of which conflict.WASHINGTON — Republicans mounted an array of defenses of President Trump at this week’s impeachment hearings — making arguments that at times seemed to conflict with one another logically, but that dovetailed in a key way: All served to undermine Democrats’ allegations that Mr. Trump abused his power.
In angry statements from the hearing dais, lines of questioning to witnesses and comments during breaks to reporters, Republicans sought to poke holes in the strength of evidence that Mr. Trump personally put a condition on the government committing official acts — namely, that Ukraine publicize investigations that could benefit him.
But at other times, Republicans suggested that Mr. Trump’s pursuit of those investigations was justified — reading into the record related facts and allegations about Ukrainian actions in 2016 and about the Ukrainian gas company Burisma and its decision to give Hunter Biden, the son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a lucrative board seat.
View the complete November 21 article by Charlie Savage on The New York Times website here.
Hill also aide chides Republicans for peddling ‘fictions’ on Ukraine, RussiaFiona Hill, a Russia expert who worked on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, on Thursday said she came to understand that Trump’s ambassador to the European Union was on a “domestic political errand” and was not engaged in furthering the foreign policy of the United States.
In detailed testimony during the fifth day of public impeachment hearings into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, Hill connected dots between current and former administration witnesses over the last eight days, delivering perhaps the most forceful testimony countering the Republican defense of Trump and his dealings in Ukraine.
Hill told the committee that her misunderstanding of Sondland’s responsibilities led to tension between the two.
View the complete November 21 article by Patrick Kelley on The Roll Call website here.
With Gordon Sondland prepared to testify this week, Republicans backed away from complaints about secondhand information and instead offered a blunter defense: The president did nothing wrong.WASHINGTON — House Republicans, bracing for another week of impeachment hearings, asserted on Sunday that President Trump had done nothing wrong because his plans for Ukraine to investigate his political rivals never came to fruition — even as the president complicated their efforts by attacking another witness.
On a day of back-and-forth on Twitter and the morning television talk shows that are a staple of Sundays in Washington, Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited Mr. Trump to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, while the president’s allies shifted their emphasis away from the defense they offered last week, when they stressed that witnesses had only secondhand information against him.
That argument may not work much longer, because lawmakers are about to hear from crucial witnesses who had direct contact with the president, including Gordon D. Sondland, a donor to and an ally of Mr. Trump who served as his liaison to Ukrainian officials while the president withheld — but later released — $391 million in military aid to Ukraine.
View the complete November 17 article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg on The New York Times website here.
One of the biggest problems Republicans face as they struggle to defend President Donald Trump from impeachment is President Donald Trump himself.
That was as evident on Friday as it has ever been when, in the middle of the House Intelligence Committee’s hearing with former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the witness that Trump had attacked her on Twitter while she was testifying.
Schiff said that this behavior constitutes witness intimidation. While there was some dispute about whether the tweets would mee the legal standards for such a criminal charge, they could clearly be considered witness intimidation in the scope of articles of impeachment.
View the complete November 15 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.
Bipartisan memo warns lawmakers of consequences for them and the HouseThe House Ethics Committee responded this week to efforts by House Republicans to access the secure facility in the basement of the Capitol during a closed-door impeachment deposition on Oct. 23, issuing a memo about breaches of security and warning lawmakers of potential consequences.
The memo, dated Thursday, reminds lawmakers that all members and staff who have access to classified information take an oath to not disclose any such information and that access to classified information and secure areas are on a “need to know” basis.
“House personnel should not attempt to gain access to classified information or controlled areas unless they have a need to access the area or information,” Ethics Chairman Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat, and ranking member Kenny Marchant, a Texas Republican, wrote in the memo.
View the complete November 15 article by Katherine Tully-McManus on The Roll Call website here.
An internal memo which has been circulating among House Republicans has been made public, having been obtained by outlets including CNN and Axios. This memo outlines four points of evidence which will serve as the crux of the GOP’s argument against impeaching President Donald Trump. But the strategy presented in the plan, according to one CNN commentator, is comically bad.
Appearing on CNN’s New Day Tuesday, John Avlon completely shredded the GOP strategy — which will lean on the president’s “state of mind” in his conversations with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“These are zombie impeachment talking points,” Avlon said. “This is slavish devotion to Donald Trump’s bar which is, ‘I did nothing wrong.’ And they’re going sort of in search of brains because the arguments they’re making are really easy to blow up.”
View the complete November 12 article by Joe DePaolo on the Mediaite website here.
The GOP knows Trump will be watching the public testimony.House Republicans are gearing up for a blockbuster showdown with Democrats as the impeachment probe enters its most visible phase yet, with GOP lawmakers and staffers from key committees plotting with leadership to launch their counterattack.
To prepare for this week’s public hearings, Republican leaders have moved one of President Donald Trump’s fiercest Hill defenders to the House Intelligence Committee and have lined up an explosive witness list for the upcoming proceedings, offering some clues into their defense strategy.
The transcripts released last week from closed-door interviews with impeachment witnesses also provide a window into how the GOP plans to approach the high-stakes hearings. Republicans will try to paint the Democratically led process as politically motivated and minimize Trump’s role in the quest to persuade Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
President Trump’s congressional allies and critics on Sunday doubled down on their respective positions on the impeachment inquiry as the House prepares to move into the public phase of the process.
Which witnesses should appear was a key topic after House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) requested that former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden be called to testify. Republicans also plan to call the whistleblower whose complaint helped spark the inquiry, among others.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that while some of the suggested Republican witnesses would likely be called, he saw no reason to have Hunter Biden as a witness.
View the complete November 10 article by Zack Budryk on The Hill website here.
House Republicans’ latest plan to shield President Trump from impeachment is to focus on at least three deputies — U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and possibly acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — who they say could have acted on their own to influence Ukraine policy.
All three occupy a special place in the Ukraine narrative as the people in most direct contact with Trump. As Republicans argue that most of the testimony against Trump is based on faulty secondhand information, they are sowing doubts about whether Sondland, Giuliani and Mulvaney were actually representing the president or freelancing to pursue their own agendas. The GOP is effectively offering up the three to be fall guys.
Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) initiated the impeachment inquiry Sept. 24, congressional Republicans have struggled to come up with a consistent and coherent explanation for why Trump tried to coerce a foreign leader to investigate the president’s domestic political rivals.
