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The Case Against the Slippery Slope Case Against Impeachment for “Abuse of Power”

The first of the two articles of impeachment on which Donald Trump is about to be tried by the Senate focuses on “abuse of power.” In my view, Trump’s scheme to withhold aid from Ukraine in order to pressure that country’s government into investigating a political adversary is also a violation of the Constitution and criminal law. An abuse of power can also be an illegal and criminal act. But the article does not require proof of illegality for conviction.

Despite claims to the contrary by newly appointed Trump defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz, there is overwhelming evidence that the original meaning of the Impeachment Clause permits impeachment and removal for abuses of power that are not criminal or otherwise illegal. That is actually one of those points on which there is a fairly broad consensus among constitutional law scholars across the political spectrum. For good summaries of the relevant evidence, see recent analyses by Gene Healy of the Cato Institute, and prominent conservative legal scholar Michael Stokes Paulsen (here, here, and here).

But critics of the abuse of power standard nonetheless contend it should be rejected. They fear it would create a slippery slope under which presidents can be impeached and removed for frivolous or vague reasons. Dershowitz, for example, worries that abuse of power is a “vague, open-ended” criterion that could lead to a “slippery slope.”

Unlike Dershowitz, my co-blogger Josh Blackman admits that “Congress can convict a president for conduct that is not criminal.” But he too fears that impeachment for abuse of power depends on “subjective judgment” and therefore “the predicates of the Trump articles will set a dangerous precedent, as impeachment might become—regrettably—a common, quadrennial feature of our polity.”

On this view, almost any president can potentially be accused of “abuse of power” by political adversaries in Congress. And then he might be impeached and removed for relatively trivial misconduct, or even just because of partisan animosity or policy differences with Congress.

I. Why the Slippery Slope Argument Against Impeachment is Overblown.

Such concerns are to some degree understandable. Every president has partisan adversaries who who would be happy to “get him” if they can. Nonetheless, slippery slope fears about impeachment are misplaced. If anything, there is much more reason to fear that presidents who richly deserve to be removed will get away with serious abuses of power.

The biggest reason why we need not worry much about frivolous impeachment and removal is that removal requires a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate, as well as a majority in the House of Representatives to impeach. The former is almost always impossible to achieve unless many senators from the president’s own party vote to convict him. They are highly unlikely to do so for frivolous reasons. Michael Paulsen expounds on this and some other constraints on abusive impeachment in greater detail here.

We might still worry that members of a House controlled by the party opposed to the President will impeach for frivolous reasons in order to do him political damage, even if he is ultimately acquitted. But this overlooks the reality that a frivolous impeachment can backfire on the party that does it. The impeachment of Bill Clinton notoriously backfired on the Republicans because most of the public decided that the charges against Clinton weren’t serious enough to justify removing a president.

Of course, it’s possible that skilled partisans will find an impeachment charge that is simultaneously frivolous yet also appealing to swing voters. But that risk is endemic to political life, and is not unique to impeachment. In a world where voters are often ignorant and biased, there is no way to prevent politicians from sometimes successfully damaging opponents’ reputations with dubious charges.

Some might fear that a hostile House can tie up the president with impeachment investigations even if there is no chance of conviction (and perhaps even if the House never actually votes to impeach). But a hostile Congress can already harass administrations with questionable investigations, even if impeachment is not the purpose of the inquiry in question. Congressional Republicans effectively proved that with their two-year long Benghazi investigation, which was far longer and more costly than the Mueller and Ukraine investigations of Trump, despite the fact that impeachment was never a serious possibility in the Benghazi case.

Moreover, to the extent that frivolous impeachment is a genuine concern, the problem cannot be “solved” by limiting impeachment to criminal offenses. The scope of federal and state criminal law has grown so great that almost anyone can be charged with some crime if investigators work hard enough to find one. If a president cannot be charged with frivolous supposed abuses of power, he can still be accused of committing some petty crime. And most adult Americans probably have in fact committed one at some point or other in their lives.

Perhaps this possibility is precluded by the fact that the text of the Impeachment Clause is limited to “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (emphasis added). But the difference between a “high” crime and a minor one is at least as subjective as that between an abuse of power and ordinary, supposedly non-abusive, policymaking. Those of us who lived through the Clinton impeachment remember how Republicans claimed that Clinton’s offenses were grave affronts to the republic, while Democrats argued that they were minor, or at least nowhere near serious enough to justify impeachment. Whether a crime is “high” enough to justify impeachment is at least as subjective as the abuse of power standard is. If the word “high” does serve as an effective safeguard, it can do so with abuses of power no less than crimes, by limiting impeachment to serious abuses, as opposed to petty, insignificant ones.

Ultimately, the main safeguard against slippery slopes here is the combination of the need for a two-thirds majority in the Senate for removal and the danger of political backlash. It may not be a perfect safeguard, but it is very formidable nonetheless.

II. Barring Impeachment for Abuse of Power Creates Slippery Slope Risks of its Own.

Limiting impeachment to specific criminal or otherwise illegal conduct creates a slippery slope risk of its own. It creates a risk that the president can avoid impeachment even for grave abuses. Trump defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz gave a great example of such when he admitted that, under his approach, a president could not be impeached for the following conduct:

“Assume Putin decides to ‘retake’ Alaska, the way he ‘retook’ Crimea. Assume further that a president allows him to do it, because he believed that Russia has a legitimate claim to ‘its’ original territory… That would be terrible, but would it be impeachable? Not under the text of the Constitution.”

If impeachment is strictly limited to statutory crimes and misdemeanors, a president could also avoid impeachment for gross violations of the Constitution that do not amount to crimes. For example, he could order his subordinates to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion, to violate freedom of speech, and so on. Such presidential misconduct is illegal, but generally not a crime.

Over the last several decades, presidents have all too often engaged in serious violations of the Constitution and grave abuses of power and gotten away with it. President Obama launched two wars without constitutionally congressional authorization—as serious a breach of the constitutional separation of powers as any. He got away with it. Donald Trump has gotten away with his brutal—and illegal—family separation policy, and with massive  cruelty of his travel ban motivated by religious bigotry. Even if you agree with the Supreme Court’s dubious ruling that the judiciary was required to defer to the president on the latter policy, it was still a gross abuse of power. Each of these examples was actually a far more severe abuse of power than the Ukraine case,  especially if judged by the scale of the harm caused to innocent people.

Presidents have strong incentives to abuse their power and violate laws any time it seems likely to promote their partisan and electoral interests, or advance their policy agendas. Impeachment for abuse of power can provide a counterweight, albeit perhaps a fairly modest one.

III. Which Danger is Greater?

Let us assume the worst: if impeachment for abuse of power is allowed, occasionally a “good” president will get the axe even if he or she didn’t really deserve it. That strikes me as a price well-worth paying for putting a tighter leash on presidents who genuinely abuse their power.

In criminal cases, there is good reason to avoid conviction unless the charge against the accused is an offense clearly delineated by law, and guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The reason why is that the defendant stands to lose her liberty or property—or even her life. By contrast, the risk facing an impeached president is removal from a position of enormous power.

Unlike unjust deprivation of life, liberty, or property, removal from power doesn’t violate anyone’s human rights. When real human rights are at stake, it may make sense to allow ten guilty people to go free, in order to save even one innocent from conviction. When it comes to positions of power, almost the opposite is true: Removing ten “normal” politicians is more than justified if that is the only way to get rid of one who engages in grave abuses of power. It’s not as if we suffer from a shortage of ambitious politicians who would be happy to take the places of those who get removed.

Imprecise delineation of  standards is also  far less problematic when it comes to removal from power than criminal punishment. If criminal laws are vague, people will fear to use their liberty, lest they accidentally run afoul of  the law. Such a “chilling effect” on liberty can be deeply problematic. If standards for impeachment are vague, the president might shy away from exercises of power that might be abuses, even if it is not entirely clear whether they really are. Such a chilling effect on power is more a feature than a bug, especially in a context where numerous other incentives incline presidents towards overreaching.

But perhaps the above underrates the harm caused by removing a “good” president. Such removal, it is said, is tantamount to “reversing” the outcome of an election. Not so.  A true reversal of an election would bring to power the president’s opponents. Thus, Trump’s election would be reversed by impeachment if his removal would bring Hillary Clinton to power. In reality, of course, impeachment elevates the president’s own vice president, who comes from the same party, and usually has a similar policy agenda. Elevating Mike Pence to the presidency may or may not be a good idea. But no one is likely to confuse him with Hillary Clinton—and not just because of the difference in gender. It is possible to imagine scenarios where the president and VP both get impeached and removed, thereby elevating the Speaker of the House of Representatives (who will often belong to the opposing party).

Such scenarios are great fodder for political thriller novels. But if it is extremely difficult to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove a president in favor of a successor of the same party, it is virtually impossible to do so in order to elevate a political opponent such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Michael Stokes Paulsen offers some additional responses to the “overturning elections” argument here.

Ultimately, the real danger we face is not that too many good presidents will be removed from power unfairly, but that too many grave abuses of power will go unpunished and undeterred. I am not optimistic that impeachment alone can solve this problem. The supermajority requirement that prevents frivolous impeachment also prevents it in all too many cases where it is amply justified. But the threat of impeachment for abuse of power can at least help at the margin.

Let presidents—even “good” ones—lose more sleep over the possibility of impeachment. The rest of us will then be able to sleep a little easier, knowing we are that much more secure against abuses of government power.

 

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The Case Against the Slippery Slope Case Against Impeachment

The first of the two articles of impeachment on which Donald Trump is about to be tried by the Senate focuses on “abuse of power.” In my view, Trump’s scheme to withhold aid from Ukraine in order to pressure that country’s government into investigating a political adversary is also a violation of the Constitution and criminal law. An abuse of power can also be an illegal and criminal act. But the article does not require proof of illegality for conviction.

Despite claims to the contrary by newly appointed Trump defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz, there is overwhelming evidence that the original meaning of the Impeachment Clause permits impeachment and removal for abuses of power that are not criminal or otherwise illegal. That is actually one of those points on which there is a fairly broad consensus among constitutional law scholars across the political spectrum. For good summaries of the relevant evidence, see recent analyses by Gene Healy of the Cato Institute, and prominent conservative legal scholar Michael Stokes Paulsen (here, here, and here).

But critics of the abuse of power standard nonetheless contend it should be rejected. They fear it would create a slippery slope under which presidents can be impeached and removed for frivolous or vague reasons. Dershowitz, for example, worries that abuse of power is a “vague, open-ended” criterion that could lead to a “slippery slope.”

Unlike Dershowitz, my co-blogger Josh Blackman admits that “Congress can convict a president for conduct that is not criminal.” But he too fears that impeachment for abuse of power depends on “subjective judgment” and therefore “the predicates of the Trump articles will set a dangerous precedent, as impeachment might become—regrettably—a common, quadrennial feature of our polity.”

On this view, almost any president can potentially be accused of “abuse of power” by political adversaries in Congress. And then he might be impeached and removed for relatively trivial misconduct, or even just because of partisan animosity or policy differences with Congress.

I. Why the Slippery Slope Argument Against Impeachment is Overblown.

Such concerns are to some degree understandable. Every president has partisan adversaries who who would be happy to “get him” if they can. Nonetheless, slippery slope fears about impeachment are misplaced. If anything, there is much more reason to fear that presidents who richly deserve to be removed will get away with serious abuses of power.

The biggest reason why we need not worry much about frivolous impeachment and removal is that removal requires a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate, as well as a majority in the House of Representatives to impeach. The former is almost always impossible to achieve unless many senators from the president’s own party vote to convict him. They are highly unlikely to do so for frivolous reasons.

We might still worry that members of a House controlled by the party opposed to the President will impeach for frivolous reasons in order to do him political damage, even if he is ultimately acquitted. But this overlooks the reality that a frivolous impeachment can backfire on the party that does it. The impeachment of Bill Clinton notoriously backfired on the Republicans because most of the public decided that the charges against Clinton weren’t serious enough to justify removing a president.

Of course, it’s possible that skilled partisans will find an impeachment charge that is simultaneously frivolous yet also appealing to swing voters. But that risk is endemic to political life, and is not unique to impeachment. In a world where voters are often ignorant and biased, there is no way to prevent politicians from sometimes successfully damaging opponents’ reputations with dubious charges.

Some might fear that a hostile House can tie up the president with impeachment investigations even if there is no chance of conviction (and perhaps even if the House never actually votes to impeach). But a hostile Congress can already harass administrations with questionable investigations, even if impeachment is not the purpose of the inquiry in question. Congressional Republicans effectively proved that with their two-year long Benghazi investigation, which was far longer and more costly than the Mueller and Ukraine investigations of Trump, despite the fact that impeachment was never a serious possibility in the Benghazi case.

Moreover, to the extent that frivolous impeachment is a genuine concern, the problem cannot be “solved” by limiting impeachment to criminal offenses. The scope of federal and state criminal law has grown so great that almost anyone can be charged with some crime if investigators work hard enough to find one. If a president cannot be charged with frivolous supposed abuses of power, he can still be accused of committing some petty crime. And most adult Americans probably have in fact committed one at some point or other in their lives.

Perhaps this possibility is precluded by the fact that the text of the Impeachment Clause is limited to “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (emphasis added). But the difference between a “high” crime and a minor one is at least as subjective as that between an abuse of power and ordinary, supposedly non-abusive, policymaking. Those of us who lived through the Clinton impeachment remember how Republicans claimed that Clinton’s offenses were grave affronts to the republic, while Democrats argued that they were minor, or at least nowhere near serious enough to justify impeachment. Whether a crime is “high” enough to justify impeachment is at least as subjective as the abuse of power standard is. If the word “high” does serve as an effective safeguard, it can do so with abuses of power no less than crimes, by limiting impeachment to serious abuses, as opposed to petty, insignificant ones.

Ultimately, the main safeguard against slippery slopes here is the combination of the need for a two-thirds majority in the Senate for removal and the danger of political backlash. It may not be a perfect safeguard, but it is very formidable nonetheless.

II. Barring Impeachment for Abuse of Power Creates Slippery Slope Risks of its Own.

Limiting impeachment to specific criminal or otherwise illegal conduct creates a slippery slope risk of its own. It creates a risk that the president can avoid impeachment even for grave abuses. Trump defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz gave a great example of such when he admitted that, under his approach, a president could not be impeached for the following conduct:

“Assume Putin decides to ‘retake’ Alaska, the way he ‘retook’ Crimea. Assume further that a president allows him to do it, because he believed that Russia has a legitimate claim to ‘its’ original territory… That would be terrible, but would it be impeachable? Not under the text of the Constitution.”

If impeachment is strictly limited to statutory crimes and misdemeanors, a president could also avoid impeachment for gross violations of the Constitution that do not amount to crimes. For example, he could order his subordinates to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion, to violate freedom of speech, and so on. Such presidential misconduct is illegal, but generally not a crime.

Over the last several decades, presidents have all too often engaged in serious violations of the Constitution and grave abuses of power and gotten away with it. President Obama launched two wars without constitutionally congressional authorization—as serious a breach of the constitutional separation of powers as any. He got away with it. Donald Trump has gotten away with his brutal—and illegal—family separation policy, and with massive  cruelty of his travel ban motivated by religious bigotry. Even if you agree with the Supreme Court’s dubious ruling that the judiciary was required to defer to the president on the latter policy, it was still a gross abuse of power. Each of these examples was actually a far more severe abuse of power than the Ukraine case,  especially if judged by the scale of the harm caused to innocent people.

Presidents have strong incentives to abuse their power and violate laws any time it seems likely to promote their partisan and electoral interests, or advance their policy agendas. Impeachment for abuse of power can provide a counterweight, albeit perhaps a fairly modest one.

III. Which Danger is Greater?

Let us assume the worst: if impeachment for abuse of power is allowed, occasionally a “good” president will get the axe even if he or she didn’t really deserve it. That strikes me as a price well-worth paying for putting a tighter leash on presidents who genuinely abuse their power.

In criminal cases, there is good reason to avoid conviction unless the charge against the accused is an offense clearly delineated by law, and guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The reason why is that the defendant stands to lose her liberty or property—or even her life. By contrast, the risk facing an impeached president is removal from a position of enormous power.

Unlike unjust deprivation of life, liberty, or property, removal from power doesn’t violate anyone’s human rights. When real human rights are at stake, it may make sense to allow ten guilty people to go free, in order to save even one innocent from conviction. When it comes to positions of power, almost the opposite is true: Removing ten “normal” politicians is more than justified if that is the only way to get rid of one who engages in grave abuses of power. It’s not as if we suffer from a shortage of ambitious politicians who would be happy to take the places of those who get removed.

Imprecise delineation of  standards is also  far less problematic when it comes to removal from power than criminal punishment. If criminal laws are vague, people will fear to use their liberty, lest they accidentally run afoul of  the law. Such a “chilling effect” on liberty can be deeply problematic. If standards for impeachment are vague, the president might shy away from exercises of power that might be abuses, even if it is not entirely clear whether they really are. Such a chilling effect on power is more a feature than a bug, especially in a context where numerous other incentives incline presidents towards overreaching.

But perhaps the above underrates the harm caused by removing a “good” president. Such removal, it is said, is tantamount to “reversing” the outcome of an election. Not so.  A true reversal of an election would bring to power the president’s opponents. Thus, Trump’s election would be reversed by impeachment if his removal would bring Hillary Clinton to power. In reality, of course, impeachment elevates the president’s own vice president, who comes from the same party, and usually has a similar policy agenda. Elevating Mike Pence to the presidency may or may not be a good idea. But no one is likely to confuse him with Hillary Clinton—and not just because of the difference in gender. It is possible to imagine scenarios where the president and VP both get impeached and removed, thereby elevating the Speaker of the House of Representatives (who will often belong to the opposing party).

Such scenarios are great fodder for political thriller novels. But if it is extremely difficult to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove a president in favor of a successor of the same party, it is virtually impossible to do so in order to elevate a political opponent such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Michael Stokes Paulsen offers some additional responses to the “overturning elections” argument here.

Ultimately, the real danger we face is not that too many good presidents will be removed from power unfairly, but that too many grave abuses of power will go unpunished and undeterred. I am not optimistic that impeachment alone can solve this problem. The supermajority requirement that prevents frivolous impeachment also prevents it in all too many cases where it is amply justified. But the threat of impeachment for abuse of power can at least help at the margin.

Let presidents—even “good” ones—lose more sleep over the possibility of impeachment. The rest of us will then be able to sleep a little easier, knowing we are that much more secure against abuses of government power.

 

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Secret Wars, Forgotten Betrayals, Global Tyranny. Who’s Really In Charge Of The US Military?

Secret Wars, Forgotten Betrayals, Global Tyranny. Who’s Really In Charge Of The US Military?

Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

“There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history, fully unfold.”

– William Shakespeare

Once again we find ourselves in a situation of crisis, where the entire world holds its breath all at once and can only wait to see whether this volatile black cloud floating amongst us will breakout into a thunderstorm of nuclear war or harmlessly pass us by. The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters back and forth at the whim of one man. It is only normal then, that during such times of crisis, we find ourselves trying to analyze and predict the thoughts and motives of just this one person.  The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a true hero for his fellow countrymen and undeniably an essential key figure in combating terrorism in Southwest Asia, was a terrible crime, an abhorrently repugnant provocation. It was meant to cause an apoplectic fervour, it was meant to make us who desire peace, lose our minds in indignation. And therefore, that is exactly what we should not do.

In order to assess such situations, we cannot lose sight of the whole picture, and righteous indignation unfortunately causes the opposite to occur. Our focus becomes narrower and narrower to the point where we can only see or react moment to moment with what is right in front of our face. We are reduced to an obsession of twitter feeds, news blips and the doublespeak of ‘official government statements’.

Thus, before we may find firm ground to stand on regarding the situation of today, we must first have an understanding as to what caused the United States to enter into an endless campaign of regime-change warfare after WWII, or as former Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Col. Prouty stated, three decades of the Indochina war.

An Internal Shifting of Chess Pieces in the Shadows

It is interesting timing that on Sept 2, 1945, the very day that WWII ended, Ho Chi Minh would announce the independence of Indochina. That on the very day that one of the most destructive wars to ever occur in history ended, another long war was declared at its doorstep. Churchill would announce his “Iron Curtain” against communism on March 5th, 1946, and there was no turning back at that point. The world had a mere 6 months to recover before it would be embroiled in another terrible war, except for the French, who would go to war against the Viet Minh opponents in French Indochina only days after WWII was over.

In a previous paper I wrote titled “On Churchill’s Sinews of Peace”, I went over a major re-organisation of the American government and its foreign intelligence bureau on the onset of Truman’s de facto presidency. Recall that there was an attempted military coup d’état, which was exposed by General Butler in a public address in 1933, against the Presidency of FDR who was only inaugurated that year. One could say that there was a very marked disapproval from shadowy corners for how Roosevelt would organise the government.

One key element to this reorganisation under Truman was the dismantling of the previously existing foreign intelligence bureau that was formed by FDR, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on Sept 20, 1945 only two weeks after WWII was officially declared over. The OSS would be replaced by the CIA officially on Sept 18, 1947, with two years of an American intelligence purge and the internal shifting of chess pieces in the shadows. In addition, de-facto President Truman would also found the United States National Security Council on Sept 18, 1947, the same day he founded the CIA. The NSC was a council whose intended function was to serve as the President’s principal arm for coordinating national security, foreign policies and policies among various government agencies.

In Col. Prouty’s book he states,

“In 1955, I was designated to establish an office of special operations in compliance with National Security Council (NSC) Directive #5412 of March 15, 1954. This NSC Directive for the first time in the history of the United States defined covert operations and assigned that role to the Central Intelligence Agency to perform such missions, provided they had been directed to do so by the NSC, and further ordered active-duty Armed Forces personnel to avoid such operations. At the same time, the Armed Forces were directed to “provide the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA” as an official function.”

What this meant, was that there was to be an intermarriage of the foreign intelligence bureau with the military, and that the foreign intelligence bureau would act as top dog in the relationship, only taking orders from the NSC. Though the NSC includes the President, as we will see, the President is very far from being in the position of determining the NSC’s policies.

An Inheritance of Secret Wars

“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”

– Sun Tzu

On January 20th, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States. Along with inheriting the responsibility of the welfare of the country and its people, he was to also inherit a secret war with communist Cuba run by the CIA.

JFK was disliked from the onset by the CIA and certain corridors of the Pentagon, they knew where he stood on foreign matters and that it would be in direct conflict for what they had been working towards for nearly 15 years. Kennedy would inherit the CIA secret operation against Cuba, which Prouty confirms in his book, was quietly upgraded by the CIA from the Eisenhower administration’s March 1960 approval of a modest Cuban-exile support program (which included small air drop and over-the-beach operations) to a 3,000 man invasion brigade just before Kennedy entered office.

This was a massive change in plans that was determined by neither President Eisenhower, who warned at the end of his term of the military industrial complex as a loose cannon, nor President Kennedy, but rather the foreign intelligence bureau who has never been subject to election or judgement by the people. It shows the level of hostility that Kennedy encountered as soon as he entered office, and the limitations of a President’s power when he does not hold support from these intelligence and military quarters.

Within three months into JFK’s term, Operation Bay of Pigs (April 17th to 20th 1961) was scheduled. As the popular revisionist history goes; JFK refused to provide air cover for the exiled Cuban brigade and the land invasion was a calamitous failure and a decisive victory for Castro’s Cuba. It was indeed an embarrassment for President Kennedy who had to take public responsibility for the failure, however, it was not an embarrassment because of his questionable competence as a leader. It was an embarrassment because, had he not taken public responsibility, he would have had to explain the real reason why it failed. That the CIA and military were against him and that he did not have control over them. If Kennedy were to admit such a thing, he would have lost all credibility as a President in his own country and internationally, and would have put the people of the United States in immediate danger amidst a Cold War.

What really occurred was that there was a cancellation of the essential pre-dawn airstrike, by the Cuban Exile Brigade bombers from Nicaragua, to destroy Castro’s last three combat jets. This airstrike was ordered by Kennedy himself. Kennedy was always against an American invasion of Cuba, and striking Castro’s last jets by the Cuban Exile Brigade would have limited Castro’s threat, without the U.S. directly supporting a regime change operation within Cuba. This went fully against the CIA’s plan for Cuba.

Kennedy’s order for the airstrike on Castro’s jets would be cancelled by Special Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy, four hours before the Exile Brigade’s B-26s were to take off from Nicaragua, Kennedy was not brought into this decision. In addition, the Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, the man in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation was unbelievably out of the country on the day of the landings.

Col. Prouty, who was Chief of Special Operations during this time, elaborates on this situation:

“Everyone connected with the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion knew that the policy dictated by NSC 5412, positively prohibited the utilization of active-duty military personnel in covert operations. At no time was an “air cover” position written into the official invasion plan…The “air cover” story that has been created is incorrect.”

As a result, JFK who well understood the source of this fiasco, set up a Cuban Study Group the day after and charged it with the responsibility of determining the cause for the failure of the operation. The study group, consisting of Allen Dulles, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Adm. Arleigh Burke and Attorney General Robert Kennedy (the only member JFK could trust), concluded that the failure was due to Bundy’s telephone call to General Cabell (who was also CIA Deputy Director) that cancelled the President’s air strike order.

Kennedy had them.

Humiliatingly, CIA Director Allen Dulles was part of formulating the conclusion that the Bay of Pigs op was a failure because of the CIA’s intervention into the President’s orders. This allowed for Kennedy to issue the National Security Action Memorandum #55 on June 28th, 1961, which began the process of changing the responsibility from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Prouty states,

“When fully implemented, as Kennedy had planned, after his reelection in 1964, it would have taken the CIA out of the covert operation business. This proved to be one of the first nails in John F. Kennedy’s coffin.”

If this was not enough of a slap in the face to the CIA, Kennedy forced the resignation of CIA Director Allen Dulles, CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard M. Bissell Jr. and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell.

In Oct 1962, Kennedy was informed that Cuba had offensive Soviet missiles 90 miles from American shores. Soviet ships with more missiles were on their way towards Cuba but ended up turning around last minute. Rumours started to abound that JFK had cut a secret deal with Russian Premier Khrushchev, which was that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviets withdrew their missiles. Criticisms of JFK being soft on communism began to stir.

NSAM #263, closely overseen by Kennedy, was released on Oct 11th, 1963, and outlined a policy decision “to withdraw 1,000 military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963” and further stated that “It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel [including the CIA and military] by 1965.” The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had the headline U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY ’65. Kennedy was winning the game and the American people.

This was to be the final nail in Kennedy’s coffin.

Kennedy was brutally shot down only one month later, on Nov, 22nd 1963. His death should not just be seen as a tragic loss but, more importantly, it should be recognised for the successful military coup d’état that it was and is. The CIA showed what lengths it was ready to go to if a President stood in its way. (For more information on this coup refer to District Attorney of New Orleans at the time, Jim Garrison’s book. And the excellently researched Oliver Stone movie “JFK”)

Through the Looking Glass

On Nov. 26th 1963, a full four days after Kennedy’s murder, de facto President Johnson signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of Kennedy’s policy under #263. And on March 4th, 1964, Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War and involved 2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during this period.

The Vietnam War, or more accurately the Indochina War, would continue for another 12 years after Kennedy’s death, lasting a total of 20 years for Americans.

Scattered black ops wars continued, but the next large scale-never ending war that would involve the world would begin full force on Sept 11, 2001 under the laughable title War on Terror, which is basically another Iron Curtain, a continuation of a 74 year Cold War. A war that is not meant to end until the ultimate regime changes are accomplished and the world sees the toppling of Russia and China. Iraq was destined for invasion long before the vague Gulf War of 1990 and even before Saddam Hussein was being backed by the Americans in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979.

It had been understood far in advance by the CIA and US military that the toppling of sovereignty in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran needed to occur before Russia and China could be taken over.  Such war tactics were formulaic after 3 decades of counterinsurgency against the CIA fueled “communist-insurgency” of Indochina. This is how today’s terrorist-inspired insurgency functions, as a perfect CIA formula for an endless bloodbath.

Former CIA Deputy Director (2010-2013) Michael Morell, who was supporting Hillary Clinton during the presidential election campaign and vehemently against the election of Trump, whom he claimed was being manipulated by Putin, said in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose that Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed covertly to ‘pay the price’.

Therefore, when a drone stroke occurs assassinating an Iranian Maj. Gen., even if the U.S. President takes onus on it, I would not be so quick as to believe that that is necessarily the case, or the full story. Just as I would not take the statements of President Rouhani accepting responsibility for the Iranian military shooting down ‘by accident’ the Boeing 737-800 plane which contained 176 civilians, who were mostly Iranian, as something that can be relegated to criminal negligence, but rather that there is very likely something else going on here.

I would also not be quick to dismiss the timely release, or better described as leaked, draft letter from the US Command in Baghdad to the Iraqi government that suggests a removal of American forces from the country. Its timing certainly puts the President in a compromised situation. Though the decision to keep the American forces within Iraq or not is hardly a simple matter that the President alone can determine. In fact there is no reason why, after reviewing the case of JFK, we should think such a thing.

One could speculate that the President was set up, with the official designation of the IRGC as “terrorist” occurring in April 2019 by the US State Department, a decision that was strongly supported by both Bolton and Pompeo, who were both members of the NSC at the time. This made it legal for a US military drone strike to occur against Soleimani under the 2001 AUMF, where the US military can attack any armed group deemed to be a terrorist threat. Both Bolton and Pompeo made no secret that they were overjoyed by Soleimani’s assassination and Bolton went so far as to tweet “Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.” Bolton has also made it no secret that he is eager to testify against Trump in his possible impeachment trial.

Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently, but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits that though West Points’ cadet motto is “You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.”, his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating “I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses. (long pause) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

Thus, it should be no surprise to anyone in the world at this point in history, that the CIA holds no allegiance to any country. And it can be hardly expected that a President, who is actively under attack from all sides within his own country, is in a position to hold the CIA accountable for its past and future crimes.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 01/20/2020 – 22:20

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US Officials Admit Covert Tech Program Is Fueling Iran Protests

US Officials Admit Covert Tech Program Is Fueling Iran Protests

After major protests hit multiple cities across Iran in November following a drastic government slash in gasoline subsidies which quickly turned anti-regime, broad internet outages were reported — some lasting as long as a week or more nationwide — following Tehran authorities ordering the blockage of external access. 

And during smaller January protests over downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, more widespread internet outages were reported recently, likely as Iranian security services fear protest “crackdown” videos would fuel outrage in western media, and after months ago Mike Pompeo expressly urged Iranians in the streets to send the State Department damning videos that would implicate Tehran’s leaders and police. 

But now Washington appears to have initiated the “Syria option” inside Iran: covertly fueling and driving “popular protests” to eventually create conditions for large-scale confrontation on the ground geared toward regime change. 

Image source: Zuma Press/DW.com

Financial Times reports Washington’s ‘covert’ efforts are now increasing, and are more out in the open: 

US government-funded technology companies have recorded an increase in the use of circumvention software in Iran in recent weeks after boosting efforts to help Iranian anti-regime protesters thwart internet censorship and use secure mobile messaging.

The outreach is part of a US government program dedicated to internet freedom that supports dissident pressure inside Iran and complements America’s policy of “maximum pressure” over the regime. A US state department official told the Financial Times that since protests in Iran in 2018 — at the time the largest in almost a decade — Washington had accelerated efforts to provide Iranians more options on how they communicate with each other and the outside world.

Similar efforts had long been in place with anti-Assad groups prior to the outbreak of conflict in Syria in 2011, WikiLeaks cables previously revealed. 

The US State Department is now openly boasting it’s enacted this program for Iran, which includes “providing apps, servers and other technology to help people communicate, visit banned websites, install anti-tracking software and navigate data shutdowns,” according to FT.

And dangerously, many Iranians may not even realize they could be in some instances relying on such US-funded countermeasures to circumvent domestic internet blockages:

“Many Iranians rely on virtual private networks (VPNs) that receive US funding or are beamed in with US support, not knowing they are relying on Washington-backed tools.”

Iran is on occasion known to round of citizen-journalists and accuse them of being CIA assets — thus the State Department’s open boasting about its program, which is further connected to a broader $65.5 million “Internet Freedom program” in troubled spots throughout the world — could only serve to increase this trend. 

“We work with technological companies to help free flow of information and provide circumvention tools that helped in [last week’s] protest,” one US state department official told the FT. “We are able to sponsor VPNs — and that allows Iranians to use the internet.”

So there it is: US officials explicitly admitting they were actively assisting in organizing recent protests which followed Soleimani’s killing and the Ukrainian airliner shoot down. 

At least one circumvention software is actually identified in the report as being produced by Canada-based Psiphon, which receives American government funds. Of course the company sees its role more as facilitating “free flow of information” and less as essentially a willing asset in pursuing covert regime change in Tehran. 

Interestingly, the revelation comes just as other US-funded propaganda campaigns related to Iran are coming to light:

All of this suggests neocons in Washington could be a big step closer to fulfilling their long-term dream of seeing US-sponsored regime change come to Iran — a policy plan which goes back to at least the 1990’s and was given greater impetus and urgency under the Bush administration. 


Tyler Durden

Mon, 01/20/2020 – 21:55

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Davos Elites Warn “Climate Action Failure” Biggest Global Risk In 2020

Davos Elites Warn “Climate Action Failure” Biggest Global Risk In 2020

Authored by Marcus Lu via VisualCapitalist.com,

Environmental concerns are a frequent talking point drawn upon by politicians and scientists alike, and for good reason. Irrespective of economic or social status, climate change has the potential to affect us all.

While public urgency surrounding climate action has been growing, it can be difficult to comprehend the potential extent of economic disruption that environmental risks pose.

Front and Center

Today’s chart uses data from the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report, which surveyed 800 leaders from business, government, and non-profits to showcase the most prominent economic risks the world faces.

According to the data in the report, here are the top five risks to the global economy, in terms of their likelihood and potential impact:

With more emphasis being placed on environmental risks, how much do we need to worry?

According to the World Economic Forum, more than we can imagine. The report asserts that, among many other things, natural disasters are becoming more intense and more frequent.

While it can be difficult to extrapolate precisely how environmental risks could cascade into trouble for the global economy and financial system, here are some interesting examples of how they are already affecting institutional investors and the insurance industry.

The Stranded Assets Dilemma

If the world is to stick to its 2°C global warming threshold, as outlined in the Paris Agreement, a significant amount of oil, gas, and coal reserves would need to be left untouched. These assets would become “stranded”, forfeiting roughly $1-4 trillion from the world economy.

Growing awareness of this risk has led to a change in sentiment. Many institutional investors have become wary of their portfolio exposures, and in some cases, have begun divesting from the sector entirely.

The financial case for fossil fuel divestment is strong. Fossil fuel companies once led the economy and world stock markets. They now lag.

– Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis

The last couple of years have been a game-changer for the industry’s future prospects. For example, 2018 was a milestone year in fossil fuel divestment:

  • Nearly 1,000 institutional investors representing $6.24 trillion in assets have pledged to divest from fossil fuels, up from just $52 billion four years ago;

  • Ireland became the first country to commit to fossil fuel divestment. At the time of announcement, its sovereign development fund had $10.4 billion in assets;

  • New York City became the largest (but not the first) city to commit to fossil fuel divestment. Its pension funds, totaling $189 billion at the time of announcement, aim to divest over a 5-year period.

A Tough Road Ahead

In a recent survey, actuaries ranked climate change as their top risk for 2019, ahead of damages from cyberattacks, financial instability, and terrorism—drawing strong parallels with the results of this year’s Global Risk Report.

These growing concerns are well-founded. 2017 was the costliest year on record for natural disasters, with $344 billion in global economic losses. This daunting figure translated to a record year for insured losses, totalling $140 billion.

Although insured losses over 2019 have fallen back in line with the average over the past 10 years, Munich RE believes that long-term environmental effects are already being felt:

  • Recent studies have shown that over the long term, the environmental conditions for bushfires in Australia have become more favorable;

  • Despite a decrease in U.S. wildfire losses compared to previous years, there is a rising long-term trend for forest area burned in the U.S.;

  • An increase in hailstorms, as a result of climate change, has been shown to contribute to growing losses across the globe.

The Ball Is In Our Court

It’s clear that the environmental issues we face are beginning to have a larger real impact. Despite growing awareness and preliminary actions such as fossil fuel divestment, the Global Risk Report stresses that there is much more work to be done to mitigate risks.

How companies and governments choose to respond over the next decade will be a focal point of many discussions to come.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 01/20/2020 – 21:30

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Black Gun Ownership

A Pew Research Center 2017 survey gives us some estimates: Black gun ownership is lower than white gun ownership—but not by much. For whites, 36% of respondents report that they own a gun personally, and 49% report that they live in a household in which someone (whether they or someone else) owns a gun. For blacks, the numbers are 2/3 of that: 24% and 32%. (The numbers are lower for Hispanics, 15% and 21%.) In raw numbers, there are about 40 million blacks in the U.S., so about 13 million (or likely about 10 million adults) live in gun-owning households.

This seems to closely track different gun ownership based on ideology. Blacks generally vote about 90% in general elections for Democratic candidates, so it’s fair to say that they are generally Democrats or lean Democrats. Among all respondents who said they were Democrats or leaned Democrat, the numbers were 20% personal gun ownership, 30% household. Assuming that the great majority of blacks fall in this political category, white and black gun ownership among Democrats and Democrat-leaners seems to be virtually identical.

But in any event, there are lots of black gun owners out there, just as there are lots of Democrat gun owners. I can’t speak to what fraction of gun rights activists or gun rights enthusiasts are black—it’s certainly possible that black gun owners are on average less likely to focus on this issue politically than white gun owners. But it seems pretty likely that many black gun owners do care in considerable measure about their right to own guns, whatever fraction of them might or might not show up to, say, gun rights rallies. (Naturally, this tells us nothing about what is good gun policy; I am speaking here only of demographics.)

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Stocks, Bond Yields Tumble As Fears Over Coronavirus Outbreak Spread

Stocks, Bond Yields Tumble As Fears Over Coronavirus Outbreak Spread

Dow futures are down over 100 points, AsiaPac equity markets are down harder, and Treasuries are well bid along with gold after a Chinese officials confirmed the coronavirus can be spread by human-to-human contact, and the deadly disease is spreading to other asian nations.

“Now we can say it is certain that it is a human-to-human transmission phenomenon,” Zhong Nanshan, a scientist who is leading a government-appointed expert panel on the outbreak, said in an interview on state-run television on Monday.

As The New York Times reports, cases have been reported outside China.

The authorities in Thailand detected the new coronavirus last week in two Chinese women who had flown from Wuhan to Bangkok on separate trips. The government said the women, aged 74 and 61, were in good condition.

In Japan, a Chinese man who returned from Wuhan on Jan. 6 was also confirmed to have the disease. He was discharged after five days in a hospital.

South Korea confirmed its first case of the coronavirus on Monday in a 35-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan who arrived on Sunday at Incheon International Airport, which serves Seoul.

The woman was found with a fever, muscle pain and other symptoms while going through customs and was immediately quarantined for tests, said Jung Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The woman was traveling with five other people intending to spend the Lunar New Year holidays in South Korea and Japan, Ms. Jung said. South Korean officials were running tests on anyone believed to have come in contact with the woman in the plane, she said.

And fear of a SARS 2.0 outbreak have sparked risk-off trades in early Asia trading.

“There are now sufficient cases that it’s not going to die out by chance,” said Neil Ferguson, a public health expert at Imperial College London who has studied the new virus.

“The real question now is, how efficiently can this virus spread from person to person?”

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is down notably…

As are US futures…

Bonds are bid…

Along with gold…

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said on Monday that the outbreak “must be taken seriously” and that every possible measure should be taken to contain it, according to the state broadcaster CCTV.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 01/20/2020 – 21:01

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Black Gun Ownership

A Pew Research Center 2017 survey gives us some estimates: Black gun ownership is lower than white gun ownership—but not by much. For whites, 36% of respondents report that they own a gun personally, and 49% report that they live in a household in which someone (whether they or someone else) owns a gun. For blacks, the numbers are 2/3 of that: 24% and 32%. (The numbers are lower for Hispanics, 15% and 21%.) In raw numbers, there are about 40 million blacks in the U.S., so about 13 million (or likely about 10 million adults) live in gun-owning households.

This seems to closely track different gun ownership based on ideology. Blacks generally vote about 90% in general elections for Democratic candidates, so it’s fair to say that they are generally Democrats or lean Democrats. Among all respondents who said they were Democrats or leaned Democrat, the numbers were 20% personal gun ownership, 30% household. Assuming that the great majority of blacks fall in this political category, white and black gun ownership among Democrats and Democrat-leaners seems to be virtually identical.

But in any event, there are lots of black gun owners out there, just as there are lots of Democrat gun owners. I can’t speak to what fraction of gun rights activists or gun rights enthusiasts are black—it’s certainly possible that black gun owners are on average less likely to focus on this issue politically than white gun owners. But it seems pretty likely that many black gun owners do care in considerable measure about their right to own guns, whatever fraction of them might or might not show up to, say, gun rights rallies. (Naturally, this tells us nothing about what is good gun policy; I am speaking here only of demographics.)

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Flynn’s Lawyer: FBI Agents Wrote Flynn Didn’t Lie, We Have Eyewitness

Flynn’s Lawyer: FBI Agents Wrote Flynn Didn’t Lie, We Have Eyewitness

Authored by Peter Svab via TheEpochTimes.com,

Sidney Powell, lawyer to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, said the FBI excluded crucial information from a report on their interview of her client. The report, an FBI 302 form, was used to charge Flynn with lying to the FBI, but the original draft of the 302 stated that Flynn was honest with the FBI agents, according to a witness who saw the draft, said Powell.

Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to one count of lying to FBI agents during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview.

A 302 report summarizing the interview was supposed to be filed within five days. But the earliest draft Flynn’s lawyers were provided was from Feb. 10, 2017 – more than two weeks after the interview.

Powell, who took over Flynn’s defense in June 2019, has for months asserted that an earlier 302 must exist. Prosecutors have said they don’t have it, stopping short of asserting that it doesn’t exist.

In an Oct. 24, 2019, court filing (pdf), Powell rejected the suggestion that the 302 draft was “missing,” saying neither the bureau nor its digital document system “loses the most important of its reports that is supposed to support the federal felony of the President’s National Security Adviser.”

On Jan. 16, Powell disclosed that she has a witness who could attest to what was in the original draft.

“I’ve now found a witness who says the original 302 did in fact say that Flynn was honest with the agents and did not lie,” she told Larry O’Connor on his WMAL radio show.

“So for somebody to delete that from the 302 is just beyond outrageous.”

She wouldn’t elaborate much further when asked by The Epoch Times.

“Can’t say more about witness but yes, person saw it,” she said via email.

Withdrawing Plea

Flynn was expected to receive a light sentence because of cooperation with the government on two investigations—one led by then-special counsel Robert Mueller and the other in the Eastern District of Virginia against Flynn’s former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian.

In a Jan. 7 sentencing memo (pdf), however, prosecutors asked for up to six months in prison for Flynn, saying he pulled back his cooperation in the Rafiekian case last year.

In response to the memo, Flynn asked the court on Jan. 14 (pdf) to allow him to withdraw his original plea, saying the prosecutors violated the terms of the agreement.

Rafiekian was charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent based on a job that Flynn’s now-defunct consultancy, Flynn Intel Group (FIG), did for Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin.

Flynn wasn’t charged in that case and Rafiekian was ultimately acquitted due to insufficient evidence.

In June 2019, after Flynn fired his original lawyers and hired a new legal team led by Powell, prosecutors asked Flynn to testify that he signed FIG’s lobbying forms knowing there were lies in them. He refused, saying he only learned there was something wrong with the registration in retrospect.

That angered the lead prosecutor, Brandon Van Grack, notes from a June 27, 2019, conference call indicate.

Powell said that ever since then, the prosecutors’ behavior has been “retaliatory, vindictive, and in bad faith” because Flynn refused to lie.

In a Jan. 16 court filing (pdf), she disclosed documents that, in her view, indicate the prosecutors knew they were asking for a false statement.

She previously asked Judge Emmet Sullivan to order the government to hand over a plethora of documents she said were exculpatory to Flynn. She said the case should be dismissed for government misconduct, including for withholding the documents. Sullivan denied the request.

Top Brass Witnesses

Powell said in the WMAL radio interview that if Sullivan allows the plea withdrawal and the case goes to trial, she will call witnesses including former FBI Director James Comey, his former deputy, Andrew McCabe, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, and the “agent who cannot be named,” referring to Special Agent Joe Pientka.

It was Strzok and Pientka who interviewed Flynn, while Comey and McCabe were involved in planning the interview. Powell previously requested Clapper’s phone records to “confirm” whether he communicated with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, “especially on January 10, 2017, when Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of ‘take the kill shot on Flynn,’” she said.

Ignatius and Van Grack, the leading prosecutor in the Flynn case, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. An FBI spokesman declined to comment. An attempt to reach Clapper for comment was unsuccessful.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 01/20/2020 – 20:40

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McConnell Gives Democrats Just Two Days For Trump Impeachment Trial In Senate

McConnell Gives Democrats Just Two Days For Trump Impeachment Trial In Senate

House impeachment managers will have just two days to prosecute their case against President Donald Trump according to a resolution circulated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a move meant to accelerates the timetable for a trial Republicans intend to end in a speedy acquittal. President Trump’s team will also have two days to present their arguments and then senators will have a chance to ask questions and consider subpoenas of witnesses.

According to The Hill, both sides will have 24 hours to make their first round of arguments, the same amount of time House impeachment managers and Bill Clinton’s lawyers received in 1999, but it limits them to just two days each, instead of the three allowed in Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial more than 20 years ago.  A Senate GOP leadership aide noted that prosecutors in the Clinton trial didn’t use all of their allotted time and finished their opening arguments within three days.

The resolution does not require additional witnesses to be subpoenaed, much to the anger of Democrats, and does not allow House prosecutors to admit evidence into the Senate trial record until after the opening arguments are heard. The rules would also allow the president’s team to seek a quick dismissal of the charges, though many Republican senators have said they should at least hear the case.

In response, the top Senate Democrat, Charles Schumer quickly pushed back and vowed to force votes on amendments. “Sen. McConnell’s resolution is nothing short of a national disgrace,” Schumer said in a statement Monday afternoon, further accusing McConnell of casting aside public statements that he would use the same rules as under the Clinton trial, adding that the majority leader is clearly “hell-bent on making it much more difficult to get witnesses and documents and intent on rushing the trial through.”

Schumer also said in a statement Monday evening that he will offer amendments to alter “the many flaws” in a “deeply unfair proposal,” as well as to subpoena further witnesses and documents.

The resolution also includes language favored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and other GOP moderates requiring a debate and vote on subpoenaing new witnesses and documents.

Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who worked with McConnell and Collins to modify the resolution, said it “guarantees a vote on whether we need additional evidence at the appropriate time.”

Schumer argues that forcing House managers to cram their opening arguments into a two-day window will force them to present on the Senate floor well into the evening and possibly past midnight.

“McConnell’s resolution stipulates that key facts be delivered in the wee hours of the night simply because he doesn’t want the American people to hear them,” Schumer said.

According to the resolution, House managers will be allowed to begin their arguments 1 p.m. Wednesday.  

In response, a Senate GOP leadership aide told the Hill that in 1999, the House prosecutors and the president’s defense team each used fewer than 12 hours over a three-day period. “This resolution provides the same time but more structure for the arguments,” the aide said. The resolution also provides 16 hours for senators to ask questions.

In another departure from the 1999 organizing resolution, McConnell’s measure does not allow evidence from the House impeachment inquiry to be entered into the Senate trial record until after the question of additional witnesses and documents receives consideration. McConnell reportedly did this in response to Trump’s lawyers not having the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses at the House hearings.

“The White House was denied due process throughout the 12 weeks of partisan House proceedings,” the source said.

Additionally, according to McConnell’s resolution if the Senate votes at the end of phase one against subpoenaing witnesses, then it will not be possible to consider additional motions on specific witnesses. Democrats have said they want to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, senior White House adviser Robert Blair and senior Office of Management Budget official Michael Duffey.

The Senate will vote on the resolution Tuesday.

Schumer called on moderate Republican colleagues to reconsider McConnell’s aggressive timeline: “Any senator that votes for the McConnell resolution will be voting to hide information and evidence,” he said in his statement.

“I will be offering amendments to address the many flaws in this deeply unfair proposal and to subpoena the witnesses and documents we have requested,” he added.

* * *

The White House immediately backed McConnell’s rules, but didn’t indicate whether it would press a quick vote on a motion to dismiss.

“Protecting the president’s rights to offer pretrial motions was critical for us to support the package, and we’re very gratified with the resolution,” said Eric Ueland, the White House’s liaison to Congress. “I’m not going to talk about trial strategy publicly.”

“It makes sense” to file a motion to dismiss because in every criminal case where there is no wrongdoing, you should try and get a dismissal, Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump’s defense team, said in an interview Monday evening.

Earlier on Monday, the White House and impeachment managers from the House of Representatives released a pair of filings where both sides argued that constitutional separation of powers is at stake in the trial.

The president’s 171-page filing contends that the House failed to prove that the president explicitly linked aid for Ukraine to an investigation Trump sought into political rival and former Vice President Joe Biden. And the president’s lawyers argued that the Senate should swiftly reject the impeachment articles.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 01/20/2020 – 20:15

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