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struggle4progress

(118,032 posts)
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 06:57 AM Feb 2021

Impeachment trial memorandum is damning

“There’s a reason that the people’s branch is in Article One. Of course, we have the power to impeach a lawless president. He does not have the power to impeach us,” Representative Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who will serve as the lead impeachment manager for the Senate trial of Donald Trump, tells The Nation. “Now is the moment for us to stand up and to strongly reassert Congress as the dominant branch of the US government” ...

A former constitutional law professor and a veteran legislator, the congressman has no illusions about the difficulty of securing a two-thirds vote to convict Trump from a Senate where half the members are aligned with Trump’s Republican Party. Yet he is prepared to counter the arguments against impeaching a former president, in particular, and against accountability in general. Raskin will give no quarter to those who “essentially would want to turn the other cheek” and once more neglect the high crimes and misdemeanors of the 45th president. “One wonders,” he says, “how many Americans would have to be killed, how much destruction would have to occur, how much of our governmental process must be destroyed, before they’re willing to stand up against Donald Trump.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/impeachment-trump-trial-brief/

text of brief at link

24 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Impeachment trial memorandum is damning (Original Post) struggle4progress Feb 2021 OP
Jamie has the background and strength to True Blue American Feb 2021 #1
Nadler Roy Rolling Feb 2021 #2
Correct Cosmocat Feb 2021 #8
I am happy to see a strong face True Blue American Feb 2021 #14
Bravo for Jamie Raskin! Duppers Feb 2021 #3
Truth be told . . . Iliyah Feb 2021 #4
Zero chance Cosmocat Feb 2021 #9
Answer to your question: RVN VET71 Feb 2021 #15
Amazing, isn't it? moose65 Feb 2021 #17
... Celerity Feb 2021 #5
No Kentucky Fried Chicken in there. PWPippinesq Feb 2021 #18
As hard as I try... N_E_1 for Tennis Feb 2021 #6
I'd say... DEbluedude Feb 2021 #10
I would say you're right, but it's also white women. Lonestarblue Feb 2021 #16
It was a call for unity...I agree...nt N_E_1 for Tennis Feb 2021 #23
Every time they show some backbone... Trueblue Texan Feb 2021 #11
In some cases, yes, definitely. RVN VET71 Feb 2021 #19
Other posters have given some good answers to your question, but I also think that part of it smirkymonkey Feb 2021 #21
Smirky... N_E_1 for Tennis Feb 2021 #24
To offer an answer to his last quote Fritz Walter Feb 2021 #7
I don't think they'll ever stand up. Trueblue Texan Feb 2021 #12
They won't, regardless the number of deaths. RVN VET71 Feb 2021 #20
And sadly, it won't matter one iota... SKKY Feb 2021 #13
i wonder how many of them just wont show up. mopinko Feb 2021 #22

True Blue American

(17,972 posts)
1. Jamie has the background and strength to
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 07:11 AM
Feb 2021

Present a powerful case.

What happened to Nadler? He seemed to be ill. I know he had congestive heart failure.

Roy Rolling

(6,853 posts)
2. Nadler
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 07:23 AM
Feb 2021

The Democrats need new faces this time around, Mr. Nadler is fading into the background. His fingerprints may be all over every paper they offer, but his face won’t.

It’s all about presentation now.

True Blue American

(17,972 posts)
14. I am happy to see a strong face
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:15 AM
Feb 2021

Jamie is dealing with the worst that can happen to a parent but soldiers on. Sometimes shock drives you through the first bad months!

Duppers

(28,094 posts)
3. Bravo for Jamie Raskin!
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 07:38 AM
Feb 2021

Now, IF the press & MSM will support the whole truth about "Trump’s Republican Party."


That's the key. No more equivocation.


Iliyah

(25,111 posts)
4. Truth be told . . .
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 07:48 AM
Feb 2021

At the last "impeachment" majority of senate republicans did not even listen and many either walked out or didn't even bother to show up. Their minds were already made up. Then looked at what happened, it got worse, and shithole further destroyed democracy, ignored the pandemic, over 470,000 dead from COVID-19 and still climbing.

All of this lead to January 6, 2021 and that lie of "stop the steal".

Will the senate republicans finally put The United States of America first?

RVN VET71

(2,686 posts)
15. Answer to your question:
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:24 AM
Feb 2021

No. The Republicans have long since given up all pretense of patriotism and adherence to their oaths of office and the constitution those oaths swore them to uphold and defend. The Fascist-KKK side of the GOP will hold the line in absolute defiance of the requirements of law and the pleadings for justice. The Business-plutocratic side of the GOP will reject a guilty verdict because of money, of billionaire donor support.

In today’s GOP: Money trumps (yes, pun) justice, and so does racism and a need for authoritarian rule by strong white men.

moose65

(3,164 posts)
17. Amazing, isn't it?
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:32 AM
Feb 2021

They didn't even listen to any of the charges the first time around. And then they acquitted him on February 5, right before all hell broke loose all over the country.

Whew. I am so glad the Trump "presidency" is over.

N_E_1 for Tennis

(9,593 posts)
6. As hard as I try...
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 08:22 AM
Feb 2021

I can’t wrap my head around why the republicans are such cowards. Why do they want authoritarian country? Big money interests I get that, but the “everyday citizen” ? I’m stumped.

DEbluedude

(812 posts)
10. I'd say...
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 08:58 AM
Feb 2021

because the old white boys club know that their days as a majority are coming to an end. Demographics. They do not want to cede power and the only way to maintain it is to do what they're doing now. Its not about governing, its about power.

Its not like minorities are treated differently in this country, right?

And I'm an old white guy.

Lonestarblue

(9,874 posts)
16. I would say you're right, but it's also white women.
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:26 AM
Feb 2021

I believe racism to be the most destructive force in the US today because it feeds so many other negative behaviors, from the casual calling of police because a black family is in a public park to the attack on the Capitol to “take back their country.” So many news reports have included comments by the terrorists and the people who support them (and Trump) that they are losing their country and they need to fight to keep it. To me, that is thinly veiled rhetoric to say they want their white country back, a time when black and brown people were subservient and immigrants stayed in low-level jobs and mostly out of sight. That country is not coming back, nor should it.

I suppose because of my extra sensitivity to events after the Capitol attack, I noticed a couple of things last night about many of the Super Bowl ads. Many presented a message of unity, of upholding values, of the need to work for the country together. Others clearly presented black people in all roles of life, which generally doesn’t make me stop and think but did this time because of the lunatic Republican Party of Trump.

Did anyone else think the Super Bowl ads had messaging that aligned with Biden’s goal of unity?

Trueblue Texan

(2,368 posts)
11. Every time they show some backbone...
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:07 AM
Feb 2021

...Trump calls them for a personal meeting. I think he probably shows them the evidence he's got on them and threatens them. They do an aboutface and toe the line for him. I don't know what the Russians have collected on all of them, but they are using it to hold our government and systems of accountability hostage.

RVN VET71

(2,686 posts)
19. In some cases, yes, definitely.
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:42 AM
Feb 2021

But most of them are motivated not by fear of exposure but by a basic dislike for democracy, especially when it gets in the way of their access to power.

Power is celebrity and the ability to manipulate the citizenry.

Power is access to the treasury, and to the wording of the legal code itself which can guarantee that access.

To these people, public office is not an honor, it’s path to wealth at the public’s expense. The primary reason these people became Senators and Representatives was to exercise their assumed power, at whim and will, and draw from the public trough (my money and your money!) what they felt they deserved because they saw public office as a means to live like Middle Eastern potentates.)

The GOP is stimulated by access to that kind of power, to the ability to wield that kind of power, and to use that power as a shield against the retributive effects of their shilling and outright criminality.

Trump threatens to deprive them of that power if they betray him. Trump, in fact, can deprive him of that power through primaries and lying propaganda. So they do his bidding, soullessly, without conscience, without even a thought about the country and its people.

 

smirkymonkey

(63,221 posts)
21. Other posters have given some good answers to your question, but I also think that part of it
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:56 AM
Feb 2021

for the average rank-and-file republican is they want an authoritarian country/government because they want to see the people they don't like get punished and/or eliminated.

They don't care if they are going to suffer too, as long as they get their revenge on the people that they believe are responsible for their misery, whether that is immigrants, minorities, women, gay people, athiests, Jews, Liberals, Democrats, etc.

The cruelty is the point for them. Most of them are consumed with hatred.

N_E_1 for Tennis

(9,593 posts)
24. Smirky...
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 10:47 AM
Feb 2021

That same idea was floating in my head, this is where the incredulity their wants baffles me.

Ok, rid yourselves of enemies, immigrants, differently skinned people get that. But to be willing, more than willing, almost joyous to give up their freedoms to accomplish that. To have one man rule over all with unfettered power and the ability to crush everything they are afraid they’ll lose if the liberals are in charge.

Don’t they realize that on a whim that leader could extinguish all their liberties?
That they would have no say, no vote for leadership for or against?

Is critical thinking so deeply buried in society that they can’t imagine the ramifications of their want of authoritarian government?

If so...good god.

Fritz Walter

(4,281 posts)
7. To offer an answer to his last quote
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 08:41 AM
Feb 2021

We know that the number of dead Americans -- already 462,000 as of this morning -- would have to be much, much higher before they'd stand up against Cantaloupe Caligula.

RVN VET71

(2,686 posts)
20. They won't, regardless the number of deaths.
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:47 AM
Feb 2021

Say a million Americans dies from covid-19, 5 million, more! The GOP will simply lay it all on Joe and Kamala. Trump will never be attacked by more than one or two of them for his utter incompetence dealing with the plague.

These people just don’t care. Unless it affects them or their families. Then they care. Then they will rail against Biden and Harris with a ferocity this tattered Republic has seldom seen -- and continue to tout the brilliant success of Trump’s efforts, the genius and effectiveness of which was stopped by the stolen election of 2020.

SKKY

(11,771 posts)
13. And sadly, it won't matter one iota...
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:12 AM
Feb 2021
Jury Nullification

A jury's knowing and deliberate rejection of the evidence or refusal to apply the law either because the jury wants to send a message about some social issue that is larger than the case itself, or because the result dictated by law is contrary to the jury's sense of justice, morality, or fairness.

Jury nullification is a discretionary act, and is not a legally sanctioned function of the jury. It is considered to be inconsistent with the jury's duty to return a verdict based solely on the law and the facts of the case. The jury does not have a right to nulification, and counsel is not permitted to present the concept of jury nullification to the jury. However, jury verdicts of acquittal are unassailable even where the verdict is inconsistent with the weight of the evidence and instruction of the law.

See U.S. v. Thomas, 116 F.3d 606 (2d Cir. 1997).

mopinko

(69,803 posts)
22. i wonder how many of them just wont show up.
Mon Feb 8, 2021, 09:59 AM
Feb 2021

esp for the vote. cowards way out. and if they are anything, they are cowards.

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