Not all messages are displayed:
show all messages (2948 of them)
hmm maybe we will get public hearings, according to the NYT (although they do not quote anybody or cite anything specifically lol)
Democratic leaders had hoped to move as soon as Thanksgiving to wrap up a narrow inquiry focused around Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, buoyed by polling data that shows that the public supports the investigation, even if voters are not yet sold on impeaching the president.
But after a complicated web of damaging revelations about the president has emerged from private depositions unfolding behind closed doors, Democratic leaders have now begun plotting a full-scale — and probably more time-consuming — effort to lay out their case in a set of high-profile public hearings on Capitol Hill.
Their goal is to convince the public — and if they can, more Republicans — that the president committed an impeachable offense when he demanded that Ukraine investigate his political rivals.
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 22 October 2019 21:44 (four years ago) link
Washington (CNN)Former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Tuesday said she left office because "saying no" and refusing to do things that others in the administration wanted was "not going to be enough.""There were a lot of things that, there were those in the administration who thought that we should do, and just as I spoke truth to power from the very beginning, it became clear that saying no, and refusing to do it myself was not going to be enough, so it was time for me to offer my resignation," she said at FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit.
Her comments came towards the end of an intense and brief interview with Amna Nawaz, national correspondent for "PBS NewsHour," which focused primarily on Nielsen's controversial role in the separation of families at the border.
Nielsen, who resigned in April, was pressed multiple times on whether she regretted signing a memo that enforced separating families.
"I don't regret enforcing the law, because I took an oath to do that," Nielsen said, adding that her decision was to "enforce the law, not to separate families."
However, she said she wished the coordination and information flow had "worked a lot better."
"What I regret is that we haven't solved it and what I regret that that information flow and coordination to quickly reunite the families was clearly not in place and that's why the practice was stopped through an executive order," she said.
"It clearly wasn't working, so we stopped it during an executive order," she added.
When asked if anyone raised concerns that children would be traumatized as a result of the policy, Nielsen said, "not from staff, no."
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced that he was going to nominate Nielsen to the National Infrastructure Advisory Council. Nielsen told the audience Tuesday that the position is unpaid and she would be advising the government on cyber and critical infrastructure needs.
Nawaz pressed her on why she was currently advising the White House, prompting a retort from Nielsen.
"Are you telling every CEO in here that they should never advise the government," she said to applause.
This was Nielsen's first public interview since her forced resignation in April. She had been scheduled to appear at the Atlantic Festival last month, but later dropped out amid backlash. She canceled due to a family situation, not the criticism over her attendance, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile dropped out of the Fortune event earlier this week, citing the "atrocity of family separation."
"Respectfully, I absolutely cannot support Kirstjen Nielsen having a voice among the most powerful and inspiring women in America," she tweeted.
Nielsen became the face of the Trump administration zero-tolerance policy that led to the separation of thousands of families who were apprehended crossing the southern border.
At the end of the contentious interview, Nielsen said, "I wish we had gotten to cyber, because that's why I was originally here."
whoa Kirstjen ok then
― omar little, Tuesday, 22 October 2019 23:01 (four years ago) link
This is great. McConnell is a) conceding that they cannot effectively defend the President's behavior, and is b) playing a weak hand that a) most of the American people don't understand (lol even Congressional members don't understand the process!) or care about. What's more, hard evidence - which the Dems are clearly gathering - is more eye-popping/attention and will trump complaints about process. And what's more, process complaints can be circumvented by simply holding public hearings, holding a floor vote, etc. which will likely happen within the next few months. They have nothing.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is urging Republicans to focus on Democrats and their tactics in seeking to mount an effective defense of President Trump on impeachment.
One GOP lawmaker, summing up McConnell’s message to Republicans at a private lunch meeting Tuesday, quoted the GOP leader as saying, “This is going to be about process.”
McConnell recognizes that some members of his conference are uncomfortable defending Trump on charges his administration linked aid to Ukraine to that country’s government running politically motivated investigations meant to help the White House.
As a result, he’s telling his members they have plenty of reason to offer a vigorous defense of Trump, as the president publicly urged them to do Monday, by focusing on Democratic tactics that McConnell and Trump view as unfair.
Senate Republicans also privately make the point that it’s difficult to defend Trump on the substance of the charges against him because so much remains unknown.
GOP lawmakers don’t know the identity of the whistleblower who filed a complaint against Trump or what exactly House Democrats have discovered in their investigation, which has been conducted largely behind closed doors.
There are also outstanding questions about the nature of interactions between Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian officials over an investigation of Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.
At the private lunch, McConnell and Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) drew a contrast between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and past Speaker Carl Albert (D-Okla.), who served during the impeachment of President Nixon.
Albert in 1973 and 1974 gave Republicans much more of an opportunity to participate in the process, they said.
McConnell also said Democrats in the minority were treated better by former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) during the impeachment of President Clinton than today’s Republicans.
“What is clear and not in dispute, as Sen. Blunt has pointed out, is the process in the House to which the president is being subjected is totally unprecedented and totally unfair,” McConnell told reporters after the lunch.
“Speaker Albert laid out procedural guidelines during the Nixon episode — Speaker Gingrich during the Clinton impeachment episode — all of which included the kind of basic procedural safeguards that one associates in our country with being treated fairly,” he said.
A Republican senator who spoke on condition of anonymity said McConnell gave his colleagues leeway to express opposition to various Trump actions, such as pulling U.S. troops out of northern Syria, but urged them to stick together on process.
“He feels everybody is free to talk about issues like Ukraine or maybe the Kurds, but to try to conduct an impeachment without any process is very contrary to what happened before,” the lawmaker said. “That pretty much sums it up.”
A second Republican senator said McConnell and Blunt thought it made sense to give the Senate GOP conference a primer on past impeachment proceedings.
“It was a logical second place to go after the informational hearing on how impeachment will work in the Senate so members will know when they are talking about this process why it’s different than the way this has been done before,” the lawmaker said. “It’s one thing to say it’s unfair. It’s another thing to say here are all the boxes that were checked for Clinton and Nixon, and none of these boxes have been checked for this president.”
McConnell’s effort came a day after Trump, at a Cabinet meeting, complained that Democrats are much more unified than Republicans on impeachment.
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 23 October 2019 15:35 (four years ago) link