One WB doesnt undercut dozens of people testifying to what was going on.
I get it yall dont care and that's really all that yall need to say. Just remember the choice here will follow you in on the future.
The House had a number of witnesses but failed to build a strong case for impeachment and now wants the Senate to do that instead. Here's a great summary by a legal scholar who was one of the 4 who testified to the House. I recommend reading legal scholars on the issue vs the mainstream media as most journalists are simply pushing an agenda or ignorant on these matters. There has been nothing proven and the case by the House is based on inferences from 3rd party witnesses and assumptions over what certain key events in the timeline must indicate.
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Among the worst decisions made by House Democrats is this: They burned through three months of investigating without even attempting to compel the testimony of key witnesses like national security advisor John Bolton. Instead, they based impeachment charges on a record largely based on the inferences of third-party witnesses.
As a result, they’re left with a record that requires a senator to decide every contested fact in the way least favorable to the president in order to establish an impeachable act. However, there are three direct conversations that directly contradict such a conclusion.
For one thing,
the language of Trump’s July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not state a clear quid pro quo. You have to infer that his request for a favor implied a penalty if it wasn’t fulfilled.
And
then there’s the testimony about Trump’s phone calls with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Both contain express denials of any quid pro quo. One can reasonably question the veracity of such an assertion during the calls, and that’s why the testimony of first-hand witnesses would have been so important.
Yet the House made no real effort to hear from key administration figures, including Bolton, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Trump counsel Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Not only has the House been curiously passive in seeking to force such testimony; it actually withdrew one of the few subpoenas facing a court ruling in the case of Charles Kupperman, Trump’s former deputy national security advisor. Kupperman was willing to testify and simply wanted court review, but the House strangely withdrew its request that he testify.
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam B. Schiff has said that requesting courts to compel testimony would take too long. But courts can sometimes work quickly. In a critical case involving Richard Nixon’s impeachment, it took just three months to go from a ruling by the District Court to a final ruling of the Supreme Court. Nixon lost and then resigned.
Given the momentousness of impeachment, taking time to build a strong case is worth some delays. Moreover, courts have already agreed to decide other cases involving the president, including the challenge over whether Trump can be compelled to turn over tax and financial records. That puts the House in the awkward position of impeaching a president for obstruction before the Supreme Court rules on key issues.
I vehemently disagree with the sweeping privilege and immunity claims made by the Trump White House. However, presidents including Barack Obama have stood behind the shield of executive privilege and have gone to court rather than turn over evidence. Both Nixon and Clinton were able to challenge such questions and receive final decisions from the Supreme Court (which ruled against them).
In racing to meet its artificial deadline of impeaching by Christmas, the House submitted a case guaranteed to fail. Rather than wait a couple months to move forward with a greatly enhanced case, the House prefers to grab what it’s got on the shelf and run with it."
Source
Then there is also the added complexity of what is known as the "law of attempts." Here is an elaboration on that below.
"The law of attempts,” a category of crimes where someone is accused of contemplating, but not actually carrying out, an unlawful act. The Trump trial could be the first time the Senate considers charges that amount to allegedly conceiving, but then abandoning, an abuse of power. While it is certainly true that there was a temporary act of “nonfeasance” in withholding the aid to Ukraine, it was ultimately released over two weeks before the deadline under federal law.
The law of attempts has long been debated, and has often favored defendants in securing lesser punishments or outright acquittals. When, in 1879, an Alaska man sent an order for 100 gallons of whiskey from California, he was charged with illegally attempting to “introduce spirituous liquors” into Alaska. A court dismissed the charge, writing, “There are a class of acts which may be fairly said to be done in pursuance of or in combination with an intent to commit a crime, but are not, in a legal sense, a part of it, and therefore do not, with such intent, constitute an indictable attempt.”
That helps explain why such attempted crimes are generally punished less severely. The California Penal Code Section 664 stipulates, for example, that most attempted offenses are punishable, at most, at a level half that for a completed offense. Of course, the Senate cannot “half-remove” a president. But one of the more knotty problems facing the Senate is whether a president can be saved by what Leff called the “luck” of an alleged plan that never actually played out.
If so, the whistleblower complaint could strangely prove the luckiest break Trump ever got from the House. If Trump’s critics are right, it was the complaint that stopped an attempt from becoming a completed abuse of office.
Not everyone sees a foiled attempt as a reason to acquit. This perspective came up in the House impeachment hearing when Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman declared, “If the president of the United States attempts to abuse his office, that is a complete impeachable offense.” (I also testified at the hearing.)
Another witness, University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt, attempted to explain it this way: “Imagine a bank robbery. The police come and the person’s in the middle of a bank robbery. The person then drops the money and says, ‘I am going to leave without the money.’ Everybody understands that’s robbery.”
The analogy highlights the problem of what some courts call “abandonment” cases.
Even if the intent of a robbery is proved, Trump never took the loot. Police do not arrest people parked in front of a bank and charge them as bank robbers based on their contemplated or thought crime.
All impeachment trials present a mixed question of both the guilt and the gravity of an alleged offense.
Senators often disagree with the House about whether an act is impeachable or, if guilt is proven, whether the gravity of the act warrants removal.
Withholding the aid in the hopes of an investigation into a political opponent would be improper if proved. But the aid, in the end, was not withheld. The Senate might now have to decide whether an attempted abuse constitutes a removal offense for an American president."
Source
Finally, regarding the Bolton leak from the NYT...
"The leak falls short of answering key questions that would likely have to be pursued in testimony. For example, Trump allegedly told Bolton that he wanted to “continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens,” the New York Times
reported.
That still leaves the question of intent. Trump has never denied asking for the investigations, but insisted that they were meant to deal with his concerns over ongoing corruption in Ukraine. Moreover, the first of the two investigations could not be a basis for impeachment. Trump asked for assistance in investigating allegations into the 2016 election — matters that were currently being investigated by U.S. Attorney John Durham. It is the Biden investigation that raises legitimate questions, but it comes down again to a question of intent.
Finally, the leak refers to the freeze on the funds but does not indicate that Trump was prepared to hold the aid past the deadline at the end of September. (It was released on September 11th.).
