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Reject the Coverup | Attend a Rally This Wednesday

On Wednesday, Americans will mobilize to show our elected officials we Reject The Coverup of President Trump's impeachable actions.

rejectthecoverup.org

Trump’s enablers in Congress led by Mitch McConnell are about to acquit our lawless president. This was never a trial. It’s a cover up.

Wednesday, February 5th at 5:30pm, hundreds of thousands of Americans will mobilize with a simple demand: Reject The Coverup

Trump’s former chief of staff says Senate impeachment trial without witnesses is ‘a job only half done’

John Kelly spoke to NJ Advance Media in advance of Friday's vote on whether to call witnesses to testify in Trump's impeachment trial.

www.nj.com

Kelly said he believed former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s assertion that Trump withheld congressionally approved aid to Ukraine to pressure that government into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Bolton, who made the claims in an unpublished book reported by the New York Times, was “a copious note taker” and was “an honest guy and an honorable guy,” Kelly said. 

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., answering questions on Facebook Live on Wednesday, said that not only was acquittal a foregone conclusion, but senators would not take any other action either, such as working to block foreign intervention in American elections.

“I’m not optimistic that we have the votes in the Senate to any kind of corrective action,” Booker said. 

If you don’t know now you know... #TrumpIsGuilty

—  Sweet T@CRMEducation

Replying to @SenatorLoeffler @SenatorRomney and @realDonaldTrump

Wow, what are you listening to? Has Trump purchased you as well? There is absolutely no way you can stand behind your statement.  I know you’re cringing inside because you have too much credible evidence otherwise. America is going to remember every Trump minion.

— achaz @arthaz20

She was “appointed to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of former Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson.”

CNN's Anderson Cooper speaks with Lev Parnas' attorney, Joseph Bondy, about the recently released recording of President Donald Trump at a 2018 dinner with Parnas and Igor Fruman.

Cooper: “Are there more recordings that Lev Parnas has? With the president?”

Bondy: “Yes”

Cooper: “Do you plan to release those?”

Bondy: “ "Perhaps. We've sent recordings to the House Intelligence Committee”  🔥

Cooper: “What’s he looking at now?”

Bondy: 

“I’d like to think that there will still be a vote in the Senate for witnesses and evidence. It would be awful.. I can’t imagine a trial without those things. 

IT WOULD LITERALLY BE LIKE A SILENT MOVIE OR A PUPPET SHOW. 

We still have a couple of days to push for change.”

Republicans complain about the impeachment trial’s lack of new evidence while blocking new evidence

Republicans are using an astoundingly self-refuting talking point to lay the groundwork for Trump’s acquittal.

www.vox.com|Aaron Rupar

1. Democrats did except all EIGHT of Trump’s officials DISOBEYED their subpoenas. Each is facing fines and potential prison time if the Republican controlled government would do their jobs.
2. William Barr’s DOJ did nothing
3. House Republicans did nothing
4. Senate Republicans did nothing

As Democratic impeachment managers made the case against President Donald Trump on Wednesday and Thursday, Republican senators rolled out a rationale for their future vote to acquit: that the trial is a waste of time because Democrats aren’t presenting new evidence.

• John Barrasso (WY)
• Tim Scott (SC)
• Mike Braun (IN)
• Pat Toomey (PA)
• Rick Scott (FL)
• Josh Hawley (MO)

“What are the Republicans saying? Well, they’re saying they heard nothing new. But these Republicans voted nine times on Tuesday against amendments to ensure new witnesses and new documents. The same Republicans saying they heard nothing new just voted nine times to hear nothing new.”

— Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer

“I think most if not all senators are hearing the case by the prosecution and the case by the defense for the first time,” 

“If you polled in the United States Senate, nine out of 10 senators will tell you they have not read the transcript of the proceedings in the House and the tenth senator who says he has or she has is lying.”

— Sen. John Kennedy said during a break on Wednesday evening.

The Senate Itself Is on Trial

Impeachment will be a test of whether the world's greatest deliberative body still exists in a moral universe.

newrepublic.com

“I really think the verdict has already been decided as well. I don’t think any Republicans are going to vote for impeachment,”

— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) - Jan 16, 2020

The crimes that lead to impeachment, after all, would make the process inescapably political. “The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused,” Hamilton wrote. “In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” 

The Senate, designed and structured to be a more deliberative and dispassionate body than the House, would best resist these forces.

But the Framers’ insights can only take us so far. The Senate that existed in Hamilton’s era is a far cry from the Senate today. In the early republic, senators were chosen by state legislatures and represented their interests in the nation’s capital.

In a country where elected leaders are the norm, Hamilton wrote, those who wield the impeachment power could “be too often the leaders or the tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction,” and that they may not “possess the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny.”

The Framers expected that senators would be accountable to their consciences and their state legislatures. They did not anticipate that the president could call upon a hyper-partisan media infrastructure to keep his supporters ignorant of his crimes, or that he could use a party-primary system to influence the political futures of the jurors who would decide his own. 

Republican senators have every reason, for example, to oppose hearing from witnesses like John Bolton or Mick Mulvaney. If their testimony would aid Trump’s cause, it’s hard to imagine that he wouldn’t have forced them to testify himself.