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Letter from White House counsel Pat Cipollone to House leaders

Threegoofs said:
Bubba has his Fox News talking points.

He can’t deviate.

I’m sure you understand...
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I do. The posts are not done for bubba...they are done to expose the truth. I made my point for everyone to see. But, I appreciate your observation.
 
bubbabgone said:
What are the House impeachment inquiry rules in effect right now?
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:roll:

There's this crazy thing they have now called Google Search, which can point you directly to the House rules on impeachment.

https://rules.house.gov/sites/democ...ouseRulesManual115/jefferson.xml#section-liii

Here's the part relevant to current events:

§603. Inception of impeachment proceedings in the House.
In the House various events have been credited with setting an impeachment in motion: charges made on the floor on the responsibility of a Member or Delegate (II, 1303; III, 2342, 2400, 2469; VI, 525, 526, 528, 535, 536); charges preferred by a memorial, which is usually referred to a committee for examination (III, 2364, 2491, 2494, 2496, 2499, 2515; VI, 543); a resolution introduced by a Member and referred to a committee (Apr. 15, 1970, p. 11941; Oct. 23, 1973, p. 34873); a message from the President (III, 2294, 2319; VI, 498); charges transmitted from the legislature of a State (III, 2469) or territory (III, 2487) or from a grand jury (III, 2488); or facts developed and reported by an investigating committee of the House (III, 2399, 2444).

§605. Investigation of impeachment charges.
The impeachment having been made on the floor by a Member (III, 2342, 2400; VI, 525, 526, 528, 535, 536), or charges suggesting impeachment having been made by memorial (III, 2495, 2516, 2520; VI, 552), or even appearing through common fame (III, 2385, 2506), the House has at times ordered an investigation at once. At other times it has refrained from ordering investigation until the charges had been examined by a committee (III, 2364, 2488, 2491, 2492, 2494, 2504, 2513) or has referred to committee an impeachment resolution raised as a question of privilege (Nov. 6, 2007, p. 29820; June 10, 2008, p. 12072 and June 11, 2008, p. 12218).

§606. Procedure of committee in investigating.
The House has always examined the charges by its own committee before it has voted to impeach (III, 2294, 2487, 2501). This committee has sometimes been a select committee (III, 2342, 2487, 2494), sometimes a standing committee (III, 2400, 2409). In some instances the committee has made its inquiry ex parte (III, 2319, 2343, 2366, 2385, 2403, 2496, 2511); but in the later practice the sentiment of committees has been in favor of permitting the accused to explain, present witnesses, cross-examine (III, 2445, 2471, 2518), and be represented by counsel (III, 2470, 2501, 2511, 2516; 93d Cong., Aug. 20, 1974, p. 29219; H. Rept. 105–830, Dec. 16, 1998).

As you've been told before: Nothing in the Constitution or House rules requires a formal vote before any impeachment investigations or inquiries begin.

Precedent is irrelevant -- especially when those "precedents" are cherry-picked by those who are in the tank for the POTUS. What matters is the Constitution (which, again, does not specify a process) and US law (which does not specify a process) and House rules (which are being followed).

Now that you know, you should stop your inaccurate and ignorant moaning, and accept that the process is a) legitimate and b) already happening.
 
Trippy Trekker said:
Trump Letter Promises Complete Obstruction - The Atlantic

DEMs in the House of Representatives hold 31 seats in districts won by Trump. 235 DEMs to 197 GOPs. Impeachment requires 218 votes.

United States House of Representatives elections, 2020 - Ballotpedia

Trump strategists dim hopes of avoiding impeachment primarily rests on persuading vulnerable DEMs to not vote for impeachment. The GOP has already begun to target that select group. IMO, the prospect of impeachment continues to rise with each and every passing day!
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I watched some of the townhalls of Dems you mentioned and they seem to be holding their own pretty good.
 
bubbabgone said:
"In a letter to House leaders, White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote that House Democrats’ recent actions violate “the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent.” He criticized the impeachment inquiry as attempt to overturn the 2016 presidential election results and to influence the upcoming 2020 campaign. "
https://www.washingtonpost.com/cont...-ab4b-9d591a5fda7b/?wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1


https://www.washingtonpost.com/cont...-ab4b-9d591a5fda7b/?wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1
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Classmates of Cipollone from the University of Chicago Law School dispute his letter....

"We are sorry to see how your letter to the congressional leadership flouts the traditions of rigor and intellectual honesty that we learned together," said the letter from members of the class of 1991 at the University of Chicago Law School..."

Law classmates tell Trump lawyer Cipollone he distorts Constitution by blocking impeachment witnesses

Classmates response to Cipollone letter
 
Moot said:
Classmates of Cipollone from the University of Chicago Law School dispute his letter....

"We are sorry to see how your letter to the congressional leadership flouts the traditions of rigor and intellectual honesty that we learned together," said the letter from members of the class of 1991 at the University of Chicago Law School..."

Law classmates tell Trump lawyer Cipollone he distorts Constitution by blocking impeachment witnesses

Classmates response to Cipollone letter
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21 out of 160? Wow.
And the "Letter from the 21" (we'll call them) said "When any president openly invites the help of foreign powers for partisan political purposes, ..." so that pretty much destroys their alleged reverence for the "law and the Constitution".
 
Visbek said:
:roll:

There's this crazy thing they have now called Google Search, which can point you directly to the House rules on impeachment.

https://rules.house.gov/sites/democ...ouseRulesManual115/jefferson.xml#section-liii

Here's the part relevant to current events:

...

As you've been told before: Nothing in the Constitution or House rules requires a formal vote before any impeachment investigations or inquiries begin.

Precedent is irrelevant -- especially when those "precedents" are cherry-picked by those who are in the tank for the POTUS. What matters is the Constitution (which, again, does not specify a process) and US law (which does not specify a process) and House rules (which are being followed).

Now that you know, you should stop your inaccurate and ignorant moaning, and accept that the process is a) legitimate and b) already happening.
Click to expand...
Cherry-picked precedent? There haven't been many impeachments of Presidents.
Pick an impeachment precedent that you believe isn't irrelevant. One that closely mirrors what's happening today.

Here's a recent precedent.

The Democrats are employing a far different procedure than the accord the parties arranged two decades ago when lawmakers weighed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Democrats paid few compliments to the House Majority GOP in December 1998, when the party opened a formal impeachment inquiry into Clinton based largely on his tryst with a White House intern.

But Democrats at the time acknowledged the two parties cooperated significantly when it came to setting the rules for the inquiry, even though most Democratic lawmakers objected to impeachment.

The Clinton impeachment inquiry opened in December 1998 with a bipartisan agreement that the rules would be based on those used in 1974 during the impeachment investigation into President Richard M. Nixon. Those rules provided the minority with some rights, including the power to call witnesses and to seek authority to issue subpoenas.
...
Conyers at the time praised a largely bipartisan process to develop many of the rules for the impeachment inquiries.
“You know as well as I,” Conyers told Hyde, “that whatever action this committee takes must be fair, it must be bipartisan, for it to have credibility. The American people deserve no less, and history will judge us by how well we achieve that goal.”

Democrats have abandoned bipartisan format of Clinton impeachment
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Is it inaccurate? Why is it irrelevant today? Why was it a good idea then but a bad idea now?
 
bubbabgone said:
Cherry-picked precedent? There haven't been many impeachments of Presidents.
Pick an impeachment precedent that you believe isn't irrelevant. One that closely mirrors what's happening today.

Here's a recent precedent.



Is it inaccurate? Why is it irrelevant today? Why was it a good idea then but a bad idea now?
Click to expand...

The Democrats want Trump out.
That's all that matters.
 
bubbabgone said:
21 out of 160? Wow.
And the "Letter from the 21" (we'll call them) said "When any president openly invites the help of foreign powers for partisan political purposes, ..." so that pretty much destroys their alleged reverence for the "law and the Constitution".
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That is against the law, bubba. Looks more like you destroyed your own alleged reverence for the law.
 
ocean515 said:
You can't say no.

A grand jury is part of the due process protections. It's made up of private citizens.

It doesn't find guilt of innocence. It's proceeding are private and behind closed doors.

A grand jury has nothing to do with, nor does it have any parallel to, what the treasonous majority controlling the House is doing.
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Yes it does have a lot in common with the House voting on Impeachment, including what is presented and who gets what rights when it comes to the process.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
 
bubbabgone said:
Cherry-picked precedent? There haven't been many impeachments of Presidents.
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Congress has impeached nearly 20 individuals, and started proceedings on others. Most of those impeachment proceedings did not start with a full House vote to authorize a formal inquiry. So yes, you're cherry-picking.


Pick an impeachment precedent that you believe isn't irrelevant.
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Justice William Douglas
Judge Harry Claiborne
Judge Alcee Hastings
Judge Walter Nixon

And no, neither the Constitution nor US Code nor House Rules lay out any special procedures that require a formal vote by the entire House to start an inquiry.

And again: Precedent is NOT BINDING on the House. It is the HOUSE RULES that are binding, and I literally pointed you right to those rules.

On a side note, I find the hypocrisy of conservatives rather thrilling, as they are perfectly happy to abandon precedent in genuinely binding situations whenever it suits them. The most obvious (but certainly not the only) example is Roe v Wade, which conservatives would love to directly overturn, even as they are insisting that the House follow a non-existent and non-binding precedent when it comes to Trump's impeachment.

The bottom line is:
• Trump very likely committed impeachable offenses by soliciting foreign governments to interfere with US elections, more than once
• Trump very likely is committing impeachable offenses by obstructing this process
• The current process in Congress is 100% legitimate, is within the guidelines set by the Constitution, is abiding by US law, and is following the rules of the House of Representatives
• Trump is almost certainly going to be impeached by the House

Also, see
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20190712/109768/HHRG-116-JU00-Wstate-GerhardtM-20190712.pdf
and
How Congress Can Access the Legal Powers of Impeachment Without a Formal Inquiry

Sorry not sorry, but you don't have a leg to stand on.
 
Jay59 said:
Quote the talking points, again.

Do you have any original thoughts?


Good idea. Do that.
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Let's recap for our listening audience, shall we?

You chose to make this arrogant (and we later find out, ignorant) post

Jay59 said:
This is why TDS is sometimes called Trump Denial Syndrome. Only in denial can you make such ridiculous claims.
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In response to my claim that Trump was far more corrupt than the Clinton's ever were.

In post 412, I challenged you to back up that statement. Certainly if your point were true, consistent with the tenor it was delivered, backing that statement up should have been a walk in the park. Then, to call my point ridiculous, you should have been able to produce 5 cites for any cite had.

But, NO! In two successive posts you not only failed to back up your arrogant (and now we know, ignorant) statement, offering nothing but shallow obfuscation to cover up the fact you had been faced and did not have the goods. Meanwhile, I offered 21 highly credible cites attesting the the vast and varied corruption of Donald Trump.

I gave you more than one chance to back up your point, and you didn't even try. I don't blame you, because you can't. The bigger point, however, is that if you can not back up your assertions here, don't make them. It only exposes that you don't know what you are talking about.

What I did here is to simply expose the intellectual dishonesty that is increasingly pervasive among many of our right wing posting friends. They hear wild things in the fact-free world of sites like Red State, Daily Caller, Brietbart, Drudge, Zero Hedge, and increasingly, Fox News... and rather than verifying that information with real news sites that are committed to fact-based stories and journalistic integrity, they bypass that step and try to sell those ideas in places like this as truth when it is not. Sorry, but far too many of the stories found in those locations are substantially lies based on half truths and baked in a way that it titillates your political proclivities. It is fundamentally porn for political junkies. Its turning the mind and world-view of its readers into mush.

As typical, as we just witnessed here, people that get their news from those sites can not back up their points with real facts and real journalism. What we just witnessed from you is fundamentally

"All hat, no cattle"

All Hat, no cattle2.webp

Pick up your game. We can't have debate when people merely regurgitate what they hear from the far corners of the Internet, then make no effort to comprehend it or validate it. At the very least, you can bring your cites here so we can all read them... that said, to expect to be called out when you bring something from a less than reputable site. I will call you out anytime I see a claim I know can not be backed up.
 
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bubbabgone said:
Cherry-picked precedent? There haven't been many impeachments of Presidents.
Pick an impeachment precedent that you believe isn't irrelevant. One that closely mirrors what's happening today.

Here's a recent precedent.



Is it inaccurate? Why is it irrelevant today? Why was it a good idea then but a bad idea now?
Click to expand...


If you’re going to protest the idea of “cherry picked president”, you shouldn’t base your argument on a completely dishonest spin piece like this.

The Trump (and Trump noise machined) claim is that the inquiry is illegitimate because the full hose has not voted to launch an investigation.

They keep telling their audience that the House needs to vote to begin an investigation into impeachment and agree on the rules for such an investigation.

Your “president” is no such thing, although it is cleverly written (or more likely edited) to form that false impression in your mind.

There was NO full house vote to initiate an impeachment investigation in the House in 1998.

That’s because, contrarary to the White House line, the GOP went right from the Starr Report, to articles of Impeachment without any investigation at all, or with a vote for the full House.

There was bipartisan cooperation on the rules the committee uses to draft the articles, as this article states.

But this article was intended to mislead you into believing that the full house voted on opening an Impeachment inquiry and that they agreed on rules for such an inquiry.

Neither occurred, although the Exampiner and much of right wing media has false claimed otherwise.

Susan Ferricio is a much better reporter than to come up with deliberately misleading trash like this. But her employers are not.
 
upsideguy said:
Let's recap for our listening audience, shall we?

You chose to make this arrogant (and we later find out, ignorant) post



In response to my claim that Trump was far more corrupt than the Clinton's ever were.

In post 412, I challenged you to back up that statement. Certainly if your point were true, consistent with the tenor it was delivered, backing that statement up should have been a walk in the park. Then, to call my point ridiculous, you should have been able to produce 5 cites for any cite had.

But, NO! In two successive posts you not only failed to back up your arrogant (and now we know, ignorant) statement, offering nothing but shallow obfuscation to cover up the fact you had been faced and did not have the goods. Meanwhile, I offered 21 highly credible cites attesting the the vast and varied corruption of Donald Trump.

I gave you more than one chance to back up your point, and you didn't even try. I don't blame you, because you can't. The bigger point, however, is that if you can not back up your assertions here, don't make them. It only exposes that you don't know what you are talking about.

What I did here is to simply expose the intellectual dishonesty that is increasingly pervasive among many of our right wing posting friends. They hear wild things in the fact-free world of sites like Red State, Daily Caller, Brietbart, Drudge, Zero Hedge, and increasingly, Fox News... and rather than verifying that information with real news sites that are committed to fact-based stories and journalistic integrity, they bypass that step and try to sell those ideas in places like this as truth when it is not. Sorry, but far too many of the stories found in those locations are substantially lies based on half truths and baked in a way that it titillates your political proclivities. It is fundamentally porn for political junkies. Its turning the mind and world-view of its readers into mush.

As typical, as we just witnessed here, people that get their news from those sites can not back up their points with real facts and real journalism. What we just witnessed from you is fundamentally

"All hat, no cattle"

View attachment 67266164

Pick up your game. We can't have debate when people merely regurgitate what they hear from the far corners of the Internet, then make no effort to comprehend it or validate it. At the very least, you can bring your cites here so we can all read them... that said, to expect to be called out when you bring something from a less than reputable site. I will call you out anytime I see a claim I know can not be backed up.
Click to expand...

Don’t let it get to you.

Trumpsters are used to dishonest spin and fact free claims.

They like them even better if they’re packaged in an easy to say slogan, (“drain the swamp, collusion delusion, TDS, etc). These little tricks all the true believer to breeze right past the thinking part, and go right to the run your mouth part.

So, they always get upended when they try these pat lines on people who are actually paying attention.

You should understand that there is an irreducable minimum in Trumpster world. I think it’s at about 25% of the population. This is Bush’s approval numbers in 2007, nd it is the level of support for the dying tea party movement in 2015.

It’s the same audience. The same group of people. It’s the parochial reactionary right wing.

You’re never going to convince them that the fool’s gold fuhrer is a fraud.

Every con man knows that his most ardent defenders are always his victims.
 
roguenuke said:
Yes it does have a lot in common with the House voting on Impeachment, including what is presented and who gets what rights when it comes to the process.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
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What a convincing argument. What does, "A lot in common" mean?

Why does is a grand jury made up of private citizens?
 
ocean515 said:
What a convincing argument. What does, "A lot in common" mean?

Why does is a grand jury made up of private citizens?
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There is no judge. The House gets to run the proceedings, and presents the evidence against the person facing potential impeachment without having to provide any opportunity to counter any evidence to the accused (others in the House can potentially counter that evidence however). There is no requirement to allow lawyers for the accused in. They aren't deciding on guilty or not for crimes (including crimes against the office, corruption), only on whether someone should face a trial for certain charges or not. Those are a lot things the two procedures have in common.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
 
roguenuke said:
There is no judge. The House gets to run the proceedings, and presents the evidence against the person facing potential impeachment without having to provide any opportunity to counter any evidence to the accused (others in the House can potentially counter that evidence however). There is no requirement to allow lawyers for the accused in. They aren't deciding on guilty or not for crimes (including crimes against the office, corruption), only on whether someone should face a trial for certain charges or not. Those are a lot things the two procedures have in common.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
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Why is a grand jury made up of private citizens?
 
ocean515 said:
Try again.
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No. If you don't like my answer, state your position clearly instead of making vague statements that have nothing to do with the original comment.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
 
roguenuke said:
Okay. I said they had a lot in common, not that they were exactly alike. So your comment is meaningless to what I posted.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
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Meaningless?

Interesting way to back out of a point you lost.
 
Torus34 said:
Oh, my! Overturn the popular will of the voters. The President of the United States of America, in strict accordance with the Constitution of the United States of America, is not, repeat, not elected by 'the popular will of the voters' but, rather, by the Electoral College.

Such is the nonsense we have to deal with from both the right and the left these days.
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Electoral College is how we do it. We don't have a popular vote.
 
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