Sociopaths

One senator said "'It'll make Kavanaugh look like a walk in a park,'" Cramer said.
(He couldn't exactly remember/wouldn't say who.)

— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) October 16, 2019

If you want to make [Murphy the Trickster] God laugh, tell him your plans. Of course ‘LeaderMcConnell’ will do his chelonian best to squash the whole thing with a quickness, licitly or not. But it’s past the point where he can plausibly deny there’s a case for impeachment, or that a public show of anger at the idea will move either the Democrats or the voters to desist.

Per the Washington Post, “McConnell tells Senate Republicans to be ready for impeachment trial of Trump”:

… An air of inevitability has taken hold in Congress, with the expectation Trump will become the third president in history to be impeached — and Republicans believe they need to prepare to defend the president. While McConnell briefed senators on what would happen during a Senate trial, House GOP leaders convened what they expect will be regular impeachment strategy sessions.

In their closed-door weekly luncheon, McConnell gave a PowerPoint presentation about the impeachment process and fielded questions alongside his staff and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who was a manager for the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton…

During the meeting, Graham lobbied his colleagues to consider a public declaration in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), which would describe Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seeking an investigation into a domestic political rival as “unimpeachable.” Some senators, however, pushed back against that idea, arguing that Trump would assume that those who did not sign the document would be persuadable on a vote to oust him…

The GOP’s internal reality check on Trump’s impeachment comes as House Democrats have had success securing damaging testimony from current and former State Department and National Security Council officials, many of whom are voicing long-held concerns about Trump’s actions on Ukraine…

Timing was a looming question in the Senate GOP meeting. McConnell said that he expected Pelosi to hold an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving and that the Senate should try to dispose of the issue by Christmas. But he also noted that motions of dismissal of the charges in an impeachment trial are handled at the discretion of the chief justice, who presides over the trial.

In this case, John G. Roberts Jr. would have the final word on how quickly the Senate could move, potentially complicating the GOP’s effort to short-circuit what could become a lengthy trial…

I wonder if McConnell ran this timeline by Roberts. SCOTUS already booked half of December for oral arguments, and Rehnquist didn’t miss any of them in 1999. https://t.co/hvfacJLNAt

— Matt Ford (@fordm) October 16, 2019

Impeachment Inquiry Open Thread: McConnell Has Reached the Bargaining StagePost + Comments (122)