Impeachment Squad Cartoons

GOP veterans of Clinton’s impeachment urge caution on Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some have regrets. A few can’t talk about it. Others would do it all again.

But the Republicans who carried out President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 are unanimous in urging caution and restraint as Congress embarks on yet another impeachment struggle, this time over accusations that President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son.

The impeachment veterans of two decades ago were thrust into a seismic political event that was sober and circus-like at the same time. It opened a new, angry chapter of American politics that strained Washington institutions that were stronger then than now. They urge a pause in the tribalism of the Trump era.

“You’ve got a race to judgment, people apparently have already made up their minds, and I don’t think there’s a lot of openness about this. And I think there should be,” said former Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., one of 14 House impeachment “managers” who presented the case against Clinton to the Senate.

“People ought to wait before they make judgment on whether or not there’s even an impeachable offense out here to be considered until all the facts are on the table,” He added. “That’s not been the case for a number of congressmen on both sides of the aisle that I can see.”

The managers during Clinton’s impeachment were all solidly conservative white men. Most are out of politics. A few are judges. Some do some lobbying, while others have simply retired. The chairman, Henry Hyde of Illinois, died in 2007.

The best-known is Lindsey Graham, a former Air Force prosecutor who was among those most aggressively gunning for Clinton. In 1999, speaking from the well of the Senate, the South Carolina congressman made the case: “Impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”

Now a senator, Graham seems to be part of the defense rather than the prosecution

“I have zero problems with this phone call” with Zelenskiy, Graham said on CBS’ “Face The Nation.”

The only Clinton prosecutor remaining in the House is Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, a 41-year veteran of Congress who is retiring at the end of next year. He insists charges that Trump abused his office are nowhere near being proven.

In 1998, independent counsel Ken Starr offered up two vanloads of testimony and evidence, effectively dropping the full case for impeachment in Congress’s lap.

“I think that Starr’s report, which said that the president may have committed impeachable offenses, obligated the Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives to conduct an inquiry to see if that was the case,” Sensenbrenner said in an interview. Congress had removed judges in comparable perjury cases, he said.

History is calling again, this time with accusations that Trump abused his power to help his political fortunes.

Sensenbrenner in July aggressively questioned special counsel Robert Mueller, whose report didn’t find criminal wrongdoing by the president in Russia’s 2016 election interference but spelled out 10 instances in which Trump may have obstructed the probe. Mueller didn’t indict Trump, citing Justice Department guidelines against charging a sitting president. Nor did he say whether impeachment could be a remedy.

“You didn’t use the words ‘impeachable conduct’ like Starr did,” Sensenbrenner told Mueller. “Even the president is innocent until proven guilty.” Mueller said his mandate didn’t include offering opinions on other remedies like impeachment.

McCollum, who left Congress to lose a 2000 Senate campaign but staged a political comeback as Florida’s attorney general, cautions that lots of facts, testimony and evidence have yet to surface. The investigation into Trump’s festering scandal is in its opening stages.

“There are really a lot more questions than there are answers,” McCollum said, adding that so far he sees “just a really weak case.”

Democrats say they already have their “smoking gun,” having obtained the transcript of Trump’s call with Zelenskiy, and accuse Republicans of downplaying a clear-cut abuse of presidential power.

Former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democrat who served in the House from 1965 to 1999 during both the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon and the impeachment of Clinton, has said he’d vote to both indict and convict Trump if he were in Congress. Hamilton said he’s “deeply concerned” that more Republicans have not publicly favored impeachment proceedings against Trump or even spoken out against his actions with Russia and Ukraine.

Trump’s call was “certainly egregious conduct” because it was for personal gain, Hamilton said.

“If his conduct is acceptable, then we have lowered the bar on what the office and public trust really means,” Hamilton said. “If we legitimize the kind of behavior that he has exhibited, then our political system is going to be greatly reduced.”

Aside from Graham and Sensenbrenner, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison is the only one of the 1998 impeachment managers remaining in political office. Hutchison was re-elected by a landslide last year.

“The facts have to be developed,” Hutchinson told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on Saturday, in little-noticed remarks that amount to apostasy in today’s GOP. “The allegations raised should be taken seriously.”

Three of the other former managers are now on the bench. Former Rep. Ed Bryant, R-Tenn., is a federal district court judge, while Charles Canady, R-Fla., and James Rogan, R-Calif., serve on state courts.

Rogan cheerfully responded to an email seeking an interview but said he couldn’t comment.

“I would like to help you, but I fear I am rather hamstrung by our Canons of ethics,” Rogan said. “Not only am I precluded from discussing anything related to the current situation, I am precluded from saying anything that might be interpreted that way (such as giving advice).”

Then there’s former Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina who wasn’t an impeachment manager but forced a Judiciary Committee discussion on easily the most vulgar accusation levied against Clinton for his conduct. He seemed almost sheepish when encountered in the Capitol recently.

“We made a mistake” impeaching Clinton, Inglis said, adding that the substance of the matter “wasn’t so very consequential.”

“I can say that now, in retrospect — I didn’t think that at the time — but I think that was because I was probably sort of blinded by my dislike of President Clinton, you know, and wanting to stop him,” Inglis said. “So there may be some similarities there in this scenario.”

“If somebody’s the president of the United States and they do something that’s bad enough, then even their own followers are generally going to turn on them,” McCollum said. “And that’s not happened yet. It happened with Nixon. That did not happen with Clinton and that does not appear to me to be likely to be happening with Trump _ at least on the facts that are out there right now.”

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Associated Press writer Andrew Selsky contributed from Salem, Ore.

Impeachment intensity: Trump decries ‘coup’ and ‘corrupt media’

President Trump just went there.
What’s happening now, he tweeted, is not impeachment, “it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”
Leaving aside all the terrible things he says would follow his ouster, let’s be clear: This is not a coup.
Impeachment is a remedy contained in the Constitution after considerable debate by Alexander Hamilton and the other founders. Impeaching Donald Trump, especially on a party-line vote, may be dumb, reckless, blindly partisan or downright suicidal. But it is not a coup, even of the bloodless variety.
The president isn’t the only one using intemperate language. Maxine Waters, the left-wing Democratic congresswoman, responded to his “filthy talk” by declaring, “Impeachment is not good enough for Trump. He needs to be imprisoned & placed in solitary confinement.”
So much for due process or the formality of a trial. Waters is already picking out his jail cell.
I had barely finished writing these words when the president tweeted about the “Do Nothing Democrats,” saying they are “wasting everyone’s time and energy on [BS.”] Except he spelled it out.
Look, it’s hardly surprising that rhetoric is getting way overheated with the Democrats wielding a weapon that’s only been used against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. But words matter, in political discourse as in life. And “coup” was no accident.
Trump obviously has every incentive to rouse his supporters by painting himself as the victim of dark forces, including the media and the Deep State.
And the critics can retire to their fainting couches when he retweets a phrase like “civil war.” Journalists use the term all the time, talking about a Republican civil war or Democratic civil war or some other war.
But coup is different, and so is calling for a congressman’s arrest. Trump yesterday called Adam Schiff a “lowlife” who should resign, saying he couldn’t carry Mike Pompeo’s “blank-strap.” (Suddenly jock is a dirty word?) He’s also ended a tweet about the House Intel chairman with: “Arrest for Treason?” (The supposed treason is that Schiff exaggerated Trump’s comments on the Ukraine call in what he said was a parody.)
Kamala Harris, trying to break into the news, is demanding that Twitter suspend the president’s account. There is zero chance of that happening, as the senator well knows. Can you imagine the backlash against the company, already accused of leaning left, for banning a commander-in-chief with 63 million followers?
Harris pointed to Trump’s postings in which he likened the intelligence whistle-blower to a spy and mentioned the word treason. “These tweets represent a clear intent to baselessly discredit the whistleblower and officials in our government who are following the proper channels to report allegations of presidential impropriety,” she wrote Twitter chief Jack Dorsey.
As for the fourth estate, the president told reporters he is largely dropping “fake” and will refer to them as the “corrupt media.”
Trump was teeing off on the Washington Post, but he was mistaken; the focus of his ire was a new book by two New York Times reporters, Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis.
The Times story based on the book said that in private meetings Trump “often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.”
Trump ridiculed the story as a lie and said it was “stupid” to ask whether he’d ever said such things. (Davis tweeted that the White House did not deny the account when twice presented with the details.)
The president then declared that he would largely retire his “fake news” formulation in favor of “corrupt news”—which, he added for good measure, is “truly the enemy of the people.”
That’s the latest sign of Trump’s frustration, after years of negative coverage, in the midst of an impeachment inquiry.
But here’s the kicker. When Fox’s John Roberts asked Trump about a just posted New York Times story that the whistle-blower told Schiff’s staff about his complaint days before filing it, he said he couldn’t believe the paper had written it and that maybe it’s getting better. When the president views a story as more favorable, he miraculously upgrades his opinion of the press.

Schiff committee's reported contact with whistleblower a 'gift' to Trump, Tom Bevan says

President Trump may consider reported contact between the Ukraine whistleblower and Rep. Adam Schiff's, D-Calif., House Intelligence Committee as free reign to disparage the impeachment inquiry, according to Tom Bevan.
Schiff also appears to have not been completely forthright about said contact with the whistleblower in the past, the Real Clear Politics co-founder claimed Wednesday on "Special Report."
"This is a gift to Trump," he said.
"As everybody's racing to try and frame the narrative, this is a gift to Donald Trump in the sense that he can now muddy the waters and say 'look, this was a setup -- this was a fraud -- this is a hoax'."
Already, the president has called the impeachment inquiry over his transcribed phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky a "hoax" and earlier Wednesday called Schiff a "fraud."
A spokesman for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that the whistleblower alleging misconduct in the White House had reached out to Schiff's panel before filing a complaint -- prompting President Trump, in an extraordinary afternoon news conference at the White House, to accuse Schiff directly of helping write the document.
Schiff had previously claimed in a televised interview that "we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower." A Schiff spokesperson seemingly narrowed that claim late Wednesday, telling Fox News that Schiff himself "does not know the identity of the whistleblower, and has not met with or spoken with the whistleblower or their counsel" for any reason.
"It shows that Schiff is a fraud. ... I think it's a scandal that he knew before," Trump said, as Finnish President Sauli Niinisto stood at an adjacent podium. "I'd go a step further. I'd say he probably helped write it. ... That's a big story. He knew long before, and he helped write it too. It's a scam."
On "Special Report," Bevan called the report "valuable" and also discussed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's apparent reticence to schedule a formal floor vote on impeachment.
He said Pelosi, D-Calif., has afforded herself maximum flexibility in that without the vote, her committees can issue subpoenas but the minority -- Republicans -- cannot petition for them.
On the flip side, he said, Republicans can tag the inquiry as mostly political because the San Francisco lawmaker has not taken the formal step of making it a "serious inquiry."
Fox News Gregg Re and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

Ilhan Omar says Trump 'terrified' of her 'intersectionality' as a woman, immigrant, Muslim

She's a woman, she's an immigrant and she's Muslim -- and that "intersectionality" of identities has President Trump "terrified," U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., claimed in a television appearance Wednesday night.
Omar, a member of the "Squad" of far-left congressional Democrats, made the remarks on the late-night comedy show, "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee."
The freshman lawmaker, who came to the U.S. with her family from Somalia when she was a teenager, said she never imagined when she was a child that she would someday be part of an effort to impeach a U.S. president.
"A lot of people think we take joy in impeaching this president because we don't like him," Omar said. "But we take joy in making sure that when we say we're going to protect the rule of law, that the American people know that we are serious about that."

"A lot of people think we take joy in impeaching this president because we don't like him. But we take joy in making sure that when we say we're going to protect the rule of law, that the American people know that we are serious about that."
— U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

"I, however, am just always so happy when I think that Don Jr. is upset," host Samantha Bee told the congresswoman.
"That does slightly make me happy," Omar jokingly agreed.
While Omar often criticizes the president, she is also a frequent target of Trump's as well..
"Why do you think that the president focuses so much on you?" Bee asked.
"I think he is terrified by any women who are practicing 'Shine Theory,' who have each other's back," Omar responded, referring to a concept of mutual empowerment developed by American businesswoman Aminatou Sow and journalist Ann Friedman. "But for me, I think he is terrified at the fact that I sit on the intersectionality of many identities that he really despises: a woman, an immigrant, Muslim, refugee, and Punjabi in one beautiful package."
When asked how she felt about "perpetually being taken out of context" by her political opponents, Omar simply told Bee she "doesn't really care that much" about that because her critics "are just vilifying and dismissing my voice anyway."
"The fact that I live rent-free in their head doesn't mean they get to live rent-free in mine," Omar said.

"The fact that I live rent-free in their head doesn't mean they get to live rent-free in mine."
— U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

She later expressed how she thinks "rehabilitation" is possible for "white supremacists" like White House adviser Stephen Miller, adding that they could "use some light, some love, some joy" in their lives.
Previously, Omar vowed in July that she would continue being President Trump's "nightmare," after Trump said that Omar and her Squad colleagues should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came."

Joe Biden Cartoons

Biden urges impeachment, deflects from Ukraine dealings

Former Vice President Joe Biden appears to be trying to deflect attention from his alleged corruption in Ukraine by joining calls for impeachment. He announced on Tuesday that he’s in favor of impeaching President Trump if the president does not cooperate with Congress’ official inquiry.

Desperate Donald Trump knows that I can beat him, so now he’s enlisting the help of a foreign government — once again. It’s an abuse of power and violates every basic norm of the presidency.

We cannot give him four more years in the White House.https://t.co/cqhkBUviAs pic.twitter.com/vXmH3lTW6k
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 21, 2019

Despite his urgent calls for President Trump to be removed from office, Biden fell among the vocal majority of the Senate rejecting former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. At that time, Biden supported the American people’s choice to elect Clinton into office and voiced caution when deciding to proceed with the hearing.
“The American people don’t think that they have made a mistake by electing Bill Clinton,” said Biden. “We in Congress had better be very careful before we upset their decision and make darn sure that we are able to convince them, if we decide to upset their decision, that our decision to impeach him was based upon principle and not politics.”
The former vice president’s new stance contrasts with what he said in a recent interview, where he claimed the Trump-Ukraine phone call transcript may reveal an impeachable offense. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky insisted that he wasn’t pressured during the call. He said that his administration started a corruption probe into Biden prior to his conversation with President Trump.
Biden is now accusing the president of violating his constitutional responsibility.
“The thing I learned — we learned, we all learned recently — is that statement, that the 2000-word statement released was that he talked about getting the Justice Department engaged in this,” he said. “I mean, it’s such a blatant abuse of power that it just — I don’t think it can stand.”
Biden claims he is a victim of abuse of power by President Trump and has not addressed his effort to blackmail Ukraine to dismiss its chief prosecutor. Whether the American people will support him in 2020 in light of yet another one of his flip-flops on hot topic issues remains to be seen.

Senate Democrats in GOP states worry impeachment inquiry could backfire in 2020

Senate Democrats in Republican-leaning states are worried the impeachment inquiry could ruin any chances of the Democrat Party winning back the majority in the upper chamber in 2020.
Montana Senator John Tester said it’s vital that House Democrats focus on President Trump’s July phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart because he claims the president is the master of pivoting and deflecting.
“My belief is that now that the speaker has decided to impeach, they need to make sure it is very, very focused,” he stated. “They need to get to the bottom of the information as promptly as they can and they need to move.”
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin echoed the same remarks as Tester, adding, Democrats should stay away from old issues and focus on investigating the Ukraine phone call because it deals with a foreign entity.
However, Democrat Senator Doug Jones said he does not believe the whistleblower complaint is grounds for impeachment. The Alabama lawmaker said the complaint is based on hearsay, and he’s skeptical of using secondhand complaints to oust the president.
“A lot of the whistleblower complaint is, in fact, hearsay,” said Jones. “It is what other people have told him — that is clear on its face.”

….the Whistleblower, and also the person who gave all of the false information to him. This is simply about a phone conversation that could not have been nicer, warmer, or better. No pressure at all (as confirmed by Ukrainian Pres.). It is just another Democrat Hoax!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2019

This comes as other liberal Democrats want a broader investigation to include issues relating to the Mueller probe and other accusations.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the investigation would solely focus on the Ukraine conversation and not any other complaints against the president.
“This is the focus of the moment because this is the charge,”she stated. “All of the other work that relates to abuse of power, ignoring subpoenas of the government of Congress, abuse a contempt of Congress by him — those things will be considered later.”
Pelosi has also said there should be no rush to judgment despite announcing the impeachment inquiry ahead of the release of the transcript and the whistleblower’s complaint regarding President Trump’s Ukraine phone call.