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babylonsister
babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
January 15, 2020
Yovanovitch calls for investigation following evidence released by lawmakers
By Justine Coleman - 01/14/20 09:24 PM EST
Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch called for an investigation Tuesday into “what happened” after newly released evidence suggested that her movements were being monitored.
Yovanovitch requested the investigation through her lawyer Lawrence Robbins, who issued a statement on her behalf.
The former ambassador’s calls come after the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform committees released additional evidence to be submitted to the Senate for the impeachment trial.
more...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/478302-yovanovitch-calls-for-investigation-following-evidence-released-by?fbclid=IwAR3ALP-waHOjo9ACJpKbKYBzJW_71oTdn7XMVLopFFxYYH4P3VDpya6uM6A
Yovanovitch calls for investigation following evidence released by lawmakers
Yovanovitch calls for investigation following evidence released by lawmakers
By Justine Coleman - 01/14/20 09:24 PM EST
Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch called for an investigation Tuesday into “what happened” after newly released evidence suggested that her movements were being monitored.
Yovanovitch requested the investigation through her lawyer Lawrence Robbins, who issued a statement on her behalf.
“Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing,” he said in the statement obtained by The Hill. “We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened."
The former ambassador’s calls come after the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform committees released additional evidence to be submitted to the Senate for the impeachment trial.
more...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/478302-yovanovitch-calls-for-investigation-following-evidence-released-by?fbclid=IwAR3ALP-waHOjo9ACJpKbKYBzJW_71oTdn7XMVLopFFxYYH4P3VDpya6uM6A
January 15, 2020
John Roberts may be leading the Senate impeachment trial, but this woman is shaping it
Elizabeth MacDonough, the first female Senate parliamentarian, will be advising the chief justice on how to address arcane procedural questions.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN
01/13/2020 05:10 AM EST
In a small Capitol Hill office after President Donald Trump had been impeached and official Washington bolted town for the holidays, a three-person team gathered to dig through musty old law books and congressional records.
The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, and her aides were scrambling to prepare for an event with little precedent in American history — the impeachment trial of a U.S. president. In just a few weeks, they would have to advise Chief Justice John Roberts on how to run that trial and address a slew of arcane procedural questions that few — if any — had ever been asked. Their answers, they knew, could influence how the historic event unfolded.
They read everything they could find on the subject, including transcripts and other historic materials from the two previous impeachment trials of U.S. presidents, as well as the work the office did in preparation for a case against Richard Nixon that didn’t happen because of his 1974 resignation.
They also looked at 17 other impeachment cases involving judges and other government officials dating to the John Adams administration. They made notes and downloaded all manner of material onto the laptops and internal systems they would be able to bring to the Senate floor and access at a moment’s notice.
snip//
MacDonough, 53, will bring to her assignment more than 20 years of Capitol Hill experience as a non-partisan career government employee, going all the way back to her days in the Senate Library. She started as an assistant in the parliamentarian’s office just a few months after President Bill Clinton survived his own Senate impeachment trial and rose to become the first female Senate parliamentarian in U.S. history. Along the way, MacDonough has played pivotal roles helping senators navigate vicious debates over taxes, government shutdowns and health care. She helped the upper chamber work through the controversial decision to remove the filibuster as a weapon to block judicial nominations.
more...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/13/john-roberts-senate-impeachment-whisperer-098050
John Roberts may be leading the Senate impeachment trial, but this woman is shaping it
John Roberts may be leading the Senate impeachment trial, but this woman is shaping it
Elizabeth MacDonough, the first female Senate parliamentarian, will be advising the chief justice on how to address arcane procedural questions.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN
01/13/2020 05:10 AM EST
In a small Capitol Hill office after President Donald Trump had been impeached and official Washington bolted town for the holidays, a three-person team gathered to dig through musty old law books and congressional records.
The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, and her aides were scrambling to prepare for an event with little precedent in American history — the impeachment trial of a U.S. president. In just a few weeks, they would have to advise Chief Justice John Roberts on how to run that trial and address a slew of arcane procedural questions that few — if any — had ever been asked. Their answers, they knew, could influence how the historic event unfolded.
They read everything they could find on the subject, including transcripts and other historic materials from the two previous impeachment trials of U.S. presidents, as well as the work the office did in preparation for a case against Richard Nixon that didn’t happen because of his 1974 resignation.
They also looked at 17 other impeachment cases involving judges and other government officials dating to the John Adams administration. They made notes and downloaded all manner of material onto the laptops and internal systems they would be able to bring to the Senate floor and access at a moment’s notice.
“They’re up to their eyeballs in preparations,” said Alan Frumin, a former Senate parliamentarian and one of MacDonough’s mentors.
snip//
MacDonough, 53, will bring to her assignment more than 20 years of Capitol Hill experience as a non-partisan career government employee, going all the way back to her days in the Senate Library. She started as an assistant in the parliamentarian’s office just a few months after President Bill Clinton survived his own Senate impeachment trial and rose to become the first female Senate parliamentarian in U.S. history. Along the way, MacDonough has played pivotal roles helping senators navigate vicious debates over taxes, government shutdowns and health care. She helped the upper chamber work through the controversial decision to remove the filibuster as a weapon to block judicial nominations.
"I’ve been here with many, many parliamentarians. All were good. But she’s the best."
- Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy
- Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy
more...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/13/john-roberts-senate-impeachment-whisperer-098050
January 15, 2020
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article239288553.html
‘No cameras, no C-Span, no coverage.’ Rules will limit access during Trump’s trial
By Bryan Lowry
January 14, 2020 05:32 PM
Sen. Roy Blunt said Tuesday that there will be restrictions to public and press access during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, including periods when the Senate chamber is cleared of reporters.
The bulk of the trial will be broadcast on television. But during certain periods of debate, the Senate will go into closed session under its impeachment rules, the Missouri Republican told reporters.
“I mean closed session. I mean there will be nobody there but senators and essential staff. No cameras, no C-Span, no coverage, what the rules say happened last time,” said Blunt, the Senate Rules chairman and a member of Senate GOP leadership, referring to restrictions in place during former President Bill Clinton’s 1999 trial.
'No cameras, no C-Span, no coverage.' Rules will limit access during Trump's trial
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article239288553.html
‘No cameras, no C-Span, no coverage.’ Rules will limit access during Trump’s trial
By Bryan Lowry
January 14, 2020 05:32 PM
Sen. Roy Blunt said Tuesday that there will be restrictions to public and press access during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, including periods when the Senate chamber is cleared of reporters.
The bulk of the trial will be broadcast on television. But during certain periods of debate, the Senate will go into closed session under its impeachment rules, the Missouri Republican told reporters.
“I mean closed session. I mean there will be nobody there but senators and essential staff. No cameras, no C-Span, no coverage, what the rules say happened last time,” said Blunt, the Senate Rules chairman and a member of Senate GOP leadership, referring to restrictions in place during former President Bill Clinton’s 1999 trial.
January 14, 2020
Appeals court orders halt to removing over 200,000 names from Wisconsin voter rolls
January 14, 2020
10:39 am
JT Cestkowski
MADISON (WKOW) -- The Wisconsin Appeals Court ordered a hold Tuesday on an Ozaukee County judge's ruling that the state's election commission should remove over 200,000 names from the state's voter rolls.
The Associated Press reported the hold and a similar order against fines for state election officials each day they did not remove the names.
The case, originally brought by the conservative Wisconsin Insitute for Law and Liberty, seeks to purge 209,000 registrations from the state's voter rolls.
Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court denied a request for the case to bypass appeals and proceed directly to the state's highest judicial body.
Appeals are the next step for the case and the hold will likely remain in place until after the court makes its own ruling.
The Ozaukee county judge made the initial ruling in the case, siding with the conservative plaintiffs. The defendant, the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, will meet Tuesday and is expected to discuss the legal proceedings.
Appeals court orders halt to removing over 200,000 names from Wisconsin voter rolls
https://wkow.com/2020/01/14/appeals-court-orders-halt-to-removing-over-200000-names-from-wisconsin-voter-rolls/?fbclid=IwAR1iocnm0edNU5u4PaAOJ6HCXQshKMpAFgXgdVrF6Zj8_OdbVTqOzD2Sk7sAppeals court orders halt to removing over 200,000 names from Wisconsin voter rolls
January 14, 2020
10:39 am
JT Cestkowski
MADISON (WKOW) -- The Wisconsin Appeals Court ordered a hold Tuesday on an Ozaukee County judge's ruling that the state's election commission should remove over 200,000 names from the state's voter rolls.
The Associated Press reported the hold and a similar order against fines for state election officials each day they did not remove the names.
The case, originally brought by the conservative Wisconsin Insitute for Law and Liberty, seeks to purge 209,000 registrations from the state's voter rolls.
Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court denied a request for the case to bypass appeals and proceed directly to the state's highest judicial body.
Appeals are the next step for the case and the hold will likely remain in place until after the court makes its own ruling.
The Ozaukee county judge made the initial ruling in the case, siding with the conservative plaintiffs. The defendant, the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, will meet Tuesday and is expected to discuss the legal proceedings.
January 14, 2020
McConnell and his Republicans cooking up tricks to give gloss of legitimacy to impeachment trial
Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday January 14, 2020 · 2:12 PM EST
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to have navigated his way out of an automatic motion to dismiss the House's impeachment. McConnell played along with the efforts of some of the conference's maniacs, signing onto a resolution to change the Senate rules to allow it to dismiss the articles before the House sent them over. Which is constitutionally dubious, at best, but when has that bothered McConnell?
Now that the articles are definitely coming this week, however, he has to moderate a bit to make the other squeaky wheels in the conference happy. That means allowing them to posture on the possibility of having witnesses. At the outset, McConnell is all but dismissing the notion. "If the existing case is strong, there's no need for the judge and the jury to reopen the investigation," he said Tuesday. "If the existing case is weak, House Democrats should not have impeached." He also said that it's "Bizarro-world" for Democrats to suggest anything less than a trial that didn't go beyond what the House includes in its prosecution is a cover up. Never mind that he's been facilitating the Trump administration's obstruction of Congress for months.
There are now four Republican senators saying they want the opportunity to hear from witnesses—Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney. That means there's potentially a 51-vote majority to call witnesses. In theory.
That theory breaks down a bit when you look at their actual statements. Like Murkowski's. She told Alaska public radio Monday that she is advocating for the same process as the Clinton impeachment, which is a three-phased hearing in which witnesses would be called in Phase 3. "Am I curious about what what Ambassador Bolton would have to say? Yes, I am," she said about the possibility of him acting as a witness. But, and it's a big but, she said she wasn't going to "pre-judge" and demand that until she hears all the evidence in Phases 1 and 2 of the trial.
Alexander similarly said "We're taking an oath to be impartial […] and that to me means we have a constitutional duty to hear the case, ask our questions and then decide whether we want additional evidence in terms of documents or witnesses."
What they’re doing with all this is keeping up the pretense of being open to having a real trial, with McConnell's full support, but with an out. They can hear the House's case and say that they don't find enough there to require witness testimony and then move to acquit. That's undoubtedly the game they have cooked up with McConnell for everyone to save face. There's no question that McConnell's Republicans are going to acquit Trump—almost certainly every single one of them. At this point it's about doing just enough to put a gloss of legitimacy on the whole thing.
The difficulty for them in doing so is that the news isn't going to stop coming on Trump's misdeeds, and that Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer are committed to forcing votes to subpoena witnesses and documents that the administration has been fighting to withhold.
McConnell and his Republicans cooking up tricks to give gloss of legitimacy to impeachment trial
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/14/1911516/-McConnell-and-his-Republicans-cooking-up-tricks-to-give-gloss-of-legitimacy-to-impeachment-trialMcConnell and his Republicans cooking up tricks to give gloss of legitimacy to impeachment trial
Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday January 14, 2020 · 2:12 PM EST
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to have navigated his way out of an automatic motion to dismiss the House's impeachment. McConnell played along with the efforts of some of the conference's maniacs, signing onto a resolution to change the Senate rules to allow it to dismiss the articles before the House sent them over. Which is constitutionally dubious, at best, but when has that bothered McConnell?
Now that the articles are definitely coming this week, however, he has to moderate a bit to make the other squeaky wheels in the conference happy. That means allowing them to posture on the possibility of having witnesses. At the outset, McConnell is all but dismissing the notion. "If the existing case is strong, there's no need for the judge and the jury to reopen the investigation," he said Tuesday. "If the existing case is weak, House Democrats should not have impeached." He also said that it's "Bizarro-world" for Democrats to suggest anything less than a trial that didn't go beyond what the House includes in its prosecution is a cover up. Never mind that he's been facilitating the Trump administration's obstruction of Congress for months.
There are now four Republican senators saying they want the opportunity to hear from witnesses—Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney. That means there's potentially a 51-vote majority to call witnesses. In theory.
That theory breaks down a bit when you look at their actual statements. Like Murkowski's. She told Alaska public radio Monday that she is advocating for the same process as the Clinton impeachment, which is a three-phased hearing in which witnesses would be called in Phase 3. "Am I curious about what what Ambassador Bolton would have to say? Yes, I am," she said about the possibility of him acting as a witness. But, and it's a big but, she said she wasn't going to "pre-judge" and demand that until she hears all the evidence in Phases 1 and 2 of the trial.
Alexander similarly said "We're taking an oath to be impartial […] and that to me means we have a constitutional duty to hear the case, ask our questions and then decide whether we want additional evidence in terms of documents or witnesses."
What they’re doing with all this is keeping up the pretense of being open to having a real trial, with McConnell's full support, but with an out. They can hear the House's case and say that they don't find enough there to require witness testimony and then move to acquit. That's undoubtedly the game they have cooked up with McConnell for everyone to save face. There's no question that McConnell's Republicans are going to acquit Trump—almost certainly every single one of them. At this point it's about doing just enough to put a gloss of legitimacy on the whole thing.
The difficulty for them in doing so is that the news isn't going to stop coming on Trump's misdeeds, and that Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer are committed to forcing votes to subpoena witnesses and documents that the administration has been fighting to withhold.
January 14, 2020
Posted on Tue, Jan 14th, 2020 by Adalia Woodbury
Opinion: If it Takes A Crime For Republicans to Impeach Trump, He Delivered
The fact that Donald Trump ordered Soleimani’s killing seven months ago takes us into criminal territory that also ought to be impeachable.
snip//
Now Trump is saying, he doesn’t need to bother with the same standard every other president followed and the implication is that he can order the death of any person on the planet just because he feels like it.
And this is where I ask, what does this say about the Republicans who are defending him? It says that he could kill on Fifth Avenue or anywhere else in the world and they would still defend him. It says that they’ve sold out every value Republicans used to say they were about for membership in the cult of Trump.
They’ve abandoned the Republican governed by representative democracy in favor of a blood thirsty and power hungry cult of personality.
The GOP no longer believes in anything resembling co-equal branches of government. Now they bow to their “dear leader” and after suffering the humiliation of his wrath simply say “Please sir, I want more.”
On the plus side, they’ve made voting in the general election easier than it ever was. Voters need only ask if they want a blood thirsty king or a president for the people.
If only this was just about partisanship. It’s not. It’s about America’s soul and it’s about the souls of every American. Who you vote for in 2020 not only says something about America, it also says something about you.
If it Takes A Crime For Republicans to Impeach Trump, He Delivered
https://www.politicususa.com/2020/01/14/opinion-if-it-takes-a-crime-for-republicans-to-impeach-trump-he-delivered.htmlPosted on Tue, Jan 14th, 2020 by Adalia Woodbury
Opinion: If it Takes A Crime For Republicans to Impeach Trump, He Delivered
The fact that Donald Trump ordered Soleimani’s killing seven months ago takes us into criminal territory that also ought to be impeachable.
snip//
Now Trump is saying, he doesn’t need to bother with the same standard every other president followed and the implication is that he can order the death of any person on the planet just because he feels like it.
And this is where I ask, what does this say about the Republicans who are defending him? It says that he could kill on Fifth Avenue or anywhere else in the world and they would still defend him. It says that they’ve sold out every value Republicans used to say they were about for membership in the cult of Trump.
They’ve abandoned the Republican governed by representative democracy in favor of a blood thirsty and power hungry cult of personality.
The GOP no longer believes in anything resembling co-equal branches of government. Now they bow to their “dear leader” and after suffering the humiliation of his wrath simply say “Please sir, I want more.”
On the plus side, they’ve made voting in the general election easier than it ever was. Voters need only ask if they want a blood thirsty king or a president for the people.
If only this was just about partisanship. It’s not. It’s about America’s soul and it’s about the souls of every American. Who you vote for in 2020 not only says something about America, it also says something about you.
January 14, 2020
The legal plan to stop senators from telling Trump: ‘You’re fired’
Trump’s legal team defended the behavior that got him impeached. But at a Republican-controlled impeachment trial, the president’s attorneys will have a more receptive audience.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN
01/13/2020 07:45 PM EST
The lawyers who pushed and defended the actions that got Donald Trump impeached are now tasked with keeping the president in office.
It was the White House counsel’s team that provided the legal justification for the president’s decision to stonewall congressional subpoenas — a move that led to an article of impeachment. And it was Trump’s TV bulldog and ostensible personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who nudged on the president’s attempts to lean on Ukraine to open politically advantageous investigations — a pressure campaign that led to another article of impeachment.
Now, they all have a role to play as they plot their strategy to get Trump acquitted in his upcoming impeachment trial — both within the ornate Senate chamber and on the all-important conservative media circuit. It’s a well-worn Trump strategy: Act first, lawyer up later. And it has often made his attorneys part of the story when they inevitably get questions about Trump’s behavior. The upcoming Senate trial will be no different.
In the Senate, White House counsel Pat Cipollone will deliver opening arguments and take the lead. He’ll be flanked by two of his deputies, Michael Purpura and Patrick Philbin, who will be stationed at the president’s defense table ready to parse the Democratic prosecution’s arguments and cross examine any witnesses. Then there’s Jay Sekulow, the longest-serving member of the president’s personal legal team, who is expected to make his own trial presentation delving into the Ukraine scandal and denouncing any attempts by Democrats to link the president’s behavior to Robert Mueller’s election interference investigation.
snip//
No matter their résumés, Democrats argue that the president’s attorneys should expect to face complications during the Senate trial that could cost them Republican votes. That includes working for a president who has shown little in the way of impulse control, despite the counsel of his lawyers.
Anita Kumar contributed to this report.
The legal plan to stop senators from telling Trump: 'You're fired'
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/13/legal-plan-senators-telling-trump-fired-098460The legal plan to stop senators from telling Trump: ‘You’re fired’
Trump’s legal team defended the behavior that got him impeached. But at a Republican-controlled impeachment trial, the president’s attorneys will have a more receptive audience.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN
01/13/2020 07:45 PM EST
The lawyers who pushed and defended the actions that got Donald Trump impeached are now tasked with keeping the president in office.
It was the White House counsel’s team that provided the legal justification for the president’s decision to stonewall congressional subpoenas — a move that led to an article of impeachment. And it was Trump’s TV bulldog and ostensible personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who nudged on the president’s attempts to lean on Ukraine to open politically advantageous investigations — a pressure campaign that led to another article of impeachment.
Now, they all have a role to play as they plot their strategy to get Trump acquitted in his upcoming impeachment trial — both within the ornate Senate chamber and on the all-important conservative media circuit. It’s a well-worn Trump strategy: Act first, lawyer up later. And it has often made his attorneys part of the story when they inevitably get questions about Trump’s behavior. The upcoming Senate trial will be no different.
In the Senate, White House counsel Pat Cipollone will deliver opening arguments and take the lead. He’ll be flanked by two of his deputies, Michael Purpura and Patrick Philbin, who will be stationed at the president’s defense table ready to parse the Democratic prosecution’s arguments and cross examine any witnesses. Then there’s Jay Sekulow, the longest-serving member of the president’s personal legal team, who is expected to make his own trial presentation delving into the Ukraine scandal and denouncing any attempts by Democrats to link the president’s behavior to Robert Mueller’s election interference investigation.
snip//
No matter their résumés, Democrats argue that the president’s attorneys should expect to face complications during the Senate trial that could cost them Republican votes. That includes working for a president who has shown little in the way of impulse control, despite the counsel of his lawyers.
“The best lawyers can only do so much with a difficult client and a difficult case,” said Ted Kalo, a Democratic strategist who briefly worked for Pelosi and the House Judiciary Committee on messaging during their December impeachment effort.
“That challenge is further exacerbated,” he added, “by a difficult client who appears to be set on a defense strategy that’s appealing to Fox News prime-time hosts but not necessarily moderates of the Senate.”
“That challenge is further exacerbated,” he added, “by a difficult client who appears to be set on a defense strategy that’s appealing to Fox News prime-time hosts but not necessarily moderates of the Senate.”
Anita Kumar contributed to this report.
January 14, 2020
January 14, 2020 7:00AM ET
How Trump’s ‘Imminent Threat’ on Iran Turned in to the New WMD
The administration’s increasingly incoherent case for assassinating Qasem Soleimani doesn’t add up
By Tim Dickinson
His administration unable to keep its story straight about how exactly General Qasem Soleimani posed an “imminent threat” to U.S. national security, President Trump now claims it “really doesn’t matter” if the assassinated Iranian commander was about to kill Americans.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The question of imminence matters. Indeed, the legal justification of the strike depends on it. Killing a top-ranking government official of a nation that the United States is not at war with, on the soil of a third nation altogether, would be illegal, except as an extreme matter of self defense.
Even acting to foil an imminent threat requires an expansive legal reading of Article 51 of the United Nations charter, which outlines the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” According to experts in international law, killing Soleimani was legal only if the U.S. could demonstrate he was the operational commander of attacks that were about to happen, and that killing him — and only the act of killing him — would disrupt that threat.
The truth appears quite different. Like the claims of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2002, the Trump administration’s invocation of an “imminent threat” posed by Soleimani looks increasingly like a flimsy rationale, chosen after the fact to justify a predetermined course of U.S. military action.
Democrats have been quicker to call bullshit this time around. “I have still not seen any intelligence to suggest that there was an imminent attack against U.S. forces,” said Senator Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Counterterrorism. Some Republicans have joined them: “There was no specific information given to us of a specific attack,” said Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky after a classified briefing by the administration. “I didn’t learn anything in the hearing that I hadn’t seen in a newspaper already.”
According to recent news reports, the killing of Soleimani had been premeditated by the administration for months, not as an act of self-defense, but as a measure of vengeance on a “bad guy” who has long directed violent militias in the region. Moreover, we’ve learned that Soleimani wasn’t the only target for assassination, and that the U.S. also tried, and failed, to take out a second Quds Force commander, Abdul Reza Shahlai, who was targeted in a fourth country, Yemen. More alarming, President Trump himself has reportedly characterized the strikes against Iranians as part of an effort to curry favor with GOP hawks in the Senate who will imminently be serving as jurors in his impeachment trial.
more...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/imminent-threat-turned-weapons-mass-destruction-937039/
How Trump's 'Imminent Threat' on Iran Turned in to the New WMD
January 14, 2020 7:00AM ET
How Trump’s ‘Imminent Threat’ on Iran Turned in to the New WMD
The administration’s increasingly incoherent case for assassinating Qasem Soleimani doesn’t add up
By Tim Dickinson
His administration unable to keep its story straight about how exactly General Qasem Soleimani posed an “imminent threat” to U.S. national security, President Trump now claims it “really doesn’t matter” if the assassinated Iranian commander was about to kill Americans.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The question of imminence matters. Indeed, the legal justification of the strike depends on it. Killing a top-ranking government official of a nation that the United States is not at war with, on the soil of a third nation altogether, would be illegal, except as an extreme matter of self defense.
Even acting to foil an imminent threat requires an expansive legal reading of Article 51 of the United Nations charter, which outlines the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” According to experts in international law, killing Soleimani was legal only if the U.S. could demonstrate he was the operational commander of attacks that were about to happen, and that killing him — and only the act of killing him — would disrupt that threat.
The truth appears quite different. Like the claims of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2002, the Trump administration’s invocation of an “imminent threat” posed by Soleimani looks increasingly like a flimsy rationale, chosen after the fact to justify a predetermined course of U.S. military action.
Democrats have been quicker to call bullshit this time around. “I have still not seen any intelligence to suggest that there was an imminent attack against U.S. forces,” said Senator Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Counterterrorism. Some Republicans have joined them: “There was no specific information given to us of a specific attack,” said Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky after a classified briefing by the administration. “I didn’t learn anything in the hearing that I hadn’t seen in a newspaper already.”
According to recent news reports, the killing of Soleimani had been premeditated by the administration for months, not as an act of self-defense, but as a measure of vengeance on a “bad guy” who has long directed violent militias in the region. Moreover, we’ve learned that Soleimani wasn’t the only target for assassination, and that the U.S. also tried, and failed, to take out a second Quds Force commander, Abdul Reza Shahlai, who was targeted in a fourth country, Yemen. More alarming, President Trump himself has reportedly characterized the strikes against Iranians as part of an effort to curry favor with GOP hawks in the Senate who will imminently be serving as jurors in his impeachment trial.
more...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/imminent-threat-turned-weapons-mass-destruction-937039/
January 14, 2020
Up to 10 GOP senators consider bucking Trump on war powers
I'll believe it when I see it with my own cynical, tired eyes. 
Up to 10 GOP senators consider bucking Trump on war powers
By Alexander Bolton - 01/14/20 06:00 AM EST
As many as 10 Republican senators are considering bucking President Trump on a resolution that would limit his ability to take military action against Iran.
The increasing number is the latest sign of growing GOP frustration over the Trump administration’s justification for the drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is circulating a bipartisan resolution that would direct Trump to remove U.S. forces from any hostilities against Iran within 30 days of its enactment.
GOP Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.) have already voiced their support for the measure, and Kaine says about eight more Republicans, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Todd Young (Ind.) and Mitt Romney (Utah), are reviewing it.
“Probably about 10,” Kaine said when asked about the number of Republicans who could vote to rein in Trump’s powers. “There’s good discussion going on.”
Lee said several Republicans are carefully weighing whether to back the measure, adding that it “would not be unreasonable to say that there might be a group of 10 who should be considered potential candidates to vote for it.”
more...
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/478093-up-to-10-gop-senators-consider-bucking-trump-on-war-powers
January 14, 2020
Greta and George, the best short video of 2019
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