https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1223301592549556224
(((Rep. Nadler))) ✔ @RepJerryNadler

I am sorry to not be able to stay in Washington for the conclusion of the Senate impeachment trial but I need to be home with my wife at this time. We have many decisions to make as a family. I have every faith in my colleagues and hope the Senate will do what is right.

12:46 PM - Jan 31, 2020

https://twitter.com/BresPolitico/status/1223286287936913415
John Bresnahan ✔ @BresPolitico

New - Trump trial could go into next week, maybe even mid-week. Senators and WH want more time for closing arguments, Iowa caucus on Monday and State of the Union complicating timing. All very fluid right now

11:45 AM - Jan 31, 2020

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1223339287871213569
Manu Raju ✔ @mkraju

Big reason why final acquittal vote may not happen til next week: Each senator is entitled to 15 minutes. Collins and Murkowksi want timeframe similar to Clinton trial, which was three days of deliberations, source says. Dems are warning of amendments if that timeframe not given


Also, the Senate floor will be shut down Tuesday afternoon for a security sweep before the State of the Union.

The White House wants it done by the SOTU, but given the demands of senators to speak, it's unclear whether McConnell can make th

3:16 PM - Jan 31, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/us/politics/trump-bolton-ukraine.html

The president asked his national security adviser last spring in front of other senior advisers to pave the way for a meeting between Rudolph Giuliani and Ukraine’s new leader.

By Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt
Jan. 31, 2020, 12:00 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — More than two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who is now leading the president’s impeachment defense.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton to call Volodymyr Zelensky, who had recently won election as president of Ukraine, to ensure Mr. Zelensky would meet with Mr. Giuliani, who was planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the investigations that the president sought, in Mr. Bolton’s account. Mr. Bolton never made the call, he wrote.

The previously undisclosed directive that Mr. Bolton describes would be the earliest known instance of Mr. Trump seeking to harness the power of the United States government to advance his pressure campaign against Ukraine, as he later did on the July call with Mr. Zelensky that triggered a whistle-blower complaint and impeachment proceedings. House Democrats have accused him of abusing his authority and are arguing their case before senators in the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have said he did nothing wrong.

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https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1223256648401244160
Joshua Potash @JoshuaPotash

After last night, it’s time take our protest to the next level.

So @Remove_TrumpNow is shutting down Constitution Avenue in D.C. right by the Capitol.

While holding a giant banner of the impeachment clause of the Constitution.

Embedded video

9:48 AM - Jan 31, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/31/trumps-attorneys-have-butchered-crucial-founders-take-impeachment/

Gouverneur Morris’s views changed during the Constitutional Convention — setting a good example for senators today.

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Morris began the deliberations a great champion of a powerful president. Early in the convention, he argued against impeachment of the president under any circumstances because “it will render the Executive dependent on those who will impeach.” He was worried that Congress would use impeachment as a tool to control the president.

But George Mason and Benjamin Franklin challenged Morris. “Shall any man be above Justice?” Mason asked. Franklin argued that impeachment promised a path “for the regular punishment of the Executive when his misconduct should deserve it” and also allowed “for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused.” They convinced Morris that some form of impeachment would be appropriate, but only in select circumstances. “[C]orruption & some other offences to be such as ought to be impeachable; but thought the cases ought to be enumerated & defined,” Morris declared, and this is the language invoked by Dershowitz.

But Madison pressed for more, contending that a broad range of conduct should be grounds for impeachment. Madison argued that it was “indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the Community agst the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.”

This argument made sense to Morris, who informed his fellow delegates that his “opinion had been changed by the arguments used in the discussion.” Morris had come to believe that, far from being limited to crimes, the president should be impeached "for treachery; Corrupting his electors, and incapacity.”

Morris had changed his mind because the debates led him to realize that impeachment was a critically important tool for ensuring that the president did not abuse his power. “This Magistrate [the president] is not the King but the prime-Minister. The people are the King,” Morris declared.

</snip>

https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1223246194899587072
Ryan Goodman ✔ @rgoodlaw

The quid pro quo is ongoing

“Pompeo did not give Mr Zelensky one thing he has sought since last May...Pompeo’s message that Mr Trump was not ready to receive Mr Zelensky at the White House was a blow to the Ukrainian president’s national security efforts”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/world/europe/ukraine-pompeo-zelensky-trump.html …
Pompeo Says U.S. Backs Ukraine Against Russian Aggression
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, during the impeachment trial of President Trump over a pressure campaign against Ukraine.

9:06 AM - Jan 31, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/31/it-will-republicans-worst-possible-way-acquit/

By Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer

Jan. 31, 2020 at 7:45 a.m. EST

Look at it this way: The Senate was never going to reach a two-thirds supermajority to remove President Trump from office. By refusing to call witnesses, by advancing a frightful theory of unlimited presidential power, by endorsing the right of presidents to enlist foreign powers, by misstating evidence and making scurrilous attacks on everyone from House manager Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) to former vice president Joe Biden, Senate Republicans have demonstrated the lengths to which they will go to hold on to raw power and to bolster a deeply unfit president who does not know right from wrong.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) aptly outlined the stakes: “The president seems to be emulating a French king who said, ‘L’etat, c’est moi.’ ‘The state, it’s me,' " she said. “No, Article II does not say you can do whatever you want. The Constitution does not say that. ... I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status in the comments that they are making.” She added, "I just pray that the senators will have the courage and the ability to handle the truth instead of blocking the truth from themselves in the decision, and from the American people. "

The insistence on not merely acquitting but acquitting without the semblance of a real trial and with a new unlimited theory of presidential power will, at the very least, be clarifying for voters and the judiciary:

Roberts has seen just how power-hungry and intellectually dishonest the administration is and how it has played the courts (e.g. claiming in court that Congress can only enforce subpoenas through impeachment while making the opposite argument in the Senate). We hope that when cases centering on exaggerated claims of executive immunity reach the high court, Roberts will lead the justices with a strong majority to reject and discredit Trump’s dangerous views on executive power.

The public should understand fully that the Republican Party has become the authoritarian party. Instead of limited government, separation of powers and self-rule, Republicans embrace — when it suits their fancy — unlimited executive power, executive domination of the other branches and selling our democracy to the highest foreign bidder. They have mutilated the Constitution so they can claim its broken remains. They have been willing to sacrifice an ally to Russian domination, a signal to the Kremlin and others that we are feckless friends. Voters should be forewarned that neither the legislative branch nor executive branch can be entrusted to this crowd.

Americans who actually adhere to conservative beliefs should give up the fantasy that the GOP can be rescued. In not only electing and defending Trump but also shredding long-held constitutional principles, it poses a threat to the rule of law, equal justice under the law and the American creed (“All men ...”). Their energies are best spent in the short run trying to nominate and help elect a centrist Democrat and then creating a principled center-right party from the ground up.

The country needs to have a robust discussion about the electoral college, the Senate filibuster, the defects in the impeachment process, firewalls between the White House and the Justice Department, the power to indict sitting presidents, the War Powers Act, statutory emergency powers (which Trump has abused) and voting rights. (When Republicans hear that presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has a long list of executive orders ready to go, perhaps they will reflect on the path to tyranny they have paved.)

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