Democratic congresswoman accused Republicans of fabricating impeachment evidence
Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Republicans of fabricating evidence presented in today’s impeachment hearing.
“Earlier today, one of our colleagues, the gentleman from Florida, presented up on the screen something that looked, appeared to be a screenshot of a text message containing or insinuating an explosive allegation. That screenshot of what appeared to be a text message was a fabricated image,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to a presentation from Republican Byron Donalds.
Earlier in the hearing, Donalds had shown a series of text messages that he said were indications Hunter Biden engaged in fraud and money laundering, and that Joe Biden benefited from it.
“I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know if it was the staff of the committee, but it was not the actual direct screenshot from that phone,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She also noted that only the four witnesses before the oversight committee were under oath, while the lawmakers on the panel could say what they want – including lies.
“I would ask that the chair, and I would ask that this committee, elevate to the promise of our duties here and comport ourselves with the consistency and practice that is required of our seats and our duty and our oath,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
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Republicans dissastisfied with first impeachment hearing – reports
Reports are emerging that Republicans are not happy with how the first hearing of Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry has gone today. The party’s operatives are dissatifed with their three witnesses, who refused to definitively say the president broke the law, as well as oversight committee chair James Comer’s management of the session.
Here’s more, from CNN and the Messenger:
Democrat Melanie Stansbury is using her time to make the case that the whole impeachment inquiry is being done at the behest of Donald Trump – or “the grand puppet master”, as she calls him.
“Let’s be clear about what this hearing actually is. It’s an effort to undermine our democracy, to diminish Donald Trump’s own two impeachments,” the New Mexico lawmaker said.
She went on:
We know that Donald Trump has called for this impeachment inquiry, because we have the direct evidence from his own social. You can see it right here. He says, impeach the bum. And we also know that he’s been directly coordinating with members of this committee as reported by the New York Times right here, a member of this committee has been briefing Donald Trump on this inquiry.
We also know that if Donald Trump doesn’t get his way he wants his loyalists to shut down the government. How do we know that? Because he posted it right here on his social media. And his loyalists in this committee, who are doing his bidding for him today, retweeted it. And in fact, it actually says right here that the reason why they want to defund the government and impeach is because this is the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me.
So, folks, this is not a serious inquiry. This is not a serious hearing. In fact, the witnesses here don’t even believe there’s enough evidence to impeach their own members don’t even believe there’s a much is enough evidence to impeach.
“I think it’s obvious who the grand puppet master is here. He tweeted about it on his own social and we see the long arm, the little hands of Mr. Donald Trump, whose fingerprints are all over this hearing and this sham impeachment,” Stansbury concluded.
Republicans, meanwhile, are using their time to get support from their witnesses for their investigation of Joe Biden.
Clay Higgins asked law professor Jonathan Turley for his interpretation of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” one of the things the constitution says a president can be removed for committing.
“This has been a matter of obviously robust debate for many decades. What we do know is that there were various terms that were offered, and were rejected,” Turley replied.
“Would Madison argue that ‘betrayal of trust to foreign powers’ is an impeachable offense?” Higgins asked, referring to founding father James Madison, who played a major role in writing the United States’s governing document.
“There are references into that type of betrayal of trust, but also, if you take a look at past impeachments, they have gone to the violation of public trust, including the use of office to perpetuate false accounts or to obstruct this body,” Turley replied.
Higgins then went on to recite the evidence Republicans have accumulated against Biden, which mostly centers on his son’s overseas business activities and the justice department’s investigation into it, which they allege was politically undermined.
“Do you agree that the oversight committee, judiciary committee and ways and means committee should be judiciously investigating reasonable suspicion of impeachable actions by president Joe Biden?” Higgins then asked.
“I do … I think it is your duty to get answers to these questions and to see if the president was involved in what I think is a confirmed corrupt influence peddling effort,” Turley replied.
One tactic Democrats are using to blunt the impeachment effort is to get the three Republican-invited witnesses to acknowledge that the facts don’t yet support charging Joe Biden.
Earlier in the hearing, Democrat Ro Khanna asked George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley to elaborate on his opening statement, where he said, “I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish, but I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”
“The key here that the committee has to drill down on, is whether they can establish a linkage with the influence peddling, which is a form of corruption,” Turley said. “And the (resident, whether he had knowledge, whether he participated, whether he encouraged it, we simply don’t know, and we don’t even know if this was an illusion or not.”
“Currently, it’s your testimony that that nexus has not been established, correct?” Khanna asked.
“No, I think that’s the purpose of the inquiry,” Turley replied.
Democratic congresswoman accused Republicans of fabricating impeachment evidence
Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Republicans of fabricating evidence presented in today’s impeachment hearing.
“Earlier today, one of our colleagues, the gentleman from Florida, presented up on the screen something that looked, appeared to be a screenshot of a text message containing or insinuating an explosive allegation. That screenshot of what appeared to be a text message was a fabricated image,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to a presentation from Republican Byron Donalds.
Earlier in the hearing, Donalds had shown a series of text messages that he said were indications Hunter Biden engaged in fraud and money laundering, and that Joe Biden benefited from it.
“I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know if it was the staff of the committee, but it was not the actual direct screenshot from that phone,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She also noted that only the four witnesses before the oversight committee were under oath, while the lawmakers on the panel could say what they want – including lies.
“I would ask that the chair, and I would ask that this committee, elevate to the promise of our duties here and comport ourselves with the consistency and practice that is required of our seats and our duty and our oath,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Democrats, led by congressman Kweisi Mfume, just attempted to, once again, subpoena Rudy Giuliani.
Mfume argued that the lawyer for Donald Trump has crucial information about the impeachment inquiry. Giuliani was also at the center of Democrats’ impeachment of Trump in 2019 for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
“Doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with this,” Republican Nancy Mace grumbled, before voting against it, together with other GOP lawmakers, who blocked the motion by a vote of 20 to 18.
“Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” Mfume said, after the motion failed. “That’s how we got here, ladies and gentlemen, and this committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame.”
South Carolina’s Nancy Mace then displayed a text message between Hunter Biden and a Chinese businessman working for a company she said was affiliated with the Communist Party.
“Hunter says ‘my uncle will be here with his brother’ in all caps, ‘who would like to say hello to the chairman,’” Mace said, reading off the text message.
“He goes on: ‘Jim’s brother, if he’s coming, wants to say hello,’” Mace said.
“His uncle’s brother. Hmm, I wonder who that could be,” Mace continued. “I can’t quite figure it out. Hunter puts brother in all caps, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. But, since I’m not always dealing with geniuses in Washington DC, as has been illustrated today, I’ll spell it out. The brother of Hunter’s Uncle Jim is Joe Biden.”
“Why was Hunter so secretive about his father?” Mace asked. “I’m gonna tell you why. It’s because Joe Biden didn’t want the American people to know he and his family were getting paid millions and millions of dollars from a company closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party.”
While Joe Biden has erroneously downplayed his son’s business dealings in China, despite what Mace says, there’s no proof that the president financially benefitted from Hunter Biden’s ventures there, as this Washington Post fact check makes clear. It’s also worth noting that Hunter Biden’s involvement with the Chinese company, CEFC, began in 2017 – after Joe Biden’s term as vice-president ended.
Democrats then, again, attempted to disrupt the hearing with a point of order.
The culprit was Dan Goldman, who, before Republican Byron Donalds could talk, wanted to raise an issue.
“You’re out of order, out of order,” James Comer, clearly wise to the minority’s tactics, quickly responded, before moving on to Donalds, who presented a number of text messages from Hunter Biden to his siblings and relatives.
After Donalds finished speaking, Comer came back to Goldman, who requested that a specific page from Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer’s testimony to the committee was entered into the hearing record. Comer granted the request, and the hearing moved on.
“I think this hearing is all about look over here, not over there,” Democrat Gerry Connolly said, as he began an exchange with Michael J. Gerhardt.
Connelly asked Gerhardt to comment on “all those Biden towers” he’s seen across the world. There aren’t any Biden towers – the Democrat was referring to Donald Trump’s properties in countries across the world, one of a host of the former president’s international entanglements Connolly accused Republicans of ignoring.
“I just think that one of the reasons we’re here is because somebody has been indicted in four different locales on four different sets of concerns with I think 81, 91 actual counts and has been found guilty in two civil proceedings, one on involving sexual behavior and one on actual corporate fraudulent activity, and we don’t want to talk about any of that,” Connolly said.
“We want to speculate about discredited testimony from discredited witnesses, like Rudy Giuliani, whom we’re afraid to subpoena. That’s what this is all about. This isn’t about our need to defend Joe Biden, this is about their need to make sure we get off topic, that we no longer talk about the pending criminal trials of the former president of the United States, and if anything’s worthy of examination, that is – not this.”
Republican Jim Jordan is using his speaking time to establish that Republicans have a basis to open an impeachment investigation.
Citing instances where Joe Biden’s White House staff responded to questions about his son’s business activities, Jordan asked George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley, “What do you think about all those false statements from the White House and this abuse of power issue?”
“Well, the involvement of White House staff and executive branch staff has been really one of the trip wires we saw in Nixon and to some extent, even in Clinton, the degree to which you enlist support for a false narrative, or to obstruct Congress, can go into things like abuse of power,” Turley said.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington DC’s non-voting Democratic delegate, asked Michael J. Gerhardt to elaborate on the dangers of “impeachments (that) are initiated without any evidence of wrongdoing by a president.”
“They trivialize impeachment, they trivialize the constitution, and they ride roughshod over the rule of law. Nothing good comes from abusing your power, whether it’s done by a president or by Congress,” Gerhardt said.
The impeachment hearing is now well underway, and the two parties’ tactics are becoming clear.
Republicans are taking viewers deep into the weeds, unveiling a bevy of evidence they say proves corruption on the part of Joe Biden. They’re asking their three witnesses about specific aspects of the evidence, and asking them for their opinions of them.
Democrats are meanwhile questioning the entire premise of the hearing, and in particular the fact that the full House has not voted to approve an impeachment inquiry. The goal is, clearly, to discredit the entire idea of impeaching the president.