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You are here: Home / Politics / Impeachment Inquiry / Impeachment Inquiry Open Thread: Don McGahn Looks Down the Barrel

Impeachment Inquiry Open Thread: Don McGahn Looks Down the Barrel

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46Comments

  2. 2.

    germy

    You can expect McGahn to appeal, which would likely drag this out until after an impeachment trial in the Senate.

    I agree.

  4. 4.

    Jeffro

    Hey as long as the Dems repeatedly & loudly point out that none of this – not one teeny tiny little thing – looks like the actions of an innocent man with clean tax returns and zero loyalty to Russa, I’m sure we’ll win.  If not in the courts or at the impeachment trial then in Nov 2020.

     

    Once upon a time, I had thought that we might get his approval down to the crazification factor.  But I see now that we’ll just have to get by with our low-50% beating his 40% until his older racist base shuffles off this mortal coil.

  6. 6.

    Kraux Pas

    Of course the President’s not the king. The President’s far more powerful than the king. The President has the power that kings have never had

    Alan Dershowitz, lawyer.

  7. 7.

    germy

    @Jeffro:

    until his older racist base shuffles off this mortal coil.

    But what to do about his young racist base?  The ones that march in the streets, start fights, and get into mischief online?  The “OK” symbol flashers, the red hats at the rallies, the young blonde ladies with their tattoos and twitter accounts?

     

    I recently took our cat in for a dental cleaning.  Nice young lady did the work.  She sent us a followup email to see how the cat was doing.  We checked her twitter account afterwards, and saw her husband calls himself a “proud deplorable”

     

    They’re not going away.

  8. 8.

    cain

    @germy:

    And that’s fine we should drag his ass to court and kick his ass. Especially for some reason Trump is still President after the election. Tbe supreme Court is going to decided a lot of shit that is already settled law.

  10. 10.

    randy khan

    @cain:

     

    I have this odd feeling that none of the cases about Trump’s claims of immunity will be decided by the Supreme Court until after the election.  And then maybe never at all if he loses because on January 20, 2021, all of the cases would become moot.  It would be easy not to schedule the oral arguments until the fall, which would make that entirely plausible.

  11. 11.

    cain

    @germy:

    You are right because as long as we have fox news and a poor educational system we can generate more.

    The real issue is to get more voters out there.

  12. 12.

    cain

    @randy khan:

    It’s their damn job to do it. Even after the election they should be forced to make a decision so it is settled law. Make them rule .. If the Democratic presidency comes in, they should absolutely push for it because you know the conservative justices will be forced to since they would be giving power to a Democratic president

  13. 13.

    James E Powell

    @randy khan:

     

    Agreed. And I have the belief that if it were a Democrat who was refusing to appear and testify, the courts would decide it in a week.

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    @randy khan

    If – if – a case is accepted for hearing during the present term, a decision/outcome will be announced no later than the end of the term, June 30.

    Not making a value judgment, just pointing out the court calendar.

  15. 15.

    Philbert

    @cain:  Yup, given mooting, let’s have a Dem admin do a test offense for every one of these cases and prosecute it all the way, using the GOP’s exact words, and take it to the Supremes.

  16. 16.

    Martin

    @zhena gogolia: He doesn’t have nearly enough young supporters to win. His approval among young people is in the 20s. It’s in the 50s with people over 50.

     

    Part of that dynamic is that older people tend to be white. Most minorities are relatively young. In CA, whites are majority (over 50% of pop) over age 50, but latinos are majority (over 50% of pop) under age 25. So there’s a trend between race and age.

  17. 17.

    Jeffro

    @zhena gogolia: it only looks that way, sometimes.  The data shows that his supporters are mostly older folks.

     

    (I’m kinda getting up there in age myself; I’m not a Millenial going all ‘ok boomer’ here =)

  21. 21.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Kraux Pas: Right. If anyone ever has an urge to say that Dershowitz calls ’em like he sees ’em and is an honest lawyer who just so happens to favor Trump in every question, this is really the quote they should remember.

    And there are people out there who try to regard Dersh as honest, they really do. And here he is, arguing that a President has MORE power than an absolute monarch.

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    Should we add one more thing to the long list of institutional fragilities the Trump admin has revealed: a court system that moves too slowly? I know courts of all types can be slow and overburdened, and you can’t wave a magic wand to fix that. But it seems like there should be a way to rule on issues of grave national importance on an expedited basis.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

     

    There is a lot of ageism out there but young people are better than older people as a class, although it’s not as vast a difference as between white people and non-whites.

  27. 27.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Betty Cracker: I thought it was possible to ask for an expedited trial. In this case, McGahn is saying there’s irreversible harm if he’s forced to testify. The House should be saying there’s irreversible harm to the impeachment proceedings if McGahn is allowed to drag this out another 7 months on a preposterous pretext.

     

    Really though, I think the Supremes have agreed to expedited resolutions in the past. In this case, they should just turn down the appeal. Trump doesn’t really lose anything other than good PR if his people just show up and scream “Executive Privilege!”

     

    His voters would probably like it.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    @Martin: I should note that it’s not an ageist trope if it true. Nobody is suggesting that older people are predisposed to be Trump supporters by virtue of their age (maybe because of their race, which as I note above has a correlation with age). We’re arguing that Trump supporters tend to be old by virtue of counting them and seeing that to be true.

     

    There are a lot of dynamics that suggest that older voters *shouldn’t* be Trump supporters. One place you see that is with Jewish voters, where the trend is reversed. Older Jewish voters reject him, because they lived closer to the history where we learned where this leads. His support is strongest among younger voters where ‘Jewish’ is more synonymous with ‘white’. That’s discouraging, to say the least. Further, the only  socialists I know are either under 25 or over 65. Getting fucked over by the system for half a century certainly does shape ones opinions.

  30. 30.

    Martin

    @germy: This is the Democrats ‘drown them in a bathtub’ strategy. Marginalize them at every turn. You can’t eliminate them, but you can rob them of their agency and make it harder for them to recruit.

     

    Trump probably has undone 20 years of progress on that front.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    I think it’s good because it restates norms and laws, but it won’t matter. These are people who have to be compelled to do anything. They simply don’t consider themselves bound by rules and laws that apply to others.

    I am glad impeachment polls well- steady. I think they had to impeach or oversight was dead letter with no real meaning so I think if you jump you have to go all the way and trust it works out okay.

    This wasn’t really a decision. It was now or never. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Even if it fails they saved the legitimacy of the process – that mechanism survives – and that’s worth a lot.

    Political fashions change and these crooks aren’t going to be in power forever. I’d like to have the tools to have a functioning democracy still at hand when they finally go back to their various grifts, or prison, whatever.

  32. 32.

    JaySinWA

    Okay, call me a Pollyanna, but I don’t see the courts dragging this out for T’s benefit. The level of immunity claimed is (they don’t even need to show up?) is so broad that it would make subpoenas impotent. I suppose they could try a carve out that only invalidates Congressional ones, but I don’t see how they thread the needle.

  33. 33.

    Jim Parish

    I began rejecting Dershowitz during GWB’s presidency, when he advocated the issuance of “torture warrants”.

  35. 35.

    Kent

    In the end, relying on Mueller, or the House Impeachment investigation, or the Senate, or the Supreme Court, or the Media or anyone else to do the job of expunging Trump from our lives is naive in the extreme.

     

    The ONLY way it will happen if is enough ordinary people get out there and organize and vote.  There is no other magic process that will right the ship.  We have to do it ourselves.   That becomes more and more clear with every passing day.

     

    And, of course, we have to do it with enough margin to eliminate the possibility of ratfucking and voter suppression, and mis-counts and all the other anti-democratic crap that we already know they are going to pull.

     

    Nothing else matters over the next 12 months.

  36. 36.

    artem1s

    @Jeffro:

    Once upon a time, I had thought that we might get his approval down to the crazification factor.

    I still think there is a chance for this to happen.  It was just Friday that the info came out about Rudy’s involvement.  Anyone who was standing too close to Rudy (including the VP) during this whole shitshow, is going to start edging away from him. Those who don’t or now can’t distance themselves are probably looking at subpoenas in one trial or another.  We are finally approaching peak underbussing.  Peak crazification factor may always be higher with MAGA’s but there are still a lot of not-Nunes crazy level GOP leaders who are not willing to go to jail for this guy.

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    @MisterForkbeard: What’s most annoying to me about Donnie’s Minions in this case (and several other earlier ones) is that they’re not asserting Executive Privilege yet.  They’re just claiming that the might.  They’re trying to have it both ways – telling Congress to back off because they might assert a privilege that doesn’t exist and yet not actually assert it because they don’t want to risk losing in court.  Plus, by saying they might assert it later, they’re dragging out the process.

     

    It’s infuriating.

     

    If they do end up asserting it, they should lose on the merits.  In doing so they’ll weaken legitimate claims that a future President might need to assert.

     

    Grrr….

     

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  38. 38.

    Roger Moore

    @Martin:

    He doesn’t have nearly enough young supporters to win. His approval among young people is in the 20s. It’s in the 50s with people over 50.

    This isn’t a complete contradiction of what she’s saying.  20% of people in their 20s is still a lot of people, even if it isn’t enough to keep winning national elections.

  39. 39.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    It’s a tired out cliche by this time, but I still always wish somebody would ask the “What about Obama / Bill Clinton / Hillary / Biden” question.

    In this case: “Did Obama also have this greater-than-kings power?”

  40. 40.

    drdavechemist

    @germy: At my school, a kid (middle school, I think) got up to say he was thankful for the current Oval Office occupant, “The best President ever, who does a great job keeping this country safe.” Not sure how you overcome that level of brainwashing, but it shows that support for the current regime exists even in the younger generation.

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @Betty Cracker:

    Should we add one more thing to the long list of institutional fragilities the Trump admin has revealed: a court system that moves too slowly?

    Sounds like we need more federal judges. We just need a Senate that would let a Democratic president appoint them.

  42. 42.

    janesays

    It’s frustrating seeing how many people think this is actually going to result in McGahn testifying anytime soon (or ever).

    It’s going to be appealed to the Supreme Court, and it’s incredibly naive to think we’ll get any sort of decision from them before April or May, at the earliest. It’s also naive to assume that they’ll uphold the lower court decision. They may do that… but it’s not too hard to imagine them doing the exact opposite, given who five of those justices are. It’s going to be a 5-4 ruling either way, and Roberts will be the decider. Doesn’t give me great hope.

    Anyway, I don’t expect the Democrats to hold up the impeachment process until they get a ruling from SCOTUS, because I think that would definitely blow up in their faces – especially if the Roberts court decides to overturn Judge Jackson’s ruling.

  45. 45.

    janesays

    @joel hanes: There was a significantly greater urgency involved there – Bill Clinton was scheduled to leave office on January 20, 2001, and his successor needed to be determined ASAP to begin the transition. Regardless of where you were on the political divide at that time, there was a pretty solid consensus in the American public that the issue needed to be resolved as quickly as possible.

     

    If SCOTUS kicks this can down the road on the McGahn testimony, the only thing that happens is we don’t get to hear from McGahn anytime soon (or possibly ever).

  46. 46.

    janesays

    @cain: If Trump is still president after the election, literally nothing matters anymore. The country is finished. He’ll get to fill two more SCOTUS seats and we won’t be able to stop it. And the next 30+ years will be a living hell for everybody who isn’t a rich, straight, conservative white guy.

     

    The next election is existential for America, quite literally. The wrong choice is the end of the Republic.

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