On Fox News Monday, legal analyst and Trump-skeptic conservative Andrew Napolitano warned the president he is making a mistake by refusing to send counsel to make his case in the House impeachment hearings — and suggested that the president can’t claim the process is rigged against him when he refuses to even participate in the process.
“I think the president would be very unwise not to send lawyers there,” said Napolitano. He acknowledged that it would be “unseemly” of the president to testify at the hearings himself, “but I think he makes a mistake when he refuses to participate,” because his lawyers could argue his case for him effectively.
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“So it would be in his interest to participate in that, right?” said Cavuto. “To exonerate himself or at least state his case?”
“Absolutely,” said Napolitano, who started out as supportive of the Trump administration and willing to promote conspiracy theories for the president, but has gradually become one of his harshest critics on Fox News. “He also loses the argument ‘it’s unfair’ if he doesn’t take the opportunity to participate himself.”
Regarding his personal view, Napolitano said that he believes the evidence shows the president’s attempt to cut off military aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden is “clearly impeachable, because it involves two potential crimes,” bribery and campaign finances offenses. “[Republicans] are free to say that’s not an impeachable offense, but they are not free to say it didn’t happen, because the evidence that it happened is overwhelming.”
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On MSNBC Saturday afternoon, legal analyst Danny Cevallos explained how Rudy Giuliani's trip to Ukraine to produce anti-impeachment propaganda could end up harming his legal position — by muddying attorney-client privilege with President Donald Trump.
"The only path to legitimacy is if there was a true corruption threat in Ukraine, and specifically if Hunter Biden and Burisma posed a true corruption threat," said Cevallos. "That is why Rudy Giuliani is in Ukraine. He's building that case. So that he can show, bring a news network there, right-leaning news network to do a documentary or investigate this issue and yield factual information that Rudy Giuliani can point to and say, this corruption, this evidence, these facts show that President trump was warranted in requesting an investigation, not generally into corruption, specifically into Hunter Biden. It's the only path that will work for Republicans that passes even remotely any kind of smell test. Even then, it's a bit of a stretch."
Donald Trump broke out of his Twitter hibernation on Saturday afternoon just before flying off to Florida for a pair of fundraisers, and used the opportunity to declare himself the "greatest of all presidents."
Attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for not passing his signature trade bill, Trump then went after Democrats for trying to impeach him -- saying they were making a big mistake.
On Twitter, the president wrote: ""Hard to believe, but if Nancy Pelosi had put our great Trade Deal with Mexico and Canada, USMCA, up for a vote long ago, our economy would be even better. If she doesn’t move quickly, it will collapse!"
Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.
If you have an older relative who spends way too much time stewing in the conservative media, you may have experienced a moment when you not only disagreed with him, but you realized that you had no earthly clue what he was going on about. Perhaps it was when he started talking about the UN plot to eliminate golf courses and replace paved roads with bicycle paths. Maybe he stopped you in your tracks with a discourse on why flies were attracted to Barack Obama, or complained about the government insisting on referring to Christians as "Easter-worshippers" or expressed outrage over 9/11 hijackers being given leniency by Muslim jurists.