Senate Impeachment Trial Could be Quagmire for Democrats and Joe Biden In Particular

No exit strategy.

Just as the Democrats did over the last several weeks in the House, Republicans in the Senate majority will have a chance to call their witnesses and dominate the process -- with condemnations of those who duck their subpoenas. Topping their list are the former vice president, his son, and Alexandra Chalupa, a former Democratic National Committee operative whom Republicans have accused of digging dirt on the 2016 Trump campaign with help from Ukrainian officials.

Chalupa has said she’s "on a mission" to testify and repudiate such accusations. But there's a reason Democrats didn’t put her in the hearing hot seat last month. She has publicly said that officials at the Ukrainian Embassy were "helpful" to her efforts to research the activities of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's Russia ties – even as she insisted the embassy was not trying to interfere in American politics.

Also worth exploring: the convicted domestic bomber she palled around Ukraine with.

They ought to call him, too.

...

Joe Biden on Wednesday said he would not testify in impeachment proceedings against President Trump as Republicans focus on the underlying cause for Trump's concerns about the Bidens' activities in Ukraine – primarily that Hunter Biden was paid millions to sit Burisma's board while his father served as the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine. Trump's efforts to persuade that country's new president to investigate the matter is at the heart of the impeachment proceedings.

"No, I'm not going to let them take their eye off the ball," Biden told reporters on the campaign trail when asked if he would acquiesce to Republicans' calls for him to testify in an impeachment trial....

But even Democratic impeachment witnesses testified last month that Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma raised legitimate conflict-of-interest questions and that they were at a loss to explain why no one in the Obama administration put a stop to it.

Listen, Fat, you're gonna have to testify under oath.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:40 PM

| Access Comments