Two weeks!

 Two-week Trump strikes again.

Bingo.

Impeach this motherfucker and give the world a break.  Flip the House AND the Senate in November.

UPDATE 06:28 pm:

Yes.

Everything old is new again.

Also, check Polymarket to see who made a shit ton of money.

Thanks, Bibi

 

And Trump preferred Bibi's assessment.  Never thinking Bibi might be baiting him.

Link to the NYT article quoted above.

The article makes Vance out to be the voice of reason but unable to deter Trump.  So, since he was right about what could happen if Trump followed Bibi, and considering that other cabinet members were more inclined to agree with Vance, perhaps they can all get together now to bolster each other into calling for the 25th amendment remedy to remove Trump.  That's probably too much to hope for, but it would indeed be to Vance's advantage.  And MAGA leaders are calling for it.

And if he goes ahead with his threat to kill a whole civilization, he should be impeached.  

Good point.

UPDATE 04/09/2026:  Zeteo is reporting that Trump is furious about this leak to the Times reporters (who have an entire book coming out: Regime Change).  I'd say if there's a leak about this particular incident, there's only a small group of people who could have leaked.  Who was at that meeting?  Only his most trusted cronies.  These are the people who wear shoes too big for them.  I suppose one of them could have complained to other people they thought would keep quiet.  

These revelations appear to be just the start of an arterial gush of revelations that Swan and Haberman have obtained – and Trump was already pissed off, publicly fantasizing about suing the authors with billowing anger that predates this week’s Times story.

Last month, the US president erupted at Haberman online, posting that she’s “just another SLEAZEBAG writer for The Failing New York Times,” and saying, “I’m thinking of adding Maggot, and some of her ‘associates,’ into my Florida based Lawsuit against The Times.” He and his staff also attached a photo of Haberman to his post, making it clear where they wanted their Two Minutes Hate directed. At the time, his outburst seemed to come out of nowhere. But it was all about the book.

[...]

One close Trump adviser says the president started getting “a little nervous” about the book in March, and sporadically went on profanity-laced tirades declaring the leaks an invasion of his privacy and potentially “treason,” and demanding the names of senior appointees who anonymously leaked.

  Zeteo

Also from Zeteo:

UPDATE 04/11/2026:

If Vance is going to use the 25th, he better do it soon.

 

Double-down Donnie

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Raskin tried

Since Congress won back the House in 2018, [Congressman Jamie] Raskin had pushed to take action on the issue of Trump allegedly violating the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, which prohibits federal office holders from receiving gifts or compensation from foreign leaders.

Pelosi did not want to move on the issue at the time, and vulnerable Democrats in pro-Trump districts also did not want to launch another investigation into the then-president.

According to Politico’s Playbook, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) asked Raskin during a discussion in 2019: “What’s the point? We know the end of this story.”

“Sometimes, we have to do these things,” Raskin responded.

  The Hill

Yes, yes, yes.

A few weeks later, in October 2019, Raskin again raised these concerns to Pelosi during an impeachment strategy session related to Trump’s threat to withhold aid to Ukraine unless Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dig up dirt on then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Trump at the time was planning to host the annual Group of Seven (G-7) conference of foreign leaders at Trump Doral, his private resort in Miami, which meant foreign officials would be spending money at Trump’s businesses and the president himself would spend taxpayer dollars there.

[...]

Pelosi told Raskin at the October meeting to prepare a resolution, calling Mulvaney a “liar and a creep” and Trump a “sick man and a freeloader,” according to Politico.

But when Trump ultimately reversed his decision to host the G-7 conference at Trump Doral, Pelosi eased up.

Still, Raskin refused to give up, repeatedly pushing for the emoluments probe.

Pelosi warned him to back down, threatening to withhold an impeachment manager position he wanted in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial over the Trump-Zelensky conversation.

It's past time for Pelosi to leave Congress. And I, for one, would like to see Adam Schiff or Jamie Raskin - or actually any number of qualified Democratic Congresspersons - to take her place as Speaker. The Schiff personality might be better able to herd the Democratic crew than Raskin, but they both have the integrity and courage to lead.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Excuuuuuuuuuse me???!

Where does he get off?  Bill Barr jerked the entire country around.

Barr spoke directly to Republican outcries about the nature of the “unprecedented” search of a former president, offering a counterpoint: “It’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club.”

“And how long is the government going to try to get that back? They jaw bone for a year. They were deceived on the voluntary actions taken. They then went and got a subpoena. They were deceived on that, they feel, and the facts are starting to show that they were being jerked around. And so how long, you know, how long do they wait?” Barr said in an interview on Fox News.

  Politico

How long do we wait for Barr to be held accountable for his shit?

Barr called the “whole idea of a special master a bit of a red herring” and a “waste of time.” He said the only documents his legal team may want to insulate the government from are those related to his “private lawyer communications, him as an individual and his outside lawyers.” He added that there doesn’t “appear to be much of this material.”

“What people are missing — all the other documents taken, even if they claim to be executive privilege, either belong to the government because they are government records. Even if they are classified, even if they are subject to executive privilege, they still belong to the government and go to the archives. And any other documents that were seized, like news clippings and other things in the boxes containing the classified information, those were seizeable under the warrant because they show the conditions under which the classified information was being held.”

The Department of Justice, to have escalated the investigation to this point, “probably has pretty good evidence” of obstruction, Barr added.

Obstruction of justice is Barr's middle name!

“Given the fact it’s a former president, given the state of the nation, and given the fact the government has gotten its documents back, does it really make sense to bring a case as a matter of prudential judgment? And that’s a question I think will turn on how clear the evidence of obstruction or deceit is."

Jesus Tapdancing Christ, asshole. Look in the mirror.

 

Prudential judgment? Deceit? Did he not get the memo? I mean the release of HIS OWN memo obstructing justice and deceiving the public, protecting Trump at a time when he could have been stopped with an impeachment conviction.

Bill Barr should be silently contemplating his part in the disaster and danger that Trump free in the world represents. Perhaps in a cell in a federal penitentiary. Why is any news outlook giving him a platform?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

And, right on cue...

Barr memo soon to be made public (maybe)

The decision released Friday by a unanimous three-judge D.C. Circuit panel found, in essence, that the Justice Department botched its handling of the Freedom of Information Act suit from the liberal watchdog group that sought the memo.

[...]

[Judge] Srinivasan said the memo, co-authored by Assistant Attorney General for Legal Counsel Steven Engel and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Edward O’Callaghan, seemed more like a “thought experiment” because Barr decided before the memo was written that Trump would not be charged with a crime. A long-standing DOJ legal opinion rules out federal criminal charges against a sitting president.

“As the Department concedes, it never in fact considered charging President Trump with obstruction of justice or any other crime.”

[...]

The ruling affirms a withering opinion U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued last year that ordered the document’s release and called the Justice Department’s initial arguments in the case “disingenuous.”

[...]

DOJ attorneys could ask the full bench of the D.C. Circuit to rehear the case or seek review at the Supreme Court.

  Politico

I'm guessing they won't.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Adam Schiff book preview

Volker should be prosecuted

Remember impeachment number one?

“At no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden,” [Kurt] Volker said in his Oct. 3, 2019, deposition. “You will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion.”

He echoed this in his later testimony: “At no time was I aware of or knowingly took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden. As you know from the extensive real-time documentation I have provided, Vice President Biden was not a topic of our discussions.”

The idea that the Trump team’s push might somehow not actually have been about the Bidens was a very fine line walked by another member of the “three amigos” whose testimony Republicans initially played up, then-European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry also tried to make a similar argument. The problem with all of that: Giuliani himself had explicitly connected the requested investigations to Biden in his public comments months before.

[...]

And the recording obtained by CNN shows Giuliani indeed making those connections in a call featuring Volker himself.

“All we need from the [Ukraine] President [Volodymyr Zelensky],” Giuliani says on the call, “is to say, I’m going to put an honest prosecutor in charge, he’s gonna investigate and dig up the evidence that presently exists, and is there any other evidence about involvement of the 2016 election, and then the Biden thing has to be run out.”

[...]

Volker’s testimony is worth a careful parse. He also referred specifically to the idea that Biden wasn’t brought up in the text messages he turned over — rather than at all in any conversations. And whether he was specifically party to “an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden” is also debatable, for reasons mentioned above.

Another issue: Volker in his deposition presented the Giuliani-Yermak call as “just an introductory phone call so they could talk to each other.”

“It was literally, you know, ‘Let me introduce,’ you know, ‘Mr. Giuliani,’ ” Volker said. “ ‘Let me introduce Mr. Yermak.’ ” Volker might have been referring narrowly to his own role, but the call lasted more than 40 minutes and dealt with plenty of the substantive subjects that would later come up in the impeachment trial.

  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Don McGahn testimony

Trump has persistently denied any effort to fire Mueller amid the long inquiry, which probed allegations that members of Trump’s team had colluded with Russian figures during his 2016 presidential campaign. Yet in Friday’s interview, [Trump White House counsel Don] McGahn directly disputed Trump’s claims, repeatedly laying out Trump’s consideration of firing Mueller.

“Well, you know, he certainly entertained the idea. Certainly seemed to ask a number of people about it. Certainly had a number of conversations with me about something along those lines,” McGahn told lawmakers.

“So, you know, it was disappointing that he’d come out and say, oh, it was never on the table when, certainly, at least the conflict of interest issue and whether that would preclude Mueller from being special counsel, certainly was discussed,” he added.

  The Hill

"Disappointing."

“He wanted me to call [former Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein and inform Rod that [Mueller] had conflicts. And, in the President's view, Mueller shouldn't be able to serve as special counsel because of these conflicts,” he said. McGahn called the potential dismissal of Mueller a “point of no return.”

[...]

“What I was not going to do is cause any sort of chain reaction that would cause this to spiral out of control in a way that wasn’t in the best interests ... of my client, which was the President,” he added.

The transcript also shows McGahn’s own fears of being implicated in the investigation, as Trump was pressuring him to release a statement saying Trump had not sought to pressure Rosenstein to remove Mueller.

[...]

House Democrats had subpoenaed McGahn in April 2019, seeking his insights into allegations that members of Trump’s team had colluded with Russian figures during his 2016 presidential campaign — a topic that became the subject of a 22-month investigation by Mueller.

[...]

The Trump White House directed McGahn to defy the subpoena as part of its broad stonewalling of Democratic investigations. The House sued to force McGahn’s testimony, leading to a protracted court battle that ended last month when the two sides struck an agreement for the former White House counsel to testify before the House Judiciary Committee behind closed doors.

UPDATE:

[...]

The Justice Department secretly subpoenaed Apple in February 2018 for account information of then-White House Counsel Don McGahn, as well as his wife, and secured a gag order barring the company from telling them about it, according to a person familiar with the matter.

It is unclear what the Justice Department was investigating or whether prosecutors actually obtained any of McGahn's account information.

[...]

Apple informed the McGahns of the subpoena last month after the gag order expired. />It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to subpoena the records of a sitting White House counsel. The news of the subpoena, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes days after it emerged that the Trump-era Justice Department had also subpoenaed Apple for communications metadata of at least two Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, as well as current and former staff and family members as part of a leak investigation.

Those seizures are now under review by the Justice Department's inspector general. The two lawmakers who had their data seized were Reps. Adam Schiff, the committee's top Democrat, and Eric Swalwell.

[...]

While the Mueller investigation concluded in 2019, McGahn was called earlier this month to testify before the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee following a protracted two-year legal battle. Testimony from that appearance was made public last week, and revealed the degree to which McGahn felt he was being pressured toward wrongdoing by Trump.

McGahn told the committee he was made particularly uneasy by Trump's repeated requests that he facilitate the dismissal of Mueller, who had been tasked with investigating possible ties between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.

  NPR

McGahn to finally talk

Former Trump White House Counsel Don McGahn will testify before the House Judiciary committee about his role in former special prosecutor Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, the panel announced Wednesday.

McGahn will speak only to committee members in private, under an agreement negotiated by his attorneys, the committee, and the Justice Department. The interview will be conducted "as soon as possible" and a transcript released publicly shortly thereafter, according to the court filing.

McGahn served as the campaign attorney for former President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential run and later as his White House counsel until 2018.



[...]

The interview will be limited to information attributed to McGahn in the publicly available portions of the Mueller Report, as well as events that involved him personally. He can decline to answer questions that go beyond that scope. Attorneys for the Justice Department may also tell McGahn not to answer certain questions.

  NPR

So, will there be anything of value in it?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wheels of justice grinding slowly

A federal judge has ordered the release of a key Justice Department memo supporting former Attorney William Barr’s conclusion that former President Donald Trump should not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice over episodes investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued that ruling in a withering opinion that accused Barr of being “disingenuous” when describing Mueller’s findings and found that the Justice Department was not candid with the court about the purpose and role of the 2019 memo prepared by Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.

[...]

“Not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege," she wrote. "The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time.”

Justice Department attorneys also argued that the memo is covered by attorney-client privilege, but Jackson said much of it didn’t seem to contain legal advice or conclusions.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How long will these guys last?

Trial lawyers David Schoen and Bruce L Castor will head up Trump’s new legal team, the former US president announced on Sunday evening.

[...]

The new lawyers are not without controversy. David Schoen represented Roger Stone, who was convicted in November 2019 of obstructing a congressional investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, and then had his prison sentence commuted by Trump.

The Atlanta-based lawyer also met with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when the financier was preparing for trial in New York on charges relating to sexual exploitation and shortly before Epstein died in jail in 2019.

Bruce Castor is a former acting attorney general of Pennsylvania and a prominent Republican who has been slammed by advocates for victims of sexual crimes because of his stance against reforms involving help for past victims of Catholic priests and in the case of university football coach and predator Jerry Sandusky. And Castor gained notoriety for declining to prosecute Bill Cosby more than a decade before the entertainer was eventually convicted in 2018, and also sued Cosby’s victim, Andrea Constand, in a case that was dismissed, and then was sued by Constand for defamation, which was settled.

[...]

[T]he trial schedule, and its substance, have been thrown into doubt with the departure of five lawyers on Trump’s defense team – apparently the entire team.

[...]

In a sense the resignation of Trump’s lawyers was irrelevant, because Republicans are planning to acquit Trump in any case, observed Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer.

“The ‘crisis’ over Trump’s legal team quitting assumes that the substance of the impeachment case will sway Senate Republicans,” Zelizer tweeted. “Most already have their answer. Trump could offer no defense or he can go on the floor to read lines from the Joker movie – they would still vote to acquit.”

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  In case  you didn't know, Trump was the 45th president.

World's worst client

I was hearing that Trump's impeachment lawyer, Butch Bowers, was actually a good lawyer.  I guess that explains why he quit.

Donald Trump has abruptly parted ways with the two lead lawyers working on his defence for his Senate impeachment trial, a source familiar with the situation said, leaving the former US president’s legal strategy in disarray.

Butch Bowers and Deborah Barberi, two South Carolina lawyers, are no longer on Trump’s team, the source said, describing the move as a “mutual decision”.

Three other lawyers associated with the team, Josh Howard of North Carolina and Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris of South Carolina, also parted ways with Trump, another source said.

  Guardian

Five of them!

A third source said Trump had differences with Bowers over strategy ahead of the trial. The president is still contending that he was the victim of mass election fraud in the 3 November election won by Joe Biden.

[...]

It was unclear who would now represent the former president at the trial.

Rudy? Lin Wood? Release the Kracken?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Impeachment #2

The US House of Representatives has presented its article of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate, a step that formally sets in motion the Senate trial against the former United States president, which is expected to start next month.

Walking from one side of the US Capitol to the other, nine House managers appointed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi hand-delivered the impeachment document to the Senate on Monday evening.

The article charged Trump with “incitement of insurrection” in relation to the deadly storming on January 6 of the US Capitol building in Washington, DC by a mob of his supporters.

The House impeached Trump on January 13 on the same charge – making him the first president in US history to be impeached twice.

[...]

“President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud, and should not be accepted by the American people, or certified by state or federal officials,” Raskin said.

The formal step kickstarts the trial phase of the impeachment process, in which all 100 senators will sit as jurors to hear evidence and legal arguments from the House managers and Trump’s defence team.

To be convicted, the Senate must secure a two-thirds majority on the impeachment charge.

  alJazeera

If they had any sense of their duty to the Constitution they would do it. But they don't, so they won't.

If that happens, a subsequent vote could bar Trump from running for public office again in the future.

[...]

Senate Democratic and Republican leaders have agreed on a timeline for the trial, which is expected to begin during the week of February 8.

[...]

Senators will be sworn in as jurors on Wednesday and a summons will be sent by the Senate to the former president, requiring him to answer the article of impeachment.

This is one hell of a creepy picture, though.

Do you realize how close to the brink we are?

The reason to convict Trump and bar him from office forever is rather simple: No sitting president has ever incited a violent attack on Congress. Allowing Trump to do so without sanction would invite a future president with autocratic ambitions and greater competence to execute a successful overthrow of the federal government, rather than the soft echo of post-Reconstruction violence the nation endured in early January. The political incentives for the Republican Party in convicting Trump may be unclear, but the stakes for democracy are not. The Senate must make clear that attempted coups, no matter how clumsy or ineffective, are the type of crime that is answered with swift and permanent exile from American political life.

That Trump is responsible for the assault on the Capitol is clear far beyond a reasonable doubt. Trump informed the assembled crowd on January 6 that “if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” and that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He then directed the mob at the Capitol, falsely telling the rioters he would accompany them, retreating to the White House instead. Those arrested after the attack have themselves told the authorities they were acting on the president’s admonitions. Behind the scenes, Trump was attempting to orchestrate an autogolpe using the Justice Department to force states to overturn their vote tallies; he was foiled only by the threat of mass resignations. The mob was his last resort.

[...]

Any president from any party who incites a violent attack on another branch of government in order to seize power should be forever barred from holding office.

If Congress cannot uphold that principle, it will not survive the next attack if it comes.

  The Atlantic

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Thanks, Mitch

McConnell has also said he won't reconvene before January ...but hey, do what you want...you will an19, so there's not much practical effect.  Unless, that is, they vote to bar him from ever holding federal office again.

yway.

Good to go

Final tally:

And climbing

you woul

And you would expect that any Republican who wants to run for president in 2024 would be all to eager to get Trump out of the way.

With few exceptions, GOP is not budging

The House of Representatives approved a symbolic resolution urging Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment against President Trump, after the president's No. 2 has expressed that he would not exercise that option. The move comes nearly a week after violent pro-Trump extremists breached the U.S. Capitol.

The vote was mostly along party lines, 223-205, with just one Republican, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, joining Democrats to vote for the measure.

[...]

"I do not believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our Nation or consistent with our Constitution," Pence writes. He says the amendment is "not a means of punishment or usurpation," and that invoking it would "set a terrible precedent."

  NPR

It's obvious Trump is unfit for office. The 25th Amendment is absolutely consistent with our Constitution. It's in its name.

He says the Trump administration is committed to ensuring an orderly transition in its final days and that "now is the time to heal."

Now that people are dead, the Capitol building is wrecked, insurrectionists are still on the prowl, but the GOP has finally had to accept they're not getting the next four years in the White House, it's time to heal. Asshole.

With Pence's response to the 25th Amendment resolution, the House plans to move forward with impeachment proceedings. Trump is just the third U.S. president to have been impeached. He would be the only one to have been impeached twice.

He's the greatest.

In a news conference Tuesday, Schumer said he's asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to call the Senate back into session immediately to begin a likely impeachment trial.

If the Senate GOP  had done their duty on the first impeachment, none of this would be happening.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Article of Impeachment

Supporting Materials