Wouldn't it be delicious if the Democrats had a real smoking gun and they are just waiting to drop it for maximum impact?

The Washington Post - Netanyahu’s indictment exposes Trump, too

today

Israel’s attorney general dropped the long-awaited bombshell Thursday evening. 

 

In a news conference, Avichai Mandelblit announced formal charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on counts of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, capping close to three years of intrigue and investigation in a 63-page indictment.

 

The decision makes Netanyahu, who has dominated his country’s politics for close to two decades, the first Israeli prime minister to be indicted while still in office.  ...

 

The bribery case, the most serious one, is a scenario in which the evidence appears to show Netanyahu engaging in a corrupt quid pro quo to boost his own political fortunes. 

 

Sound familiar?

 

Netanyahu’s indictment ought to unsettle President Trump. 

 

Not only is a close Trump ally in legal jeopardy, but his situation echoes that of the American president, who has raged for days from the sidelines of the House’s ongoing impeachment inquiry. ...

 

But neither Trump nor Netanyahu is calmly allowing government institutions to adjudicate on these alleged abuses of power. 

 

Instead, they are lashing out, demonizing the independent news media and their political opposition, while casting apolitical civil servants as pitchfork-wielding participants in “witch hunts” and distracting their nationalist supporters with fearmongering about minorities and immigrants. 

 

On Thursday, the Israeli prime minister described what was happening to him as a “coup” and called to “investigate the investigators,” the kind of language that Trump has also frequently deployed. ...

 

Fred99:

The Washington Post - ‘Impeachapalooza’: An irregular week for an outlandish presidency

November 22, 2019 

Exhibit A: Last Friday, a failed Maryland congressional candidate who has publicly compared Black Lives Matter to satanism and yet somehow obtained clearance to be at the White House blew a ram’s horn near the West Wing to lament the felony conviction of Trump confidant Roger Stone.

 

Exhibit B: On Saturday, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro praised Trump as “almost superhuman” just hours after he was spirited to the hospital for an unannounced medical visit.

 

Exhibit C: On Sunday, Yovanovitch, whom the president attacked on Twitter during her testimony, received a hero’s welcome at a jazz club in Georgetown - an impromptu public ovation that is rarely, if ever, bestowed on a former ambassador in an informal setting.

 

Trump reacted to this week by tweet and by Sharpie, in capital letters and with hysterical punctuation.

 

On Wednesday he emerged from the White House carrying a notepad scrawled with: “I WANT NOTHING. I WANT NOTHING. I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO.”

 

On Thursday, Trump referred to Democrats as “human scum.” He called the media “FAKE & CORRUPT.” ...

 

DEVIN NUNES ACCUSES IMPEACHMENT WITNESSES OF TRYING TO MISLEAD THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WITH FACTS

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what some observers called his most caustic opening statement of the impeachment inquiry, Representative Devin Nunes, on Thursday, accused witnesses of misleading the American people with factual statements.

“From the beginning of these proceedings, the Democrats’ witnesses have offered facts, more facts, and nothing but facts,” Nunes said. “I, for one, have had enough of their games.”

Ramping up his attack, he accused the civil servants who have testified, of having an obsession for verifiable information.”

“ ‘Step right up,’ these witnesses are saying,” Nunes added. “ ‘The fact circus is in town.’ ”

Nunes warned his Democratic colleagues that “the American people won’t be fooled by your relentless account of things that actually happened.”

“When the American people see the Democrats building this massive, sky-high tower of facts, they're gonna say: Is that all you’ve got?” he said.

Breaking news: A lawsuit by American Oversight watchdog organisation has just succeeded in forcing the release of State Department documents that were withheld from the congressional impeachment inquiry. This sounds like a big deal:

“We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress. It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador. 

“This is just the first round of disclosures. The evidence is only going to get worse for the administration as its stonewall strategy collapses in the face of court orders. 

“That American Oversight could obtain these documents establishes that there is no legal basis for the administration to withhold them from Congress. That conclusively shows that the administration is engaged in obstruction of justice. The president and his allies should ask themselves if impeachment for obstruction is worth it if the strategy isn’t even going to be effective.

“This lawsuit is just one of several American Oversight is pursuing to bring transparency to the Ukraine investigation. The public should expect more disclosures, over the administration’s strong objection, for the foreseeable future.”

More breaking news: One of the Soviet stereotypes arrested trying to flee the country now wants to testify to Congress that Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes is up to his ears in the conspiracy to smear the Bidens and other dirty tricks, and was secretly in Vienna doing dirty deals with the other usual suspects. It looks like the wall of silence may be starting to crack in a very big way. These people are not conservatives trying to defend their ideology. They are criminals scrambling to cover their backsides.

Trump on Fox for an hour. He is doing a brilliant job of digging the hole he is going to be buried in.

The Washington Post - Trump’s GOP support hardens despite damning impeachment testimony

November 24, 2019 

After two weeks of extraordinary open hearings that Democrats envisioned as their best opportunity to shape public opinion on impeachment, President Trump claims to be impervious to the cascade of damaging revelations because of hardening Republican opposition to his removal from office.

 

So far, the historic proceedings have exacerbated the political divide.

 

Some moderate Republican lawmakers once seen as the most likely to break with Trump condemned his conduct but signaled in recent days that they would probably vote against his impeachment because they do not believe the president’s actions meet that threshold.

 

This phase of the inquiry was particularly damning for Trump, simply because of the fact pattern that emerged.

 

A series of government witnesses, testifying under oath and at risk of perjury, implicated the president in a scheme to pressure Ukraine to influence the 2020 election.

 

But impeachment is not a criminal or legal proceeding; it is a political one. 

 

And as the inquiry hurtles toward a likely House vote on impeachment next month and a possible Senate trial, Republicans on Capitol Hill are solidly behind the president, even if they offer scattershot and at times contradictory defenses of his alleged wrongdoing.

 

Trump said Friday that he was looking forward to an impeachment trial and expressed confidence he would prevail. 

 

“There has never been so much unity and spirit in the Republican Party, as there is right now!” the president tweeted.  ...

 

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