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| Image via Focus Washington, 28 August 2017. |
The inquiry can (and will) begin without using the word "impeachment". We can (and will) use the word all we want. It's not convenient for Nadler to use it at the moment.— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 9, 2018
But that certainly doesn't mean it won't be.
Feel like saying "How should I know? The sample's too small." What interests me is narratology. In 1974 Democrats had a story that got people really riled up. In 1998 Republicans didn't. House Judiciary in 1974 got 6 out of 17 Republican votes to send articles to full House...— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 9, 2018
To me the difference between the two cases isn't in the House, it's in the public: Not enough voters could see Clinton as guilty of "high crimes". What married man wouldn't lie about getting head from a girl in the office? (Never happens to me so I'm not 100% sure, but...)— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 9, 2018
The two felonies in the Cohen finding certainly deserve impeachment, but I don't think they make the case narratologically, and I'm not surprised the newspapers aren't going nuts. The Russia case, in which we've seen Junior committing a serious felony already...— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 9, 2018
Is quite another matter. Even the newspapers are starting to catch onto it, and the emerging Saudi case, which is similar. The basic story is that US foreign policy is for sale, as a subdivision of Trump Org enterprises, and I think wider public may get this.— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 9, 2018
To Emptywheel, it's getting almost simple: It's about Trump's desire to build a Moscow hotel, which he'd been fretting over for years, ever since Ivanka and Junior and Felix Sater made that exploratory trip to Russia in 2006. In October 2015, four months after he declared his candidacy, the project started reviving, in communications reported in BuzzFeed last June that are now getting confirmed in the Cohen sentencing documents, between Ivanka and Dmitry Klokov, an Olympic weightlifting champion, offering to arrange a meeting between the candidate and Vladimir Putin, and went on into the next spring with various intermediaries including Papadopoulos and Page, culminating with the Agalarov-arranged June meeting in Trump Tower (remember, the Agalarovs were developing the land where Trump's tower was to be built) where, if I'm right, the terms were agreed; Trump would act as an advocate for Putin in the campaign, Russian intelligence would assist the Republicans "as part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump"—note that the email didn't say for the Trump campaign but for the person:
The Russians exploited Trump’s most venal instincts and those of all the people around him. And all the election help and policy payoffs were just side shows to Trump. So long as he showed a willingness to damage Hillary Clinton in any way available, the Russians were happy to have him believe this was just about a silly tower in Moscow.But it's bribery on an international scale.
So I don't know, but it's looking pretty good to me. The reason for the focus on the Judiciary Committee, if it's not clear, is that if they do their work right, as in 1974 the rest of Congress doesn't have to do much of anything, and in particular the Senate doesn't have to take a vote at all, which is very much their preference. They simply send a delegation of Republican Senators over to the White House and tell Trump he has to resign or he will be convicted.
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