Those four constitutional lawyers today all sucked. The three, although the middle guy was a bit less so, were all gung ho that it's absolutely impeachable, do it, do it now and between that and her stupid attempts at being funny like the Baron "joke" just made them come across as biased and disingenuous at best... And the other guy's attitude that they should just spend years fighting things out in court making impeachment completely useless just made it easy to discount anything he had to say. So glad I watched all that.. yeah right..
Yeah, that's a pretty good take of the hearing. Although I didn't mind there jokes as much, nice contrast with all the ridiculous bickering from the Reps. Was only able to watch the first 45 min, and then a bit of the second 45 mins and then just random bits throughout the day though.
Pretty interesting 2 of the 4 played the exact same roll in Clintons hearings.
here is one thing that is very damming in this report:
Adam Shift subpoenaed AT&T, before the impeachment inquiry started to get the call logs of Trumps lawyer, and subsequently sent subpoenas to AT&T and Verizon to get the call logs of a conservative reporter, and a sitting member of congress on the Intelligence committee.
AT&T should be condemned for complying with the subpoena without fighting it in court, and Shift should be condemned in the strongest way possible for spying on his political opponents for transparent political purposes. Especially concerning is the spying on a US citizens (in this case the President) lawyer, who is supposed to be able to provide legal advice to his client and conduct legal work for his client in confidence.
I feel where you're coming from, but subpoenaing phone records isn't spying, and doesn't require a warrant or probable cause. Cell Providers are required by law to comply with federal subpoenas (assuming they are filed correctly) and it's all in their ToS. They are very transparent about the whole process. If a subpoena meets the basic requirements that make it valid, they will honor it regardless of what or who it's for. AT&T gets like 200k subpoenas a year.
Hate on the laws all you want, but it's not Schifty Schift being Schifty like the outrage in conservative media is trying to make it seem.
Being that there was no impeachment inquiry open at the time, there was no legitimate reason for Adam Shift to be obtaining any of these call records, even if attorney-client privilege rights were ignored. There is no reason to be spying on reporters period.
It's the duty of the House to provide oversight of the Executive Branch, including the president. They don't have to open an impeachment inquiry to open an investigation. If they didn't have this power, there would be no check on the Executive branch and we wouldn't really be a democracy anymore.
All the outcry is just politicians playing the game. The democrats were crying the same song when the Republicans were firing off tons of subpoenas related to Benghazi, Clintons emails, Fast and Furious, That Solar Company, The oil spill, The ACA website, I could go on...
This is especially ironic because the impeachment inquiry is alleging that Trump abused his office to have Ukraine investigate someone who happened to be a political rival of criminal wrongdoing. As President, it is Trump's job to enforce US laws, and the US has signed Treaties with Ukraine that requires the Ukraine to investigate crimes that took place in Ukraine that would be illegal in both countries if the crime took place within their jurisdictions. Adam Shift on the other hand, was looking for dirt to smear his political opponents.
He wasn't just "having Ukraine investigate someone who happened to be a political rival":
In discussions with Ukrainian officials, Ambassador Sondland understood that President
Trump did not require that Ukraine conduct investigations as a prerequisite for the White House
meeting so much as publicly announce the investigations—making clear that the goal was not
the investigations, but the political benefit Trump would derive from their announcement and
the cloud they might put over a political opponent.
It's Adam Schiffs job to investigate anything that smells fishy in the Executive Branch. He's one of only 3 people with the power to subpoena them. Literally his most important job is to find out if anyone is abusing their power in the Executive Branch, because if he doesn't, nobody else will.
