We have seen this show before, it’s all designed to pressure a small number of weak Republican Senators to allow Democrats to turn the Senate into a circus in which the process becomes the punishment.

It has been clear for weeks that the Democrats were seeking to ‘Kavanaugh’ the Senate impeachment trial — to roll out with media help a well-timed series of supposed bombshell accusations whose main purpose was to create a media hysteria to pressure Republican Senators to extend the process.

The process for the nominee, or in the impeachment framework the president, becomes the punishment and the Democrat campaign strategy.

That’s what happened in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. Once it because clear that Kavanaugh would be confirmed and the hearings were closed, a series of accusers — Christine Blasey Ford, Julie Swetnick, Deborah Ramirez, plus anonymous accusers — were rolled out to reopen the hearings and prolong the process. The accusations were absurd and contradicted by all known evidence, but that was not the point. The Democrats, having invented and honed the skill of Borking nominees, wanted to punish the nominee and damage his legitimacy as a Supreme Court Justice.

It’s happening with the Trump impeachment trial. The House case collapsed during the presentation, but even more so during the Saturday presentation by Republicans, as described in VIDEO: Trump trial team exposed Adam Schiff’s lies and manipulation behind impeachment:

On December 16, 2019, just days after the House voted to impeach but weeks before the House would deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate, I wrote how that strategy was clear, Democrats are going to try to “Kavanaugh” the Impeachment Trial with new accusations:

The most dangerous place on earth, Bob Dole wisely observed, is between Chuck Schumer and the TV cameras. Not surprisingly, while Mitch McConnell usually gets his way, Schumer gets the headlines and TV coverage. Schumer did that again today with his demand for a “fair” trial, meaning to Schumer that Democrats get to reopen the investigation of Trump during the trial, including calling witnesses who did not testify, and doing the job the House Democrats failed to do. A do-over…. Schumer and Senate Democrats know that what the House had is not enough to get 20 Republican Senators to vote against Trump — they may not even get one. So the trial takes on a different purpose — to seek evidence and to prolong impeachment investigations for the remainder of the election year based on “new evidence” discovered during the trial. Byron York astutely observes that Senate Democrats are taking the same approach they took in trying to block Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination: Call it the Brett Kavanaugh model of impeachment. During the Supreme Court justice’s confirmation process, a hearing had already been held, and Kavanaugh appeared on the way to joining the court. Then, up popped a new allegation, the Christine Blasey Ford story, and Democrats demanded the case be reopened, witnesses be interviewed, evidence be gathered, and time be taken for more investigation. Republicans acceded to those demands, and the Kavanaugh confirmation careened off course for a while before GOP lawmakers finally got it back on track…. … Senate Democrats proved themselves to be misleading and dishonest demagogues during the Kavanaugh hearings. Expect the same at a Senate impeachment trial.

Again on January 16, 2020, just after Democrats delivered the articles of impeachment to the Senate, Lev Parnas is Julie Swetnick, and Dems are trying to ‘Kavanaugh’ the impeachment trial:

Lev Parnas is to the Impeachment Trial as Julie Swetnick was to the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, if Republicans let Democrats get away with it. Recall that after the Kavanaugh hearings were done, but before the committee vote, Democrats leaked that they had a surprise witness they had known about for several weeks, Christine Blasey Ford. Her claim that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school fell apart when the four people she said were present in the house that night all said they had no memory of such an event — not just the sexual assault, but even of being in the house as a group. So out of the woodwork came multiple other accusers, particularly Julie Swetnick, represented by then-Democrat-presidential hopeful Michael Avenatti. Swetnick pushed her ludicrous story out on cable news. The story was that Kavanaugh ran gang rape parties in high school in which men lined up in rape trains. The story was absurd on its face, but Democrats and liberal media treated it as more proof that no vote should be held on Kavanaugh until there were full investigations of all allegations. Swetnick’s claim not only was absurd, her background cast serious doubt on her crebility. Her claims fell apart when she was pressed. But she served Democrats’ purposes. This is what “to Kavanaugh” something is: to drag a hearing out with serial accusations and accusers so that the process becomes interminable. And this is what is happening with the Democrats’ attempt to remove Trump through impeachment and trial.

First it was Lev Parnas, someone under federal indictment for providing false information. Parnas splashed his opinions about Trump involvement in something nefarious on the conspiracy show Rachel Maddow. And now Parnas has secret tapes. But none of it amounts to anything relevent — Parnas shows that Trump didn’t like or trust the Obama-appointed U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. So what? Trump has said that himself. And Trump like every president has a right to appoint his own ambassadors, so there was nothing wrong with it. A big nothing no more worthy than the flimsy accusations of Ford (disproven by the people she said were witnesses) and bizarro-world accusations of Ramirez and others.

Now it’s John Bolton through a supposed leak of a portion of his upcoming book to the NY Times. The Times story has no quote from the book, no specific time frame, and nothing that supports impeachment. The “bombshell” is that Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says. That headline is all the Times needed to kick off a media feeding frenzy being used to pressure Republicans to allow Bolton and other witnesses the House never bothered to subpoena. But there is almost no support for that headline in the actual article. This is that only part of the article that purports to paraphrase the Bolton book:

In his August 2019 discussion with Mr. Bolton, the president appeared focused on the theories Mr. Giuliani had shared with him, replying to Mr. Bolton’s question that he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.

That’s about as specific at The Times article gets, and it doesn’t support the nefarious headline. Assuming it was said, there would be nothing wrong with it. It’s a weaker claim then the serious (but unfounded) accusations against Kavanaugh.

(Added) Alan Dershowitz made following point during his presentation to the Senate tonight:

“Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense. That is clear from the history. That is clear from the language of the Constitution.”

Alan Dershowitz: "Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense. That is clear from the history. That is clear from the language of the Constitution." pic.twitter.com/clD3nsCaeb — CSPAN (@cspan) January 28, 2020

But we’re in the middle of a media feeding frenzy.

I talked about the Democrats’ ‘Kavanaugh’ strategy on the Chicago’s Morning Answer with Amy Jacobson (no relation) and Dan Proft:

[Transcript is auto-generated, I’ve cleaned it up but it’s still rough in places] PROFT: We’re pleased to be joined by William Jacobson. He’s a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School. He’s also the founder of the very good legal blog for you, legal eagles like me, legalinsurrection.com. He’s President of Legal Insurrection Foundation. Professor Jacobson, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. WAJ: Thanks for having me on. PROFT: So, you know, I mean, how do you, what are sort of, excuse me, some of your top lines after, you know, a week of this leading with the first, offerings from the, the defense team on Saturday, WAJ: I was able to watch the entirety of the two hour presentation by the Republicans on Saturday. And as some of the clips you played indicate it was fairly devastating to the substance of the Democratic case. I think it’s a, it’s not looking good. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we have now the big bombshell. Like we did in Kavanaugh near the end when it looks like it’s over for the Democrats, all of a sudden there’s some accusation made. And that’s the New York Times report last night or yesterday on the upcoming Bolton book, which having read that lengthy New York times report, there’s actually almost no substance to it. There’s no quotes from the book. There’s no specific accusations. It’s a conclusion. And this is exactly what happened in Kavanaugh when the hearings were over, when it looked like he was clearly going to be confirmed, all of the sudden new accusations come out. And I think that’s why the Republican Senators would be right to be very skeptical about the, what’s going on here and the demand for witnesses because John Bolton is somebody the House could have tried to subpoena. They never actually even subpoenaed him in the House. And the courts could have on an expeditious basis ruled on whether the subpoena was valid. … So now they’re trying to turn the Senate into an investigatory body and that’s not what the Senate role here is. So I think the Democrats are in a lot of trouble. Their only hope is they can stretch this thing out, get more media bombshells that stretch it out. And I think that’s what they’re about. I think they know there’s no way, based on what we know so far that Trump is going to be removed. PROFT: Well, I mean, Democrats seem to so desperate. They leaked that Lev Parness, you know, recording over the weekend and they were trying to me try this in the court of public opinion. WAJ: That’s right. And the Parness tape is really a whole lot of nothing. Trump has publicly said he didn’t like that ambassador. It’s his right to remove an ambassador and to appoint ambassadors. So Lev Parnas comes out with a tape where Trump says he doesn’t like the ambassador. There’s literally zero news in that tape, but it’s dominated the news media news cycle for 48 hours or 72 hours. Now this is a replay not just of Kavanaug, but of the Russia Mueller investigation. Almost every three to four days there would be some new bombshell, which amounted to nothing, often was disproven within two or three days, and it was a permanent crisis news cycle. There was always something being rolled out by the media. The New York Times played a huge role in doing that based upon what anonymous people told them…. CNN did it a lot. MSNBC much less, they were more opinion oriented, but there was this permanent permanent crisis news cycle, and that’s what we’re seeing with the impeachment. But when you get down to it, the Republican two hour presentation was fairly devastating to the Democrats and it wasn’t just devastating on the substance. It was devastating as to the intent of the Democrats because the Democrats want Republican senators to take on good faith that if we just call more witnesses, all we’re really interested in is getting to the truth. But the Republicans showed that in the 24 hours of presentation to the Senate, the Democrats did not act in good faith because they withheld critical parts of testimony from the witnesses they quoted. So I think … the only question is sometime later this week, are four Republican senators going to vote to call witnesses and turn this thing into a complete circus in the Senate. As it looks at the moment in time, it does not look like they’re going to get four. They might get one or two. AMY JACOBSON: Yeah. And not just cherry picking witness testimony …. WAJ: That’s right. And that’s a lot of what goes on here is that they bring in, you know, inapplicable precedent or they misstate what it is… The president probably would win in court on John Bolton’s testimony being subject to executive privilege. I mean, he was about as close to the president as you can get. And if a president is going to be able to confide in his senior, most advisers, he’s got to have, he or she or whoever it happens to be in the future has to have an understanding that that is private. Otherwise you will never speak to your closest advisers. So I think Trump would probably win. I don’t think Trump would win in the sense that Bolton doesn’t have to show up to testify, but I think he would win the, the president once Bolton shows up could assert executive privilege to prevent testimony as to private conversations with the president. So I think, and I think that’s why the Democrats didn’t go to court. They could have gotten from a district court a fairly quick ruling. I think they probably could have gotten a ruling within two or three weeks and then an appeals court ruling within a week or so after that. So within a couple of months they could have had all the rulings that they needed and the Supreme Court would have, would have ruled on a temporary basis as to what would happen. So this notion that it would be years and years and years before they’d get a ruling on this witnesses I think is false. So they didn’t even try and they didn’t try because I think ultimately they knew that the key people they claim to have wanted Mulvaney, Bolton and a couple of others are so close and so senior in the administration that they never would have been allowed to testify anyway. AMY JACOBSON: The other thing, just going back to the Lev Parness bombshell, audio, video that surfaced over the weekend. And so that was from a dinner in April of 2018 and he was saying, get rid of Marie Evanovich. The ambassador will get rid of her tomorrow. Wait a second. That’s a year before Joe Biden announced he was running for president. So I guess president Trump’s perspective with respect to your Ukrainian policy wasn’t all tied up in quote unquote getting dirt on a political opponent. WAJ: Now Trump doesn’t like people who are disloyal to him and who don’t like him. And the reports he was getting, whether they’re true or not, is that this ambassador was disloyal to him, was an Obama hold over, was undermining his policies. And he had every right as president to say, I want an ambassador who actually supports my policies. And I think he was entitled to that. And the fact that as you, as you indicate a year earlier, he expressed that view actually hurts the Democrats because it shows it wasn’t tied into Biden running for president because he wasn’t even running at that point and it wasn’t even clear he would run. * * * I would expect that tomorrow there’ll be some new nonsensical bombshell. I mean it really, people need to read that New York times article. There isn’t a single quote in there from the book. It’s what certain people who say they’ve seen the book, how they characterize it, and then the New York times characterizes it. It’s not even third-hand hearsay because nobody told the New York Times a quote from the book, so it’s, and this is now dominating it. This comes out at a critical juncture just like it did for Kavanaugh. This is the Democrat playbook on how to oppose Trump. Use the media to your advantage to roll things out and disrupt what’s going on.



