Good Morning Everybody!
I have a few things that I wanna cover this morning so I’ll jump right in.
Yesterday, Trump’s attorneys announced that they are not going to participate in this week’s new impeachment hearings. Now, on some level, that’s not surprising, because they’ve refused to participate in almost all of the aspects of this process so far, even flat out demanding that their staff members break the law by ignoring subpoenas and refusing to testify.
So tomorrow, the hearings will continue, but again, without the Trump administration. And I just have to say again, something that I feel like I’ve said a hundred times before – it’s hard to know a moment in history when you are in it, but what Trump is doing right now, flat out refusing to participate in his own impeachment, has never been done before in the entire history of this country. He continues to erode the most basic standards and norms in or government. What we are basically learning is that this nation was not at all prepared to have a President who simply refused to obey the law. And outside of impeachment, and the election, it appears that we don’t really have any way to hold the president accountable.
So, the impeachment hearings will continue tomorrow, and my best guess is that Trump will be impeached in the House before Christmas. Now some people are basically framing this as nothing more than a technicality, because most experts say it’s absolutely impossible that the Senate, which has a Republican majority, will do anything to uphold the impeachment. And I agree and disagree. Yes, it’s highly unlikely that the Senate, which needs 67 Senators to remove Trump from office, would ever do such a thing, but the House of Representatives has absolutely done the right thing and it’s foolish to think otherwise. The House can’t stop doing their job just because they believe the Senate won’t do their job.
I wanna transition for a minute and give a few quick updates on several different news stories.
First – a quick update on the Rodney Reed case. As you know, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that his execution be stopped, but before the Governor could ever respond, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals stopped the execution and granted him an appeal. Right now, though, Rodney’s lawyers from The Innocence Project are disputing the new judge that has been assigned to the case. And they are right to dispute it.
RELATED: Shaun King: Update On Rodney Reed
The judge that was on the case retired. And the law states that when a judge retires, that the locally elected judge will be appointed to the case, but instead, Texas has now brought a new judge out of retirement, a man that has not tried a case in 5 years, and is not even from Bastrop County, where the trial and crimes took place, and assigned him to it. It’s some of the most backwards, country, legal BS I’ve ever seen in my life that Texas keeps bringing old white judges out of retirement to try this case. I’ve never seen anything like it. And it’s indicative of just how problematic this case has been from the jump. So Rodney’s lawyers are awaiting a decision on whether or not they will be forced to work with the new judge that was just brought out of retirement.
And lastly, I wanna give us an update on some horrible threats against Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Last month a Trump supporter was sentenced to 10 years in prison for threatening to kill her, but last week, something happened that again, I think, is a sign of the times.
The Republican woman running against Ilhan Omar in Minnesota, Danielle Stella, was just permanently banned from Twitter for threatening to lynch Ilhan Omar. I kid you not. This is the actual Republican running against her.
And I say it’s a sign of the times not because we’ve never seen such threats before in general, but because I don’t know that we’ve seen them be made publicly, at least over the past 100 years, from a Republican running for Congress.
I’ve gotta run, but I’ll be back on Thursday with some more updates. Love and appreciate you all.
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Shaun King: Trump Isn’t Participating In Impeachment Hearings And An Update On Rodney Reed was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
