Opening arguments in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial are set to begin this Tuesday, and Donald Trump Jr. is among those freaking out. During an outburst on Fox News this Sunday morning, he threateningly insisted that if a single Senate Republican dared to vote against the president’s side’s hoped-for witnesses while supporting others, then they should not even be in office. In other words, as the meat of the trial gets closer, the president’s own son and top defender is seeking to secure some kind of dictatorial lockdown on the Republican Party.
During an appearance on Sunday Morning Futures with host Maria Bartiromo, Trump Jr. railed:
‘The, let’s call it weaker Republicans… make a vote on it, if some of those guys don’t want to hear from the witnesses we’d want to hear from but will hear from the others, I want to know about it, because they don’t deserve to be in office. Hearing from everyone is totally fair. That’s not what we’ve heard so far while the Democrats have controlled the process.’
That is a completely false characterization of the impeachment process so far. Democrats have granted Republican witness requests except in those cases where they would seriously compromise the integrity and even security of the investigation.
For example, House Republicans demanded that a still officially anonymous whistleblower who revealed Trump’s plot to bribe Ukraine be compelled to testify publicly. That could have easily put the whistleblower in real danger, and besides, House Dems have accumulated plenty of evidence confirming the key bribery plot without the whistleblower testimony.
Some new evidence includes material from personal Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas, who, among other drops, revealed many of the events that he had attended with the Trump team, including Jr. A flyer has even circulated featuring none other than Parnas himself named among the members of Trump Jr.’s “Executive Steering Committee” for a fundraiser benefiting Trump ally Ron DeSantis’s eventually successful campaign to be Florida governor. That fundraiser — which attracted high-dollar donations via an apparent minimum cost to get in of $500 — even featured Fox host Jeanine Pirro.
10/ Note Giuliani’s indicted, Soviet-born gofer’s prominence on flyer.
“Don Jr., how did Lev Parnas become part of your steering committee to raise money for DeSantis? Did Rudy Giuliani suggest him? Did you talk to him about Ukrainian investigation?”-@tracygreen questions for Jr pic.twitter.com/uthbkO6l3Y
— Heidi Cuda (@Heidi_Cuda) October 18, 2019
But Trump Jr. says there’s nothing to see here. He claimed:
‘I met him at some fundraising events…. I didn’t even realize he was Ukrainian, I thought he was Israeli. That’s the problem with how this world works, you take a couple pictures with someone, if someone’s a donor, they get in line, they stood at a dinner with 50 people. I guarantee my father couldn’t pick this guy out of a lineup, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t taken pictures with him.’
Yeah — considering the thousands upon thousands of documented lies that Trump Sr. has publicly told since taking office, his dad isn’t exactly the most trustworthy source around.
Watch:
No matter attempts from Trump Jr. and his dad’s allies in Congress to brazenly fix the trial for the president, the case against him will be heard — and, this November, he may lose the White House, if the majority of polls pitting him against key Democrats are to be believed.
