Attorney General William Barr sent Trump a virtual audition resume claiming that the president under article two he can do whatever he wants. He got the job. Now we find out the presidents’ defense team did something similar.
Sure, Trump nets people from Fox News to stud his administration. Now we find out that attorney Robert Ray made a donation fewer than two weeks after the news broke about a whistleblower’s complaint. It claimed that the president was threatening to not release Congress-approved military aide.
The Courier Journal looked into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) donations. It discovered that Ken Starr, the impeachment trial defense attorney who also prosecuted President William (Bill) Clinton donated to the majority leader. Starr was a cheap date, he only donated $2,800 back on July 31, 2019.
Yet, that was not the first time Starr had contributed to McConnell’s campaign. It seemed that he has been donating to the majority leaders regularly going way back to 2002. But wait, there was more.
Another attorney on Trump’s defense team donated twice that much in one year. Ray gave the McConnell Senate Committee in his primary and again in the general one on September 30, 2019. He donated $5,800.
McConnell’s Campaign Manager Kevin Golden sent an email to The Courier Journal claiming that these donations from Starr and Ray had nothing to do with the senator’s thinking:
‘The absence of any adequate arguments by House impeachment managers seems to be playing a pretty meaningful role however.’
McConnell said that he did not consider himself impartial in his Senate role in the hearing. Indeed, he anticipated that the senators would vote on the witnesses’ testimony or documents along the party line. He also anticipated the full vote on whether Trump was guilty or not to be a party-line vote, too:
‘This is a political process. The House made a partisan political decision to impeach. I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not impartial about this at all.’
McConnell got his “Moscow Mitch” moniker after an Oligarch close to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin set up an aluminum processing plant and the limited number of jobs it brought to the senator.
Then, there was McConnell’s wife. She came from a very wealthy Chinese shipping company. His father-in-law gave him tens of millions of dollars when they married. Elaine Chao has been the secretary of transportation since Trump was elected, and she was caught trying to funnel transportation project money into her husband’s state.
As the Senate’s top official, McConnell holds much power.
The House passed two articles of impeachment in December 2019. Then, in January, House Speaker Pelosi sent those articles of impeachment to the Senate. Surprise, surprise the two men would represent the president on his defense team.
McConnell announced that he would be in “total coordination with the White House counsel” prior to and during the impeachment trial. This was weeks before the trial actually started. He was critical of the presidential investigation calling it:
‘[The] most rushed, least thorough and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history.’
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
