GOP Senators Demand Impeachment Of Hunter Biden, Whistleblower, Benghazi, Lindbergh Baby

Also, who decided to cancel 'Firefly'? That show was awesome!

If Donald Trump is impeached, at least two dumbass Republicans in the US Senate are "considering" the possibility of calling Joe Biden and his son Hunter to testify at Trump's Senate trial, plus maybe half the staff of the White House, too, the Washington Post   reports today. According to two unnamed insiders, the

effort gained steam on Capitol Hill last week at a private lunch where Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and John Neely Kennedy (La.) raised the idea of summoning Hunter Biden [...] Paul took his private push public at a campaign rally with the president Monday night in Kentucky.

"I say this to my fellow colleagues in Congress, to every Republican in Washington: Step up and subpoena Hunter Biden and subpoena the whistleblower!" Paul told the crowd, also referring to the unnamed intelligence official who first raised alarms about the president's Ukraine conduct.

While most of the article is about other Republicans going on the record to say why they think that's a terrible idea, Trump's hardcore supporters think it's super smart, because when a president is being tried for putting pressure on a foreign country to get help in an election, shouldn't half-assed already-debunked conspiracy theories get equal time?

The "thinking," such as it is, was summed up by Rep Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina), who explained you're allowed to invite foreign interference in an election if you really belieeeeve your motives were pure:

Obviously based on testimony that I've heard, Hunter Biden's role in Ukraine issues is certainly well-known, but also I think he could help the Senate understand if there were some legitimate concerns that needed to be addressed, whether they related directly to him or corruption more broadly [...] I look at this more as a Ukrainian corruption issue than I do any particular individual.

Which is why Trump said so much on the phone call about Ukrainian corruption in general, right, and only mentioned the Bidens again and again as the only example. It was one of those "just for the only instance" kind of things. Sen. Kennedy said maybe Trump had a "good faith reason to believe that Hunter Biden may have been involved in corruption," and how would we ever know the state of Trump's mind or his good faith unless we grilled the Bidens directly, huh?

A bunch of Republican senators told the Post it was way too soon to be talking about who'd be called at an impeachment trial now, since the House hasn't even voted on articles of impeachment yet and there's still time for a giant asteroid to obliterate all life on Earth.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said of calling in Hunter Biden: "I think that's a sideshow." He added that impeachment "is a very solemn and serious constitutional process, and I just think that whatever the House decides to vote on . . . that's what we ought to consider and  not make this any more of a reality show than it's likely to become."

Spoken like a guy whose term isn't up till 2022! Even so, the Trump News Network has been pushing the idea:

The  Bidens have to be called," former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon said Sunday on Fox News. "Joe Biden is a hand grenade and Hunter Biden is the pin. And when that pin gets pulled, the shrapnel is going to blow back all over the Democratic establishment."

Some Biden supporters actually think that would be just dandy, according to the Post, since it would give the former VP a chance to say "for shame" to his former colleagues for letting the Senate turn into a Trump-branded circus.

His allies would also probably point out that several Republican senators, including Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Rob Portman (Ohio), were aligned with the vice president at the time [Biden], in calling on Ukraine to crack down on corruption.

In a statement, Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo pointed to a newly released transcript of testimony from Kurt Volker, a former top Ukraine expert at the State Department, who told lawmakers that there was no truth to Trump's allegations about Biden and Ukraine. Ducklo said, "It's no surprise after today's revelation . . . that some Republican senators might resist carrying the water of a president who is clearly spiraling and desperate to breathe new life into his pathetic lies."

We would say more about the potential for Joe Biden to give a campaign-enhancing performance if he were called during impeachment, but we are at the moment busy emailing the Disney Channel to incorporate a political consultant named TJ Ducklo into its "Duck Tales" reboot. Maybe Tammy Duckworth, too!

Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said there was little point in worrying about crazy speculation at this point, because there's a lot of Hannity to be broadcast between now and any eventual trial:

"There was a stage where we were supposedly going to have Giuliani up here, so you can't get too overheated by any of these proposals [...] They can't defend what the president did, so they're trying to change the subject."

OK, but what about the Democrats' attempts to distract the public from Biden's crimes by going on and on about ducks, huh?

[ WaPo ]

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