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August

Metanoia
200 missing in India after burst glacier causes flash flooding

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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable


** incidentally, inserting that clip as a response to something GS said is what got me banned from the Paracast forum :)

New Allegations of Cover-Up by Cuomo Over Nursing Home Virus Toll
In a private conversation, the governor’s top aide admitted that data was withheld on nursing homes, where more than 10,000 New Yorkers have died during the pandemic.

merlin_183630537_f3e7a6f9-8250-4bfd-865a-bce475bce5fd-articleLarge.jpg

merlin_183630537_f3e7a6f9-8250-4bfd-865a-bce475bce5fd-articleLarge.jpg

The governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, is at the center of the latest controversy over the state’s handling of coronavirus-related nursing home deaths.Credit...Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

By Jesse McKinley and Luis Ferré-Sadurní

Feb. 12, 2021
ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his administration faced new allegations on Friday that they had covered up the scope of the coronavirus death toll in New York’s nursing homes, after a top aide to the governor admitted that the state had withheld data because it feared an investigation by the Trump Justice Department.

The remarks by the top aide, Melissa DeRosa, made in what was supposed to be a private conference call with Democratic lawmakers, came as a cascading series of news reports and a court order have left Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, scrambling to contain the political fallout over his oversight of nursing homes, where more than 13,000 people have died in the pandemic in the state.

Lawmakers from both parties have called for stripping the governor of the emergency powers that he has exercised during the pandemic, while Republicans have demanded the resignations of top Cuomo administration officials and new federal investigations.

Ms. DeRosa’s jarring admission came when she was asked about ongoing delays in giving lawmakers nursing home death data. She said that after the Department of Justice requested information last summer, “basically, we froze.”

At the time, the governor’s office was also facing similar requests from the State Legislature.

“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” Ms. DeRosa said during the call, according to a partial transcript later released by the governor’s office after her remarks appeared in The New York Post.

The Justice Department never formally opened an investigation, according to Ms. DeRosa. But the intense scrutiny of the governor’s record on nursing homes has struck at the core of his carefully cultivated image as a competent chief executive with a deference to facts, as embodied by the daily news conferences that he held early in the outbreak. Mr. Cuomo even published a memoir about his work on the pandemic before it ended, offering “leadership lessons.”

The continuing questions about how many people died in nursing homes residents threatens to overshadow Mr. Cuomo’s legacy.

Just two weeks ago, the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, who has been an ally of the governor, in a damning report accused the Cuomo administration of undercounting coronavirus related deaths connected to nursing homes by the thousands.

Democrats both in the State Senate and Assembly met privately on Friday afternoon to discuss whether the Legislature should curtail the emergency powers that have allowed the governor to set virus-related restrictions and gave him full control over the vaccine rollout. No immediate action was expected.


“Crucial information should never be withheld from entities that are empowered to pursue oversight,” Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Senate majority leader and a Democrat, said in a statement before the meeting, adding that she would discuss “next steps” with her conference.

Condemnation was even louder from Republicans, who seized on the remarks as evidence of duplicity or even criminality.

“It is time to move past the lies and finally uncover the full truth,” said Representative Tom Reed, a Republican from the state’s Southern Tier, who called for a federal investigation on Thursday night.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting, about a third of the 43-member Democratic conference in the Senate signed a public letter in support of repealing the governor’s expanded powers “as expeditiously as possible.”

While the state has acknowledged that the pandemic tore through nursing homes last spring, Mr. Cuomo’s health department had refused to reveal how many nursing home residents had died after being hospitalized, saying such information was difficult to compile and verify, and was being carefully audited.

Mr. Cuomo has also repeatedly tried to blame the nursing home issue on former President Donald J. Trump and political partisanship, and has pushed back hard on allegations of a cover-up, simultaneously saying that his administration was committed to facts and suggesting — after some additional data was released — that statistics were beside the point.

in late January, arguing that the percentages were unimportant. “Died in a hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.”

But other Democrats were voicing concern. State Senator Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat from Brooklyn, called the revelations “a betrayal of the public trust,” adding, “There needs to be full accountability for what happened, and the legislature needs to reconsider its broad grant of emergency powers to the governor.”

Early on Friday, Ms. DeRosa, the top nonelected official in the state, sought to clarify the context for her remarks. She described the administration’s delays in getting information to state lawmakers as a kind of triage, because it had needed to prioritize a response to federal authorities.

“I was explaining that when we received the D.O.J. inquiry, we needed to temporarily set aside the Legislature’s request to deal with the federal request first,” she said. “We informed the houses of this at the time,” referring to the upper and lower chambers of the Legislature.

She said that the administration was “comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the D.O.J., and then had to immediately focus our resources on the second wave and vaccine rollout.”

“As I said on a call with legislators, we could not fulfill their request as quickly as anyone would have liked,” she said.


Ms. James’s report forced the state’s health department to make public more than 3,800 previously unreported deaths of residents who died outside a facility, like in a hospital, and had not been included in the state’s official nursing home tally.

Since then, the number of deaths connected to New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities has only ballooned, to about 15,000 confirmed and presumed deaths, from 12,743 in late January, as of this week.


The administration released the latest figures in response to a court order after a six-month battle between the Cuomo administration and the Empire Center, a conservative-leaning think tank, which requested a full accounting of nursing home deaths under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

The virtual meeting this week between Ms. DeRosa and other senior administration officials, including Mr. Cuomo’s health commissioner and budget director, and top Democratic state lawmakers was intended to bridge a growing rift between the governor’s office and the Legislature.

In hearings in early August, legislators repeatedly questioned the state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, on the full extent of deaths linked to nursing homes. They were unsatisfied with Mr. Zucker’s failure to disclose the number of resident deaths outside nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

“I’m not prepared to give you a specific number,” Dr. Zucker told state lawmakers at the time. “We are looking at all the numbers, we are looking at the data, when the data comes in and I have an opportunity to piece through that, then I will be happy to provide that data to you and to the other members of the committee.”

A few weeks later, on Aug. 20, the State Senate and Assembly formally wrote to the health department requesting those figures, as well as additional information.

requested nursing home data from four states, including New York, to determine whether it would launch a formal investigation into those states’ handling of deaths in nursing homes.

Cuomo officials said that as a result, they asked legislative leaders for additional time to respond to their data request as they addressed the federal inquiry.

The administration responded to the Justice Department’s questions in writing relatively quickly, by Sept. 9. But state health officials did not respond to the Legislature’s questions until this week, nearly six months later.

In Wednesday’s meeting, Ms. DeRosa told Democratic lawmakers that Mr. Trump had turned nursing homes “into a giant political football,” conceding that the state’s lack of transparency may have complicated some lawmakers’ re-election campaigns.

And she noted that the data that the state was receiving from nursing homes was often muddled and required strenuous work to clean up.

“I’m just asking for a little bit of appreciation of the context,” Ms. de Rosa said, apologizing and promising better data in the future. “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair.”

But lawmakers seemed unconvinced.

“We don’t have enough time today to explain,” Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, the Democratic chairman of the health committee, “all the reasons I don’t give that any credit at all.”
 

wwkirk

Divine
The guy was actually pretty popular all around before becoming President. But since then, numerous sectors of society have been obsessed with destroying him. (There's a video I couldn't embed.)

Trump acquitted for second time following historic Senate impeachment trial

By Jeremy Herb, Manu Raju, Ted Barrett and Lauren Fox, CNN
Updated 11:42 AM ET, Sun February 14, 2021

Trump impeachment witness' statement read into evidence
(CNN)The Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial Saturday, voting that Trump was not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol -- but the verdict amounted to a bipartisan rebuke of the former President with seven Republicans finding him guilty.

The final vote was 57 guilty to 43 not guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.
Held exactly one month after the House impeached Trump, the number of Republican senators who voted against Trump ended up higher than even what Trump's legal team had anticipated, marking a stark departure from the first impeachment trial last year when only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, found Trump guilty.

This time, Republicans Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Romney voted to convict Trump. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Burr, the former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman who led the Senate's Russia investigation, after he voted earlier in the week that the trial was unconstitutional. Both Burr and Toomey are retiring from the Senate at the end of 2022.

Burr said that while he believed the trial was unconstitutional, he decided to put that aside after the Senate voted Tuesday that the trial was constitutional and should proceed.
"As I said on January 6th, the President bears responsibility for these tragic events. The evidence is compelling that President Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection against a coequal branch of government and that the charge rises to the level of high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Therefore, I have voted to convict," Burr said in a statement.

McConnell blames Trump but voted not guilty anyway

The vote underscored the obvious dilemma Trump has posed to most congressional Republicans in the aftermath of the January 6 riots, with many Republican senators eager for the party to move on from the former President but grappling with the reality that he still holds sway over the party's base. It's a dichotomy that the party will face heading into the 2022 midterm elections, when it seeks to regain control of Congress, and the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

Most Senate Republicans sided with the constitutionality argument in their votes to acquit, allowing them to avoid casting judgment based on Trump's conduct. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a blistering criticism of Trump's actions on the Senate floor after the vote, but McConnell said he voted to acquit because he did not believe convicting an ex-president was constitutional.

"The Senate's decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day," McConnell said. "It simply shows that senators did what the former President failed to do. We put our constitutional duty first."
Lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland hailed the vote, saying it was the most bipartisan impeachment in history.

"The bottom line is that we convinced a big majority in the Senate of our case," Raskin said.
And in a Saturday night statement hours after the Senate vote, President Joe Biden said that the "substance of the charge is not in dispute," and noted the bipartisan nature of the vote.
"While the final vote did not lead to a conviction, the substance of the charge is not in dispute. Even those opposed to the conviction, like Senate Minority Leader McConnell, believe Donald Trump was guilty of a 'disgraceful dereliction of duty' and 'practically and morally responsible for provoking' the violence unleashed on the Capitol," Biden said in his first comments since Trump's acquittal.

Trump's attorney Michael van der Veen, however, said the former President was "vindicated" by Saturday's vote to acquit him.

"He had a good day in court today. He was vindicated. He was found not guilty," van der Veen said after the vote. "The political witch hunt that they had, that the Democrats had thrown at him was defeated, so he should feel quite pleased."

Vote comes after surprise call for witnesses
Closing the House managers' argument, Raskin played to senators' sense of history in urging them to convict the former President for inciting the rioters to attack the Capitol and failing to stop them after the violence unfolded. "This is almost certainly how you will be remembered by history," Raskin said. "That might not be fair. It really might not be fair. But none of us can escape the demands of history and destiny right now. Our reputations and our legacy will be inextricably intertwined with what we do here, and with how you exercise your oath to do impartial justice."

Trump acquitted despite new evidence about his failure to protect Pence

Van der Veen argued that Trump did not incite a riot that had been preplanned, again repeating the falsehood that the rioters represented both left and right fringe groups, when video evidence and court documents conclusively show that the riot was perpetrated by Trump supporters.

The final vote came quickly on the fifth day of the Senate trial after a surprise Democratic request for witnesses earlier Saturday threw the trial briefly into chaos.
The Senate voted 55 to 45 to consider witnesses -- with five Republican joining Democrats -- after the managers said they wanted to hear from Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican who had told CNN new details about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's phone call with Trump on January 6. But after several hours of intense negotiations between Senate leaders, the managers and Trump's legal team, the managers agreed to enter Herrera Beutler's statement into the trial record as evidence and move forward without hearing from witnesses.

On Saturday morning, Democratic senators had expected House managers to move past witnesses onto closing arguments and a final vote. But Raskin announced when the trial got underway that the managers wanted to subpoena Herrera Beutler about her knowledge of McCarthy's phone call. Herrera Beutler, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last month, confirmed in a statement Friday that McCarthy said the President told him on the call, "'Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.'"

Concerns that calling witnesses would backfire
House Democrats ultimately decided to cut a deal over witnesses because of the unpredictability of how that would turn out and fears that doing so could backfire and undermine their case, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the discussions.
Democrats didn't make a decision to call Herrera Beutler to testify until shortly before the proceedings began Saturday morning, sources said. The managers debated until nearly 3 a.m. ET Saturday morning about whether to call witnesses following news of the McCarthy call, including consulting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Managers had their eyes set on at least two possible witnesses -- Herrera Beutler and Rep. John Katko of New York -- who also voted to impeach, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deliberations. A spokesman for Herrera Beutler said she would have been willing to testify.

Six takeaways from Trump's impeachment trial

Among the variety of reasons they did not go forward, they were warned bluntly by Senate Democrats that moving forward on witnesses could stall the Senate since the Trump team could move forward with any number of motions for witnesses. Each motion would require two hours of debate. That warning was delivered Saturday to the Democratic impeachment managers by Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, who said he was conveying what Republicans had told him, according to the source along with a Coons aide.

Trump's lawyers had responded to Raskin's request by threatening to call 100 witnesses, and his legal team quickly had prepared a list of 300 potential names Saturday.
Coons twice spoke to the managers during the recess, first telling the managers that a delay would cost Republican votes to convict and could even cost Senate Democratic votes. "The jury is ready to vote," Coons said. "People want to get home for Valentine's Day," according to a senior House Democratic aide.

Later, he returned again to tell the managers they should accept a deal to admit Herrera Beutler's statement into evidence and not call witnesses.
It was an important moment that did accelerate things and get the trial back on track, officials said, because it came as staff for prosecutors were already on the phone trying to schedule a potential Zoom deposition.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia also approached a manager in the hallway to urge against moving forward with calling witnesses.

According to a Democrat familiar with the matter, the impeachment managers did not tell top Senate Democrats they wanted witnesses until five minutes before the proceedings. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer didn't even know until that point, but he told the managers Friday night and Saturday morning that Senate Democrats would support whatever decision the mangers made -- and reiterated that point on a caucus call Saturday.

Inside the Senate: Sketches from a dramatic Day 5 of the Trump impeachment trial

They ultimately settled on submitting Herrera Beutler's statement to the record as long as Trump's attorney made a public statement agreeing to submit it as evidence. The reason:
The sources told CNN that Democrats were uncertain how Herrera Beutler's testimony would come across after she was subject to cross examination, with some concerns that she could potentially undercut their case if there were holes in her account.

Moreover, if they called other witnesses, it could also backfire. For instance, McCarthy could provide testimony that defended Trump, undermining what they believe is a rock-solid case that Trump incited the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, the sources said.
Plus witnesses would not ultimately change GOP senators' minds, they concluded, while hearing from witnesses could bog down the Senate for weeks and imperil Biden's agenda.
"We could have had 5,000 witnesses," Raskin told reporters after the vote. "The point is that no number of witnesses demonstrating that Donald Trump continued to incite the insurrectionists even after the invasion of the Capitol would convince them. They wouldn't be convinced."

GOP senators focus on constitutional argument
While there was plenty of drama over witnesses at the trial Saturday, the reality for Democrats was that additional evidence was still unlikely to change the final outcome of the trial.
The final vote was already telegraphed earlier in the week. The GOP senators who voted the trial of a former president was unconstitutional said that was what would determine their final vote, leaving the Senate well short of the 17 GOP senators needed for conviction.

GOP Sen. Mike Lee hands over phone records to House impeachment managers

Many Republicans, like McConnell, criticized Trump's conduct but said they voted to acquit because of jurisdictional issue. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who is not seeking reelection next year, said, "My decision today in no way condones the president's conduct. On the contrary, it is keeping an oath to the Constitution, that I believe the president did not keep on January 6."
The six Republicans who voted the trial was constitutional all voted to convict Trump, joining the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him in the House last month. Several of those Republican senators -- Collins, Murkowski, Romney and Cassidy -- pressed Trump's lawyers during the Senate's question-and-answer session Friday over the actions Trump took -- and failed to take -- when he learned about the riots unfolding and tweeted Pence was lacking courage while he was being evacuated from the Senate.

Burr was the only senator who voted the trial was unconstitutional to also find Trump guilty.
For the Republican senators who voted to convict Trump, they could face political consequences, as House lawmakers who impeached him have been censured by local GOP officials. Murkowski is the only senator who voted to convict who is running for reelection next year, and told reporters afterward that her vote had nothing to do with politics.
"I'm sure that there are many Alaskans that are very dissatisfied with my vote, and I'm sure there are many Alaskans proud of my vote," Murkowski said. "And I'm sure that that is the same of every 100 of us that just cast a vote in there. Because the country is split, and the country is divided. And the country has chosen sides in a way as we can see, can be very aggressive and can lead to violence."

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments Saturday.
CNN's Dana Bash, Kaitlan Collins, Daniella Diaz, Clare Foran, Sarah Fortinsky, Annie Grayer, John Harwood, Ryan Nobles, Alex Rogers, Kristin Wilson, Ali Zaslav and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.
 
Last edited:

wwkirk

Divine
The guy was actually pretty popular all around before becoming President. But since then, numerous sectors of society have been obsessed with destroying him. (There's a video I couldn't embed.)

Trump acquitted for second time following historic Senate impeachment trial

By Jeremy Herb, Manu Raju, Ted Barrett and Lauren Fox, CNN
Updated 11:42 AM ET, Sun February 14, 2021

Trump impeachment witness' statement read into evidence
(CNN)The Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial Saturday, voting that Trump was not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol -- but the verdict amounted to a bipartisan rebuke of the former President with seven Republicans finding him guilty.

The final vote was 57 guilty to 43 not guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.
Held exactly one month after the House impeached Trump, the number of Republican senators who voted against Trump ended up higher than even what Trump's legal team had anticipated, marking a stark departure from the first impeachment trial last year when only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, found Trump guilty.

This time, Republicans Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Romney voted to convict Trump. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Burr, the former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman who led the Senate's Russia investigation, after he voted earlier in the week that the trial was unconstitutional. Both Burr and Toomey are retiring from the Senate at the end of 2022.

Burr said that while he believed the trial was unconstitutional, he decided to put that aside after the Senate voted Tuesday that the trial was constitutional and should proceed.
"As I said on January 6th, the President bears responsibility for these tragic events. The evidence is compelling that President Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection against a coequal branch of government and that the charge rises to the level of high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Therefore, I have voted to convict," Burr said in a statement.

McConnell blames Trump but voted not guilty anyway

The vote underscored the obvious dilemma Trump has posed to most congressional Republicans in the aftermath of the January 6 riots, with many Republican senators eager for the party to move on from the former President but grappling with the reality that he still holds sway over the party's base. It's a dichotomy that the party will face heading into the 2022 midterm elections, when it seeks to regain control of Congress, and the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

Most Senate Republicans sided with the constitutionality argument in their votes to acquit, allowing them to avoid casting judgment based on Trump's conduct. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a blistering criticism of Trump's actions on the Senate floor after the vote, but McConnell said he voted to acquit because he did not believe convicting an ex-president was constitutional.

"The Senate's decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day," McConnell said. "It simply shows that senators did what the former President failed to do. We put our constitutional duty first."
Lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland hailed the vote, saying it was the most bipartisan impeachment in history.

"The bottom line is that we convinced a big majority in the Senate of our case," Raskin said.
And in a Saturday night statement hours after the Senate vote, President Joe Biden said that the "substance of the charge is not in dispute," and noted the bipartisan nature of the vote.
"While the final vote did not lead to a conviction, the substance of the charge is not in dispute. Even those opposed to the conviction, like Senate Minority Leader McConnell, believe Donald Trump was guilty of a 'disgraceful dereliction of duty' and 'practically and morally responsible for provoking' the violence unleashed on the Capitol," Biden said in his first comments since Trump's acquittal.

Trump's attorney Michael van der Veen, however, said the former President was "vindicated" by Saturday's vote to acquit him.

"He had a good day in court today. He was vindicated. He was found not guilty," van der Veen said after the vote. "The political witch hunt that they had, that the Democrats had thrown at him was defeated, so he should feel quite pleased."

Vote comes after surprise call for witnesses
Closing the House managers' argument, Raskin played to senators' sense of history in urging them to convict the former President for inciting the rioters to attack the Capitol and failing to stop them after the violence unfolded. "This is almost certainly how you will be remembered by history," Raskin said. "That might not be fair. It really might not be fair. But none of us can escape the demands of history and destiny right now. Our reputations and our legacy will be inextricably intertwined with what we do here, and with how you exercise your oath to do impartial justice."

Trump acquitted despite new evidence about his failure to protect Pence

Van der Veen argued that Trump did not incite a riot that had been preplanned, again repeating the falsehood that the rioters represented both left and right fringe groups, when video evidence and court documents conclusively show that the riot was perpetrated by Trump supporters.

The final vote came quickly on the fifth day of the Senate trial after a surprise Democratic request for witnesses earlier Saturday threw the trial briefly into chaos.
The Senate voted 55 to 45 to consider witnesses -- with five Republican joining Democrats -- after the managers said they wanted to hear from Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican who had told CNN new details about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's phone call with Trump on January 6. But after several hours of intense negotiations between Senate leaders, the managers and Trump's legal team, the managers agreed to enter Herrera Beutler's statement into the trial record as evidence and move forward without hearing from witnesses.

On Saturday morning, Democratic senators had expected House managers to move past witnesses onto closing arguments and a final vote. But Raskin announced when the trial got underway that the managers wanted to subpoena Herrera Beutler about her knowledge of McCarthy's phone call. Herrera Beutler, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last month, confirmed in a statement Friday that McCarthy said the President told him on the call, "'Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.'"

Concerns that calling witnesses would backfire
House Democrats ultimately decided to cut a deal over witnesses because of the unpredictability of how that would turn out and fears that doing so could backfire and undermine their case, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the discussions.
Democrats didn't make a decision to call Herrera Beutler to testify until shortly before the proceedings began Saturday morning, sources said. The managers debated until nearly 3 a.m. ET Saturday morning about whether to call witnesses following news of the McCarthy call, including consulting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Managers had their eyes set on at least two possible witnesses -- Herrera Beutler and Rep. John Katko of New York -- who also voted to impeach, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deliberations. A spokesman for Herrera Beutler said she would have been willing to testify.

Six takeaways from Trump's impeachment trial

Among the variety of reasons they did not go forward, they were warned bluntly by Senate Democrats that moving forward on witnesses could stall the Senate since the Trump team could move forward with any number of motions for witnesses. Each motion would require two hours of debate. That warning was delivered Saturday to the Democratic impeachment managers by Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, who said he was conveying what Republicans had told him, according to the source along with a Coons aide.

Trump's lawyers had responded to Raskin's request by threatening to call 100 witnesses, and his legal team quickly had prepared a list of 300 potential names Saturday.
Coons twice spoke to the managers during the recess, first telling the managers that a delay would cost Republican votes to convict and could even cost Senate Democratic votes. "The jury is ready to vote," Coons said. "People want to get home for Valentine's Day," according to a senior House Democratic aide.

Later, he returned again to tell the managers they should accept a deal to admit Herrera Beutler's statement into evidence and not call witnesses.
It was an important moment that did accelerate things and get the trial back on track, officials said, because it came as staff for prosecutors were already on the phone trying to schedule a potential Zoom deposition.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia also approached a manager in the hallway to urge against moving forward with calling witnesses.

According to a Democrat familiar with the matter, the impeachment managers did not tell top Senate Democrats they wanted witnesses until five minutes before the proceedings. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer didn't even know until that point, but he told the managers Friday night and Saturday morning that Senate Democrats would support whatever decision the mangers made -- and reiterated that point on a caucus call Saturday.

Inside the Senate: Sketches from a dramatic Day 5 of the Trump impeachment trial

They ultimately settled on submitting Herrera Beutler's statement to the record as long as Trump's attorney made a public statement agreeing to submit it as evidence. The reason:
The sources told CNN that Democrats were uncertain how Herrera Beutler's testimony would come across after she was subject to cross examination, with some concerns that she could potentially undercut their case if there were holes in her account.

Moreover, if they called other witnesses, it could also backfire. For instance, McCarthy could provide testimony that defended Trump, undermining what they believe is a rock-solid case that Trump incited the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, the sources said.
Plus witnesses would not ultimately change GOP senators' minds, they concluded, while hearing from witnesses could bog down the Senate for weeks and imperil Biden's agenda.
"We could have had 5,000 witnesses," Raskin told reporters after the vote. "The point is that no number of witnesses demonstrating that Donald Trump continued to incite the insurrectionists even after the invasion of the Capitol would convince them. They wouldn't be convinced."

GOP senators focus on constitutional argument
While there was plenty of drama over witnesses at the trial Saturday, the reality for Democrats was that additional evidence was still unlikely to change the final outcome of the trial.
The final vote was already telegraphed earlier in the week. The GOP senators who voted the trial of a former president was unconstitutional said that was what would determine their final vote, leaving the Senate well short of the 17 GOP senators needed for conviction.

GOP Sen. Mike Lee hands over phone records to House impeachment managers

Many Republicans, like McConnell, criticized Trump's conduct but said they voted to acquit because of jurisdictional issue. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who is not seeking reelection next year, said, "My decision today in no way condones the president's conduct. On the contrary, it is keeping an oath to the Constitution, that I believe the president did not keep on January 6."
The six Republicans who voted the trial was constitutional all voted to convict Trump, joining the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him in the House last month. Several of those Republican senators -- Collins, Murkowski, Romney and Cassidy -- pressed Trump's lawyers during the Senate's question-and-answer session Friday over the actions Trump took -- and failed to take -- when he learned about the riots unfolding and tweeted Pence was lacking courage while he was being evacuated from the Senate.

Burr was the only senator who voted the trial was unconstitutional to also find Trump guilty.
For the Republican senators who voted to convict Trump, they could face political consequences, as House lawmakers who impeached him have been censured by local GOP officials. Murkowski is the only senator who voted to convict who is running for reelection next year, and told reporters afterward that her vote had nothing to do with politics.
"I'm sure that there are many Alaskans that are very dissatisfied with my vote, and I'm sure there are many Alaskans proud of my vote," Murkowski said. "And I'm sure that that is the same of every 100 of us that just cast a vote in there. Because the country is split, and the country is divided. And the country has chosen sides in a way as we can see, can be very aggressive and can lead to violence."

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments Saturday.
CNN's Dana Bash, Kaitlan Collins, Daniella Diaz, Clare Foran, Sarah Fortinsky, Annie Grayer, John Harwood, Ryan Nobles, Alex Rogers, Kristin Wilson, Ali Zaslav and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.
If Trump decides to run again in the near future, the hysteria will probably resume or continue. Otherwise it should die down. Even if he stays in the public eye, he shouldn't be the same emotional trigger since he is out of office.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
If Trump decides to run again in the near future, the hysteria will probably resume or continue. Otherwise it should die down. Even if he stays in the public eye, he shouldn't be the same emotional trigger since he is out of office.

Read that Lindsay Graham is headed to Florida today to speak to him about the future of the Republican Party. My guess is it'll be something like 'a third party will just enable the Democrats' or 'shut up' or maybe both.

DT could invent the cure for cancer and all viruses right now and the media and more than half the country would still want to throw a rope over a tree limb.
 

nivek

As Above So Below


** incidentally, inserting that clip as a response to something GS said is what got me banned from the Paracast forum :)

New Allegations of Cover-Up by Cuomo Over Nursing Home Virus Toll
In a private conversation, the governor’s top aide admitted that data was withheld on nursing homes, where more than 10,000 New Yorkers have died during the pandemic.

merlin_183630537_f3e7a6f9-8250-4bfd-865a-bce475bce5fd-articleLarge.jpg

merlin_183630537_f3e7a6f9-8250-4bfd-865a-bce475bce5fd-articleLarge.jpg

The governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, is at the center of the latest controversy over the state’s handling of coronavirus-related nursing home deaths.Credit...Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

By Jesse McKinley and Luis Ferré-Sadurní

Feb. 12, 2021
ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his administration faced new allegations on Friday that they had covered up the scope of the coronavirus death toll in New York’s nursing homes, after a top aide to the governor admitted that the state had withheld data because it feared an investigation by the Trump Justice Department.

The remarks by the top aide, Melissa DeRosa, made in what was supposed to be a private conference call with Democratic lawmakers, came as a cascading series of news reports and a court order have left Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, scrambling to contain the political fallout over his oversight of nursing homes, where more than 13,000 people have died in the pandemic in the state.

Lawmakers from both parties have called for stripping the governor of the emergency powers that he has exercised during the pandemic, while Republicans have demanded the resignations of top Cuomo administration officials and new federal investigations.

Ms. DeRosa’s jarring admission came when she was asked about ongoing delays in giving lawmakers nursing home death data. She said that after the Department of Justice requested information last summer, “basically, we froze.”

At the time, the governor’s office was also facing similar requests from the State Legislature.

“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” Ms. DeRosa said during the call, according to a partial transcript later released by the governor’s office after her remarks appeared in The New York Post.

The Justice Department never formally opened an investigation, according to Ms. DeRosa. But the intense scrutiny of the governor’s record on nursing homes has struck at the core of his carefully cultivated image as a competent chief executive with a deference to facts, as embodied by the daily news conferences that he held early in the outbreak. Mr. Cuomo even published a memoir about his work on the pandemic before it ended, offering “leadership lessons.”

The continuing questions about how many people died in nursing homes residents threatens to overshadow Mr. Cuomo’s legacy.

Just two weeks ago, the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, who has been an ally of the governor, in a damning report accused the Cuomo administration of undercounting coronavirus related deaths connected to nursing homes by the thousands.

Democrats both in the State Senate and Assembly met privately on Friday afternoon to discuss whether the Legislature should curtail the emergency powers that have allowed the governor to set virus-related restrictions and gave him full control over the vaccine rollout. No immediate action was expected.


“Crucial information should never be withheld from entities that are empowered to pursue oversight,” Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Senate majority leader and a Democrat, said in a statement before the meeting, adding that she would discuss “next steps” with her conference.

Condemnation was even louder from Republicans, who seized on the remarks as evidence of duplicity or even criminality.

“It is time to move past the lies and finally uncover the full truth,” said Representative Tom Reed, a Republican from the state’s Southern Tier, who called for a federal investigation on Thursday night.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting, about a third of the 43-member Democratic conference in the Senate signed a public letter in support of repealing the governor’s expanded powers “as expeditiously as possible.”

While the state has acknowledged that the pandemic tore through nursing homes last spring, Mr. Cuomo’s health department had refused to reveal how many nursing home residents had died after being hospitalized, saying such information was difficult to compile and verify, and was being carefully audited.

Mr. Cuomo has also repeatedly tried to blame the nursing home issue on former President Donald J. Trump and political partisanship, and has pushed back hard on allegations of a cover-up, simultaneously saying that his administration was committed to facts and suggesting — after some additional data was released — that statistics were beside the point.

in late January, arguing that the percentages were unimportant. “Died in a hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.”

But other Democrats were voicing concern. State Senator Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat from Brooklyn, called the revelations “a betrayal of the public trust,” adding, “There needs to be full accountability for what happened, and the legislature needs to reconsider its broad grant of emergency powers to the governor.”

Early on Friday, Ms. DeRosa, the top nonelected official in the state, sought to clarify the context for her remarks. She described the administration’s delays in getting information to state lawmakers as a kind of triage, because it had needed to prioritize a response to federal authorities.

“I was explaining that when we received the D.O.J. inquiry, we needed to temporarily set aside the Legislature’s request to deal with the federal request first,” she said. “We informed the houses of this at the time,” referring to the upper and lower chambers of the Legislature.

She said that the administration was “comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the D.O.J., and then had to immediately focus our resources on the second wave and vaccine rollout.”

“As I said on a call with legislators, we could not fulfill their request as quickly as anyone would have liked,” she said.


Ms. James’s report forced the state’s health department to make public more than 3,800 previously unreported deaths of residents who died outside a facility, like in a hospital, and had not been included in the state’s official nursing home tally.

Since then, the number of deaths connected to New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities has only ballooned, to about 15,000 confirmed and presumed deaths, from 12,743 in late January, as of this week.


The administration released the latest figures in response to a court order after a six-month battle between the Cuomo administration and the Empire Center, a conservative-leaning think tank, which requested a full accounting of nursing home deaths under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

The virtual meeting this week between Ms. DeRosa and other senior administration officials, including Mr. Cuomo’s health commissioner and budget director, and top Democratic state lawmakers was intended to bridge a growing rift between the governor’s office and the Legislature.

In hearings in early August, legislators repeatedly questioned the state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, on the full extent of deaths linked to nursing homes. They were unsatisfied with Mr. Zucker’s failure to disclose the number of resident deaths outside nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

“I’m not prepared to give you a specific number,” Dr. Zucker told state lawmakers at the time. “We are looking at all the numbers, we are looking at the data, when the data comes in and I have an opportunity to piece through that, then I will be happy to provide that data to you and to the other members of the committee.”

A few weeks later, on Aug. 20, the State Senate and Assembly formally wrote to the health department requesting those figures, as well as additional information.

requested nursing home data from four states, including New York, to determine whether it would launch a formal investigation into those states’ handling of deaths in nursing homes.

Cuomo officials said that as a result, they asked legislative leaders for additional time to respond to their data request as they addressed the federal inquiry.

The administration responded to the Justice Department’s questions in writing relatively quickly, by Sept. 9. But state health officials did not respond to the Legislature’s questions until this week, nearly six months later.

In Wednesday’s meeting, Ms. DeRosa told Democratic lawmakers that Mr. Trump had turned nursing homes “into a giant political football,” conceding that the state’s lack of transparency may have complicated some lawmakers’ re-election campaigns.

And she noted that the data that the state was receiving from nursing homes was often muddled and required strenuous work to clean up.

“I’m just asking for a little bit of appreciation of the context,” Ms. de Rosa said, apologizing and promising better data in the future. “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair.”

But lawmakers seemed unconvinced.

“We don’t have enough time today to explain,” Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, the Democratic chairman of the health committee, “all the reasons I don’t give that any credit at all.”



 

nivek

As Above So Below
** incidentally, inserting that clip as a response to something GS said is what got me banned from the Paracast forum :)

Really?...He must have some thin skin lol...

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nivek

As Above So Below


Cuomo cannot admit he was wrong, he likely would have been at least partially forgiven if he had just admitted to making a bad decision and said it on television...If Cuomo were to have used the Navy ship and the convention center where there over two hundred beds available then none of those people would have died in the nursing homes, but Cuomo refused because then Trump would have been the hero because Trump put them there...That Democrat would rather let people die in order to make Trump look bad...Michigan and Pennsylvanian Governors made the same decision as Cuomo and also should be investigated...

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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Cuomo cannot admit he was wrong, he likely would have been at least partially forgiven if he had just admitted to making a bad decision and said it on television...If Cuomo were to have used the Navy ship and the convention center where there over two hundred beds available then none of those people would have died in the nursing homes, but Cuomo refused because then Trump would have been the hero because Trump put them there...That Democrat would rather let people die in order to make Trump look bad...Michigan and Pennsylvanian Governors made the same decision as Cuomo and also should be investigated...

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There are all sorts of stories on the news about people in Texas freezing to death for lack of utilities. If you really want to test your spleen read up on NYCHA and Big Andy's hard-hatted foray into city housing and the all the things he promised ... on his photo op. People are still sitting there right now still waiting ....

I have no sympathy for limelight addicted politicians of any stripe. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Please take your brother with you on the way out .....
 
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