January 1, Trump Assembles Impeachment ‘Dream Team’

This Day in History | 1990

Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for smoking crack cocaine after the FBI and D.C. police set up a sting operation catching Barry smoking the drugs on an undercover camera. 

Good Morning Middle Americans,

President Trump has his legal team in place for his impeachment trial and it is the stuff of TV movies. Alan Dershowitz, constitutional scholar and former member of OJ Simpson’s defense team is on the squad. So is Ken Starr, the man who investigated Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinski in the run up to his impeachment. Trump knows how to produce a TV show and this will certainly be a production. 

Also Ronald Reagan’s son is back and wants America to know that his father would have never supported Donald Trump’s presidency. Reagan goes so far as to call the president a traitor. 

Bernie Sanders has opened up a bit of lead in Iowa. The caucuses are just about two weeks away. And it looks like it’s shaping up to be a two way race between Biden and Bernie. 

Finally former Rep. Chris Collins, one of President Trump’s earliest supporters, faces sentencing in New York for an insider trading scheme. 

Read all about it!

• Fraser Dixon

Trump Assembles a Made-for-TV Impeachment Defense Team

(AP) – President Donald Trump has assembled a made-for-TV legal team for his Senate trial that includes household names like Ken Starr, the prosecutor whose investigation two decades ago resulted in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said he will deliver constitutional arguments meant to shield Trump from allegations that he abused his power.

The additions Friday bring experience in the politics of impeachment as well as constitutional law to the team, which faced a busy weekend of deadlines for legal briefs before opening arguments begin Tuesday even as more evidence rolled in.

The two new Trump attorneys are already nationally known both for their involvement in some of the more consequential legal dramas of recent American history and for their regular appearances on Fox News, the president’s preferred television network.

Find out more about the impeachment deal team here

Monica Lewinksy After Ken Starr Joins Trump Impeachment Team: ‘Are You F__king Kidding Me?’

(The Hill) – Monica Lewinsky weighed in shortly after news broke Friday that Ken Starr would join President Trump’s impeachment defense team.

“this is definitely an ‘are you f—ing kidding me?’ kinda day,” she tweeted.

Starr investigated former President Clinton in the 1990s and wrote an extensive report that ultimately led to his impeachment in the House, though he was later acquitted by the Senate. The report exposed Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, who was then a White House intern.

Read more here

Ron Reagan: My Father, Ronald Reagan, Would Not Want Republicans to Vote for ‘Traitor’ Trump in 2020

(The Daily Beast) – Amid the rumbling drama of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders’ antipathy over what he did or didn’t say about a female president, Pete Buttigieg’s low energy, Joe Biden watching the clock over his allotted time, Amy Klobuchar’s laconic wit, and Tom Steyer’s devotion to plaid, the CNN/Des Moines Register Democratic debate this week featured a striking scene-stealer in the commercial breaks.

Ronald Reagan, his son told The Daily Beast, would have thought Trump “a traitorous president who is betraying his country.”

“The Republican party at this point, for a whole host of reasons to do with Donald Trump, is an entirely illegitimate political party just made up of a bunch of sycophantic traitors mouthing Kremlin propaganda to defend this squalid little man who is occupying the White House,” Ron Reagan told The Daily Beast, speaking from Italy, where he spends half his year, split with his American home in Seattle, where he has lived for 25 years.

Read more here from the Daily Beast

Bernie Sanders Narrowly Leads 2020 Race as Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden Slide in Latest Poll

(Newsweek) – Ex-Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren both slid in the latest poll from the 2020 Democratic race, as Senator Bernie Sanders slipped narrowly into the lead.

The Reuters/Ipsos online poll of 681 Democrats and independents, of which 552 were registered to vote, was conducted between January 15-16.

It placed the Vermont independent Sanders on 20 percent and Biden, who served in the Obama administration, on 19 percent. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, was on 12 percent.

Compared to the previous Reuters/Ipsos poll released January 9, Biden was down 4 points and Warren was down three points. Sanders, however, had held steady.

Read more here

Ex-Congressman Chris Collins to be Sentenced in New York for Insider Trading

(Reuters) – Chris Collins, a former U.S. Congressman from New York who was an early backer of President Donald Trump, is due to be sentenced on Friday after pleading guilty to taking part in an insider trading scheme.

Collins, 69, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in October in federal court in Manhattan, a day after resigning his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Although he faces a maximum of five years in prison for each of the two charges, prosecutors have agreed as part of a plea deal that a reasonable sentence would be a total of less than five years.

A few months after he was criminally charged in 2018, Collins had narrowly won re-election to the 27th Congressional District in western New York.

Read more here