Carl Heastie lets Andrew Cuomo escape

Newsday 

 The state Assembly won’t pursue impeachment charges against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo once his resignation takes effect, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced Friday.

Heastie (D-Bronx), in an interview with Newsday, said an Assembly investigation found "credible evidence" against Cuomo and likely would have resulted in impeachment charges.

But the primary purpose of the impeachment proceeding was to determine whether the governor should stay in office following sexual harassment claims and other allegations regarding actions that Cuomo took during the pandemic, Heastie said.

The governor’s decision to step down, announced Tuesday, effectively makes the question moot. Cuomo's resignation is to take effect Aug. 24.

 Heastie said another driver in the decision to "suspend" proceedings is that the state constitution doesn’t clearly "authorize the Legislature to impeach and remove an elected official who is no longer in office."

"We don’t believe we do" have the authority to continue once Cuomo departs, Heastie said. The speaker added that he understood and agreed with Cuomo accusers who say the governor should be held accountable, but impeachment wouldn’t be an available avenue once the governor leaves.

 Legislators would not have finished their investigation before Aug. 24.

Instead, the Assembly will do the "next best thing": turning over its evidence to various law enforcement agencies investigating Cuomo, Heastie said.

The attorney general has been looking into Cuomo’s $5.1 million book deal, Heastie noted. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the nursing home data. And prosecutors in five counties, including Nassau, have said they are looking into alleged sexual harassment incidents.

"The thing is, the federal government, the ... [attorney general] and local ... [prosecutors] are doing their own investigations," Heastie said. "We have not finished gathering evidence and we didn’t want to interfere with their investigations. So the next best thing to do is to turn over our evidence so they can conclude" their investigations.

Because of those other ongoing investigations, the Assembly won’t make the evidence publicly available at this time, a Heastie spokesman said.

Cuomo will be gone but nothing will fundamentally change.

Democrat Socialist coalition calls for Cuomo's impeachment

Donny Two Times

Queens Eagle

A Queens-born real estate developer made history Wednesday when he became the first U.S. president ever impeached twice by the House of Representatives.

Donald Trump, a 74-year-old lame duck Republican, is accused of inciting a lethal mob of far-right supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol in order to prevent Congress from certifying the results of his resounding loss in the November 2020 election. President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, recorded 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.

With Trump’s encouragement, Confederate-flag bearing white supremacists and fascist agitators besieged the Capitol, threatening to kill Vice President Mike Pence, breaking into lawmakers’ offices, stealing public property and smearing feces on the wall.

The attack left five people dead, including a Capitol police officer beaten by rioters.  

Ten Republican members of Congress joined the Democratic majority in voting to impeach the Jamaica Estates native for the second time.

In December 2019, Trump became the third president impeached by Congress — and the first from Queens.

The impeachment of President Trump has begun

New York Times

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House would initiate a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, charging him with betraying his oath of office and the nation’s security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain.

Ms. Pelosi’s declaration, after months of reticence by Democrats who had feared the political consequences of impeaching a president many of them long ago concluded was unfit for office, was a stunning turn that set the stage for a history-making and exceedingly bitter confrontation between the Democrat-led House and a defiant president who has thumbed his nose at institutional norms.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” Ms. Pelosi said in a brief speech invoking the nation’s founding principles. Mr. Trump, she added, “must be held accountable — no one is above the law.”
She said the president’s conduct revealed his “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

Ms. Pelosi’s decision to push forward with the most severe action that Congress can take against a sitting president could usher in a remarkable new chapter in American life, touching off a constitutional and political showdown with the potential to cleave an already divided nation, reshape 

Mr. Trump’s presidency and the country’s politics, and carry heavy risks both for him and for the Democrats who have decided to weigh his removal. 

CBS News

This is the complaint sent by a whistleblower in the intelligence community to the community's inspector general, about an "urgent concern" that "the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. The interference, the whistleblower wrote, includes "pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals." 

The complaint is central to the impeachment inquiry launched by House Democrats.

---

UNCLASSIFIED

August 12, 2019 
The Honorable Richard Burr
Chairman
Select Committee on Intelligence
United States Senate 
The Honorable Adam Schiff
Chairman
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
United States House of Representatives

Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff: 
I am reporting an "urgent concern" in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(A). This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment. 
In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals. The President's personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well. 

• Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort. The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official interagency business. It is routine for U.S. officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another in order to inform policymaking and analysis.
• I was not a direct witness to most of the events described. However, I found my colleagues' accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another. In addition, a variety of information consistent with these private accounts has been reported publicly. 

I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute "a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order" that "does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters," consistent with the definition of an "urgent concern" in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(G). I am therefore fulfilling my duty to report this information, through proper legal channels, to the relevant authorities.  

Impunity City

Like Trump likes to say, I am not a fan of this president. But this "whistleblower"'s account is basically based on gossip.

 Being that this a CIA agent they are relying on for impeachment, this guy is less a whistleblower and more like a whistlemole.

Talk of Paterson impeachment

From Fox 5:

A meeting of black leaders at Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem on Thursday did not result in unanimous support for Governor David Paterson, reports NY Post State Editor Fred Dicker.

Speaking with Good Day New York on Friday, Dicker says impeachment is possible.

"It is a possibility. The Assembly Democrats would have to initiate an impeachment. If the Attorney General finds he broke the law and the governor refuses to resign, there is an excellent chance he'll be impeached," said Dicker.

Paterson has hired a criminal lawyer to handle the latest allegation that he lied about accepting free Yankees tickets. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the claims.

Good Day New York Co-host Greg Kelly asked Dicker if sympathy was rising for the state's leader who appears affable, but gets beat up every day.

"I think there is a massive erosion going on. All the negative stories are taking a heavy toll on Paterson. He used to be that way (affable) but he looks like a guy hit by a bus in a state of shock."