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mischiefmanaged71 · 3 years

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Bad Romance - Joaquin Torres X Reader

Song: Bad Romance - (961) lady gaga - bad romance ( s l o w e d ) - YouTube

Summary: The reader is an enhanced individual with the ability to replicate other people’s abilities. A member of the Avengers, she has been working alongside Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes to investigate the Flag Smashers but the man calling himself the next Captain America poses an obstacle when he takes interest in her abilities.

Author’s Note: Hello! So this is my first time posting a fic I've written. I’ve been writing since 2018 but never had the courage to post anything so I hope you all enjoy my story. Torres has only been in ‘The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’ for like five minutes but I’m in love with him. There obviously isn’t enough fiction out there about him so I took it upon myself to write one. This is an idea I came up with in my head, aside from the plot of the show. Listen to the song for added effect. I’ve inserted timings as well :)

Pairing: Joaquin Torres X Fem!Reader

Warnings: TFATWS SPOILERS, Canon-level Violence, blood, romance

Word count: 2.5K

Darkness is all you’ve known these past hours.

It’s been almost twenty-four hours since you’ve last had contact with anyone. Sam would usually check in with you about now, but that didn’t seem a likely possibility.

Your right eye is almost swollen shut and you’re pretty confident that you have a few broken ribs from how difficult breathing is. The sound of metal creaking echoes in the empty room as you rattle your restraints.

You’ve been quite literally chained to the wall.

They weren’t taking any precautions.

Especially after witnessing the dozen agents you could take down all by yourself.

Leaning against the wall, you try to reach some semblance of comfort, laying some of your weight against the hard-rock. Your neck burns from the collar they attached when you caught you off-guard.

It was during a recon mission, you were chasing a lead about the Flag Smashers’ next meet up when they showed. Half a dozen armed men in tactical gear.

They snagged a collar on you, disabling your powers.

You didn’t anticipate this.

All you heard was a piercing noise and then you blacked out.

You couldn’t access your powers as soon as that light buzzed. Trying to summon fire warranted a little electric shock to your system. Little, meaning severe enough to take down an elephant.

Yeah, so getting out of here would be tricky.

Isn’t it always?

Five guards have remained in the room for the past two days, monitoring, watching.

For what?

You have only the slightest idea why.

The double doors which have remained close for the past two days creak open. The blue uniform is familiar to you but the face donning the outfit is not. He’s an imposter wearing a costume, a mock of the real thing. John Walker, along with his so-called ‘American squadron’, had grabbed you as a statement. Sam and Bucky certainly weren’t going to stay out of it because someone told them to. You all followed a code, to protect those who couldn’t fight for themselves.

“Hello, Y/N, it's been a while since we met last...I’m sorry for the way you were handled on the way here but it was the only way I could get to talk to you.”, he said, looking at the bruises beginning to form.

He talked nonchalantly as if this were a normal conversation. Your wrists were raw from pulling away from the cuffs, clothes covered in dirt and dried blood. He strode up to you, pulling his helmet off and placing it carefully on a metal crate.

“Now, I know Bucky and Sam had a lot to say about me, but you, you were always silent. I thought we had an understanding.”

‘An understanding?’

You refuse to look at him.

“You talk big words for someone who couldn’t begin to understand the legacy of that uniform.”

“I earned this! I put in the work. All they want is someone to look up to. To show them that justice still exists.”, he paces in front of you.

“Justice. Is it?”, your eyes narrow.

He pauses in thought, seething with internalised spite. Pacing the floor, he turns his back to you.

“Have you had time to think about my question?”

You remain silent, glaring at his mockery of Steve’s uniform.

“No? Okay. That’s fine,”, he whispered.

Walker signalled for a guard to open the doors once more and two more men entered, dragging someone along. You squint your eyes to identify the person as they dump them in front of you.

“No”, you whispered desperately, your breath caught in your throat.

You spot Joaquin’s dark hair and tan complexion, more so, the blood staining his clothes. The men dragged Joaquin next to Walker, letting him slump to the floor. From what you could see, he had been beaten pretty badly, the bruises already beginning to form on his face. His hands are cuffed behind him and he’s unable to hold his own weight.

Panic fills Torres as he notices the chains securing you to the wall. The last he heard over the coms was a struggle. He and Sam had been surveilling to get anything they could on your kidnappers.

You could only hear the rapid beating of your heart in your throat as blood rushed to your face. Your breathing quickens as you don’t quite know what will happen next.

John broke the silence,

“I’m going to ask you again.”

“Then, I'm going to count from three.”, he said, pulling a silencer out from his waistband and cocking it at Joaquin who rested on his knees.

“What are you?”

You stare at him incredulously, unresponsive.

You look down at Joaquin as he gazes up at you, helpless to move with guns trained on you. He’s telling you to stop, to lie, to do anything but give yourself up.

“What answer do you want?”, you asked, using all your strength to lift your head up.

“You want me to say I’m a freak? A mutant? An experiment? What good does that do you? Everyone knows it.”, you huff, sharpening your glare.

He stares down at Joaquin and kicks his foot out against the ground, clicking his tongue. Walker threw his foot into Joaquin’s back, pushing him into the floor.

“Not that.”

You watch as he points the gun harder.

“Tell me. What. You. Are.”, he grits out.

You clench your jaw hard, shutting your eyes tightly. A burning sensation fights in your chest, spreading to your arms. You suck in a breath desperately, a whimper tearing from your throat as your head drops.

The click of the safety echoes loudly.

(1:26s of the song)

Your eyes shoot open, blazing red and as the chains snap free from the wall. The metal clangs loudly against the floor, triggering the five weapons now pointed at your chest. A surge of fire ignites as you swipe your leg, knocking the agents back. The two standing closest raise their guns as you tilt your head and launch a blast of fire from your hand. The next agent replaces him, firing his gun consecutively, but you strut towards him, swiping them away with blasts omitting from your hands. You send a roundhouse kick with a wall of fire, propelling him through the exit. The remaining three encircle you with their weapons, clicking the safety off.

Your hands burn, glowing red with the heightening energy,

“Okay, you got me.”

You raise your hands in surrender as one of them steps towards. Faltering a step, you inhale deeply as he grabs your arm. Once he sets a hand on you, you exhale, breathing out a stream of fire. You twirl in a circle, the fire pushing them back and blocking their sight of you as they flinch from the heat. Dropping to the floor, you strike the cement and crack the surface. The building’s structure shakes as a cloud of energy dissipates from the contact, incapacitating the last of the soldiers.

Walker fixes his gun on Joaquin but you focus your glare on him. You wait as he stares at you, knowing he has the advantage.

"I'd stop right now, if I were you."

You silently stare at him with blazing fire burning in your orbs. The clicking of the safety reverberates in your mind as all movement stops. The muzzle of the gun is inches away from Joaquin's head.

“Alright, you’ve had your show now.”

You've got mere seconds to make a decision here.

He remains still, as Joaquin’s eyes meet yours and you nod your head slightly.

It’ll be okay because you’d never let anything happen to each other.

"Walker, you've made your point. Look, it's me you really want, not Torres.", You snipped, grabbing his attention.

Joaquin’s heart raced faster,

What were you doing?

You could see the gears turning in Walker’s head, his eyebrows perk up.

"C'mon, this whole thing was to get to me, right? To weaponize me. It's my power. So take it. Just let him go."

Walker pauses in thought,

"I don't think I will."

You knew that'd be his answer but he was too busy looking at you to notice anything else. Joaquin threw his leg out, kicking Walker’s shin to knock him off his centre.

Moving quickly, you roundhouse, knocking the gun from his hand and driving your foot into his knee. He lets out a pained yell, ducking your elbow jab and rolling behind you. You roll forwards, swooping your flames across the floor to knock Walker on his back. He rolls to the side, standing again to flick open a compact switch from his pocket. He struggles for a moment as you strut over, but he presses the button down with conviction.

You falter in your steps as a loud piercing sound breaches your cranium and hearing. It’s overwhelming, threatening to shatter your skull. A whimper falls from your mouth as both hands grasp your head. You can faintly hear Joaquin yelling your name from behind. The pain is unbearable. Joaquin bangs the cuffs on a metal crate behind him, forcing them to break.

Your vision blurs as you clumsily move towards Walker. Once you’re close enough to him, you throw an uncoordinated right hook but he catches it and returns with a kick to your chest, knocking you to the floor. The pain continues, eliciting a moan from you as it grows worse with each second. Joaquin watches as you scream in agony, sprinting towards Walker and tackling him to the floor. Walker loses the switch from his hand, punching Joaquin in the jaw to get him off. Joaquin hisses as his head hits the floor, but he’s quickly grappling for the switch before Walker can get his hands on it. Scanning the floor, he sights it inches away from where you’re curled up in a ball. He’s crawling over to make it but a grip on his shoulder halts him, flipping him over and punching him repeatedly.

Over the intense clanging, you see black dots form in your sight as you want to pass out. You hear grunts nearby and the sound of a fist making contact with skin. You flicker your eyes upward to see Walker’s figure looming over someone.

‘Joaquin...where’s Joaquin?’

You close your eyes and force yourself up, struggling to gain your bearings. Upon opening your eyes, you notice something within your reach. Crawling forward, your fingers barely touch it. You try again and again before you feel the metal beneath your fingertips. Finally, you have it in your hands and crush it. The metal crunches and the ringing ceases. A sigh of relief leaves your mouth as you push yourself off the floor.

More coherent now, you angrily send a blast of energy to knock Walker off of Joaquin. Scrambling off the floor, he brings his fists in front of him, but you've already there, standing in front of him.

"I’m going to count from three.”, you said.

Striking a wave in his direction, you blast fire into his chest, your eyes imbuing fluttering embers.

‘Three’

You continue your onslaught, attacking him with multiple blows of rage.

Your figure looms over Walker, blocking Joaquin from his sight.

‘Two’

Your hands emit a fiery glow as you project flames, igniting a huge blast which sends Walker crashing through the window and down below.

‘One’

Gazing down the terrace, you saw Walker’s unconscious body laying on the crushed roof of a car. The authorities would show up eventually.

Looking back inside, you finally start to feel the adrenaline rush declining. You move away from the window to find Torres leaning against a crate. Joaquin's face is bruised and cut-up as he holds his side with a grimace.

"Joaquin, are you okay?!",

You rush over to hold his other arm, scanning him for serious injuries.

He stops your moving hands to grip them,

"(Y/N), I'm okay, I'm okay. It's you I'm worried about. You almost died. How did you do that?", Joaquin asked, concern lingering in his eyes at the magnitude of your powers.

"I-I don't know. I guess my powers have always been linked to my emotions and then you were in danger. It was kind of instinctive, you know?"

"I could never let anything happen to you. Never.", She whispered silently, not noticing if he had caught it.

Joaquin moved to grasp her chin in his hand, pulling her head up so he could look into her eyes.

"You saved me."

You glanced over his face and the clear pain he was hiding from his injuries.

"You have no idea how glad I am that you're okay. I-I was afraid...It shouldn't have been you.", You said to Joaquin, tears glinting in your sight.

"I'm not going anywhere. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.", he said, moving closer as your eyes meet his deep and endearing gaze.

"We should call Sam.", You suggested.

"I'll call him later."

Yours eyes met as he leaned his forehead on yours. You inhaled deeply as he gripped your hands tightly as if you would fall out of his grasp. Joaquin's arms encircle your waist and pull you in his embrace. Your arms rest around his neck, nestling your head against his shoulder.

You hold each other tightly in a moment of calm, seeking comfort from that person. The one person you would always seek out.

You pull away, but his arms remain around your waist.

"You're so beautiful.", He whispers.

Your breathing shudders for a second before you decide to go for it,

"I-I love you, Joaquin."

You gauge his reaction as his eyes widen slightly. He leans in and guides his lips to yours. He kissed you slowly and passionately, his hands still gripping your waist. You sigh and stand on your tip-toes, tugging the hairs on the back of Joaquin's neck to bring him closer. You both pause, gasping for air for a moment. Kisses linger in between breaths as you both wind down from the intense 24 hours you've had, emotionally and physically.

"For the record, I love you too.", He grins, laughing at your eye roll.

"I didn't quite catch that, why don't you show me again?", You winked, biting your lip as his arms swooped around you again and tugged you closer.

Barely brushing your lips, he looks between your eyes and then your lips.

"I think we can arrange that."

Your breath catches as your lips brush his. You smiled, closing your eyes, as does Joaquin. You swayed in his arms as his lips encased yours once more.

Suddenly, red and blue flashing lights breach your vision from below. Sirens surrounded you both. You separated, glancing outside the broken window.

Police cars surrounded the building. Reinforcements had arrived. His hand still grips yours and you motion to help him take some of his weight, wrapping an arm around his waist.

"We should get of here.", You pushed open the door to exit down a flight of stairs.

"Yeah.", Joaquin replied, grinning down at you as you walked out together.

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Romney votes to convict Trump on charge of abuse of power, becoming the lone Republican to break ranks

By Dan Balz and Robert Costa | Published February 05 at 7:16 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted Feb 05, 2020

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) sealed a place in history Wednesday by voting to convict President Trump of abuse of power, becoming a lone voice of dissent in a Republican Party that otherwise has marched in lockstep with the president throughout the impeachment proceedings.

Romney voted against the second article of impeachment, which accused the president of obstruction of Congress. But on the first article, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said that he found the evidence against Trump overwhelming and the arguments by the president’s defense ultimately unconvincing.

Romney’s decision, announced in a deeply personal speech on the Senate floor where he spoke of his faith and constitutional duty, sparked an immediate and intense outcry among Trump’s supporters — fury that Romney acknowledged is unlikely to fade.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, called for Romney to be “expelled” from the GOP, while many of Trump’s congressional allies cast him as a bitter and irrelevant relic of a Republican establishment that has all but crumbled before Trump in recent years.

Romney stood by his decision as Republican criticism mounted on Wednesday, maintaining that Trump abused his office by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

“I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me,” Romney said in his floor remarks, calling Trump’s conduct “grievously wrong.”

Romney added, “We’re all footnotes at best in the annals of history. But in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that is distinction enough for any citizen.”

Romney’s vote — coming after other centrist GOP senators such as Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) decided to acquit Trump even as they scolded him for acting inappropriately — was hailed by many Democrats as an example of unflinching political courage from a Republican they have long battled.

Following Romney’s speech, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), walked off the Senate floor in tears and remained speechless for several seconds.

“He literally restored my faith in the institution,” Schatz said.

Presidential historian Jon Meacham said Romney is an “emblem of what so many of us feared was an entirely vanished kind of moderate voice that is guided by reason and not passion. What he did was in the tradition of Dwight Eisenhower, his own father, and George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford.”

Romney’s father, the late Michigan governor George Romney, was a prominent Republican who was known for being guided by his Mormon faith and a commitment to public service and civil rights. Romney does not speak often of his father, but is inspired by his example far more than he discusses publicly, friends said Wednesday.

“There’s no question that the president asked a foreign power to investigate his political foe,” Romney said in an interview with The Washington Post ahead of his floor statement. “That he did so for a political purpose, and that he pressured Ukraine to get them to help or to lead in this effort. My own view is that there’s not much I can think of that would be a more egregious assault on our Constitution than trying to corrupt an election to maintain power. And that’s what the president did.”

The crux of the case against Trump was the allegation that he withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father was vice president.

Romney was one of two Republican senators who supported the effort to summon witnesses and documents. He was the only Republican who crossed party lines on Wednesday to join Democrats in voting to convict Trump on the first charge, abuse of power, while voting to acquit on the second, obstruction of Congress.

Inside the Senate GOP cloakroom, Romney’s decision was greeted with disappointment but little surprise. Ever since Romney was elected to the Senate in 2018, the 72-year-old senator has parted ways with his party at times and has occasionally criticized Trump — an approach that has won him few allies in a chamber where Trump’s political capital and favor is a prized commodity.

“He’s made it very clear from the beginning, even on the witness vote, that he was going to go his own way,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said. “This is one of those historical votes where everybody has to do what they think is the right thing.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared ready to move on from the trial and did not threaten Romney.

“I was surprised and disappointed, but we have much work to do for the American people, and I think Senator Romney has been largely supportive of most everything we’ve tried to accomplish,” McConnell said.

For Romney, breaking with Trump carried not just political consequences in a party he once led as its standard-bearer, but familial dynamics. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the daughter of Romney’s older brother, is one of the president’s loyalists — and she firmly stood by Trump on Wednesday.

“This is not the first time I have disagreed with Mitt, and I imagine it will not be the last,” McDaniel tweeted.

The RNC also sent an email to reporters Wednesday taking aim at Romney, under the subject line, “Mitt Romney turns his back on Utah.”

Other Trump allies were far harsher in their response to Romney. “He’s now officially a member of the resistance & should be expelled” from the party, Trump Jr. tweeted.

Romney knew his vote to remove the president from office would bring consequences. Already, there is a bill in the Utah legislature that would allow voters to remove a sitting senator. Last week, the Conservative Political Action Conference disinvited Romney to their annual event. He expects worse in the days ahead.

When Romney was in Florida last weekend, a person at the airport called him a traitor, and someone else later told him to “get with the team,” followed by an epithet. “It’s going to be there a long, long, long time,” he said in the interview. “And you know, the president’s going to, you know, use me in rallies. I mean, he likes theater, and I can be part of that. So it’s going to be tough.”

Recently appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), facing a tough intraparty primary fight from Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), has already used Romney as a foil, attacking him last week for supporting the call for witnesses.

Romney said his decision to vote to convict the president was “the hardest decision” he has ever had to make and one that he hoped he would never have to make. “When [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi indicated we’re now going to pursue impeachment, my heart sank in dread,” he said.

For a time, he thought — or at least hoped — that Trump’s request to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for an investigation into the Bidens during a July 25 phone call represented little more than a throwaway line. As more information came out, Romney came to a different and more worrisome conclusion: that the president had committed a potentially impeachable act.

“He’s the leader of my party,” Romney said of Trump. “He’s the president of the United States. I voted with him 80 percent of the time. I agree with his economic policies and a lot of other policies. And yet he did something which was grievously wrong. And to say, well, you know, because I’m on his team and I agree with him most of the time, that I should then assent to a political motive, would be a real stain on our constitutional democracy.”

Romney said he hoped the president’s defense team would present evidence during the trial that would exonerate the president. He said he even contacted the White House Counsel’s Office, through a fellow senator, asking if they would provide affidavits from officials such as former national security adviser John Bolton or acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, but to no avail.

“I was hoping beyond hope that the defense would present evidence, exculpatory evidence, that would remove from me the responsibility to vote where my conscience was telling me I had to vote,” he said. “And that’s one of the reasons, by the way, that I wanted to hear from Bolton, which is I hoped he would testify and raise reasonable doubt.”

Romney dismissed arguments that a president could be impeached only if there were a statutory crime, calling that “absurd on its face,” and saying he could not think of “a more egregious assault on our constitutional system than corrupting an election and getting a foreign power to do it for you.” What Trump tried to do, he said, is “what autocrats do in tinhorn countries.”

He also dismissed the arguments that the president was justified in asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. He said the former vice president might have been guilty of a conflict of interest, but added that a conflict of interest is “a matter of judgment, but it’s not a crime.” As for Hunter Biden, he said, “He got a lot of money for his father’s name. That’s unsavory. But again, it’s not a crime.”

Romney acknowledging that Trump threw up “a barrage of efforts” to keep the House from receiving documents or testimony from key administration officials with firsthand knowledge, but decided against supporting the obstruction charge. “I don’t think that was an appropriate approach, necessarily,” he said, “but [Trump] did follow the law, and the House did not take the time to go to the courts as I think they should have.”

Some of Romney’s Republican colleagues have suggested that the issue should be left to the voters in this year’s election, rather than having the Senate render judgment. Romney said his reading of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers led him to conclude that the Senate must make the decision.

“The Constitution doesn’t say that if the president did something terribly wrong, let the people decide in the next election what should happen,” he said. “It says if the president does something terribly wrong, the Senate shall try him. And so the Constitution is plain.”

Romney said he made his decision knowing that the president would be acquitted by the Senate. Were mine the deciding vote” to remove Trump from office, he said, “I hope I would have the strength of character to cast that vote. That would be the right thing to do.” He added at another point, “No one wants to vote to remove a president of the United States, and I sure don’t.”

Romney said the question of Trump’s fate now will go be decided in the November election. “It’s going to go to the people, and they will make the final decision,” he said, adding that he is “highly confident” the president will be reelected. “Given the strength of the economy and the record established so far, I believe he gets reelected. And I think if they [Democrats] nominate [Sen.] Bernie [Sanders of Vermont] or [Sen.] Elizabeth [Warren of Massachusetts], he’ll get elected in a landslide.”

Yet in a later season of a political life that began at the side of George Romney, Romney said he kept coming back to questions of duty and faith.

“Again, how do I say before God, ‘I agreed to render impartial justice and let the consequences for me personally outweigh my duty to God and my duty to be to the country that I love?’” Romney said, explaining how he settled on his vote. “That’s simply putting my head down and saying what was done was perfect — there’s nothing to see here. [It] was not something I could do.”

______

Paul Kane and Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.

**********

HOUSE MANAGERS: TRUMP WON’T BE VINDICATED. THE SENATE WON’T BE, EITHER.

By Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Sylvia Garcia and Jason Crow

February 05 at 5:29 PM EST

Reps. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Val Demings (Fla.), Sylvia Garcia (Tex.) and Jason Crow (Colo.) were the Democratic House managers in the impeachment trial of President Trump.

Over the past two weeks, we have argued the impeachment case against President Trump, presenting overwhelming evidence that he solicited foreign interference to cheat in the next election and jeopardized our national security by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to pressure Ukraine to do his political bidding. When the president got caught and his scheme was exposed, he tried to cover it up and obstruct Congress’s investigation in an unprecedented fashion. As the trial progressed, a growing number of Republican senators acknowledged that the House had proved the president’s serious misconduct.

Throughout the trial, new and incriminating evidence against the president came to light almost daily, and there can be no doubt that it will continue to emerge in books, in newspapers or in congressional hearings. Most important, reports of former national security adviser John Bolton’s forthcoming book only further confirm that the president illegally withheld military aid to Ukraine until Kyiv announced the sham investigations that the president sought for his political benefit.

Although Bolton told the House that he would sue rather than appear to testify pursuant to a subpoena, he appeared to have a change of heart and made it clear that he would be willing to testify in the Senate. Yet, rather than hear what Bolton had to say, Republican senators voted to hold the first impeachment trial in U.S. history without a single live witness or new document.

Notwithstanding the Constitution’s mandate that the Senate shall have the sole power to “try” impeachments, a narrow majority of senators opted not to, and instead acted as though it were an appellate court precluded from going beyond the record in the House. Nothing supported this unprecedented prohibition on witnesses and documents, except the overriding interest of a president determined to hide any further incriminating information from the American people and a Senate majority leader in his thrall.

Instead, the president’s defenders resorted to a radical theory that would validate his worst, most authoritarian instincts. They argued that a president cannot abuse his power, no matter how corrupt his conduct, if he believes it will benefit his reelection. The Founders would have been aghast at such a sweeping assertion of absolute power, completely at odds with our system of checks and balances. Even some of the president’s lawyers were ultimately forced to back away from it.

And so, at last, the president’s team urged that it should be left to the voters to pronounce judgment on the president’s misconduct, even as it worked to prevent the public from learning the full facts that might inform their decision. More ominously, this leaves the president free to try to cheat in the very election that is supposed to provide the remedy for his cheating.

Just this week, with the vote on impeachment still pending before the Senate, the president’s personal lawyer and emissary, Rudolph W. Giuliani, repeated his call for Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rival and urged the president to carry on seeking such illicit help.

When we made our final arguments to the Senate, we asked whether there was one Republican senator who would say enough, do impartial justice as their oath required, and convict the president.

And there was. Mitt Romney. The senator from Utah showed a level of moral courage that validated the Founders’ faith that we were up to the rigors of self-governance.

No one can seriously argue that President Trump has learned from this experience. This was not the first time he solicited foreign interference in his election, nor will it be the last. As we said during the trial, if left in office, the president will not stop trying to cheat in the next election until he succeeds.

We must make sure he does not.

Republican leadership in the Senate had the power to conceal the president’s full misconduct during the trial by disallowing witnesses and documents, but they cannot keep the full, ugly truth of the president’s conduct, and that of all the president’s men, from the American people. Not for long.

Because of the impeachment process, voters can now stand forewarned of the lengths to which the president will go to try to secure his reelection, violating the law and undermining our national security and that of our allies.

By denying the American people a fair trial, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also deprived the president of something that he desperately sought — exoneration. There can be no exoneration without a legitimate trial. Out of fear of what they would learn, the Senate refused to hold one. The president will not be vindicated, and neither will the Senate, certainly not by history.

The Constitution is a wondrous document, but it is not self-effectuating; it requires vigilance, and a pledge by every new generation of voters and public servants to safeguard and fulfill its lofty promise. And it requires a kind of courage that Robert F. Kennedy once said is more rare than that on the battlefield — moral courage. Without it, no constitution can save us, but with it, no hardship can overcome us. We remain committed to doing everything in our power to preserve this marvelous experiment in self-governance.

America is worth it.

*********

It’s not over. Congress must continue to hold Trump accountable.

By Editorial Board | Published February 05 at 4:34 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 05, 2020 |

SOME OF the senators who voted Wednesday to acquit President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress claimed he had surely been chastened by his impeachment by the House of Representatives. We suspect they know better. Not only is Mr. Trump brazenly unrepentant for his attempt to extort Ukraine’s help for his reelection, but also he is likely to take the Senate’s vote as vindication and license for further improper actions. That makes it incumbent upon responsible members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to do what they can to protect the integrity of the November election, as well as that of the Constitution.

An initial step could be a resolution of censure by the Senate. That wouldn’t remove Mr. Trump, but it would challenge Republicans who say they regard his actions as “inappropriate” to vote accordingly. If they do, it might have a deterrent effect. If they don’t, voters will have cause to judge those senators up for reelection this year. A bipartisan censure motion would make it difficult for Mr. Trump to go on claiming he had done “absolutely nothing wrong” and that the case against him was “a hoax.”

In the House, committees that pursued the investigation of Mr. Trump’s actions in Ukraine should continue to do so. There is much that remains unknown, including whether the president extracted favors in 2017 and 2018 from Ukraine’s previous government. There is also a public interest in the airing of evidence that the White House has illegitimately suppressed about the pressure campaign against the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky. The House should subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton, along with documents related to Mr. Trump’s withholding of military aid from Mr. Zelensky’s government.

If court battles are needed to obtain this evidence, the House should fight them. It is vital that Congress’s power to conduct oversight of the executive be confirmed. Otherwise, Mr. Trump can be expected to continue a blanket refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations during the remainder of his time in office, thereby neutering what should be an equal branch of government.

Above all, legislators, the media and patriotic government officials must remain on guard against new attempts by Mr. Trump to subvert democracy. The president has publicly called on China as well as Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, and has said he would accept dirt on an opponent if it were offered by a foreign government. There’s no reason to believe that Russia, Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian regimes favored by Mr. Trump won’t try to help his campaign, as Russia did in 2016.

If evidence of such interference or other wrongdoing emerges, Congress must not hesitate to pursue it. Mr. Trump’s supporters crow that the impeachment investigation backfired politically, boosting the president’s poll ratings. Even if that is true, it must not deter Congress from holding the president to account. The lesson of the Ukraine affair must not be that there is no remedy for a president who would use his powers to undermine U.S. democracy.

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WAS IMPEACHMENT WORTH IT? YES

By Max BOOT | Published February 05 at 4:34 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 05, 2020 |

After 134 tumultuous days, the impeachment of President Trump ended in a predictable near-party-line acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate. Out of 250 Republicans in Congress, only one — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — had the courage to vote his conscience, voting to convict on the first of the two articles. (Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a former Republican, also supported impeachment.)

Was it worth it? As Zhou Enlai supposedly said of the French Revolution, it’s too early to say. But so far, impeachment has not lived up to either the greatest hopes or the worst fears of its advocates.

In the best-case scenario, the incontrovertible weight of evidence would have led more than one Republican to turn against the president. No one ever imagined that there would be 67 votes to remove him, but it was at least conceivable that advocates of impeachment could obtain a bare Senate majority and thus make it harder for Trump to claim that this was all a partisan plot.

That that didn’t happen is a testament to the power of political polarization, with a record-setting 87-point split between Democratic and Republican views of Trump in the latest Gallup poll. (He has the support of 94 percent of Republicans and 7 percent of Democrats.) The craven Senate Republicans were so terrified of Trump’s hold on their base that all but two of them voted against hearing from witnesses for the first time in impeachment history. Their behavior brings to mind the Nixon defender who defiantly declared: “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind.” Wednesday’s acquittal comes despite, not because of, the evidence.

Trump emerges with higher than normal — if far from stellar — approval ratings. The latest FiveThirtyEight polling average has him at 43.4 percent approval and 52.1 percent disapproval. He has gone up in the polls recently (49 percent support him in the new Gallup poll), but this is probably because the public approves of the economy, not of his conduct. Consumer confidence in the IDB/TIPP poll is at its highest level in 16 years and the incumbent tends to get credit — which Trump was eager to claim in the State of the Union.

The good news for Trump’s opponents is that so far there is little evidence of a popular backlash against impeachment. Nearly 50 percent of the public supports impeachment and removal in the FiveThirtyEight polling average. That’s not enough to drive him out of office. But it is actually slightly higher than the number (46 percent) who wanted President Richard M. Nixon convicted in July 1974, just a few weeks before he resigned, and it’s far higher than support for impeaching President Bill Clinton, which topped out at a paltry 35 percent.

The Economist/YouGov poll shows that, by 50 percent to 34 percent, Americans think Trump is guilty of withholding military aid to Ukraine to force an investigation of the Bidens and, by 48 percent to 39 percent, they think he is guilty of obstructing Congress. By an even larger margin, respondents in recent polls said the Senate should call witnesses. The Republicans’ failure to do so denies Trump the full exoneration he craves.

The public isn’t rallying to Trump and the Republicans as they rallied to Clinton and the Democrats after impeachment in 1999 because what Trump did was far worse than lying about sex. In those days, Clinton’s popularity shot up to 73 percent and the Democrats’ advantage in party identification expanded to 17 points. By contrast, the RealClearPolitics polling average for a generic congressional ballot, showing a 7-point advantage for Democrats, is now nearly identical to the average of polls taken right before the 2018 midterm election.

In short, impeachment hasn’t fundamentally altered the political dynamics — and its impact is likely to dissipate even more before the election. Impeachment could have its biggest impact on House Democrats in red districts and Senate Republicans in blue states, but opinions of Trump are so entrenched that it doesn’t seem likely to leave a lasting mark on the presidential race one way or the other.

I still believe impeachment was the right thing to do, because it brought out so much evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing — even without the testimony of important witnesses such as John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney. Even five of the senators voting to acquit acknowledge that Trump did something wrong. They just don’t care. Now it will be up to the voters to decide if it matters to them or not.

I’m resigned to the likelihood that Trump’s outrageous abuse of office won’t prevent him from winning a second term. But I don’t think there’s much House Democrats could or should have done differently. Ignoring Trump’s attempt to rig the election wasn’t a serious option and pushing for censure wouldn’t have been any more successful in winning bipartisan support. Sure, Trump may be emboldened after he’s acquitted — but he also would have been emboldened if there had been no consequences at all once he was caught in a corrupt quid pro quo.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and the other House managers proved their case. They did their duty with honor and eloquence. All of the vulnerable Democrats such as Sen. Doug Jones (Ala.) and the House freshmen who risked their seats to support impeachment were profiles in courage. So too were all the civil servants — beginning with the heroic whistleblower — who exposed Trump’s dirty deeds at real risk of retribution. It’s not their fault that in Trump’s America “truth” and “right” matter less than partisan might.

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George Conway: I believe the president, and in the president

By George T. Conway III | Published

February 05 at 11:04 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted Feb. 05, 2020

George T. Conway III is a lawyer in New York and an adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super PAC.

I believe the president, and in the president.

I believe the Senate is right to acquit the president. I believe a fair trial is one with no witnesses, and that the trial was therefore fair. I believe the House was unfair because it found evidence against him. I believe that if the president does something that he believes will get himself reelected, that’s in the public interest and can’t be the kind of thing that results in impeachment.

I believe former national security adviser John Bolton has no relevant testimony because he didn’t leave the White House on good terms.

I believe the president’s call was perfect. I believe he is deeply concerned about corruption in Ukraine. I believe the president can find Ukraine on a map.

I believe Ukraine interfered with the 2016 election, and that the intelligence community’s suggestion otherwise is a Deep State lie. I believe the Democratic National Committee server is in Ukraine, where CrowdStrike hid it.

I believe President Barack Obama placed a “tapp” on the president’s phones in 2016, and that the Russia investigation was a plot to keep him from winning, even though the plotters didn’t think he could win.

I believe former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was conflicted because he quit one of the president’s golf clubs, and that he and his Angry Democrats conducted a Witch Hunt to destroy the president. But I believe Mueller’s report totally exonerated the president, because it found no collusion and no obstruction.

I believe it would be okay for the president to say he grabs women by their p-----s, because he is a star, and stars are allowed to do that. But I believe he didn’t say that, even though he apologized for it, because I believe the “Access Hollywood” tape was doctored, because he said it was.

I believe E. Jean Carroll lied when she accused the president of rape, because he said she’s not his type. I believe the dozens of other women who accused him of sexual misconduct are also lying, because he would never think of grabbing them by their p-----s or anything else.

I believe the president didn’t know Michael Cohen was paying off porn star Stormy Daniels, and that Cohen did it on his own, because the president had no reason to pay her off. I believe the president was reimbursing Cohen for his legal expertise.

I believe the president is a good Christian, because TV pastors say so, and that it’s okay he doesn’t ask for God’s forgiveness, because he doesn’t need to, since he’s the Chosen One. I believe the president knows the Bible, and that two Corinthians are better than one.

I believe the president wants to release his taxes but has not because he’s under audit, which is why he has fought all the way to the Supreme Court not to disclose them. I believe he will disclose them when the audit is over, and that they will show him to be as rich and honest as he says he is.

I believe the president is a very stable genius, and that he repeatedly tells us so because it’s true.

I believe the president can spell. I believe any spelling mistakes he makes are because he’s a very busy man who doesn’t watch much TV, or because he’s intentionally triggering the libs.

I believe Hurricane Dorian was headed straight for Alabama. I believe the president’s map wasn’t altered with a Sharpie, and that if it was, he didn’t do it, since he didn’t need to because he was right.

I believe the president didn’t call Apple’s CEO “Tim Apple,” and that he said “Tim Cook of Apple” really, really fast, but that if he did say “Tim Apple,” it was to save words, which he always tries to do.

I believe windmills are bad and cause cancer. I believe there was a mass shooting in Toledo and that there were airports during the Revolution, because the president said so.

I believe the president is defeating socialism, despite the subsidies he’s paying to save farmers from his protectionism and the $3.2 trillion he’s added to the national debt during his term.

I believe the president has made tremendous progress building the wall, that Mexico paid for it in the trade deal, that the wall will soon run from San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico, that it will stop those caravans cold, and that it won’t fall down.

I believe the president has a 95 percent approval rating among Republicans, and that there’s no need to cite polls for that.

I believe the president had the largest inaugural crowd ever, regardless of what any photos from liberal bureaucrats might show.

I believe there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.

I believe China pays all tariffs levied on imported Chinese goods.

I believe the president is truthful. I believe the Fake News media lied each of the 16,241 times they have said he has made a false or misleading claim.

I believe the president is selfless, and always puts the nation’s interests first. I believe he isn’t a narcissist, but he’d be entitled to be one if he were one. I believe the president would never exercise his presidential powers to advance his personal interests, but if he did, that would be okay, because whatever is in his personal interests is necessarily in the nation’s interests as well.

I believe Article II of the Constitution gives the president the right to do whatever he wants.(This is just the short list!!!)

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PELOSI RIPPED UP A SPEECH. TRUMP IS RIPPING UP OUR DEMOCRACY.

By Greg Sargent | Published February 05 at 10:07 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 05, 2020 |

Nancy Pelosi ripped up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, and the civility police are on a rampage: On “Morning Joe,” host Willie Geist lectured that the House Speaker’s act is “not what the country needs.”

As many pointed out, Pelosi’s theatrical gesture, which came after Trump appeared to refuse to shake her hand at the outset, is tame alongside Trump’s own constant shredding of decorum — the hate rallies, the insulting of lawmakers and so forth.

But there’s a more precise point to be made here. If the underlying premise of the criticism of breaches of decorum is that they pose a threat to our democracy’s functioning, then much of what Trump has done well beyond such breaches — for three years now — actually does pose a severe threat to that functioning, while acts like Pelosi’s actually do not pose any remotely comparable threat.

This isn’t whataboutism. It’s meant to correct a massive category error. Breaches in civility are not the main threat to our political system. Indeed, if Trump only went on half-cocked rally rants and merely insulted Democrats, the current damage would not be nearly as severe.

It’s all the other misconduct that threatens the fabric of democracy — Trump’s unchecked lawlessness, his abuses of power, his public racism, his unprecedented lying, his treatment of the opposition as illegitimate.

In this context, hand-wringing about a mutual deterioration of decorum — the New York Times discerned a “mutual snubbing,” while an NBC reporter sniffed that Pelosi indulged in “antics” that are “Trumpian” — is profoundly misleading about the wildly asymmetrical realities of the moment.

Pelosi defended the gesture, describing Trump’s speech as a “manifesto of mistruths.” As it happens, Trump’s speech actually was full of lies, but for some reason this isn’t seen as a breach.

More broadly, their showdown is now being widely treated as the capstone of a troubled relationship — a “tumultuous” and “sour” one — which culminated in Trump’s impeachment.

But such descriptions won’t do. This is not a matter of Pelosi being angry at Trump for his policies and rhetoric on one side and Trump being angry at Pelosi for impeaching him on the other.

TRUMP TREATS THE OPPOSITION AS ILLEGITIMATE

When the Senate acquits Trump, it will come after Trump worked in every conceivable way to render the House an illegitimate or even nonexistent arm of the government.

No matter how vigorously Trump’s propagandists lie to the contrary, the impeachment — for extraordinary abuses of power designed to subvert our national interests to Trump’s own and corrupt our elections, the foundation of democratic government — was a legitimate exercise of constitutional authority. It was handled in a manner commensurate with the gravity of the undertaking.

The Trump administration refused to turn over any documents and laid down a blanket (but only partly successful) ban on witness cooperation. And so, Trump didn’t merely say the House’s constitutional impeachment function was illegitimate — “a coup” — he treated it as such in a manner designed to make this so.

In acquitting Trump while refusing witnesses and evidence, Senate Republicans will not only be clearing him for the article levied for this obstruction of Congress (as well as for abuse of power). They will be carrying through that delegitimization of the House’s institutional role to completion.

Team Trump argues he’s above accountability

Trump’s team has unabashedly argued throughout that Trump is not subject to legitimate accountability of any kind.

During the special counsel investigation, Trump’s lawyers argued he can close down an investigation into himself for any reason, even if it amounts to a corrupt effort to shield his wrongdoing from scrutiny. Then, during impeachment, they argued Trump cannot be impeached for abuses of power, a view widely dismissed by legal scholars.

As political theorist Will Wilkinson noted, the upshot of this is that the House lacks the “legitimate authority to second-guess anything the president does,” in effect meaning that “Democratic power is illegitimate.”

Acknowledging the legitimacy of the opposition is a hallmark of accountability in government. In allowing for it, a president in effect allows he’s not just accountable to his own voters but also to those of the opposition — such as the national majority that elected the Democratic House in 2018.

But this conception of accountability, for Trump, is simply a dead letter. Trump has delivered speeches that are literally scripted to make opposition voters disappear. He declared impeachment an affront to “the American voter,” as if only his voters, and not those who elected the House, exist.

And well before impeachment, Trump vowed to stonewall “all” House subpoenas, to protect his corrupt profiteering off the presidency — which itself is severely destructive to democracy’s functioning — through maximal resistance to legitimate congressional scrutiny.

Trump’s lawyers also argued that impeaching Trump would disenfranchise voters by denying them a choice in the next election, which is the proper mechanism of accountability. But they also claimed that in soliciting foreign interference rigging that same election, Trump did nothing wrong. In short, no political accountability mechanism for Trump is legitimate or beyond Trump’s corrupting powers.

On top of all this, there are the threats to turn loose law enforcement on political opponents; the constant racist denigration of parts of the country represented by nonwhite lawmakers (which are not mere “antics,” but tear at the country’s fabric); the nonstop lying (a form of deep contempt for the very idea of deliberative democracy) and the perpetual manipulation of government to validate lies (another form of deep contempt for government in the public interest).

I don’t claim to know whether Pelosi’s act was bad or good politics. It probably won’t matter in the least. But in this broad context, debates about an erosion in decorum are at best utterly meaningless and are at worst actively misleading about the deep hole we’re in.

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Here is what we can take away from Trump’s impeachment and acquittal

President Trump’s four-month-long impeachment saga is over: He was acquitted by the Senate on Wednesday on both charges, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Trump will forever have an asterisk next to his name as the third president to be impeached by the House, but he’ll remain in office. Now we’ll see a president for the first time in modern history seek reelection while carrying that asterisk.

About the Senate vote

Just as the House of Representatives did in December, the Senate voted on each article of impeachment separately. To kick Trump out of office, 67 senators needed to vote to convict him on at least one article. There was nowhere near that much support for either article.

The most important political takeaway from the vote is how partisan it was. Not a single Democrat voted to acquit the president, not even the senators representing Trump-friendly states. Only one Republican voted to convict him, Mitt Romney of Utah, after no House Republicans supported impeachment.

But Romney’s lone vote changes how Trump can talk about his impeachment going forward. He can no longer technically say his impeachment was solely driven by Democrats. One Republican — a prominent one at that — voted to convict him.

Romney voted to acquit Trump on the second charge of obstruction of Congress. His conviction vote on the first charge was historic though: He’s the first senator in an impeachment trial to vote to convict a president of the same party.

“The president’s purpose was personal and political,” Romney said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday announcing his vote. “Accordingly, the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of the public trust.”

Takeaways from the entire impeachment process

1. IMPEACHMENT IS POLITICALLY DRIVEN

So many readers I talked to wanted to think of impeachment as a process where blind justice reigns. And sure, there were some House Democrats who put their careers at risk by voting to impeach Trump even though their districts had supported him. Romney said he expects to be “vehemently denounced” by some in his party for his decision. (Fact check: True. Donald Trump Jr. is already driving a push to kick him out of the party.) But by and large, lawmakers voted with their political futures in mind, rather than the facts.

That’s because you can’t take the political calculus out of Congress. In fact, impeachment was designed to have an inherent contradiction. The nation’s founders set up a check on the executive, but they gave a political body — and not a court — the ultimate say on this.

The partisan process allowed Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to say the quiet part out loud, that he was working in “total coordination” with the White House on how to hold a trial that best benefited Trump. And his supporters could accurately point to instances of Democrats doing the same when their party’s president was being impeached. Democrats and privately some Republicans may truly feel that Trump should be kicked out of office, but at the end of this, their decisions were driven more by politics than conscience.

2. TRUMP’S GREATEST ASSET WAS HIS PARTY’S LOYALTY

At one point during impeachment, former Arizona Republican senator Jeff Flake told reporters he thought there would be “at least” 35 Republican senators who would vote to convict Trump if the vote were private.

We don’t know if that was true, and it obviously didn’t bear out in a public vote. But Flake got at the fundamental dynamic within the Republican Party, which is many lawmakers privately disagree with the president on policy, politics and character, but have decided their political futures rest on standing by Trump.

Party loyalty is not abnormal politics, but the degree to which Republican lawmakers have defended the president is. Trump has created an environment where there is no room for deviation from him even (or perhaps especially) on something as serious as the allegations facing him on Ukraine.

By the end of the trial, some Republican senators were forced to acknowledge that Trump did do the things the House accused him of. But they were in the minority of their party and, save Romney, still voted to acquit the president.

Flake also served as a powerful reminder to Republican lawmakers of what happens when they cross Trump. He was watching the trial from the public gallery, a senator who retired last year in part because he chose to publicly speak out against the president. The lawmakers below him have kept their jobs in large part because they have chose not to speak out against the president whenever possible. That is how Trump survived impeachment even though some of his own former advisers said he did what he was accused of doing.

3. WE DON’T KNOW HOW THIS WILL AFFECT THE 2020 REELECTION

In fact, it’s possible it doesn’t have much of an impact. From the beginning of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry in September to the end on Wednesday, the nation has been divided on whether Trump should be removed from office. And — surprise — Americans’ opinions on impeachment are baked into their political views.

Precisely because of that partisanship, it has seemed difficult if not impossible for Democrats to peel off supporters from the other side, and vice versa. The independents are also split down the middle.

In addition, the result of Trump’s impeachment has inevitable for many voters: House Democrats impeach Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate acquits him.

So if there aren’t surprises on impeachment (save one Republican senator’s vote), what about this process should move the average voter in November?

4. THE INVESTIGATION INTO WHAT TRUMP DID IS NOT OVER

There will be more revelations about what Trump’s intentions were when he paused Ukraine’s aid and asked Ukraine’s president to investigate the Bidens, whether they come from former national security adviser John Bolton’s book, or from others who resisted House subpoenas speaking out, or from witnesses called by House Democrats.

Already, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold E. Nadler (D-N.Y.) has said Democrats will subpoena Bolton (who said he’ll talk to the Senate and has written Trump has political intentions on Ukraine). Other lawmakers cautioned to The Post’s Rachael Bade that decision hasn’t been made yet. They are likely aware of how political it will look to continue investigating Trump’s actions on Ukraine after impeachment is over.

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