Mueller Investigation pt 6

[JoeMorgue]

If Trump is re-elected, the situation will be the same.

Right because all the Supreme Court Justices are going to live forever.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If Mueller had uncovered any evidence that Trump was complicit in those attacks, Trump would be gone. There wasn't any such evidence.

The Mueller statement starts out dividing the issues into two (count 'em) two parts.

Complicit was part one. The Russians didn't need Trump's help.

OBSTRUCTION of the investigation into the Russian interference was part two. Mueller did indeed find evidence, he spelled it out, then he passed the baton to Congress.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

And....I'm not alone.

There's no question you are not alone. The question is, I've never taken for a brainwashed Trumper.

 

[Xabre]

I am opposed 100 percent to impeachment. The, for lack of a better word, sin of making Trump president can only be redeemed by the voters. We cannot afford to give the failed genetic experiments and products of incest who go to his rallies a knife in the back narrative. We know what their kind do with such narratives and we should not provide the opportunity.

The rest of the world needs to see the American electorate reject Trump so we can begin to reclaim our leadership role for the free world. The results of what happens when you pull a 20 dollar bill on a fishing line through a trailer park need to feel rejected by their countrymen.

I know fighting it out at the ballot box will be ugly. I know even more families will be torn asunder in the next election. However, loyalty to the nation versus locality to Trump is a division we should seek to make. What is the value of one family compared to the future of an entire nation? When Trump supporters want to rejoin the country we should welcome them back with open arms. Until they make that decision, a Trump supporter is less than a real American. They don't love their country like real Americans. They can't be accepted as real Americans.

This coming from an obvious Uber Alt Left Automaton, who has ( probably through no fault of his own) indulged in far too much Kool-Aid, and being transfixed upon the letters CNN and/ or MSLSD.... only to find incessant Trump bashing with not a shred of fact to back their collective Vitriolic Rhetoric up....but then what can one expect from Cable news outlets who have no Journalistic integrity no ethics, and have no problem bashing the 1st Amendment evidenced by their Borg like abuse of it.

 

[Shalamar]

This coming from an obvious Uber Alt Left Automaton, who has ( probably through no fault of his own) indulged in far too much Kool-Aid, and being transfixed upon the letters CNN and/ or MSLSD.... only to find incessant Trump bashing with not a shred of fact to back their collective Vitriolic Rhetoric up....but then what can one expect from Cable news outlets who have no Journalistic integrity not ethics, and have no problem bashing the 1st Amendment evidenced by their Borg like abuse of it.

One party conservative fascist state, soon! Just for you! Brought to you by his royal highness, emperor of the Americas, Trump!

 

[I Am The Scum]

This coming from an obvious Uber Alt Left Automaton, who has ( probably through no fault of his own) indulged in far too much Kool-Aid, and being transfixed upon the letters CNN and/ or MSLSD.... only to find incessant Trump bashing with not a shred of fact to back their collective Vitriolic Rhetoric up....but then what can one expect from Cable news outlets who have no Journalistic integrity no ethics, and have no problem bashing the 1st Amendment evidenced by their Borg like abuse of it.

Uncle Leo?

 

[Roger Ramjets]

There has been a lot of talk of impeachment lately. Some people think it is absolutely imperative that Congress step up, fulfill their duty, and throw Trump out.

My question is: What did he do?

Seriously.

You know what he did. Seriously.

If the most obvious is firing Comey, then...…………..nothing.

But that's not nothing, so you are wrong.

Nope.

Nor for the Senate.

But Clinton was impeached, so you are wrong. They obviously did have enough to impeach him.

Conviction is another matter of course. Nobody knew where that would go. Are you trying to argue that Trump hasn't done enough to convict him?

With the current Senate it's not certain that anything Trump did would be enough to convict. I bet he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and they still wouldn't convict.

Oh, and, for what it's worth, I think Trump is pond scum. I wish we could impeach him for shredding the Paris accords, starting a trade war, being a general embarrassment to the United States, spending record amounts of money after cutting taxes resulting in huge increases to an already unacceptable debt, and...…..well, you get the idea. He's awful. But, those aren't impeachable

How do you know? I bet they would be if Congress decided so.

High crimes and misdemeanors

The charge of high crimes and misdemeanors covers allegations of misconduct by officials, such as perjury of oath, abuse of authority, bribery, intimidation, misuse of assets, failure to supervise, dereliction of duty, unbecoming conduct, refusal to obey a lawful order, chronic intoxication, and tax evasion.

I hope you are right though. It would be a real pity if Trump got impeached and thrown out before the next election. It's going to be a doozy.

 

[Meadmaker]

You know what he did. Seriously.

No. Really. I didn't. I mentioned the McGahn thing (well, that's what I was alluding to.) I didn't know if there was anything else. I didn't know that firing Comey played into it. All the news stories that I've heard have just mentioned obstruction of justice, with no reference to anything specific. Seriously.


I'm sure that's my fault, in a sense. I can't stomach listening to the news anymore. I'm never in front of a TV at evening news time. My available television news sources are CNN and Fox. Fox has never been worth a hoot, but CNN has joined it as a cesspool. I can't stomach listening to their evening lineup.


The radio and print news has been filled with "should we impeach" and the phrase "obstruction of justice" has been used a lot, but, really, they haven't talked about how he obstructed it.

But Clinton was impeached, so you are wrong. They obviously did have enough to impeach him.

Well, that's true. 218 votes is what they need to impeach, and a pretense.

Conviction is another matter of course.

Aye, there's the rub.

Nobody knew where that would go. Are you trying to argue that Trump hasn't done enough to convict him?

Nobody? Well, I suppose, technically, no one knew, but the smart money was on acquittal. that time and this time. There's no conviction there.

I hope you are right though. It would be a real pity if Trump got impeached and thrown out before the next election. It's going to be a doozy.

It's the economy, stupid.

 

[smartcooky]

Your opinion tells a lot about you.

Assuming that you are from the USA you should know that the line between left and right politics is shifted real far to the right in the USA.

In all (or at least all that I can think of) western democracies the Democrats in the USA would be considered centre right leaning conservatives.

THIS!

If you transposed the policies, ideas and actions of the Democrats into New Zealand, they would be about on a par with the National Party, our centre right party (in England, they would fit in about the same place as the Tories).

The New Zealand Labour party is considered to be more left of centre than National's is right of centre, but if you transposed their policies, ideas and actions of the New Zealand Labour party into the USA, they would be considered a lot further left. AOC would slot in perfectly as Minister for the Environment in a Labour Government.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

This coming from an obvious Uber Alt Left Automaton, who has ( probably through no fault of his own) indulged in far too much Kool-Aid, and being transfixed upon the letters CNN and/ or MSLSD.... only to find incessant Trump bashing with not a shred of fact to back their collective Vitriolic Rhetoric up....but then what can one expect from Cable news outlets who have no Journalistic integrity no ethics, and have no problem bashing the 1st Amendment evidenced by their Borg like abuse of it.

It's my understanding that bots would be projecting key words like these.

 

[Cain]

If Mueller had uncovered any evidence that Trump was complicit in those attacks, Trump would be gone. There wasn't any such evidence.

This is precisely why obstruction charges exist -- because a lack of evidence can be due to false testimony, destruction, etc. But with that said, impeachment is about politics rather than the law. Hundreds of federal prosecutors can say Trump broke the law and charges would be brought against anyone else, but the "jury" here are US senators who disproportionately represent Trump followers.

There isn't even nearly enough outrage about how the AG spun the Mueller report with his own false summaries and lies. Hell, he even staged a ridiculous press conference.

Comey said long ago that people are naive if they think Mueller's going to get rid of the Orange Menace and it'll be that easy. After the Access Hollywood tape, Clinton said she should be up fifty points. She should have, but she wasn't. Americans are political idiots. W. Bush never faced a serious threat of impeachment. All he did was bomb a bunch of people. Reagan escaped Iran-Contra. All he did was secretly sell arms to "rogue" state to fund right-wing death squads.

 

[PhantomWolf]

If Mueller had uncovered any evidence that Trump was complicit in those attacks, Trump would be gone. There wasn't any such evidence.

You clearly have not read the Mueller report.

Mueller did not say that there wasn't any such evidence that Trump was complicit in the Russian attacks. He stated that he had insufficient evidence to prove that account beyond a reasonable doubt and so had to clear Trump on that.

He also stated very clearly that if he was able to clear Trump on Obstruction of Justice he would have done so, and he was unable to do that.

What do you think that means?

 

[smartcooky]

Nope.

Then you are beyond redemption.

Nor for the Senate.

Be honest now, would anything be enough for the Senate?

 

[smartcooky]

You clearly have not read the Mueller report.

Mueller did not say that there wasn't any such evidence that Trump was complicit in the Russian attacks. He stated that he had insufficient evidence to prove that account beyond a reasonable doubt and so had to clear Trump on that.

He also stated very clearly that if he was able to clear Trump on Obstruction of Justice he would have done so, and he was unable to do that.

What do you think that means?

Meadmaker appears to be yet another one on this forum who does not understand that "insufficient evidence" is not that same as, and does not mean "no evidence"!

I'll just leave this here

 

[Aridas]

We realize this. But as Mueller's investigation has ended, it's not likely that there will be any more bombshells between now and Nov. 2020.

Like in Nixon's day? The tapes that sealed the deal were apparently located in a Congressional investigation after the Mueller equivalent.

With that said, there have already been plenty of bombshells... to the point where pretty much all of us are used to it. To put things in perspective, though, had Bill Clinton done, say, a fifth of the bad things that Trump did in the first 6 months of his Presidency alone, I and many, many Democrats would have been firmly in favor of removing him. The Republicans, of course, would have been thrilled to vote for the impeachment of a brazenly corrupt Democrat anyways. In short, we've been in fully justified to impeach territory for pretty much this entire Presidency, with Republican propaganda sycophancy being the biggest single reason that it hasn't happened.

There's a lot of truth in this, and I think voting him out would be best.

While I am sympathetic to this under normal circumstances, it bears repeating that the Trump Presidency is NOT NORMAL and absolutely should not be allowed to be normalized. What we've got is a President who is brazenly breaking and subverting law after law and has been openly acting to sabotage the government for pretty much his entire Presidency. That's even before getting to the absurdly numerous lies, norm breaking, and constant attempts to divide the country.

Impeachment now would be useless if we can just let him bluster, boast, and use his crimes (and the silence of the GOP) as campaign slogans.

That's not really a variable factor. He's been doing that anyways. All along.

I don't want Pence in charge either, or anyone else in that chain of stupidity.

Understandably so. Yet... Under the current circumstances, where the House Democrats can reasonably serve as check on the two of them, Pence will fairly certainly do less direct harm than Trump is.

I vote for letting him talk himself into a corner and then voting him out. In the interim, the Dems should be doing nothing but focusing on passing bills and laws that help the American people. Nothing else. Stop acknowledging this fool (Trump, not Cain).

They've been largely focused on that. Lots and lots of very popularly supported legislation, even. McConnell's been refusing to even allow votes, though, of course, and crowing about how the Democrats are doing nothing. That quite pointedly includes anything to do with securing our elections. I don't advise on ignoring Trump, though, myself. Democratic lawmakers ignoring him really won't make him either go away or get the MSM to change their coverage. Trump's base isn't going to be less fired up, either, even if they did. Rather, it would just be adding legitimacy to the Republican lies and turning off a lot of Democratic Party-leaning voters. There are more important things to focus upon, of course, but, to paraphrase something that has been said, the Democrats both can and need to walk AND chew bubblegum.

Recently (I think it started around the time Obama got into office) US politics has got hyper partisan. The GOP decided back then to oppose everything Obama did on general principle. The Tea Party wing got more vocal and more powerful and because politics in America is all about winning votes to the detriment of all else, hyper partisan is the new normal. The same is happening elsewhere in the world to a lesser degree too.

Hmm. It may have crossed a line then, but it's been getting worse and worse for a while, with special emphasis on the Republican side as they focus on who's saying something. Democrats have been slow to react in kind and are still primarily focused on what's being said.

Keep in mind Clinton lost because of multiple reasons, the Russian interference was only one.

There were indeed quite a few reasons. It's worth reiterating again, though, that the Russian involvement was largely illegal and was done to hurt the US. That, alone, makes it deserve significant attention and calls for action from anyone who is even a little bit patriotic.

And one of the reason the American public is so lukewarm on impeaching Trump despite.... *gestures at everything* is that right there.

If we impeach Trump we have to do it because it's the right thing to do and/or the best thing for the country. Acting like it's one of the tribes getting back at some real or hypothetical slight, even in a joking, offhand, or in passing manner taints it.

We cannot frame an impeachment of Trump as a win for the Democrats. It can't be about that.

If we're impeaching a President nobody is winning. We shouldn't be happy about it. It's not a cause for celebration.

If successful, we can certainly be happy that that particular dark time is over and that things look like they'll be a little be less bad moving forward from there. Yes, though, that we're in a place that impeachment is warranted in the first place is a terrible thing and should make no one happy.

And the media focus on the investigation into that has been focused on one and only one question. Can we use this to get rid of Trump?

A small request. Please, do not confuse the mainstream media with the Democrats. I realize that the Republicans have been screaming "liberal left-wing media" constantly for decades, but that's largely a brazen lie on objective inspection.

As a registered Democrat, here's my stance on this particular issue. The Russian attack on our electoral system deserves a serious response, with the primary focus of preventing it from happening again. If Trump can be removed because of his involvement? Good! That's entirely a secondary concern, though.

In matters related, though, that Trump (and the leaders of the Republican Party in general) has actively undermined any response is a serious issue. That a number of them have even worked to undo defenses that we had brings the word treason to mind.

In matters tangential, Trump outright giving Russia compromat on himself, just giving them super top secret information as if it were small talk, continually kowtowing to them, and so on are all very serious things that strongly, strongly point to the necessity of his removal as soon as possible.

Does that help clarify a Democratic position on the subject of Trump-Russia compared to your observations from the MSM?

And....I'm not alone.

Unfortunately.

You clearly have not read the Mueller report.

Mueller did not say that there wasn't any such evidence that Trump was complicit in the Russian attacks. He stated that he had insufficient evidence to prove that account beyond a reasonable doubt and so had to clear Trump on that.

He also stated very clearly that if he was able to clear Trump on Obstruction of Justice he would have done so, and he was unable to do that.

What do you think that means?

Is it worth adding on that Mueller stated that lies and withheld evidence materially impeded his investigation?

 

[smartcooky]

Is it worth adding on that Mueller stated that lies and withheld evidence materially impeded his investigation?

You mean that Obstruction of Justice all the Trump dingbats deny happened?

 

[Stacyhs]

Hell, if he'd been Obama in his last term, he'd have been impeached so fast you'd get whiplash.

And one of the reason the American public is so lukewarm on impeaching Trump despite.... *gestures at everything* is that right there.

If we impeach Trump we have to do it because it's the right thing to do and/or the best thing for the country. Acting like it's one of the tribes getting back at some real or hypothetical slight, even in a joking, offhand, or in passing manner taints it.

We cannot frame an impeachment of Trump as a win for the Democrats. It can't be about that.

If we're impeaching a President nobody is winning. We shouldn't be happy about it. It's not a cause for celebration.

You missed my point. It wasn't about "Acting like it's one of the tribes getting back at some real or hypothetical slight" or "celebrating" an impeachment but pointing out what should be glaringly obvious: the Republicans' continuing support of Trump with their 'no obstruction' brown-nosing is partisanship over anything else. There is little doubt that, if Obama had done the exact same thing Mueller listed in his report, the GOP would have been demanding his impeachment.

 

[Belz...]

But it is not difficult for me to give examples of disinformation and false narratives promoted by western intelligence/media.

That wasn't what you asked, though. Are you now changing your request?

I mean it's almost like "Russian disinformation" itself is a disinformation campaign by western intelligence/media.

Are you accusing the FBI and DOJ, and allied intelligence agencies, of fabricating this?

 

[Belz...]

This coming from an obvious Uber Alt Left Automaton, who has ( probably through no fault of his own) indulged in far too much Kool-Aid, and being transfixed upon the letters CNN and/ or MSLSD.... only to find incessant Trump bashing with not a shred of fact to back their collective Vitriolic Rhetoric up....but then what can one expect from Cable news outlets who have no Journalistic integrity no ethics, and have no problem bashing the 1st Amendment evidenced by their Borg like abuse of it.

I'm sure you think other people's news is fake, but yours is journalism.

 

[a_unique_person]

Meadmaker appears to be yet another one on this forum who does not understand that "insufficient evidence" is not that same as, and does not mean "no evidence"!

I'll just leave this here

Normally justice works the other way around. A trial will end depending on reasonable doubt. Mueller was not conducting a trial, he was performing an investigation. Hence the twist in the interpretation of the evidence leading him to remind Trump et al. that Trump cannot use the report as a basis to claim innocence or guilt. Only a trial, or in a president's case, an impeachment, will determine that.