Mueller Investigation pt 6

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Skeptic Ginger said:
Which is why the decision to impeach should be about the court of public opinion, not about removing Trump from office.

What we need to do is not let the GOP convince us impeachment would be a losing proposition. Of course they are going to promote that narrative. Are we stupid enough to believe them?
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yes you are


But I hope he does get impeached that'll just lock 2020 up for him
 
Trump Tweets

NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION, NO NOTHING! “What the Democrats are trying to do is the biggest sin in the impeachment business.” David Rivkin, Constitutional Scholar. Meantime, the Dems are getting nothing done in Congress. They are frozen stiff. Get back to work, much to do!

THE TRUTH! The Witch Hunt is dead. Thank you @marcthiessen.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Have you read the Mueller report? Or let Barr spoon feed a little of it to you?

Are you afraid what will happen if the House makes the report public in a way people hear more than Barr's whitewash?

What are you afraid of that you post pages and pages here trying to get people not to look at the Mueller report?
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My posting here does not prevent anyone from reading the Mueller report. It is available in bookstores and on-line. I asked if you are curious to discover whether or not Joseph Mifsud is a Russian agent or not. You seem not to care about this critical piece of information.

Devin Nunes has sent letters to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and the State Department asking for all the documents they have on Joseph Mifsud. All but the FBI are cooperating.

Do you support Devin Nunes and his attempt to discover the real identity of Joseph Mifsud? Don't you care about transparency?

Aridas said:
:But then, the kind of thing that actually happened was worse. For example, Trump literally gave a speech about his intended foreign policy written by a lobbyist for Russia. He literally asked Russia to do illegal things to help him... and made it perfectly clear right after that he wasn't joking at all (and they immediately started trying to do exactly what he asked). He did start claiming that it was a joke later, of course, after a bunch of backlash. Republicans were mostly happy with that, however unbelievable it was on actual inspection. That Trump apparently instructed a number of the members of his campaign repeatedly to try to make those illegal things happen makes it even less believable.

Incidentally, on Mifsud, from the Mueller report, since you seem excessively focused on that...

It sure sounds like you're trying to split hairs, focusing specifically on the lack of the word "Russian agent" there. The relevant connections are later described in more detail, of course. Perhaps it's worth bearing in mind that this is what's said after Papadopoulos' lies to the FBI and uncooperativeness allowed him to enough time to get out?
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We know that the Left and the Democrats are insincere when they say they are outraged by Trump "colluding" with Russia. They aren’t. If it is treason to get “dirt” on your political opponent from Russia then why isn’t the Left and Democrats outraged by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS. The Steele dossier which was used to get a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page and the Trump campaign came in part from Russian sources. So paid for political opposition, with Russian sub-sources, was used to go after Trump and interfere in an election. Yet they aren’t the slightest bit bothered by any of this. In the 2018 mid-terms some 70 percent of Democratic voters, along with a high number of Independents and even Republicans believed that Trump had colluded with Russia. Yet with so many voters basing their voting decisions on fake news and misinformation, once again, the Left doesn’t seemed concerned at all.

So do you believe that Joseph Mifsud is a Russia agent as stated by James Comey in his Washington Post op-ed a few days ago? This was the supposed basis for opening the Crossfire Hurricane counter-intelligence investigation on July 31, 2016. How could George Papadopoulos be colluding with the "Russians" if he had not met any Russians?
 
Aridas said:
Indeed. A question that I haven't heard answered, though, is if McConnell has any say over when a trial would take place. After the BS he pulled with Merrick Garland and pretty much every Judge that Obama nominated, it's actually a real concern. Would it be Roberts or McConnell who decides when?
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In my opinion, Roberts. It's really untested waters. There has never been a case where a president or any other official has been impeached, and the Senate didn't start a trial.

What I'm certain of is that there is a trial in the Senate, and the Senate has rules on how that trial is conducted, and the Chief Justice presides over the proceedings and decides if those rules are being followed. I don't know if the rules themselves dictate anything about the timing of the trial. If so, that would be the answer, and the Chief Justice would say that the rules have to be followed.

Where it gets dicey is if the rules leave the Senate a lot of options, and they decide to "interpret" the rules in such a way that is obviously outside of the intent of the constitution, and outside of 200 years of practice. In other words, the constitution is clear that impeachments are followed by trials. If the senate just refuses to hold a trial, would that be allowed? Well, I suppose what would happen would be that some set of Representatives would go to the Supreme Court and say that the Senate is not following the constitution, and there would be a ruling by the court as to whether they are subverting the constitution. My guess is that if they were literally refusing to hold the trial, the court would rule against the senate, but it's not the kind of thing that has ever been done, so there's no precedent to judge by.

Also, I've referred to the possibility of the senate changing its own rules. Would that actually be allowed? I think it depends just how far it goes, and what the circumstances are. Again, it has never been done, so we can't be sure how the court would react. My guess is that if it's a blatant political move that goes against the spirit of the constitution, the court would say it isn't valid, but that's just a hunch.
 
tanabear said:
For instance Italian member of the European Parliament, Gianni Pittella, campaigned for Hillary Clinton.
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How many fake facebook accounts did he create to push lies about Hillary's opponents?
 
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IsThisTheLife said:
Was it Bill Hicks who conjured a vision of an unnamed president-elect being taken into a room with a bunch of 'advisors' and senior spooks, the lights dim and 30 seconds of crystal clear 35mm footage of a car on Elm Street, Dallas, November 22nd 1963 plays out, the lights come up and someone says; "any questions, mr. president?"
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No, that was a crazy, zone-eyed conspiracy nutter in the Conspiracy episode of Penn & Teller’s Bull$h*t.
 
All this talk about Republicans not holding a trial, though, is strictly theoretical. I agree with Applecorped that it would be a huge win for the president.


With one possible exception...….


I've looked at the Mueller Report. In there, there's the stuff about Michael Cohen and Trump Tower Moscow. I began my participation in this thread asking what Trump actually did. It's kind of telling that no one picked up on what I actually meant, or could answer the question, but let me demonstrate what I meant. Here's what he did:

While campaigning to be President of the United States, he was engaging in negotiations with the Russian government for real estate deals worth billions. He lied about that, repeatedly, and directed his cronies to lie about that, repeatedly. After being elected, one of those cronies kept up that same set of lies before a congressional committee, in order to protect Trump's image. Trump let it go on, which resulted in his former lawyer being thrown into jail, and Trump turned on him and let him go down.

That's a winning political narrative. That really demonstrates the sort of scumbag that Trump is. He's a lying weasel who surrounds himself with yes-men, with the sort of people who would do anything to gain his favor, but when the heat is on, Trump cuts and runs, and throws them under the bus.

(Just in case anyone wonders, that above paragraph is not just some sort of "Here's how they should spin it" example. It's my actual opinion of Donald Trump.)

Even that one probably isn't enough to get a conviction in a court of law, which means it sure as heck isn't enough to get a conviction from a Republican senate, but it's something that people can relate to as really, truly, awful behavior.

The rest of the report is full of ways that Trump and his cronies tried to spin things for public relations purposes. That might be contemptible, but it's not criminal. The Democrats should shut up about that and emphasize the one thing that probably also isn't criminal, but it might be, and it is, at the very least, disgusting.
 
How about pretending that US elections aren't still under threat and refusing to harden them?
That's a violation of the Oath of Office.
 
Meadmaker said:
While campaigning to be President of the United States, he was engaging in negotiations with the Russian government for real estate deals worth billions. He lied about that, repeatedly,...
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Could this be one possible tack?

I mean, making the 10,000+ lies or misleading statements made by Trump to the American public the kind of “misdemeanor” that the Founding Fathers had in mind when they deliberately used vague language in describing the grounds for impeachment. If the chief executive is a habitual liar, that can have dire consequences if and when a real emergency presents itself. I think that right now, if the president made a case for war, a majority of the public would doubt the veracity of any claim he made. A majority of the Senate would be unlikely to convict Trump for chronic lying, but such lying should be categorized and documented and presented to them, for history’s sake if nothing else.
 
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tanabear said:
We know that the Left and the Democrats are insincere when they say they are outraged by Trump "colluding" with Russia. They aren’t. If it is treason to get “dirt” on your political opponent from Russia then why isn’t the Left and Democrats outraged by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS.
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This argument was pathetic the first time it was trotted out a fair while ago now. It's no less pathetic now. It depends upon trying to create a false equivalence by citing a way that the two are similar while ignoring the primary concerns in play. Much like -

tanabear said:
Now imagine if a politician from the Russian Duma attended and spoke at a campaign rally for Trump. The Left would go into an apoplectic rage, demanding investigations, impeachment and treason trials. They would certainly want to ban all Russian politicians from campaigning on behalf of American politicians. Yet a foreign politician from Italy campaigns for Hillary Clinton and it doesn't even register on their outrage meter at all.

This shows that this Russian interference nonsense is just a pretext to get rid of Trump, in other words a coup attempt.
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Just like that quote, it also depends on lying about what is being said about how serious it is. In this case, for example, that conspiring (it looked like Trump and campaign sought to do this and action was taken to try to do so, but various members got off on technicalities because Mueller was being absurdly "cautious" about what indictments to issue) with a foreign government to have illegal actions done to help one win is "illegal." "Illegal" is not the same as "treason." Now, Fusion GPS isn't a foreign government, their findings were not used to affect the election, their methods were legal, and the repayment for their services was clear and above board. All four of those are substantial and important differences that make the attempted equation utterly absurd.

More could potentially be added on, for that matter, but Fusion GPS is far more equatable with the Trump campaign's association with the Israeli company Psy-Group, which, to be clear, "The Left" isn't calling illegal. The social media manipulation strategies that they were pushing are problematic, of course.

tanabear said:
The Steele dossier which was used to get a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page and the Trump campaign came in part from Russian sources. So paid for political opposition, with Russian sub-sources, was used to go after Trump and interfere in an election. Yet they aren’t the slightest bit bothered by any of this.
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:rolleyes: The Steele Dossier was revealed to the public by Buzzfeed on January 10, 2017. That's well AFTER the election. What kind of election interference are you claiming it caused, exactly? The FBI was completely silent about that and anything else negative to Trump and there were apparently agents who pumped out LIES and significant pressure to hurt Hillary and help Trump. Really, the whole "The Left are being hypocritical" nonsense on display here is based on straw man arguments and nonsense.

tanabear said:
In the 2018 mid-terms some 70 percent of Democratic voters, along with a high number of Independents and even Republicans believed that Trump had colluded with Russia. Yet with so many voters basing their voting decisions on fake news and misinformation, once again, the Left doesn’t seemed concerned at all.
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After reading the Mueller Report, the concerns from then still look to be clearly warranted. Even moreso if one adds on Trump and his Administration's actual actions regarding Russia after he officially became President.

tanabear said:
So do you believe that Joseph Mifsud is a Russia agent as stated by James Comey in his Washington Post op-ed a few days ago?
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Given the statements in the Mueller Report, the conclusion that Mifsud was acting as an intermediary to the Russian government is far from unreasonable, though not certain beyond any unreasonable doubt, as some right-wing propaganda demands for it to be. It does look like Mueller was wary of decisively concluding it based on insufficient information available, though. Insufficient in fair part because of the lies of a member of the Trump campaign - just one of the ways in which the Trump campaign's lies materially interfered with investigation of the matter.

tanabear said:
This was the supposed basis for opening the Crossfire Hurricane counter-intelligence investigation on July 31, 2016. How could George Papadopoulos be colluding with the "Russians" if he had not met any Russians?
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Hmm? You're saying that the Russian nationals involved weren't Russians? How interesting.
 
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Meadmaker said:
In my opinion, Roberts. It's really untested waters. There has never been a case where a president or any other official has been impeached, and the Senate didn't start a trial.
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Johnson? Clinton? That's two Presidents that have been impeached and gone to a Senate vote on whether to remove them or not. There have been a number of impeachments, either way.

As for the rest of your post, it's been snipped because I don't really have much comment to add, not because I ignoring it. Unnecessary to say, but I felt like saying it this time.
 
dasmiller said:
Suppose a DA had a police report that showed that a powerful person in his district had committed some serious crimes, and the DA decided not to pursue it because he believed that it would politically costly for him. We'd consider him a bad person for putting career considerations above his duty to the public.

Why is it different for Congress? If they (in this case, House Democrats) believe that there's sufficient evidence that Trump committed significant crimes, how can they ethically not impeach?

Of course, the Senate may simply ignore it or vote that Trump is really a great guy, and that would be unethical of the Senate, but the House can't control that. If the House doesn't impeach, then the House Democrats are being unethical so that the Senate Republicans can ethically ignore Trump's crimes.
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Yes impeachment probably would fail, but it would clearly put the responsibility for failing to do their duty on the Senators who vote against.
 
Meadmaker said:
It's kind of telling that no one picked up on what I actually meant, or could answer the question, but let me demonstrate what I meant.
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Mmm. My apologies for not being one of the ones who responded with a series of specifics, or a particular sales pitch, even if I did touch on a few later in what I said about the Trump-Russia issue - media coverage vs. an actual Democrat's concerns... much as, quite frankly, my list would likely get rather long. The particular example you gave is focused on a case where Trump just gave compromat on himself to the Russians and committed deception and crimes to cover it up, yes, which was mentioned in the "reasons to remove him as soon as possible" part of that.

Honestly, though, one of the biggest issues with forming a particular winning political narrative is that Trump's just done so very much that it's hard to focus on any particular thing and the right-wing's outrage propaganda that preaches about how Trump being called out for doing horrors and illegal things is nothing but political chicanery. As I also mentioned before, had Clinton done 1/5 of the bad things that Trump did in his first 6 months alone, Democratic Party Senators would rather certainly have been effectively forced to remove him from office via impeachment by Democrats... with obviously willing support from the Republicans.
 
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theprestige said:
US elections are run by the states. Absent new legislation arrogating that responsibility to the federal government, I'm not sure there's much the president can do to harden them.
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Taking the lead on coordination and aid is a good start. As it is, McConnell's actively blocking the Senate from even hearing legislation on the general subject, as part of a broader strategy to give the pretense of Democrats having done nothing.
 
BobTheCoward said:
The defense for that is easy...

..he is not pretending but actually thinks this way.

Do you have any evidence he pretends?
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If he *really* believes other than what the multifarious experts in the trade are saying conclusively occurred and is occurring, then this points to incompetence or worse. It's no better than "pretending" to not believe.

In the end, a leader who is demonstrably not expert in a field cannot haughtily expect his opinion to supercede without question the conflicting, essentially unanimous opinion among his experts in said field. To do so would be to invite and enable autocracy.
 
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