Impeachment, Indictment, 25th Amendment

and when?

Tom Malinowski @Malinowski (Diplomat, former Asst Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Congressman elect) | 7:50 PM - 20 Dec 2018:
He's burning down the house now. Years from now, the only thing that will matter, the one thing people will remember, is who helped to put the fire out.

Vulnus alit venis et cæco carpitur igni.
Quod me nutrit me destruit.
Ex vitio alterius sapiens emendat suum.

^ non sequitur

The House democrats with their majority can impeach pretty much anytime they want--if they want. It would then go to the Senate where a two thirds majority is needed to remove the POTUS from office. Democrats have 47 Senators if you include Sanders and King who caucus with them. That would mean they'd need all of them +20 Republican Senators crossing over and IMO that happening over the next several months is very unlikely. No doubt though that Trump makes practically all of the Republican Senators nervous as fuck about 2020 but particularly those up for reelection in competive states like Collins, Gardner and maybe 2 or three others.

I don't think the House Democrats are going to make any serious moves to impeach until at least some Senate republicans are ready to seriously break ranks. I think the possibility of that gets stronger towards the end of 2019 and the more he undermines them with shit like the pullouts in Syria, Afghanistan?--or loses his mind with his decision making such as in taking on responsibility for the upcoming shutdown and the more the several strands of investigations start closing in on him--all those things separately together could well play into his being impeached but I think that's at least several months away.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump | 9:32 AM - 24 Dec 2018:

I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security. At some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy!
_________________________________________

Alternative NOAA @altNOAA | 11:19 AM - 24 Dec 2018:

'Twas the Night Before Christmas, when all thro' the White House, only a creature was stirring - the fat crazy louse. The indictments were sealed by the Grand Jury with care, with the knowledge that Mueller soon would be there.

Merry Christmas!
_________________________________________

@Tannude | 11:23 AM - 24 Dec 2018 :

Everyone sing!

We wish you a Mueller Christmas
We wish you a Mueller Christmas
We wish you a Mueller Christmas
And impeachment next year

Indictments we bring
To you and your kin
Indictments for Christmas
And impeachment next year

5: He doesn't actually need Democrats to make a deal. Republicans control both houses of Congress, but they weren't even able to muster the majority vote needed for a motion to proceed. Trump doesn't even have Republicans unified on his side in this shutdown fight.

Time for G.O.P. to Threaten to Fire Trump
Thomas L. Friedman | Dec. 24, 2018

Republican leaders need to mount an intervention.

...Trump’s behavior has become so erratic, his lying so persistent, his willingness to fulfill the basic functions of the presidency — like reading briefing books, consulting government experts before making major changes and appointing a competent staff — so absent, his readiness to accommodate Russia and spurn allies so disturbing and his obsession with himself and his ego over all other considerations so consistent, two more years of him in office could pose a real threat to our nation. Vice President Mike Pence could not possibly be worse...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/opinion/impeach-fire-president-trump.html

ETA_____________________________________________________________________

The vice president should be preparing for the worst
Ed Rogers | December 24, 2018

...His office is populated with good people who are capable, get along well with each other and are not part of the wild dramas constantly emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

...For hand-wringers such as me, it feels as though we are vulnerable. Something bad is going to happen. No one staff member can change the existing dynamic, but there is no harm in adding some extra horsepower. The vice president can accommodate the president’s insecurities and help prepare for the worst. Just hoping for the best isn’t what the job requires. We are on notice. Trouble is coming. The vice president would be doing a service by reinforcing his office with an experienced chief of staff, in case something extraordinary happens.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/12/24/the-vice-president-sh...

________________________________________________________________________

Someone tweeted about the irony of a marginal 72-year-old climate-denier dissing a seven-year-old who believes in Santa Claus...

Christmas Eve 2018, Trump on NORAD Santa-tracking phone with seven-year-old:
"Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at seven it's marginal, right?"

"He's burning down the house now."

He is? Burning down the house? How?

"Debt Up $1.37 Trillion Since Last Year; $10,743 Per Household... "

trump and republicans are lying hypocritical self-serving assholes. Film at 11.

Trump Tower fire: no sprinklers on floor--Trump fought sprinkler requirement--and no working smoke detector in unit--that's how. One dead. Four firefighters hurt. Management sued estate of dead man.

Mass hysteria continues. Film at 11.

A beefed-up White House legal team prepares aggressive defense of Trump’s executive privilege as investigations loom large
Carol D. Leonnig | January 9 at 6:44 PM

A beefed-up White House legal team is gearing up to prevent President Trump’s confidential discussions with top advisers from being disclosed to House Democratic investigators and revealed in the special counsel’s long-awaited report, setting the stage for a potential clash between the branches of government.

The strategy to strongly assert the president’s executive privilege on both fronts is being developed under newly arrived White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who has hired 17 lawyers in recent weeks to help in the effort.

He is coordinating with White House lawyer Emmet Flood, who is leading the response to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on his now-20-month-long investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Flood is based in White House Counsel’s Office but reports directly to Trump...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-beefed-up-white-house-legal-team-prepa...

Neal Katyal @neal_katyal | 7:28 PM - 9 Jan 2019
https://twitter.com/neal_katyal

THREAD ON WHETHER MUELLER REPORT WILL BE PUBLIC, AND @washingtonpost STORY ABOUT TRUMP HIRING MANY NEW LAWYERS TO ASSERT EXEC PRIVILEGE.

Short Answer: It will be public.

1.The special counsel rules, which I drafted at DOJ 20 years ago, contemplate 2 kinds of reports. One is a report from Mueller to the AG, at the close of his investigation: “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.”

2. That document is to be confidential. But there is a second, separate reporting requirement, which forces the AG to notify Congress “with an explanation for each action…upon conclusion of the Special Counsel’s investigation, including…

3. ... a description and explanation of instances (if any) in which the AG concluded that a proposed action by a Special Counsel was so inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices that it should not be pursued.”

4.That report must explain why the investigation has concluded, and any instance in which the AG overruled the Special Counsel. The provision was designed to ensure “Congressional and public confidence in the integrity of the process.”

5.Notably, we wrote the circumstances for an AG to overrule a Special Counsel very tightly—it has to violate “established Departmental practices.”

6. So, to take one hypothetical example, generic DOJ opinions about whether a sitting President could be indicted do not create an “established Departmental practice” about whether an individual could be indicted for successfully cheating in a Presidential election.

7.There is no DOJ established practice that says if a Presidential candidate cheats enough and wins the Presidency, that he gets a get-out-of-jail-free card.

8.There is one other important aspect to the regulations. If a Special Counsel is worried that the AG may cover something up, the regs give him an important weapon.

9.Because they require a mandatory report to Congress about any instance of the AG overruling a Special Counsel, they put the thumb on the scale of a Special Counsel telling the AG he will take a sensitive act and waiting for AG to say no. That triggers the reporting requirement.

10. It is a safeguard to prevent a cover-up, it creates a mandatory report to a separate and coequal branch of govt. So that is why I believe Mueller has a move left to play if Whitaker or Barr (if confirmed) try to stymie him and his full report.

11. Now the President can try to claim executive privilege. Nixon tried that, it didn’t turn out so well. He got crushed in the Supreme Court. Trump’s claim appears even weaker—much won't even concern presidential deliberations & the part that might (Comey) has been waived by Trump.

12.And here, there is another problem: Trump’s legal team has been saying they don’t think a sitting President can be indicted.

13. Leaving aside the point above in (6) and (7), the only way that claim makes any sense is if the President must be impeached first. Every real scholar who says a sitting President can’t be indicted couples that with a view that impeachment is the remedy.

14. So if the President asserts the view he can’t be indicted, he has to allow the turnover of all investigative material to Congress. Otherwise he would be no different than King George III, literally above the law.

15.This point is fleshed out in my NYT op-ed below*. The key point is that even if you think Trump won't be indicted, his legal claims about his immunity from indictment set up & invite the launch of impeachment investigation + eviscerate his exec priv claims.

16. Bottom line: the President can try to hide the Mueller Report. He will lose to the public’s right to know.

* Neal Katyal: Can’t Indict a President? That Could Hurt Trump (May 21, 2018)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/opinion/neal-katyal-indict-trump.html

If I were Trump, I'd insist--in advance--that the Mueller fantasy-game be reported in full and publicly; Mueller has spent a lot of time and money and had damn well better have some extremely serious "goods" to show for that. If he doesn't, he should be brought to account legally and politically.

What, I wonder, do Democrats and their lynch-mob House of Representatives do if and when, having impeached Trump, the Senate acquits Trump, and Trump, having served only one term, runs for re-election and wins, whether, once more, solely by the Electoral College balloting or, unlike in his first term, by a majority of the popular votes cast nationally? What then?

And what if, having been convicted in the Senate and removed from office, Trump were to run for president in November 2020 and, as described above, were to win the election?

Hmm, Congress? What then?

As U.S. courts have rightly judged in cases during the first decades of the existence of the United States, certain matters are "political" and are not to be settled in a court of law. (It happens, by the way, on this point, to have been extremely unfortunate that the U.S. courts failed to have understood at the time, a century and a half ago, that negro-slavery was not properly one of these 'political' issues and, instead, ought to have been settled in court, and in favor of the emancipation of all people held in bondage in the United States of the time.)

Who--which person, which individual-- is deemed fit to serve as president of the United States, having been duly-elected under the existing and applicable rules and laws, that is a "political issue" par excellence and it ought not be left solely up to a court to determine this over and against the expressed wishes--by their cast ballots--of the electoral majority according to law.

Courts must not be invited to second-guess electorates. Elections are to be decided by ballots cast in the legal electoral processes, not by ballots cast by juries or by judges in service on a federal court case. Thus, the Gore v. Bush presidential election ought to have been decided by a counting, and re-counting, until satisfactory, of all the disputed ballots in the disputed electoral districts--not by a panel of judges deciding "time has run out." When an electorate speaks, its decision should be respected through the end of the elected official's term of office--unless duly impeached and convicted of what may respectably, in the public's eyes, and not only those of a Hell-bent partisan lynch-mob, "high crimes and misdemeanors".

> 14

Pink elephant sighted at 10 o'clock.

Film at 11.

(lol)

TicToc by Bloomberg @tictoc | 12:02 PM - 9 Jan 2019:

JUST IN: Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is being called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee by Jan. 29
to answer Democrats' questions about recusing himself from Robert Mueller's Russia investigation

_________________________________________

TicToc by Bloomberg @tictoc | 12:02 PM - 9 Jan 2019:

MORE: In a letter to Whitaker, Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler suggested that
the Justice Department is dragging its feet in a previous commitment to appear before the panel #tictocnews

(Letter posted at https://twitter.com/tictoc)

_________________________________________

TicToc by Bloomberg @tictoc | 12:02 PM - 9 Jan 2019:

MORE: Nadler also suggested Whitaker was ignoring the wishes of the Justice Department by trying to push back the testimony date #tictocnews

(Letter posted at https://twitter.com/tictoc)

Trump's ex-lawyer Michael Cohen will testify at House Oversight Committee before entering prison
Dan Mangan | Brian Schwartz 1/10/2019

President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen will testify at the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7, he said.

Cohen is due to begin a three-year prison term in March for a range of crimes that include ones related to Trump.

Cohen admitted facilitating payments to two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, in exchange for their silence about alleged affairs with Trump. He also admitted lying to Congress about the extent of Trump's involvement in an aborted plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

...Shortly after the Oversight Committee's chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., announced Cohen would testify, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said that "it will be necessary, however, for Mr. Cohen to answer questions pertaining to the Russia investigation, and we hope to schedule a closed session before our committee in the near future."

...Cummings noted that earlier this week, he sent sent letters to the White House and the Trump Organization renewing his of four months ago for documents related to "Trump's apparent failure to report debts and payments to Mr. Cohen to silence women alleging extramarital affairs with the President before the election."

"Those documents are now due on January 22, 2019," Cummings said...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/10/ex-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-to-testify-to-hous...

Hillary Clinton got almost 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016 and she wasn't exactly all that popular with people on the left or even lots of independents in the middle. IMO she was about the least popular candidate that the Dems could have run. He won't be running against her again and almost anyone IMO that the Dems nominate this time around is going to be much more popular than Hilary and much more likely to unite people to vote for him/her if only because if Trump is the republican nominee he will also unite independents and moderates to vote for the dem nominee and just a few reasons:

1. his administration has taken corruption and cronyism into unchartered territory.
2. his tax bill is going to hurt a lot of people.
3. his anti-hispanic rhetoric is going to put Hispanics (the largest growing bloc of new voters) firmly in the democratic corner.
4. he's even I would think managed to kill a good % of military happy voters with his shit treatment of Mattis, Kelly etc.
5. this shutdown we're currently in the middle of won't do him or his party any good and IMO I wouldn't be surprised if the economy starts tanking in the next two years and he will take the hit for it if it does
6. his is the biggest shitshow of shitshows of any Presidency I've seen in my lifetime and it's not even close and after two years he still doesn't have a clue how the government works or what it's supposed to do.

Very easily the majority of voters hate him and he's done nothing to expand his base. The border wall is just another of his lies and likely to be a failed promise. What he has done was pretty much evident in the mid-term rejection of his first two years and since then there's been 0 sign at all that he learned any lesson from that. If anything he's been more of an idiot. Fantasy land is thinking he would do better in 2020 and there's a fairly decent chance he won't make it to 2020 anyway.

>18 lriley:

1) It's been quite some time since there was any "uncharted territory" left in American political corruption--end even longer, of course, if one expands the "map" to include Aisa or Europe or Africa or South America.

2) A common feature of tax legislation. I'm still waiting for the revolutionary backlash.

3) Rank identity-politics at work there. This assumes that Hispanics vote as a block. It is typical of current pseudo-left liberal naievté. See, e.g. one of numerous examples: "Build the wall and allow DACA recipients like me to stay in America, the only country I know and love" | By Hilario Yanez

4) Again, you simplistically conflate being "pro-military" with having automatic sympathy for one or another particular present or former general-officer supposedly treated shabbily by Trump. It's just not so simple as that. Why wouldn't _many_ reflexively pro-military types be just as likely to blame these generals for not having served their appointments in Trump's administration to their boss's (Trump's) satisfaction? In a Harvard/Harris poll conducted in Dec. 2018, when asked to state, for each of a list of persons or groups, their views as "Very Favorable/ Favorable" 40% had a favorable or very favorable view of Jim Mattis while, among the same respondants, 84% held a favorable or very favorable view of "U.S. military" (at p. 41 of 122 in the poll results.) The same poll indicates that, among people self-identified as "Republicans", more of them said they approved of Trump than approved of the party itself.

(At p. 71) " Does General Jim Mattis's resignation as Secretary of Defense make you more likely to support Donald Trump's foreign policy, less likely to support Donald Trump's foreign policy, or about as likely to support his foreign policy as before?" Result: a statistical dead-heat

"More likely to support Trump" (16%) & "about as likely to support Trump" (36%) (combined) : 52%

" less likely to support Donald Trump's foreign policy" : 48%

5) See reply 3), above.

6) Your personal hate-driven bias expressed here.

#19--your absolute idiocy expressed here and in #14.

News for you--when things are going really well for Trump he gets approval ratings in the low 40's--when they're not he's in the low 30's. That should tell you something about his odds of winning the popular vote. He doesn't rise above those low 40's and it's not going to happen in the next two years--not with what's incoming for him in the new year. He's had the easy part of his four years--the next two years the Mueller, SDNY investigations are going to come to fruition and peel some real skin off him and he's going to howl like a big baby because that's what he is. Add to that he House is going to join the party and go to town investigating him, his family and his cronies too. Cohen in early February--mark it on your calendar. I suspect that sooner than later those high's in the low 40's are going to drop to the low or mid 30's and his lows in the 30's are going to drop into the 20's. He ain't winning again.

But even without any of that--even if he could hold on to his base then he's going to have to defend everything he won the last time to win again and he's not going to win anywhere else and this is something you don't seem to be able to get through your thick cranium. He's not going to win independents--he's driving them away--he's not going to run against Hilary again either and he's driving women and Hispanics and gays away too. It seems the results of the mid-terms flew right past your radar and one of the lessons to be learned from that is how wildly unpopular he is.

Originally posted and edited 11 January, 2019
edited (†) 12 January, 2019

>20 lriley: "It seems the results of the mid-terms flew right past your radar and one of the lessons to be learned from that is how wildly unpopular he is."

Actually, they didn't. It seems to me that you missed something more significant in their import. There was this much-announced, much anticipated "Blue Wave" which was supposed to occur in the mid-term elections of 2018. But what I saw just didn't qualify for or live up to all the advertised hype. And I far from the only person to have noticed this.

" (from The New York Times)

"So how big was the blue wave?

"Over all, 2018’s shift to the left was smaller than the one in 2006, the last time the Democrats flipped the House. And it was half the size of the most recent Republican wave in 2010 when districts shifted more than 19 points to the right."

(from "Politico" 's "Friday Cover") "The Only Impeachment Guide You’ll Ever Need"
______________________
... ...

"Since the midterms, the question has gone from anti-Trumpist fantasy to practical gamesmanship—something being discussed in Capital Hill offices and hallways, at law firms and among party strategists and leaders.

In one sense, Trump is as vulnerable as he’s always been. In another, the risk is huge. The collision of anti-Trump forces with his powerfully loyal base—to say nothing of the president’s own thirst for conflict—would guarantee the most explosive political disruption in generations. If the effort misses, the blowback could easily propel Trump back into office in 2020, with a reinvigorated base bent on revenge.

“ 'If they’re dumb enough to impeach him, they’re going to lose the House and he’s going to be reelected and there won’t be a Senate trial,' said Joseph di Genova, an informal Trump adviser and frequent Fox News pundit. 'That’s what’s going to happen, and I hope they do it.' *

So, what would an impeachment really take in the Washington of 2019, and how would it all go down? To answer these questions, POLITICO interviewed more than two dozen sources, including sitting Republican and Democratic senators and members of Congress, current and former Capitol Hill aides, political operatives, historians and legal experts. The story that follows is the most detailed accounting, anywhere, of what dominoes need to fall if House impeachment articles were really to move forward, how a Trump trial in the Senate would go down and what—if anything—might break the Senate GOP majority apart enough to vote to remove their own president from office.

The picture won’t be consoling to anti-Trumpers who hope it will be easy, but neither will it reassure loyalists who see any attack on the president as off-limits.

"Politically, ousting Trump would require the same kind of seismic wave he successfully surfed during his 2016 campaign—nothing less, in fact, than another shakeup and realignment of the Republican Party. A pair of data points will help tell the story here. First, there’s Trump’s overall public approval ratings, which have been at historic lows throughout his presidency. The Real Clear Politics’ average currently has Trump at around 42 percent. His floor to date: 37 percent, in mid-December 2017. “Nothing’s going to change until he hits 30,” said Jim Manley, a former Senate operative who worked for former Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

"But perhaps an even more important indicator on the impeachment front is Trump’s standing among likely GOP primary voters. The latest Gallup tracker shows the president holding an 89 percent approval among Republicans, the very same number he enjoyed right after he was sworn into office in January 2017. As long as figures like that don’t slide dramatically—and Republicans haven’t budged in their support despite nearly two years of White House turmoil—Trump is probably safe from seeing his own party toss him under the bus."

... ...

__________________

* I don't necessarily agree with these predictions down to the last detail but the gist of them may be essentially correct in some practical effects. In short, I can easily imagine the Democrats' designs to bury Trump under endless investigations creating a genuine backlash effect--which could be what sees him spared in the end.

Call us when you discover the kind of genuine high crimes and misdemeanors which united Republicans and Democrats in 1974 to ensure the forced-resignation of President Richard Nixon. If and when your lynch-mob achieves that, I'll be quite ready to join them in their effort to see President Trump out of office. You and they are, as I see it, a VERY VERY LONG way from that point. And I'm an original Leftist from the days of the Nixon nightmare.





Meanwhile, good, sincere and principled Leftists ought to, as I do, find it outrageous and infuriating to see any legally-elected U.S. official subjected to this kind of vendetta. There's your very real and very serious scandal and it is doing genuine and very deep and long-lasting harm to the nation---just as, so I suspect-- Putin hoped when he seeded the ground with false and ridiculous snares and delusions, in hopes of setting off a Democratic-Party-led witch-hunt against Trump--one which would sputter and croak on and on at great length and, in the process, split Americans more deeply than ever into two camps bitter and mutual in their distrust--the last thing they have in common.

So, we're now there and Putin has every reason to be extremely pleased with himself.

But, as he knows better than anyone, he could never have achieved these things without morons like the Nancy Pelosis, the Charles Schumers, the Eliot Engels, the Clintons, the Obamas, the James Comeys and, above all, Robert Mueller. And none of them need have had (†) the slightest notion that, behind their partisan ambitions, they, in effect, were doing, and continue to do, (†) the essential work for Putin's clever designs-- to sow serial discord, spun from nothing but Americans' pre-existing partisan suspicions with nothing real in fact to support where these are allowed to lead.

How Robert Mueller Can Write a Report the Justice Department Cannot Suppress
Benjamin Wittes | January 10, 2019

...There are really only a few plausible bases on which the Justice Department might decline to make the Mueller Report public. The document will likely contain some classified material. It will likely contain some grand jury material, which is protected from public disclosure under Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. It will probably contain some material plausibly protected by executive privilege. And it might contain information whose public disclosure would raise legitimate privacy concerns. Note that none of these concerns requires the suppression of the whole document; they all affect individual items of evidence or passages within it.

Nothing prevents Mueller from anticipating these concerns and writing an executive summary that contains no classified information, no grand jury information, no executive confidentialities and no material unduly invasive of the privacy of innocent parties. Such a summary might have to be spare, but it could certainly summarize all of Mueller’s major conclusions as to the president’s conduct. This would produce a document that would be hard to suppress even by an administration keen to do so. He could also write a table of contents that is itself telling to give readers a sense of the broader findings. (Depending on how much sensitive material there is, Mueller could even endeavor to write the body of the report itself in a fashion carefully scrubbed of all such information, relegating that material to appendices. I suspect, though I don’t know, that this would be difficult given the elements of the investigation that concern issues of counterintelligence and executive branch management.)

Particularly if Congress knew that Mueller had proceeded in this fashion, it could speedily obtain the summary of his conclusions and then, if the executive branch proved unwilling to turn over the other material, use it as a “road map”—so to speak—to both litigation and also to conducting its own investigative hearings...

https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-robert-mueller-can-write-report-justice-departme...

>22 margd:

The Legacies of Robert Mueller’s Investigations | By Victor Davis Hanson | August 13th, 2018

and, on YouTube :

Victor Davis Hanson 2018 - The Troubles in the Mueller Investigation

Victor Davis Hanson - The Mythologies of the 2016 Election

The jury is out on Victor Davis Hanson. His fellow conservatives cannot decide whether he is more stupid than racist, or more racist than stupid.

It does seem to me to be a close call. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Davis_Hanson#Criticism_for_his_views_on_rac...

>24 JGL53: I don't know...George W Bush gave the guy a medal...and he does have a wikipedia page...and proximity pasted three (3) (three!) of his public utterancings...I wonder what Hanson thinks about people with collapsed nostrils? I know that isn't racial (except in Michael Jackson's case), but surely it has meaning.

24: Citing Hanson is akin to admitting that all you have left to argue with is dishonesty and racism.

2) A common feature of tax legislation. I'm still waiting for the revolutionary backlash.

This is an example of the utterly disingenuous nature of most of proximity's commentary. The tax bill hasn't generated a backlash yet for the simple reason that its impact hasn't been felt yet. The provisions of the tax bill aren't going to be felt by most people until this reporting period (i.e. people who are currently preparing to file their tax returns). We'll see how well the tax bill goes over after people work through their returns and see how much the changes in the code affected them. Pretending that a lack of backlash thus far is an indication that everything is fine for the administration is being deceptive at best.

>26 StormRaven: >27 StormRaven:

LOL!

"Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?"

A 99 YEAR HISTORY OF TAX RATES IN AMERICA |
Prepared by: Brian T. Lynch

OUR TAX STRUCTURE USE TO BE MUCH MORE PROGRESSIVE THAN IT IS TODAY.

The Progressive Tax Code

Our progressive, or graduated income tax was implemented by Howard Taft in 1913. The idea was to create a system where those who did well bore a greater responsibility for funding the government. In fact, the original intent was to only tax the wealthiest citizens. The income tax was never meant to burden the majority of wage earners. The new law taxed individuals making $3,000 or couples making $4,000 per year. $4,000 at that time would be equivalent to about $100,000 per year in today’s dollars. What the law did not take into account was inflation. Much the same as is presently the case with the minimum alternative income tax, the original income tax brackets stayed constant every year while inflation and working class wages slowly rose. Eventually, income taxes became a burden to lower wage earners as well as the rich.

The progressive nature of the income tax is achieved by creating multiple income tax brackets to for rising levels of income. Each tax bracket has a slightly higher tax rate. Between 1913 and 1918 the number of tax brackets that applied to wealthy incomes rose to 56 brackets. By 1940 that number of brackets fell to 24 and there it more or less remained for the next 40 years.

What did rise over this time period were the marginal tax rates. By the 1950’s the top marginal tax rate for the wealthiest earners was 90 percent. The top marginal tax rate was gradually lowered over the next 30 years until it was at 70% in 1980. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan collapsed the top 9 tax brackets to lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50%. During is second term he eliminated 10 more upper tax brackets dropping the top marginal tax rate from 50% to just 28%. He also raised the tax rates on the lowest income earners, those who were originally not expected to contribute. At the same time, tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans combined with huge jumps in military spending resulted in huge budget deficits and a large national debt that has been with us since.*

The top marginal tax rate for wage income was eventually raised back to 35% but not before capital gains income was stripped from the progressive tax code and separately taxed at a rate of just 15%. Capital gains income represents the major source of income for the wealthiest Americans. So the original intent of the progressive tax code, that the tax burden should only fall on the wealthiest American’s, was turned upside down.

For a glimpse of the problem with our current tax structure, see the US states map at the following URL to see how much more the bottom 20% are paying in taxes, as a percentage of income, over the top 1%.
http://tiles.mapbox.com/occupy/map/TaxBurden

__________________________

* See the bold-face part followed by the additional bold-face & underlined part?
Do you grasp its significance? No, you don't. You won't understand why these statistics are significant because, frankly, you're just not that damn smart.

1988 --> 2019: 31 years. When do we move from "feeling" the "effects" to revolting over them?

LOL!

Impeach Donald Trump
Yoni Appelbaum | March 2019 Issue

Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.

...(contrary to his oath of office, Donald Trump) has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.

...In these five ways—shifting the public’s attention to the president’s debilities, tipping the balance of power away from him, skimming off the froth of conspiratorial thinking, moving the fight to a rule-bound forum, and dealing lasting damage to his political prospects—the impeachment process has succeeded in the past.

...suddenly, the members of the United States Senate will be forced to answer a question that many have long evaded: Is the president fit to continue in office? There will be no press aides to hide behind, no elevators into which they can duck.

...Today, the United States once more confronts a president who seems to care for only some of the people he represents, who promises his supporters that he can roll back the tide of diversity, who challenges the rule of law, and who regards constitutional rights and liberties as disposable. Congress must again decide whether the greater risk lies in executing the Constitution as it was written, or in deferring to voters to do what it cannot muster the courage to do itself. The gravest danger facing the country is not a Congress that seeks to measure the president against his oath—it is a president who fails to measure up to that solemn promise.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/impeachment-trump/580468/

If House impeached Trump, Chief Justice Roberts would preside over the Senate trial--not McConnell. (@tribelaw)

To Impeach or Not to Impeach
Philip Rotner | April 9, 2019

...political calculation always needs to be weighed against what is being sacrificed in its name. In this case, what is being sacrificed is insuring that a dangerous, corrupt, and incompetent president remains in office for another two years.

...Here are just a few of Trump’s high crimes that are far more serious than anything included in the Articles of Impeachment for Johnson, Nixon and Clinton:

Obstruction of the Mueller investigation by lying and encouraging others to lie about the purpose and nature of the Trump Tower meeting to obtain illegally hacked Russian government dirt on Hillary Clinton;

Obstruction by dangling pardons in order to influence witnesses not to testify;

Obstruction by openly encouraging witnesses not to cooperate with the FBI and government investigators, and praising those who refused to do so;

Ordering Customs and Border Control officers to disobey the law and refuse to admit asylum seekers, who have a statutory right of entry;

Abusing his power by threatening regulatory action to retaliate against news outlets who are critical of him, including opposition of the merger of CNN’s parent Time Warner with AT&T, and calling for government review of Amazon’s shipping rates;

Abusing his power by pressuring the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate his political adversaries, including Hillary Clinton;

Decimating the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies to the point that they cannot perform their functions;

Using “acting” titles for government officials in order to circumvent the Senate’s advice and consent function;

Ordering the United States military to do police work on the Mexican border, in contravention of the Posse Comitatus Act;

Profiting from the presidency by refusing to divest his business interests.

The list could go on, without even taking into account Trump’s more mundane alleged crimes like attempting to secure loans and insurance by giving false financial information to banks and insurers, conspiring to violate campaign finance laws by paying and covering up hush-money payments, and treating the supposedly charitable Trump Foundation, in the words of the New York State Attorney General, as “little more than an empty shell” used not for charitable purposes, but “to pay off the legal obligations of entities he controlled, to promote Trump hotels, and to support his presidential election campaign.”

...By ignoring compelling grounds for impeachment, we may get not only four more years of Trump, but also a precedent for a nearly unreachable standard of impeachment for the future.

https://philiprotner.com/2019/04/09/to-impeach-or-not-to-impeach/

The House can draw up articles of impeachment but the Senate won't go through---so the best that can be hoped for is a big show--which could backfire I suppose though Trump is a particularly divisive president and unpopular to a higher % of Americans.....and I just don't see that changing.

Really the way to get rid of him is to vote him out. The way to handle him on the campaign trail and at debates is to confront him with his lies, contradictions, bigotry and misrepresentations but also be clear about putting people over corporations and be clear about how to face issues like health care and climate change. Democrats haven't always been very good at all at this. One of the reasons Trump was conceivable to a good portion of those who supported him in 2016 is that people were sick and tired of being lied to by those they elected. So bringing everything into the light of day is the way to go.

Anyway the 2018 mid-terms was on the one hand a real pounding and on the other a partial corrective. At the end of the day it's probably best that the people decide..........and the electoral college is not really the people's will---it needs to be scrapped.

"Obstruction by dangling pardons"

the president's pardon-authority is Constitutionally-given. It is, practically speaking, and, by definition, his legal prerogative to use so it is simply not possible to classify the grant or even the hint of the likelihood of a grant-- of a pardon as being an (illegal) obstruction of justice. The president's pardon-powers are a feature of the official justice system, for fucking sake!

"Obstruction by openly encouraging witnesses not to cooperate with the FBI" ...

if this were a crime, every defense lawyer would be guilty of "obstruction of justice"---LOL!

_____________________________


"Ordering Customs and Border Control officers to disobey the law and refuse to admit asylum seekers, who have a statutory right of entry;

"Abusing his power by threatening regulatory action to retaliate against news outlets who are critical of him, including opposition of the merger of CNN’s parent Time Warner with AT&T, and calling for government review of Amazon’s shipping rates;

"Abusing his power by pressuring the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate his political adversaries, including Hillary Clinton;

"Decimating the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies to the point that they cannot perform their functions;

"Using “acting” titles for government officials in order to circumvent the Senate’s advice and consent function;

"Ordering the United States military to do police work on the Mexican border, in contravention of the Posse Comitatus Act;

"Profiting from the presidency by refusing to divest his business interests.

The list could go on, " ...

and it would be similarly a load of worthless bullshit as charges of wrong-doing go.

>33 proximity1: he president's pardon-authority is Constitutionally-given. It is, practically speaking, and, by definition, his legal prerogative to use so it is simply not possible to classify the grant or even the hint of the likelihood of a grant-- of a pardon as being an (illegal) obstruction of justice. The president's pardon-powers are a feature of the official justice system, for fucking sake!

Just because an act is legal doesn't mean it can't be used for obstruction of justice. That's like saying since it's legal for me to give you money that if you're on a jury that it can't be witness tampering.

>34 jjwilson61:

"Just because an act is legal doesn't mean it can't be used for obstruction of justice."

I feel sorry for you.

"That's like saying since it's legal for me to give you money that if you're on a jury that it can't be witness tampering."

That is not even a coherent sentence.

Under law, the use of the presidential pardon cannot, by definition, constitute an act of obstruction of justice.

The president's pardon power is never grounds for allegations of a criminal act under the concept of "obstruction of justice," because the president may pardon any person for whatever reason he sees fit.

(I had to type here ( text deleted ) the sort of thing which the house-rules forbid being posted, and then erase it, just to vent my frustration with your fucking idiotic post.)

>35 proximity1:

Would it be illegal if the president was openly selling pardons? As you say, "the president may pardon any person for whatever reason he sees fit", but if the "reason he sees fit" were to be a brown paper envelope full of cash under the table, would that be legal?

....and may as well mention again that if someone is convicted on state charges Trump has no power to pardon.

>35 proximity1: OK, I'll spell it out for you:

"That's like saying because it's legal for me to give you money then if I give you money to change your vote on a jury then that can't be witness tampering."

Me giving you money is equivalent to the President promising someone a pardon
You changing your jury vote is equivalent to whatever the President wants in exchange for the pardon.

Can you comprehend that?

What it all will boil down to in the end is the question of the enforcement of the law, i.e., will we have rule of law or not?

trump is now seen and will continue to be seen by a vast majority of educated people, including the overwhelming vast majority of Constitutional law experts, as blatantly (publicly) violating a considerable number and variety of criminal and civil laws, both federal and state.

Will the law be enforced regarding trump - one day - or will he be given a pass - based on his being the sitting POTUS? And - after he leaves office -what can and will be done about his criminal behavior, both before and during his days as POTUS?

The Supreme Court and the Senate republicans knocked Nixon's dick in the dirt at the wrap-up of the Watergate scandal. Skip to the present - if these two entities do not come across at some point now regarding trump then the fat orange traitor will skip and escape justice.

(Except that trump's criminal activities under the state law - mainly of New York state - seem unavoidable for him.)

In any case, barring unforeseen beneficent circumstances arising in the near future, trump will continue to wield supreme political power for another 645 days - at least. Will the nation, and the world, survive? I bet it will. But, then, my track record to date as a serious gambler is shit.

>38 jjwilson61:

Unfortunately, your analogy is completely inapt; and, unlike you, I can actually understand your feeble, irrelevant "points" (as well as understanding why your objections are utter nonsense) without your having to explain these to me.

Until "recently" (i.e. President Ford's preemptive pardon of former-president Nixon), the presidential pardon had been used only post-conviction (we're leaving aside here Lincoln's blanket pardon of Confederate soldiers after the cessation of hostilities in the U.S. civil war, which were also granted without there having been legal convictions for criminal act (rebellion or treason against the United States (the rebels were indeed rare examples of people who fit the strict definition of "traitors" ) ). So no pardoned person had "escaped" "justice." He or she had, practically and theoretically, been through the justice system and convicted—FOR FUCKING SAKE!

Thus, even if one could prove some alleged "quid-pro-quo", virtually impossible unless the president himself admitted to it, this would be irrelevant since the president can pardon (any except himself or herself) for any reason or even NO REASON AT ALL--"just because he can." It's probably not even reviewable by a court. Or, if challenged, a court these days would simply throw out a legal challenge to the president's use of his pardon-power (unless he tried to pardon himself)--which may account for the reason that president Ford was able to carry out the outrageous act of preemptively pardoning Nixon for any crimes "he may have committed."

As is so often the case, here, again, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, didn't grasp that I'd perfectly well understood what you'd meant, nor even understood why and how you'd failed to get the point here, even after having it repeated to you. You might have gone and done some fucking READING on this topic, but, no, you couldn't be bothered to do that.

As I wrote above, I feel sorry for you. Get a fucking clue every once in a while!

_______________________________

● The Presidential Pardon Power
by Jeffrey P. Crouch

● (Congressional Research Service reports) An Overview of the Presidential Pardoning Power | by T.J. Halstead, Legislative Attorney American Law Division | Order Code RS20829 Updated December 12, 2006

“The President shall...have power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” This express language itself implies the inherent limits of the pardon power. First, the pardon power is limited to “offenses against the United States,” preventing the President from intruding upon state criminal or civil proceedings.(1) Likewise, the pardon power does not extend to “Cases of Impeachment,” preventing presidential interference with Congress’ power to impeach.(2)

"Absent these limitations, the President’s authority to grant pardons is essentially unfettered.(3) For instance, a pardon may be bestowed at any time after the commission of an offense, irrespective of whether charges have actually been pressed. Also, a pardon may be issued subsequent to conviction and during the service of sentence. Additionally, a pardon may be granted after a sentence has been served, in order to restore the civil rights of the individual in question.4 Furthermore, the President may also pardon a large group of offenders, as was done subsequent to the Civil War. (5) “

>40 proximity1: I'm afraid the strain of defending the indefensible has had dire effects on your mental health.

>41 jjwilson61:

If you're allowed to post that comment, then perhaps I'm allowed to observe that, given a choice between having to be either insane or be a moron, I'd much prefer to be insane.

You also had simply nothing at all to say against my points above on the merits--again, completely typical of your bullshit participation here.

In much less weighty, but controversial, decisions, we were advised to not make the other guy's decision, i.e., to not relieve him of his responsibility to make a decision. To do so corrupts the process one is given.*

George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him.
Opinion | The Mueller report is riddled with Trump's lies and manipulation

George T. Conway III | April 18 at 8:09 PM

The president tried to manipulate the justice system. Congress must not let this go, argues the Editorial Board. (The Washington Post)...

...As Charles L. Black Jr. put it in a seminal pamphlet on impeachment in 1974, “assaults on the integrity of the processes of government” count as impeachable, even if they are not criminal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-conway-trump-is-a-cancer-on-the-p...
______________________________________________________________________

The Mueller report is the opposite of exoneration
Opinion | The Mueller report is riddled with Trump's lies and manipulation

WaPo Editorial Board | April 18, 2019

The president tried to manipulate the justice system. Congress must not let this go, argues the Editorial Board. (The Washington Post)

...From here, the House Judiciary Committee must hear directly from Mr. Mueller. Lawmakers should insist on reading the entire report, including substantial sections that have been redacted from public view. Then they may face a difficult balancing act between the many valid reasons to regard impeachment as a last resort, and their responsibility to ensure that no one is above the law.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mueller-report-is-the-opposite-of-ex...

______________________________________________________________________

Dear Democrats: Mueller Just Handed You a Road Map for Impeachment. Follow It.
Mehdi Hasan | April 18 2019

...You now have access to the report itself, and even the “lightly redacted” 448 pages provide you with a clear and detailed road map for impeaching Donald Trump, in line with Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Listen to special counsel Robert Mueller. “With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,” he writes, adding: “The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”

Got that? The special counsel — who listed 11 instances of potential obstruction of justice in his report and refused to “exonerate” the president — placed the decision firmly in your court. This is the impeachment referral you claimed you were waiting for.

Trump, in Mueller’s view, may not have committed an “underlying crime” in relation to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — but this is frankly irrelevant to the case for impeachment. Listen to one of the 13 managers sent from your august body to prosecute the case against President Bill Clinton in the Senate in 1999. “You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job as president in this constitutional republic if this body determines your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role,” said then Republican representative — and now senator — Lindsay Graham. The process of impeachment, he argued, “is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”

...I defy any of you to read the special counsel’s report and conclude that this president did not lie, lie, and lie again.

...I also defy any of you to read the special counsel’s report and conclude that this president did not try and offer “favored treatment” and “rewards” to witnesses and defendants in the Russia investigation, à la Nixon.

...what, then, is the point of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution? If you’re not willing to remove this president from office, in the wake of this damning report, you might as well remove the impeachment clause from the Constitution. If not Trump, who?

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/dear-democrats-mueller-just-handed-you-a-roa...

______________________________________________________________________

Five questions that still need to be answered in the Mueller report
Opinion | The Mueller report is riddled with Trump's lies and manipulation

Jennifer Rubin | April 18, 2019
The president tried to manipulate the justice system. Congress must not let this go, argues the Editorial Board. (The Washington Post)
By Jennifer Rubin

...five topics that will require further clarification from Attorney General William P. Barr, Mueller and some of the figures involved.

First, the degree to which Barr and other members of the Trump administration, including press secretary Sarah Sanders, actively and thoroughly misled or even outright lied to the public is jaw-dropping....

Second, the idea that Mueller found there was “no collusion” has been debunked...

Third, there is replete evidence of obstruction of justice...

Fourth, the mainstream media’s report on the incidents that Mueller examined with regard to obstruction were, in virtually all cases, completely correct....

Finally, there is much more to come...

* One can question whether Trump should be prosecuted and whether it would be wise to impeach him, knowing the Republican Senate will never remove him. What is unarguable is that no person who has behaved in ways Mueller described — including repeated lies to voters and efforts to impair an investigation — should be reelected. Republicans who insist otherwise once more disgrace themselves.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/18/five-questions-that-still-nee...

______________________________________________________________________

Wow, just wow. Just the facts.

A Portrait of the White House and Its Culture of Dishonesty
Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman | April 18, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/politics/white-house-mueller-report.html

______________________________________________________________________

What Mueller Found on Russia and on Obstruction: A First Analysis
Scott R. Anderson, Victoria Clark, Mikhaila Fogel, Sarah Grant, Susan Hennessey, Matthew Kahn, Quinta Jurecic, Lev Sugarman, Margaret Taylor, Benjamin Wittes | April 18, 2019

...Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, and no, he did not conclude that President Trump had obstructed justice. But Mueller emphatically did not find that there had been “no collusion” either. Indeed, he described in page after damning page a dramatic pattern of Russian outreach to figures close to the president, including to Trump’s campaign and his business; Mueller described receptivity to this outreach on the part of those figures; he described a positive eagerness on the part of the Trump campaign to benefit from illegal Russian activity and that of its cutouts; he described serial lies about it all. And he describes as well a pattern of behavior on the part of the president in his interactions with law enforcement that is simply incompatible with the president’s duty to “take care” that the laws are “faithfully executed”—a pattern Mueller explicitly declined to conclude did not obstruct justice.

...Results of the Russia Investigation

...Findings on Obstruction of Justice

...the special counsel writes that “it is important to view the President’s pattern of conduct as a whole” because it “sheds light on the nature of the President’s acts and the inferences that can be drawn about his intent.”

...The report identifies and analyzes ten episodes of concern in the obstruction investigation.

conduct involving then-FBI Director Comey and Michael Flynn;
the president’s reaction to the continuing Russia investigation;
the president’s termination of Comey;
the appointment of a special counsel and efforts to remove him;
efforts to curtail the special counsel’s investigation;
efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence;
further efforts to have the attorney general take control of the investigation;
efforts to have White House Counsel Don McGahn deny that the president had ordered him to have the special counsel removed;
conduct toward Flynn, Manafort, and a redacted individual (likely Roger Stone); and
conduct involving Michael Cohen.

...Barr’s Bad Day

...The Political Reaction

...Political judgment is precisely what the circumstances require. Whether that judgment takes the form of an impeachment inquiry, an election campaign, or both is a question with which the political system will wrestle over the coming months. But no longer can the country escape the question of the acceptability of the president’s conduct by saying that it is under investigation, that we will wait until the facts come out, or that we won’t proceed on the basis of anonymous sources in news stories.

Mueller has put on the record a remarkable litany of opprobrious behaviors by the president and the people around him. He has also determined, for a variety of different reasons—legal, factual and prudential—not to proceed criminally against any more subjects. That leaves the judgment of those behaviors in other hands.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-mueller-found-russia-and-obstruction-first-anal...

ETA_____________________________________________________________

Mueller Report Counterspin: We Still Don't Know Why Trump Denied Russian Interference
Michael C. Dorf | April 19, 2019

...why did Trump repeatedly deny that there was Russian interference? I can think of four possibilities, none of which shows Trump in a remotely positive light:

1) Trump participated in or knew of participation by members of his campaign (including Donald Jr.) in an illegal conspiracy with Russian agents...

2) Trump was either trying to curry favor with Putin for personal gain...or afraid that Putin would release damaging information about Trump ...

3) Trump simply has a natural affinity for strongman dictators...

4) Trump's ostensible policy rationale -- seeking better relations with Russia -- motivated him not to want to antagonize Putin by calling Putin out for his election interference. ...

In a well functioning democracy, leaders of the opposition party would have a chance to put the question to the president or at least his spokesperson why Trump for so long falsely claimed there was no Russian interference when he obviously knew better, and the president or his spokesperson would have to give an answer or face consequences...

http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2019/04/mueller-report-counterspin-we-still.html

>41 jjwilson61: Ease up, man--the guy is going to implode. How would you feel if you came to know that it was YOUR post that led to his entirely internal and fatal combustion or, say, full body perma-cramp?

Mueller Hints at a National-Security Nightmare
Joshua A. Geltzer and Ryan Goodman | April 19, 2019

The missing piece of the report is a counterintelligence investigation that should set off alarm bells about our democracy and security.

The Mueller report isn’t actually close to a full account of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. That’s not just because of the redactions. When he was hired, Mr. Mueller inherited supervision of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation. That is the missing piece of the Mueller report.

President Trump may claim “exoneration” on a narrowly defined criminal coordination charge. But a counterintelligence investigation can yield something even more important: an intelligence assessment of how likely it is that someone — in this case, the president — is acting, wittingly or unwittingly, under the influence of or in collaboration with a foreign power. Was Donald Trump a knowing or unknowing Russian asset, used in some capacity to undermine our democracy and national security?

The public Mueller report alone provides enough evidence to worry that America’s own national security interests may not be guiding American foreign policy.

...the glimpses (of the ongoing counterintelligence investigation) we see in the Mueller report...should set off very serious national security alarm bells.

...A failure by political leaders to condemn the activities of a Trump campaign that openly welcomed Russian hacking and privately encouraged timely releases of damaging information about the campaign’s opponent would put our nation at further risk.

As president, Mr. Trump has taken a series of steps at home and abroad that advance Russian policy interests. At home, he has weakened American democracy, all but paralyzed our ability to act through legislation and vilified key institutions — particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community. Abroad, Mr. Trump has weakened NATO, given Russia an increasingly free hand in Syria, minimized sanctions against Russian actors, questioned America’s commitment to protecting Eastern Europe from Russian aggression and defended Mr. Putin on the world stage.

It’s hard to look toward the 2020 election with anything but concern — we have not come far enough to protect the democratic process from the threat of foreign election interference, and one reason may well be that the man in the Oval Office has been compromised and continues to be influenced, wittingly or otherwise, by a Kremlin eager to see the United States remain vulnerable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/opinion/mueller-report-trump-counterintellige...

ETA_______________________________________________________________________

Heard guest on 1A this morning say that FL election authorities didn't know they were hacked by Russia.
Orlando article seems to confirm that either they weren't told or they don't care:

Mueller report: FBI finds Russian attempt to hack presidential election got into one Florida county system
Anthony Man | April 18, 2019

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-mueller-report-florida-findings...

ETA________________________________________________________________________

Laurence Tribe @tribelaw | 12:37 PM - 19 Apr 2019:

A great example of potentially impeachable oath-defying dereliction of duty:
Trump responding to Mueller Report by taking a victory lap rather than
doing anything at all to protect our election systems from ongoing Russian attack.
Not treason, exactly, but treachery for sure.

Hold hearings. Issue subpoenas.
But also, pass legislation that forces admin to protect our election systems and that limits damage by Trump-eting Elephants in Must....
ETA: And take care of the important stuff. Climate change. NOW.

In a Functional Country, We Would Be on the Road to Impeachment
Michelle Goldberg | April 19, 2019

Mueller laid out the evidence for members of Congress to take action against President Trump. Will they?

...To not even try to impeach Trump is to collaborate in the Trumpian fiction that he has done nothing impeachable...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/opinion/mueller-report-trump-barr-impeachment...

The Mueller Report Demands an Impeachment Inquiry
Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic | April 20, 2019

...The Mueller Report describes, in excruciating detail and with relatively few redactions,
a candidate and a campaign aware of the existence of a plot by a hostile foreign government to criminally interfere in the U.S. election for the purpose of supporting that candidate’s side.
...a candidate and a campaign who welcomed the efforts and delighted in the assistance.
...a candidate and a campaign who brazenly and serially lied to the American people about the existence of the foreign conspiracy and their contacts with it.
And yet, it does not find evidence to support a charge of criminal conspiracy, which requires not just a shared purpose but a meeting of the minds.

...The Mueller Report describes a president who, on numerous occasions, engaged in conduct calculated to hinder a federal investigation.
It finds ample evidence that at least a portion of that conduct met all of the statutory elements of criminal obstruction of justice.
In some of the instances in which all of the statutory elements of obstruction are met, the report finds no persuasive constitutional or factual defenses.
And yet, it declines to render a judgment on whether the president has committed a crime.

Now, the House must decide what to do with these facts. If it wants to actually confront the substance of the report, it will introduce a resolution to begin an impeachment inquiry...

https://www.lawfareblog.com/mueller-report-demands-impeachment-inquiry

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Susan Hennessey @Susan_Hennessey | 6:34 AM - 20 Apr 2019
In light of the binding guidance a president cannot be indicted,
we need to consider what would it mean for something like the Mueller report to come out and
the House not to launch an impeachment inquiry.

Trump's moral squalor, not impeachment, will remove him from power (Guardian)

Congress cannot not rid us of this appalling man. Democrats must focus on voters who hold the keys to the White House...

But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.

Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away...

Impeachment or not I think the Mueller report is going to fester and be an indictment of this White House anyway. It can be used by whoever ends up being the democratic nominee to hammer away at Trump every minute of every hour of every day right up to the election and there's no point in not hammering.

I saw a clip of Elizabeth Holtzman yesterday that I thought was interesting. She talked about her days as a congresswoman during the Watergate hearings. She doesn't think that Mueller going before a congressional committee would be nearly as relevant as some of the witnesses and convicted in his investigations. Her point is why filter it through the mouth of the investigator when you can get the people who were really there to witness and have testified already and then people could decide for themselves by watching and listening these same witnesses describe under oath the things they saw and whatever or not Trump had to do with any of it.

Has Donald Trump Committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors?
John Nichols | May 2, 2019

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a noted constitutional scholar—and member of the House Judiciary Committee—discusses the question.

...john nichols: How should we be thinking about impeachment?

jamie raskin: It’s the people’s and the Congress’s final instrument of self-defense against a president who is trampling the rule of law and assuming the powers of a king. It has both legal and political dimensions. The legal aspect requires us to ask whether there have been high crimes and misdemeanors such as treason or bribery, which I take to mean grave offenses from on high of a public character against the democracy itself. The political part requires us to ask whether the public interest demands impeachment and conviction as a remedy to stop a pattern of misconduct that is contemptuous of the rule of law and our Constitution. If it were a purely legal judgment, it would have been assigned to the courts in Article III, but the founders rejected that idea and located it in Article I, with Congress.

...JN: How should the committee make the call on whether the inquiry that extends from the Mueller report, and related issues, will become an impeachment process?

JR: To me, the question is whether we have sufficiently abundant evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, meaning public offenses against the character of our government, which are part of a continuing pattern of attacks on our constitutional system. I’ve got to say that the mood here has changed over the last several days in late April, ever since the president told the executive branch of the government to stop cooperating with congressional investigations. They are trying to disable our capacity to investigate corruption of the security-clearance process, to question the former White House counsel Don McGahn, to obtain the president’s tax returns, and to call witnesses and get documents. The obstructionism we read about in the report has come leaping off the pages and is making it impossible to do our work.

Trump is trying to pull a curtain down over the entire executive branch and cut us off at the knees. Well, every member of Congress, regardless of political party, depends upon the oversight power and specifically the power to investigate the executive branch of government. Trump’s refusal to respond to our lawful demands is a direct assault on the separation of powers and an affront to our ability to get our work done.

JN: Doesn’t what the president is doing meet the standard of impeachment or a potentially impeachable offense?

JR: There is no doubt. Obstruction of justice is plainly an impeachable offense. It was the heart of the Nixon articles. Check out Article 3: It alleged presidential obstruction of justice and congressional process, and then assembled an inventory of different things Nixon did to block and confound the investigation, including lying, intimidating subordinates, destroying evidence, and so on.

The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for obstruction of justice when he told one lie about a private act of sex. I don’t hold that up as a standard for us. We would never sink so low as to impeach a president in those circumstances. If we wanted to impeach a president on the Republican standard that was used in the Clinton case, we would have impeached Donald Trump long ago because his hush-money payoffs to his mistresses constituted campaign-finance violations and are a far greater offense to the rule of law than Bill Clinton’s lie about a personal relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But we believe that impeachable conduct must be of a character that truly undermines essential public values, rather than just reflecting private infidelity and deception.

...JN: Is this a good time for the American people to be reading up on the issue, as well?

JR: You know, one of the pernicious dynamics of the Trump era is the assault on critical-thinking skills in the public. And constitutional literacy has been under powerful attack by a president who recently made the inadvertently comical suggestion that he wasn’t worried about impeachment because he would just appeal it to the Supreme Court. So I think it’s a great opportunity for Congress to help educate the public about the nature of the Constitution and for people across the land to reengage with it.

Whenever there’s a new outrage by Trump, one of my colleagues will get up on the floor and refer to Congress as a coequal branch of government, and I always think that there’s something forlorn and vaguely pathetic about that. We are not a coequal branch. We are the first among equals. We are in Article 1 of the Constitution. We are the representatives of the people. When you look at the powers of Congress, they are comprehensive and abundant. The president’s core job is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not thwarted and circumvented, much less violated.

The struggle to defend our oversight power is also a struggle to get America to see that we are a representative, constitutional democracy. We are not a presidential monarchy.

When you look at that outrageous 19-page job application, single-spaced, that Bill Barr submitted before his appointment, it’s all about his belief that the president of the United States cannot be found guilty of obstructing justice. This is way beyond the procedural point that the Department of Justice makes that the president cannot be indicted while in office.… This is an egregious constitutional error, which cuts against our fundamental belief that no one is above the law in our democracy and no one may be a judge in his own case. But the argument obviously has an eager supporter in Donald Trump, who has from the beginning promised to unleash prosecutors against Hillary Clinton and continually demands an investigation into his critics. He has incessantly interfered in the Mueller investigation.

JN: Does this period we are in have the potential, no matter what formal action Congress takes, to renew respect for the system of checks and balances?

JR: Well, I think that’s right. We’ve been plunged into a series of presidential wars and presidential crises for decades now, and this should be a moment when we restore the proper constitutional balance, with the Congress understood as the people’s branch of government. It needs to be made far more democratic, which is why we’re fighting for sweeping campaign-finance reform and abolition of gerrymandering in the states. But as imperfect as it is, it is the people’s branch, and we need to vindicate our power.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Also) JR: Donald Trump has a history of acting in greedy, irrational, bullying, and provocative ways, so I assumed that he would bring us to this point eventually. I felt at the beginning, and I feel now, that we need every tool in the constitutional tool kit on the table, and that includes the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, which we keep hearing about from people who leave the Trump administration.

The 25th Amendment, which was adopted in 1967, provides that the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can take action if the president is determined to be unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. But it also says that the vice president and a majority of a separate body appointed by Congress can act under these circumstances too. It’s just that Congress has never set up the body.

JN: You’d like to see that happen.

JR: It should have been done long ago. It’s necessary for every presidential administration, not just this one. There are lots of reasons that the president might be incapacitated, as the authors of the 25th Amendment, Indiana Senator Birch Bayh and New York Senator Robert Kennedy, observed. There are physical reasons, mental and cognitive reasons. These are serious things in the nuclear age, as the framers of the 25th understood.

So the 25th Amendment is not irrelevant to discussions about presidential accountability. The amendment itself is organized around separation-of-powers principles. You can go back and find dialogue among the senators who authored the 25th Amendment discussing the importance of having Congress engaged with the process as well as the cabinet. Congress is central to it. We have 535 Members of Congress, but just one president.

https://www.thenation.com/article/impeachment-trump-congress-mueller-barr/

Pelosi clashes with fellow Dems in closed-door debate on impeachment
HEATHER CAYGLE, JOHN BRESNAHAN and SARAH FERRIS | 05/20/2019 07:47 PM EDT

House Democratic leaders sparred internally on Monday over whether to begin an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies rejecting the call to move forward for now, according to multiple sources.

Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Joe Neguse of Colorado — all members of Democratic leadership — pushed to begin impeachment proceedings during a leadership meeting in Pelosi's office, said the sources. Pelosi and Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Cheri Bustos of Illinois — some of her key allies — rejected their calls, saying Democrats' message is being drowned out by the fight over possibly impeaching Trump...

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/20/nancy-pelosi-impeachment-1336587

Fucking asshole moron Americans!

Thanks to you, with your clinically-hysterical and in so many other ways. your insane "Trump Derangement Syndrome," a scorched-earth politics is now easily the way that national political affairs shall remain framed. This is the kind of vicious, stupid, and needlessly destructive political warfare that has in the past been a prelude to either real civil war or, short of that, to deep and protracted widespread violent civil disorder.

Now, with each new turn of the wheel of misfortune, the two main parties shall either be wreaking revenge on their adversaries or keeping score for the next round in which they'll take up the assault and look for revenge on the party just turned out of office.

Americans get only one president at a time and the position demands much from the person holding it. If the president finds that political adversaries are so bent on thwarting his every move, the whole country suffers. Americans can, should they be so exquisitely stupid, "cut off their own political noses to spite their faces"-- thereby ruining a president's capacity to discharge his duties--even the basic duties on which all Americans depend.

The signal virtue of democratic republics is that they allow changes in course; they allow trials of policy the success of which is unknown and unknowable in advance. In other words, the electorate is allowed to make what is, in the view those who see their wishes defeated at the polls, "a mistake". Though whether it actually proves to be that or, instead, a course which proves in reality to be very much better than those opposing it had thought possible—that cannot be assured prior to trying things.

Therefore, for the system to work other than by mutually-destructive partisan scorched-earth warfare, elections— which are determined by regular periodic appeals to the voting public for their grant of authority—must be respected by those whose parties are not elected. Democrats, of course, know this—since, when it seemed virtually certain that they'd be the winners of the presidential race, they demanded assurances of such good-sportsmanship from Trump and his supporters.

It turns out that, in demanding that, they were—in vast numbers—a bunch of fucking hypocrites.

So now the course ahead is very clearly and very firmly set: it is nothing short of a disaster-course, politically speaking.

We are going to see and live through round after round of partisan beating-each-other-to-death. The whole country—and all the common interests which depend on people having more good sense than they are now showing—is going to suffer tremendously until this madness burns itself out.

How much damage and of what kind and how enduring it shall be—these, no one can tell at this point.

Daily Beast: "Pelosi to Impatient Dems: We’ve Got Trump on the Ropes"

Circle the firing-squad!

Ready!

Aim!

Fire!

Goddamn you fools!

_______________________

(Youtube / (film) "Reversal of Fortune" (clip) "Everyone gets a defense!" (Alan Dershowitz)

The Case Against Impeaching Trump by Alan Dershowitz

The Case Against Impeaching Trump

#52--is 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' a thing? Apparently you and Alan Dershowitz think so. Since entering office Mr. Trump has acted as if he's ascended to a throne and as if laws don't apply to him like they apply to others. He's been subpoenaed and he ignores--when his associates are subpoenaed his instructs them to do the same--which is obstruction plain and simple. If I (or any other American that posts or reads here) did some shit like that I(we)'d be sitting in a county lockup.

The idea that Donald's being picked on then--'scorched earth politics'--isn't this the same guy that pushed and pushed and then pushed some more the b.s. theory that Obama wasn't born in the United States? What was that exactly if not scorched earth politics? But no I don't really see the democrats doing the same here--they are following a line of inquiry (when they go after D.T.'s financial and tax records) that was opened up in the Mueller report and Michael Cohen's testimony before congress-- so there's something that actually might be there instead of made up out of thin air...and if my name or even Proximity's real name (assuming that it's not really Proximity) were in an FBI report reportedly doing X, Y and Z would I (or should he) expect some follow up on that even if I(he) hadn't been charged with anything?--yeah, I(he) probably w(sh)ould....and keeping in mind that Mr. Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator to a felony that a indicted and imprisoned felon is currently serving time for he's pretty lucky not to be in prison too but IMO he should be. I would say just that one event is enough to push his ass into impeachment territory never mind anything else.

Speaking of scorched earth politics though--when Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia--he chose this center rightist Garland (and to the dismay of practically everyone on the left and to a lot of other democrats) as a conciliatory nod to congressional and Senate Republicans and Mitch McConnell threw that gift right back in his face. If I remember correctly Garland had been on the republican party's radar as a possible Supreme Court justice for some time but the fact that Obama chose him was enough that McConnell refused to advance the process. Mitch and his compadres more than less made the decision that it was going to be the Senate Republicans (not the Senate as a whole) that were going to decide who was worthy of that position.

It is also a fact that Trump has deliberately done his level best to delegitamize the Obama presidency--we've seen it in his attacks on Obamacare--we see it in his getting us out of the Paris Climate Accords and the Iran Nuclear treaty and any number of other things. If Obama had a hand in something Trump wants it undone.

>54 lriley: I consider Obama's timidity at that point the last shameful act in a horrific and terribly disappointing presidency. He rather quietly amassed nearly as many war crimes as Bush and cronies and refused to fight Insurance companies on health care. Historically, Obama will never be in Trump's dungeon--for Trump makes so much noise daily that his drone killings go virtually unnoticed, and his immigration policies are so berserk they will constitute a new category of international crimes against humanity.

By the way, just days after Trump got done giving Orban his hand job, Hungary voted with the UK on the Chagos Islands?

I don't read your crap.

Well, Iriley, who is writing crap here, you or me. It's got to be one of us.

Logically, though, if he doesn't read, for instance, my crap, he is responding to you by talking to me. Otherwise he is talking to you in response to me.

I believe he declared that he shall nevermore read either of our craps.

He definitively and more than once proclaimed he would never read any of my posts again. But as I have pointed out, and actually so have you now, he DOES read out crap, at least sometimes. You found one example of him reading your crap recently. I have written down three times when it was obvious through simple content analysis to determine that he had read mine.

I don't think that justifies calling him a liar, though, because it is so darn easy to peek.

#57--it could be both. But it's all good.

Whether he likes it or not though I have not made the same promise to him--so I'll continue to comment on his own 'crap' when I feel like it.

On the question of Obama--he ran his 2008 from the left and I was enthusiastic voting for him. I'm not about to say he was a terrible president as president's go but he was a major disappointment for me because he didn't govern from the left--more like the center right. IMO a president governs for the whole country but he should always lean towards his base--the people who put him where he is and not pander towards those who didn't. The republicans didn't respect him for it when he did pander to them either. They continued to demonize him every chance they got. This idea that the democrats have to 'work with' and appease republicans to 'get things done' certainly doesn't seemed to be shared by republicans. They pretty much have a 'my way or the highway' no compromise approach. The dems should be quid pro quo. The only way we're ever going to get medicare for all is that way anyway. There's no room for compromise on that or climate change--once you get the majorities you ram it right through and too bad if they don't like it. Those who don't want to be part of the solution need to get out of the way.

As for the drone strikes, war crimes--Obama's avenue away from those things was always to pull out--when we didn't disengage it was inevitable his administration was going to be tainted with some of the same crimes of the previous administration. There was no way of continuing and keeping your hands clean. FWIW Donald originally was for pulling out too and I'm pretty sure that his military advisers talked him out of it and maybe the same happened with Obama. The military does not like to admit defeat--they would stay into the 22nd century to avoid doing that. Cut defense spending in half would be a good start to making them see reason. Trump recently seems to me to be more and more bellicose--he's not going to pull out of Iraq of Afghanistan--more likely that we will be engaging somewhere else. I wouldn't be surprised he'd start a war to try to distract attention away from his legal issues. We shall see.

Too easy on Obama. He campaigned in 2008 on going into Pakistan, he murdered US citizens and just as importantly a lot of Yemeni bystandards in Yemen, and, well, I would like a complete list of where the US murdered at his orders and/or ultimate responsibility, but Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Palestine, Tunisia is probably not a complete list.
Keeping Guantanamo open itself was enough to put him behind bars in an international jail. He helped inure US Americans to complicity in torture, terror and murder. By not making the previous administration accountable, he sanctioned their crimes, which is bad enough; but committing them in apparent perpetuity should put him in the same cell as Bush, across the cold cement floor from Cheney, Abrams, Bolton, Rice, Clinton, Wolfowitz...The only worse criminal still living in the US is Kissinger, who deserves something beyond my imagination.

>5 margd: he didn't govern from the left--more like the center right

From a distance it looks as if centre-right is the furthest left one is going to see in the USA, and that to many US citizens centre-right looks pretty far left.

Former GOP Rep. Tom Coleman: Trump, Pence are illegitimate. Impeach them
Tom Coleman | May 22, 2019

...The political calculus not to pursue impeachment is understandable. Current polls show a majority of voters do not favor it. But critical times require exceptional leadership. Lawmakers of both parties should not blindly follow the polls but instead follow the evidence and their conscience. Politics should not rule the day. Partisan politics is what got us to this dangerous place — so dangerous, I believe, that the survival of our democracy is at risk.

Contemplate the possible behavioral problems of a Trump untethered from the law and who is frequently untethered from reality. Would we be surprised if he were to repeatedly brandish his get out of jail card while breaking, at will, democratic norms, presidential precedents and criminal statutes? Trump said early in his campaign that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Are we now at that point?

Because DOJ regulations put a president above the law while in office, I believe the only viable option available is for the House of Representatives, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, to open its own investigation, hold public hearings and then determine if they should pursue removal of the president through impeachment. There is a trove of evidence in the Mueller report indicating Trump has committed multiple impeachable offenses, including abuse of power and lying to the American public. Both were part of the articles of impeachment brought against President Richard Nixon. This process would allow a full public review of wrongdoing, while providing Americans an opportunity to obtain a better understanding of the consequences to our national security and the lingering threat to our democracy.

...the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 sets the order of officials who are in line to succeed a president, regardless of the reason. The first three officials listed are the vice president, the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate. If the vice president were unable to ascend to the presidency for whatever reason — for example resignation or impeachment — then the speaker would become president. Today that individual is Rep. Nancy Pelosi. It is unknown whether she would agree to serve as president or that the majority of the House would want her to do so.

The Constitution does not require the speaker of the House actually to be a member of the House of Representatives. Under these circumstances, with the specter of a national crisis looming over the vacancy of the presidency and vice presidency simultaneously, consideration should be given by House members to draft a nationally-known individual for speaker who would appeal to the vast majority of Americans. That person, after being sworn in as speaker, would ascend to the highest office in the land. Under the provisions of the 25th Amendment, the new president would nominate a vice president, who would take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both chambers of Congress.

...Tom Coleman is a former Republican U.S. representative from Missouri. He has served as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and at American University.

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article23071...

>48 John5918: Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been.

That's literally true, but Nixon would have been impeached if he hadn't resigned, which he did only because he was going to be impeached. The fact that Trump doesn't have the same wisdom doesn't make that not an effective impeachment.

>62 prosfilaes: "Trump doesn't have same wisdom" so resignation like Nixon's won't happen--unless self-interest compels him to resign? Himself, his money, or family members'?

The other difference is that Trump wouldn't retire quietly, so pardon isn't in the cards. If pardoned, he would be inciting and interfering and yapping about himself until the end of his days. The country would not begin to heal.

Trump is a one-man Nixon rehabilitator.

Numerous of the principals behind the vendetta against Trump—which began back before his election and then became super-charged since then—several of them, including former high-ranking F.B.I. officials (James Comey, Andew McCabe (and, peripherally, perhaps McCabe's wife as well)) and agents or others under their authority (Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page), former Attorneys General—Holder and Lynch and Clinton campaign operatives including, foremost, of course, Hillary Clinton herself, and former intelligence agency heads, (Clapper, Brennan)—some or all of these and others are going to face criminal charges and wind up either making a plea bargain or going to trial where some of them or all are going to be convicted of serious felonies.

There is now simply much too much known about the ugly clandestine criminal conspiracy against Trump's campaign and election for this affair to end without trials and convictions. They'll be richly deserved. Hillary Clinton and a number of her senior campaign aides ought to be convicted and sentenced to years of prison.

("Federal Rats Are Fleeing the Sinking Collusion Ship")..."the old leaky vessel of collusion is sinking. The rats are scampering from their once safe refuge -- biting and piling on each other in vain efforts to avoid drowning." —Victor Davis Hanson

#64--On whether Trump colluded with the Russians to throw an election--I don't think the Mueller report reached that conclusion--although Donald seemed to invite their help at least on a couple of occasions and he went to lengths to hide information to public view (or even flat out lie to the electorate during his campaign) regarding his Moscow Tower project. He also has obstructed justice numerous times and in a variety of ways. He has committed campaign finance and money laundering crimes and is an unindicted co-conspirator--that's a crime. There is reason to believe that there are tax crimes he is trying to avoid by not releasing tax and financial information relative both to his personal and his business dealings----which is to say at the very least he is a crook and his activities have been impeachable worthy. The Mueller report was at best kind of an exoneration in a narrow sense on the collusion thing but not on obstruction and other things. The self interested attorney general Barr would have people read it in the narrowest sense and not look at the broader implications at all.

On the subject of the Clinton's I am not a fan--nor a fan of their foundation. It is separate from this though. One might ask why him and not them? but really it's no excuse for Trump's own crimes. One is separate from the other.

On the subject of impeachment--there's a point where whether you're going to be successful or not in the Senate trial that you need to go ahead and get all the dirty laundry out in front of the public. Could it backfire? Yep--but doing nothing can backfire too. Taking action here is the better way to go. Getting Trump on the witness stand to face questioning would be something they should try very hard to do.

>54 lriley: Because it had nothing to do with letting the voters choose.

In reversal from 2016, McConnell says he would fill a potential Supreme Court vacancy in 2020
Ted Barrett | May 28, 2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/politics/mitch-mcconnell-supreme-court-2020/index...

When Democrats are finished impeaching, trying, convicting and removing President Trump from office, they can get started on removing his assistant, former-Vice president and, then, newly sworn-in president, Mike Pence.

When that task is complete and Pence is removed, Democrats can establish a new bureau in the Department of Justice (or, perhaps that shall be renamed as the Department for Official State Legal Security), the Bureau for the Protection of Democratic Thoughts and Activities, charged with discovery and prosecution of those who, having in one way or another, come into possession of knowledge of acts or thoughts of others which are anti-Democratic or otherwise a potential threat to the state's security, have failed to promptly notify the bureau's agents of this knowledge.

Eventually, these problems can be solved (according to some person's or people's notion of that) by fitting everyone with a continuously-recording-&-broadcasting chip.

THUS, (some person's or people's notion of those who are) Bigots and Other Deviants, political or otherwise, can then be quickly and surely discovered, arrested, tried and convicted and removed from posts of responsibility.

Before long, everyone shall have the correct, state-approved, thoughts and acts.

Trump seems a little upset about something.
(View video clips at https://twitter.com/atrupar )

Aaron Rupar (vox) @atrupar | 5:44 AM - 30 May 2019

Trump calls members of Robert Mueller's team "some of the worst human beings on Earth." 😳

Trump flatly denies a tweet he posted just an hour earlier, now claims "Russia did not help me get elected."

Trump reveals he has absolutely no clue how impeachment works, says, "I can't imagine the courts allowing it." (The courts have nothing to do with impeachment, which is the domain of Congress.)

Trump shakes the hand of a reporter (can't see who it is) who he commends for treating him "fairly."

Asked about report that Navy was asked to move a ship named after John McCain during his recent trip to Japan, Trump denies involvement, but goes on to trash John McCain

TRUMP: "There is nobody -- ever -- been more tough or difficult for Russia than Donald Trump."

For the second time in a matter of minutes, Trump trashes John McCain

TRUMP: "Some day you ought to read a thing called Article 2. Read Article 2. Which gives the president powers that you wouldn't believe. But I don't even have to rely on Article 2. There was no crime."

Trump concludes with a long rant about immigration

Laurence Tribe @tribelaw | 6:28 AM - 30 May 2019

There are now over 1,000 prior federal prosecutors of both parties who attest that the evidence in the Mueller report would’ve led to Trump’s indictment and conviction but for his immunity as president under DOJ policy.

"Trump reveals he has absolutely no clue how impeachment works, says, "I can't imagine the courts allowing it." (The courts have nothing to do with impeachment, which is the domain of Congress.)"

Really?

Maybe, at long last, it's time to stop assuming that Trump is an idiot or that he can't get and use good advice.

When I read Article III, section 2, I don't see any thing which indicates that the SCotUS cannot hear a challenge to an impeachment brought by the party who is the target of the impeachment. If there is such a limitation, perhaps someone would point it out to me. I know of nothing in or since Marbury v. Madison which bars the SCotUS from reviewing and issuing an opinion on the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and whether, in the case of President Trump, there is some impeachable act under those terms.

Suppose that the president habitually had offensive body odor--and he resisted demands that he bathe sufficiently to eliminate it. Is his refusal in this sufficient as a ground for his impeachment, trial, conviction and removal from office?

Essentially, Trump's foes have against him their opinion that his--Trump's--opinions "stink." That's a shame. And it may even be true in certain instances. But how does that justify an impeachment, trial and conviction for "high crimes and misdemeanors"?

Section 2.

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.

As I read margd, she implies that the U.S. courts cannot review (or intervene in) cases concerning impeachment.

Really? Where in the law does it say that?

I don't know that this question is even settled--as in "the courts may not ...."

___________________________________

>69 margd:

"There are now over 1,000 prior federal prosecutors of both parties who attest that the evidence in the Mueller report would’ve led to Trump’s indictment and conviction but for his immunity"....

So?

The criminal law doesn't work that way in the U.S., margd.

If you want a conviction, you have to have an indictment, a trial and a verdict first. And only the judge or the jury sitting in judgement at trial are competent to deliver that verdict. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference how many prior federal prosecutors of both parties ... attest that the evidence in the Mueller report would’ve led to Trump’s indictment and conviction but for his immunity. Their opinions are just that: their opinions. They have no force in law.

Meanwhile, Trump himself has spoken with better insight and authority on the matter than either you, Laurence Tribe or these former prosecutors have shown--and it's a hell of a shame on you and on them that he has :

"There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent. The case is closed. Thank you!”

>67 proximity1: When Democrats are finished impeaching, trying, convicting and removing President Trump from office, they can get started on removing his assistant, former-Vice president and, then, newly sworn-in president, Mike Pence.

Why would you suggest this? Is there any suggestion anywhere that Mike Pence has committed impeachable offences? While he may be obnoxiously right wing, that is not grounds for impeachment.

I haven't read Prox, but he might be reacting to a (Republican?) opinion that Pence, like Trump, won by illegitimate means, and should likewise face impeachment. (Can't find the post at the moment.)

Quel horreur! Impeachment and removal of Trump and Pence would mean Mme. Nancy Pelosi would assume the presidency--some mysogynists' worst nightmare, though we could (and have) done a whole lot worse, IMO.

The author of the piece, anticipating panties-in-a-twist reaction to prospect of a woman president (especially THAT one), wrote that a more acceptable candidate could be elected Speaker if the prospect of a President Pelosi is impediment to removal of Pence. Apparently, the Speaker doesn't even have to be an elected representative.

>72 margd:

Talking of misogynists' nightmares, Cyril Ramaphosa has just chosen South Africa's first Cabinet with 50% women. I believe Rwanda, Ethiopia and one or two Scandinavian nations share the same blessing. Africa sets an example to the world!

South Africa joins Ethiopia, Rwanda in small club of gender-parity cabinets (africanews.com)

Should Democrats Reserve Impeachment for the Catastrophe of a Second Trump Term?
Ed Kilgore (quoting David Frum) | May 30, 2019

...An acquitted Trump will be an immunized Trump. Is it vexing to hear Trump’s team misrepresent Robert Mueller’s report as an “exoneration”? Imagine what they will say and do if they defeat impeachment on a party-line Senate vote. It was all fake news, a plot by the Deep State. As false and wrong as those claims will be, how will Democrats sustain the momentum to hold Trump to account after a trial and acquittal? Won’t they then have to submit to the jeers of Trump henchpersons: This issue was litigated, and it’s time to move on?

Impeachment now threatens to turn the 2020 election into a referendum on the Democrats’ methods in Congress, not Trump’s wrongdoing in the presidency, in the campaign, and in private life.

...They should reserve the impeachment remedy for the very genuine possibility of a Trump second term, by which time the Senate will likely have shifted more in the Democrats’ direction....

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/should-dems-save-impeachment-for-possible...

>74 margd:

Oh, right—there's sound reason: a re-elected Trump, having just received a fresh mandate, is all the more vulnerable to a Senate trial's conviction on House impeachment charges...

and about those "charges"? Consider: the electorate could only have re-elected Trump (as is assumed in this hare-brained scenario of The Intelligencer's Ed Kilgore, cited by "margd") if that electorate had already considered and rejected the validity of this goddamned demented vendetta against Trump—which, as a matter of fact, they have done.

There is no great and wide popular desire to impeach, convict and remove Trump and surely that would only be better confirmed by Trump's re-election; this is instead mainly a delusional product of the Trump Derangement Syndrome mania gripping a minority of people, many of them in the so-called mainstream new media.

To put this idiotic piece of reasoning in simpler terms, it goes like this:

Democrats—and any others of those reasoning according to Kilgore here—suppose that the voters are going to re-elect Trump the better to have his partisan adversaries impeach him.

Now, if the lunacy of this hasn't struck you yet, consider then, too, that, by re-electing Trump, his presidential immunity to criminal indictment (to the extent that this is valid) is then renewed and extended into his new term of office while, were he not re-elected, he'd presumably then become once again susceptible to criminal indictment—provided only, we should hope, that there is some valid ground for an indictment. It is abundantly clear that, for far too many Democrats, anything or even nothing at all shall suffice for Trump's criminal indictment; they simply hate the man that much.

Re-elect Trump—so that we, his partisan foes, obsessed with his removal for purely partisan motives, can impeach him rather than "risk" "shooting and missing" in an impeachment attempt before the end of his current term.

God!, you people are political morons! And Trump, amazingly, is making laughing-stocks out of you!

When one thinks about it, the upshot of Kilgore's reasoning is truly striking. It ought to leave us dumbstruck: I cannot imagine any clearer or more convincing confirmation of something revealed about the assumptions contained in this reasoning— and it's just this:

in this point of view and, according to this line of reasoning, it is completely taken for granted that any electorate's decision to re-elect Trump—if that should happen—is irrelevant, is completely beside the point of anything that could matter or be interesting; so much so that it is not even noticed that the voting public's decision to re-elect Trump could be a meaningful indicator of something significant and something which, because of its significance, demands and requires general consent and respect as a statement of the popular electoral will.

Never mind that it is just conceivable that, next time around, Trump might win not only the majority of Electoral College electors but also a clear majority of the aggregate national popular vote—it could not possibly be clearer that such an outcome would make absolutely no difference at all to those who are bent on getting Trump out of office by any means necessary.

These people have zero respect for, confidence in or patience with the solemnly taken decision of millions of their fellow-citizens when the ballots of those fellow-citizens do not conform to their own ideas of what is right and proper for the nation. They relegate an electorate and its decision contrary to their wishes to the status of 'beneath our contempt', not even worthy of notice.

They are so completely consumed by the calculation of their strategies and tactics in the single-minded pursuit of Trump's removal that they can't even notice that Trump's re-election would have meaning, have significance, politically and that it rightly ought to have this. All they see, all they recognize is whether or not something has a positive or a negative influence on their ambition to remove Trump. They will support anything which they can calculate as a positive and oppose anything which falls outside that criterion's measure.

By this, they are stating, though they do not understand this—so blinded are they by their obsession— the public be damned, democratic elections be damned, majorities or pluralities which go against us be damned, democracy itself, however attenuated, however tattered, be damned. Trump's removal is so paramount that, to ensure it, they must "save" the impeachment process for the ultimate Trump term of office, and, therefore, Trump's re-election has no other significance than that it satisfies this necessity: it ensures that impeachment, should it fail, shall not leave the way open to a subsequent term through the effect of what they can only view as an "immunization" of Trump to further calls for removal.

What would be their next recourse if, in his second term, Trump faced down an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives or, "worse", once impeached, upon trial in the Senate, the vote failed to convict him? Patience with the legal processes and their outcomes? or Assassination? Mass-suicide?

ETA :

Professor who has correctly predicted 9 presidential elections says Trump will win in 2020 unless Democrats impeach | BY MARINA PITOFSKY - 05/30/19 11:16 AM EDT

An American University professor who has correctly predicted the last nine presidential elections says President Trump will win the 2020 election unless congressional Democrats, “grow a spine,” CNN reported.

Allan Lichtman, a political historian, said Democrats only have a shot at the White House if they begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, calling the decision both “constitutionally” and “politically” right in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“It’s a false dichotomy to say Democrats have a choice between doing what is right and what is constitutional and what is politically right. Impeachment is also politically right,” Lichtman told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Wednesday.

Lichtman has developed a system of 13 “key factors” that help determine whether the party in the White House will maintain its hold, according to CNN. The factors range from whether the party has an incumbent president running to the country’s short- and long-term economic conditions to foreign policy successes and failures. If the party loses out on six factors or more, he says they will lose the presidency.

Lichtman says the Trump administration is down three key factors: Republican losses in the midterms elections, a “lack of foreign policy success” and Trump’s “limited appeal to voters,” CNN reported. Impeachment would trigger a fourth key — scandal over the proceeding’s public nature.

Apparently the professor didn't get the memo.

Democrats and others intent on getting rid of Trump by any means possible are not, I repeat, not, so confident of their ability to get rid of Trump by House impeachment, and Senate trial and conviction. Instead, they're rather worried that an impeachment vote, even if passed by the House, might fail when the process moves to the Senate for a trial and a vote on conviction. Their concern is based on the most crass and ordinary of political calculations: with only "one shot" available, when are they best-advised to take it? Now, in Trump's first term? The concern is that, if they "miss" (i.e. fail to impeach), they shot their bolt and they have nothing left when (Alack and alas!) it's just possible that the guy might win re-election!

O! No! What to do!? Perhaps they ought to wait, some counsel; that way, they'd know that, with Trump in his ultimate term, they have 'nothing to lose' by attempting to scuttle his second election —having tried everything they could think of to scuttle his first election, not excluding resort to dastardly lies and fear-mongering and blatant propagandizing and to corrupting the country's Constitutional order and the integrity of its political institutional infrastructure, all of that failing to do the trick— they can throw caution, good sense, fair-play, decency, and everything else to the wind and"go for broke" only when it's clear that the risk of a failure to impeach or convict Trump might mean he not only survives politically but, dear God!, finds himself "immunized" against their years-long Neo-McCarthyite crusade to root out the base Evil of a general presidential election which done gone ag'in 'em.

Therefore, they reason, with his re-election, they'll have, in effect, "nothing to lose" at that point.

Never mind, I guess, that obsessively trying to reverse not one but two electoral decisions by the American voting public somehow does not qualify in their minds as being an element which might be described as involving "something to lose". As they define this, these are only those things which are strictly theirs to lose, as partisan Democrats; as for the country itself, why, Hell!, Sir!, of what concern is that to them?! We are, after all, dealing here with the gain or loss of a presidential election. Against that, what matter the integrity of the Constitution or the nation's political, legislative or judicial institutions?

The question is of course so absurd as to answer itself: as against getting rid of Trump, these matter not at all.

Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he's got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off

Look out kid
It's somethin' you did
God knows when
But you're doing it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin' for a new friend
A man in the coonskin cap, in the pig pen
Wants eleven dollar bills, you only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin' that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone's tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D.A.

Look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don't tie no bows
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

...

___________

—Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues

>75 proximity1: if that electorate had considered and rejected the validity

We don't put criminal accusations to the electorate to vote on the validity of the criminal accusation. They are heard by a properly constituted court (which I understand in this case would be the Congress) where detailed legal arguments are presented, not for or against the accused as a person but for or against whether the accused is proven to have committed said criminal offence, with lawyers on both sides of the argument. The findings of criminal trials are often unpopular with the electorate, but the verdict is supposed to be based on the evidence presented in court, not on popular opinion.

To impeach Trump there will need to be 218 house members vote for impeachment. Right now the Democrats could muster maybe 80 at best out of 235 members + Justin Amash. This ain't going to happen unless Nancy Pelosi gives it the go ahead and she's not ready and might never be--maybe the idea is to do the investigative work to set it up in case Trump wins another term.

from The Hill (Washington, D.C.)

Dershowitz: Shame on Robert Mueller for exceeding his role | BY ALAN DERSHOWITZ, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 05/29/19 01:45 PM EDT

“The statement by special counsel Robert Mueller in a Wednesday press conference that 'if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that' is worse than the statement made by then-FBI Director James Comey regarding Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. Comey declared in a July 2016 press conference that “although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

“Comey was universally criticized for going beyond his responsibility to state whether there was sufficient evidence to indict Clinton. Mueller, however, did even more. He went beyond the conclusion of his report and gave a political gift to Democrats in Congress who are seeking to institute impeachment proceedings against President Trump. By implying that President Trump might have committed obstruction of justice, Mueller effectively invited Democrats to institute impeachment proceedings. Obstruction of justice is a “high crime and misdemeanor” which, under the Constitution, authorizes impeachment and removal of the president.

“Until today, I have defended Mueller against the accusations that he is a partisan. I did not believe that he personally favored either the Democrats or the Republicans, or had a point of view on whether President Trump should be impeached. But I have now changed my mind. By putting his thumb, indeed his elbow, on the scale of justice in favor of impeachment based on obstruction of justice, Mueller has revealed his partisan bias. He also has distorted the critical role of a prosecutor in our justice system.

“Virtually everybody agrees that, in the normal case, a prosecutor should never go beyond publicly disclosing that there is insufficient evidence to indict. No responsible prosecutor should ever suggest that the subject of his investigation might indeed be guilty even if there was insufficient evidence or other reasons not to indict. Supporters of Mueller will argue that this is not an ordinary case, that he is not an ordinary prosecutor and that President Trump is not an ordinary subject of an investigation. They are wrong. The rules should not be any different.” …

Robert Mueller's 'no questions' routine is absolute nonsense | BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 05/30/19 10:00 AM EDT

“The very first and purportedly only press conference by special counsel Robert Mueller had the feeling of a Mount Sinai moment for Washington this week. Indeed, his message seemed to be the same as that of Moses, which is have faith and do not question. Mueller spoke some 1,200 words before virtually admonishing the press corps that 'I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner.' After refusing to answer questions, he went back to the place from whence he came.

“Last week, I wrote that it has become sacrilegious to question the motives or performance of Mueller. His press conference was the greatest test of such blind faith. Mueller announced that 'the report is my testimony' and that he would not answer questions from Congress either, beyond what is already in his final report. From anyone else, such a statement would be denounced as arrogant, evasive, or both. However, many members of Congress and the media accepted it as the gospel according to Mueller.

“The problem is that Mueller was uttering absolute nonsense about his inability to reach a conclusion. He likewise did not offer a principled basis for refusing to answer any questions. This includes obvious questions such as why he refused to comply with the request from his superiors to identify grand jury material, which delayed the release of his report. The disconnect in the coverage of his remarks was striking. Attorney General William Barr testified for hours on his role and has answered dozens of questions. He was promptly dismissed as evasive and even perjurious. Mueller declared he would tolerate no questions and declined to address any of the criticism of his work with very little objection from the media.

“The press conference this week should be an embarrassment for the Justice Department. The agency has long maintained that the special counsel could perform the same function as an independent counsel in determining whether high ranking officials committed criminal acts. For two years, Congress and the Justice Department expressly anticipated findings of any criminal conduct. Mueller employed a massive staff and spent tens of millions of dollars. Yet, it now appears that he never intended to make any findings of possible crimes by President Trump.

“Mueller insisted that, because there is a Justice Department policy not to indict a sitting president, he interpreted that to bar him from finding the basis for criminal conduct. According to Mueller, you can investigate but not reach basic conclusions on what the investigation found. One could understand why he would not be eager to answer questions about such an absurd interpretation, when his cited sources directly contradict him.

“I testified on these flawed memos from the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton impeachment. Like many other academics, I view the policy as unsupported by either the Constitution or the convention debates, but that does not matter because the memos have simply nothing to do with a special counsel finding criminal conduct by a president. The memos focus entirely on the indictment and prosecution of a sitting president. They do conclude that being a defendant in a criminal case would thus prevent any president from performing his duties, but they do not challenge the need to investigate a sitting president. History shows presidents routinely accused of criminal conduct, including in impeachment proceedings.

“Indeed, President Clinton was investigated and found to have committed crimes by an independent counsel. The Justice Department memos did not find that the investigation or such findings were improper. When the Independent Counsel Act subsequently expired, Congress was assured that the same investigatory function would be performed by any special counsels. The memos only addressed when a president can be indicted and said that prosecution must wait until he leaves office, since he could not function while in the docket of a criminal court or a federal prison.

“Mueller has insisted that the policy 'says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.' That is not actually what it says. The Justice Department concluded that its view 'remains that a sitting president is constitutionally immune from indictment and criminal prosecution.' It focuses on the prosecution of sitting presidents, not the investigation of sitting presidents. In referencing a process other than the criminal justice system, it refers to the only legal way to remove a president from office.

“Nothing in the memos even remotely bars a special counsel from reaching conclusions on the basis of possible criminal charges. Indeed, the memos accept that the Justice Department needs to establish such evidence to preserve a record for possible later charges. That is why Mueller was told by his superiors that there was no policy barring him from finding criminal conduct, only the policy against indicting while the president is in office. Even if you twist the memos to suggest some prohibition to reaching conclusions on criminal conduct, that debate should have ended when his two superiors, the attorney general and deputy attorney general, told him there was no such policy and asked him to reach a conclusion.

"His instructions and mandate were crystal clear. His position is even more nonsensical when you look at what he has already done. Mueller declared that “we concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime.” Yet, Mueller contradicted that statement when he declared that ‘if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so.’

“So which is it? Mueller actually did reach a ‘determination one way or the other’ on crimes related to collusion. In his special counsel report, he found that he could ‘not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’ In effect, Mueller ultimately came across as almost coquettish in his declaration that he would not make a clear finding of a possible crime but could not rule out criminal conduct by the president.

“In other words, Mueller can produce hundreds of pages of evidence of possible criminal conduct and repeatedly refer to not exonerating Trump of crimes but somehow cannot reach a conclusion on the weight of the evidence. Of course, Mueller did not address such questions because he would not tolerate questions. The media simply listened obediently as he claimed that he was only being “fair” when he repeated that he could not clear Trump of the crime. That, of course, led the media to declare that Mueller really was searching for criminal conduct with a wink and a nod.

"Whatever space Mueller occupied in maintaining such a position, it was neither created nor countenanced by federal law or Justice Department policy. Instead, he accepted the job of special counsel and then radically redefined it, without telling anyone outside of his staff. In that sense, he failed as special counsel. Mueller was not appointed to be a chronicler of allegations. Mueller was appointed to perform a prosecutorial function in the investigation of a president and his associates.

"Moreover, he does not get to dictate what Congress can investigate, or to stonewall the media.” ….

If the House is like the prosecutor and the Senate like the jury then prosecutors make decisions on whether to go to trial all the time on what a jury is likely to do. A prosecutor could be convinced that a defendant was guilty but if he was sure that he couldn't convince a jury of that then he wouldn't take it to trial.

>79 jjwilson61:

Yeah, of course. The Dems would naturally hesitate to resort to an impeachment if the jury's cooperation couldn't be assured. Gee. Well, "justice denied," huh!?

"If the House is like the prosecutor and the Senate like the jury then prosecutors make decisions on whether to go to trial all the time on what a jury is likely to do. A prosecutor could be convinced that a defendant was guilty but if he was sure that he couldn't convince a jury of that then he wouldn't take it to trial."

... "if he was sure that he couldn't convince a jury of that"...

The point, which somehow it seems you don't get, is that it's one thing for a prosecutor to lament the fact that, owing to a lack of key, and necessary evidence, he must conclude that no (properly motivated) jury would be likely to return a guilty verdict despite the prosecutors having lots of good, valid evidence which fairly inculpates the suspect(s) and something else for the Dems to reason—with an obsessive knowledge of the composition of the very "jury" which they shall face,—that "we'd never get a guilty verdict from these people.... and so, with that in mind, wait around hoping for more propitious times when, again, they can see the people who'll be sitting in judgment.

While impeachment isn't precisely the same as a criminal trial, nor has precisely the same principles governing its operation, many of the legal and probative elements are fully transferable from one to the other kind of procedure.

When it comes to matters of fairness, of justice, of the partiality or lack of it in weighing evidence and determining issues which turn not only on fact but on opinion, shopping for a favorable jury is a disreputable tactic as much in looking ahead to a Senate trial as it is in looking ahead to a criminal trial by jury.

What a pity this escaped your attention. What a pity it seems to have escaped many, many people's attention. It is, in fact, a telling commentary about these times. They're rotten in so many respects such as this.

People's grasp of and devotion to key principles of legal justice today are deplorable. The news media have done much to bring this about and little to redress it. That's at least in part because we're again in a nadir of journalistic standards of practice.

We have the shitty political culture our ignorance and moral bankruptcy leave us deserving.

...

Four in the mornin' and they haul Rubin in
They took him to the hospital and they brought him upstairs
The wounded man looks up through his one dyin' eye
Says, "Wha'd you bring him in here for? He ain't the guy!"
Here's the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For somethin' that he ne-ver done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world!

Four months later, the ghettos are in flame
Rubin's in South America, fightin' for his name
While Arthur Dexter Bradley's still in the robbery game
And the cops are puttin' the screws to him, lookin' for somebody to blame
"Remember that murder that ya happened in a bar?"
"Remember that you said you saw the getaway car?"
"You think you'd like to play ball with the law?"
"Think it might-a been that fighter that you saw runnin' that night?"
"Don't forget that you are white."

Arthur Dexter Bradley said, "I'm really not sure."
The Cops said, "A poor boy like you could use a break
We got you for the motel job and we're talkin' to your friend Bello
Now you don't wanta have to go back to jail, be a nice fellow
You'll be doin' society a favor
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin' braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple mur-der on him
He ain't no Gentleman Jim" ...

... ...

Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was "murder-one, " guess who testified?
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game!

...
________________________

Bob Dylan - Hurricane

Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
Bob Dylan
Oh, the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block
I’d ask him what the matter was
But I know that he don’t talk
And the ladies treat me kindly
And they furnish me with tape
But deep inside my heart
I know I can’t escape
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile with the
Memphis blues again
Well, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells
Speaking to some French girl
Who says she knows me well
And I would send a message
To find out if she’s talked
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine
An’ I said, “Oh, I didn’t know that
But then again, there’s only one I’ve met
An’ he just smoked my eyelids
An’ punched my cigarette”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Grandpa died last week
And now he’s buried in the rocks
But everybody still talks about how
Badly they were shocked
But me, I expected it to happen
I knew he’d lost control
When I speed built a fire on Main Street
And shot it full of holes
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Now the senator came down here
Showing ev’ryone his gun
Handing out free tickets
To the wedding of his son
An’ me, I nearly got busted
An’ wouldn’t it be my luck
To get caught without a ticket
And be discovered beneath a truck
Oh, Mama, is this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Now the tea preacher looked so baffled
When I asked him why he dressed
With twenty pounds of headlines
Stapled to his chest
But he cursed me when I proved it to him
Then I whispered and said, “Not even you can hide
You see, you’re just like me
I hope you’re satisfied”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Now the rainman gave me two cures
Then he said, “Jump right in”
The one was Texas medicine
The other was just railroad gin
An’ like a fool I mixed them
An’ it strangled up my mind
An’ now people just get uglier
An’ I have no sense of time
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
And when Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon
Where I can watch her waltz for free
’neath her Panamanian moon
An’ I say, “Aw come on now
You know you knew about my debutante”
An’ she says, “Your debutante just knows what you need
But I know what you want”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb
They all fall there so perfectly
It all seems so well timed
An’ here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

JAN CRAWFORD, CBS NEWS interviews Attorney General William Barr:

…
(CBS This Morning) JAN CRAWFORD: But it seems like you have a concern that there may have been a bias by top officials in the FBI as they looked at whether to launch and conduct this investigation?

WILLIAM BARR: Well it's hard to read some of the texts with and not feel that there was gross bias at work and they're appalling. And if the shoe were on the other--

JAN CRAWFORD: Appalling?

WILLIAM BARR: Those were appalling. And on their face, they were very damning and I think if the shoe was on the other foot we could be hearing a lot about it. If those kinds of discussions were held you know when Obama first ran for office, people talking about Obama in those tones and suggesting that "Oh that he might be a Manchurian candidate for Islam or something like that." You know some wild accusations like that and you had that kind of discussion back and forth, you don't think we would be hearing a lot more about it?

… …

“But when you came into this job, you were kind of, it's like the US Attorney in Connecticut, I mean, you had a good reputation on the right and on the left. You were a man with a good reputation. You are not someone who is, you know, accused of protecting the president, enabling the president, lying to Congress. Did you expect that coming in? And what is your response to it? How do you? What's your response to that?”

WILLIAM BARR: Well in a way I did expect it.

JAN CRAWFORD: You did?

WILLIAM BARR: “Yeah, because I realize we live in a crazy hyper-partisan period of time and I knew that it would only be a matter of time if I was behaving responsibly and calling them as I see them, that I would be attacked because nowadays people don't care about the merits and the substance. They only care about who it helps, who benefits, whether my side benefits or the other side benefits, everything is gauged by politics. And as I say, that's antithetical to the way the department runs and any attorney general in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital and I realize that and that is one of the reasons that I ultimately was persuaded that I should take it on because I think at my stage in life it really doesn't make any difference.” … …

>74 margd: Should Democrats Reserve Impeachment for the Catastrophe of a Second Trump Term?
Ed Kilgore (quoting David Frum) | May 30, 2019

The downside of reserving impeachment for the catastrophe of any second Trump term is that we'd have President Pence for three years instead of one, and while a smidge steadier and more honest (?) than the current occupant, he has significant downsides himself.

RE: ... "The downside of reserving impeachment for the catastrophe of any second Trump term is that we'd have President Pence for three years instead of one" ...

______________

How do you figure, margd? No one here actually believes for a moment that your mob-justice bunch would hesitate to drum up a pretext on which to get rid of Pence, too, once he's installed.

By your demented logic, Trump, so obviously guilty of, at the very least, obstruction of "justice" (LOL!), then, logically, Pence has to be an accessory-after-the-fact to this obstruction, right? (Unless, of course, you are naive enough to suppose that the president and his vice-president are, in a matter of such importance, playing an elaborate game of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." LOL! IN that case, you'd go after Pence for being so amazingly naive.)

And, besides, as usual, you miss certain essential things:

Try telling Obama, Clinton, Podesta, Clapper, Brennan, Holder, Lynch, Comey, McCabe, Peter Strzok or Lisa Page and all the other conspirators behind the conspiracy to defraud the FISA court's warrant-process and knowingly corrupt the administration of official justice department agencies that, after Trump is removed and Pence takes over, with William Barr still in his office as Attorney General, "everything will work out just fine."

I'm sure they'd all be relieved to hear it! LOL!

Barr is seriously smart and apparently he's a genuine straight-shooter, i.e., not for sale. Too bad for the people mentioned just above.

Tick! ....... tick! ......... tick! ..........

…
“ (from New York Magazine : "In Terrifying Interview, William Barr Goes Full MAGA") Later in the interview, (Attorney General William) Barr grossly contradicts Mueller’s findings with regard to Trump’s ties to Russia. ‘Mueller has spent two and half years, and the fact is, there is no evidence of a conspiracy,” he says. ‘So it was bogus, this whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.’

“This is just a wild lie. Mueller was unable to establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia. He was unable to establish this, in part, because ‘some individuals invoked their Fifth Amendment right,’ or ‘provided information that was false or incomplete,’ or ‘deleted relevant communications.’ Indeed, the two Trump campaign officials most closely linked to Russian cutouts, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, refused to cooperate with prosecutors. A failure to establish a criminal conspiracy is not the same thing as finding “no evidence of a conspiracy.”

… Indeed, the two Trump campaign officials most closely linked to Russian cutouts, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, refused to cooperate with prosecutors. A failure to establish a criminal conspiracy is not the same thing as finding “no evidence of a conspiracy.” Nowhere does the Mueller report say there’s no evidence of a conspiracy. —Jonathan Chait (emphasis added)

Senator Mark Warner (D. - VA.) speaking to Margaret Brennan CBS News Face the Nation (June 2, 2019)

“I saw absolutely no evidence that politics played any role—and again, if law enforcement and the F.B.I. had not opened an investigation when they had as much evidence as they did of Russian intervention, they would have been irresponsible—“

(emphasis added)

From May, 2017 to April, 2019, the Mueller investigation spent more than 25m USD.

"To carry out the investigation and prosecution of the matters assigned to him, the Special Counsel assembled a team that at its high point included 19 attorneys-five of whom joined the Office from private practice and 14 on detail or assigned from other Department of Justice components. These attorneys were assisted by a filter team of Department lawyers and FBI personnel who screened materials obtained via court process for privileged information before turning those materials over to investigators; a support staff of three paralegals on detail from the Department's Antitrust Division; and an administrative staff of nine responsible for budget, finance, purchasing, human resources, records, facilities, security, information technology, and administrative support. The Special Counsel attorneys and support staff were co-located with and worked alongside approximately 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, a paralegal, and professional staff assigned by the FBI to assist the Special Counsel's investigation.

Those "assigned" FBI employees remained under FBI supervision at all times; the matters on which they assisted were supervised by the Special Counsel"

— Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election Volume I of II page 13, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

… “In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of "collusion." In so doing, the Office recognized that the word "collud(e)" was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation's scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office's focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law. In connection with that analysis, we addressed the factual question whether members of the Trump Campaign "coordinat(ed)"-a term that appears in the appointment order-with Russian election interference activities. Like collusion, "coordination" does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement-tacit or express- between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election Volume I of II — page 2, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)


“The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons conspired or coordinated with the IRA (Internet Research Agency, LLC) . Section II of this report details the Office's investigation of the Russian social media campaign.” (emphasis added)

Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election Volume I of II — Page 4, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I

“Second, while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges. Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any Campaign official as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal. And our evidence about the June 9, 2016 meeting and Wiki-Leaks' s releases of hacked materials was not sufficient to charge a criminal campaign-finance violation. Further, the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign conspired with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.” (emphasis added)

Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election Volume I of II— Page 9, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I

“The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA's interference operation.”
— page 14, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“While certain campaign volunteers agreed to provide the requested support (for example, agreeing to set aside a number of signs), the investigation has not identified evidence that any Trump Campaign official understood the requests were coming from foreign nationals.”
— page 35, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“The investigation did not find evidence that the Trump Campaign recovered any s~ch Clinton emails, or that these contacts were part of a coordinated effort between Russia and the Trump Campaign.” — page 61, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“Summer 2016. Russian outreach to the Trump Campaign continued into the summer of 2016, as candidate Trump was becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for President.”
— page 4, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I

“The Office did not locate Rasin (Alexei Rasin, a Ukrainian associate involved in Florida real estate) in the United States, although the Office confirmed Rasin had been issued a Florida driver's license. The Office otherwise was unable to determine the content and origin of the information he purportedly offered to Stone. Finally, the investigation did not identify evidence of a connection between the outreach or the meeting and Russian interference efforts.”
— page 62 , EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“This email appears to be their final exchange, and the investigation did not identify evidence that Cohen brought Klokov's initial offer of assistance to the Campaign's attention or that anyone associated with the Trump Organization or the Campaign dealt with Klokov at a later date.”
— page 74, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“No communications or other evidence obtained by the Office indicate that the Trump Campaign learned that Foresman was reaching out to invite the candidate to the Forum or that the Campaign otherwise followed up with Foresman until after the election, when he interacted with the Transition Team as he pursued a possible position in the incoming Administration.”
— page 80, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“The investigation did not find evidence that Clovis responded to Klein's email or that any further contacts of significance came out of Klein's subsequent meeting with Greenblatt and Rabbi Lazar at Trump Tower. Klein 8/30/18 302, at 2.” — page 90, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“…No documentary evidence, and nothing in the email accounts or other communications facilities reviewed by the Office, shows that Papadopoulos shared this information with the Campaign.”
— page 94, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“The investigation did not identify evidence that the Campaign passed or received any messages to or from the Russian government through CNI (Center for the National Interest) or (Dimitri) Simes.” — page 103, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“The Office found no evidence that Kislyak conversed with either Trump or Sessions after the speech, or would have had the opportunity to do so.” — page 105, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“According to written answers submitted by President Trump, he has no recollection of learning of the meeting at the time, and the Office found no documentary evidence showing that he was made aware of the meeting--or its Russian connection-before it occurred.”
— page 110, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“But the Office did not find evidence that¬ the original idea for the speech was connected to the anticipated June 9 meeting or that the change of topic was attributable to the failure of that meeting to produce concrete evidence about Clinton. Other events, such as the Pulse nightclub shooting on June 12, could well have caused the change. The President's written answers to our questions state that the speech's focus was altered ''(in) light of' the Pulse nightclub shooting. See Written Responses, supra. As for the original topic of the June 13 speech, Trump has said that "he expected to give a speech referencing the publicly available, negative information about the Clintons," and that the draft of the speech prepared by Campaign staff"was based on publicly available material, including, in particular, information from the book Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.”
— page 116, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (¬some emphasis added)

“The investigation did not identify evidence connecting the events of June 9 to the GRU's hack-and-dump operation. OSC-KA V _00029-30 (6/14/16 Email, Goldstone to E. Agalarov).”
— page 120, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

“According to Goldstone, around January 2017, Kaveladze contacted him again to set up another meeting, but Goldstone did not make the request.753 The investigation did not identify evidence of the transition team following up.”
— page 121, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

to be continued, LOL!

Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election Volume I of II — page , EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I

— page , EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I
— page , EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I
— page , EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I

___________________________


“Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps, the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.” * — Page 10, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME I (emphasis added)

______________________________

* on "unavailable information" and, generally, 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,'

See : (The Conversation) "You look but do not find: why the absence of evidence can be a useful thing" | April 22, 2019 9.23pm BST

At a NATO press conference in 2002, the then US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared the war in Iraq justified on the grounds that although there was no evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs):

Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist.

"A hidden God? Extraterrestrials? Communists? WMDs? If this is where the slogan 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' leads, why would anyone find it compelling?

"The slogan sounds like a cautionary tale – a healthy dose of scepticism to ward off the pox of hasty inferences drawn from a paucity of evidence. But trouble brews when cautionary tales get deployed as indisputable methodological principles.

... ...

"This is not how the burden of proof works.

"If you doubt that Iraq had WMDs (because there was no evidence it did), you do not have the burden of proving that you are right. Nor do you have the burden of disproving that super-intelligent terrestrials or extraterrestrials exist.

The burden rests with those who claim that such things are probable enough to be live options."

Q: Can the "Let's get Trump, whatever it takes"-mob even understand this?

#85--Reading some of your shit about accusing people falsely......The Central Park Five case is back in the spotlight. A new netflix series on the case. Maybe you should watch. But anyway why is Trump important to that? Trump wanted the death penalty for the five teenagers arrested, accused and convicted of sexual assault of the Central Park jogger Trisha Meili in 1989. He went to the trouble even of spending a lot of money on full page ads in the New York Daily News to make his case.

Some years afterwards when the real rapist admitted to the crime (backed up by his DNA and knowledge that could only be known by the actual rapist) the group known as the Central Park Five were released from prison but......Mr. Trump even to this day refuses to accept the reality that the five were innocent of that crime and continues to suggest that they are guilty and should be in prison--though if it had been up to him they would have gone to the electric chair. Nice.

>74 margd: Should Democrats Reserve Impeachment for the Catastrophe of a Second Trump Term?

Wow. That's a stunningly explicit admission that the impeachment circus is political.

Proxim, thanks for all the background reading and posting you do on this. I often don't have time to read it all (busy with work, etc.) but it's nice that there's a countervailing voice.

You know what would be deeply hilarious? If Trump were impeached, removed from office, then RAN AGAIN AND WON IN 2020.

As far as I know, there's no law against this.

Seriously, I hope the impeachment talk just dies a quiet death. But if that scenario came to pass, I wouldn't stop laughing for a month.

>72 margd: Impeachment and removal of Trump and Pence would mean Mme. Nancy Pelosi would assume the presidency--some mysogynists' worst nightmare

Wow, Nancy Pelosi must be a misogynist, since she's resisting calls for impeachment.

During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood her ground by saying the impeachment of President Donald Trump is not happening any time soon...

>87 Carnophile: explicit admission that the impeachment circus is political

Um, quote is from David Frum's article in The Atlantic, and he's Republican, thankfully a righteous one who puts country above party.

>91 margd: Um, quote is from David Frum's article in The Atlantic, and he's Republican

Um, I'm well aware that there are anti-Trump Republicans. They even have a name for themselves, Never-Trumpers.

I didn't say Frum's a Dem; I said it was political.

>87 Carnophile: EXACTLY. And the (almost) incredible part is that these people actually don't even see this! These are fucking amazing times! ;^)

>88 Carnophile: You're welcome.

>89 Carnophile: Quite! And true, as far as I am aware. Impeachment and conviction carries removal as the sole consequence. While Trump would then be liable for criminal indictment, that alone would not bar either his candidacy or, LOL!, an electoral victory. Indeed, others have envisioned this wacky possibility. Why? Well, because, clearly, Trump's adversaries really are that politically stupid!

>92 Carnophile:

Bingo! "Um, I'm well aware that there are anti-Trump Republicans. They even have a name for themselves, Never-Trumpers".

You're much too subtle for margd. Her gear-speed stops at "Well, David Frum said it, he's a Republican, so it must be so!"

She can't figure this stuff out--even when you draw her little Crayola crayon pictures.

Nancy's playing chess. Trump's playing checkers. (Tiddlywinks?)

Nancy Pelosi is reportedly pushing back on impeachment because she wants 'to see Trump in prison' instead
Sonam Sheth | June 6, 2019

...House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler...pushed (house Speaker Nancy) Pelosi to allow his committee to formally launch an impeachment inquiry once before, and he pressed the issue again at the meeting, but Pelosi..."I don't want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison"...reasoning stems from her desire to see Trump defeated in the 2020 election so that he can potentially face criminal prosecution for any alleged wrongdoing.

...Pelosi said she wanted the Democratic-led House of Representatives to investigate Trump to the fullest extent so they could have an airtight case against the president.

The "silver lining" of impeachment for Trump...is that "he believes that he would be exonerated by the United States Senate. And there is a school of thought that says, if the Senate acquits you, why bring charges against him in the private sector when he's no longer president? So when we go out there with our case, it's got to be ironclad"

...A higher percentage of people support impeaching Trump now than the percentage of adults who supported impeaching Nixon at the beginning of the Watergate hearings in 1973...19%...41% of respondents said they support impeaching Trump.

...the former special counsel (Mueller) laid out an extensive roadmap of evidence against Trump and emphasized that even though he didn't bring charges in the obstruction case, the report "does not exonerate" the president... highlighted two points that legal experts say indicate his belief that the president engaged in potentially criminal conduct. First, Mueller said the constitutional remedy for accusing a sitting president of wrongdoing lies with Congress, not the criminal justice system. Second, he said a president is not immune from criminal prosecution once he leaves office.

https://www.businessinsider.com/nancy-pelosi-trump-in-prison-report-2019-6

_____________________________________________________________

Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw | 5:34 AM - 6 Jun 2019
Compromise solution that all should consider by @tribelaw
“House, unlike any grand jury, can conduct an impeachment inquiry that ends with a verdict”
— not necessarily refer to Senate for trial and removal
— more fitting than censure resolution

Impeach Trump. But don’t necessarily try him in the Senate.
Laurence H. Tribe | June 5, 2019

... much of the House Democratic caucus, at least one Republican member of that chamber (Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan) and more than a third of the nation’s voters...treat the impeachment power as a vital constitutional safeguard against a potentially dangerous and fundamentally tyrannical president and view it as a power that would be all but ripped out of the Constitution if it were deemed unavailable against even this president.

That is my view, as well.

...(could) build into the very design of this particular inquiry an offramp that would make bypassing the Senate an option while also nourishing the hope that a public fully educated about what this president did would make even a Senate beholden to this president and manifestly lacking in political courage willing to bite the bullet and remove him.

By resolving now to pursue such a path, always keeping open the possibility that its inquiry would unexpectedly lead to the president’s exoneration, the House would be doing the right thing as a constitutional matter. It would be acting consistent with its overriding obligation to establish that no president is above the law, all the while keeping an eye on the balance of political considerations without setting the dangerous precedent that there are no limits to what a corrupt president can get away with as long as he has a compliant Senate to back him. And pursuing this course would preserve for all time the tale of this uniquely troubled presidency...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/impeach-trump-but-dont-necessarily-try-h...

>87 Carnophile:

Whether to indict or not is often a political decision. See for example the number of war criminals who have never been indicted by the International Criminal Court. However whether there are grounds for indictment is not political, it is a question of credible evidence.

A professor in graduate school told us that he thought all presidents have been guilty of impeachable offensives. I don't know if I agree with that, but his point was impeachment is defined so vaguely, like most laws, that it can be applied to all kinds of situations. Lawyers write abstract laws that favor lawyers. Surprise!

People who have been talking about impeachment since Trump became president, if not before, lack credibility. There's no point in reading what they have to say.

>94 margd: contd.

Laurence Tribe @tribelaw | 8:38 AM - 6 Jun 2019
With due respect to @SpeakerPelosi, an UNIMPEACHED Trump, if soundly defeated on 11/3/20, could easily resign between 11/4/20 and 1/19/21 so that Pence, as the interim POTUS, could PARDON him. Please start taking into account how the CONSTITUTION works!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

George Conway @gtconway | 3d 4h4 hours ago
The Constitution (Art. I, § 3, cl. 7)...provides that “the Party convicted on a bill of impeachment and removed from office by the Senate shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.” And so, ...

... given DOJ’s policy of not indicting presidents until they leave office, this provision counsels strongly in favor of impeachment. Because if you think Trump should be in jail for his crimes, he’s likely to get there sooner the sooner he leaves office.

...As Professor Tribe points out, Trump could still be pardoned even if he is not removed from office

...Pence would be less likely to do this if he doesn’t take office as a lame duck.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Laurence Tribe @tribelaw | 2h2 hours ago
.@gtconway3d is right. And an unimpeached president Trump would be politically easier for Pence to pardon than an impeached Trump. Ford’s pardon of Nixon would’ve been less likely had Nixon stayed on till after the House actually impeached him.

#97--Trump could be pardoned for federal crimes. State crimes-no and he's got a democratic NYS attorney general that is almost certainly going to go after him and if it came to an interim POTUS Pence pardoning him he still better look for another country to live in like Israel or Saudi Arabia.

Politico: Robert Mueller could be subpoenaed in the next two weeks

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler told Democratic leaders at a closed-door meeting this week that he could issue a subpoena to Robert Mueller within two weeks if he is unable to reach an agreement to secure the former special counsel’s public testimony...

Wow, they really cannot let this go. Mueller’s report didn’t give them what they wanted, so their attitude toward Mueller is suddenly hostile. And they’re trying for Mueller report do-over.

>94 margd: Tribe: impeach trump but don’t necessarily try him in the senate

Jesus! Tribe says, Impeach Trump, but don’t give him an opportunity to mount a defense in a trial. The verdict might disagree with the opinion of Laurence Tribe.

The Constitution gives the Senate “the sole Power to try all Impeachments,” so when Tribe says don’t try him in the senate, the necessary implication is, don’t give him a trial at all.

Keep in mind as you read this that the people going after Trump have been saying that Trump’s the one eating away at the constitution and democratic norms.

>100 Carnophile: Looking forward to reading Lawfare and others' legal assessments. Harvard Law's Lawrence Tribe, after all, wrote the book: To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment, and until recently wasn't a fan of impeachment.

Opinion piece doesn't preclude Trump being cleared, and it assumes opportunity for him to defend himself.

Trump's foot-dragging on providing documents and witnesses could result in Senate not having time to try an impeachment, anyway. Could be well into 2020 before House was finished. As Senate Majority said with regard to Obama's Merrick Garland nomination: at that point, let the people decide.

Delusions persist. Meds needed ASAP.

>101 margd: Opinion piece doesn't preclude Trump being cleared, and it assumes opportunity for him to defend himself.

The Constitution mandates that he have an “opportunity to defend himself” in a Senate trial. Laurence Tribe doesn’t like that notion at all. He wants it to take place in a forum where he thinks the outcome will suit Laurence Tribe better.

Chief Justice John Roberts would preside, but the Constitution never anticipated anyone like Mitch McConnell having broad authority to decide parameters of a Senate trial:

Senate GOP vows to quickly quash any impeachment charges
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/445512-senate-gop-pledges-to-quickly-quash-a...

Biden: McConnell stopped Obama from calling out Russians
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/23/mitch-mcconnell-russia-obama-joe-biden...

Despite Mueller's warning, McConnell blocks bipartisan election security bills
https://www.salon.com/2019/05/30/despite-muellers-warning-mcconnell-blocks-bipar...

House Dems demand probe of Kentucky investment made by company controlled by Putin-linked oligarch
https://www.salon.com/2019/05/17/house-dems-demand-probe-of-kentucky-investment-...

and, lest we forget,

McConnell blocked a late-term justice nominee for Obama but helped confirm one for Reagan 30 years ago
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/29/mcconnell-blocked-obama-...

McConnell Says Republicans Would Fill a Supreme Court Vacancy in 2020, Drawing Claims of Hypocrisy
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/us/politics/mitch-mcconnell-supreme-court.htm... ..

I'm sure many here view LT as a sort of community, which makes it all the more heartwarming that margd more or less acted as the priestess who married proximity and carnophile.

>104 margd: the Constitution never anticipated anyone like Mitch McConnell

Wah, I don't like McConnnell! Let's overthrow the Constitution!

PS: "Trump's a threat to our democratic traditions!"

(Edited to correct the post reference from 105 to 104.)

>105 RickHarsch: That's just weird.

>106 Carnophile: I don't recall writing anything about the turtle guy.

>107 Carnophile: Yes, I agree. You and proximity are extremely far apart in basic worldviews and have a glancing, temporary, Trumponian connection, but are engaging in a love fest over your distraught feelings brought on by margd. It's very, very weird.

>108 RickHarsch: post reference now corrected.

Trump on impeachment and Nixon: ‘He left. I don’t leave.’
PIA DESHPANDE | 06/10/2019

President Donald Trump, whose actions during the Russia investigation have prompted comparisons to the Watergate scandal, drew a distinction between himself and President Richard Nixon on Monday: “He left. I don’t leave. A big difference.”

He made the comment on the same day that John Dean, the former Nixon White House counsel, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for a hearing on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which outlined possible obstruction of justice by Trump. Dean testified that he saw “remarkable parallels” between Nixon’s actions and Trump’s...

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/10/trump-impeachment-nixon-1359209

John Dean offers us an interesting case. He got it terribly wrong, becoming one of "All the (Nixon) president's men"; then, too late, he figured out what he hadn't been smart enough to recognize much sooner. And it seems that this is how it has been his entire life. He doesn't really know how to do anything else; yet, he fails so spectacularly--and his failings are both intellectual and, above all, moral--that he's become quite well off despite having been barred from the practice of his trained profession--the law--which he knew and betrayed as he did so much else.

His entire life has been a long series of making huge and costly mistakes and moral misjudgements.

When caught, he cut a deal with federal prosecutors and turned "state's evidence" against the other Watergate conspirators in exchange for what came to be a virtually non-custodial, fictive six-year prison term. The others, his former associates, he helped convict--they went to real prison.

The worst Dean suffered was embarrassment, shame (supposing he had any) and disbarment and, so, consequently the end of his ability to practice law.

What did he do then? Two things: one, he cashed in as much as possible on his fame/notoriety as a former-Watergate conspirator in the Nixon White House and essentially rehabilitated his reputation, writing books, reworking his public image, going on talk-shows, the lecture-circuit, etc.--becoming, undeservedly, generally well regarded by the public which knew and cared little about the facts which Dean was careful not to emphasize. And, two, he became an investment banker, which, after lawyers, are, of course, the second-nearest and dearest icons of virtue in the eyes of God and God's Justice.

Now he's back, once again cashing in on his felonious past, again taking on the again unjustified role of elder, wise-man counsellor who, as a matter of fact, only figured things out after he blundered.

Here, he's blundering again; back in the Nixon White House, as a Washington lawyer , Dean, as well or better than any others, knew exactly when and how he was committing serious felonies each and every time he did that. When caught, he resorted to every dodge and moral lapse to save himself at the expense of his partners in crime, whose trust, after he'd betrayed the truth and the law, he went on to also betray.

Here, he's misrepresenting the facts, the truth, of the matter concerning Trump who, rather than being the principal in a series of crimes is the victim and target of others' criminal conspiracies to get him at all costs; Dean is making himself a direct and deliberate party to this shameful scandal and cashing-in for his own profit as he does it.

Just as he was in the beginning of the Nixon affair, Dean is on the wrong side of the facts, the truth and the law; just as he did back then, he's taking the self-serving and opportunistic path and leaving others in the lurch in the process.

It ought to be rather amazing that he can continue to get an audience at all. He's a study in immorality and shallowness and the fact that he's listened to as though he's some kind of Guru is a shame on the rest of society.

Can Democrats break the Republican hammerlock on impeachment?
Harry Litman | June 10, 2019

...Trump could argue that a Sense of the House resolution amounts to a “bill of attainder” under the Constitution. That obscure provision forbids the legislature from singling out persons for punishment without a trial.

...Second, the White House is likely to argue that the Tribe path lacks any valid legislative purpose.

...Is the (Tribe) proposal bulletproof? No. But it is a promising way forward that could break the Senate Republicans’ hammerlock and consign them to the sidelines, which is where they deserve to stay if they continue to pretend that the president is the blameless victim of a Robert Mueller-led witch hunt.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/10/can-democrats-break-republica...

________________________________________________________

Laurence Tribe @tribelaw | 12:30 PM - 10 Jun 2019:

If @AlanDersh had read my op-ed, he’d see I NEVER proposed “impeaching POTUS” without “referring it to the Senate for trial.” I left open “DISPENSING with impeachment” and “embodying House conclusions of criminality ... in a ... resolution far stronger than a mere censure.”

Alan Dershowitz @AlanDersh
My friend/colleague @tribelaw would place the House above the law by proposing that it act unconstitutionally to impeach POTUS without referring it to the senate. 1/

That’s not how the framers viewed impeachment. @tribelaw would have gone apoplectic if the republican house had done that to Bill ( or Hillary) Clinton. Tribe fails the shoe on the other foot test. https://bit.ly/31rwF6L 2/

Q. : "Can (House) Democrats break violate the Republican hammerlock Constitution's provisions on impeachment of the president?"

"Fixed" it for you.

A.: Probably not. But that certainly doesn't mean that they won't try to do just that.

Again, just how in the hell do you people call yourselves "liberals" or "progressives"!?

>113 margd: Tribe says,

I NEVER proposed “impeaching POTUS” without “referring it to the Senate for trial.”

This is a spectacularly brazen lie. The title of Tribe's article is

Impeach Trump. But don’t necessarily try him in the Senate.

>113 margd: Can Democrats break the Republican hammerlock on impeachment?

Can Democrats figure out a way around procedures, laws, rules, the Constitution to get the verdict we want?

None of this--much less the piece of paper that is the Constitution--will matter if we don't at last muster the wisdom, selflessness, and will to tackle greenhouse gases.

>117 margd:

Never mind that you're changing the subject. Indeed, combatting the degradation of the natural environment, on which all life depends—that is an issue which, like all such vitally-important issues, hinges on in some very important ways the preservation of Constitutional liberties—such as they are, in these pathetically degraded times.

So, if one wants to be serious about "saving the living-world's environment", just supposing that one did, one had better also be very seriously interested in preserving the integrity of the Constitution and the constitutional-order, those institutions through which the principles in that document actually work in the "real world."

These two things are inextricably linked.

But everything you do here is an implicit attack on these institutions—especially the electoral institutions—since, when these don't produce the outcomes to which you are blindly and amazingly stupidly devoted, you show yourself completely ready not only to not come to their defense, but, you'll actually attack them.. Rather than protecting the integrity of elections—which means and implies that people are free to take in and evaluate for its usefulness or validity any and all information, 'good,' 'bad', 'valid', 'invalid' information, and act on that information as they've evaluated and judged it, in the voting-booth—you're ready to see these outcomes undermined, reversed, annulled—just because they didn't suit you.

You'd invalidate all that—and these voters—or, at the very least important parts of it, because you foolishly regard these people's reasoning as having been "tainted" while, naturally, of course, your political judgments haven't been similarly "tainted" and never are.

In brief, you really ought to "get over yourself." But it seems that you simply cannot manage that feat.

Yes, sure: the natural-environment is in peril. But it's essentially in peril partly because freedom and free institutions are also in peril. AND YOU, personally, because of the damn fool things you do with your time here, contribute, in your tiny way, to the fact that they are in peril.

I suspect that you believe you're "woke." I'd urge you to wake the fuck up and notice that you are not.

_____________________________________________

To those who are so bent on getting rid of Donald Trump, try taking the time to grasp how and why so many might find certain things about his politics appealing, even if much about Trump is open to deserved criticism.

You could do worse than starting here in that endeavour

Why Are the Western Middle Classes So Angry? by Victor Davis Hanson

Someone on Twitter asked if acting Cabinet members are eligible to vote to remove incapacitated president under the 25th Amendment. ?

Committee on the Judiciary
116th Congress
Resolution for Investigative Procedures
Offered by Chair Jerrold Nadler
(5 pages)

https://www.politico.com/f/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judiciary panel advances impeachment drive as Pelosi changes the subject
ANDREW DESIDERIO | 09/12/2019

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/house-judiciary-committee-approves-gui...

I am reminded of the "Hold" scene in Braveheart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDVuQi4gdtk

Pelosi quietly sounding out House Democrats about whether to impeach Trump, officials say
Rachael Bade and Mike DeBonis | September 23, 2019

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been quietly sounding out top allies and lawmakers about whether the time has come to impeach President Trump, a major development as several moderate House Democrats resistant to impeachment suddenly endorsed the extraordinary step of trying to oust the president.

Pelosi, according to multiple senior House Democrats and congressional aides, has been gauging the mood of her caucus members about whether they believe that allegations that Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate a political foe are a tipping point. She was making calls as late as Monday night, and many leadership aides who once thought Trump’s impeachment was unlikely now say they think it’s almost inevitable...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-quietly-sounding-out-house-democr...

____________________________________________________________________

Seven freshman Democrats: These allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect
Gil Cisneros, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Elaine Luria, Mikie Sherrill, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger | September 23, 2019

Our lives have been defined by national service. We are not career politicians. We are veterans of the military and of the nation’s defense and intelligence agencies. Our service is rooted in the defense of our country on the front lines of national security.

We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country, and throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States many times over. Now, we join as a unified group to uphold that oath as we enter uncharted waters and face unprecedented allegations against President Trump.

...As members of Congress, we have prioritized delivering for our constituents — remaining steadfast in our focus on health care, infrastructure, economic policy and our communities’ priorities. Yet everything we do harks back to our oaths to defend the country. These new allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect. We must preserve the checks and balances envisioned by the Founders and restore the trust of the American people in our government. And that is what we intend to do.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/24/seven-freshman-democrats-thes...

This is almost like Trump wants to be impeached. If he's impeached in the house but wins in the Senate, that might be really demoralizing to the Democrat base and depress their turnout. It's possible that he saw his poll numbers and decided that this is his only way to win.

>122 jjwilson61: What a rock (Trump) and a hard place (Biden) this puts Ukraine between. Looking less likely now, but either could be elected president in 2020.

Also, whistleblower and Inspector General must be looking at Trump treatment of Mueller, Comey, McCabe.

Maguire, et al. must be taking note that nobody escapes orbit of Trump with reputation intact...

#122---for what it's worth there's a good chance that in an impeachment trial the Democrats could force Trump to testify. I don't see impeachment working out well for Trump or his party at all.

What I see in all this is that Trump wanted to get dirt on Biden because he thought (at least at the time of his asking Ukraine's president for help) that Biden would be who he would face off against for re-election. Getting ready to go into the gutter---he also has this invincibility idea and had walked away from Muller pretty much scot free so he tried it all over again. The fact is he's fucked up and clumsy and this time his fingerprints are all over it. The fact of the matter is he's going into the gutter whoever he faces and he doesn't care how he gets his dirt or where he gets it from.

Seriously doubt that the Senate will convict and remove him from office. His shit needs to be dragged into the light though for everyone to see and if it is he won't be re-elected and his party will get hammered even harder for it. So I see the benefit to going ahead with impeachment. As for the idea that Trump thinks he will benefit from this---well he's a moron.

#123--Sessions recused himself from the Muller probe for a good reason--he didn't want criminal liability. Barr, Maguire and Giuliani should take note of why Sessions did such because they could be in the crosshairs of the criminal justice system when Trump's presidency is over. It's probably too late for Giuliani--he might want to get himself a cyanide pill.

Andrew Desiderio @AndrewDesiderio (Politico) | 11:39 AM · Sep 25, 2019:

Hmmm… The White House just sent its talking points on Ukraine to House Democrats.

Here are some screenshots, per source.
Image https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1176884014768185344/photo/1

ETA_________________________________________________________

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney (Politico) | 12:07 PM · Sep 25, 2019:

No joke: White House just emailed all Dem offices asking to “recall” the talking points email.

Pelosi Statement on Notes of Call Between President Trump and Ukrainian President (Press Release)
September 25, 2019

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement on the White House’s release of the notes of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine:

“The release of the notes of the call by the White House confirms that the President engaged in behavior that undermines the integrity of our elections, the dignity of the office he holds and our national security. The President has tried to make lawlessness a virtue in America and now is exporting it abroad.

“I respect the responsibility of the President to engage with foreign leaders as part of his job. It is not part of his job to use taxpayer money to shake down other countries for the benefit of his campaign. Either the President does not know the weight of his words or he does not care about ethics or his constitutional responsibilities.

“The transcript and the Justice Department’s acting in a rogue fashion in being complicit in the President’s lawlessness confirm the need for an impeachment inquiry. Clearly, the Congress must act.

“As we await the transmittal of the full whistleblower complaint to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, it is important to note that the complaint was determined by the Inspector General to be a matter of ‘urgent concern’ and ‘credible.’ The Intelligence Community has long recognized that whistleblowers constitute a vital part of our national security apparatus and that they must be protected. I reiterate my long-standing call to protect the whistleblower from retaliation.”

https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/92519

(interestingly, it's not about Trump; it's about Biden)

Senate Republicans split over Trump urging Ukrainian leader to investigate Biden

One early divide among Senate Republicans is between the “Burr camp” and the “Johnson camp,” according to two senior GOP aides who were not authorized to speak publicly, referring to Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. Burr’s faction of the Senate GOP has a darker, frustrated view of Trump’s handling of Ukraine, while Johnson’s wing is more focused on probing Biden, the aides said.
…
But Romney’s willingness to speak out has “given cover” to Senate Republicans who also want to speak out even if more mutedly, one Senate GOP aide said, since he is taking the lead in asking pointed questions about Trump and the administration.

Johnson, meanwhile, told colleagues he would consider investigating Biden and Ukraine and said he took those issues seriously — a position that was strongly encouraged by several allies of Trump at the lunch, according to three people familiar with the conversations.
…
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said, “Biden is the one who threatened Ukraine’s aid, not Trump, and that has to be investigated.”

I like one of the quotes The Guardian came up with:

“I think the precise legal term for this is, ‘Holy crap,’” tweeted Randall Eliason, a professor at George Washington University school of law.

Everyone thought Trump was untouchable – that may have just changed

>123 margd: Maguire, et al. must be taking note that nobody escapes orbit of Trump with reputation intact...

Acting director of national intelligence threatened to resign if he couldn’t speak freely before Congress
Greg Miller, Shane Harris and Karoun Demirjian | September 25, 2019

The acting Director of National Intelligence threatened to resign over concerns that the White House might attempt to force him to stonewall Congress when he testifies Thursday about an explosive whistleblower complaint about the president...

...It was unclear whether Maguire’s threat had forced the White House to acquiesce and allow him to testify without constraint. But officials said Maguire has pursued the opportunity to meet with lawmakers to defend his actions and integrity.

In his only public statement on the matter, issued Tuesday evening, Maguire said, “In light of recent reporting on the whistleblower complaint, I want to make clear that I have upheld my responsibility to follow the law every step of the way.”

“ I am committed to protecting whistleblowers and ensuring every complaint is handled appropriately,” Maguire added. “I look forward to continuing to work with the Administration and Congress to find a resolution regarding this important matter.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/acting-director-of-national-int...

Max Boot can still be astonished.

The rough transcript is devastating. How could Trump not know that?

President Trump, by contrast, is so clueless — so lacking in even the most basic sense of right and wrong — that he could actually tweet this morning: “Will the Democrats apologize after seeing what was said on the call with the Ukrainian President? They should, a perfect call — got them by surprise!” Suffice it to say, there were no apologies after the release of the Memorandum of Telephone Conversation (TelCon) between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25.

Ukrainians understood Biden probe was condition for Trump-Zelenskiy phone call: Ukrainian adviser
patrick reevell and lucien bruggeman | Sep 25, 2019

When Ukrainians voted to elect comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy as their next president in the spring of 2019, the fledgling administration was eager to coordinate a phone call with Kyiv’s most important benefactor -- the United States, according to an adviser to Zelenskiy.

But after weeks of discussions with American officials, Ukrainian officials came to recognize a precondition to any executive correspondence, the adviser said.

"It was clear that President Donald Trump will only have communications if they will discuss the Biden case," said Serhiy Leshchenko, an anti-corruption advocate and former member of Ukraine's Parliament, who now acts as an adviser to Zelenskiy. "This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood." ...

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ukrainians-understood-biden-probe-condition-trum...

_____________________________________________________________________________________

In addition to pulling Barr, Maguire, Mulvaney, Pence (potential pardon for Trump), Pompeo under the bus with Trump and Giuliani, I'm reading that Zelensky understood that his words in phone call would not be released in Trump's "transcript". Some of it might not play well in Ukraine, e.g., tone that however advisable (or translated into Trump-speak), might sound subservient to Ukranian ears or ungrateful to Europeans, Canadian, Japanese donors.

Trump encourages questions to Pence about his own Ukraine calls
ABBEY MARSHALL | 09/25/2019

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that reporters should ask Mike Pence to release details of his conversations with Ukraine, seemingly drawing his vice president into the scandal that has engulfed the administration.

“I think you should ask for Vice President Pence’s conversation, because he had a couple of conversations also,” Trump said at a news conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “I could save you a lot of time. They were all perfect. Nothing was mentioned of any import other than congratulations.”

...Some of Trump’s top aides have also been drawn into the scandal. The Washington Post reported that Trump asked his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine just days before the July 25 call with Zelensky, and the memo of Trump’s call showed the president urging Zelensky to work with Attorney General William Barr to investigate the Bidens.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/25/trump-pence-ukraine-phone-calls-151277...

Read the full (nine-page) complaint:
https://www.axios.com/trump-ukraine-whistleblower-complaint-released-e2524316-fb...

Whistleblower alleges Trump abused power to solicit foreign interference
9/26/2019

...Highlights...
1. The July 25 Presidential phone call...
2. Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call...
3. Ongoing concerns...
4. Circumstances leading up to the 25 July Presidential phone call...

Read the full (nine-page) complaint: https://www.axios.com/trump-ukraine-whistleblower-complaint-released-e2524316-fb...

https://nypost.com/2019/09/25/ukraine-transcript-is-like-a-lousy-sequel-to-russi...

Chris Murphy @ChrisMurphyCT | 7:47 PM · Sep 26, 2019:
This isn’t real, is it? Giuliani didn’t just voluntarily expose a highly illegal coordination between the Trump campaign and the State Department?

Quote Rudy Giuliani @RudyGiuliani · 7h
Why does this text and date render the hearsay so-called whistleblower useless and not credible?
If you get even one reason I might recommend you for Law School. Two and it’s LawReview. Answers later. Watch Laura at 10 pm.
Image https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1177346278004539392/photo/1

________________________________________________________________

Reads like a familiar nightmare:

Two Unofficial US Operatives (born in Soviet Union) Reporting To Trump’s Lawyer Privately Lobbied A Foreign Government In A Bid To Help The President Win In 2020
Erik Carter | July 22, 2019

...Two unofficial envoys (american citizens born in Soviet Union) reporting directly to Donald Trump’s personal lawyer have waged a remarkable back-channel campaign to discredit the president’s rivals and undermine the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian meddling in US elections.

In a whirlwind of private meetings, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — who pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican campaigns and dined with the president — gathered repeatedly with top officials in Ukraine and set up meetings for Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani as they turned up information that could be weaponized in the 2020 presidential race.

The two men urged prosecutors to investigate allegations against Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden. And they pushed for a probe into accusations that Ukrainian officials plotted to rig the 2016 election in Hillary Clinton’s favor by leaking evidence against Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair, in what became a cornerstone of the special counsel’s inquiry.

They also waged an aggressive campaign in the United States, staying at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, and meeting with key members of Congress as they joined in a successful push that led to the removal of the ambassador to Ukraine after she angered their allies in Kiev.

Meanwhile, the two men — both of whom have troubled financial histories — rose to prominence in Republican circles, meeting with party leaders while injecting hundreds of thousands of dollars into top Republican committees and dozens of candidates’ campaigns.

As they carried out their campaign, they used their proximity to the White House to tout a new business they set up to sell natural gas in Ukraine, with photos posted on Facebook showing Parnas posing with President Trump in the White House and top House members on Capitol Hill.

Their work proved influential. Prosecutors in Kiev announced in March that they would investigate the officials accused of trying to steer the election in Clinton’s favor — a month after meeting with Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani — and Trump applauded the plan in an interview with Fox News, calling the allegations “big” and “incredible.” The next month, Attorney General William Barr announced he had appointed a federal prosecutor to lead a probe into the origins of the Mueller investigation.

Parnas said he expected the information that he and Fruman advanced to become an important focus of Barr’s inquiry, and to dominate the debate in the run-up to the 2020 election. “It’s all going to come out,” he said. “Something terrible happened and we’re finally going to get to the bottom of it.”

In an exclusive interview with BuzzFeed News at the Trump International Hotel, the 47-year-old former stockbroker insisted he and Fruman were not paid for acting as intermediaries between the Ukrainian officials and Giuliani.

...He said the back channel was initiated by Ukrainian officials who wanted to meet US authorities and had trouble making the right connections. “They knew I was friends with the mayor,” he said, referring to Giuliani, who was previously mayor of New York City. That was what kick-started the campaign to dig up information on Democrats in Kiev — an effort that “is not going away,” Parnas added. “We’re American citizens, we love our country, we love our president.”...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mikesallah/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-trump-parn...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trump Said His Ukraine Envoy Would ‘Go Through Some Things.’ She Has Already.
Sharon LaFraniere, Kenneth P. Vogel and Peter Baker | Sept. 26, 2019

President Trump’s words about Marie L. Yovanovitch, his former ambassador to Ukraine, were ominous. In a telephone conversation that has set off a political crisis for Mr. Trump, he told Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, that she was “bad news.”

“She’s going to go through some things,” he added.

In fact, she already has gone through quite a bit. Over the past several months, Ms. Yovanovitch, a decorated 33-year veteran of the State Department (Russian-speaking, Canadian-born, American citizen), has been vilified in the right-wing news media, denounced by the president’s eldest son as a “joker,” called a Democratic stooge by the president’s personal lawyer and then abruptly recalled from Kiev this May, months ahead of schedule.

Her supposed sin, never backed up by evidence, was that she had shown disloyalty to Mr. Trump, disparaging him behind his back. Her friends, who say her professionalism and history of diplomatic service make that highly unlikely, have another theory: She had turned into collateral damage in efforts by Mr. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, to damage the reputation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., perhaps Mr. Trump’s most prominent Democratic rival in 2020.

Among the apparent strikes against her: A former Ukrainian prosecutor claimed in an interview with The New York Times that Ms. Yovanovitch had blocked his team from getting visas to the United States to deliver damaging information about Mr. Biden and his son Hunter to the F.B.I....

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/yovanovitch-trump-ukraine-ambassa...

>135 margd:

The New York Times : the journalistic equivalent of Junk-bonds or, ' JUNK-"journalism" '

#136---as opposed to?

I'm not a fan by the way of the Times or the Washington Post but there is no credible news source that is running with Trump or Giuliani's bullshit on Biden--who by the way I don't like either. Even Fox who are not credible at all seem non-plussed about where to go with this. But I'm all for Biden and his son being investigated but not by Bill fucking Barr. Let the FBI look it all over again--that's fine. I don't know whether or not they come up with something the facts still are Trump and Giuliani still betraying the country and trying to fix an election with foreign help. You know why? because Trump will never get a majority of votes in any election and they know that. They have to rig things. Both these fuckers (Trump/Giuliani) are criminals and deserve to be in prison cells. Others to be investigated include Barr, Michael Pence now and Mike Pompeo.

Some chance that Nancy Pelosi becomes the first woman American POTUS if the Donald gets removed because he seems intent on dragging Pence down to hell with him. Wouldn't that be a fucking laugh.....and she showed a whole lot of restraint and ironically didn't really want to go the impeachment route.

>137 lriley: I think Nancy Pelosi is playing long game--wants Dem president, House, and Senate in 2020, not trading that for Oval Office for one year herself. There's no smoking gun in Pence's hand, so would be little support in Congress or citizenry for impeaching him. Despicable as he can be, he's at least rational and not as likely as Trump to get us in a war, etc. in the year he might be president--I think/hope.

Wonder if, once free, a President Pence would feel any need to pardon Trump for any/all crimes that feds might charge hime with?

When books are written about this epoch, there'll be a bestseller about one amazing Speaker of the House: ACA, 2018 election, impeachment, etc.--in heels. ;-)

Is there ANYONE Trump won't throw under bus to save himself? Oh yeah...Putin.
Wonder if Schiff's committee will want to see all the calls Trump hid in secret server?

Kremlin says it hopes U.S. would not release Trump-Putin calls, like it did with Ukraine
AP | Sept. 27, 2019, 6:56 AM EDT

...Asked Friday if Moscow is worried that the White House could similarly publish transcripts of Trump's calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that "we would like to hope that it wouldn't come to that in our relations, which are already troubled by a lot of problems."

He noted that the publication of the Trump-Zelenskiy call was "quite unusual."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/kremlin-says-it-hopes-u-s-would-not-release-t...

Trump and his Cult45ers fear/hate Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam.
Putin must be a very happy camper.

David Frum @davidfrum | 9:11 AM · Sep 27, 2019:
The Kremlin also reminding Trump who else has records of those conversations ...

Quote Tweet Darth Putin @DarthPutinKGB · 2h
The Kremlin hopes the entirely innocent conversations I had with Trump will remain secret.

Hundreds of ex-national security officials support impeachment inquiry into Trump

The statement was released by the National Security Action, an advocacy group formed in 2018 by two former national security advisers in the Obama administration to oppose Trump's foreign policy.

The bulk of the statement's signees are former Obama officials, but the list also includes officials who have served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
...
"We do not wish to prejudge the totality of the facts or Congress' deliberative process," they said, adding, "At the same time, there is no escaping that what we already know is serious enough to merit impeachment proceedings."

There is currently a
23.81% chance
that President Trump will leave office before the end of his first term
(due to impeachment, quitting etc).

This probability was generated from the betting markets (Betfair) 43 minutes ago.

Betting markets are amongst the most accurate indicators of political outcomes.

https://odds.watch/trump

Nixon had the decency to move on before he was yanked out of
the Oval Office job. Trump will NOT leave unless his health
becomes an issue.

Will GOPers choose Trump as their candidate after he is impeached?
Will Americans re-elect a guy who was impeached during his first
administration???

Only time will tell.

Conversation
Abby Livingston @TexasTribAbby | 9/29/2019

Good evening. We're a little more than 30 mins out from @evanasmith's interview with @SpeakerPelosi. I will be your livetweeter for the evening.

...Evan: You were the impediment to impeachment. Now you're the instrument. What happened?
Pelosi: The facts.

And then she name dropped Willie Nelson who's in attendance.

...Pelosi: I'm saying to the president and I'm saying to you Evan You've come into my wheelhouse now. I have 25 years of experience in Intelligence.

Pelosi, continues to list her background in intel: If you want me to talk about my wheelhouse, I will.

Pelosi now stressing seriousness and somberness of impeachment.

Pelosi: I have handled this with great care, with moderation...This is very bad news for our country. If it as it seems to be our president has engaged in something that is so far beyond what our founders had in mind...This goes beyond any guard rails.

Pelosi jumps on Evan for quoting news reports: I think you're being too hard on the president. These are allegations...You're talking about allegations, I'm talking about facts.

...Pelosi: I think there's a cover up of the cover up.

Pelosi, on whether there is a political risk to impeachment inquiry: "That doesn't matter. That doesn't matter."

Pelosi: "I've been very prayerful about this. I'm heartbroken on this." She adds she has been looking for something exculpatory #tribfest19

Pelosi: "If this pattern were to prevail...then it's over for the republic. We will have the equivalent of a monarchy."

Pelosi: "If you have a concern with the president and she cites a number of complaints of Trump work on that in the election. that's not about impeachment. that's about differences of policy."

Pelosi, on how long this will take: I have no idea...it takes as long as the Intelligence Committee follows the facts. if you're going to go into a proceeding of this historic nature...you do it to, quote Lyndon Johnson...with a heavy heart.

A really annoying heckler relentlessly taunts Pelosi. She brushes it off. "I'm speaker of the house. I'm used to this."

Pelosi, on an administration ignoring subpoenas: "The system of checks and balances is over. I have a responsibility to defend the Constitution...this is a very very dangerous territory"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The 2019 Texas Tribune Festival
Livestream: A conversation with Nancy Pelosi (1:23:03 -- she appears ten minutes in)

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, talks about making Congress work, a presidency without precedent, the coming elections and her vision for a better America.

by Texas Tribune Staff Sept. (28?), 2019

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/20/nancy-pelosi-texas-tribune-festival/

So the question is, what turkey will President Pence pardon this Thanksgiving?

Nancy Pelosi has put the Trump impeachment inquiry on a fast track. Here's the plan, timeline and key players
Bart Jansen and Christal Hayes | Sept. 29, 2019

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she wants to move "expeditiously" on the impeachment inquiry into whether President Donald Trump abused his power by pushing Ukraine to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden.

...Some lawmakers want the House to decide whether to file articles of impeachment by Thanksgiving, a timeline that could avoid having the issue spill over into the 2020 election year...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/09/29/nancy-pelosi-impeachment...

Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom | 3:53 PM · Sep 28, 2019:

There is a kind of karmic hilarity to the fact that in order to protect Trump,
his staff centralized the materials that could doom him in a highly classified system
that can't be erased or manipulated without a record of access by a very small number of people.

Trump's 'Civil War' quote tweet is actually grounds for impeachment, says Harvard law professor

“This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment – a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power,” John Coates, a Harvard Law professor, wrote on Twitter on Monday.

McConnell says Senate will put Trump on trial if House votes to impeach
Fadel Allassan | Septe 30, 2019

"Well, under the Senate rules, we're required to take it up if the House does go down that path, and we'll follow the Senate rules ... It's a Senate rule related to impeachment that would take 67 votes to change, so I would have no choice but to take it up. How long you're on it is a whole different matter, but I would have no choice but to take it up, based on a Senate rule on impeachment."

— McConnell

https://www.axios.com/mitch-mcconnell-senate-impeachment-house-a75ddd66-e684-44c...

The NYT reports that Trump recently asked Australian PM to help discredit the Mueller Report. That phone call transcript was also restricted access.

Trump Pressed Australian Leader to Help Barr Investigate Mueller Inquiry’s Origins

In making the request, Mr. Trump was in effect asking the Australian government to investigate itself. The F.B.I.’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election began after Australian officials told the bureau that the Russian government had made overtures to the Trump campaign about releasing political damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Australian officials shared that information after its top official in Britain met in London in May 2016 with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who told the Australian about the Russian dirt on Mrs. Clinton.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters tells CNN's Anderson Cooper there is one word for Trump referencing civil war - Sedition.

Ralph Peters: Trump must keep 'throne' to avoid prison

Karen Tumulty gives us some background on the definition of treason in the Constitution.

James Madison warned us that Trump is dangerously un-American

The framers of the Constitution took great care in spelling out what acts could be regarded as treason, which was the only crime they explicitly defined. Article III, Section 3 states that “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

Why did the framers believe treason, alone among offenses, merited such clarity in the nation’s founding document? Their recent history had given them reason to fear authoritarians who would loosely throw around accusations of treason. The parameters of the crime under British law were broad and vague, and could be stretched to include counterfeiting or sleeping with a member of the royal family, says Jason Opal, a professor of American history at McGill University. The royal governors of the 13 colonies invoked treason as a handy means of crushing dissent and executing those who objected to the crown’s rule.

When the framers set out to devise a legal system for the new nation, they borrowed much from British law and traditions. But they felt strongly that “treason” should have a precise, fixed and uniquely American meaning. Madison wrote in Federalist No. 43: “As new-fangled and artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free government, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other, the convention have, with great judgment, opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime.”

As an illustration how Republican minds "work"

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney: Ukraine phone call 'is starting to seem like a political set up' against Donald Trump

#153--it is a setup in the sense that Donald set himself up.

The suspense!

last evening:

The State Department watchdog just requested an 'urgent' meeting with congressional committees

The State Department's internal watchdog requested a Wednesday briefing with a bipartisan group of committees in both the House and the Senate. The purpose is "to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine."

The State Department Inspector General Steve Linick invited Democratic and Republican congressional committee staffers to inform them about documents on Ukraine it had obtained from the department's Office of the Legal Adviser.

If FOX News had existed during the Nixon era. . . . . .

"Nixon era"? There was no Nixon "era".

Richard Nixon didn't even serve two full terms in office as president. He served two terms (under Dwight D. Eisenhower's (R.) presidencies) as Vice-president (January 20, 1953 – January 20, 1961) and, prior to that, he served less than one term as U.S. senator from California (December 1, 1950 – January 1, 1953) and one term in office as the U.S. Representative to Congress from California's 12th congressional district, (January 3, 1947 – November 30, 1950)

In 1960, the race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the Democrat's and the Republican's nominees, respectively, had the following result:

Turn-out : 62.8 %
Popular vote : John F. Kennedy : 34,220,984 Richard Nixon : 34,108,157
Percentage : Kennedy : 49.72% Nixon : 49.55%

In the1968 campaign, Nixon's second as the Repblican party's nominee, Nixon won running against the then-incumbent Vice-president, the Democrat, Hubert Humphrey, and the third-party candidate, George Wallace, former Governor of Alabama,

Turn-out : 60.9 %
Popular vote Nixon : 31,783,783 Humphrey : 31,271,839 Wallace : 9,901,118

Vote by percentage of total votes cast: Nixon : 43.4% Humphrey: 42.7% Wallace: 13.5%

In 1972, Nixon won re-election (turn-out : 55.2% (down 5.7percentage points from the previous election*) ) overwhelmingly:

Popular vote Nixon : 47,168,710 George McGovern : 29,173,222
Percentage Nixon : 60.7% George McGovern : 37.5%

By electoral-college votes : Nixon : 520 McGovern : 17

By states carried : Nixon : 49 McGovern : 1 (and the District of Columbia)

____________________________

* despite being the first U.S. presidential election in which citizens 18 year-olds were eligible to vote.

Nelson Rockefeller had a career in politics and public life which spanned as many years as that of Nixon. But no one speaks of the Rockefeller "era" or, for that matter, the Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush or the Obama "eras", all of them serving twice in the office of president.

So that means that currently there is an 79% chance he will be in office until his term ends, right?

>158 thebooklover2:

No, it doesn't mean that. We don't know what, if anything, it "means."

You might as well ask, "Can't you hit a moving-target?"

We can say that there are quite reasonable grounds to expect that Trump shall serve out at least his current term in office--still, that would be despite some of the most determined, powerful and no-holds-barred efforts to get rid of him.

Fortuntately for Trump, so many of his most highly-placed adversaries are not only lying, hypocritical, self-serving egotists--many of the very things with which they try to smear him--they are also politically stupid, and that to a rather surprising extent.

Trump came into office largely lacking both political experience and an insider's detailed knowledge of law and government policy. But he was never anything even remotely like the fool his foolish opponents took him and presented him to others to be.