Let's let both sides call as many witnesses as they want ! (Page 2): do not be so damn dumb... President Obama sent plenty of weapons.. only your fish wrap media is telling you it was...

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

CarryOn wrote:

All Presidents have claimed Executive Privilege at one time or another. President Trump has every right to claim privilege.

After he released an unprecedented number of documents and allowed testimony in the 2+ year long Mueller investigation, he has probably had enough. He gave them everything they wanted and they would still be fishing around for something .... and shifty would still be claiming/lying to have evidence of Russian collusion even though there never was any such evidence ... if Barr hadn't told him to SOGOTP.

He immediately released the transcript of the telephone conversation, too. A telephone call with a foreign leader, which is also unprecedented, in an attempt to show transparency and give the House what they wanted. But they won't stop. And if that is the case, then they can subpoena anybody. They can try to get a Court order to force testimony. They could have done all of that. Bolton told them he would follow a judge's order, but then they just dropped the subpoena and did a Roseanna Roseanna Danna and said, "Nevermind." Whatever their reasons are for not following through, I don't know, but the fact that they did not speaks to their confidence ... or lack thereof .. that they would find anything provable. That they chose to do a rushed, shoddy job of something so important speaks to major incompetence. They should all be forced to resign for the damage they have done to our government.

And anybody who trusts a report coming out of nadler's judiciary committee after this totally partisan fishing expedition and one-sided investigation must still believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If they had actual proof of bribery, soliciting, wire fraud, etc. then those would be the charges against him. Obstruction of Congress means nothing except widdle biddy nadler and widdle biddy shifty got their feelings hurt because they didn't get their way. Obstruction of Justice is another thing entirely, but he was not charged with any such thing. Truth is, they got nothin' and they know it. And in a few weeks, the whole country is going to know it.

And as for attempting to claim Trump was helping putin by delaying aid, if you really believe that then all of you ought to be calling out obama for refusing to send the Ukrainians any weapons at all when they were actually under attack by putin's army. He sent them blankets instead. And I think water, too. Talk about helping putin. Trump sent real weapons. And from what I have read, the money was transferred within the timeline set out by Congress, so technically there was no delay at all.

Whatever the whole truth is, we will find out soon enough.

All Presidents have claimed Executive Privilege at... (show quote)

do not be so damn dumb... President Obama sent plenty of weapons.. only your fish wrap media is telling you it was only blankets and pillows, and you are the few believing such crap..

release of a phone call unprecedented .... BS... what is unprecedented is to lock the phone transcript in the sealed file until testimony revealed it existed.. then the transgression was obvious to everyone in the world but the orange cult who kisses the ring to the orange mistake..

the president committed crimes. Only the fact that the Justice feels that a sitting president can not be indicted has left him out of jail.. and they are wrong, a President is not above the law..

There is no way around it. Attorney General William Barr’s efforts to clear President Donald Trump, both in his original letter and in his press conference the morning of the report’s release, are wholly unconvincing when you actually spend time with the document itself.

Mueller does not accuse the president of crimes. He doesn’t have to. But the facts he recounts describe criminal behavior. They describe criminal behavior even if we allow the president’s—and the attorney general’s—argument that facially valid exercises of presidential authority cannot be obstructions of justice. They do this because they describe obstructive activity that does not involve facially valid exercises of presidential power at all.

Consider only two examples. The first is the particularly ugly section concerning Trump’s efforts to get then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “unrecuse.”

According to Mueller, the president asked Corey Lewandowski to convey a message to Sessions. It was a request that Sessions reassert control over the special counsel’s investigation, make a speech in which he would declare that the president didn’t do anything wrong and that the special counsel’s investigation of him was “very unfair,” and restrict the special counsel’s investigation to interference in future elections. Lewandowski asked a White House staffer to deliver the message in his place; the staffer in question never did so.

A few factors are important to highlight here, all of them aggravating. Lewandowski was not a government employee, so this was not an example of the president exercising his powers to manage the executive branch. Indeed, Trump very specifically did not go through the hierarchy of the executive branch. He tried to get a private citizen to lobby the attorney general on his behalf for substantive outcomes to an investigation in which he had the deepest of personal interests. What’s more, the step he asked Lewandowski to press Sessions to take was frankly unethical. Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe because he had an actual conflict of interest in the matter. In other words, the president of the United States recruited a private citizen to procure from the attorney general of the United States behavior the attorney general was ethically barred from undertaking.

But it gets worse, because Trump did not merely seek to get Sessions to involve himself in a matter from which he was recused. Trump wanted Sessions both to limit the scope of the investigation and to declare its outcome on the merits with respect to Trump himself. This action would have quite literally and directly obstructed justice. Limiting the jurisdiction of the special counsel to future elections would have, after all, precluded the indictments Mueller later issued for Russia’s hacking and social-media operations. It would have precluded the prosecutions of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Rick Gates, as well. Nor is there any real complexity here with respect to Trump’s intent. As Mueller reports, “Substantial evidence indicates that the President’s effort to have Sessions limit the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation to future election interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct.”

As a criminal matter, this fact pattern seems to me uncomplicated: If true and provable beyond a reasonable doubt, it is unlawful obstruction of justice. Full stop.

Another example: Mueller reports that after the news broke that Trump had sought to get then–White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire the special counsel, Trump sought to get McGahn to deny the story. He also sought to get him to create an internal record denying the story. McGahn refused.

CarryOn

permafrost wrote:

do not be so damn dumb... President Obama sent plenty of weapons.. only your fish wrap media is telling you it was only blankets and pillows, and you are the few believing such crap..

release of a phone call unprecedented .... BS... what is unprecedented is to lock the phone transcript in the sealed file until testimony revealed it existed.. then the transgression was obvious to everyone in the world but the orange cult who kisses the ring to the orange mistake..

the president committed crimes. Only the fact that the Justice feels that a sitting president can not be indicted has left him out of jail.. and they are wrong, a President is not above the law..

There is no way around it. Attorney General William Barr’s efforts to clear President Donald Trump, both in his original letter and in his press conference the morning of the report’s release, are wholly unconvincing when you actually spend time with the document itself.

Mueller does not accuse the president of crimes. He doesn’t have to. But the facts he recounts describe criminal behavior. They describe criminal behavior even if we allow the president’s—and the attorney general’s—argument that facially valid exercises of presidential authority cannot be obstructions of justice. They do this because they describe obstructive activity that does not involve facially valid exercises of presidential power at all.

Consider only two examples. The first is the particularly ugly section concerning Trump’s efforts to get then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “unrecuse.”

According to Mueller, the president asked Corey Lewandowski to convey a message to Sessions. It was a request that Sessions reassert control over the special counsel’s investigation, make a speech in which he would declare that the president didn’t do anything wrong and that the special counsel’s investigation of him was “very unfair,” and restrict the special counsel’s investigation to interference in future elections. Lewandowski asked a White House staffer to deliver the message in his place; the staffer in question never did so.

A few factors are important to highlight here, all of them aggravating. Lewandowski was not a government employee, so this was not an example of the president exercising his powers to manage the executive branch. Indeed, Trump very specifically did not go through the hierarchy of the executive branch. He tried to get a private citizen to lobby the attorney general on his behalf for substantive outcomes to an investigation in which he had the deepest of personal interests. What’s more, the step he asked Lewandowski to press Sessions to take was frankly unethical. Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe because he had an actual conflict of interest in the matter. In other words, the president of the United States recruited a private citizen to procure from the attorney general of the United States behavior the attorney general was ethically barred from undertaking.

But it gets worse, because Trump did not merely seek to get Sessions to involve himself in a matter from which he was recused. Trump wanted Sessions both to limit the scope of the investigation and to declare its outcome on the merits with respect to Trump himself. This action would have quite literally and directly obstructed justice. Limiting the jurisdiction of the special counsel to future elections would have, after all, precluded the indictments Mueller later issued for Russia’s hacking and social-media operations. It would have precluded the prosecutions of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Rick Gates, as well. Nor is there any real complexity here with respect to Trump’s intent. As Mueller reports, “Substantial evidence indicates that the President’s effort to have Sessions limit the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation to future election interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct.”

As a criminal matter, this fact pattern seems to me uncomplicated: If true and provable beyond a reasonable doubt, it is unlawful obstruction of justice. Full stop.

Another example: Mueller reports that after the news broke that Trump had sought to get then–White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire the special counsel, Trump sought to get McGahn to deny the story. He also sought to get him to create an internal record denying the story. McGahn refused.

do not be so damn dumb... President Obama sent ple... (show quote)

All this, you know to be true, in a most uncomplicated way? Then why hasn't Trump been formally charged for ANY of it? Again, no obstruction of justice, no extortion, no bribery, no etc., etc., If the dems had any provable offense at all, they would be on it like flies on dung. Again, they got nothin' or they would be screaming to the rafters and offering up such proof to the public. If they had any proof of anything impeachable in this sham investigation, shifty would not have had to make up his own thuglike version of the transcript. All he wold have had to do was present the real transcript and any real evidence he has and start from there. But he had/has nothing. No impeachable offense .. even his own witnesses were forced to admit the same under oath. So nothing. It's all just a big pipe dream.

If you, on the other hand, know so much about what can be proven and how it applies to criminal law .. or Constitutional law ... then perhaps you should offer your services to those in charge and assist them in this matter. They obviously need your help.

CarryOn

Seth wrote:

When this impeachment falls through, watch the Democrats, instead of getting around to doing their jobs full time, simply come up with something else, and after that, something else.

All there has been since Trump was elected is one attack after another without pause. They fail to "get" him one way, they go for another, on and on and on.

How can you possibly respect your own intelligence when it doesn't occur to you that most Americans can see through this endless charade, and are tired of it already? Any idiot can see that this isn't about patriotism or concern for any set of Constitutional issues, but about pure politics, dirty politics in defiance of an election result the Democrats didn't like and about trying to derail the president because they know the people will reelect him, and the will of the American people counts less to the Democrats than their political agendas.

Had it ended with the Mueller Circus® you might have a leg to stand on, but it didn't. The very fact that they kept changing the charges before coming up with the two extremely tepid articles of impeachment they did only makes the Dems, and by extension you, for defending and agreeing with their actions, look profoundly silly.

The entire endless debacle also insults the intelligence of the American people, to whom the presence of a witch hunt is blatantly obvious, when Pelosi, Noodler Nadler and Schitt actually try to convince We, the People that any of this has anything whatsoever to do with a quest for "justice." It's pure, unmitigated politics at its absolute filthiest, worthy more of the government of some third world shithole than the United States of America. The Democrats are demeaning this country in the eyes of the world and couldn't care less, and in the end, because of the frivolous nature of all these efforts to get rid of a president for no good reason other than that his opposition party knows they can't beat him in a fair election with the pool of candidates they have, the Democrats are going to be punished by the voters this November.

You can link all the articles you wish and offer up all the rhetoric that strikes your fancy, but that's the long and short of it.

Anything you'd like to add to refute this will be more of the same partisan fantasy that just doesn't make it into the reality column.

President Trump will still be POTUS when the Senate trial is a done deal, more witch hunting will take up most of the Democrats' time right through October and on 3 November, President Trump will be elected to his second term and the Democrats will lose their House majority and a few Senate seats.

Then the witch hunt will resume for four more years, during which time President Trump will accomplish more great things for America while the Democrats spend all the people's time endeavoring to nullify the 2020 election.

As a conservative, I have no problem with that because all the Democrats and their mainstream media stooges will actually accomplish will be chasing more left of center and swing voters over to the Republican side.

When this impeachment falls through, watch the Dem... (show quote)

Agree 100%, Seth. They won't know what hit them. Great post!

Seth

CarryOn wrote:

Agree 100%, Seth. They won't know what hit them. Great post!

Weewillynobeerspilly Loc: North central Texas

permafrost wrote:

Silly dreams for silly people.. you right wingers are full of it..

Yea, love the keep Seattle hostile bumper sticker below your hate Trump stickers.....nuff said about that idiocy.

Lonewolf

Seth wrote:

Nope, it will be all Democrats and the honchos from the various agencies they corrupted, and suddenly they'll all be snivelling, wheedling and pleading for President Trump to pardon them.

After all the non-stop B.S. they've been putting him through instead of doing what they are paid to do by We, the Taxpayer, he'll hopefully say, "Let's discuss it again in ten years."

They sent over 400 bills to the senate

Lonewolf

CarryOn wrote:

All this, you know to be true, in a most uncomplic... (show quote)

Charged he was just impeached for those charges!!!

Seth

Lonewolf wrote:

They sent over 400 bills to the senate

Yup, bills AOC and "the Squad," Bernie and Pocahontas were undoubtedly very proud of.

cr

Question for Lone Wolf, do you vote for Politicians to waste time and money? Or to make and pass laws to improve our way of life?

Lonewolf

cr wrote:

Question for Lone Wolf, do you vote for Politicians to waste time and money? Or to make and pass laws to improve our way of life?

The only one wasting time are the Republicans in the senate Mitch has blocked just about everything. He won't let a senate bill go to the house!

I think after the thousands and most likely millions of laws we should start doing away with!
Trump had Clinton investigated again 2 years found nothing just like the 3 year investigation found nothing is that a waist of time and money??

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

cr wrote:

Question for Lone Wolf, do you vote for Politicians to waste time and money? Or to make and pass laws to improve our way of life?

waste of money and time??? Are you once more ranting about Benghazi?? Or emails??? When it comes to wasting time and money the republicans hold no bounds. even now ranting for ever more investigations, no matter how many times no infractions are found, they always are demanding more investigations of the same thing...

Have no idea why you people are in such a dither.. the impeachment is done, the removal from office will not happen.. McConnell has stated several times in public that he will conduct things as the white house wishes.. he will Accommodate the orange ding dong in every way..

New evidence/witnesses will not matter, Moscow Mitch will follow instructions from Putin and the white house..

Lonewolf

permafrost wrote:

waste of money and time??? Are you once more ranti... (show quote)

padremike Loc: Phenix City, Al

permafrost wrote:

If the Democrats had followed up on the blockage of witnesses and documents, the Impeachment would not yet be done and we would be looking at many more weeks of court appeals and counter appeals. that is the trump trade mark court strategy, taught by Cohan the gangster lawyer who gave trump his life long strategy of outspending the others over time and money..

truth,,,,you can not handle the truth...

let’s dispense with the attempt to smear the impeachment by the fact that some racists and islamophobes cannot stand one particular member.

Yes, Donald Trump threatened the safety and security of Ukraine. It’s not the specific missiles, it’s the fact that Congress approved the missiles while Trump withheld them. That is a clear signal to Trump’s ally, Putin, that he is free to conduct his dirty nasty war and we will abandon our ally. That said, while Trump intended Ukrainian officials to feel threatened, that part of the case would be tough to prove. So the report, created by the Judiciary Committee, actually charges Trump with Criminal Bribery and Wire Fraud / Honest Services Fraud. There’s decades of jail time in those two charges alone. (The bribery charge is for soliciting a bribe, which means to demand payment for performing an official act).

Yes Trump did these actions to improve his chances of being elected. He didn’t go after Marianne Williamson or Cory Booker. He went after Joe Biden, the much loved former Vice President who is very popular with Black folks, and whose genuine kindness and intelligence makes him a formidable politician.

Yes, he blocked Congressional efforts to investigate. Congress has an oversight role and they routinely request, and get, thousands of pages of documentation every year from the vast and sprawling administration. Yet Trump blocked it all, an unprecedented move that no one has done before at this kind of scale. Thousands of pages of evidence are blocked. If Trump actually were innocent, he would have gladly released those pages. That is clearly an obstruction of Congress at an executive level, and while each count of obstruction only amounts to a few months in prison, each record withheld would amount to a separate count. Trump is looking at decades of jail time on the obstruction charge alone.

If the Democrats had followed up on the blockage o... (show quote)

Think what you want but if your lynch mob truly though they had a legitimate case they would have sent it to the courts. They knew, however, they would lose. They knew they could not lose when they conjured up another falsehood to further discredit the President because their fellow Trump haters believe all things they say against him and nothing positive is ever said for him. The Progressive shepherds are leading their flock to the slaughter. They've already captured their minds and ability to reason and they're poisoning them also with the ability to produce their own venom.

son of witless

Lonewolf wrote:

And while we do it, we move a prision bus outside to transport the losers !

Interesting idea. Unlimited witnesses and the whole time Senators must sit and shut up. Perhaps we could keep it going until President Trump's next inauguration.

debeda

Weewillynobeerspilly wrote:

So, your side needs a mulligan? you had 3 years.........now sit back, shut the hell up and watch your dreams get crushed.....again.