[PassedOut]

rmnka447, on 2019-April-15, 15:21, said:

"Deep Throat" helped keep the reporters on the proper track to find the Nixon wrongdoing, not providing a continuous stream of the same story to be sensationalized over and over. But let's be clear, the MSM played that story again and again to bolster their opinion that Trump was undermining our democracy and feed into a scenario delegitimizing him.. Trump continually denied he would fire Mueller, but the MSM kept saying that he was considering it.

Well, did Mueller get fired? Nope, and that's the fact that counts. Trump has enough smarts to know that firing Mueller would have been politically catastrophic in the caustic atmosphere fomented by the "resistance". Contrary to your beliefs, the guy's no dummy, just one heck of a provocateur of the left.

Or not.

Mueller’s biggest bombshell? Trump told the White House counsel to lie.

Quote

In late January 2018, the New York Times revealed that Trump had ordered McGahn to fire Mueller the previous June. The Times report, according to the special counsel’s report released Thursday, is supported by “substantial evidence.”

Trump nonetheless ordered McGahn to publicly dispute the Times’s account — first relaying the message through his personal attorney, then through White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, then again through White House staff secretary Rob Porter and, finally, in a face-to-face meeting with McGahn in the Oval Office last February. Trump also told Porter to convey to McGahn that the White House counsel should write a letter “for our records” denying that the president ever ordered Mueller’s firing.

McGahn rebuffed the president every time, but that does not exonerate Trump. An unsuccessful attempt to obstruct justice is obstruction, nonetheless. Nor can Trump plausibly argue that his order to McGahn was facetious. Trump did not tell McGahn to lie just one time. Instead, he issued this instruction on four separate occasions — three times through others, once directly.

But, of course, you and everyone else had already figured that out. If the mainstream media and Trump differ, it is always Trump who is lying.

[Chas_P]

Winstonm, on 2019-April-18, 19:04, said:

The power of the presidency is immense - that the power is in the hands of a totally corrupt individual is immensely damaging.

Yes,it is truly sad that Hillary got beat. She is, as we all know, an absolute paragon of virtue.

[cherdano]

Chas_P, on 2019-April-19, 20:04, said:

Yes,it is truly sad that Hillary got beat. She is, as we all know, an absolute paragon of virtue.

Why do Trumpniks always make such an effort to conform to any caricature-like stereotype about them? "Lock her up", Trump for 2020!

[johnu]

Chas_NoDignity_NoHonor, on 2019-April-19, 20:04, said:

...

Another Fox/Dennison puppet

[shyams]

Chas_P, on 2019-April-19, 20:04, said:

Yes,it is truly sad that Hillary got beat. She is, as we all know, an absolute paragon of virtue.

ROFL, what a way to defend the indefensible!

[y66]

According to the NYT Editorial Board, "the real danger that the Mueller report reveals is not of a president who knowingly or unknowingly let a hostile power do dirty tricks on his behalf, but of a president who refuses to see that he has been used to damage American democracy and national security". Of course, it's not just the president who refuses to see that he has been used or the Rooskies who are the biggest perps. Putin has nothing on the Murdoch family, the Koch brothers and the Republic party. Clearly, it's not just the president who refuses to see that he has been used or the Trump presidency that is f*cked.

[Winstonm]

Chas_P, on 2019-April-19, 20:04, said:

Yes,it is truly sad that true Hillary got beat. She is, as we all know, an absolute paragon of virtue.

FYP

Two words: Al Gore

Of course, Individual-1 is a paragon of virtue: (Mueller report)

Quote

With respect to Manafort, there is evidence that the President’s actions had the potential to influence Manafort’s decision whether to cooperate with the government. The President and his personal counsel made repeated statements suggesting that a pardon was a possibility for Manafort, while also making it clear that the President did not want Manafort to “flip” and cooperate with the government.…In light of the President’s counsel’s previous statements that the investigations “might get cleaned up with some presidential pardons” and that a pardon would be possible if the President “come[s ] to the conclusion that you have been treated unfairly,” the evidence supports the inference that the President intended Manafort to believe that he could receive a pardon, which would make cooperation with the government as a means of obtaining a lesser sentence unnecessary.

Furthermore...

Quote

Trump seethes after Mueller report relies on notes from White House aides

Individual-1 is expected to sign an executive order that will ban notetaking, disagreement with him, and will make failure to lie in support of his lies a capital offense. (Sarah Sanders is safe)

[y66]

Guest post from Michael Bloomberg:

Quote

Americans have not seen the full Mueller report. But we have seen more than enough. The warning I delivered at the 2016 Democratic National Convention — Donald Trump is not fit for office — is now clearer than ever.

Despite the report’s substantial redactions, in many cases because related criminal investigations continue, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s careful and detailed narrative is clear. And all citizens, no matter their party, should be deeply troubled.

The report found that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in “sweeping and systematic fashion” to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign and to benefit Donald Trump’s. And although Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Russian agents and the Trump campaign, he did establish an appalling pattern of conduct unbefitting an American president.

The Trump campaign devised a communications strategy to exploit Russian sabotage, the report states, and the candidate himself indicated to an aide that he’d been informed of an upcoming leak of stolen information.

After the election, Trump’s associates tried to thwart the special counsel’s probe of the Russian attack. “Several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters,” Mueller reports. “Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.”

Trump himself refused to be interviewed in person and provided “inadequate” answers to Mueller’s written questions, invoking variations on the statement “I don’t recall” more than 30 times.

The matter of obstruction of justice remains a troubling loose end. Many of the president’s actions, conducted in public, are already familiar: the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the complaints about Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusing himself, and so on. But the report also portrays alarming efforts by Trump outside the spotlight to interfere with and even terminate Mueller’s work, including requests that White House aides act to impede the investigation.

In his report, Mueller opens the door for Congress to assert itself, noting that the legislative branch has authority to examine presidential conduct. Congressional committees have already invited Mueller to testify. He should, and in the process clarify what is perhaps the report’s most important passage: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

In addition, Congress should make sure that Mueller’s decision not to press conspiracy charges is not regarded as a legal precedent for future campaign practices. Foreign assistance in campaigns — especially from a hostile power — is expressly forbidden in the U.S. And new legislation is needed to protect American campaigns and voting systems against future attacks.

Some lawmakers will no doubt also consider whether to pursue impeachment. Given the Republican majority in the Senate, such an effort would have no realistic chance of success. It might even improve Trump’s political prospects by advancing the story that he is being harassed by the opposing party.

In any case, impeachment at this point should not be necessary. The American people will soon have an opportunity to render the verdict they see fit — in the 2020 election.

[y66]

Guest post from Mitt Romney:

Quote

I have now read the redacted Mueller report and offer my personal reaction.

It is good news that there was insufficient evidence to charge the President of the United States with having conspired with a foreign adversary or with having obstructed justice. The alternative would have taken us through a wrenching process with the potential for constitutional crisis. The business of government can move on.

Even so, I am sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President. I am also appalled that, among other things, fellow citizens working in a campaign for president welcomed help from Russia—including information that had been illegally obtained; that none of them acted to inform American law enforcement; and that the campaign chairman was actively promoting Russian interests in Ukraine.

Reading the report is a sobering revelation of how far we have strayed from the aspirations and principles of the founders.

Not to mention the aspirations and principles of the OP.

[johnu]

y66, on 2019-April-20, 13:07, said:

Guest post from Mitt Romney:

Romney is really a gutless wonder. He's a 1%'er who speaks loudly and carries a small stick.

Quote

“It is good news that there was insufficient evidence to charge the President of the United States with having conspired with a foreign adversary or with having obstructed justice. The alternative would have taken us through a wrenching process with the potential for constitutional crisis. The business of government can move on.

Despite being sickened by the words and actions of those in the white house, Romney is basically taking Dennison's government paid personal attorney Barr's word that Dennison is innocent. Romney says nothing about impeachment, congressional investigations and oversight. Just more business as usual. One might suspect that he has illusions about running for president again.

[hrothgar]

Chas_P, on 2019-April-19, 20:04, said:

Yes,it is truly sad that Hillary got beat. She is, as we all know, an absolute paragon of virtue.

I think that its telling that even someone as far down the rabbit hole as Chas can't come up with any response other than "Wattabout Hillary?"

[hrothgar]

johnu, on 2019-April-20, 13:24, said:

Romney is really a gutless wonder. He's a 1%'er who speaks loudly and carries a small stick.

I'll be interested to see whether Romney decides to primary Trump.
It's not impossible.

[hrothgar]

FWIW, I felt that the following podcast had some of the best discussion surround the Mueller report.

https://www.lawfareb...-mueller-report

It would be interesting to know what some of the Trumpista's have to say about the conclusions...

The first five - ten minutes have a pretty good summary.

[Chas_P]

Winstonm, on 2019-April-20, 07:15, said:

FYP

Two words: Al Gore

Of course, Individual-1 is a paragon of virtue: (Mueller report)



Furthermore...



Individual-1 is expected to sign an executive order that will ban notetaking, disagreement with him, and will make failure to lie in support of his lies a capital offense. (Sarah Sanders is safe)

I was just rattling your chain Winnie. As previously stated, I have grave doubts that anything posted by any of us on an internet message board will have a major impact on the future of our country. It just gives old farts like you and me an easy way to waste time. Anyway, have a happy Easter or vernal equinox holiday or whatever politically correct greeting you deem appropriate for this time of year.

Your friend,

Chas.

[hrothgar]

Chas_P, on 2019-April-20, 18:20, said:

I was just rattling your chain Winnie. As previously stated, I have grave doubts that anything posted by any of us on an internet message board will have a major impact on the future of our country. It just gives old farts like you and me an easy way to waste time. Anyway, have a happy Easter or vernal equinox holiday or whatever politically correct greeting you deem appropriate for this time of year.

Its so rare that the trolls admit that they are old and lonely and desperate for attention...

[johnu]

Chas_NoDignity_NoHonor_NoIntegrity, on 2019-April-20, 18:20, said:

Why is Chas_NoDignity_NoHonor_NoIntegrity still posting on this thread? He doesn't have the dignity, honor, or integrity to honor his word and stop posting. He could have taken the easy way out and just changed his username, but he prefers to continue embarrassing himself by continuing to show that he can't control himself and stop posting.

[hrothgar]

rmnka447, on 2019-April-18, 15:40, said:

AG Barr said he used Mueller's criterion for deciding the obstruction issue, not his previous legal opinion. Are you suggesting AG Barr is lying?

Oh look, Barr was lying

https://www.nytimes....r-excerpts.html

[Winstonm]

Chas_P, on 2019-April-20, 18:20, said:

I was just rattling your chain Winnie. As previously stated, I have grave doubts that anything posted by any of us on an internet message board will have a major impact on the future of our country. It just gives old farts like you and me an easy way to waste time. Anyway, have a happy Easter or vernal equinox holiday or whatever politically correct greeting you deem appropriate for this time of year.

Your friend,

Chas.

Here is the basic issue that the Mueller report showed. Russia actively worked to influence the 2016 election with the intent of helping elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump, his family, and his campaign welcomed that help.

That, all by itself, should be enough to invalidate him as a U.S. president.

[y66]

In the news: Comedian wins in Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelensky, a political neophyte who is best known for playing a president on TV, decisively won the country’s presidential election on Sunday, exit polls indicated. Excerpt:

Quote

Mr. Zelensky’s victory will give Ukraine its first Jewish leader and deliver a stinging rebuke to a political and business establishment represented by Mr. Poroshenko, a billionaire candy tycoon who campaigned on the nationalist slogan “Army, language, faith.”

After five years of grinding war with Russian proxies in the east of Ukraine, voters appeared to send a signal that they were more concerned with the internal menaces of corruption and poverty — ignoring Mr. Poroshenko’s warning, delivered after he cast his own ballot on Sunday, that voting for a comedian “is not funny” and could lead to “painful” consequences.

Speaking at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, moments after the scale of his apparent victory became clear, Mr. Zelensky took a jab at Russia and other former Soviet lands that have turned elections into empty rituals that merely confirm their authoritarian leaders’ continued rule.

“As long as I am not officially a president, I can say as a citizen of Ukraine to all countries of the post-Soviet Union: Look at us — everything is possible,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Mr. Poroshenko conceded that that his presidency — which began in 2014 after street protests ousted Ukraine’s deeply corrupt, pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych — was over.

“‘Never give up’ — I also hear that now,” Mr. Poroshenko said on Sunday night in Kiev. “But when I see the results of these exit polls, they are obvious and give reasons to call my opponent now and congratulate him.”

Mr. Zelensky’s triumph hits back at years of Russian propaganda presenting Ukraine as a failed state dominated by fascists steeped in anti-Semitism and contempt for Soviet fighters who defeated Hitler’s forces in World War II.

Though part of a trend that has brought the rise of maverick political outsiders in the United States and Europe in recent years, Mr. Zelensky has shunned populist themes like hostility toward immigrants and minorities. Ukrainians worry less about outsiders coming in, and more about the large number of their own people leaving to work in Poland and other wealthier countries.

Ukraine has the lowest economic output per capita in Europe, according to figures released late last year by the International Monetary Fund.

Two revolutions delivered only disappointment after the country gained independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. While desperate for change, some of Mr. Zelensky’s supporters acknowledged that they could not realistically expect him to transform the country quickly.

“He promises utopia of course, but let it just be different,” said Natalia Melnykova, 42, who added that she did not like either candidate on Sunday’s ballot, but had voted for the comedian.

“I want something to change,” she said. “Let the youth try.”

The prospect of a smooth transfer of power after a boisterous but mostly orderly election campaign shows how far Ukraine has moved away from Russia, where listless elections offer no real competition and, for nearly 20 years, have kept President Vladimir V. Putin in power.

“The beauty of this election is that we did not know when it started who was going to win,” said David J. Kramer, a Russia expert who was an assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush. “It is not a preordained exercise.”

As of Sunday afternoon, polling had been calm and free of notable irregularities, said Mr. Kramer, who is in Ukraine with a team of election observers from the International Republican Institute, an independent group.

Many voters said they had supported Mr. Zelensky not so much because they thought he was a good candidate but because they wanted to punish Mr. Poroshenko for deflating the hopes raised by Ukraine’s 2014 revolution and for doing little to combat corruption.

Mr. Poroshenko tried to rally support during the campaign by promoting himself as a defender of Ukraine’s national interests against Mr. Putin, while Mr. Zelensky focused on what he said was the incumbent’s failure to deliver on promises to end crooked deals between officials and Ukraine’s powerful oligarchs.

Mr. Zelensky, who plays a teacher who improbably becomes president in the hit television series “Servant of the People,” wound up his campaign on Friday by lambasting Mr. Poroshenko at a raucous debate before more than 20,000 people in a Kiev sports stadium.

Referring to a 2017 pledge made by Mr. Poroshenko to tackle graft and “cut off the hands of those who steal in the army,” Mr. Zelensky asked, “Why do your people all have both their hands?”

Speaking to supporters on Sunday evening in Kiev, Mr. Zelensky said: “Thanks to all the Ukrainian citizens who voted for me, and to all who didn’t. I promise I won’t mess up.”

Volodymyr Ovseychyk, 21, a defense studies student, said he had voted for Mr. Zelensky because he did not want “to vote for politicians who have been in power for five years and have done almost nothing.”

He added that he hoped Mr. Zelensky would turn out to be a leader like Ronald Reagan.

[y66]

Guest post from Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

Quote

As we enter the first post-Mueller week, I have several things on my mind.

As always, a lot hangs on public reaction. We won’t know for at least several days, but just to lay down a marker: Through April 17, the FiveThirtyEight polling summary estimated President Donald Trump had a 42.0 percent approval rating and a 53.0 percent disapproval rating. That’s bad, and it’s awful for a president while the economy is good. That disapproval number is the worst in the polling era for any president 818 days into his presidency, and no elected president has hit that number from this point up through November of his fourth year and still been re-elected. Still, I certainly wouldn’t rule Trump out based on those numbers.

Perhaps the Robert Mueller report won’t change public opinion. But once again, even a small real change would be a big deal. If Trump could move above 44 percent approval, he’d be very much within striking distance of winning a second term. If he drops down to 40 percent, he would need to find some real improvement somewhere to have a chance at all, and it’s hard to see where that would come from. My guess all along has been that 40 percent is the rough line below which a significant primary challenge becomes more likely, too.

I see several people saying that Democrats in the House now have an obligation to at least consider impeachment, given the strong case that Trump has committed obstruction of justice; I’ve seen others argue that it’s basically a constitutional imperative to impeach if the majority of the House believes Trump has committed a serious offense. I still don’t buy it. As Julia Azari has said, “There is no nonpartisan, apolitical mechanism to evaluate abuses of power and remove a president from office.”

Impeachment remains a political act, not a judicial one, and even in the judicial realm, prosecutors normally do take into consideration the chances of obtaining a conviction, not just whether the suspect actually did the crime, in deciding whether to indict. That should be all the more the case for the House on impeachment, which after all is based on the vague constitutional standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and not the criminal code. The Framers gave impeachment to the House, which is perhaps the portion of the government they expected to be most in tune to short-term public opinion. We can only conclude crass political considerations are supposed to be part of the House’s criteria for impeachment, but its members might also believe that setting out exactly what Trump and his people have done wrong in a series of hearings would do more to protect the rule of law than a partisan impeachment followed by a partisan acquittal in the Senate. (And yes, it’s still possible that some Republicans will turn against Trump. If so, that might change the political calculations that House Democrats make. There’s nothing wrong with that.)

I’ve seen some say that if the House doesn’t impeach Trump now, for these offenses, then impeachment would become a dead letter. Nonsense. Once could certainly argue that Lyndon Johnson should have been impeached for lying about Vietnam to Congress and the nation, and yet the very next president resigned ahead of certain impeachment and conviction. The truth is (and my apologies to someone who made this comment recently) that impeachment has always been an unlikely solution to most problems with the presidency or any particular president. And certainly using it without winning removal in the Senate would hardly strengthen the power.

Whatever turns out to be best for Democrats in the House and Republicans in the Senate to do, Trump certainly has brought us to a point where what he deserves is impeachment and removal. That’s not just because of any specific crimes Trump committed (whether it’s obstruction of justice, payoffs of hush money to keep women quiet, conflicts of interest or others). Trump, like Richard Nixon, has acted as if he alone is a legitimate part of the government of the United States. Like Nixon, his defiance of the rule of law is ongoing and promises to continue as long as he’s in office.

To say that he deserves impeachment and removal is not to say that the House and Senate should do it. Again, the politics of the situation matters, and are supposed to matter. But, yes, a president who does the things that Mueller has documented — many of which we’ve seen in plain sight for months — is not fit for the office.