Is treason the only only ‘high crime and misdemeanor’ of concern?
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I understand this concern about special prosecutors, but I interpreted your comment to mean that there’d be no crime in the absence of the special investigation. There’s way too much here.
There’s been a suggestion going around among Trump supporters for awhile now that Trump & team were just inexperienced, having never served in government, and didn’t know what was ok to do and what wasn’t.
If that’s the case, then why all the lies? The Trump team had an enormous, inordinate amount of contacts with Russians and other foreigners. Kushner augmented his SF-86 security form with over 100 contacts and he still didn’t list the June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer (the one about getting dirt on Clinton).
This ain’t no witch hunt.
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I guess if you forget that Trump’s been involved in politics longer than I’ve been alive stuff like this makes perfect sense.
Sending you a bill for the Windex I used to clean the coffee off my monitor after reading this.
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That depends largely on the 2018 mid term election results.
Mueller could charge the President with a crime, but Congress would still need to impeach him to remove him from office. Otherwise we could have the weird scenario of having a sitting president on trial by the justice department. I’m no constitutional law scholar, but the President is still a citizen, so the presumption of innocence and the right to a trial will still apply. Given Trump’s behaviour thus far do you think he’ll step down out of “shame”?
Mueller has to either come up with iron clad serious charges against DJT in order to force impeachment… or wait until the Dems have more power in Congress.
Edit: I never answered your question ED. IMHO I’m sure Mueller can charge Trump with any number of petty infractions. But to force Congress to remove him from office it needs to be Treason or something nearly as serious.
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Let us hope that is not the case.
Fusion GPS, in a notice to a federal judge in Washington late on Tuesday, said that a subpoena sent by the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Devin Nunes, to the firm’s bank was “part of an ongoing effort to discredit Fusion in retaliation for its role in undertaking research” into Trump during the election.
Nunes has been doing everything he can to discredit anything and anyone involved in this investigation. Pretty clear most republicans in Congress are too after watching Rosenstein’s testimony today.
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But overall, U.S. officials said, the Kremlin believes it got a staggering return on an operation that by some estimates cost less than $500,000 to execute and was organized around two main objectives — destabilizing U.S. democracy and preventing Hillary Clinton, who is despised by Putin, from reaching the White House.
The bottom line for Putin, said one U.S. official briefed on the stream of post-election intelligence, is that the operation was “more than worth the effort.”
The Russian operation seemed intended to aggravate political polarization and racial tensions and to diminish U.S. influence abroad. The United States’ closest alliances are frayed, and the Oval Office is occupied by a disruptive politician who frequently praises his counterpart in Russia.“Putin has to believe this was the most successful intelligence operation in the history of Russian or Soviet intelligence,” said Andrew Weiss, a former adviser on Russia in the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It has driven the American political system into a crisis that will last years.”
U.S. officials declined to discuss whether the stream of recent intelligence on Russia has been shared with Trump. Current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update — known as the president’s daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him.
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I tell you what, @loppar…
Goldwater…and yes…the much beloved Ronald Reagan are turning over in their graves…
is Goldwater code name for the leaker in pee gate scandal?
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Barry Goldwater. He’s basically American political conservatism Jesus.
He’s also arguably one of history’s most influential people re: fiscal conservatism, may it rest in peace.
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Is this supposed to be the “Deep State” everyone is so worried about… ?
The Biggest “truth” in that piece?
“…Now; no matter what; half the country is going to believe that Mueller’s investigation was never motivated by truth…”
That’s the case with just about everything these days.
So you’re saying the texts published by CNN were fake and that guy wasn’t fired?
Of course the special prosecutor is a political tool, when have they ever not been? Let’s hope Trump doesn’t go full Bill Clinton on Mueller like they did to Starr. Imagine the indignant outrage from the media if he did.
If that agent really used the phrase “backup plan” in reference to the investigation… that’s a bit damning.
https://lawfareblog.com/peter-strzoks-insurance-policy
But the president’s defenders are off base when they try read conspiracy into Peter Strzok’s “insurance policy” message. Talking about Trump’s chances in August 2016, here’s what Strzok wrote:
I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office [Andrew McCabe is the FBI deputy director and married to a Democratic Virginia State Senate candidate] for that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40 …
Lots of folks on the right are suggesting that “insurance policy” is some opaque and sinister Deep State code for black ops in the event of a Trump victory.
Give me a break. Read the text again.
Strzok was reacting to the argument that there was no point getting worked up because Trump was bound to lose. He argued in response that the odds against a Trump victory offered no reason to be complacent and gave an example: The odds are also very much against you dying before the age of 40, but you probably bought insurance at that age because dying with a young family would be such a disaster; the expense is reasonable even if the event is unlikely. For the same reason, in Strzok’s view, horror at the prospect of a Trump presidency is reasonable even though the prospect is remote.
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Ahh the problems of out of context conversations.
“I’m afraid we can’t take that risk”
The entire tilt of the message depends on who “we” consists of. The world? The American electorate? The FBI? The people in Andy’s office?
Coincidentally… WTF is going on at the FBI? Between Comey’s erratic behaviour and all of the anti-Hillary and anti-Trump leaks. Are they law enforcement or an amateur gossip columm?
@Loppar always talking about how huge the FSB is. I’ll bet they don’t have unsanctioned leaks all the time. Then again that’d only happen once and they’d make an example of whoever did it.
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By example, you mean:
“Hey, where’d Dmitry go? Haven’t seen him in weeks.”
“Dmitry who?”
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Dmitry is as dead as pee pee hookers… Lets not praise Mr Putins methods…Trump does that fine all by himself
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He had his fourth discussion/interaction with Putin today. As with the prior three, we (the US) learned about it only when the Russian media reported it.
Putin told him he didnt do anything what else do you want? If you cant trust ex KGB who can you trust jeesh
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