RUSSIAGATE: Im tired of MSM acting stupid as to whether Trump was trying to impede an investigation

[kpete]

We know that trump summoned Comey to a dinner, at which he requested a loyalty pledge, which Comey rejected. Trump admits that at that same dinner the topic of whether Comey would keep his job was brought up. That implicitly ties together Comey’s employment with the loyalty pledge. That is a “pressure was brought to bear” offense.

We know that later Trump requested Comey kill the Flynn investigation, which overlaps with the Russia investigations.

We know that Trump fired Comey after failing to secure the loyalty pledge and failing to get Comey to kill the Flynn investigation, and Trump has now admitted twice that he fired Comey in order to kill the Russia investigation.

You don’t have to be a genius to connect the dots.

I’m tired of the MSM acting stupid as to whether Trump was trying to impede an investigation.

Finally, impeachment is not a legal standard, it’s a political standard. “High crimes and misdemeanors” = unethical use of one’s office, criminal or non-criminal, that is bad enough to warrant removal from office, as deemed by Congress. “High crimes and misdemeanors” as it pertains to impeachment is both a weaker and stronger standard than “criminality”. There are some crimes that are too trivial to warrant removal from office, and at the same time there are non-crimes that are bad enough to warrant removal from office. It’s whatever Congress wants to do. There have been judges impeached for things that were unethical but not criminal.


The MSM keeps trotting out Dershowitz and Turley to carry Trump’s water, by talking about the legal statute “Obstruction of Justice”, which is not relevant. Turely said the other day that Trump’s actions don’t meet the ‘Obstruction of Justice’ standard because when he fired Comey there was no grand jury in effect, therefore he’s not done anything impeachable. That is such weak sauce. Dershowitz is playing the same kind of crap.


But if the MSM keeps playing that game, Democrats might want to consider stopping using the phrase “Obstruction of justice” and instead use the phrase, “impeding an investigation”, or “impeding a counter-intelligence investigation” or “impeding a criminal and counter-intelligence investigation”. And use terms like “pressure was brought to bear”. These are all unethical abuses of the office Trump holds. Don’t specify a specific criminal statute, so that Turley, Dershowitz, Ryan, and MSM can’t use the technicalities of that statute to protect Trump.

And if Ryan wants to play semantics to protect Trump, then the Dems should explicitly run on impeachment in 2018. In 2006 they explicitly took impeachment off the table, but this time they should explicitly put it on the table. (They should run on “issues” too, but this diary is about Russiagate, so that’s what I’m talking about here.)


http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/5/29/1666735/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up-Trump-voters-got-the-Chaos-they-were-promised#comment_66647607

[MedusaX]

1. Abuse of Power is the umbrella under which all of *45's acts fall.

Everything impeachment worthy he has done ...
And continues to do should be tagged with the additional descriptor identifying the act as an Abuse of Power.

Abuse of Power essentially equates to High Crimes and Misdemeanors...

The following excerpt provides a nice overview of the significance of the term 'high crimes and misdemeanors' as it relates to impeachment.


>snip<
The convention adopted “high crimes and misdemeanors” with little discussion.
Most of the framers knew the phrase well.
Since 1386, the English parliament had used “high crimes and misdemeanors” as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown.

Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as
misappropriating government funds,
appointing unfit subordinates,
not prosecuting cases,
not spending money allocated by Parliament,
promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates,
threatening a grand jury,
disobeying an order from Parliament,
arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament,
losing a ship by neglecting to moor it,
helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,”
granting warrants without cause, and
bribery.

Some of these charges were crimes.
Others were not.
The one common denominator in all these accusations was that
the official had somehow
abused the power of his office and
was unfit to serve.

After the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution had to be ratified by the states. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote a series of essays, known as the Federalist Papers, urging support of the Constitution.
In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton explained impeachment.

He defined impeachable offenses as
“those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men,
or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

>snip<
http://www.crf-usa.org/impeachment/high-crimes-and-misdemeanors.html


I think that the narrative needs to be framed in terms of *45's repeated Abuse of Power...

Each of his actions needs to be tied to the narrative as being
yet another act, in an ongoing series of acts,
which represents an abuse of power in its own right and
collectively, these acts establish a pattern of abuse which is likely to continue for the duration of his term thereby steadily increasing the severity of the injuries inflicted upon society.

[Mr. Ected]

3. This

Very well laid out. This is exactly what the MSM needs to take under consideration and is a nice summary of the intentions of the Founding Fathers regarding impeachable offenses.

[uponit7771]

2. +1, if this was anyone​ else they'd be crucified by now

[lostnfound]

4. "Trump is obstructing justice - when will congress stop allowing it?Who in congress is abetting it?"

[AgadorSparticus]

5. Agreed. They need to take the kid gloves off and treat him like an adult

Make him own up to his shit.

[politicaljunkie41910]

6. The question you should ask yourself is whether the GOP would have impeached Hillary or Obama

Last edited Mon May 29, 2017, 12:45 PM - Edit history (1)

for the conduct Trump has engaged in. We know that they were willing to impeach Bill Clinton for lying under oath about sex with an intern, after having spent years investigating every aspect of his life imaginable and coming up empty.

If President Obama had members of his staff secretly meeting with the Russians and not reporting these meetings on their Form SF86 , or secret meetings in the Saychelles Islands or trying to set up backdoor communication channels with the Russians either before or after taking office, the GOP would not only have voted to impeach him, they would have had him prosecuted criminally as well. They would say that because they were operating in secret, there is a presumption that they were doing something nefarious, or illegal. They wanted to "lock Hillary up" for the use of an unauthorized server in her home, and they have no proof that any information was ever compromised. In the case of Trump and his minions, we don't know what information has been compromised. As Malcom Nance has said, if they were seeking a back channel communication system, "what exactly were they planning to communicate; our nuclear codes?"

Nance also said that our intelligence agencies will have to assume that certain of our intelligence has been compromised, and make changes accordingly. At what price is this going to cost us? LOCK THEM UP.

The things that they tried to accuse Hillary of, (unauthorized server that was never compromised, and insufficient security at a CIA safe house in Benghazi) are not even in the same league as what the Trump administration and his minions have done even before taking office, let alone since.

I don't want to get into a tit for tat situation with the GOP, but if you substitute the name Clinton or Obama as a yardstick to measure whether or not the GOP would not have had the same "let's not rush to judgment attitude" had it been one of them, than I rest my case. The Secret Service would not have been able to guarantee either of their safety ever again had this been the case, and they had been accused of either taking money from or secret unreported meetings/communications with the Russians.

[SHRED]

7. Truth.

[dalton99a]

9. Precisely.

[yallerdawg]

8. If impeachment is merely 'political' and originates in the House...

and conviction of 'high crimes and misdemeanors' rests with the Senate, then we need evidence of real crimes to force him out now!

Otherwise, we'll have to wait and hope to take back the House and the Senate to proceed in 2019, even 2021?

Then it will most definitely be 'political' - would that be a 'good thing' for America?

Let's do what the legal pundits suggest - find the 'smoking gun' and nail this bastard now!

[Morrakiu]

10. Evidence?

There's no evidence cause the accusations are fiction. Just like Harry Potter and the holocaust.