I’m driving. I’ll unlock this thread in about 1 hour .
ETA: Ok, I’ve cleaned up the thread from the posts since early this morning. If one of your brilliant gems needs to be restored to preserve its greatness, PM me and let me know but most of the responses I deleted couldn’t easily be extracted from the other BS.
Thanks to all who reported and please report posts and don’t escalate hostilities in the future.
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It’s fun to see Donald Jr. in the middle of everything. I can see it coming to this: “Kid, we’ll give you a plea deal, on the condition that your old man resigns. Otherwise, we’ll be sending you up the river for a few decades. Might want to have a friendly chat with him.”
Did you see the opening skit for SNL on Saturday? It was not exactly that scenario, but pretty close.
No, I didn’t! I’m sure it’s online; I’ll have to watch it now. 
De Niro (Mueller) with the eye thing directed at Stiller (Cohen) was priceless.
The ending was expected…but still funny.
It was essentially a shot-for-shot recreation of the end of The Sopranos. As usual, Kate McKinnon is the standout playing Rudy Guiliani.
Don Jr. is too stupid to flip on his father even if it was to his advantage. On the other hand, Michael Cohen—the real life counterpart to Barry Zuckerkorn—is just stupid enough. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that he actually involved in anything that would result in a serious indictment for Trump. The campaign finance violation of paying of Stephanie Clifford, while embarassing, doesn’t really rise to a level of a “high crime or misdomeanor”, and although Cohen solicitied foreign companies on the explicit basis of having influence over Trump, it isn’t clear that Trump authorized or directed Cohen to do anything to contact anyone on his behalf (although a couple of missing suspicious activity reports on Cohen’s financial transactions could hint toward a coverup). However, in the larger scope it still doesn’t matter; even if the House of Representitives flips to a Democratic majority, Mitch McConnell isn’t going to let the Senate even get to a vote for removal.
As far as foreign influence in elections, there is nothing that prevents a foreign actor from expressing an opinion about US politics, whether it is an individual on social media or a celebrity on a cable television show. What is not permitted is for foreign interests to provide undisclosed donations to political campaigns or to directly fund political action committee campaigns. It is ambiguous whether misrepresenting ones’ self on social media to attempt to influence domestic politics is illegal—there is essentially no statute law as long as it isn’t presented as a paid advertisment—but it is certainly a violation of the normal relations between ostensible democracies to interfere in internal elections, and while the United States as done so in noteworthy fashion (often with blowback) it has never done so in such an organized campaign as Russia did in the 2016 US election and elections in other European nations before and since. This is arguably a form of psychological and political warfare and Putin’s Russia should be regarded thus.
Stranger
I see two problems with this:
It’s quite possible that the Senate could flip as well.
If the Republicans insist on making impeachment a political thing by backing Trump no matter what, then the point of Democratic impeachment is to make it a political act by (a) (with Mueller’s help, of course) putting together an overwhelming case for obstruction of justice, assuming Trump himself didn’t actually authorize the solicitation and welcoming of foreign help to win the election, and (b) demonstrating how deeply in the tank the Republicans are for this criminal President, when hardly any of them vote for impeachment (and/or removal, if it’s taken up by the Senate).
This would instantly cure a lifelong habit of sombre agnosticism.
I don’t see why McConnell would quash a vote on removal. He knows how the votes will turn out, and he will almost certainly be on whichever side the vote is going to be.
The only way Mitch would let it come to a vote, if the GOP remains in control of the Senate, is if they’ve decided to give Trump the heave-ho. (And at this point, I can’t imagine what it would take to get them to do that.)
If they are still supporting him, however unenthusiastically, McConnell won’t let a vote happen because he doesn’t want his GOP colleagues to have to go on record as having supported Trump in an impeachment proceeding. The more they can pretend later that they were really against Trump all along, the better it will be for them. It’ll be bullshit, but plenty of people will buy into the bullshit if they can.
While it is mathematically possible for Democrats to take a majority in the Senate, out of 34 (35 if McCain dies in the next week or so) they are defending eighteen incumbants and challenging six Republican incumbants with ten or eleven seats in free play. They have to win a total of twenty-six to gain majority. That kind of gain isn’t wholly unprecidented—it’s the same numerically as happened in 2008–but holding that number of seats up for election hasn’t been shown since 1982, and in the post-WWII era there has never been that combination of holds and gains by Democrats (or Republicans, either, though 2014 was close). It would be an apparently unprecidented shift, and while it is easy to make the argument that we are in an unprecidented state of affairs with a historically unpopular president and incumbant Republican senators resigning, I wouldn’t go betting any mortgage payments on the Democrats likelihood of taking a majority. And as much as I’d like to entertain the vision of an even split and Mike Pence having to cast a deciding vote to remove Trump.
Anyway, I think it has already been well established that impeachment is primarily a political process rather than a purely legalistic one, “high crimes and misdomeanors” aren’t even defined in law, and in 1998 Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about receiving a blowjob, which wouldn’t even be newsworthy in the current environment if pissing Russian hookers and paid-off porn stars. And if there is one thing that Republican voters at large have demonstrated that they don’t care about, it is actual facts, with over 80% by some polls claiming that there are no valid connections between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian contacts. As long as McConnell is majoirty leader, the Senate will never vote to remove Trump, and the odds that Ol’ Snapping Turtle will lose that role after the 2018 elections is a proposition bet on acey-duece at best.
Stranger
Why all the talk of whether McConnell would let it come to a vote? It’s not his decision to make. The real question is whether John Roberts would let it come to a vote.
IANAL, so I thought I would check to see what the FEC says.
Phew. I was starting to get worried I might go to prison for posting that “Trump is a buffoon” on a message board. 
Sorry, if I broke any sarcasm-o-meters.
Well, I’m going to still disagree, but let’s hope we find out who is right, even if the GOP prevents the removal from office! I still think plain ol’ impeachment is better than nothing.
Thank you for researching this matter and providing clarity.
My interpretation is that the law prohibits financial contributions. The link describes a scenario where a foreign national singer provided his/her services at a campaign event but was not paid for the performance. In that instance, the participation in the campaign was considered legal.
This is another example of the news media being biased, incompetent, and lazy. How many times have we heard the terms “meddling” or “interfering”? It seems to me they have purposefully attempted to make people think that any sort of Russian involvement in an American campaign is illegal. For instance, purchasing Facebook ads of a political nature by the Russians would have been entirely legal if they did it openly. I presume they used American identities because they did not want the stigma of their ads coming from Russians. Cringe alert. Profiling anybody?
Or, alternately (and, IMO, far, FAR more likely): they used American identities because they knew that their posts would be far less effective in meeting their intended ends if the viewers actually knew that they weren’t being posted by Americans.
Really? Thousands of fraudulent troll accounts with the express intent of manipulating opinion isn’t ‘meddling’ or "interfering?’ What world do you live in?
I’ve got a profile for you: criminal, whether it’s legal or otherwise.
He shoots…he scores!