I think it just shows that going up any ladder in this administration will inevitably lead to a crook.
So it wasn’t a lone whistleblower doing his duty…it was a veritable Mormon Tabernacle Choir of whistles being blown. And being ignored, until it got to House Intelligence.
I think you missed my point. My point wasn’t to get you to admit that the president is inept. My point is that someone who has no other indicators of even trying to do his job well and in an ethical manner should not get this much of a benefit of the doubt when an ethical complaint arises. Sure, give him a trial in the senate where he has a presumption of innocence, but at this stage? Come the fuck on. He didn’t even try to make this look like official state business. He didn’t even try to make sure this was legal and/or ethical. Everything we’ve seen so far looks exactly like someone doing something shady and getting caught.
Ah, the old “*It’s not really murder if I thought they were secret Illuminati Lizard-people. Prove me wrong! *” defense.
Right, I don’t personally give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt and I think all three of your accusations are well-founded. If the House voted on articles of impeachment right now, and I were a representative, I would very likely vote for impeachment of the President because that presumption of innocence is not borne out by evidence.
But neither does any evidence yet prove the President is worthy of conviction. So if I were a Senator forced to vote guilty or not guilty right now, I would vote not guilty. If I were a representative, I would prefer to hold off the impeachment vote until we build a more complete case, until we rule out the possibility of innocence. Max S. the representative is not interested in sending articles of impeachment to the Senate that are doomed to fail, especially when the House can so easily eliminate the possibility of innocence.
It would only take a few well-placed questions to law enforcement officials.
~Max
You don’t need a Vindman to know which way the whistle blows.
Brilliant!!
Right wing Congressman Mark Meadows was born in France. Is his first loyalty to France?
I think “secret Illuminati Lizard-people” is a little bit over the top, but basically, yeah.
If a cop makes a warrantless arrest based on immediate probable cause, and then it turns out that the probable cause is baseless, the cop is not going to be reprimanded unless he should have known that probable cause was baseless at the time of the arrest.
Let’s say an officer approaches a suspect’s home late at night and is shot and killed on the spot. The officer did not identify himself, approached during the dead of night, his squad car and lights were out of sight and sirens off, allegedly did not respond to defendant’s verbal warnings, was dressed in dark clothes, etc. Defendant claims that he killed the officer in an act of self defense (if such a defense is legal as it is here), because he thought the officer was a burglar or rapist or something. If a reasonable person in the same situation as the suspect, with the same limited information, could come to the same conclusion, the suspect will go free.
Now let’s say Ukraine and Russia have some bad actors who actually do want to subvert the U.S. political process. Some of these actors have or had positions of power in Ukraine. They build up circles of influence and draw semi-prominent Americans in, such as Gen. Flynn, Mr. Manafort, Mr. Giuliani, and a whole bunch of others that we’ll never hear about. Mr. Trump wins the presidency, Gen. Flynn is kicked out, the Mueller investigation goes down and takes Manafort with it, but now Mr. Giuliani is very close to the president. So Ukrainian sources start feeding him (and others) false leads about Crowdstrike and Burisma. Now you have two conspiracy theories, and one person close to the president who thinks they are credible. The theories make it to the news and now thousands of Americans think they are credible. The President sees this on the news and calls up Rudy, why didn’t you tell me you know about all this stuff, you get together with Barr and get to the bottom of this. Barr opens an investigation based on tips from Rudy’s sources or news reports or whatever, tells the President we need evidence from Ukraine. President says, what’s the problem? Barr says Ukraine has a history of not keeping promises to investigate, is generally corrupt. President says he’ll take care of it, fires the ambassador who he never liked, and tells Mr. Pompeo, who sends Mr. Sondland to the White House. Trump tells him that he wants Ukraine to agree to investigations before they meet face to face. He also cuts military aid because if Ukraine is too corrupt to cooperate, why should we cooperate with them? Bolten and Volker are blindsided because Trump didn’t tell them what’s going on and it looks awfully shady. Volker bites his tongue, Bolten gets fired. Meanwhile Pompeo recruits Mr. Taylor, but before he fully realizes what’s going on the Presidents have a phone call and Giuliani is out on back-channel missions. A whistleblower report surfaces, the IG says it’s credible, DoJ says no crime committed, and then Adam Schiff gets it and says we have a problem.
I sure can speculate, can’t I?
~Max
What’s the connecting tissue between Rudy Giuliani, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn?
One would have to imagine that Russia-aligned Ukrainian separatist allied Americans would be relatively thin on the ground and difficult to randomly and by happenstance come into contact with, befriend, and work with all while being completely unaware of that aspect of their daily lives.
I’ve believed all along that the GOP whining about “secret hearings” was a serious misstep on their part. Once the hearings go public the committee will likely be recalling people who have already testified in private to repeat their testimony in public, televised hearings. There will clearly be Republicans asking questions so that complaint will be shown to be the big fat lie it has been all along.
Recalling Fiona Hill and Col. Vindman to testify in public is pretty much a guarantee. Calling Bolton to corroborate their version of events will go very poorly for the GOP. Sondlund undoubtedly committed perjury so that’s going to be an issue.
Taking this step is in no way “caving” to the GOP, it was always going to happen. I trust Pelosi as a strategist more than anyone on the GOP side of things.
Note - Scalise and Jordan were just on television whining that the resolution is just as unfair as the “secret” hearings that have been going on. They are lying scum who should be voted out of office at the next election.
I think they have every reason to be confident in that regard.
The question they should be asking however is what effect this is having outside their base.
I think there is a substantial difference between not reprimanding a cop unless:
- they should have known that probable cause was baseless.
- It is proven that they knew that probable cause was baseless.
There is a significant difference in burden of proof between these two.
You appear to be holding the cop to standard #1, where a gullible cop with a prexisting grudge against a pizza parlor owner is not allowed to just barge down the restaurant door because he saw some “anonymous tips” about human trafficking on an internet forum.
Based on post #1446, you appear only hold Trump to standard #2.
Strike Flynn out, that was a mistake. Just Giuliani and Manafort.
Mr. Giuliani through two Ukrainian-born associates. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested “on criminal charges stemming from their alleged efforts to funnel foreign money into U.S. elections and influence U.S. politics on behalf of at least one unnamed Ukrainian politician” (Viswanatha et. al, 2019). I don’t know where Mr. Giuliani sources his accusations against Burisma or about Crowdstrike, but I am guessing it comes from somewhere in Ukraine or Russia.
Mr. Manafort through ten years of direct dealings with and lobbying on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. It is then alleged that his Ukrainian friends called on him to arrange the Trump Tower meeting, that he met with a KGB agent, etc.
Viswanatha, A., Ballhaus, R., Gurman, S., & Tau, B. (2019, October 10). Two Giuliani Associates Who Helped Him on Ukraine Charged With Campaign-Finance Violations. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 29, 2019 from https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-foreign-born-men-who-helped-giuliani-on-ukraine-arrested-on-campaign-finance-charges-11570714188
Paul Manafort definitely knew he was dealing with Russia-aligned Ukrainian-separatist-allied people. I’m willing to entertain the possibility that Mr. Giuliani is just clueless.
~Max
So let’s see: if the President is totally delusional, dreams shit up without any evidence behind it, and has no U.S. agency even try to investigate his delusions to confirm or contradict them, and he threatens to toss Ukraine over to the Russians unless they investigate his delusion - so what you’re really saying is this is 25th Amendment shit, not impeachment shit, amirite?
No, my standard for Mr. Trump is “it is proven that he should have known that the accusations against the DNC/Crowdstrike and Hunter Biden/Burisma Holdings were baseless.”
Indeed, I hold the cop to the same standard: “it is proven that they should have known that probable cause was baseless”.
~Max
That’s been proven into the ground. There never was a base for these allegations, so assuming he can tell a hawk from a handsaw, he should have known they were baseless.
I swear we did this lots of pages ago. 
… I think so, yeah.
~Max
Very well. We shall resume in an hour.