Rick Perry is the labrador retriever of the current scandal - dumb and goofy, always ready to play, usually drooling. No one suspects some evil agenda when he craps on the rug.
Didja notice a hint of irony in my post 
Republicans haven’t left Trump because, by and large, he’s a mainstream Republican. He’s doing what other Republicans either have done or would have done if they thought they could get away with it. The only thing that sets him apart is the tweets and obvious mental impairment. This is what Republicans have been for years.
Let’s also note:
And, I feel it should be pointed out:
Presumption of innocence tends to go away during criminal trials through the introduction of “evidence as to the character and personality of the accused”.
When I am prosecuting a man of killing his girlfriend, I will almost never succeed at doing this by having a video tape of him killing his girlfriend. I will likely not even have a knife with his fingerprints and the shape of his hand blocking out blood from the handle. What I will have is testimony that various others saw him hitting his girlfriend, maybe one or two people saying that he said that he was going to kill her, etc.
By the standards that people seem to apply to Trump, for proving that he’s guilty of anything, they go far beyond any standard that we use to throw people into jail for the rest of their life, when we’re just talking about firing a guy from his job. General evidence of character and previous MO is ignored. That is nonsensical.
Nearly everyone who has worked in this White House has said that they’ve been asked to perform illegal acts by the President. The Mueller report has legal testimony that also says this and further goes on to say that, after Trump was told that certain things were illegal, he simply continued to ask for those things to be done.
That little nugget of the Mueller report alone, completely ignoring “obstruction of justice” or anything, is an impeachable offense. The Oath of Office for the Presidency requires that the President defend and execute the laws of the land. Asking people to break the law, having just been informed that the requests are illegal, is as direct an offense against the Oath and basic fundamentals of the job description as you can get. As said before, “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” means any abuse of the office or failure to live up to your oath that was intentional.
In a criminal case, I could point to the fact that Trump has said that he will commit crimes to go after his opponents and that he has a documented history of asking people to commit criminal activities of similar nature. The lack of a smoking gun would not be a large component of the jury’s deliberations. Smoking guns are not the standard of evidence that we use and, if we did, the number of people in jail would decrease by 99.5%.
And if the protests of the accused had any weight (“it was a perfect call, I’m innocent, other people do it to”) - there nuber of people in jail would be zero.
Your comparison to a criminal trial is marvelous, and thank you for that. However: This will be a criminal trial where the facts are more or less a given, but the defendant is going to try to argue that what he’s accused of isn’t really a crime, or at worst it’s a misdemeanor.
Not just the defendant, but also a good part of the jury.
By the way, I probably missed it (this thread already has > 3500 responses, and I came in in the middle), but why does quid pro quo even matter? Isn’t asking a foreign power for assistance with an election a serious enough charge?
Yes. But trying to state otherwise is just another attempt by Republicans to “move the goalposts” on this issue. Something that Republicans are absolute masters at.
But the standard is neither crime nor misdemeanor, it’s “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. While, perversely, that contains the same words the meaning of the phrase is completely unrelated to modern usage of the words.
“Maladministration”, for example, wouldn’t be considered to be a component of the phrase as we would think it, but it is included by the intent of the founders:
It should matter, yes. And if this were a President who was a Democrat the GOP would be screaming bloody murder. But since this guy is a Republican they are going to act as if it is no big deal. They like to play the patriotic card all the time but it’s mostly bullshit.
Also, I just saw the Dems are asking Bolton to testify next week. It should have been pretty obvious this was coming. The question though is will he show up? Even though Trump may claim executive privilege Bolton seems to genuinely despise him and may actually spill his guts. It will be interesting.
And we need to stop with the phrase quid pro quo and just call it extortion since people understand what that actually is.
It doesn’t. It’s a Republican way of saying: Nevermind that, look over here at this instead.
The specific thing Trump did was ask a foreign government to investigate a US citizen for him. And that is absolutely a violation of his oath to this country and our constitution.
Whenever this is mentioned, the Pubs are quick to bring up the Steele dossier (which of course was originally funded by a Republican campaign, but don’t let that bother you). But Steele wasn’t a government employee, and he wasn’t hired by a current office holder. Which of those two facts is significant, or is it both? Or neither?
At a bare minimum, the Steele dossier wasn’t initiated by President Obama. That’s just for starters.
Roberta Rampton, NPR:
Michael S. Schmidt, NYT:
I’m guessing Tim Morrison will be the next victim of the Smear campaign. I wonder what lies Fox News will be preparing for tomorrow?
Sorta curious what the comment from Bolton’s lawyer neans. Is it possible Bolton won’t testify voluntarily but is signaling he will show up if subpoenaed?
He is possibly signaling his willingness to testify w/ a subpoena so he can CYA.
I think Trump hasn’t used “rat” since Cohen slipped up. “Snitch” is probably next.
As several other witnesses have done.
I suspect Bolton wants to wait until the Thursday meeting about Kupperman’s request to get a ruling on which branch of government he has to obey.