The Trump Impeachment Inquiry

If you don’t give her allowance until she punches some guy she doesn’t even know, what is that? Or - more on point - if she lies to the cops that this guy she doesn’t know committed a crime?

First, it seems fairly clear that the bribery talked about in the Constitution (“treason, bribery, and other high crimes or misdemeanors”) refers to an official in the United States receiving a bribe from a foreign power to do their bidding. It’s right there next to treason in the list and has to be taken in that context. I doubt the framers would have cared if we paid a bribe to a foreign country to get them to do what we want. We paid “tribute” to the Barbary corsairs for years.

Also, like with extortion, such an expansive definition calls into question any action. Am I bribing my daughter with an allowance to clean her room? Is my (hypothetical) employer bribing me to perform tasks at work? Were we attempting to bribe South Africa to end apartheid?

After all, South Africa was/is a sovereign nation and had every right to enact whatever social policies they liked within their own country. Was that an attempted bribe?

It would definitely be an illegal contract; probably violate a few criminal laws against solicitation of a crime, and I would be liable in tort law at minimum. She would probably be in the juvy system if she agreed. But how is it bribery or extortion?

*snip. Respectfully, this is both wrong and really too much. The harm in extortion is a direct harm: If you (not you a hypothetical you) do not pay me $1000, I will kill you. Extortion. Trump didn’t threaten to invade the Ukraine or conduct airstrikes if they didn’t investigate.

What is not extortion is a refusal to provide a third party benefit. Under your scenario if some bad guys are after me, it would be extortion for a private security company to refuse to protect me unless I paid them.

The extorting party must be the one that will cause the harm.

I like how you think this argument somehow exonerates Trump.

Have you read the Federal bribery statute?

And it would be okay if the CEO refused to protect me if I didn’t give him money under the table when the board of directors had already signed a contract saying they’d protect me.

Bribery is about personal gain, not national gain. Trump tried to solicit a bribe in the form of an announcement of an investigation that would benefit him personally in exchange for Congressional mandated aid to Ukraine (and high-profile visits from the Prez/VP). The “quid pro quo” is the aid for the investigation announcement and visits.

It’s always been considered corrupt and an abuse of power to use one’s official role for personal gain. Many officials have been prosecuted for this. It’s not credible to argue that this wasn’t about personal gain for Trump, and that such an act for personal gain is not corrupt and an abuse of power. Clear as day.

I’ve been following Heather Cox Richardson for the past several months on Facebook and she posts outstanding summaries of the day’s events; they’re generally fairly long but worth the read. Her latest:

Quick points:

  1. Adam Schiff and the House impeachment managers have been impressive. They compiled and presented clear and compelling.

  2. Jennifer Rubin, a conservative writer for the Washington Post wrote “making clear to the entire country that Trump did exactly what he is accused of, but that his own party, suffering from political cowardice and intellectual corruption, do not have the nerve to stop him.”

  3. And the topper of it all: Republican senators aren’t paying attention. They’re getting up and leaving, they’re out of the chamber for long periods of time, and they’re goofing off. Rand Paul, for instance, displayed a hand written message pretending to be a hostage victim and openly worked on a crossword puzzle during the proceedings.
    So it seems that Chief Justice Roberts needs to take control of the proceedings and kill the goofing off. If Republicans aren’t going to pay attention to the evidence what would stop Roberts from dismissing them from the proceedings? Does that create another constitutional crisis if they are removed from voting?

I’m curious why you would conclude that motive is irrelevant in judging actions? Again, if you’re simply fighting a semantic battle over the proper definition of “extortion”, I guess you can have at it. Completely irrelevant to the impeachment, but go ahead. But if you’re somehow saying that motive is irrelevant to whether a President can be impeached, you are waaaaaayyyyyyyy off base.

That isn’t the full extent of the Founder’s use of the term Bribery in the impeachment clause. I would suggest reading a bit of Lawrence Tribe’s To End a Presidency.

Again, if you’re conducting a semantic argument over the precise definition of “extortion”, have at it. Enjoy. If you’re trying to persuade someone that somehow the President’s actions somehow have to meet your particular definition of “extortion” before he can be impeached, then we’ll have a problem.

To be honest, I don’t really understand what you’re trying to do with these posts in this thread.

All of this goalpost shifting keeps going on in any Trump thread. Other posters said that Trump was guilty of bribery and extortion. It seems then that it is pretty reasonable to define bribery and extortion and doing so is not “semantic.”

I swear I think that if someone said Trump was guilty of genocide and I pointed out that he really wasn’t, someone else would come along and said that I was nitpicking because Trump really is the worst person ever and should have been removed from office yesterday and that I must be Trump’s whipping boy for wanting to defend him.

The board is about fighting ignorance. Whatever he is guilty of, it is not bribery or extortion. When you try to oversell your case it takes away from what you do have.

Bribery and extortion are merely words used to describe the President’s actions, not requirements for impeachment. Feel free to continue to tilt at windmills around the precise definition of general usage words though.

I would say he’s guilty of bribery and extortion in the common vernacular use of those words.

That’s also irrelevant to whether or not he can or should be impeached over his actions.

Do you have a legal position on that?

If Trump had said (I’m going to use literal text here instead of Trump speaking through subordinates and in code to keep things simple)

“I will release the miltary aid to Ukraine, if the Ukraine transfers $1,000,000 to my personal bank account.”

, then is that bribery, extortion or none-of-the-above?

And when we say that what he did was “wrong”, just precisely what do we mean? Do we mean he made a factual mistake, like confusing a Whopper with a Big Mac? Heavens, if such was the Founders intent, who among us would not be liable to impeachment? And if we have such difficulty with “wrong”, how much more so words like “extortion” and “lying sack of shit”!

Remember your Sciprture: don’t cast pearls before swine, they will clutch them and faint dead away!

Have you read the Federal bribery statute?

If Trump is guilty of bribery or extortion, then every politician in the history of the United States is guilty of it. You want that farm subsidy included in next week’s spending bill? You really should vote for my health care bill today. We are going to put sanctions on you unless you stop trying to build nuclear weapons. We will invade you unless you let us inspect your weapons dismantling program. It happens all of the time and has happened throughout history.

Trump asked another country to investigate a possible law violation by the Bidens. That’s his job. Just because you want him to do it another way does not make it impeachable. Just because Biden is his political rival does not make it impeachable. The Constitution does not say that the President is only to enforce the laws against his political friends lest it look like a conflict of interest. It doesn’t say that he must conduct investigations the way past presidents have done. And if the Bidens didn’t do anything wrong, there is nothing to report.

This is a big bunch of nothing cooked up by a party that has hated him before he was elected, have made fun of everything he says or does, and have believed that almost every action he has taken is impeachment worthy. When you cry wolf too many times, people don’t believe you. Especially when you throw around ridiculous terms like bribery and extortion. Hell, I’ve even heard murder being thrown around because a couple of illegal immigrants died in custody.

I mean, this whole board is filled with Tramp, Drumpf, comments about his orange skin, his weight, his hair. Every damn thread has to have a Trump reference. We could be talking about coin collecting and by post 20 there would be a shot at Trump. We get it that you hate the guy. But he was elected despite your hate of him. The remedy for that is to go out and win next time not devote 4 years towards finding anything at all to get rid of him. What happened to the Russia collusion? That’s all we heard about for years and now nothing. This Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing.

Just admit that you don’t know what the law actually says.

This is not his job. Not only is it clear that this was done for personal gain, rather than national interest, but there’s no record (unless you have a cite) of any President ever asking a foreign government (much less one known for corruption, and much less a political rival) to investigate a US citizen of wrongdoing.

How is this acceptable to you – Trump using his official position and powers for personal political gain? Would it be fine with you if every President going forward asks other countries to try and dig up dirt (yes, that’s clearly what he was asking for) on their political opponents?

If this is acceptable to you, and to the country, then our system has no chance of surviving. It needs legitimacy and the trust of the public to survive long-term – this was not a legitimate act of a public servant. There’s no chance of maintaining the trust of the public in the American system if officials are allowed to openly use their official position to influence/pressure/manipulate others for personal gain.

You really cannot tell the difference between those things and getting something for Trump’s personal gain?

Wow. I give up.

I do not believe that there is a “foreign” limiter, but Zelenskyy is foreign so that’s moot.

Is it assault and battery when I pinch a little boys cheek? Is it when I punch my wife in the face? Is it when I punch her in the face because she’s a filthy whore? Is it when I punch her in the face because we were practicing boxing and I goofed?

Is it theft when I pick up a fallen nickel on the ground? Is it when I cut the chain and ride off with a bicycle out front of a school?

If only we had the power of using our brain to make reasonable determinations between such questions…!

This is why one of the criteria for criminality is mens rea. It’s how we say, “Yeah, you might be able to argue that any one action is or is not a crime depending on circumstances, since that can happen with almost every type of crime. So what was the actual intent of the action? Was the intent benevolent? Or was the intent criminal?”

What was the intent?