All Mueller did was focus on the strictly legal things, and look what happened. That won’t cut it. This whole thing is about public image. Most people are too stupid to parse legalities. How else do you think Trump got this far?
I don’t think he did. What I heard was:
“Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump was again asked what he wanted Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to do with regard to the Bidens.”(Liptak, 2019)
“Well, I would think that if they were honest about it they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer. Uh, they should investigate the Bidens, because how does a company that’s newly formed, and all these companies, if you look at - and by the way China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with, uh, with Ukraine. So I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens, because nobody has any doubt that they aren’t crooked. That was a crooked deal, a hundred percent. He had no knowledge of energy, didn’t know the first thing about it, all of a sudden he’s getting fifty thousand dollars a month, plus a lot of other things. Nobody has any doubt. And they got rid of a prosecutor, who was a very tough prosecutor, they got rid of him. Now they’re trying to make it the opposite way. But they got rid - so if I were the president, I would certainly recommend that of Ukraine.” (my transcription; CNN, 2019)
I can gather that Mr. Trump thinks the Bidens are crooked and that Hunter is unqualified for his position. He also thinks “they” (the Bidens) got rid of a tough prosecutor. Something about a newly formed company but he didn’t finish that sentence.
I do not as a matter of impeachable legal analysis make the conclusion that the president admitted that the only reason he wants the Bidens investigated is for political gain. Yes, he admits that he wants the Bidens investigated. The reconstructed Trump-Zelensky call transcript and the publicized withholding of military aid heavily suggests that Mr. Trump used military aid to demand, inter alia, an investigation of the Bidens. Recently released text messages between U.S. envoys and ambassadors strongly support that conclusion. I think it is likely that the president did all of this with the sole intention of hurting Joe Biden’s campaign. I cannot yet rule out the possibility that Mr. Trump had and has a reasonable basis, not yet publicly articulated, to investigate Mr. Hunter Biden, Burisma Holdings, and whatever China thing he alluded to.
I am not willing to hold off my judgement forever. This isn’t a “we’ll never know” sort of thing. I believe the House of Representatives has the power to subpoena the Justice Department and demand to see the rationale behind the investigation. If no investigation exists (existed), or no rationale is available, or the rationale is plainly insufficient such that a reasonable person in the President’s position would have known the investigation was unwarranted, I would consider the President’s quid pro quo to be an impeachable abuse of power.
If the Justice Department refuses to acknowledge the existence of an investigation, I will almost certainly be unpersuaded given the President’s public remarks. Generally the purpose of keeping an investigation secret is to prevent the target from covering their tracks; that doesn’t really apply when the President publicly calls on two countries to investigate people by name.
If the Justice Department refuses to acknowledge the rationale behind an existing investigation, the only possible situation where I might possibly believe them is if the investigation was of some vast left-wing conspiracy. The only way I might possibly believe that is if the Supreme Court viewed the reasons and evidence in secret and unanimously agreed with the DoJ.
I think that covers all the bases.
~Max
CNN. (2019, October 3). Trump: Ukraine and China should investigate Bidens. Retrieved October 4, 2019 from https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/10/03/china-should-investigate-biden-trump-sot-nr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/
Liptak, K. (2019, October 3). Trump now says both China and Ukraine should investigate Bidens. CNN. Retrieved October 4, 2019 from https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-china-investigate-2020/index.html
An investigation run by whom?
And looking into what?
Don’t misunderstand me, I think he did too. It’s just that me thinking the president abused his authority contrary to the Constitution isn’t enough for me to convict him of abusing his authority contrary to the Constitution.
Without the right “legal theory” and evidence to support it, I wouldn’t vote to convict. I think some Republican senators, if not most of them, will buckle under a flawless legal theory for impeachment and conviction.
There is a legal argument that “high crimes” should be construed to mean statutory felonies instead of abuses of power. I don’t subscribe to that notion because I take a somewhat originalist view of the Constitution, and Publius was pretty clear that “high crimes” means abuse of power. Some senators might shift goalposts as a fallback and claim that the president must have committed a felony before they will convict. I think that’s a misinterpretation of the Constitution and further, it substantially weakens Congress’s impeachment powers. So that would hurt Republicans if a Democratic president ever abuses their power in the future. Not very smart, legally or politically, in my opinion.
~Max
I think the call could be construed as meaning Mr. Trump wants Mr. Zelensky to work with both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Barr concerning the Crowdstrike investigation, and further that Mr. Zelensky would be working with Mr. Barr and Mr. Giuliani about the Biden investigation. I’ve reproduced part of the reconstructed conversation below, supporting my interpretation with boldface and underlines:
"*I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. […]
[…]Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. […] The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me*."(boldface and underline mine; The White House Situation Room, 2019)
Between paragraphs they did not switch the discussion to the Biden investigation, but you can follow the link if you don’t believe me. The first mention of the Bidens is where I underlined it, when Mr. Trump said “The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son…”
There is a later part where the President says,
“I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything.”(The White House Situation Room, 2019)
It would take a stretch to say Mr. Trump didn’t want to involve Giuliani with the Biden inquiry, but it doesn’t take much imagination to say Mr. Trump wanted the Attorney General would be involved too. I have stated my opinion that involving Giuliani is within the president’s prerogative, see [POST=21895858]post #1690[/POST] and replies. As such, I cannot yet rule out the possibility that there was a legitimate investigation behind this request. Further, I believe this is something the House of Representatives can and should determine as a matter of fact, see my recent [POST=21898274]post #1861[/POST]. I believe I have directly addresses your concern as quoted above.
This would go in a separate article of impeachment, in my opinion. I am reserving my judgement until I have time to find and look over the law in question. If it were stipulated that the president did not have the authority to withhold aid, then his actual withholding of aid would be an abuse of power barring exceptional circumstances.
In particular, if the President had reason to believe members of the Ukrainian government were enemies of the United States, and that they would directly use such aid in ways counter to the national interest, and neither Congress nor the President knew of these circumstances when signing the law, I might be okay if the President holds back the aid until the Congress (or committees on Ukraine) can be briefed, at which point they can work out what to do. But yeah, if the administration wants to argue that this is the case, they need to bring in compelling evidence that they were justified and quickly informed Congress as to the circumstances. For me the unlikeliness of this having happened places the burden of proof on the administration, if it is shown that he did not have the statutory authority to withhold aid.
It would seem like a contradiction, except that the Zelensky administration is brand new and Mr. Zelensky himself campaigned on cracking down on corruption. I could see Mr. Trump wanting Mr. Zelensky to publicly commit to his campaign promises if they further U.S. interests, especially if the previous Ukrainian administrations had a habit on not following through with law enforcement cooperation. As such, I’m not concerned with this otherwise fatal flaw in logic.
~Max
The White House Situation Room. (2019, July 25). Memorandum of telephone conversation. Retrieved October 4, 2019 from https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf
Ha!
His reputation for lying has nothing to do with my judgement of whether he committed an impeachable offense. If Mr. Trump wants to lie under oath during a deposition, let us impeach him for perjury.
~Max
He committed an impeachable offense. You’re wrong. That’s pretty much it.
That’s not quite accurate. I would like a nice, wrapped-up-with-a-bow-on-point legal argument demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump committed a “high crime”, which is impeachable under Article II Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. I stipulate to the interpretation of “high crimes” as meaning abuses of power, but in my opinion it still must be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the President acted and acted with such intent that if I were in the President’s position, I would consider that act an abuse of power.
I understand and agree that it is not in our best interests as a nation to invite/permit a foreign government to participate in the choosing of our elected officials. I don’t think that’s what you wanted me to admit, though.
I only generally agree that it is not in our national interest to invite a foreign government to investigate candidates for political office. Whether or not that would be appropriate or desirable hinges on whether there is a “plausible reason of state” to make such an invitation, as Mr. Frank Bowman of the University of Missouri said in the article you linked to (Wolfe, 2019). As applied to the current scandal, if there was no legitimate reason to investigate the Bidens, I would conclude that the President abused his authority and committed an impeachable offense by asking a foreign government to investigate a political rival’s family.
Which I will not do, because I know of none and am not in a position to know.
I believe this is a loaded question, because when you write “so he, Trump, could try to win the 2020 election” you appear to assume that this is in fact the intention behind Mr. Trump’s request. I have already admitted that if Mr. Trump made the request with such an intention, it would be an impeachable abuse of power. I am not aware of any national interest that is served by such behavior. I do not know of any arguments at all, even ones that I disagree with.
I cannot satisfy either of your requests, but I believe you may have misunderstood my position when making your post. I hope that my responses above clarify my position, and before I stop participating in this thread I ask you to confirm that you still want me to leave.
~Max
Wolfe, J. (2019, September 25). Explainer: Impeachment depends on ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ - what are they? Reuters. Retrieved October 4, 2019 from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-crimes-explai/explainer-impeachment-depends-on-high-crimes-and-misdemeanors-what-are-they-idUSKBN1WA288
It’s pretty clear that you think that, first things first, Ukraine should have an investigation and then report back to us. And that that will determine Trump’s wrongness. Which, pardon me, is wacky, to be polite.
Unfortunately, it would appear that you were premature to highlight how unique it is for Mr. Trump to ask Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that a pattern or lack of pattern is irrelevant. If there were and are valid reasons to investigate the Bidens, investigating them is more important to me than avoiding the mere appearance of impropriety. I don’t believe the President is above the law, and I certainly don’t believe the Bidens are above the law.
~Max
I have no idea, and haven’t found the want or will to dredge through Fox News to build a speculative case against the Bidens. I’m going to sit back and say, it is incumbent on the House of Representatives to ask whether the administration had any reasonable basis to start an investigation (if they even started one). Then it’s on the administration to defend themselves.
~Max
That’s not my take on this. I don’t know what the Bidens did or may have done to warrant an investigation, but I explicitly reject that basis because we have plenty of evidence that Joe Biden had bipartisan and international support when he asked Ukraine to drop their prosecutor general.
~Max
But somebody had to actually push the buttons on a keyboard to do this. Who? There simply has to be a record of this. Who ordered them to do so? And who ordered them? Is this information that is beyond knowing? It can’t be. There must be, by its very nature, a limited number of people with access to the system. The buck has to stop with someone and I’d want that someone in the hot seat explaining why it was done. And how many other times it was done. And what was contained in those documents. I believe that there should be a full court press to pursue this angle.
If someone up to no good says “I’m going to put really incriminating stuff in this box”, I’d sure as hell would want to see what is in there.
I’m not quite sure what you mean. Do I believe that any president must abuse his (or her) power to be impeached for “high crimes”? Yes, I do.
Do I believe every president should abuse his power? Absolutely not. I believe no president should abuse his power.
Do I believe that any president must abuse his power to be impeached? No, in my opinion a president can also be impeached for treason or bribery.
~Max
I’ve started to think that there is no way the Senate will vote to convict, but if public sentiment gets strongly* behind impeachment and Trump continues to be more unhinged than usual, he’ll be removed using the 25th Amendment process.
The Republicans won’t want to be saddled with having their president impeached, and impeachment could take down Pence, or at least pretty thoroughly tar him with the same brush, so the 2020 election would be tough.
Using the 25th would allow them to set up some kind of narrative of, he was always eccentric, but the unfair democratic witch hunts have pushed him farther, and made him too unstable to be president. We have to do this for the good of the country. They then try to make Pence and the cabinet look like heroes instead of coconspirators.
Then, depending on public sentiment and timing, either Pence steps in to run for 2020, or they find someone who tests very strong on perceived stability and ethics to step in.
- It’s already pretty strong, but it needs to either get much higher among Republicans, or well above 50%, or has clearly drastic electoral consequences, like losing the presidency and the Senate, maybe.
For me, the goalpost would be “surely Mr. President had a good, technically-not-politically-motivated reason to investigate the Bidens. Well? Let’s see it Mr. President!”
~Max
Grounds for investigating Biden have zero to do with the offenses. Trump was wrong to do it and it is impeachable even if Biden is corrupt.
Republicans are not honest brokers of any of this, so it is absurd to assign democrats the task of pretending they are and making the country work. When they do this, the reponses will be more rebupkis trolling of democracy and democratic poiticians and their supporters. But you know this already.
Yes the bank robbers ran out of the building with large bags of cash, but I do not make the conclusion that the only reason they did so was for financial gain. It is entirely possible that they were just testing the bank’s security.
The supposed crimes of the Biden’s have been looked at, and there is no “there” there.
Asking a foreign power to investigate a political rival is an affront to the system itself. Explicit quid pro quo is not required especially if the favor is requested of a smaller country that feels the need to curry favor. It is akin to a boss demanding sex from an employee but raping us. “This is a nice job you have here. Your raise was held up? You want to move up in the company? Nice to know. Will you have sex with me now?”
No explicit quid pro quo stated but the dependence and power imbalance make it wrong. Yes Clinton was scum to have sex with an intern. It was an abuse of power. But that abuse was not an affront to the balances of power or trying to influence an election. It did not abuse our nation’s power for personal gain. The election is more than a blow job. Survival of a country is more than an intern position.
Asking Russia and China to interfere is bad enough. Maybe enough. But asking the favor of a state dependent on us is an order of magnitude worse water or not explicit quid pro quo is made and whether or not any law was broken. Impeachment does not require a law being broken; it requires trust being broken.