I don’t know what you mean. If you mean the nuttiness of the last 48 hours you probably shouldn’t dig that hole. Are you saying it’s not unique now because tirnp got anxiety and needed to act out to double down? Does that reflect well on his judgement? He might do it now, to make it “non-unique” and to advertise to his base that he is …freewheeling(?), but the horse left the barn. He is massaging his knowledge that he has done something wrong in a stereotypical way.
“I am of the opinion that a pattern or lack of pattern is irrelevant.” So you aren’t talking about the justice or political systems? Just your own whims and notions?
Responding out of order here, as I will have to take a break soon.
I don’t believe the president is above the law (via Congressional impeachment or the 25th Amendment), and neither do I think a presidential candidate is above the law (via federal prosecution). Nobody is above the law. But prohibiting the President and his agents from investigating a rival presidential candidate regardless of the reasons effectively puts those candidates above the law. So making the investigation of a rival candidate impeachable regardless of the reason is not okay by me.
This example is a little bit more complicated because the President was caught asking foreign governments to investigate. I assume that we already had an open domestic investigation underway which required foreign cooperation. If we did not have a domestic investigation at the time of Mr. Trump’s request, I would consider his request to be impeachable. Further, if we did not have good reasons to open a domestic investigation when we did so, I would consider that an impeachable offense, but only if Mr. Trump was the one who ordered the opening of that investigation. Finally, if Mr. Trump violated a statute by withholding aid, I would probably consider that to be an impeachable offense, too.
Look man, if you want to convict the President you need Republican senators to vote for conviction. Either you convince the senators directly, or you convince their base. Either way, you have to convince Republicans of some sort. I don’t see how assuming the Republicans are unreasonable will help the cause, you know? Don’t ignore the elephants in the room.
Step one is convincing Independents and GOP leaners. When they en masse go solidly to impeach as the necessary thing to do then you get GOP critters in swingable states and districts flipping. That may not be enough to convict in the Senate but it does set up for the repudiation of Trumpism this nation needs and for the GOP to rebuild in another image.
Reasonable has little to do with the postures of most politicians. Perceived self interest is what matters
Again: what US laws do you think might have been broken? If you know of none, why are you calling for an investigation? What is it that you want investigated?
Wow. Who in the hell is saying law enforcement is prohibited from investigating Biden? Why are you so easily conflating a normal investigation instigated by the proper authorities and Trump personally instigating an investigation into his political rival based on conspiracy theories?
Mueller was constrained by being a member of the DOJ plus, one might note, the limits of the evidence that he was able to gather.
It is in fact possible that the evidence will lead to nowhere on this one too. And every time you hype something that you don’t know where it’s going to go, you’re accomplishing the same thing as the little boy who cried wolf. You gain a shelf life and then you’re toast once you’re past it.
That’s a reason to not publicize the matter in advance nor as you go about investigating it.
There were any number of things that could have been used against Trump during his first two years - like his theft of money from charity for US veterans - that all got blown over by Russia. All the eggs were put into one basket. That’s the fault of the person who arranged the eggs if that one basket falls apart, not the fault of the basket.
Yeah, I had trouble figuring out that headline, even after I read some of the article.
It seems the initial whistle-blowing event triggered a potential-crime-was-committed initial event by the CIA. Or something. Criminal TBD, but now we know it was the President.
sarcasm Isn’t it weird that the response from the lawyer wasn’t “oh boy this means we had better investigate Biden!” I mean, isn’t it just weird that the lawyer didn’t call for Ukraine to conduct the investigation? sarcasm over
Because that seems to be the natural reaction from some posts in this thread.
Sounds to me like the reaction he might have had if is loony grandpa farted loudly at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Negative, yes, but nothing serious. “Oh, I wince every time he does that.”
To the question of what, exactly, constitutes an impeachable offense (other than Treason or Bribery, and I’d argue we’ve had evidence of one-and-three-quarters of those two already), here are a few relevant paragraphs from that George Conway opinion piece I keep flogging (and I swear, I’m neither Conway nor an Atlantic shareholder):
Let’s say, arguendo, that Hunter Biden was being paid in cash, cocaine and teenaged prostitutes to murder political opponents and business rivals of his oligarch boss, and then he ate their bodies to hide the evidence; doesn’t matter, not relevant to the question of whether Trump’s actions rise to the level of impeachment. (Athough I’ll note, for the record, that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever by either Biden, no evidence that Hunter Biden was ever under investigation for any wrongdoing, and, contrary to Trump’s assertion, much evidence that the prosecutor was not “a very good” prosecutor and not “treated very badly.”) The merits of a Biden investigation are irrelevant to this core point: Trump has failed in his fiduciary responsibility to the American people to put the country’s interests above his own. This is not at all surprising; one would be hard-pressed to find an instance in Donald J. Trump’s life when he put any interests above his own. His betrayal of the trust placed in him, his failure to faithfully execute his oath, is cause for impeachment; so say I.
Also, he’s a lying sack of protoplasm. But that’s not impeachable unless under oath, and no lawyer will ever let him testify under oath if they can help it.