I think the entire hand-wringing is a slippery slope argument. I’ll admit to making that argument, because I think it is justified.
To me, I could not care less if Donald Trump suddenly resigned. President Pence at least has some principles, even if those principles are ultrareligious and disagreeable.
But I am worried about the precedent that would be set if President Trump were convicted. How would that carry over to new presidents that I like? But the slippery slope is double-sided. If the president really should be convicted, that sets an equally bad precedent if we acquit him.
But then you know, Trump isn’t going to be convicted anyways. So here I am, wringing my hands in the air.
But OJ wasn’t your average black person. As a rich celebrity he was granted more deference than the average black defendant.
I think that there is actually a lot in common between the Trump defense and the Simpson defense. Both argued that the charges against them were part of a vast conspiracy of the state against them personally, and both try to argue that possible inconsistencies in individual pieces prove innocence regardless of the other evidence available. The parallelism stops with the fact that OJ’s lawyers weren’t arguing that murder wasn’t a crime.
One could also argue that both are facing juries who are biased in their favor (Trump obviously much more so than OJ) but that is a topic for another thread.
I’m surprised you of all people buy into this slippery-slope business. Dems hated Bush II, but never tried to impeach him. Pubs hated Obama, but never tried to impeach him. And as much as Dems hate Trump, they wouldn’t have impeached him if he hadn’t (allegedly) blatantly abused the power of his office for personal gain. The only precedent being set – whether Trump is removed or acquitted – is Don’t be a completely corrupt dickhead if you don’t want to be impeached.
The slippery slope part is, if a Democratic president engaged in behind the scenes manipulation of foreign policy in order to improve their electoral chances and then stonewalled congress about it, maybe Congress would impeach them too.
The thing about slippery slopes is, sometimes they’re dangerous. Other times, you go down them shouting, “Woohoo!”
If he is guilty of using his office for self-gain or other corrupt purposes, the evidence is sufficient to prove that fact, and the ruling is based on the merits then the precedent is good.
The alternative I would compare to the idea that you eat five large pizzas a day but don’t want to get fat, so you take an emetic after every meal and purge it. Fighting insanity with insanity is insane.
Saying that I don’t want to charge the President with abuse of his office, because it could lead to politicization of impeachment, thus I am going to politicize impeachment, ignore my oaths, ignore the very letter of the Constitution, ignore what the Framers have written about their intents, ignore all evidence, and simply vote innocent no matter what comes, even if it establishes a precedent that destroys the power of Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch… That makes zero sense.
Good precedents are good. A precedent of Rule of Law should be the only precedent. A precedent of politicization to prevent politicization is insane.
Politically speaking from a bird’s eye view, that’s fine by me. But personally I would like to see a convincing argument that the president, beyond any reasonable doubt, committed a high crime or misdemeanor.
Also my Senators aren’t up for reelection for two and four years respectively, so I doubt this particular issue will weigh heavily on their campaigns. And then my representative is politically untouchable anyways: he has been my representative since I was in high school, he has never held a town hall, he has never even lived in our district, he runs unopposed in the primaries, and he wins with a 30% margin against no-name Democrats.
I think you’ve heard such an argument, again and again. If you have any doubts that the president attempted to execute a bribe consisting of a combination of congressional approved aid and political visits in exchange for an announcement about an investigation that would aid him personally, then those doubts are not reasonable.
Agreed. But OJ didn’t play the part of the black man in all ways of course. He occupied a liminal space, with many footnotes and caveats about the role he played in the culture, before and after the crime.
No, I don’t think those facts alone rise to the standard I would like to see for conviction and removal. They certainly reach the standard required for an investigation, and the burden is on the President to present a coherent explanation.
Regarding abuse of power, I would need to know as a fact, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the President exercised his office with corrupt intent - that is, that the President advanced no legitimate national interest when making his request to the foreign country. The facts given in your hypothetical do not quash the reasonable possibility that the President’s request was motivated by something other than personal political gain. The timing of the release of funds certainly suggests wrongdoing but again, the facts presented in your hypothetical do not quash the reasonable possibility of a coincidence. It would be very difficult to convince me on this without letting me consider the defense theory, since you cannot prove a negative. Once the defense theory has been presented (and it is their burden to do so in the face of an accusation) that narrows down your burden as prosecutor to disproving the defense theory, rather than proving your prosecution theory against all defenses.
Regarding obstruction, I would need to know as a fact, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the President unlawfully obstructed a lawful investigation. This means I would need a finding of fact as to legality of the President’s refusal to cooperate. His refusal alone does not imply unlawful obstruction, and based on the facts you gave me, the door is open to the possibility that the House investigation was unlawful.
But this isn’t in a vacuum. We have years of Trump’s words and actions to judge his character and motivations. Taking this all into account, which is entirely reasonable for Senators to do, there should be no reasonable doubt that Trump’s intent was corrupt in his interaction with Ukraine officials.
This is what’s missing so far here. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence around dts crimes. But the arguments here not only deny that it is material, but also that any educated guess about his motives somehow violates his rights as a US citizen.
In dts case they would have it that you can’t impute motives to a defendant based on facts.
Il Dersh said today that if dt had two motives in mind, and one were legal, then he can’t be removed.
Do tronp defenders on this board also need to adjust their defense to follow the “state of the art” of the defense as it changes in real time?
I haven’t been following every post on this thread, but this struck me:
If there actually is a threshold for evidence that would convince you that Trump abused his power beyond a reasonable doubt but you don’t think that publicly available evidence gets there, then witness testimony is vital to your eventual conclusion. Corrupt intent is something that can be proven in the context of an impeachment trial or a normal courtroom, and witnesses who can give evidence and context for the President’s intent are clearly relevant.
It was indeed a blatant lie: the basis for her misleading implication was the false claim that Shokin had been investigating Burisma at the time he was fired. (“Slow walking” is a nice try at defending her lie, but the facts do not support it.)
A misleading implication that’s based on a false claim is about as blatant a lie as it’s possible to make.
Stopping the pile-on of bad faith arguments right there: the Trump defense position that the “initial phase…was not authorized by the House (and therefore the President didn’t need to comply with subpoenas)” is utterly unsupported by the Constitution itself, by subsequent judicial rulings, or by the expressed views of actual Constitutional scholars. (And please do not attempt to pass off Alan Dershowitz as a Constitutional scholar.)
Take 20% off of what you are paying me…