Despite evidence to the contrary, I have trouble thinking of you as a real liberal. You’re so informed and rational it’s sometimes difficult to remember.
I generally agree. I think Trump’s history is replete with amazing fortune of saying things off the cuff that turn out to have just enough truth in them that he can seize on to the tatters of his statement later (“I meant the Obama government.” “I meant my campaign.”)
There’s a genuine danger when the government investigates a political campaign and I’d like to see more ironclad guarantees of a Chinese firewall between the investigation and the political apparatus in power, but ultimately, as long as we elect leaders, a natural consequence will be that those elected leaders control the investigating agencies that will be involved in such things.
I’m open to learning additional information that may change this analysis, but right now I see, as you do, an investigation that began before there was a political component, and not a shred of evidence that the later political roles of the target had any bearing or influence.
And just by-the-by, Trump won, which kinda negates many of the arguments he might offer for how cripplingly devastating this pipeline into his campaign was.
So it is obstructing justice if I tweet false details about an investigation that doesn’t exist?
If I announce that the CIA is tapping my phone, I am guilty of obstruction of justice if the Justice Department is tapping my next door neighbor’s phone?
No, I don’t think it is obstruction unless there is an actual underlying investigation.
The point is that the main points of Trump’s tweet–that Obama ordered that he be wiretapped–were wrong. But one of the points, that someone in Trump Tower was being monitored, was quite correct. He may have just been correct on that point accidentally, in which case I don’t think you can prove obstruction. But I don’t think we really know what caused him to assert that.
Are you and your neighbor involved in - oh, let’s say, money laundering for the Mob? In making your announcement, is it your intent to warn your co-conspirator that his phone is unsafe?
Yeah, in this hypothetical, it’s possible that you are engaging in obstruction.
If Trump knew about THIS wiretap, who disclosed it to him?
As the investigation continues more information is being discovered. Little by little, bit by bit. Who did what and when? Who wasn’t involved? Since this/these investigations have not concluded, I believe it’s much to early to officially declare that Obama, or the DNC, did not order/influence the surveillance of Republican candidates, or their staff.
What? He’s the president (shudder) and so is privy to this information. You say it’s much too early to declare that various Democratic factions didn’t order surveillance, but there is no evidence at all that they did so. I guess it’s too early to declare that Trump didn’t personally vote 3 million times in order to win the election. It’s too early to declare that Trump and Putin didn’t secretly get married and that’s why Trump never seems to confront Putin. There are an infinity of things that it’s too early to state didn’t happen that also have no evidence for them.
But, to the subject at hand, here’s a hypothetical. Note, there’s no evidence that anything like this happened. However, imagine Comey tells Trump that Manafort was under surveillance in Trump Tower (totally legit – Trump is president, Comey is under his purview, and Trump isn’t the subject of that investigation). Trump is concerned that the investigation into Manafort will reveal the close ties between Trump and Putin (made up for this hypothetical) and so discloses that Obama was wiretapping Trump or his associates (not legit – if he had done this in order to help Manafort hide some activities and protect Trump, that might be obstruction, right?).
So, Trump could totally legitimately know about the wiretapping, since he was president when he disclosed it, and yet still be in trouble by disclosing it if it was done to obstruct an investigation into his own affairs.
The reality is that Trump probably heard something on Fox News at 3AM. However, your statements about “too early to declare” things that have no evidence whatsoever is really reaching.
Lets say I know that the CIA is tapping my neighbor’s phone and I want to prevent them from getting good information on my neighbor because, say, the illegal things he’s doing are at my behest. I tweet that everyone on my block is having their communications monitored by the FBI, something I know is false. Neighbor then restricts his phone conversations to mundane topics.
I haven’t obstructed that investigation because what I said is incorrect?
Then both I and Trump would be guilty of obstruction of justice, even if none of the details being released match the actual circumstances of the investigation. It isn’t the CIA, it’s the Justice department, and it isn’t me, it’s my neighbor.
So when I announce that somebody is investigating me, I am obstructing somebody else investigating somebody else. I don’t see how that works.
The correct fact, the tip-off, is that the feds were surveilling Trump Tower. That, it turns out, was quite true. It was the rest, the politically salient parts, that were false. But that doesn’t prevent the true part from obstructing justice.
It would work if, hypothetically, your false announcement that you are being investigated is actually a signal to tip off a co-conspirator that you’re all being investigated. In that case, your false announcement is a canary-in-the-coal mining warning to your co-conspirators.
No, I am not confused. What Trump said was close enough to being true to be legally relevant, and the distinction between Obama doing it and the Justice Department doing it, and him being tapped and Trump Tower/his campaign manager being tapped, is not legally relevant.
Fair enough. All the CNN headlines saying that what Trump said was baseless were fake news. #Sad.
Trump accused Obama of tapping “my wires” “just before” the election for Nixonian purposes, as in to gain a political advantage. If you think that wiretapping a person before he joined the Trump campaign, and after he left the Trump campaign, as authorized by judges for investigations into criminal and counterintelligence activity, is “close enough” to the “Nixon/Watergate sad!” comments by Trump, then you probably have to think that Monica Lewinsky was “close enough” to being Bill Clinton’s wife.
Obviously, whether Trump’s partly true and partly false statement is considered a whopper is the salience of the true and false parts.
If I say Shodan is a human being who loves to poke his fingers in strangers’ pies and rub the filling into passing poodles, you would not say my claims weren’t baseless just because Shodan is, in fact, a human being.
Now, this statement is not as clear-cut as that one. But I think there’s a pretty strong argument that the salient aspect of Trump’s claim was that Obama has ordered it (making it wildly improper and prima facie evidence of political manipulation) and that he was the subject.
Shodan, completely abandoned/ignoring your assertion that it’s impossible to obstruct justice by saying a lie, even if the effect and intent are to obstruct justice?
“Imagine”? That is why I’m in favor of investigations. Hold an investigation (or investigations) and let the chips fall where they may. Many people seem to be grasping at strawmen in order to imagine a conclusion they approve of. The lame stream media certainly wasted no time declaring Trump’s claim of wiretapping to be totally false/a lie/campaign shenanigans/something that hurt their feelings/etc… As the investigation continues, as more information becomes available, I expect the true facts/actual truth to be uncovered. Eventually.
That bass turd, again. Will no one rid us of this meddlesome prick? He shouldn’t have received probation just because he testified against his co-conspirators Kelly and Baroni.
