No, it doesn’t. As I addressed above.
The grand juries, AFAIU, are looking into Manafort/Flynn. Not Trump.
No, they don’t. But Comey did, on three occasions, and it’s documented. Was he lying?
Trump didn’t ask Comey to say “Trump will never come under investigation”. What was being “reported” (lied about) in the press was that Trump was under investigation. Trump knew that was a lie, and wanted Comey to debunk it. Comey refused. Comey was fired.
I’d happily settle just for a sincere effort to answer my questions.
When his paychecks stop clearing.
Good news! There are multiple vacancies in the Trump administration for boot-licking sycophants. More opening up every day. You should apply. I’m sure everyone on the board will be willing to vouch as to your grovelling loyalty.
I think he’d last 2.5 scaramuccis.
Mission accomplished as far as Okrahoma is concerned.
Cite?
See my comment about “low-lying fruit.”
Prosecutors do not identify their targets. If they were under an obligation to identify all of their non-targets, that would be equivalent to an obligation to identify their targets.
When you cannot argue the substance, go directly to ad hominem.
Post #2114.
Again, Comey, on three occasions, documented, told Trump that he is not under investigation. Did he lie?
If Comey didn’t tell Trump that, much less three times on three separate occasions, then you’d have a point. Since he did, Trump was completely in the right requesting that Comey publicly say the truth that he told him privately, and firing Comey when Comey refused to do so.
Who said I disagree with the substance?
The substance has nothing to do with my earlier statement.
As an illustration of Trump-haters’ logic:
Brad Sherman, (D) Congressman from California, who filed the articles of impeachment against Trump:
“Thank God he didn’t put out a message on Mother’s Day because there would have been pressure on me to come out against Mother’s Day. … If Trump takes a position, then you must take an equally extreme and opposite position. He’s for Mother’s Day, you must be against Mother’s Day. He’s for a wall, you have to be for unlimited immigration from all places.”
“The politics are that you get elected for being loyal to your ideology rather than being loyal to your state. … You’d think we’d get together and fight for California and we do a little bit, and I think a little less than other states.”
Cite for Brad Sherman being the official spokesperson for all Turnip haters?
The director of the FBI should be, and be seen to be, independent and free of political influence. Comey may have thought it appropriate to tell Trump, in private, that he was not under investigation; and he may have thought it entirely inappropriate to bend to pressure and announce it publicly for Trump’s political benefit. Comey even told Trump that the request to do so should go through the White House Counsel and to the leadership of the Department of Justice. If Trump could not understand that, and wanted a director that he could influence, then that’s a damn sleazy move. I don’t know if it’s criminal, but it’s a deeper swamp than most of his predecessors had.
Or, perhaps your more recent argument is true, that Comey privately told Trump that he wasn’t being investigated, Trump discovered that he was, and fired Comey for lying. If that’s the case, then Trump fired the person he knew was investigating him. We can speculate, but may never know his real motive. I don’t know if motive is necessary for an obstruction of justice charge. If I fired someone who was investigating me and could bring criminal charges, and tried to justify it by saying “he lied to me”, would anyone believe it?
And there’s a third possibility, that Trump was not under investigation at the time Comey told him so, but was by the time Comey was fired. (The three conversations Trump refers to look like they ended in March. Comey was fired in May.) That looks even worse for Trump. It’s like his claim that he fired Comey because of how he handled the Clinton investigation. If you’re mad about something someone did nine months ago, you’d have fired him nine months ago. If Trump was mad about Comey not publicly clearing him, why not fire him then and there?
That is not my argument. That is my response to those that say that Comey lied. If he did, he should have been fired for lying.
Yes, but if Trump discovered that Comey had lied to him, then it means he found out that he was being investigated by the FBI. He then fired the director of the Bureau. Seems to me that that makes for a stronger case that Trump obstructed justice. If that’s what happened, it doesn’t excuse Trump’s actions, it makes them worse.
If your cabinet member blatantly lies to you, that’s cause for termination. Him heading any investigations is not a “get out of jail” card for it. The investigations, if any, can be done by others. There are no irreplaceable members of the administration.
I still have not received a response to this question, though. How many of the Trump-haters here think that Comey lied to Trump when three times he confirmed to him that he was not under investigation?
Others have tried and failed and I expect no different result. Nonetheless…
You and Trump appear to struggle with the same woeful misunderstandings.
Comey’s obligation is not to Trump personally. It is to the American people. In furtherance of that obligation, he, Comey, may do as he pleases, within the letter of the law. Comey chose to be truthful and told Trump he was not personally under investigation. Comey was not obliged to add the word, “yet.”
Any dolt who can’t work out that an investigation into his campaign is a de facto investigation into him and his own activities, is his own worst enemy when it comes to understanding the truth. People in possession of the most rudimentary skills of reason can work out that the customary way of building a case against a high value target is to start with the little fish first.
It is true that Trump as President may fire the Director of the FBI for any reason, or no reason at all – as Comey himself clearly stated in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. However – and this appears to be the part you don’t grasp – it is no less a crime to fire Comey if Trump’s intent was to impede or obstruct an FBI investigation. Which, by Trump’s own admission, it was.
Trump’s own statements, both to Lester Holt in his NBC interview and to the Russians in the Oval Office, that he fired Comey in an attempt to stop the Russian investigation, are powerful evidence against him in an obstruction case. Now also the “problematic” Michael Cohen/Stephen Miller/Trump letter recently in Mueller’s possession. Trump’s other many attempts to impede/obstruct the investigation include:
[ul]
[li]Asking Comey to let the Flynn investigation go;[/li]
[li]Pressuring Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Russia investigation;[/li]
[li]Making public statements that he would not have hired Sessions if he knew Sessions would recuse;[/li]
[li]Bitching publicly that Mitch McConnell was not doing enough to “protect” him from the Russia investigation;[/li]
[li]Approaching James Coats and Mike Pompeo to ask them to do more to protect him from the Russia investigation; and[/li]
[li]Lying in his assertion that Obama had “wire-tapped Trump Tower” as an attempt to distract attention from the Russia investigation, including the bizarre Devin Nunes dog and pony show that ensued.[/li][/ul]
This partial list shows a consistent course of conduct that most reasonable, intelligent persons would interpret at the least as evidence of Trump’s consciousness of guilt, and quite possibly as direct evidence of multiple attempts at obstruction.
What is especially stupid is that, in the (unlikely) event that Trump is innocent of the underlying charges engendered within the catch-all term of “collusion,” then all his obstruction was for no good reason at all. He’ll still be vulnerable to those obstruction charges.
TL, DR: Trump had every legal right to fire Comey. But that right doesn’t protect him from criminal consequences if his intent was to obstruct Mueller’s investigation which, by Trump’s own admission, it was.
Sad you can’t see that.
If Trump claims that’s the reason for firing Comey, are we supposed to just take his work for it? Neither you nor I is inside Trump’s head. We don’t, and can’t, know what he was thinking. But if that was the reason for the firing, why didn’t Trump just say so at the time; why trot out multiple other explanations? And if Trump was so indignant about being lied to, why does he get a pass from you for lying? Trump’s letter dismissing Comey gave reasons for his firing, and lying wasn’t mentioned. If Comey lied to Trump, Trump lied to Comey.
And how would Trump know that Comey lied to him? If Comey says he’s not being investigated, and someone else says he is, how does Trump know who to believe? Did he take into account the time lag between being cleared by Comey and when he fired him? People rarely have perfect information. We hear different things from different people at different times. But your analysis here assumes Trump would have perfect knowledge of the situation, and thereby perfect justification for firing Comey.
And yes, the justice system survives the departure of individual members, but I don’t see that as an acceptable excuse. If it was, the whole idea of obstruction of justice would be meaningless. Trump could fire Mueller, Clinton could have fired Starr, Nixon fired Cox; imagine any of them stepping up and saying “it’s not obstruction, someone else can fill that job.”
This is all hypothetical, of course. But if it was true, no matter how much you want to dance around it, Trump fired someone that he knew investigating him.
Wrong. He never said that he fired Comey in an attempt to stop the Russian investigation. That is your interpretation of what he said. As I pointed out in post #2115, and you ignored, there can be another and, IMO, much more likely, interpretation that has nothing to do with any Russian investigation.
As I asked in that post, can you explain why your interpretation reflects reality better than mine?
That contains nothing criminal (or, IMO, wrong) whatsoever.
Because it’s not a “made-up story,” and we have overwhelming evidence of that. Only the most tortured interpretation imaginable allows someone to think Trump meant anything else. Even a heck of a lot of Republicans, who are anything but “Trump haters,” understand it in the same way as me.
Also, zero wiggle room in Trump’s statements to Russian officials in the Oval Office as to what he meant: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
No objective interpretation of that statement will conclude anything except Trump was attempting to ease pressure from the Russia investigation.
But I noticed you didn’t address that point. Just ignored it.
Only your opinion. In mine, the letter goes to his state of mind, and indicates his intent – which is extremely relevant to obstruction charges.
I won’t hijack this thread further. The actual discussion is far more interesting and it is obvious nothing will dissuade you from your “much more likely” interpretations.