He didn’t say anything about odds, you did. And you picked 50:50. Thats not a lot of confidence in your man.
Here was the exchange.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
[QUOTE=Euphonious Polemic]
I give it 50:50 that it happens this coming week.
[/QUOTE]
I will take bets on within the month - it’ll take awhile to write this stuff up. But within a week would not be surprising.
[/QUOTE]
RickJay was responding to the “50:50 within a week”. If **RickJay **didn’t mean that he’d take bets at 50:50, let him suggest different odds. I mean there was the 50:50 that it happens within a week. I am willing to take him up on 50:50 for within a month.
I am sure he’d like to get out of the “I will take bets” thing.
There are many things to get at here, so I’m not going to waste the time to quote everyone I’m answering. I’ve already lost several paragraphs to some ad malfunctioning and crashing the page. I actually had to type this in a word processor and copy/paste it over.
First, the only way Ford could’ve been challenged in court is if the pardon was the fruit of a proven crime that involved Ford (i.e. bribery), and even if that was proven it’s not certain.
There are some strong arguments that Trumpus the Don can’t pardon himself. See the link I posted a page or two back for that. (Note here: the counterarguments, which are presented in the article, didn’t seem very strong to me, but then I haven’t read a brief from someone who’s convinced that he can pardon himself.) Ultimately the most powerful argument to me is the simplest: no citizen, even the President, should be completely above the law. And I have to hope that even the conservatives of SCOTUS will see it that way.
As for pardoning everyone else, yeah, he can do that. However, I’m not so sanguine about Pubbies just sitting on their hands. There will be a political cost for that, and you can bet Dems will push it in their faces every chance they get. Sure, those 25% are a completely lost cause, but they can’t re-elect Reps and Senators all by themselves (well, not nearly enough for a majority, anyway). Also, Pubs have a fairly safe option waiting in the wings in Pence, who is a lot more likely to be able to get things done. It could be that the political calculation favors impeachment.
No way Trump can stop all the investigations. As for firing Mueller, that has its own political costs. How many Assistant AG’s and Deputy Assistant AG’s will resign before he gets to one who’s malleable enough to fire him? I think Rosenstein will, at least, unless Trump can show legitimate cause, which he can’t. Mueller is Mr. Clean, and firing him will most likely blow up right in Trump’s fat jowls.
He can’t touch the Senate or House investigations, either, though it’s vageuly possible he could get to the chairmen in some way. FBI investigation? Wray at least looks upright himself, so I’m not sure Trump can get away with that without another spate of resignations. (Note also that, assuming one or more of the department heads resign, the Senate has to confirm, and three moral Pubs might be guilted into voting against them in order to prevent Trump’s own personal Kristalnacht.)
I can’t see any outcome where Trump gets away with all that. I think it’s a bit too alarmist.
Session already broke his recusal by recommending that Trump fire Comey. I could see him trying to fire Mueller. If that happened I suspect Mueller wouldn’t recognize his authority and then Trump would try to fire him directly or direct the DOJ to fire him because clearly he’s gone rogue.
The GOP would only need an iota of cover to go along with it and not impeach Trump over it. I think it’d probably work.
This is the post I interpreted to mean that the base is the controlling party on whether the investigation will be allowed to continue.
Maybe he didn’t mean base by “trumpists” but even then I still think this is too apocalyptic, for my view. i don’t think reality is this well oiled. This scenario is far out even for me. And I’m getting pretty mental over here myself.
There won’t be any way to prevent investigation of donald’s finances now.
Dems will not vote for anyone to replace these people under a circumstance like this. They could just say fuck you, and be patriots for it. It would be a perfect opportunity to use the McConnell rule for all of this.
They will need a signed pledge : No screwing with the investigation.
They still need 3 Pubbies to vote down anything, especially nominees, with the aforementioned rule.
This is more doable every day.
I think Trump is where Putin was in the early 2000s when he was being investigated by Russian prosecutors for corruption. He’s gone too far now to allow the investigation to continue. He will fire Mueller and keep firing anyone who gets in his way. It’s too personal now for him to ignore.
The Dems are in the minority in both house and senate. They can delay, but that’s it.
They are never willing to plant a flag ahead of time because that prevents moving the goalposts after the fact. I’d love to hear whether Okrahoma thinks it would be acceptable to fire Mueller and/or pardon his family now rather than hear why it was fine after he does it.
I’m willing to entertain a side-bet of two bucks that if Trump does what RickJay suggests and Okrahoma loses $100 to him, Okrahoma will defend Trump’s actions regardless, i.e. even if Okrahoma is willing to bet that it doesn’t happen, he’d be okay with it if it does.
I would feel more comfortable in this prediction if we’d seen much courage from the GOP so far, but to my eyes not so much. I hope you’re correct though.
I myself am pretty confident that Okrahoma would hold the bet to be invalid if the result is not EXACTLY as predicted.
ie, when Oky says "“Pardons all around, fire Mueller and then tell the Trumpistas that he HAD TO DO THIS because he was forced to by the evil media and Democrats.”?
"
If Trump pardons Mueller first; Oky wins
If a single person is NOT pardoned, Oky wins
Trump says he had to do this because he was forced to by the TERRIBLE media and Democrats, Oky wins
All that would be discussed in exact terms of the bet. If **RickJay **is willing to back up his statement that he’s taking bets, we will nail those down, I am sure. I am pretty flexible. I have a pending bet with FiveYearLurker (on Trump still being President on 1/1/19) and SageRat (on Trump resigning by 1/12/2020) and we managed to agree on the terms. It would be nice to have one that is only for a month, a quick turnaround.
Pretty much this and what Rick Jay said.
I would ask Drad Dog and any others who are so certain impeachment will happen if the President follows this course of action - How exactly is this impeachment going to come about? Without even getting into the fact that Speaker Ryan would never let this come to a vote in the House, pretending for a second articles of impeachment were introduced and came up for a vote, it will take a majority to pass them or 218 votes. Democrats have 194 seats in the House. Assuming they all vote in favor, who are the 24 Republicans that you imagine will vote to impeach? Personally, I don’t see it happening.
I never said I was certain. I do think there’s a whole lot of Chicken Littling without much justification, though.
Each peremptory pardon will be another charge of obstruction of justice for the goldfish. How does this make his problems go away?
Also he can’t be his own judge per the constitution. He cannot pardon himself or it would make the wordings of it meaningless. Pardoning his cohorts in a criminal enterprise might be seen as the same kind of act given the circumstance.
This is the only thing that gives me hope that some Republicans may have a line that they won’t let Trump cross. They are going against him here for the first time and have actually worked it so that he would have a very hard time fighting it, instead of it being just something for show he could easily by-pass.
But that isn’t my question. Since Republicans hold the majority in the House, which is where Impeachment happens, how will the President be impeached? What evidence is there that the 24 GOP House members needed to pass articles of impeachment exist?
And what case law supports the position that issuing a pardon could result in an obstruction charge? The constitution reads to me at least that POTUS has pretty broad authority in issuing pardons. I will agree the self-pardon is probably a pipe dream.