Impeaching Trump: Make America Sane Again

[Moliere]

It is kind of funny, and reassuring, that the impeachment vote fell the way it did. Pelosi was right.

[frank ryan]

Or at minimum lying about a bj. Gee, you think we can get something that dastardly on Donald Dump?

People keep throwing the collusion word around. The crime they were looking at was conspiracy. They found some evidence but it wasn’t enough to merit criminal charges. It’s in the Mueller report.

[BlueK]

It is kind of funny, and reassuring, that the impeachment vote fell the way it did. Pelosi was right.

The only thing included in that article was that Trump should be impeached for being a racist. I think most dems want any future articles of impeachment to have more than that after basing it on hearings -- more like Nixon and less like Clinton. I suspect many didn't appreciate the tactic of going around the party leadership either.

What is interesting is that everyone remembers that Clinton's approval rating was pretty high at the time his impeachment hearings started and went even higher afterwards.

But what everyone forgets is that the Republicans won the next three elections, and that's the only thing that really mattered in the end. In the longer term it did not hurt the GOP to go after Clinton.

[Uncle Ted]

People keep throwing the collusion word around. The crime they were looking at was conspiracy. They found some evidence but it wasn’t enough to merit criminal charges. It’s in the Mueller report.

You need to call Al Green and tell him that they need to vote a resolution of impeachment again!

[Walter Sobchak]

People keep throwing the collusion word around. The crime they were looking at was conspiracy.

Guys, gals... let's not be careless with words.

[falafel]

But who fact checks the fact checkers?

[Uncle Ted]

Wait... I think Al Green has a point:

Embedded Tweet

[Uncle Ted]

Come on you Dems! Keep digging....

The Impeachment Motions
Jerry Nadler deserves an Oscar for pretending his probe is serious.

Democratic presidential candidates issued a gusher of words over three hours Thursday night, but one they didn’t utter was “impeachment.” That was no accident. The polls show the cause is a political loser, and maybe someone should tell Jerrold Nadler.


The House Judiciary Chairman is still trying to persuade voters that he has Donald Trump in his impeachment sights. Russian collusion wasn’t real, obstruction of justice didn’t fly, and payments to Stormy Daniels sound too much like lying about sex (and Bill Clinton). So now Mr. Nadler is back to the old stand of arguing that Mr. Trump is enriching himself while in office

[...]
Until he does, the corruption claims look like more political spin to con liberal voters into believing that House Democrats are serious about impeachment. Mr. Nadler went through an elaborate faux drama this week to hold a vote on the parameters of an impeachment probe, but if he were serious he’d demand a vote endorsing his efforts on the House floor as the GOP did in 1998 with Mr. Clinton.
That hasn’t happened because Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to protect swing-district Democrats from a risky vote. Mr. Nadler, for all his bravado, is merely going through the impeachment motions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-imp...ns-11568416067

[beefytee]

Apparently Trump is justified in still worrying about Hillary.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...o-trump-228107

On Capitol Hill, Hillary Rodham, a 26-year-old law school graduate, was hired by the House Judiciary Committee to work on a bipartisan staff effort to help determine whether to impeach Nixon. She joined a team of aspiring lawyers that also included Bill Weld, who would go on to his own illustrious career as a top Justice Department prosecutor, Massachusetts governor and most recently as a long-shot 2020 GOP primary challenger against Trump.

Over a couple of months just before the climactic end of the Watergate scandal, the team dug deep into constitutional and legal arcana scouring documents that dated to the country’s founding, as well as century-old newspaper clippings in the Library of Congress.

The resulting title of the report, “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” may elicit yawns. But what they produced became a seminal 64-page road map with appendices that looks into what counts as an impeachable offense.

[Uncle Ted]

Apparently Trump is justified in still worrying about Hillary.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...tm_source=digg

That’s funny that the document that Hillary helped create was mentioned in WSJ op-Ed and used to impeach her husband.


Sent from my iPhone and not some cheap Chinese crap running Android spyware

[beefytee]

That’s funny that the document that Hillary helped create was mentioned in WSJ op-Ed and used to impeach her husband.


Sent from my iPhone and not some cheap Chinese crap running Android spyware

It's crazy all the ties in there. Bob Barr too!

[frank ryan]

This is concerning stuff.

Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress, former officials say

The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

It was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver, but his direct involvement in the matter has not been previously disclosed. It raises new questions about the president’s handling of sensitive information and may further strain his relationship with U.S. spy agencies. One former official said the communication was a phone call.

The White House declined to comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a lawyer representing the whistleblower declined to comment.

Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of “urgent concern,” a legal threshold that ordinarily requires notification of congressional oversight committees.

But acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire has refused to share details about Trump’s alleged transgression with lawmakers, touching off a legal and political dispute that has spilled into public and prompted speculation that the spy chief is improperly protecting the president.

The dispute is expected to escalate Thursday when Atkinson is scheduled to appear before the House Intelligence Committee in a classified session closed to the public. The hearing is the latest move by committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) to compel U.S. intelligence officials to disclose the full details of the whistleblower complaint to Congress....

The complaint was filed with Atkinson’s office on Aug. 12, a date on which Trump was at his golf resort in New Jersey. White House records indicate that Trump had had conversations or interactions with at least five foreign leaders in the preceding five weeks. Among them was a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the White House initiated on July 31. Trump also received at least two letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the summer, describing them as “beautiful” messages. In June, Trump said publicly that he was opposed to certain CIA spying operations against North Korea. Referring to a Wall Street Journal report that the agency had recruited Kim’s half-brother, Trump said, “I would tell him that would not happen under my auspices.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...rce=reddit.com

[frank ryan]

This is a pretty massive story. Trump and his increasingly politicized DOJ, assumed some control that isn't theirs and shut down a legitimate whistleblower complaint. They shouldn't been anywhere near that. It's pretty pathetic that there isn't more uproar over this. Trump promised something so concerning to a foreign leader that it merits disclosure to congress for urgent national security reasons.

The White House and the Justice Department have advised the nation's top intelligence agency that a controversial complaint involving President Donald Trump isn't governed by laws covering intelligence whistleblowers, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The revelation is the first known evidence of the White House's involvement in the standoff between Congress and the intelligence agency. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said he didn't know whether the White House was involved.
So far, the director of national intelligence has not allowed lawmakers access to the complaint, which earlier a source familiar with the case said was prompted by communication Trump had with a foreign leader. Trump responded to the reports Thursday, tweeting he would never "say something inappropriate" on a phone call with a foreign counterpart.
The episode -- with its potential for explosive information about the President -- has created new resentments between the administration and Capitol Hill, and cast a sense of mystery about the precise nature of the complaint across Washington.
In a closed-door briefing Thursday, the intelligence inspector general suggested that the whistleblower had concerns about multiple actions, sources familiar with the briefing told CNN. The watchdog did not say specifically all the acts of concern involved the President, the sources indicated, with one saying the IG referenced "a sequence of events" and "alleged actions" that took place.
The White House Counsel's office and Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel have both been involved in discussing the complaint with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which has refused to reveal the nature of it to Congress


He discussed the process for his handling of the whistleblower's concerns.
In letters released by Schiff on Thursday, Atkinson wrote he had reached an "impasse" with Maguire over his decision to keep the information from Congress.
"I have requested authorization from the Acting DNI to disclose, at the very least, the general subject matter of the Complainant's allegations to the congressional intelligence committees," he wrote. "To date, however, I have not been authorized to disclose even that basic information to you."
But the inspector general insisted the matter was very relevant to those who have oversight of intelligence.
"The Complainant's disclosure not only falls within the DNI's jurisdiction, but relates to one of the most significant and important of the DNI's responsibilities to the American people," Atkinson wrote.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/19/polit...wer/index.html

[Uncle Ted]

This is a pretty massive story. Trump and his increasingly politicized DOJ, assumed some control that isn't theirs and shut down a legitimate whistleblower complaint. They shouldn't been anywhere near that. It's pretty pathetic that there isn't more uproar over this. Trump promised something so concerning to a foreign leader that it merits disclosure to congress for urgent national security reasons.

The White House and the Justice Department have advised the nation's top intelligence agency that a controversial complaint involving President Donald Trump isn't governed by laws covering intelligence whistleblowers, according to three sources familiar with the matter.







https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/19/polit...wer/index.html

OMG, National intelligence trying to silence a whistleblower... That has never happened before.

[wapiti]

It's pretty pathetic that there isn't more uproar over this.

I think the uproar is pretty loud. It will be fun to see where this one goes.