Impeaching Trump: Make America Sane Again

[frank ryan]

Maybe I’m a Trump defender too but to me it’s not crazy to say: Yes Trump did something wrong, he deserves formal censure/warning, but doesn’t deserve impeachment.

You do reserve your bitching for the democrats and the mainstream media, and downplay nearly every criticism of Trump as liberal hysterics, even on matters you're not familiar with.

We don't know the extent of everything because important evidence has been withheld. His party protects him from any accountability and that just encouraged more brazen corruption.

[PaloAltoCougar]

Maybe I’m a Trump defender too but to me it’s not crazy to say: Yes Trump did something wrong, he deserves formal censure/warning, but doesn’t deserve impeachment.

I'd feel much better about the Republican senators if they said the same thing. Trump's defense that he did absolutely nothing wrong (a perfect call!) has very bad future implications.

[CardiacCoug]

Maybe I’m a Trump defender too but to me it’s not crazy to say: Yes Trump did something wrong, he deserves formal censure/warning, but doesn’t deserve impeachment.

[Uncle Ted]

Payback can be a b*tch.

[UVACoug]

Impeaching Trump: Make America Sane Again

I’ve never heard you champion Trump, but the vast majority of your posts seem to downplay his conduct or kvetch about the democrats.

I despise Trump, but I also hate all the disinformation that gets thrown around by both sides. If I see something I know is wrong, I’ll point it out. That’s all. I expect it from the politicians, but the amount of disinformation that gets pushed by the media is reprehensible. I hope that people will scrutinize the stuff they read in the press and not just accept it as indisputable truth. Most of the time you can find original sources and see how badly the press is mangling things. The truth about what Trump has done is bad enough. There’s no need to embellish it.

I also think process and institutions are super important. If we destroy those things, the rule of law goes out the window and we will all be worse off. In my opinion, as much as I’d like Trump to be thrown out of office and banned from holding public office ever again, this impeachment has been a total sham and it will end up causing real damage to the country going forward. It was clear from the beginning that this has never been about protecting the country from a dangerous President. It’s been about dragging him through the mud in an election year to gain political advantage. If you think Trump’s insignificant and unsuccessful efforts to “influence an election” are so bad, I don’t see how you can be happy with Pelosi and Schiff’s much more significant efforts to do the same thing.

I realize that makes me sound like a Trump defender, which has made me hesitant to say anything at all. I don’t like what Trump did, but it’s not worth destroying due process and the institutions that were established to protect our freedom over.

[frank ryan]

That's not true. There are documents showing that Guiliani and Pompeo were discussing investigations into the Bidens as early as January 2019. That was months before Biden announced he was running.

See page 61+ of this FOIA response:

https://www.americanoversight.org/wp...Docs_11-22.pdf

I’ve never heard you champion Trump, but the vast majority of your posts seem to downplay his conduct or kvetch about the democrats and nitpick the process thus far. I’d think you’d be more alarmed by AG Barr’s strange conduct or the naked bias of McConnell.

[UVACoug]

Before Biden announced his campaign, no one cared about investigating the Bidens. Only after that announcement did Trump start pushing for an investigation. In that perfect phone call Trump himself only noted investigating the Bidens; no mention of corruption. Everyone down the line was pushing for an investigation of the Bidens; that was the focus of the policy (even as careerists pushed back on that). Multiple people can testify that he asked for an investigation of the Bidens, and then not an investigation, just an announcement of an investigation. Then the money would flow. The focus has been the Bidens. What more do people need?

That's not true. There are documents showing that Guiliani and Pompeo were discussing investigations into the Bidens as early as January 2019. That was months before Biden announced he was running.

See page 61+ of this FOIA response:

https://www.americanoversight.org/wp...Docs_11-22.pdf

[cowboy]

Before Biden announced his campaign, no one cared about investigating the Bidens. Only after that announcement did Trump start pushing for an investigation. In that perfect phone call Trump himself only noted investigating the Bidens; no mention of corruption. Everyone down the line was pushing for an investigation of the Bidens; that was the focus of the policy (even as careerists pushed back on that). Multiple people can testify that he asked for an investigation of the Bidens, and then not an investigation, just an announcement of an investigation. Then the money would flow. The focus has been the Bidens. What more do people need?

I don't know. That's why I asked. I'd think that would circumstantial in a court, but I don't really know that either. There's what everyone can easily deduce, and then there's what a court requires, and the two don't always seem to be the same. Hence, the question.

[myboynoah]

This may be a silly question, but how high is the bar for establishing that Trump was trying to influence an election with his request of an investigation? He could make a case that Biden being on the board of directors was suspicious, and worthy of an investigation, so how much evidence do they need to show that proves Trump was trying to affect the election? It's a no-brainer logically, but I'd think there has to be some sort of evidentiary support.

Before Biden announced his campaign, no one cared about investigating the Bidens. Only after that announcement did Trump start pushing for an investigation. In that perfect phone call Trump himself only noted investigating the Bidens; no mention of corruption. Everyone down the line was pushing for an investigation of the Bidens; that was the focus of the policy (even as careerists pushed back on that). Multiple people can testify that he asked for an investigation of the Bidens, and then not an investigation, just an announcement of an investigation. Then the money would flow. The focus has been the Bidens. What more do people need?

[cowboy]

This may be a silly question, but how high is the bar for establishing that Trump was trying to influence an election with his request of an investigation? He could make a case that Biden being on the board of directors was suspicious, and worthy of an investigation, so how much evidence do they need to show that proves Trump was trying to affect the election? It's a no-brainer logically, but I'd think there has to be some sort of evidentiary support.

[UVACoug]

The House asked John Bolton to testify on November 7th. Bolton said he would not go unless there was a subpoena AND only after it went through the courts. So not true they didn't want him to come. You can argue they didn't push hard enough through the court system, but then the Trumpists would have just said the Dems were trying to drag it out.

Where did I say the House didn't want Bolton to testify? I said they chose not to pursue it. Bolton gave the House the conditions under which he would testify and the House chose not to meet them. Bolton is still conditioning his testimony in the Senate on receiving a subpoena, and Trump's counsel have indicated that they will seek a protective order from a court to prevent the testimony if he is subpoenaed. Thus, the Senate is in the same exact position that the House was in when they wanted his testimony.

[BlueK]

The standard for impeachment is whether it has the support of a majority of the house and 2/3rds of the senate.

Agreed. Dershowitz is off his rocker. According to his theory it's more legit to pursue impeachment if a president swiped a pack of gum from 7-Eleven than in his hypthetical of allowing another country to invade us.

[wapiti]

Alan Dershowitz actually wrote that it wouldn't be impeachable even if Russia attacked and took over Alaska and the president allowed it. Wow. What a nutjob. The basic gist of his position on this is that essentially nothing is impeachable and the concept though mentioned in the Constitution, for all intents and purposes isn't real.

"At least one individual involved in President Donald Trump’s defense thinks he can’t be impeached—even if he were to intentionally allow foreign armies to conquer and steal U.S. territory?

the shocking claim was made by Harvard Law Professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz in his recent book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump. A verified member of Trump’s impeachment defense team–though he says he’s not a full-fledged member–Dershowitz’s controversial legal argument is now predictably being imputed to the 45th president himself by Democrats.

“Assume [Vladimir] Putin decides to ‘retake’ Alaska, the way he ‘retook’ Crimea,” Dershowitz writes on pages 26 and 27 of his book. “Assume further that a president allows him to do it, because he believed that Russia has a legitimate claim to ‘its’ original territory. That would be terrible, but would it be impeachable? Not under the text of the Constitution.”

https://lawandcrime.com/impeachment/...n-house-brief/

The standard for impeachment is whether it has the support of a majority of the house and 2/3rds of the senate.

[BlueK]

Alan Dershowitz actually wrote that it wouldn't be impeachable even if Russia attacked and took over Alaska and the president allowed it. Wow. What a nutjob. The basic gist of his position on this is that essentially nothing is impeachable and the concept though mentioned in the Constitution, for all intents and purposes isn't real.

"At least one individual involved in President Donald Trump’s defense thinks he can’t be impeached—even if he were to intentionally allow foreign armies to conquer and steal U.S. territory?

the shocking claim was made by Harvard Law Professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz in his recent book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump. A verified member of Trump’s impeachment defense team–though he says he’s not a full-fledged member–Dershowitz’s controversial legal argument is now predictably being imputed to the 45th president himself by Democrats.

“Assume [Vladimir] Putin decides to ‘retake’ Alaska, the way he ‘retook’ Crimea,” Dershowitz writes on pages 26 and 27 of his book. “Assume further that a president allows him to do it, because he believed that Russia has a legitimate claim to ‘its’ original territory. That would be terrible, but would it be impeachable? Not under the text of the Constitution.”

https://lawandcrime.com/impeachment/...n-house-brief/

[beefytee]

Rather than wasting the senate's time they should just wait until his book actually does comes out. If the book is interesting then the house can subpoena him (it will no longer be executive privilege, right?), take him down to their secret interrogation room, water board him under some bright lights and loud acid rock music and make him talk!

Or how about get just get his testimony under oath?