It Is Time To Talk Impeachment

Politicians lie, yes. To a large degree, that's inevitable. And bluntly, you get the politicians you vote for. The last election showed that a lot of voters prefer being lied to rather than uncomfortable truths. That said, politicians (and most people in general) often lie in fairly predictable ways. They might overstate the benefits of a policy or understate the drawbacks, they might fudge numbers, etc.

Actually Trump's exaggerations are incredibly predictable. He's a narcissist. To him biggest election crowd ever is not trivial. Since he's so predictable it's easy to deal with. Just assume anything in which he is the "greatest" is exaggerated by about 2x.

This unpleasant personality trait was on full display during the election and the voters chose him anyway.

"Where there's smoke, there's fire."

The leftest press have had virtually every investigative reporter they've got working on this and no proof of collusion yet.

Lot's of accusations and innuendo but that's more confirmation bias than anything real.

Trump is the most open president we've ever had. If you want to know what he is thinking read his Twitter feed (to get a true picture of his thought patterns you need to read the actual feed not just cherry picked quotes by the media who hates him).

The best chance will be after the Republicans lose control of the Senate in 2018 mid-term elections.

Possible but unlikely. The current map favors the Republicans. There are a lot more Democratic senators in the "wrong" seats than Republicans (i.e. Democratic senators in Red states).

Senate races are local, a lot will depend on the promises the individual senator made to his/her state and whether or not they've kept those promises.

We'll have a better idea in a few months which senators are in trouble and which aren't.

Eyal wrote:Pretty sure the Special Prosecutor, for one, was appointed less than a year ago.

I strongly suspect that if there were ANY evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians the Democrats during the campaign would have produced something more realistic than that "Hookers pizzing on a bed" thing, or that at least ONE of the 15 Republicans running against him for the nomination would have pulled out of their skivvies before Trump locked the nomination up.

So please, spare us the "investigation is less than a year old" crud.

Trump has a LOT of flaws, I freely admit that along with the fact that he was NOT my first choice (nor even one of the top six) to run against the "unindicted felon."

Has Trump done anything that is impeachable? Other than not being liked that is.

And for that matter, the GOP has had little issue investigating their political opponents even when previous investigations showed no wrong-doing (they're still trying to do so with Clinton's emails despite the result of the FBI investigation).

Funny you should bring this up. I worked in the intelligence community for a good portion of my adult life as a security manager and have a better than passing understanding of the laws and the department regulations governing the handling of classified material.

Director Comey laid out, point for point an excellent case against the former Secretary of State, detailing both the gross negligence AND what I would call the intent to circumvent both the federal and State Department regs AND to avoid Congressional Oversight of her activities as Secretary of State through the use of that unsecure “home brew” email server of hers.

When Comey announced his decision not to recommend prosecution he overstepped his authority as Director FBI, that authority lies with the Attorney General, not the FBI. AND he had no business stating blatantly that the US Code doesn’t recognize “gross negligence” in the handling of classified material as an offense because it specifically DOES. As a former prosecutor he knew that, and he lied about it.

Hillary should be sitting in a jail cell as a flight risk right now as her case moves to trial.

Has President Trump done anything that is impeachable?

Do you live under a rock?

Has has spilled so much secret information that allies of the USA are reducing what they share.

He literally fired people who were investigating his administration. One case was a guy that the administration had explicitly said they weren't firing. Until he investigated the wrong person.

Do we need to go on?

Whereas if Hillary was even remotely guilty of anything she'd be in jail. President Trump is that desperate to keep his election promises, that he'd jail her so he can say he kept one.

robert132 wrote:I strongly suspect that if there were ANY evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians the Democrats during the campaign would have produced something more realistic than that "Hookers pizzing on a bed" thing, or that at least ONE of the 15 Republicans running against him for the nomination would have pulled out of their skivvies before Trump locked the nomination up.

As I recall, it was reported that Obama was considering whether to release details of the investigation (such as the fact it existed) prior to the election - at which point McConnell raised doubts about the reports and threatened to publicly attack the administration for using intelligence for political gain if he went public.

As for the "hooker pee" thing...you do realize that the dossier contained a bunch of reports; that the "peeing hookers" allegation was listed in the dossier itself as being low confidence (i.e. unlikely to be true)? And that other reports in the dossier have been proven correct? The only reasons the pee accusations are getting such prominence are

A) it makes for a sensational story
B) Republicans are stressing it to discredit the dossier as a whole.

Has Trump done anything that is impeachable? Other than not being liked that is.

Well, for starters, something impeachable is ultimately whatever Congress says is impeachable. In principle, they could impeach him for having a name starting with "T".

And what Annachie said (as well as e.g. apparent violations of the emoluments clause)

Funny you should bring this up. I worked in the intelligence community for a good portion of my adult life as a security manager and have a better than passing understanding of the laws and the department regulations governing the handling of classified material.

Director Comey laid out, point for point an excellent case against the former Secretary of State, detailing both the gross negligence AND what I would call the intent to circumvent both the federal and State Department regs AND to avoid Congressional Oversight of her activities as Secretary of State through the use of that unsecure “home brew” email server of hers.

When Comey announced his decision not to recommend prosecution he overstepped his authority as Director FBI, that authority lies with the Attorney General, not the FBI. AND he had no business stating blatantly that the US Code doesn’t recognize “gross negligence” in the handling of classified material as an offense because it specifically DOES. As a former prosecutor he knew that, and he lied about it.

Hillary should be sitting in a jail cell as a flight risk right now as her case moves to trial.

You are correct that the statue includes "gross negligence". However:

A) Comey did not, as you say, state that the statue did not include "gross negligence" - quite the opposite, he explicitly stated it did.
B) However, Comey did not actually accuse Clinton of "gross negligence". What he said was that "Clinton or her colleagues" were "extremely careless" - which is not the same thing, legally speaking.
C) In the US justice system, precedence plays a significant role. Comey stated they were not recommending charges as they could not find any investigation in which similar actions resulted in criminal charges.
D) Furthermore, as I understand the grosss negligence part of the statute is kind of iffy. In the ~100 years the statute has existed, it's been used exactly once - and that case had a lot more intent involved than anything here. Furthermore, there are apparently doubts on whether it's even constitutional and court precedent requires a level of intent for any violations of the statute. Link

Eyal wrote:

robert132 wrote:I strongly suspect that if there were ANY evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians the Democrats during the campaign would have produced something more realistic than that "Hookers pizzing on a bed" thing, or that at least ONE of the 15 Republicans running against him for the nomination would have pulled out of their skivvies before Trump locked the nomination up.

As I recall, it was reported that Obama was considering whether to release details of the investigation (such as the fact it existed) prior to the election - at which point McConnell raised doubts about the reports and threatened to publicly attack the administration for using intelligence for political gain if he went public.

As for the "hooker pee" thing...you do realize that the dossier contained a bunch of reports; that the "peeing hookers" allegation was listed in the dossier itself as being low confidence (i.e. unlikely to be true)? And that other reports in the dossier have been proven correct? The only reasons the pee accusations are getting such prominence are

A) it makes for a sensational story
B) Republicans are stressing it to discredit the dossier as a whole.

Has Trump done anything that is impeachable? Other than not being liked that is.

Well, for starters, something impeachable is ultimately whatever Congress says is impeachable. In principle, they could impeach him for having a name starting with "T".

And what Annachie said (as well as e.g. apparent violations of the emoluments clause)

Funny you should bring this up. I worked in the intelligence community for a good portion of my adult life as a security manager and have a better than passing understanding of the laws and the department regulations governing the handling of classified material.

Director Comey laid out, point for point an excellent case against the former Secretary of State, detailing both the gross negligence AND what I would call the intent to circumvent both the federal and State Department regs AND to avoid Congressional Oversight of her activities as Secretary of State through the use of that unsecure “home brew” email server of hers.

When Comey announced his decision not to recommend prosecution he overstepped his authority as Director FBI, that authority lies with the Attorney General, not the FBI. AND he had no business stating blatantly that the US Code doesn’t recognize “gross negligence” in the handling of classified material as an offense because it specifically DOES. As a former prosecutor he knew that, and he lied about it.

Hillary should be sitting in a jail cell as a flight risk right now as her case moves to trial.

You are correct that the statue includes "gross negligence". However:

A) Comey did not, as you say, state that the statue did not include "gross negligence" - quite the opposite, he explicitly stated it did.
B) However, Comey did not actually accuse Clinton of "gross negligence". What he said was that "Clinton or her colleagues" were "extremely careless" - which is not the same thing, legally speaking.
C) In the US justice system, precedence plays a significant role. Comey stated they were not recommending charges as they could not find any investigation in which similar actions resulted in criminal charges.
D) Furthermore, as I understand the grosss negligence part of the statute is kind of iffy. In the ~100 years the statute has existed, it's been used exactly once - and that case had a lot more intent involved than anything here. Furthermore, there are apparently doubts on whether it's even constitutional and court precedent requires a level of intent for any violations of the statute. Link

Besides which, didn't the Bush JR administration state department also use a private mail server? What is good for the goose is apparently not sauce for the gander.

Yes. It was fmr Sec. Colin Powel who advised Sec. Clinton on how to do it.

Sec. Kerry is the only one in the modern age who didn't.

Given Trump just trash-talked the US Military (told a Military Widow to her face that her husband had known what he was signing on for... ), I don't think the military will be in his camp for much longer.
Quite scary, given that it appears that the Chiefs of Staff et al are the ones on permanent damage-control with him.
Not clever, Trump.
Not clever.

Michael Everett wrote:Given Trump just trash-talked the US Military (told a Military Widow to her face that her husband had known what he was signing on for... ), I don't think the military will be in his camp for much longer.
Quite scary, given that it appears that the Chiefs of Staff et al are the ones on permanent damage-control with him.
Not clever, Trump.
Not clever.

They're still passive agressive-ing his tranny EO.

robert132 wrote:

tooldtocare wrote:The "collusion" that a full year of investigating by the FBI and both Congressional Judicial Committees AND a Special Prosecutor could not find?

Please, enlighten us.

I am not sure who the "us" is?

MSNBC has covered this extensively. The investigation you speak of is still in progress. When this investigation is concluded, the truth will set us al free.

(:-

tooldtocare wrote:I am not sure who the "us" is?

MSNBC has covered this extensively. The investigation you speak of is still in progress. When this investigation is concluded, the truth will set us all free.

(:-

Or be buried under a pile of court challenges