Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

It is time to impeach - or so says a Republican, a former member of President Donald Trump’s Individual-1's transition team

 

This weekend, I read Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report twice, and realized that enough was enough—I needed to do something. I’ve worked on every Republican presidential transition team for the past 10 years and recently served as counsel to the Republican-led House Financial Services Committee. My permanent job is as a law professor at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, which is not political, but where my colleagues have held many prime spots in Republican administrations.

 

If you think calling for the impeachment of a sitting Republican president would constitute career suicide for someone like me, you may end up being right. But I did exactly that this weekend, tweeting that it’s time to begin impeachment proceedings.

[barmar]

Our country is facing lots of problems, and while Trump may be exacerbating many of them, he's not the only one. While I would love to see him booted out of office, it's very clear that that's not going to happen.

 

There's so much work that Congress needs to do, do we really want them to waste time on a quixotic activity like impeachment? As long as Republicans control the Senate, it won't get rid of Trump. It will just be for show, like all the votes to repeal Obamacare that were taken by the Republican HoR during Obama's term.

 

I do expect Congress to investigate further, to nail down all the details. But going through the full impeachment process could divide the nation even more than we already are. And for what end? It will probably just reinforce the opinions most people already has, not change many minds.

[awm]

Our country is facing lots of problems, and while Trump may be exacerbating many of them, he's not the only one. While I would love to see him booted out of office, it's very clear that that's not going to happen.

 

There's so much work that Congress needs to do, do we really want them to waste time on a quixotic activity like impeachment? As long as Republicans control the Senate, it won't get rid of Trump. It will just be for show, like all the votes to repeal Obamacare that were taken by the Republican HoR during Obama's term.

 

I do expect Congress to investigate further, to nail down all the details. But going through the full impeachment process could divide the nation even more than we already are. And for what end? It will probably just reinforce the opinions most people already has, not change many minds.

 

Sure, the House could pass bills to make our elections more fair, improve healthcare, save the environment. But none of these will even see the floor of the Senate. The reality is that congress can do very little as long as the Senate is lead by people who not only don’t want to FIX any of these major problems but in fact don’t recognize them as problems at all (and would happily make them worse). In this kind of environment the best we can do is demonstrate as publicly as possible how ridiculous the Senate Republicans are. Impeachment has the advantage that news networks will surely cover it (unlike these other things which get at best a passing mention) and that Mitch McConnell can’t simply refuse to bring it to the floor of the Senate.

[y66]

From Divided on Impeachment, Democrats Wrestle With Duty and Politics by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos at NYT:

 

WASHINGTON — As Speaker Nancy Pelosi urges caution on impeachment, rank-and-file House Democrats are agonizing over the prospect of trying to oust President Trump, caught between their sense of historic responsibilities and political considerations in the wake of the special counsel’s damning portrait of abuses.

 

The Democrats — including more than 50 freshmen — are mindful that impeachment poses political risks that could endanger the seats of moderates and their majority, as well as strengthen Mr. Trump’s hand. But some prominent members of the 55-member strong Congressional Black Caucus and a newly empowered progressive caucus are pressing for action — three Democrats have filed articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump and dozens of others have signaled a willingness to consider that path.

 

“A realization is setting in that this moment has found us,” said Representative Jared Huffman, a fourth-term Democrat from Northern California, who is advocating for impeachment. “We cannot ignore it. We cannot wish it away. For some, this may be a very, very difficult matter. But this is why we have a House of Representatives. And this is absolutely what our founders imagined when a president did these sorts of things.”

 

Lawmakers of color, such as Representatives Maxine Waters of California, Al Green of Texas, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, seem to be leaning in the farthest. Ms. Tlaib had a pointed message for those who want to leave the decision to voters, or worry that impeachment would diminish their electoral prospects.

 

“I think the voters decided in the last election,” she said, noting the record turnout in her district and across the nation in 2018, especially among minorities. “They spoke and they elected not only the most diverse but the most bold freshman class that we have seen in a long time — people who are bold enough to hold this president accountable and not make decisions based on politics, but on putting country first.”

 

“I don’t ever want to look back — and I think a lot of my colleagues feel the same way — to say that we didn’t do everything in our power to stop this lawless president from jeopardizing our democracy,” she added.

 

Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, who fiercely defended President Bill Clinton during his impeachment, said the offenses laid out in the first volume of the report on Russian interference in the 2016 election are more worrisome than past “special counsels, prosecutors, independent investigations among Republican and Democratic presidents” have uncovered.

 

“I don’t think any member of Congress has ever seen this behavior before by any president of the United States of America,” she said, although she backed Ms. Pelosi’s go-slow approach. She continued, “Certainly, Volume I, which dictates and provides evidence of the seemingly rampant and continuous interaction between campaign operatives and the Trump administration with the adversary, is stunning.”

 

But just as liberals are invoking the founding fathers to press for impeachment, more moderate Democrats, whose districts will likely control who is in the majority after next year’s elections, are doing the same to urge caution.

 

“I believe, ultimately, what the founders created for us in our democracy is clear: When you disagree with someone’s approach or believe he or she is abusing the Constitution, you vote them out,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, a centrist Democrat from New Jersey. “You could impeach them, if it merits it, or you can beat them with better ideas and a better approach.”

 

The founders left the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors — the criteria for impeachment, along with more specific offenses like treason and bribery — open to interpretation. And the report from Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, did not provide clear guidance.

 

“The challenge is that the Mueller investigation did a data dump onto the American public and Congress, and the data dump suggests obstruction of justice, which would satisfy the requirement of high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Timothy Naftali, a New York University historian and an author of the recent book, “Impeachment: An American History.” “But the prosecutors didn’t say it, and the Justice Department isn’t saying it. And so it’s up to Congress to decide.”

 

Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, a freshman Democrat from Pennsylvania, has been thrown back to her days as a teenager watching the Watergate hearings and the resignation of Nixon unfold. She said she wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about the Mueller report.

 

“Often you go into these kinds of events with some impostor syndrome: What am I doing here? How did I get here?” she said. “All of a sudden I’m talking with my colleagues about what does this mean for the country and how do we go forward?”

 

Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a constitutional law professor, has a well-marked copy of the Federalist Papers on his nightstand.

 

“The media just wants a thumbs up or thumbs down, pro-impeachment or not,” Mr. Raskin said. “They don’t appreciate this is a process, an instrument in the Constitution that is the people’s last defense against a president trampling the rule of law and acting like a king. But it is a process, and it is meant to be a process.”

 

Mr. Raskin said he believes that the obstruction outlined in Mr. Mueller’s report constitutes impeachable offenses, but he is not yet convinced they warrant proceeding with an impeachment. He urged Democrats to build an independent and full record for the public of what had occurred, rather than relying entirely on the Mueller report as Republicans relied on the Starr Report to impeach Mr. Clinton.

 

Removing a president from office requires bipartisan buy-in and the acceptance of the American people, as was the case with Richard M. Nixon but not Mr. Clinton. Congress undertook months of hearings on Watergate, beginning in May 1973, before threatening Nixon with impeachment in the summer of 1974. By that time, about two thirds of the American people believed he had participated in the Watergate cover-up.

 

“If you look at history, articles of impeachment were considered in the House of Representatives two weeks before Richard Nixon resigned; all the rest happened before that,” said Representative Jan Schakowsky, a liberal Democrat from a safe seat in Illinois. “By the time that decision was made to go to articles of impeachment, the American people had heard it all and were persuaded.”

 

Ms. Pelosi and her leadership team appear to be following the Nixon model. The House Judiciary Committee has already issued a subpoena to compel the Justice Department to produce an unredacted copy of the Mueller report and all the evidence his investigation collected so Congress can begin sifting through it.

 

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, its chairman, has invited Attorney General William P. Barr to testify next week, then Mr. Mueller not long after, and also issued a subpoena for testimony from Donald F. McGahn II, a former White House counsel and a key witness in the special counsel’s obstruction investigation, later in May. He has promised to call others to air key facts out in the open to build a congressional record of possible obstruction of justice, abuses of power and corruption in the White House.

 

“We have not yet had our Sam Ervin moment,” Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, one of the longest-serving members of the Judiciary Committee and a member of its staff in the 1970s, said on Tuesday, referring to the North Carolina senator who led public hearings on Watergate. “We have not yet had public examination of the facts involved in this whole matter.”

 

That sits well with newer Democrats in tougher districts. At a town-hall meeting outside of Minneapolis on Tuesday night, freshman Representative Angie Craig was pressed by a pro-impeachment constituent. But her seat was Republican last year, and she demurred.

 

“I believe the next step is for Congress to request the unredacted version of the report, for the committee chairmen to call a number of folks forward and for those folks to fill in the facts for the American people,” she said, even as she declared herself “very troubled by a number of the potential areas of obstruction that are mentioned in the report.”

 

Bedeviling pro-impeachment Democrats are not other Democrats but a united Republican Party that is not even acknowledging the abuses outlined by the special counsel. And the White House has made clear that it does not intend to cooperate with requests for witnesses and documents — potentially cutting off options for the Democrats.

 

For now, even those agitating for a vote to open a formal impeachment inquiry appear to be content with the plan laid out by Ms. Pelosi and her leadership team to use the Mueller report as a road map for further investigation. Mr. Huffman called it tantamount to an impeachment inquiry, if not so in name.

 

Democrats are also mindful that voters sent them to Washington to address kitchen-table concerns — the high cost of health care, jobs, the ravages of the opioid epidemic — and worry about the implications of getting distracted from that agenda.

 

“Impeachment is designed as an extraordinary constitutional remedy, and it puts members of Congress in an extraordinary situation,” Mr. Raskin said. “The Constitution obligates us to measure the importance of an impeachment investigation against everything else on the public agenda.”

 

Mr. Huffman and Ms. Waters have urged colleagues to grapple with the implications of failing to act: What if they choose not to try to impeach a president who had been all but accused by the special counsel of obstructing justice and is an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal campaign finance felony in New York?

 

“If that president cannot face impeachment, then part of our constitutional responsibility is just a bunch of dead words,” Mr. Huffman said. “I think that is pretty bad for the country. I think it invites abuse from this president for the next year and a half. I think it sets a terrible precedent that will be abused by future president. And we can’t take that lightly.”

 

He dismissed arguments from fellow Democrats that anticipated political outcomes should dictate their decision-making as “absurd self-serving readings of the tea leaves by folks who frankly don’t want to step up and make difficult decisions.”

[Winstonm]

Our country is facing lots of problems, and while Trump may be exacerbating many of them, he's not the only one. While I would love to see him booted out of office, it's very clear that that's not going to happen.

 

There's so much work that Congress needs to do, do we really want them to waste time on a quixotic activity like impeachment? As long as Republicans control the Senate, it won't get rid of Trump. It will just be for show, like all the votes to repeal Obamacare that were taken by the Republican HoR during Obama's term.

 

I do expect Congress to investigate further, to nail down all the details. But going through the full impeachment process could divide the nation even more than we already are. And for what end? It will probably just reinforce the opinions most people already has, not change many minds.

 

You could not be more wrong.

 

Impeachment hearings are constitutionally based and that fact automatically grants authority to subpoenas issued by the impeachment process.

 

I just came back from a trip to an clinic where the t.v. was automatically on Fox - and all they were doing is repeating the claims of the the president and his stooges. The girl moderating had the audacity to claim that Mueller said there was no collusion when in fact he said no such thing.

 

Impeachment hearings on television give the country the opportunity to hear the unvarnished truth about what happened instead of hearing it filtered through propaganda outlets.

 

Once that has occurred, there is no ducking that a permanent historical vote takes place, and everyone involved has to either vote for or against our current form of democracy.

 

PS: You do realize that Individual-1, the president of the United States, tried to stop not just an investigation into himself and his campaign, but to stop the investigation of criminal espionage carried out by a foreign power. (The Mueller report describes how, in an effort to get Corey Lewandowski to convince Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal, Trump suggested that Mueller could be limited to investigating only future election hacks, nothing that occurred in 2016.)

[johnu]

The biggest ignoramus president in history?

 

Trump Erroneously Claims U.S. Supreme Court Role in Impeachment

 

President Donald Trump said he’d ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene if Congress mounts an impeachment effort against him — even though there are no legal grounds for the justices to consider such a request.

"There no ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ there are no Crimes by me at all," he asserted in a subsequent Twitter posting.

Sure, if you ignore all the criminal activity documented in the Mueller report, the criminal conspiracy of Individual-1, shredding and soiling the emoluments clause, etc, there is no evidence whatsoever.

[y66]

Guest post from Hillary Clinton:

 

Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. It documents a serious crime against the American people.

 

The debate about how to respond to Russia’s “sweeping and systemic” attack — and how to hold President Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law — has been reduced to a false choice: immediate impeachment or nothing. History suggests there’s a better way to think about the choices ahead.

 

Obviously, this is personal for me, and some may say that I’m not the right messenger. But my perspective is not just that of a former candidate and target of the Russian plot. I am also a former senator and secretary of state who served during much of Vladi­mir Putin’s ascent, sat across the table from him and knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country.

 

I am also someone who, by a strange twist of fate, was a young staff attorney on the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate impeachment inquiry in 1974, as well as first lady during the impeachment process that began in 1998. And I was a senator for New York after 9/11, when Congress had to respond to an attack on our country. Each of these experiences offers important lessons for how we should proceed today.

 

First, like any time our nation is threatened, we have to remember that this is bigger than politics. What our country needs now is clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive partisanship. Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress share the constitutional responsibility to protect the country. Mueller’s report leaves many unanswered questions — in part because of Attorney General William P. Barr’s redactions and obfuscations. But it is a road map. It’s up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads — to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not. Either way, the nation’s interests will be best served by putting party and political considerations aside and being deliberate, fair and fearless.

 

The president tried to manipulate the justice system. Congress must not let this go, argues the Editorial Board. (The Washington Post)

 

Second, Congress should hold substantive hearings that build on the Mueller report and fill in its gaps, not jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment. In 1998, the Republican-led House rushed to judgment. That was a mistake then and would be a mistake now.

 

Watergate offers a better precedent. Then, as now, there was an investigation that found evidence of corruption and a coverup. It was complemented by public hearings conducted by a Senate select committee, which insisted that executive privilege could not be used to shield criminal conduct and compelled White House aides to testify. The televised hearings added to the factual record and, crucially, helped the public understand the facts in a way that no dense legal report could. Similar hearings with Mueller, former White House counsel Donald McGahn and other key witnesses could do the same today.

 

During Watergate, the House Judiciary Committee also began a formal impeachment inquiry that was led by John Doar, a widely respected former Justice Department official and hero of the civil rights struggle. He was determined to run a process that the public and history would judge as fair and thorough, no matter the outcome. If today’s House proceeds to an impeachment inquiry, I hope it will find someone as distinguished and principled as Doar to lead it.

 

Third, Congress can’t forget that the issue today is not just the president’s possible obstruction of justice — it’s our national security. After 9/11, Congress established an independent, bipartisan commission to recommend steps that would help guard against future attacks. We need a similar commission today to help protect our elections. This is necessary because the president of the United States has proved himself unwilling to defend our nation from a clear and present danger. It was just reported that Trump’s recently departed secretary of homeland security tried to prioritize election security because of concerns about continued interference in 2020 and was told by the acting White House chief of staff not to bring it up in front of the president. This is the latest example of an administration that refuses to take even the most minimal, common-sense steps to prevent future attacks and counter ongoing threats to our nation.

 

Fourth, while House Democrats pursue these efforts, they also should stay focused on the sensible agenda that voters demanded in the midterms, from protecting health care to investing in infrastructure. During Watergate, Congress passed major legislation such as the War Powers Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973. For today’s Democrats, it’s not only possible to move forward on multiple fronts at the same time, it’s essential. The House has already passed sweeping reforms that would strengthen voting rights and crack down on corruption, and now is the time for Democrats to keep their foot on the gas and put pressure on the do-nothing Senate. It’s critical to remind the American people that Democrats are in the solutions business and can walk and chew gum at the same time.

 

We have to get this right. The Mueller report isn’t just a reckoning about our recent history; it’s a warning about the future. Unless checked, the Russians will interfere again in 2020, and possibly other adversaries, such as China or North Korea, will as well. This is an urgent threat. Nobody but Americans should be able to decide America’s future. And, unless he’s held accountable, the president may show even more disregard for the laws of the land and the obligations of his office. He will likely redouble his efforts to advance Putin’s agenda, including rolling back sanctions, weakening NATO and undermining the European Union.

 

Of all the lessons from our history, the one that’s most important may be that each of us has a vital role to play as citizens. A crime was committed against all Americans, and all Americans should demand action and accountability. Our founders envisioned the danger we face today and designed a system to meet it. Now it’s up to us to prove the wisdom of our Constitution, the resilience of our democracy and the strength of our nation.

[barmar]

The biggest ignoramus president in history?

 

Trump Erroneously Claims U.S. Supreme Court Role in Impeachmentwhatsoever.

Everyone is ridiculing this statement, but doesn't the Supreme Court have ultimate authority through their role in interpreting the Constitution? Who rules on whether a particular activity constitutes "high crimes or misdemeanors"?

 

SCOTUS decided the presidential election in Bush v. Gore.

[cherdano]

Everyone is ridiculing this statement, but doesn't the Supreme Court have ultimate authority through their role in interpreting the Constitution? Who rules on whether a particular activity constitutes "high crimes or misdemeanors"?

No. The Senate.

[hrothgar]

Everyone is ridiculing this statement, but doesn't the Supreme Court have ultimate authority through their role in interpreting the Constitution? Who rules on whether a particular activity constitutes "high crimes or misdemeanors"?

 

SCOTUS decided the presidential election in Bush v. Gore.

 

https://www.lawfareblog.com/supreme-court-has-no-role-impeachment

[Winstonm]

https://www.lawfareblog.com/supreme-court-has-no-role-impeachment

 

As much as I respect the law (my oldest daughter is a lawyer), I am quite concerned that we are assuming a model of which the GOP is trying hard to destroy, putting in its place a model where law is there as decoration only, used as a propaganda piece to subvert dissent.

 

The SCOTUS has a history of some truly horrific rulings, and that seems to be the direction it once again is moving.

 

It is easy to forget that for any law to be viable, there must be two associated musts: 1) an ability to enforce, and 2) a willingness to enforce.

 

When the head of the executive branch refuses to obey the law, the only option is impeachment and removal. Without that, the era of total lawlessness is upon us.

[Winstonm]

Has it occurred to anyone else that what we have done is elect Harold Hill as professor president.

 

"Oh, yes, we've got trouble! Right here in "Middle Merica". That starts with "M", and that rhymes with "them", and them is Mexican.

 

Trust me. All we need to do now is start a boy's band build a wall and everything will be hunky dory.

[Chas_P]

There's so much work that Congress needs to do, do we really want them to waste time on a quixotic activity like impeachment?

Going through the full impeachment process could divide the nation even more than we already are. And for what end? It will probably just reinforce the opinions most people already have, not change many minds.

 

Wow! A second voice of reason in the WC.

[Winstonm]

Speaking of wow

 

A controversial Madrid-based campaign group, supported by American and Russian ultra-conservatives, is working across Europe to drive voters towards far-right parties in next month’s European Parliament elections and in Spain’s national elections this Sunday, openDemocracy can reveal today.

 

Our findings have caused alarm among lawmakers who fear that Trump-linked conservatives are working with European allies to import a controversial US-style ‘Super PAC’ model of political campaigning to Europe – opening the door to large amounts of ‘dark money’ flowing unchecked into elections and referenda.

[Winstonm]

Wow! A second voice of reason in the WC.

 

Even the Fox bandwagon doesn't buy your BS.

 

Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano is not going easy on President Trump.

 

In a scathing op-ed and accompanying video published Thursday, Napolitano said that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election and Trump’s efforts to cover it up showed a clear pattern of criminal behavior.

 

Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano. (Photo: Richard Drew/AP)

“When the president asks his former adviser and my former colleague K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter to the file knowing the government would subpoena it, that’s obstruction of justice,” Napolitano said in his video. “When the president asks Cory Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to get Mueller fired, that’s obstruction of justice. When the president asks his then White House counsel to get Mueller fired and then lie about it, that’s obstruction of justice. When he asked Don McGahn to go back to the special counsel and then change his testimony, that’s obstruction of justice. When he dangled the pardon in front of Michael Cohen in order to keep Cohen from testifying against him, that’s obstruction of justice. Why not charge him?”

[Chas_P]

Even the Fox bandwagon doesn't buy your BS.

 

Napolitano is certainly entitled to his opinion, but I suspect that Mueller's, Barr's, and Rosenstein's will have a much greater effect.

 

From The Washington Post:

Ultimately, Mueller did not make a determination as to whether the president broke the law, based partly on the Justice Department’s long-standing policy that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime while in office. Attorney General William P. Barr reviewed Mueller’s findings last month and declared that both he and Rosenstein had determined the president had not obstructed justice.

From Conrad Black:

 

 

 

Ahead of last week’s release of the redacted Mueller report, Attorney General William Barr in his summary explained the criteria for a charge of obstruction. Those criteria include evidence of a corrupt act with corrupt intent in contemplation of a legal proceeding. The attorney general, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, a favorite of congressional Democrats who was supposedly considering recording Trump two years ago to canvass the cabinet to see if he was mentally unfit to be president, and the special counsel all agreed that none of the necessary ingredients for the president to be guilty of obstruction was present.The extravagant, knife-edge judgment call the House of Representatives Democrats have been pretending to be considering about whether to impeach or not is bunk—self-improvised therapy to cushion their psychological plunge from confidence they could take down the president, to the grim awakening to the legal vulnerabilities of the Obama Administration and the Clinton campaign in confecting this monstrous fraud of Trump-Russian collusion.

[Winstonm]

This seems to have a lot of merit:

 

This is the argument Duke political scientist Ashley Jardina makes in her book White Identity Politics. Drawing on a decade of data from American National Election Studies surveys, Jardina claims that white Americans — roughly 30 to 40 percent of them — now identify with their whiteness in a politically meaningful way. Importantly, this racial solidarity doesn’t always overlap with racism, but it does mean that racial identity is becoming a more salient force in American politics.

 

Except that racism by exclusion is still racism.

[y66]

[hrothgar]

Napolitano is certainly entitled to his opinion, but I suspect that Mueller's, Barr's, and Rosenstein's will have a much greater effect.

 

Mueller (all but) recommended impeachment and / or prosecuting Trump if he leaves office

Barr has been caught directly lying about the contents of the report

Rosenstein is all over the place, but as yesterday is looking might compromised.

[Chas_P]

Rosenstein is all over the place, but as yesterday is looking might compromised.

 

 

From The New York Times:

Mr. Rosenstein shot back at critics, saying that he and other lawyers cared about facts, whereas “in politics, belief is the whole ballgame. In politics — as in journalism — the rules of evidence do not apply.”

[Winstonm]

Guest Judge Ogden Nash:

 

I find it very difficult to enthuse

Over the current news.

Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it

can grow no blacker, it worsens.

And that is why I do not like the news, because there has

never been an era when so many things were going so

right for so many of the wrong persons.

[cherdano]

From The New York Times:

Mr. Rosenstein shot back at critics, saying that he and other lawyers cared about facts, whereas “in politics, belief is the whole ballgame. In politics — as in journalism — the rules of evidence do not apply.”

Why are you insisting on pointing out that Rosenstein is dumb?

OF COURSE rules of evidence do not apply in politics. I AM allowed to draw conclusions about politician X from the transcript of an interview with politician X even though that would be inadmissible hearsay evidence in a trial. I am allowed to make judgments of the sort "Bernie Sanders seems out of his element on foreign policy hence I'd prefer someone else as president" or "Sarah Sanders is repeatedly and blatantly lying" even before I have irrefutable evidence leaving no reasonable doubt about this statement.

[Winstonm]

Why are you insisting on pointing out that Rosenstein is dumb?

OF COURSE rules of evidence do not apply in politics. I AM allowed to draw conclusions about politician X from the transcript of an interview with politician X even though that would be inadmissible hearsay evidence in a trial. I am allowed to make judgments of the sort "Bernie Sanders seems out of his element on foreign policy hence I'd prefer someone else as president" or "Sarah Sanders is repeatedly and blatantly lying" even before I have irrefutable evidence leaving no reasonable doubt about this statement.

 

I would venture a wager that Chas_P has not even read the Mueller report so he doesn't know what it said. Right up front it says that his phrase "could not establish" does not mean he found "no evidence of", only that criminality could not be established sufficiently to charge. (Not getting cooperation from Manafort - after Individual-1 dangled a pardon - could have made it impossible to get that evidence. Which would be obstruction, which DOJ, in a Catch-22, said internally cannot be used to indict a sitting president)

 

Just as criminal justice - because it takes away a person's liberty - has the high bar for conviction of "beyond a reasonable doubt", no such harsh constraint is on civil law where "preponderance of the evidence" is all that is required - just ask O.J. the difference.

[y66]

What evidence and beliefs are we talking about? The overwhelming evidence of obstruction that Mueller found and documented or the belief by Rosenstein and Barr that the case for proving obstruction requires proof of conspiracy which is absurd?

[Winstonm]

What evidence and beliefs are we talking about? The overwhelming evidence of obstruction that Mueller found and documented or the belief by Rosenstein and Barr that the case for proving obstruction requires proof of conspiracy which is absurd?

 

From his posting history, it appears Chas_P is one of those about whom Individual-1 said he wouldn't lose their support if he shot someone on 5th Avenue.