PeterZ wrote:PeterZ wrote:
President Trump is the ONLY politician I know can't get away with any illegalities. Had he committed such crimes, he would have already been removed from office.
gcomeau wrote:Have you completely lost your mind? Just going through the undisputed facts:
- Ran a fraud university, had to pay a $25 million dollar fine.
- Ran a fraud charitable organization. Entire family currently barred from running a charity in NY state without adult supervision.
- Is an unindicted co-conspirator in a felony election finance violation that his lawyer is currently in jail for, and which in the indictment he was specifically identified as the party who had ordered the crime. (Remains un-indicted only because of DOJ rules against indicting sitting presidents.)
- Has been receiving money from foreign governments through his hotels his entire presidency. Direct violation of the Constitution.
- Was identified as having committed at least 10 different acts of Obstruction of Justice in the Mueller report. Again, not indicted because Mueller wasn't allowed to indict a sitting president. Multiple associated people who are not protected by virtue of being sitting presidents sent to prison or awaiting sentencing.
- Tried to award his own family a massive federal contract to host the G7.
- Had military flights being diverted to have the aircrews stay in one of his properties so he could profit off of that too.
- OPENLY called for foreign governments to interfere in the next presidential election by launching requested criminal investigations into his most likely opponent. In one case doing so while simultaneously putting a hold on vital military aid that country needed and also withholding a strongly desired White House visit while telling the leader of that country he wanted their relationship to be more "reciprocal" and that he needed "a favor though" when he was asked about already committed aid being provided and then spending the rest of their call talking about the specific investigations he expected.
- When facing investigation for impeachment, instructed all White House personnel to engage in total blanket non compliance with all Congressional investigative activities, without invoking any valid legal privilege to do so.
Any ONE of those is grounds for removal from office. All of them together make him the single most corrupt president in the history of the nation and it's not even close to a comprehensive list. He hasn't been removed from office because the Senate GOP will not allow it under *any* circumstances.
And go to the courts? Trump is currently arguing in those very courts that they have no legal authority to regulate his conduct because he has total immunity to all laws and that only Congress can deal with him by impeachment while SIMULTANEOUSLY declaring he has total authority to 100% obstruct any Congressional impeachment investigation.
So how the hell is that supposed to work Peter?
There have been no fact witnesses in the impeachment hearings except for Sondland.
Yes there damn well have been. "Had to talk to Trump in person" is not the criteria for a fact witness.
Everything else has been opinion.
No, it has not been. The ordering the aid be withheld is fact, not opinion. The lack of contemporaneous provided explanation for the hold is fact, not opinion. The hiding of the hold from Congress is fact not opinion. The occurrence of discussions with the Ukrainians by Trump officials telling them they needed to get the investigations going to get what they wanted from Trump is fact, not opinion. Etc.
You interpretation about President Trump asserting Executive Privilege is wacked.
HE NEVER EXERTED EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE FFS.
Executive privilege is a specific thing, not some blanket limitless power of the president to suppress any and all evidence and testimony from Congress. And Trump didn't even claim it was executive privilege he just issued a unversal order to all federal employees NOT TO COOPERATE with the impeachment investigation.
And the sad thing is I know you damn well know that that is totally insupportable, because there is ZERO possibility you were arguing Obama could just blanket order total witholding of all documents and testimony from the Republican Congress when they were holding their 5000 investigations into Benghazi.
The Executive Branch is co-equal to Congress. Congress can exert its authority and the Executive can exert its authority and resist. The Courts decide which authority prevails in any given question. Neither Congress nor the Executive is supreme in all cases. Congressional subpoenas are enforced not by congress but by the courts. If congress wanted their subpoenas enforced, they should have gone to court.
The same court Trump claims has NO jurisdiction over him as president because he is immune to all laws?
As to you other wacked view of the phone call. He asked Ukraine for help in rooting out corruption as the transcript clearly suggests.
He didn't use the word corruption one single time.
He asked them to investigate two things that were both in his personal interest. He wanted to be able to say there was a serious investigation into whether it was Ukraine and not Russian interfering because he wanted to claim Russia didn't actually help him get elected, and he wanted to be able to point at a criminal investigation of a Biden.
He had already been REPEATEDLY briefed by his own people that the Ukraine interfering bullshit was Russian propaganda. He didn't care. And every single person from the administration willing to testify under oath who was asked about it said there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Biden either. And the Pentagon had ALREADY DONE their checks on the corruption issue as part of authorizing the aid and cleared Ukraine on that question. again, Trump didn't care because he has never cared about corruption. Only about getting personal benefits for himself.
His reference to Biden was tangential not primary.
No, it was not.
Again the transcript was pretty clear on that. He didn't ask for help in the election, but asked for help as both countries are obligated to do by treaty. That Biden, Kerry, and a number of other Dems are up to their necks with corrupt Ukrainian companies is tangential to the request.
Yeah? Show me where he asked for investigation into ANY area of potential corruption that actually touches on military procurement then. You know, besides his specific request that the one single company a Biden worked for that was in no way involved in the disbursement of the aid finds be investigated.
Being a presidential candidate is not a free pass to avoid investigations into corruption
1. Which is what the FBI is for. You let the DOJ do its job you do NOT ask a foreign country to launch an investigation while you hang witheld critically needed military aid over their head.
2. Funny how you thought Trump being a presidential candidate made any investigation into any aspect of his campaign by an actual properly authorized US law enforcement agency the biggest scandal in the history of the world.
just as being president gives no immunity to investigations.
You have literally spent the first half of this post arguing that is exactly what it gives him when you declared executive privilege could be extended to any and all requests for evidence or testimony of any kind.
Asking for assistance as obligated by treaty is no abuse of power but a proper exercise of it.
There is no treaty obligating Ukraine to conduct criminal investigations of US politicians or their family members just because Trump tells them he wants it to happen while he is withholding their aid.
PS: Noticed you skipped most of that list of Trump offenses that clearly warrant removal from office.