Impeachment of Donald J. Trump

[Jeanne_S]

I never have the tv on during the day and particularity never on the weekends .I will be watching this morning however.Now we will see real professionals exposing the truth!

 

[Donkey]

I won’t discuss here while the trial is in session.

 

[PaulinVA]

I haven’t been this excited about watching Saturday morning television since I was a kid.

I look forward to the sheer entertainment value of the Trump lawyers bloviating about Burisma, the Bidens, the Steele Dossier, and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the articles of impeachment.

The President has already stipulated that he did what was charged.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

“Since my election the United States has gained 7 million jobs.”
is an example.
However, is this not true? Why claim it is a lie?

I mean… You can read the explanation right there on the page?

Trump cites how many jobs have been created since the election, but not since the beginning of his administration. Nearly 6.7 million jobs have been added to the economy since Trump took office. Job growth under Trump in his first three years was roughly the same as Obama’s last three years.

 

[Aquinas11]

Do you actually believe Donald Trump has never done anything that calls for an apology?

New article impeachment = never apologizes!

 

[dvdjs]

But I do know if you don’t allege a violation of any crime (criminal or civil law ) and if you don’t allege the law was broken then i t’s simply NOT a high crime or misdemeanor . It’s pretty simple.

But even the Constitutional law expert brought in by House Republicans to testify said, as noted by @HarryStolte:

“As I have stressed, t is possible to establish a case for impeachment based on a non-criminal allegation of abuse of power.

What you have indicated is contradicted by the testimony Constitutional law expert brought in by House Republicans.

 

[F_Marturana]

Jim Jordan hasn’t even passed the Bar Exam.

Schiff is a former US attorney.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Sooo what’s your point?

 

[Theo520]

Not one response to this well reasoned NYT article

The way things look, President Trump will almost certainly not be removed from office. The precedents set by the articles of impeachment, however, will endure far longer. And regrettably, the House of Representatives has transformed presidential impeachment from a constitutional parachute — an emergency measure to save the Republic in free-fall — into a parliamentary vote of “no confidence.”

The [House seeks to expel] Mr. Trump because he acted “for his personal political benefit rather than for a legitimate policy purpose.” Mr. Trump’s lawyers [responded], “elected officials almost always consider the effect that their conduct might have on the next election.” The president’s lawyers are right. And that behavior does not amount to an abuse of power.

continued …

 

[Donkey]

In all this, Democrats for impeachment are the only ones that have put themselves above the law.

 

[F_Marturana]

There’s a professional way of putting on a trial. Jim is probably gonna shout at people.

 

[F_Marturana]

Can you let me know why Giuliani was running around Ukraine? Why did the president of Ukraine need to deal with Rudy? Rudy isn’t part of the justice department, and hasn’t been vetted.

 

[dvdjs]

Not one response to this well reasoned NYT article

Mr. Blackman makes this important point

An impeachable offense need not be criminal.

It would be nice if we could move off that square.

As to the rest, he seems to overlook the distinction between that has been made over and over. This is a case in which the POTUS acted privately against legislated policy and implementation procedures of the US for in narrow self gain; it is not a case in which the action is taken for the US thaqt also benefits the POTUS. The existence of self interest is not being help as determinantive.

 

[PetraG]

“Whatever Congress decides” is not a proper standard for impeachment.

It would be highly unethical for Congress to remove a President when he hadn’t done something seriously wrong. I think the Framers purposefully trusted Congress to define what “seriously wrong” is and what a President ought to be held responsible for. So far, Congress has been very responsible with that, presumably because of the high number of senators required to accomplish a removal.

It’s kind of like removing a President under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. The standard of what “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” means is very vague. I think the number and identity of the persons required to make such an assessment is intended to be the safeguard against misuse of the power.

A lot of what makes this country work is that we have a governing culture that requires people to put limits on themselves and to use a high and honest standard in questions like these. In another country at another time in history, for example, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment would be an invitation to a coup against the President. The real respect for the rule of law that typically takes the day as part of our national identity is one of the safeguards that allows our Constitution to work. That is why it takes far more than a small knot of ardent enemies to get a President removed from office.

 

[PetraG]

Can you let me know why Giuliani was running around Ukraine? Why did the president of Ukraine need to deal with Rudy? Rudy isn’t part of the justice department, and hasn’t been vetted.

That was a very bad idea. Removing the President for allowing it goes too far, but he really deserves criticism for allowing that to happen. Sometimes, I don’t know if he just doesn’t understand what purpose the boundaries serve or if he doesn’t bother to learn what the theoretical boundaries are or if he knows but doesn’t care, but he goes too far. (Yes, to be fair, Presidents have been pushing those boundaries whenever they could and have really been pushing them for a long time. He’s not remotely the first to have Nixon’s attitude that the rules are for everybody else in the Executive Branch but don’t really apply to the President or to the exceptions to the rules that the President elects to make.)

 

[PetraG]

Your claim is that a cult is identifiable by the fact that members of a cult show

1. NO tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.

No, they don’t do it because even those in the GOP who dare to cross the President can expect to become a target of false attacks on social media, both from the President and from his “suppoters.” He demands fealty from others in his party, let’s just face that.

Romney criticized him, and all of a sudden there are fake stories going around on social media that Romney’s son was working for a Ukrainian oil company. That was a total fabrication. Will Hurd, Fred Upton, Susan Brooks and Brian Fitzpatrick were falsely accused of supporting Trump’s impeachment… What they actually did was vote in favor of a rebuke of the President’s comment that four citizens elected to Congress as Democrats should “go back to their home countries.” Backing that legitimate rebuke made them into people who “side with” the Democrats!! They got that because they had enough backbone to object to the President saying something that was totally out of line, something everybody in the GOP ought to have objected to!!

If you don’t think the GOP in general and Trump in particular are using silencing tactics, including spreading misinformation on social media, to keep “the faithful” in line, you haven’t been paying attention.

Is that an impeachable offense? No. Is it an unethical tactic held in common with the way cult leaders maintain their authority? It absolutely is.

The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.

I wish I had a dollar for every time the President referred to factual evidence against him as Fake News. If he doesn’t like it, it is deemed to be Fake. So yes, processes of discovery other than those approved by the President–which always means things that put the President in a good light–is deemed to be a Fake. So yes, he absolutely does make himself the exclusive arbiter of what is true and what is false. If he says global warming is a hoax cooked up by China, then it is a hoax cooked up by China, even though there is plenty of evidence that the concept of global warming did not originate with the Chinese and no evidence that the Chinese are responsible for perpetuating it.

He just made that up, but that is “the truth” and all other evidence is “fake.” That is hardly an isolated example.

New article impeachment = never apologizes!

Sorry, we had digressed from the topic of the thread to the topic of whether or not the President ever conducts himself like the leader of a cult.

He does, and he does it habitually, but the President’s consistent efforts to cultivate a cult of personality around himself is off-topic. My apologies.

 

[AlNg]

I mean… You can read the explanation right there on the page?

The explanation shows the the statement of Trump is true.
First 6.7 million rounded off is 7 million.
Secondly 6.7 million starts from the time he took office. Trump’s statistics go back further to the time he was elected.
So how is what Trump said a lie?

 

[F_Marturana]

Giuliani is s private citizen, not employed by the US. He hasn’t be vetted.

 

[Theo520]

Mr. Blackman makes this important point

An impeachable offense need not be criminal.

Yup, you’re a proponent of the new normal.

If you have the majority and can corral the votes, you can impeach for passing gas in public.

Once again you proof-texted a sentence and missed the message of the article.

 

[drcube]

Completely contrived. Trump wasn’t and isn’t going to be interested in the abstract in every corruption in Ukraine or someone sticking up a 7/11 in Ukraine. Trump is not the Ukraine President. What Trump wants investigated is corruption involving the United States, and of a VP. It is always legitimate and is the RESPONSIBILITY to investigate serious corruption like this.

Nope, not completely contrived and a clear attempt to demonize his political enemies by his lack of transparency and strong desire for an announcement of the investigation.

Lets look at Burisma and the corruption.

1. The owner of Burisma was also the minister of natural resources for Ukraine who was responsible for granting natural gas licneses and was granting his own company all the licenses.Think about that. It’s the epitome of buying gov’t influence. Was Exon founded on that? Burisma was crooked from the start.
2. In early 2014 Biden stepped forward and said he would be the point person for Obama on Ukraine. Biden was the face for Ukraine and talking to it’s President over and over again.
3. On April 13th 2014 Devon Archer ,business partner with Hunter Biden and John Kerry’s stepson, gets named to the Board of Burisma.
4. On April 28th 2014, 2 weeks after Devon Archer joins the Burisma Board Britain’s serious fraud bureau freezes 23 million in Burisma assets.
5. On May 12th 2014, 2 weeks later Hunter Biden is named to the Board of Burisma. Hunter is a not a geoarchaeologist or geophysicist. He has no background in Ukraine and doesn’t speak the language. How much was he paid? Well who really knows the answer to that one, lol. BUT reports were intially he was paid 50k a month or 600k a year, which then went up to 83,333k a month or 1 million a year. Now in comparison do you know what a Board Director of Exon Mobile makes? Their cash compensation is 110k a year. Hunter Biden was getting 10 times as much. And Hunter admitted the reason he got on the board was nepotism.
6. What did the Head of Ukraine’s anti corruption action center say? “If an investigator sees the son of the VP of the US is part of the management of a company that investigator will be uncomfortable pushing the case forward.”
7. What did Chris Heinz cut business ties with Hunter Biden, because of “lack of judgement”, his own words and what did he say about Devon Archer working with Burisma “it was unacceptable” .

Except the investigation into Burisma was dormant under Shokin (likely because Shokin was corrupt and just used the threat of ‘investigations’ to elicit bribes), so the firing of Shokin opens up the possibility of a legitimate investigation. It would actually be in Biden’s best interest (if your theory is true) to keep the corrupt but easily bribed prosecutor in place than to risk a legitimate investigation if the company were truly corrupt.