Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with Russian ambassador during Trump campaign but didn't disclose

[robulus]

@stefanjones

So. Jail, maybe. After a humiliating trial and hopefully his cronies turning evidence against him.

Thanks for that. Most uplifting thing I’ve read in a while!

[howaboutthis]

Christ, what a memory hole.

[renke]

@mguerena

“met”

Mett?

Mett

[Daedalus]

@robulus

But what I’m wondering here, is if that really is the only avenue. This is really starting to look criminal, possibly realistically prosecutable.

I’m cynical about that possibility. Who is going to enforce the law here? The checks and balances we place on the President - the court, the congress - are either fully on his side or are about to be.

Over the last ~6 years, the American people have been electing people who are predisposed to allow Trump to get away with whatever he wants as long as he delivers the legislation that their donors and religious extremists demand.

The only leverage anyone has over that is the threat - mostly hollow in 2017, and almost entirely hollow in a broad swath of the nation that has always been Party Over Country - to at some point in the future elect someone else. And at that point, history indicates that the Left is magnanimous in victory, refusing to prosecute the sins of their forebears in the interests of “moving forward.”

This isn’t guaranteed by a long shot, but it’s the trajectory I see most likely.

[LurksNoMore]

As I understand it, you have to really work for it to commit actual treason in the USA. The US Founding Fathers did not want anyone using charges of treason as a political weapon, so they made sure it was very clearly and very narrowly defined.

[stefanjones]

Oh my GOSH, Donald Trump is going to be SO ANGRY that Senator Sessions used campaign money to conduct government business.

Jeff Sessions Used Political Funds for Republican Convention Expenses

[Bobo]

I just want to stop and point out that these folks belong to the same party that wanted to impeach someone for getting a hummer in the oval office.

Let that sink in for a while…

Mouth party = far worse than lying under oath about communications with agents of an often antagonistic foreign power.

[anon50609448]

@nimelennar

The problem is that he’d have to be impeached, which would take a vote by the Republican-led House to be accomplished. And even then, he’d probably have whatever sentence commuted by President Pence.

I don’t know, if Trump makes himself unpopular enough to get impeached by a Republican house and senate, I’m not sure President Pence would want to dirty his own name by defending Trump. It might be far better for him to use the whole proceedings as proof that he takes crimes very seriously even when they are committed by important people.

I mean, if people were calling for blood and it cost the republicans congress in the mid terms, do you think President Pelosi would pardon Pence? He might need to think about his own hide at some point.

[Gyrofrog]

@anon50609448

if Trump makes himself unpopular enough to get impeached by a Republican house and senate

I worry about what it would actually take for them to get there, i.e. what the world will (or won’t) look like at that point and whether they have to phone in the proceedings from an underground bunker.