Greenwald has long been a Russia defender and apologist. He’s wilfully twisting facts to suit his narrative by arguing for things nobody ever claimed.
4 Likes
“Removing him from office” wasn’t the only possible win.
Clinton had a personal popularity bump that translated to almost non-existent political power.
Gore had to hard-distance himself from him, and still lost. The Republicans didn’t lose the power over Congress.
Do you think Republicans actually regret going after Clinton as hard as they did? What do they have to regret? On the other side, do you think Bill Clinton considers his impeachment process one of his great political windfalls? Do you think Gore looks on that time fondly as a political boost to his fortunes?
It’s a myth that Republicans were somehow hurt more than they profited, by fighting Clinton the way they did.
I think there’s a functionally zero chance of a removal from office of a sitting US President. Nixon resigned. If he hadn’t he most likely would have stayed, but he didn’t want to be reviled in office. But because he resigned, people think “impeachment=removal”. The goal of an impeachment isn’t removal, it’s a censure process with some public muscle. Which would be a great process for Trump, regardless of the ultimate remedy decided.
Waiting for a time that it won’t be called a partisan attack is like waiting for an election where the other side doesn’t run. There are still people who are insufficiently convinced that Nixon had something to resign for, and some of those people are in the White House now.
3 Likes
And you think the best possible way to make this happen is by entering impeachment without preparing. Without knowing the details or backing evidence that can be used that way?
We actually know for a fact that isn’t true. Nixon’s own party told him his conviction was nearly guaranteed.
Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, Senator Barry Goldwater, and House Minority Leader John Jacob Rhodes met with Nixon soon after. Rhodes told Nixon that he faced certain impeachment in the House. Scott and Goldwater told the president that he had, at most, only 15 votes in his favor in the Senate, far fewer than the 34 needed to avoid removal from office.
He was essentially handed an ultimatum. Resign to save face, or get impeached and convicted.
That’s funny because the constitution explicitly labels it as the only method to remove a president unfit for the office. Its structured as investigation and trial, and the only two possible results from said trial are conviction/removal and acquittal. There’s no mention of censure or process for such built in.
I get what you’re saying the process of the investigation and trial itself can be used to damage a president and a party, and halt an administration even if removal doesn’t result. And that’s true. But I do not think you are really getting the most out of it without doing to base work necessary to prep proper articles of impeachment and line up evidence for the House investigations and Senate trial that will follow.
Again I didn’t say wait. I said do the job. Make it happen. There are active steps that can be taken to shift public opinion. And while it will be smeared as a partisan attack no matter what, you can minimize the impact of those claims. Keep the number of people who buy it low, and limit the amount of the media that treats it as a valid concern or primary part of the discussion.
And that work looks very much like what’s been happening. Protect the Special Council. Get his report. make sure the public sees that report. Hold hearings, investigate all that other corruption in case that doesn’t pan out. It’s what we’ve been doing. We’re on the pathway to Impeachment whether the DNC is painting it on the side of their cars or not. Just like with the Special Council investigation this shit takes time, cause you actually have to do it.
Congress doesn’t even have the complete report yet, and they haven’t gotten access to the evidence backing it. Even if you started up impeachment based solely on the report, you’d need access to that first. In order to conduct the next steps and properly put together articles. Nadler Subpoenaed them Friday.
2 Likes
Isn’t attempted Obstruction still a crime? Just because his staff wouldn’t do the things he repeated asked them to do, doesn’t save him from prosecution. His ignorance as to what actions make up the crime of obstruction of justice isn’t an excuse.
2 Likes
A quick scan of the model penal code is not very helpful here.
18 U.S. Code § 1510
Whoever willfully endeavors by means of bribery to obstruct, delay, or prevent the communication of information relating to a violation of any criminal statute of the United States by any person to a criminal investigator shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1510
The word “endeavors” here means some kind of active action needs to be taken to obstruct justice. Giving orders is not going to be enough, but actual actions taken in accordance with them would. Even attempted obstruction is just plain obstruction.
1 Like
And that is both baffling and saddening. I remember him as a sharp opponent of the W. admin and an outspoken defender of free speech and civil rights. What happened? Did he fall prey to the old “America is bad; therefore, the people opposing America are good!” leftist fallacy, or what?
3 Likes
How is this settled? I am still undecided about how I feel about Assange and would like to know where you got this conclusion in the report.
Greenwald’s (of Snowden fame) take on the report:
There are Assange communications in the report. He talks about using selected leaks to split Bernie and Hillary supporters to try to get Trump to win.
It’s not a conclusion drawn by Mueller, it’s in Assange’s own words. It’s the strategy he communicated privately to his own people.
It’s page 44 or 45 of the report.
3 Likes
b. WikiLeaks’s First Contact with Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks
Shortly after the GRU’s first release of stolen documents through dcleaks.com in June 2016, GRU officers also used the DCLeaks persona to contact WikiLeaks about possible coordination in the future release of stolen emails. On June 14, 2016, @dcleaks_ sent a direct message to @WikiLeaks, noting, “You announced your organization was preparing to publish more Hillary’s emails. We are ready to support you. We have some sensitive information too, in particular, her financial documents. Let’s do it together. What do you think about publishing our info at the same moment? Thank” 159 Investigative Technique
Around the same time, WikiLeaks initiated communications with the GRU persona Guccifer 2.0 shortly after it was used to release documents stolen from the DNC. On June 22, 2016, seven days after Guccifer 2.0’s first releases of stolen DNC documents, WikiLeaks used Twitter’s direct message function to contact the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter account and suggest that Guccifer 2.0 “[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing.”160
On July 6, 2016, WikiLeaks again contacted Guccifer 2.0 through Twitter’s private messaging function, writing, “if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.” The Guccifer 2.0 persona responded, “ok … i see.” WikiLeaks also explained, “we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary . . . so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting.”161
3 Likes
That’s part of it. And he also said, “we believe it would be much better for the GOP to win”.
I think people can move on from the question “Was Assange trying to torpedo Clinton in favor of Trump?” He was.
If they still want to apologize for his actions, they can still talk about whether he was justified in pushing Trump, but not whether or not he did.
6 Likes
This bit probably doesn’t deserve a response. I shouldn’t have to say that I think they should put on pants before they go to the office.
I still say that if he hadn’t resigned, the senate would have found a way to ultimately
punt it, “for the good of the union”. We’ll never know, Barry Goldwater notwithstanding.
It’s not just “can”. That’s literally all it’s ever been used for, when it comes to Presidents. I wouldn’t use the word “damage” though. I would use “check”, in the pure and constitutional sense.
Removal is always there as a potential result, but it’s never been used for Presidents, and I don’t think it will in our lifetime.
They should prepare their case, that should be a given. But not to the point of never filing it, waiting for perfect weather.
The political alternatives to checking Trump through Congressional trials are:
- Waiting for Trump to produce an ugly mega-project of his own, and Democrats then publicly arguing about whether to give him 50% of what he wants or 10% of what he wants.
- Proposing Democratic initiatives in the House that can be swatted away with a dramatic Fox News friendly veto.
Articles of impeachment put him on the defensive, everything else doesn’t.
7 Likes
Teflon Donald.
Thanx. I love the utility of wilileaks but have mixed feelings about assange.
You really shouldn’t have mixed feelings about Assange. He’s a bail-jumping egotist asshole who’s almost certainly committed rape.
2 Likes
Yes, but you get accused of attempted murder, or conspiracy to commit murder. Not sure if they counted on the importance of criminalizing “attempted obstruction”, especially by the President.
I have mixed feelings about him because all humans are egotistical to some extent, he has been acused of rape under very shady circumstances, his organization has helped reveal many very important secret acts commited on my behalf, he is arrogant, he has an anti US power agenda, he is very commited to his cause, etc, etc. Nothing about him is simple and nobody is good or evil, we all do
good and evil things. I don’t have the evidence you have of almost certainly commiting rape. Like I said, I have mixed feelings about him.
The dek under the headline stating “Mueller charged no Americans with election conspiracy crimes” is correct only in the most narrow sense. Trump’s campaign manager is charged with lying about giving campaign data to an oligarch in Putin’s orbit*, but yeah technically that isn’t a ConFraudUS charge and the underlying act may not be a crime because no one ever thought to specifically make such an outrageous thing illegal. There’s also a dozen sealed referrals that we know nothing about, which perhaps makes any definitive statement about what Mueller charged premature. Or I guess maybe not since technically Mueller isn’t prosecuting the referrals, other DoJ districts are.
Hopefully this indicates why I don’t find Greenwald useful and why I’m not in the mood for actually digging into the main article.
*Pointing out that Kilimnik(sp?) is Ukrainian is IMO like pointing out Mel Gibson is a native-born American - technically true but eliding key context.
3 Likes
What do you mean you don’t find Greenwald useful? Disagreeing with one point a person makes makes them useless? I find the work he did with Snowden and then the Drone Papers very useful and quite principled and well reported.
Have you ever read this? Even if you disagree with a point in it, maybe you’ll still find it useful.
4 Likes
