Ken’s effort at muddying the waters and defending the indefensible is unsurprising; it’s his schtick.
But the title is right: nailing Trump, on a technicality or a substantive charge, will not solve the problem.
GOP delenda est. And then get to work on doing the same to the corporate Dems.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/politics/trump-comey-russia-thing/index.html
Not to mention the already-convicted ones. Trump “University” etc.
You’ve nailed this one!
Police violence against black people is easy to ignore by rich powerful whites because it’s always against somebody else’s kid.
Laws unequally enforced are injustice.
I feel like these are going to take on a new significance soon:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-taj-mahal/index.html
The violations date back to a time when the Taj Mahal was the preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn, according to federal investigators who tracked organized crime in New York City. They also occurred at a time when the Taj Mahal casino was short on cash and on the verge of bankruptcy.
I couldn’t find any documentation of Trump admitting to any of this. Cites would help.
Ah, @Wanderfound, thank you for the cite links!
But they don’t substantiate the idea of admitted criminal acts as far as I can see.
In the first one, well, the President has the legal authority to fire the FBI director for any reason he wants. So admitting that he fired the FBI director is not admitting to any crime. It may well have been execrable, underhanded, deplorable, unethical, or whatever - but it wasn’t a crime. Nor should it be - the FBI director is not some unelected Grand Inquisitor who sits above the President, that’s madness.
In the second one, the future President seems to be bragging that women will consent to sexual acts with him because of his money and fame (this implies, of course, that they would not do so otherwise, but I digress) and he specifically says that these acts are consensual. He says, quote, “they let you grab them”. He says “when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything”. There is absolutely zero admission of any crime here - although, to my eyes, that’s a striking condemnation both of the men and women he claims behave in this fashion, and the show business culture that condones it. Super skeevy and crass conversation, and it’s appalling that any grown man who talks this way could reach high office, but I see no admission of crimes here.
In the third one President Trump says, that in some future time and place, he would order others to commit war crimes. I am not 100% certain if the USA considers it a crime for a President to issue orders that contravene international agreements - like several recent Presidents allegedly have - but I certainly hope that’s a crime! Nonetheless, saying you will do something in the future is not anything like admitting to a crime. It just isn’t, self-evidently - future crimes are fantasies.
So I still haven’t found any admitted criminal acts - just lots of reprehensible speech and behavior, and (in the case of things like Trump “University”) crimes that were not admitted. If I am wrong, I will welcome corrections!
It’s very difficult to track conversations about Donald Trump because there is so much exaggeration and propaganda flung about. It’s hard to know what he is really doing or has done when false statements are routinely left unchallenged, but challenging them leaves me feeling like I need to take a shower with Clorox, so I don’t want to do it. I think I’m going back to the knife polishing threads!
Stipulated that he has that authority. Some uses of that authority are however abuses of authority. Such as, using that authority to obstruct the course of justice.
Firing the director of the FBI given the pre-existing circumstances, on its own, would merely create suspicion of obstructing justices - there would be a tiny sliver of plausible deniability that maybe he fired him for some other reason. Maybe he just doesn’t like being around people who are taller than he is.
Admitting in an interview and in conversation with the Russian ambassador that the reason he fired the director was to end a particular investigation in which Trump clearly was not disinterested - that is a confession to obstructing justice.
Obstructing justice appears to only apply to various ways of impeding the actions of officers serving of or in a courtroom, and magistrates of courts, and stuff like that. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t see that it has any application to investigations, investigators, administrators of investigative bureaus, or any special relationship to the FBI.
EDIT: This NYT article talks a little bit about the legalisms, and based on reading that, I can see the point of what you’re saying about admitting to obstruction of justice.
So while I can see that firing an investigator while he’s investigating you is going to cause a furor, and is a remarkably politically inept thing to do*, I still don’t see any crime being committed or admitted to. Trump had valid reasons and authority to fire Comey, and if he had other, less savory reasons too, it doesn’t matter legally.
To me everything about the Comey firing controversy seems like a waste of time - as the headline reads, an attempt to “nail Trump on a technicality”. Chasing it will do nothing to stop President Trump’s race-baiting, his championing of religious bigotry, his sponsorship of organized crime, etc. etc. etc… And personally I do want future Presidents to be able to dismiss the head of the FBI, at will. The position should not amount to a shogunate.
* unless it’s a covfefe
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