RM has sure spent a lot of time and money and words “clarifying” that he has come to no conclusions, and that nobody should mischaracterize him as having concluded anything.
Is he too dumb to understand what everybody hired him to do in the first place? No? Then WTF?
They will need 20 more who are willing to break ranks.
It takes a two-thirds majority to convict:
Yeah, the 3 more is just to start the impeachment hearings. And it’s not 3 more it’s 4 because I believe Pence gets a vote as tiebreaker.
Don’t get me wrong, 20 is doable in some circumstance. We’ve heard chatter that plenty of mainstream Republicans want him out, and didn’t want him in the first place. But it has to happen in a way that doesn’t compromise their reelection chances or does a lesser amount of damage to the Republican party than keeping him around.
Your guess is as good as mine as to what scenarios fit the bill there. But I reckon we’ll start getting sense for it if we hear impeachment chatter from (to use a friend’s term), “the Non-crappy Republicans”.
Dear Robert Mueller:
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is blocking a bill that would protect the United States from Russian interference in future elections. Please tell us if the Russian military is paying McConnell to assist them in this fashion.
But remember that the ‘smoking gun’ tape that finally destroyed Nixon’s partisan support was the result of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment investigation.
The committee approved three articles of impeachment (obstruction of justice; abuse of power; contempt of Congress) to be sent to the full House, but Nixon resigned before they could be voted on.
It was neither Impeachment in the House nor conviction in the Senate that brought Nixon down: it was the investigation into whether grounds for impeachment existed.
We may not (currently) have the votes to convict in the Senate, but surely we have the votes to have the House JC investigate the sumbitch.
I say, let’s do that and see where it leads.
I’ve no doubt there are plenty of ‘smoking guns’ to unearth.
Let’s dig up a few of those and then see how the Republican Senators might vote.
~41% of people heard, “No collusion, no obstruction, case closed.” They continued their daily circle jerk with exchanging fantasies of the hangings of Obama, Hillary, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Strzok, Paige . . .
All I could imagine was a little boy shaking his fist and yelling, “You’re gonna get it, you’re gonna get it, you just better watch out” at the empty space around him.
… impeachment investigations would begin in the house, taking as little or as long as House leadership requires, investigating any and all violations of the law and constitution by President Trump that the House has any evidence for (i.e., ramp up the banking investigations, start investigating the emolument clause violations, the Mueller report stuff, etc.) and then, once a lot more stuff is known by the public, the House passes articles of impeachment to go to the Senate. So many people are ignoring this important first part of the impeachment process.
Of course Nixon resigned so we’ll never know what would have happened if he stubbornly contended that he was totally exonerated through the whole thing. Would republicans have turned on him? Seeing our current situations I’m not sure. At some point Nixon knew he was screwed. If trump was a normal human being that would have happened a long time ago, and his little experiment in authoritarian leadership is having frightening results. His party isn’t rising up. They are cheering him on.
(I’m not arguing against impeachment proceedings. Just that it’s more likely that they would not end things. That it’s still gonna come down to voters in 2020. And maybe that’s best because, well, president Pence…)
It is true. Just as Gatto said, he never made a clear statement. End of discussion.
It isn’t just Trump. Jesus Christ, sifting through talk radio last night and this morning, they want Mueller investigated. “What prompted the investigation (lies from the Democrats.)” “When did you know it was all baloney but continued to press on to damaged the president?” etc.
The dude is a life long Republican, former Marine, career FBI guy, pretty much by the books poster child, and they want him crucified because he dared put the country over dear leader.
None of them are even talking about the other Russian interference that isn’t directly tied to Trump, which means it will be attempted again. I mean, can you imagine this happening under Reagan or even one of the Bushes? None of them would have stood for Russian interference. There would be strongly worded speeches, a tightening of security, etc etc.
I am watching Chernobyl on HBO right now, and it strikes me how the people in the government were willing to lie and ignore things just so they could maintain a facade of strength. The parallels of modern right wing true believers willing to put their political allegiance above the truth did not escape me.
“(with all due respect, as good a read as it is, you’re no Stephen King).”
… and I suppose I could rage on about the way you ignore the obvious distinction between my, and others examples of a clear statement vs the language of the report. But I won’t, because discussion over.
Where’s the double negative?
Just thing of the confessions that could be coerced! “You want another hour of Trump?” “Hell, no, I killed them! I killed them real good! Just don’t send me back in there!”
He was within millimeters of doing just that:
Well in theory you ought to be able to do that so long as the new AG doesn’t interfere with the investigation. The problem isn’t really that Barr is not the same AG as the one that was running things before, the problem is Barr delayed the release of the report for (arguabbably) political reasons, attempting to spin this report for all it is worth and maybe (or maybe not) redacting the most damming parts of the report. Oh, also failing to release the actual summary while substituting his own that clearly did not actually summarize things.
Those are all problems. Barr replacing the prior AG because he would presumably do all that (and maybe more) is a problem. However I wouldn’t argue that “merely” replacing an AG during an investigation is in and of itself problematic.
This
We need to stop worrying about that minority of the country and what they think until we get through the other side of this problem. They don’t need facts (indeed, they resent facts). There is no amount of evidence that will convince them. They will do things; they will make accusations; they will act out based on the random susurrations of their chosen pundits without consideration, or in opposition to, plainly obvious truth.
As long as the majority of people in the US remain cowed by what the MAGAt 27% say or do, Trump holds the advantage. Hesitation is deadly when dealing with someone who defies societal norms and laws without blinking. The only way to win through to the other side is to keep pressure on him so that he keeps making mistakes, and makes bigger and bigger blunders that even the middle of the GOP start seeing him as a threat.
I was thinking about this last night. Oddly enough, with all the shit Trump has pulled, it’s the times he’s shit on his own party that have put him at greatest risk. Using his veto on the resolution against his Fauxmergency declaration and the Yemen withdrawal, both of which were fairly bipartisan, that’s the kind of thing that will get 67 Senators behind his removal.
That process is kind of the point with some considerations about each of the steps.
All of this is about backing into when to start step 1. As I mentioned, if magically we were at step 5 today (before being quote edited that it doesn’t work this way, which clearly I knew because I referenced “magic” being involved). If step 5 happens to soon, there will be an entire 2020 campaign on “totally exonerated” when the Senate doesn’t convict.
That leads to question 2, if someone else can force the timing on this, or just being in step 2 for to long dulls public opinion forcing a move to step 5. Then the house loses control of the timing.
Finally, question 3 about what extra powers are gained by starting the impeachment process. If they can investigate all kinds of things and issue subpoenas already, what else is gained? If there’s nothing to gain other than starting the clock, then it’s better to wait until you have a big headstart developed. A headstart that is hopefully a mountain so large that the result of steps 5-8 isn’t a forgone “totally exonerated”.
They can’t (or aren’t willing to) enforce subpoena today. They should solve this before moving up from “everyday normal house investigations” to “advanced level impeachment investigations”, or what’s the point, they’ve already lost. We’ll have months of ignored subpoena, all noise and no substance, a party line vote in the house, move to the senate for a party line vote, and head into the election with “totally exonerated by the Senate”.
That’s Nancy’s problem to solve. Clearly not an easy one, and we’re all going to disagree with whatever playbook she uses.
