News Democrats move forward towards impeaching Trump.

No mukposting pls
Quick Summary, courtesy of BBC News -

Democrats in the House of Representatives have launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump
The decision by top Democrat Nancy Pelosi follows growing demands from her party
Mr Trump has reacted angrily and called it a witch hunt
He denies accusations he used military aid to press Ukraine to investigate his potential 2020 rival Joe Biden
A whistleblower reported a phone call between Trump and the Ukraine leader to the inspector general
The White House says it will release a transcript of that call on Wednesday

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Making her remarks, Pelosi said that President Trump has "seriously violated the constitution".
"This week, the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take action that would benefit him politically," she said.
He has betrayed his oath of office, national security, and the integrity of elections, she added.
The law is unequivocal," she added. "The president must be held accountable."

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Thoughts?

This could go really well or really, really bad. Trump himself has said an impeachment inquiry would be a "positive for me." His overzealous fanbase will be,,.,.,.,definitely radicalized even further by this.

All hinges on the transcript release, if it is a nothing burger like the Muller report was, it could look very bad for Democrats. If it shows a crime then it could doom Trump if the Democrats elect anyone other than Biden as their nominee.

It's going to go really bad, period. Pelosi for a while was doing the right thing by refusing to give in to the more radicalized members of the party. Regardless of whether they find anything on Trump or not (and I seriously doubt they would find anything), they will push it anyway in the House, and the impeachment attempt would be dead on arrival in the Senate. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to change my attention to something else, as lately politics have been very painful to follow...but I feel it's something I have to do to make sure I know what's going on.

I think the irony is lost upon them. "Oh, that Donald is always hiding something, I'm sure of it" but they completely missed the beat when Biden essentially used his political clout to save his crack head son.

This is going to be a glorious bonfire of what's left of their credibility (not that there's much left anyways). Once you say you want to take away cheeseburgers (in the land of Cheeseburgers and Shotguns) the gloves are off. Pelosi (as awful as she is) needs to really knuckle down, grit and bear it and tell her party to stfu.

With LA and San Fran in shambles, with LA being cleaned up by those dastardly Republicans, with President Trump raising more in CA in a single day than the dem candidates combined for the entire month . . . things are dire indeed. Peter Strozk messed up, so did Comey and everyone else thinking that it would be easy to throw 45 under the bus.

Reality bites, and so far there is no evidence and no coroboration. What's more, since the Dems are demanding investigations they are sucking the American Taxpayer for millions because they didn't get their way. They are absolutely insane. It won't work, it'll fall on deaf ears and the only one's it helps is the Republicans and the center for seeing what's really going on. It's been near 3 years of non-stop inquiry and non-stop nothing-burgers. What if they do manage to impeach him? What are they really going to ask or investigate? Maybe instead of wasting everyone's time they can focus on more important issues, like why are children forced to live in San Francisco and walk the needle ridden streets? Problems they should address but are not.

The Union Center is voting for Trump in 2020. This means that the center has lost faith in the Dems for the working class. This is the big bad for them. Personally, whether you're left or right I don't care, but I look forward the meltdowns if he wins again (chances are he will, but hey you never know). I have no idea who they can front to run against him at all. Good Luck

A little bit of information ahead of tomorrow's release is slowly coming out. There is no guarantee this is true as it does come from the administration's spin of the IG report

• The IG found that the whistle blower had significant bias toward of it Trump's 2020 opponents

• The whistle blower has retained lawyers with deep ties to Democrat politicians.

• The whistle blower did not directly hear the conversation but relayed it from someone who had heard it.

• There is no smoking gun in the report but there are some words that could cause trouble for the administration.

• The Ukrainian Investigation into Joe Biden's son was only briefly mentioned in the scope of the entire conversation.

Again take it all with a grain of salt until the White House releases the IG report but it is their spin at the moment.

They should have moved to impeach ages ago. Doing it on the back of this Ukraine report could be a huge mistake, if it turns out to be nothing but a scapegoat then the whole impeachment will be undermined.

Are we really still pretending that Trump doesn't have a history of doing dodgy shit? The Mueller report did not clear Trump of anything, regardless of how Barr tried to spin it. There was not sufficient evidence to unequivocally prove a crime - because of encryption, refusal to testify or plain false testimony, especially as collusion does not have a legal definition. It did make it pretty clear though that not only was there Russian interference in the election, interference that the Trump campaign welcomed with open arms, but that numerous members of the Trump campaign had connections to the Russian government or had spoken to them and had then tried to hide this or otherwise obstruct the investigation. It also outlines numerous times where Trump potentially (read "did but we have to have a trial first") obstructed or attempted to manipulate the investigation. It made it pretty clear that it did not exonerate Trump of anything and that he could be tried, at least for the obstruction, once he was out of office (which will probably be soon even without impeachment given his rightfully bad approval ratings).

Now someone is saying that there's potentially a round 2 of this with Ukraine. Trump openly admits to discussing Biden with the Ukrainian President (and to withholding funds promised to Ukraine iirc) in a situation where the Democrats really do not need help to beat Trump if his approval ratings are any indicator. People don't want this investigated??? That's an awful lot of coincidences to ignore based on blind and misguided faith in a man who has been shown over and over again to be a shady, pathological liar. I don't know about the rest of you, but even if my country's leader was on the same side of the political spectrum as me, I'd want those sorts of claims properly investigated for the sake of security. It might not be certain that he pulled this, but it wouldn't exactly be out of character.

The weird thing with this though, is that unless Trump is successfully impeached - somehow, despite a Republican majority senate - this revelation probably won't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. His fan-base are prepared to ignore the Russia scandal, they're prepared to ignore his dick-measuring turned bromance with a dictator, they're prepared to ignore sex crimes - some of them against minors, they're prepared to ignore his tax evasion and the endless torrent of lies that pour out of his mouth, they're prepared to ignore him being in bed with the Saudi's and his attempts to manufacture a war with Iran and they're even willing to let him doom the human race to environmental extinction so he and his buddies can keep making money off of toxic industries. Even if it is 100% confirmed that Trump was trying to blackmail Zelensky, his rabid fanbase will continue to support him just like they have through every other terrible and/or stupid thing he's done. Case in point: this thread.

All that will come of this is that Trump's base will point at whatever horrible thing Biden/his son did or are doing and pretend that Biden also being a piece of shit somehow invalidates Trump's litany of flaws and total unsuitability to the office of President.

Even then though, what happens if Trump is successfully impeached? Pence is in power following that and suddenly the 2020 election is a different game because the Republicans find themselves with a much more electable candidate, because even with Pence being just as terrible a human being as Trump, he seems like a much more capable politician. So an impeachment could end up as a net win for the Republicans even if it's successful. It's absolutely mad to think that one moron getting into office could have this wild an impact on both American and global politics. God I hope the electoral college doesn't save him again and that he doesn't manage a second upset victory.

gimmepie said:

Are we really still pretending that Trump doesn't have a history of doing dodgy muk? The Mueller report did not clear Trump of anything, regardless of how Barr tried to spin it. There was not sufficient evidence to unequivocally prove a crime - because of encryption, refusal to testify or plain false testimony, especially as collusion does not have a legal definition. It did make it pretty clear though that not only was there Russian interference in the election, interference that the Trump campaign welcomed with open arms, but that numerous members of the Trump campaign had connections to the Russian government or had spoken to them and had then tried to hide this or otherwise obstruct the investigation. It also outlines numerous times where Trump potentially (read "did but we have to have a trial first") obstructed or attempted to manipulate the investigation. It made it pretty clear that it did not exonerate Trump of anything and that he could be tried, at least for the obstruction, once he was out of office (which will probably be soon even without impeachment given his rightfully bad approval ratings).

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Point of argument, while there is no legal definition for collusion, conspiracy works, and in fact Mueller has said the two are synonymous. The Mueller report found that there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign.

In reality there is more of an argument to make now that elements in the US Government conspired to take down the Trump Campaign and it's associates, than there is that Trump engaged with Russia in a conspiracy to win the election.

EnglishALT said:

Point of argument, while there is no legal definition for collusion, conspiracy works, and in fact Mueller has said the two are synonymous. The Mueller report found that there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign.

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It made a point of saying the lack of evidence was the direct result of encryption, lies, obstruction and refusal to testify - things that wouldn't have been done if the campaign had nothing to hide. It says Trump cannot be exonerated and that the lack of evidence of criminal activity between Trump and the Russians was the direct result of obstruction. It does not take a genius to work that situation out.

In reality there is more of an argument to make now that elements in the US Government conspired to take down the Trump Campaign and it's associates, than there is that Trump engaged with Russia in a conspiracy to win the election.

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Doing your job is not conspiracy. Mueller was acting in the interests of national security, based on indications that there was potential criminal activity to investigate. That's what he and his subordinates get paid for.

gimmepie said:

It made a point of saying the lack of evidence was the direct result of encryption, lies, obstruction and refusal to testify - things that wouldn't have been done if the campaign had nothing to hide. It says Trump cannot be exonerated and that the lack of evidence of criminal activity between Trump and the Russians was the direct result of obstruction. It does not take a genius to work that situation out.

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Mueller's own testimony stated that the investigation was not "curtailed or stopped or hindered in any way". This was a two year investigation was millions of dollars and man hours put into it. If they had enough proof of a conspiracy they would have found it.

gimmepie said:

Doing your job is not conspiracy. Mueller was acting in the interests of national security, based on indications that there was potential criminal activity to investigate. That's what he and his subordinates get paid for.

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Interesting you say "Doing your job is not conspiracy", I mean we can start with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page if you want, or we can discuss Michael Flynn and how James Comey attempted an ambush interview in the opening days of the administration, there was the FBI investigator posing as a research assistant that grilled George Papadopoulos about Russia, or we can discuss how Comey was telling Trump he was not a subject of an investigation while secretly building a "counterintelligence assessment".

Those are just a few off the top of my head.

I don't want to get into the Mueller report too much in this thread, as we've all been down that road before and it's not truly what this thread is about, but an important thing about it that people miss, either intentionally or unintentionally, is that while the investigation was not "curtailed or stopped or hindered in any way" by Donald Trump, it was still shown that he attempted to obstruct the investigation. Attempting a crime is still a crime, like how attempted murder or attempted robbery is a crime even if you don't kill anyone or steal anything.

So anyway, I hope that the Dems don't pin their entire impeachment inquiry on this Ukraine phone call. The chances of it alone being the blade of evil's bane like they hoped that the Mueller report would be is probably very slim. If you want to take down Trump and have the country's first successful removal of a president from office via impeachment, you need to gather up a lot more stuff than that.

But even if they do successfully impeach Trump, even if we do get a good President out of the 2020 election, there is no hope for the U.S. anyway

Nah said:

I don't want to get into the Mueller report too much in this thread, as we've all been down that road before and it's not truly what this thread is about, but an important thing about it that people miss, either intentionally or unintentionally, is that while the investigation was not "curtailed or stopped or hindered in any way" by Donald Trump, it was still shown that he attempted to obstruct the investigation. Attempting a crime is still a crime, like how attempted murder or attempted robbery is a crime even if you don't kill anyone or steal anything.

So anyway, I hope that the Dems don't pin their entire impeachment inquiry on this Ukraine phone call. The chances of it alone being the blade of evil's bane like they hoped that the Mueller report would be is probably very slim. If you want to take down Trump and have the country's first successful removal of a president from office via impeachment, you need to gather up a lot more stuff than that.

But even if they do successfully impeach Trump, even if we do get a good President out of the 2020 election, there is no hope for the U.S. anyway

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Fair enough, but for a political standpoint making a multipoint case may be kind of hard. The public is not there on impeachment, some of the latest numbers have it at 35/61 overall, 30/64 independents, and 32/60 in swing counties.

https://twitter.com/JoeConchaTV/status/1176575657003888641?s=20

If Democrats want those numbers to change then they need to drill down to a simple message, a simple crime, instead of trying to make an overly long overarching case that people won't pay attention to or will allow the Trump administration to muddy up.

Nixon: Watergate Break in,
Clinton: Lying under oath,
Trump: ?????

Keep it simple and hammer it and the public has a chance of caring, and turning those numbers, don't do that and Trump not only gets away on impeachment, but he probably gets a second term and the Republicans regain the House.

The transcript has been published.
It's not the hugest smoking gun in the world, but it's definitely not as innocent as Trump implied:

"The other thing, There's a lot of. talk about Biden's son,. that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me."

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I'm interested to see how the rest of this will unfold over the next few days.

Note that the release is a memo and explicitly states that it is not a verbatim transcript of the call - take what you will from that, however. It's important to clarify early on that it is a memo so that we don't get a repeat of the Mueller-Barr situation where (intentionally?) poor semantics from the media allows the big picture to be missed. The mental gymnastics from the Trump fanbase that will go into denying the severity of what was laid out will be... interesting to watch, but the fact that it is a staff summary and not an explicit recording will inevitably complicate things for either side.

erik destler said:

The transcript has been published .
It's not the hugest smoking gun in the world, but it's definitely not as innocent as Trump implied:

I'm interested to see how the rest of this will unfold over the next few days.

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The fact that the Ukrainian President brought up "the investigations" first and not Trump, really complicated the situation for impeachment. This whole thing is starting to feel like a trap that Trump laid to push Democrats toward impeachment, only to show they over reached.

Her said:

Note that the release is a memo and explicitly states that it is not a verbatim transcript of the call - take what you will from that, however. It's important to clarify early on that it is a memo so that we don't get a repeat of the Mueller-Barr situation where (intentionally?) poor semantics from the media allows the big picture to be missed. The mental gymnastics from the Trump fanbase that will go into denying the severity of what was laid out will be... interesting to watch, but the fact that it is a staff summary and not an explicit recording will inevitably complicate things for either side.

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Also important to remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the purpose of the readout is for national security and archival purposes, if there was quid pro quo in there one would presume it would make it into the readout/transcript for national security purposes. In this readout, there's no evidence of undue pressure or a demand for political assistance that was leveraged by abuse of foreign policy authority.

So they released the whistleblower complaint yesterday: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190812_-_whistleblower_complaint_unclass.pdf

*slow clap* Congratulations. Not only was there nothing worth anything in this conversation as verified with the Ukranian President but the entire media pretended there was zero evidence Biden used his position to get a foreign GP fired when Biden himself claimed he did on video. Do they not realise the internet is a thing?

So, so sad. Is anyone else enjoying the fire?

I've been following this pretty closely all week. I can't come to any conclusion other than Trump abused his station for personal political gain, something which should see him removed from office (but won't).

What Trump did could well have put Ukraine in a very bad position. The revelation of what he did will definitely undermine trust in the US government abroad and potentially domestically as well. None of this is good for the US. It may push other countries to deal with China or Russia instead, and while I don't have any personal disdain for the people of those countries, I think their governments are dangerous to people worldwide.

I think I know how this is going to play out. Democrats are going to be giddy because they're going to feel vindicated. I certainly understand why they'd feel that way but I don't think that's an appropriate reaction considering the negative effects this is going to have on US interests. Republicans are going to defend Trump due to overwhelming confirmation bias. I don't think they should; the facts of this case make it fairly obvious he was in the wrong, but internal bias is difficult for a lot of people to recognize and even harder to mitigate.

Eventually articles of impeachment will be drafted and Trump will be tried before the Senate. It'll be a political circus with lots of posturing by Senators largely just looking to score points at the polls. After the circus is finished, the articles will all be defeated because conviction requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. There are currently 47 Democrats and Independents, meaning 20 Republicans would have to vote in favor of conviction. Simply put, that won't happen. Trump's support base is too strong (he polls 80-90% within the Republican Party) and it would be political suicide in most Republican districts. Republicans will (wrongly) consider this vindication that Trump did nothing wrong. Democrats will probably be upset at the failure of the system. Both sides will become even more polarized and vitriolic, I'm sure. Look forward to more poisonous dialog and violence in the streets by the extremes on both sides.

I really hope it doesn't play out this way because I don't think any of this is good for the country. The only silver lining is that I don't think Trump's going to win 2020 (the people suggesting this scandal will somehow make him more popular are delusional). Even that's more like a lesser loss to me than a win. I think my opinions on the Democratic Party's politics are well-established, but if not, suffice it to say I'm generally not a fan (I lean Libertarian). Still, I think whoever they might elect will at least try to do what they think is right for the country, even if I strongly disagree with what that may look like. Hopefully Bernie or Biden gets the nomination; I really don't like Warren and the other choices look like they're already a lost cause (too far behind in the polls).

erik destler said:

No mukposting pls
Quick Summary, courtesy of BBC News -



Thoughts?

This could go really well or really, really bad. Trump himself has said an impeachment inquiry would be a "positive for me." His overzealous fanbase will be,,.,.,.,definitely radicalized even further by this.

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supposedly somewhere online trump has said he cant be held/investigated for crimes he has committed while he is the president of the united states

Maki-Nishikino said:

supposedly somewhere online trump has said he cant be held/investigated for crimes he has committed while he is the president of the united states

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To the best of my knowledge, either you can't try him while he's in office or it is extremely difficult. That's why they have to impeach and remove him from office before he can be tried for the criminal offences - or something like that. Anyone more in the know is welcome to correct me though.