Former President Donald J. Trump

[Count Machuki]

I only pray that Caitlin can explain all of this!

I think she and Jimbo must have run off together.
Where is that guy? Hope he's ok, that nut.

[Sneelock]

oh, I'm sure he'll be back telling us what dupes we are in no time.
you see that Barr trainwreck this morning? you've GOT to look at that in light of a lot things in the report that probably came from Sessions.
Was that terrible stunt Trump's idea? seems pretty consistent.

I mean, think about it. who's left in the cabinet? all those "grownups" we used to hear so much about are gone now. People testified to Mueller that they were asked to do things they were not willing to do. let's leave legal & illlegal off the table and that is STILL some spine chilling shit. are Jared or Stephen Miller going to consult a moral compass? TRUMP sure the hell ain't.

Now, we've got some Dems standing up for some stuff - like calling out Pompeo for being in over his head with Korea. If TRUMP is really going to use this "victory" to keep demonizing his opponents - this could actually be a good thing for his opponents - don't you think? Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald and Jimbo and Caitlin probably don't but I'm not so sure. His Firebrand Faithful will love it but what about swing voters and "what the hell" Brexit type voters?

I think there's a LOT more meat in this report that we were led to expect. President Trump is un-fucking-fit to run a hot dog stand. Every day he tweets or talks this becomes more noticeable.

[Snarfyguy]

Just remember that Barr’s report is a lawyer’s summary (as an advocate) of a legal document...

But Barr is not supposed to be Trump's advocate, as you know.

I'm wondering how Trump's written responses to Mueller's questions could possibly not have contained any lies.

And I'm wondering how that S.D.N.Y. investigation is going, and whether legal liability for Trump and his inner circle is just a perpetually receding sort of mirage.

[BARON CORNY DOG]

Just remember that Barr’s report is a lawyer’s summary (as an advocate) of a legal document...

But Barr is not supposed to be Trump's advocate, as you know.

Yeah, I was just saying what was going on.

I'm wondering how Trump's written responses to Mueller's questions could possibly not have contained any lies.

1. He didn’t write them.
2. “I don’t remember”

[Count Machuki]

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller writes. “We are unable to reach such a judgment.”

This is the fanciest way to write I'm not sayin'...I'm just sayin' I've ever read.

[bobzilla77]

So far it sounds about like I thought after hearing the Barr Summary. Lotta red flags, suspicious actions. Suspect motivations. Denials of things that are demonstrably true. But no smoking gun evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, which is what you need to impeach a president. So nothing more will be done. Thanks for playing.

I mean, the guy has prevailed for years despite being surrounded by a cloud of stench that makes everyone's eyes water. A couple more incidents of "that doesn't sound totally on the level" doesn't even move the needle.

However, I do wonder, can we still indict him for this stuff after he leaves office?

And there are 12 cases referred to other courts, that are redacted. will those bring us Jagger-grade satisfaction? Wait and see.

[Snarfyguy]

And then there is Trump’s persistent claim that a president is effectively above the rule of law. This is attorney general William Barr’s belief — that a president has total executive control over the administration of justice and can direct it away from himself for any reason with complete impunity. Yesterday Trump tweeted that “I had the right to end the whole Witch Hunt if I wanted to. I could have fired everyone, including Mueller, if I wanted to.” Worth noting this claim for the future, don’t you think? The only reason he didn’t get rid of Mueller was because a handful of his underlings — Priebus, McGahn, and Sessions among them — resisted him. And so this is not just about past obstruction; it is about the very high likelihood of future obstruction. It’s about recrafting the rule of law into one where one man controls everything and can do anything he pleases.

All of this is an unprecedented series of impeachable offenses. It is a textbook definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It is the story of a president assaulting the rule of law, attempting to manipulate the justice system, dangling pardons to induce perjury, and reflexively putting his own personal interests — or simply ego — before any interest of the country as a whole. Mueller openly states that his own investigation was thwarted by the president to the extent that the “the justice system’s integrity [was] threatened.” When a president openly threatens the integrity of the justice system, and says he has unlimited power to do so in the future, he not only can be impeached, he must be impeached.

The author goes on to argue that we're effectively living in a monarchy.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/ ... p-now.html

Barr should be impeached as well.

[mentalist (slight return)]

A douchocracy

[Sneelock]

When there is a Republican in the White House then they support “the unitary executive”.
All it takes is a Democrat in office for them to complain of “executive overreach”
Lather, rinse, repeat.

[Snarfyguy]

Excuse the lengthy quote.

If Impeaching Trump Is Pointless, Then Bipartisanship Is Worthless

By Eric Levitz@EricLevitz

The president of the United States routinely orders his subordinates to subvert the law. He believes that the Justice Department should comport itself as his personal detective agency — and that the attorney general’s first responsibility is to protect the White House from legal accountability. And he has used one of his office’s most extraordinary powers — the authority to pardon convicted criminals — to undermine a federal investigation.

These realities were already apparent before Robert Mueller’s report was released Thursday. But they have now been formally confirmed by federal law enforcement. The branch of government responsible for enforcing the rule of law is led by a man with contempt for that very concept. Congress’s constitutional obligation in this circumstance is unambiguous. The president swore to “faithfully execute” the duties of his office. He has not. Thus, Congress should evict him from that office.

This would be true even if Donald Trump displayed no inclination to persist in his lawlessness. But he is displaying the opposite. Impeachment is therefore required not merely to punish the president for his past indiscretions — or to deter a future president from emulating them — but to halt the rampage of a serial offender. During his press conference (and/or lurid apologia for the president) on Thursday, Attorney General William Barr suggested that Trump’s various attempts to undermine the Russia investigation were understandable responses to an unprecedented situation. But the president does not defy the law exclusively in self-defense. Just this month, Trump fired the secretary of Homeland Security because she refused to entertain extralegal options for deterring undocumented immigration. More audaciously, the president also (reportedly) instructed Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan to deny Central American families their legal right to seek asylum — and promised to pardon the CBP chief should anyone try to hold him accountable for this crime.

There is no defensible argument against impeaching this kind of president as a substantive matter. The only debate worth having concerns the political merits of such an endeavor.

House Democrats appear to believe that, in the present context, upholding their constitutional duty — by voting to remove a lawless president from office — would be politically unwise. Their reasoning goes something like this: Recent polls suggest a majority of the public wants Congress to “move on” from the Trump-Russia saga and opposes impeachment. Meanwhile, the impeachment process would eat up precious space in the legislative calendar, which could otherwise be used to hold public hearings on more politically resonant aspects of executive-branch malfeasance, and pass popular legislative proposals. And, most important, there is every reason to believe that a push for impeachment will end with the Senate acquitting the president. Which is to say: To the extent that the impeachment process would register at all with low-information swing voters, it would likely register as an unresolved partisan squabble. Trump’s malfeasance is surely a political asset for Democrats. But the president’s lawlessness isn’t subtle. Anyone who is willing and able to see that Trump is a crook already has. Better then to focus the party’s messaging on bread-and-butter issues that might speak to voters who are indifferent to Trump’s corruption.

I’m not sure that I accept this argument. But it strikes me as plausible. And if we stipulate that the president is a criminal (in spirit, if not legally provable fact) — and that Senate Republicans are, nevertheless, opposed to removing him from office — then the Democrats’ overriding civic obligation is to maximize the probability of their victory in 2020. All else being equal, it is more important to actually remove a would-be autocrat from office than to formally demonstrate one’s commitment to doing so.

All of this said, if House Democrats are taking the position that the Republican Party is so corrupt — and our system of checks and balances so obsolete — it isn’t even worth trying to uphold their constitutional responsibility to impeach a lawless president, then they need to acknowledge the radical implications of that stance.

If there is no bipartisan consensus on upholding the rule of law, then bipartisan consensus is not an end worth pursuing. If the Republican Party can’t be trusted to even consider putting its allegiance to lawfulness above its fealty to Donald Trump, then the GOP is a cancer on the body politic. And if our Constitution has brought us to the point where a non-democratically elected president can promise “Get Out of Jail Free” cards to anyone who violates laws he does not like — without facing any serious threat of removal from office — then our Constitution is obsolete and there is no cause for treating that document, or the established norms of our institutions, with reflexive reverence.

This goes on a bit more, and I don't really buy the conclusion, but I guess I can't disagree with these observations.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/ ... roken.html

[BARON CORNY DOG]

Yeah, I’m with you snarf.

So far it sounds about like I thought after hearing the Barr Summary. Lotta red flags, suspicious actions. Suspect motivations. Denials of things that are demonstrably true. But no smoking gun evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, which is what you need to impeach a president. So nothing more will be done. Thanks for playing.

On the contrary, there is ample evidence that he obstructed justice and certainly that he attempted to obstruct justice. I think that’s classic impeachment material, and I suspect that’s the implied thrust of the Report.

[Snarfyguy]

I guess the take is Mueller punted to Congress, but Barr intercepted the thing and announced a win for his side.

Or something. I can't do sports metaphors.

Are we in overtime yet?

[Rorschach]

Can anyone explain what has been redacted and why?

And why no-one seems to be making any fuss about it...

Information that is privy to or arising from grand jury proceedings is secret. Also, information about pending investigations, and information that is redacted to protect third parties who aren’t central to the investigation. There is no fuss because I think the redactions are generally viewed as legitimate, because they aren’t legally obligated to release the report at all, and because they didn’t invoke executive privilege to redact internal White House shit. Presumably, the House can obtain a lot of the un-redacted report.

Edit: some details here:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/mueller-rep ... y-material

Thanks Michael.
You know, you’re really good at this sort of thing. You should think about a career in law or something.

[BARON CORNY DOG]

I haven't actually read most of it and don't know whether I will, so it's possible some of the redactions are dubious, but I haven't heard that from any serious people yet.

[Count Machuki]

What a shit Attorney General.

[Six String]

I'll applaud one comment from Barr. Why didn't Mueller come up with an answer on obstruction. He wimped out. Maybe he'll explain himself later this month.

[Sneelock]

I like how Nadler is handling Barr's refusal to appear today. I think this is absolutely correct. Barr is in contempt of Congress. Imagine if Hillary had refused to appear in front of a committee because she didn't approve of how it was being run. Oy Vey!

Barr's nomination should have made the Dems howl like banshees. He's a creep and a well-known creep. nothing he is saying or doing now should surprise anybody. sure, it's creepier than average but all that hooey about him being a seasoned pro wasted everybody's time. a seasoned pro compared to that jackass interim guy?

it's time for some hardball. I'm glad to see some Dems who are looking at it that way. In fact, that's probably why Barr took a powder today. I think they really thought they could just call the Mueller report a Ham Sandwich and people would just repeat them "it's a Ham Sandwich" the worst part of it is - it might work yet. It looks like the Jimbo/Deep State offense is really where the Repubs are going with this.

[Sneelock]

This space for rent.

[Snarfyguy]

I took a week-and-a-half news blackout while I was traveling on the West Coast, only to come back and find that House Dems are contemplating a subpoena or thinking about begging Barr for a less redacted Report or something.

Come on!

[Snarfyguy]

Where's Jimbo? This thread's been dead for weeks.

So now a judge has ruled to uphold the subpoena House Dems served on Trump's accountants. Good result and Trump will surely appeal, but I understand the Court has denied Trump's request for a stay pending the appeal's outcome.

In your flabby, orange face, President Dipshit!