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Fact check: Trump falsely claims whistleblower rules changed just before Ukraine complaint

Jack Hays said:
The question is whether a crime or crimes was/were committed.
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That's your opinion, but it's not grounded in...anything but your opinion. It's a stance contradicted by the history of the term, and what it meant when the founders adopted it.

Obviously, you and more significantly the Congress are entitled to decide based on that standard, but there is also nothing illegitimate about using a much broader standard.
 
JasperL said:
If he is in fact harmful and destructive, based on what principle is that not grounds for impeachment? There cannot be an obligation to allow a "harmful and destructive" president to remain in office until the next election. If there is, what's the point of impeachment? It cannot be to only punish criminal acts or the founders would have so limited its use.

Take it out of the case of POTUS, say for judges. What if a judge is found incompetent, shows up late and drunk on a daily basis, makes arbitrary/capricious rulings, is frequently overruled because decisions are not grounded in the law. None of that is illegal, per se, but it's obviously impeachable conduct because he's not doing the job of being a federal judge. It's no different for POTUS.
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We've had lots of harmful and destructive presidents. Our system provides a remedy: the next election. You know, like a democracy.
 
JasperL said:
That's your opinion, but it's not grounded in...anything but your opinion. It's a stance contradicted by the history of the term, and what it meant when the founders adopted it.

Obviously, you and more significantly the Congress are entitled to decide based on that standard, but there is also nothing illegitimate about using a much broader standard.
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The post to which I replied had assumed the commission of crimes. I was merely correcting that. I happen to agree with you.
 
Jack Hays said:
Meh. I've seen nothing alleged about Trump that rises (or sinks) to the level of Nixon's misdeeds.
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That's not the point. My example that you dismissed as "everyone does it, therefore it's OK" wasn't specific to Trump or Nixon. Nixon's example was just to demonstrate that using the arms of government to specifically target enemies is an impeachable abuse of power, without regard to it being necessarily criminal.

And if your argument is, more or less, you disagree with impeaching Trump given the facts as we know them, OK! We all have opinions! Others will have different opinions and they will be just as legitimate as yours.
 
JasperL said:
That's not the point. My example that you dismissed as "everyone does it, therefore it's OK" wasn't specific to Trump or Nixon. Nixon's example was just to demonstrate that using the arms of government to specifically target enemies is an impeachable abuse of power, without regard to it being necessarily criminal.

And if your argument is, more or less, you disagree with impeaching Trump given the facts as we know them, OK! We all have opinions! Others will have different opinions and they will be just as legitimate as yours.
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Yes, and . . . ?
 
Jack Hays said:
Meh. I've seen nothing alleged about Trump that rises (or sinks) to the level of Nixon's misdeeds.
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IOW, you haven't been paying very good attention to what's been going on. Conspiring to commit extortion with taxpayer money with a foreign power for personal gain domestically (among other things) is a wee bit more severe than covering up a two-bit break in.
 
Jack Hays said:
We've had lots of harmful and destructive presidents. Our system provides a remedy: the next election. You know, like a democracy.
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Our system provides an additional remedy: impeachment. You know, like a constitutional republic. It's there for cases when the president is intolerably harmful and destructive to wait for the possibility that the president will be removed at some future date.
 
Jack Hays said:
Yes, and . . . ?
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I'll quit here. You've gone from 'everybody does it, therefore, it's not impeachable' to 'well, what Trump did isn't impeachable', so I have no idea what point you're trying to make.

Mine is simple - Congress need not demonstrate Trump committed a crime to justifiably impeach him.
 
Tanngrisnir said:
IOW, you haven't been paying very good attention to what's been going on. Conspiring to commit extortion with taxpayer money with a foreign power for personal gain domestically (among other things) is a wee bit more severe than covering up a two-bit break in.
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Sorry, but your word choice is beyond the facts.
 
JasperL said:
Our system provides an additional remedy: impeachment. You know, like a constitutional republic. It's there for cases when the president is intolerably harmful and destructive to wait for the possibility that the president will be removed at some future date.
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IMHO you are demonstrating harmful partisan zealotry.
 
JasperL said:
I'll quit here. You've gone from 'everybody does it, therefore, it's not impeachable' to 'well, what Trump did isn't impeachable', so I have no idea what point you're trying to make.

Mine is simple - Congress need not demonstrate Trump committed a crime to justifiably impeach him.
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If Congress does that, they will do more harm to the country than Trump has done.
 
Jack Hays said:
IMHO you are demonstrating harmful partisan zealotry.
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Doesn't really matter what I think. It's up to the House then possibly the Senate. I haven't even actually taken a position strongly in favor of impeachment and removal, so I'm not very worried about being called a partisan zealot.

But IMO, the people demonstrating "harmful partisan zealotry" are the people trying to normalize what we're seeing with Trump. I think nothing we're seeing with Trump is normal or should be acceptable for the U.S., and they know it, but they are cowards, and fear the backlash.
 
Jack Hays said:
If Congress does that, they will do more harm to the country than Trump has done.
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We all have our opinions. I strongly disagree.

We forced out Nixon, for example, and would have impeached him. Given the choice, remove Nixon or Trump, I'd think just about anyone who cares about our country would choose Trump, and it wouldn't be a difficult choice at all.
 
JasperL said:
Doesn't really matter what I think. It's up to the House then possibly the Senate. I haven't even actually taken a position strongly in favor of impeachment and removal, so I'm not very worried about being called a partisan zealot.

But IMO, the people demonstrating "harmful partisan zealotry" are the people trying to normalize what we're seeing with Trump. I think nothing we're seeing with Trump is normal or should be acceptable for the U.S., and they know it, but they are cowards, and fear the backlash.
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We'll see how it goes. Trump is an uncouth coward and a bully without a sense of honor. I will be eager to vote against him in 2016 but I don't think any of that is impeachable.
 
JasperL said:
We all have our opinions. I strongly disagree.

We forced out Nixon, for example, and would have impeached him. Given the choice, remove Nixon or Trump, I'd think just about anyone who cares about our country would choose Trump, and it wouldn't be a difficult choice at all.
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We definitely disagree. Nixon was a great deal worse.
 
justabubba said:
when all you have are weak semantic points, your cause is lost
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Correct. "High crimes and misdemeanors" is aka "unfit for office." We could call it many names, breach of trust/duty, abuse of power, and more but it boils down to that. It's interesting how the Trump defenders try to raise the bar to include "crimes" but then of course the DoJ has a policy against indicting Presidents, and if the President's own DoJ headed by his own sycophants and boot lickers don't indict him, then there is no credible allegations of any crime. All the while the President and his AG interpret the law to mean that POTUS doesn't have to cooperate with law enforcement even at the state level, because Presidents are immune from being compelled to cooperate with investigations much less prosecution while President. It's essentially a position against impeachment for any reason, that this thing outlined in the Constitution is an illegitimate exercise from the start.
 
JasperL said:
Correct. "High crimes and misdemeanors" is aka "unfit for office." We could call it many names, breach of trust/duty, abuse of power, and more but it boils down to that. It's interesting how the Trump defenders try to raise the bar to include "crimes" but then of course the DoJ has a policy against indicting Presidents, and if the President's own DoJ headed by his own sycophants and boot lickers don't indict him, then there is no credible allegations of any crime. All the while the President and his AG interpret the law to mean that POTUS doesn't have to cooperate with law enforcement even at the state level, because Presidents are immune from being compelled to cooperate with investigations much less prosecution while President. It's essentially a position against impeachment for any reason, that this thing outlined in the Constitution is an illegitimate exercise from the start.
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"Unfit for office" = "high crimes and misdemeanors" only in the anti-Trump zealotry universe. We have had any number of presidents who were unfit for office. While "high crimes and misdemeanors" is indeed a broader term than the simple legal definition of a crime, it still points to the principle that impeachment should derive from proof of specific acts, not just general loathing.
 
Jack Hays said:
I don't have a cause. I just think anti-Trump zealotry is at least as damaging as Trump himself.
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I disagree for the simple reason that there is no norm, no assumption of good faith, no institution, that Trump won't take a wrecking ball to if it suits his ends, and roughly half the country when he does it then establishes whatever he just did as now acceptable, and the new bar for POTUS.

The Ukraine stuff is typical. It's not acceptable for the President to ask a corrupt foreign country to put his political rival under official investigation, or to have his personal attorney with we now know serious conflicts of interest with his paying clients the authority of the AG (but pointedly NOT part of the government, so whose loyalty goes entirely and solely to the president's personal interests, to hell with the country's interests) to assist in that. And yet the GOP with few exceptions is unwilling to condemn that as the corrupt abuse of power it so obviously is. This concept of abuse of power was an article of impeachment for Nixon, and we have a major political party now saying, because Trump did it, that it's totally appropriate and acceptable behavior for the President of the United States.

Your position is those saying, "that's bad. used to be impeachable conduct, should still be." is WORSE than Trump and his nearly unanimous GOP defenders saying, "no, actually, that's FINE! President's SHOULD do that, and then ask corrupt and communist CHINA to engage in the same thing" after he came into office pledging to literally jail his then opponent in the election. That's banana republic stuff, and Trump and then those who defend him are normalizing that for this country.

But, yeah, those who object are the bad guys, the partisan zealots.
 
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