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Abuse of power, obstruction of congress

Lutherf said:
That's only the case when considering criminal conduct. When considering solely political conduct then the only thing that matters is how well the accusation plays in the press. If you can come up with a good enough accusation that the media decides to back you then you have your "crime" and can prosecute however you see fit. Democrats have the absolute right to accuse Trump of whatever they want to and to prosecute him however they see fit. There is no requirement that Trump be afforded due process or even a defense and the ONLY reason he is being afforded anything close to that is because the Republicans hold a majority in the Senate.

What we are witnessing with this impeachment is one political party exercising powers they were never intended to have for a purpose that the Constitution was created to prevent. All that needs happen now is for a few Republicans to ignore what's going on and we may as well be Germany in 1933.
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Fallacy of false equivalence and a fallacy of logic. Germany 1933 /=/ US 2020. Dems exercising constitutional powers = Art II Constitution.
 
jamesbyoung said:
Not, they are not 'synonymous'. You don't know the law or the statutes.
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Its the fundamental principle of American jurisprudence. There is no legal status termed not innocent. There is guilty and innocent. Innocent is every person's default state, a prosecution is to determine they are guilty of something.

You claiming ignorance on my part is projection.
 
Lutherf said:
That's only the case when considering criminal conduct. When considering solely political conduct then the only thing that matters is how well the accusation plays in the press. If you can come up with a good enough accusation that the media decides to back you then you have your "crime" and can prosecute however you see fit. Democrats have the absolute right to accuse Trump of whatever they want to and to prosecute him however they see fit. There is no requirement that Trump be afforded due process or even a defense and the ONLY reason he is being afforded anything close to that is because the Republicans hold a majority in the Senate.

What we are witnessing with this impeachment is one political party exercising powers they were never intended to have for a purpose that the Constitution was created to prevent. All that needs happen now is for a few Republicans to ignore what's going on and we may as well be Germany in 1933.
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With impeachment, it is supposed to mirror some of the elements of our judicial system and as far as that goes, he is innocent until impeachment is both carried out and judged guilty. All of this assumption of guilt is just smear tactics to sway polling and the Senators that are going to be voting soon.
 
Helix said:
i stand by my argument, because i am correct.
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No, you stand by your judgment because you want to be correct, not because there is any factual evidence.
 
Helix said:
when you extort foreign countries for an election interference bribe and then try to cover it up, you are likely to be impeached if your cult doesn't control the house. plenty of people could have and probably did tell the impeached orange imbecile as much back when he was just the orange imbecile.
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You can claim he extorted the ukraines and it was for the purpose of election interference till your blue in the face but repeatedly making that claim does not make it true or illegal. The democrats have impeached him and now they have the burden to prove it. To date i have not seen conclusive evidence to support the accusstion.
The time for shuffling the deck has passed and its now time for them to lay their cards on the table. We will all be watching to see what they have and dont have.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
OpportunityCost said:
No, you stand by your judgment because you want to be correct, not because there is any factual evidence.
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Enjoy your custom reality. I'll stick with the real version.
 
Lutherf said:
That's only the case when considering criminal conduct. When considering solely political conduct then the only thing that matters is how well the accusation plays in the press. If you can come up with a good enough accusation that the media decides to back you then you have your "crime" and can prosecute however you see fit. Democrats have the absolute right to accuse Trump of whatever they want to and to prosecute him however they see fit. There is no requirement that Trump be afforded due process or even a defense and the ONLY reason he is being afforded anything close to that is because the Republicans hold a majority in the Senate.

What we are witnessing with this impeachment is one political party exercising powers they were never intended to have for a purpose that the Constitution was created to prevent. All that needs happen now is for a few Republicans to ignore what's going on and we may as well be Germany in 1933.
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Your point is well taken and is why i believe the remedy required falls on voters. We must make them pay a severe political price next election so that neither party will ever consider engaging in the dangerous game they are playing with us.
I dont like the idea of either party holding a super majority but in these circumstances it would be warranted to hand the democrats that bad of a loss in both houses. I would settle with seeing them lose 50-100 house seats and 6-7 senate seats.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
trouble13 said:
You can claim he extorted the ukraines and it was for the purpose of election interference till your blue in the face but repeatedly making that claim does not make it true or illegal. The democrats have impeached him and now they have the burden to prove it. To date i have not seen conclusive evidence to support the accusstion.
The time for shuffling the deck has passed and its now time for them to lay their cards on the table. We will all be watching to see what they have and dont have.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
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The impeached peach admitted it, as did his surrogates.
 
Helix said:
Enjoy your custom reality. I'll stick with the real version.
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Any and all evidence regarding a quid pro quo and testimony was linked to a WH visit and the aid, all other testimony stating otherwise was the opinions of those testifying and not stated by the President at any point----all of them had to state such under oath. There is no custom reality about it, that's what they testified to.
 
swing_voter said:
There is no crime.

It's a circus. The senate will cast their vote, Trump will be found innocent, and that will be it. The impeachment is a huge waste of time and taxpayer dollars.
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couldn't agree more

it would comical if it weren't so disturbing:

hearing the Dems whine and scream NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW

GEEZe.. talk about the irony meter breaking!

They forget to add something to that No one is above the law...

"no one except we Democrats in Congress"
 
OpportunityCost said:
Any and all evidence regarding a quid pro quo and testimony was linked to a WH visit and the aid, all other testimony stating otherwise was the opinions of those testifying and not stated by the President at any point----all of them had to state such under oath. There is no custom reality about it, that's what they testified to.
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If I wanted to see someone dance, I'd watch James Brown. He's a lot better at it.
 
trouble13 said:
I The only thing that proves is that the democrats think he ahould be removed. Thats no great revelation. They have been calling on impeaching him since before he was even inaugurated.

sing Tapatalk
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They didn't think America got the memo

had to waste more time and money on making sure all the dummies out there got t he memo...

even though they were getting it through corrupt, DNC-branch cnn anyway
 
Obama used the US military to destroy a foreign country's government and military in Libya without any declaration of war or approval of Congress. This lead to a civil war in Syria and our ambassador killed.

Yet literally going to all-out-war against another country without any approval of Congress isn't "abuse of power" to the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party loves war - provided we do not harm the leadership of the enemy, that we don't win and the maximum number of Americans are killed - endlessly year after year after year.
 
OpportunityCost said:
Its the fundamental principle of American jurisprudence. There is no legal status termed not innocent. There is guilty and innocent. Innocent is every person's default state, a prosecution is to determine they are guilty of something.

You claiming ignorance on my part is projection.
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Your ignorance is based on your posting. Not, they are not 'synonymous'. You don't know the law or the statutes.
 
Wait, what about the Comey defense. NO ONE has said Trump did whatever he did because his goal was to deliberately commit crimes for the sake of committing crimes. As Comey explained about Hilary Clinton, it didn't matter if she broke criminal laws. Didn't matter if she destroyed evidence to cover up the crime. Nor did it matter if she destroyed evidence to prevent Congress from seeing it - after Congress told her they wanted it. It ONLY matters whether they could prove Clinton's motive was to commit crimes for the sake of committing crimes.

There is no proof or even allegation that President Trump's motive was to commit crimes for the sake of crimes. But then the articles of impeachment don't actually mention any crimes.
 
trouble13 said:
Your point is well taken and is why i believe the remedy required falls on voters. We must make them pay a severe political price next election so that neither party will ever consider engaging in the dangerous game they are playing with us.
I dont like the idea of either party holding a super majority but in these circumstances it would be warranted to hand the democrats that bad of a loss in both houses. I would settle with seeing them lose 50-100 house seats and 6-7 senate seats. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
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The GOP, however, will be beaten down badly in the federal and state elections.

The American voter is not going to put up with their anti-Americanism any more
 
bongsaway said:
How many hundreds of times will it take to understand no 'crime' needs to be committed for an impeachment. Impeachment is not the judicial system and has nothing to do with a court of law, laws.

Just keep repeating the same old disinformation it's the republicans way.
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Yep, impeachment is purely a political process. The only power the congress has is to remove a president. They can't sentence him to jail or convict him of a crime. Impeachment is all about removal, nothing else. We go by the phrase guilty or not guilty when casting votes. But I've a mind that instead of those phrases, it should be remove and don't remove.
 
TheEconomist said:
I do not want to be condescending, but the Constitution actually limits the power to impeach.

Article II, section 4:
The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

And the historical precedents until this latest case were that presidents were always accused and tried on account of crimes.


So, look at the articles of impeachment. Does it sound anything like it fits precedents or the letter of the law? Democrats could accuse him of a crime and make a case for it, but they chose no to do it. A very serious argument can be made that Democrats abused their power. You do not have the power to remove a president from office over anything you want. You have the power to remove him from office if he did something explicitly listed in section 4 and assuming you can convince 2/3 of the Senate that he is guilty of at least of one of those things.
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Trump violated the emoluments clause when he conspired with a foreign government to benefit himself and then obstructed congress when they tried to investigate his actions. Both are violations of the constitution and impeachable offenses.

There is not a lot precedence for impeachment. Clinton was impeached for lying to a grand jury....whereas Trump was impeached for violating his oath of office and the constitution. Trump's offense was far more serious because he put national security at risk, whereas Clinton did not.

PS...it's "high crimes" which means "abuse of authority" and does not require the same standard of proof that is required in criminal law. And no serious argument can be made that democrats in congress abused their power. They acted exactly how the founders intended when a president abuses his power and oath of office.
 
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TheEconomist said:
Disputing over how far he should expose himself to scrutiny by a body of the legislature dominated by people who hate him seem like what every sane person would do under similar circumstances. I would do exactly what he did regarding documents. Anything that could be used to score brownie points against me, I would not want out -- even in the event that nothing is technically incriminating.



I do not have expertise on the time it takes to process a legal dispute between the legislature and the executive at the federal level, but I suspect they would get their answers well before Donald Trump would finish his second term, assuming he wins the election.



Although I agree with the spirit behind limiting the power of the executive and the wish to impose high ethical standards on the office of the president in particular, I believe Democrats set a dangerous precedent for political reasons. As for what the Senate does, I will submit that Democrats also set another dangerous precedent years ago for equally political reasons: they acquitted Bill Clinton in spite of the criminal nature of the accusations. And that was at a time when people had more in common across party lines. Why should Republicans enforce a norm Democrats refused to enforce?

If the roles were reversed and we lived in an imginary world were a Republican got acquitted in the 1990s and Obama was on trial for some of his unauthorized drone strikes, you would be on this website talking about Republicans are going for a partisan coup. I perfectly understand why Republicans elected a gigantic middle finger. It's the finger some people really deserved.
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Dangerous precedent was set when the republicans impeached clinton. He was being investigated for 'whitewater' a land deal and ended up being impeached for lying about a blow job to congress. That's your big crime. A lie about sex and the right is honestly trying to convince the rest of america what clinton did was way worse than what trump did. Hell, clinton gave a blood sample to starr and trump won't go under oath and refuses to let those around him testify. Certainly the actions of an innocent person.
 
Helix said:






the real reality

it burns
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Its in the transcript that he did discuss it, not that the aid was conditionary upon it, which was the main allegation that was never proven.
 
bongsaway said:
Dangerous precedent was set when the republicans impeached clinton. He was being investigated for 'whitewater' a land deal and ended up being impeached for lying about a blow job to congress. That's your big crime. A lie about sex and the right is honestly trying to convince the rest of america what clinton did was way worse than what trump did. Hell, clinton gave a blood sample to starr and trump won't go under oath and refuses to let those around him testify. Certainly the actions of an innocent person.
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Clinton perjured himself about a workplace harassment issue under oath. He was disbarred from practicing law for it. You call it not a big deal, the courts were not amused.
 
TheEconomist said:
I do not want to be condescending, but the Constitution actually limits the power to impeach.

Article II, section 4:
The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

And the historical precedents until this latest case were that presidents were always accused and tried on account of crimes.


So, look at the articles of impeachment. Does it sound anything like it fits precendents or the letter of the law? Democrats could accuse him of a crime and make a case for it, but they chose no to do it. A very serious argument can be made that Democrats abused their power. You do not have the power to remove a president from office over anything you want. You have the power to remove him from office if he did something explicitly listed in section 4 and assuming you can convince 2/3 of the Senate that he is guilty of at least of one of those things.
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Once again, no 'crime' needs to be committed to be impeached.

High crimes doesn't refer to the crime, it refers to the officeholder as in president kind of high. Trump tried to bribe ukraine by withholding aid. People in his orbit warned him it might be illegal and sure enough it is.
 
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