Mega-Thread: Impeachment Proceedings & Inquiry of Trump

[Levelfive]

"They point to the Justice Department not considering Trump to have broken any laws."

Given that the Justice Department works for the Administration, and thus the President himself, this translates to;

"We've investigated ourselves and determined we did nothing wrong."

Fuck. That.

Justice shouldn't be part of the Executive branch in the first place.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/o...sultPosition=1

"Now we have discovered what may be a third cover-up. In its handling of the investigation and a potential campaign-finance violation, the Department of Justice appears to have ignored a rule that a matter under investigation must be referred to the Federal Election Commission. Critically, if the department had followed the rule, the Ukraine affair would have been disclosed to the American public.

Were it not for the efforts of the whistle-blower, everything about this would have been hidden from the F.E.C. and the American people.

Here’s how the Justice Department failed to follow the rule. As part of the scramble in the executive branch caused by the whistle-blower’s complaint, the Justice Department secretly investigated Mr. Trump for a potential campaign-finance violation. The department reportedly cleared him because the contributions solicited from a foreign government to his campaign were not quantifiable “things of value.” That’s the key phrase in one of the most important campaign-finance laws.

Remember that Mr. Trump’s own intelligence community inspector general — a former federal prosecutor — determined that the whistle-blower complaint was an “urgent concern.” Further, the complaint set out facts suggesting that Mr. Trump had indeed violated the federal statute that criminalizes soliciting any “thing of value” from a foreign citizen in connection with an election. A thorough investigation seemed warranted.

After it looked into the complaint, the Justice Department disagreed — it said that because the amount of the contribution couldn’t be quantified, the department would not even bother opening a criminal investigation (which would still have been short of bringing an actual prosecution).

To date, the criticism of the Justice Department has focused on its seemingly hasty judgment that a federal crime had not been committed and on Attorney General William Barr’s decision not to recuse himself from a matter directly implicating him.

Those are indeed valid criticisms, but an overlooked problem is that a federal government memorandum required the Justice Department to refer this complaint to the Federal Election Commission. And by all publicly available information, the department failed to do so."

They dismissed it out of hand by claiming as a "thing of value," it couldn't be quantified. Of course, there's no explanation for why it has to be quantified when it's plainly greater than 0.

Barr, truly, is the worst shit in the seven kingdoms.

ETA: This might be a good time for FEC to adopt an "any epsilon" rule. I guess we have to thank to this administration for putting on a full grotesque display of what happens when amoral shitbags step right over toothless, vaguely worded legal niceties:

[Shadowferal]

Sen Ron Johnson covering his ass

The Hill article; here

[nonameelf]

Sen Ron Johnson covering his ass

The Hill article; here

So, congressional Republicans already knew about this shit and did nothing and now they're trying to cover it up.

Corrupt party is corrupt.

[nonameelf]

It’s weird since they got mad Schiff’s team told the whistleblower to follow procedure instead of telling everyone immediately. I guess it’s only a problem when people are doing their job instead of covering for corruption.

It's almost like everything they accuse others of is stuff they have done themselves.

[Breccia]

Hmm, what's this Breaking News alert in my email....

CIA's top lawyer made criminal referral on whistleblower's complaint about Trump conduct

Oh...that doesn't sound good.

Weeks before the whistleblower's complaint became public, the CIA's top lawyer made what she considered to be a criminal referral to the Justice Department about the whistleblower's allegations that President Donald Trump abused his office in pressuring the Ukrainian president, U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell NBC News.

The move by the CIA's general counsel, Trump appointee Courtney Simmons Elwood

Let's see that again.

Trump appointee Courtney Simmons Elwood

Yep. Moving on.

meant she and other senior officials had concluded a potential crime had been committed, raising more questions about why the Justice Department later closed the case without conducting an investigation.

In the days since an anonymous whistleblower complaint was made public accusing him of wrongdoing, Trump has lashed out at his accuser and other insiders who provided the accuser with information, suggesting they were improperly spying on what was a "perfect" call between him and the Ukrainian president.

But a timeline provided by U.S. officials familiar with the matter shows that multiple senior government officials appointed by Trump found the whistleblower's complaints credible, troubling, and worthy of further inquiry starting soon after the president's July phone call.

The fact that she and other top Trump administration political appointees saw potential misconduct in the whistleblower's early account of alleged presidential abuses puts a new spotlight on the Justice Department's later decision to decline to open a criminal investigation — a decision that the Justice Department said publicly was based purely on an analysis of whether the president committed a campaign finance law violation.

According to the officials, Elwood was acting under rules that a report must occur if there is a reasonable basis to the allegations, defined as "facts and circumstances…that would cause a person of reasonable caution to believe that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed."

A DOJ official said Attorney General William Barr was made aware of the conversation with Elwood and Eisenberg, and their concerns about the president's behavior, in the days that followed.

Justice Department officials now say they didn't consider the phone conversation a formal criminal referral because it was not in written form. A separate criminal referral came later from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was based solely on the whistleblower's official written complaint.

When Elwood and Eisenberg spoke with DOJ, no one on the phone had seen the whistleblower's formal complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community, which had been submitted two days before the call and was still a secret. The issue of campaign finance law was not part of their deliberations, the officials said.

Oh dear. The ICIG the acting DNI and now the CIA's top lawyer all saw this as a credible problem? And Barr, Trump's personal lawyer, is now caught in a lie that could only be resolved via time travel?

I mean...really?

[Machismo]

Hmm, what's this Breaking News alert in my email....

CIA's top lawyer made criminal referral on whistleblower's complaint about Trump conduct

Oh...that doesn't sound good.



Let's see that again.



Yep. Moving on.



Oh dear. The ICIG the acting DNI and now the CIA's top lawyer all saw this as a credible problem? And Barr, Trump's personal lawyer, is now caught in a lie that could only be resolved via time travel?

I mean...really?

Well, don't forget that it also involves actual travel... he's out of the country.

[Paranoid Android]

Sen Ron Johnson covering his ass

The Hill article; here

Umm, okay in this tweet from a CNBC reporter it is saying Sen. Johnson is confirming the story.

So is the strategy now saying 'We did it, but who cares'.

breath-taking:

GOP Sen Johnson says Trump donor/ambassador TOLD HIM WH had Ukraine investigation-for-aid quid pro quo

Johnson asked Trump, who denied and asked “who told you that?”

Pence linked aid to investigations the next day, showing which was true https://t.co/WhpZENjLWd

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/sta...059721221?s=19

[Breccia]

Axios summarized some of Volker's key statements.

Volker's 5 big points:

"[M]y efforts were entirely focused on advancing U.S. foreign policy goals with respect to Ukraine."

"I became concerned that a negative narrative about Ukraine, fueled by assertions made by Ukraine’s departing Prosecutor General, was reaching the President of the United States, and impeding our ability to support the new Ukrainian government as robustly as I believed we should."

"[A]t no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden."

"[W]hile executing my duties, I kept my colleagues at the State Department and National Security Council informed, and also briefed Congress, about my actions."

"I strongly supported the provision of U.S. security assistance, including lethal defensive weapons, to Ukraine throughout my tenure."

Dude does not want to be the fall guy.

Also, @Levelfive broke the story, but I just wanted to share the headline

Ron Johnson says Sondland told him of possible Ukraine quid pro quo

Yep. Oh, and bear in mind, we've known about the phone call for, what, two weeks? And Johnson is only bringing this up now, after the texts and testimony of Volker? "Oh, you mean this gate key" confirmed.

[Levelfive]

Umm, okay in this tweet from a CNBC reporter it is saying Sen. Johnson is confirming the story.

So is the strategy now saying 'We did it, but who cares'.


https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/sta...059721221?s=19

This seems much more an effort to throw Sondland under the bus, and exculpate Trump--"look how he said he would never do that!"

ETA: Keep in mind, too, that both the DoJ (i.e., Barr) and the White House (everyone else) had been alerted to the whistleblower report in early August.

[nonameelf]

ETA: Keep in mind, too, that both the DoJ (i.e., Barr) and the White House (everyone else) had been alerted to the whistleblower report in early August.

So, they knew about it over a month before everyone else did and they seriously don't have better defenses for it?

[Levelfive]

Hmm, what's this Breaking News alert in my email....

CIA's top lawyer made criminal referral on whistleblower's complaint about Trump conduct

Oh...that doesn't sound good.



Let's see that again.



Yep. Moving on.



Oh dear. The ICIG the acting DNI and now the CIA's top lawyer all saw this as a credible problem? And Barr, Trump's personal lawyer, is now caught in a lie that could only be resolved via time travel?

I mean...really?

Really good article.

Also, I hadn't thought about this way, but it's a great point: "It wouldn't have been difficult for the government to determine how much money Ukraine would have spent in an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, he said,

"That would give them a dollar amount to show that Trump solicited 'something of value,'" Ryan said."

- - - Updated - - -

So, they knew about it over a month before everyone else did and they seriously don't have better defenses for it?

I have been puzzling over that very question myself:

I have also wondered where the other would-be whistleblowers are, and nobody genuinely believes there's nothing else worth blowing the whistle over. The people remaining are obviously post-apocalypse cockroaches who can survive anything, and so highly self-interested it occludes all other moral and ethical considerations--certainly anything so loser-ish as "country first." The "adults" in this "room" instead just move things to super secret computers, not just to protect Trump, but themselves, because to correct or confront Trump on anything is to be cast out, and this corruption train is kah-razy money as long as it keeps going and you keep riding. What has really perplexed me, though, is how it is that the DoJ and the White House have known about this complaint since early August and not only STILL haven't managed to cobble together a coherent "counter-narrative"--and maybe in part they were just relying on Barr to successfully cover this one up, too--but that somehow every single one of them, presumably even the lawyers who had the real transcript hidden, looked at that summary and collectively said, "Yeah, that sounds good--totally exculpatory." Perfect, even.

Maybe it's just this:

"The apparent absence of any similar resistance to Trump’s transgressions reflects at best an indifference by the highest-ranking Trump appointees to a manifest breach of constitutional duty. Perhaps they, like political analyst Charlie Cook, thought the Zelensky communication and the Giuliani initiative were “not much more inappropriate than [what] we hear from [Trump] in a typical week.” But that simply demonstrates the danger we now face: Trump has used the powers of the presidency for his own self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment so brazenly and so regularly—such actions have become so normalized—that it no longer occurs to many of those close to the president to sound the alarm or take steps to end the deviancy." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...s-norm/599155/

Maybe their willful, built-up immunity to Trump's pathological criminality and amorality is what finally brings it all down.

[SirBeef]

It's almost like everything they accuse others of is stuff they have done themselves.

The Republican party, projecting their crimes and unethical and immoral behaviors onto Democrats since 1980.

[Levelfive]

A report congress should have gotten within a week.

I can't remember which article it was now that described "the whistleblower's alarm when he realized the lawyers investigating the complaint were the same ones implicated in it," which prompted him to escalate matters.

[Orbitus]

One screen, two movies. I've refrained from having an opinion on this subject because both sides of this coin are dirty as fuck. Either Biden quid pro quo'd to get a prosecutor fired, corrupt or not, or Trump quid pro quo'd to get Biden investigated, or more likely, both are true. Ever since I've heard of this, I've just become completely disillusioned with politics as a whole. There will never be a draining of the swamp, because the swamp cannot be drained. Everyone that enters Washington is destroyed by it.

OK, I will spell it out to you personally. Biden did this with the backing of both DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS. There was at least 2 Republicans that signed the same fucking letter that wanted this prosecutor fired, for NOT investigating corruption. Those aren't the only people though, you have the EU and IMF that wanted him gone. And you know what happened when he was gone? The investigation into Burisma, the company Hunter Biden joined, happened, instead of not happening under Shokin, the prosecutor that Biden and Republicans got fired. And you know why he did that? Because Biden was working on behalf of the US people.

Trump, right now, isn't working on behalf of the people. He is working to save his own skin. Because he knows that if he loses, he is going to fucking jail. He withheld the money to get the investigation into LITERALLY A NOTHINGBURGER, for personal gain.

There was no investigation into Hunter Biden because he wasn't part of the company when it was being investigated.

So, your bullshit argument of "both sides" doesn't fucking apply here.

- - - Updated - - -

Sen Ron Johnson covering his ass

The Hill article; here

Ron Johnson was one of the Senators that signed Biden's letter to get rid of the prosecutor that Biden bragged about getting rid of.

[Fincayra]

OK, I will spell it out to you personally. Biden did this with the backing of both DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS. There was at least 2 Republicans that signed the same fucking letter that wanted this prosecutor fired, for NOT investigating corruption. Those aren't the only people though, you have the EU and IMF that wanted him gone. And you know what happened when he was gone? The investigation into Burisma, the company Hunter Biden joined, happened, instead of not happening under Shokin, the prosecutor that Biden and Republicans got fired. And you know why he did that? Because Biden was working on behalf of the US people.

Trump, right now, isn't working on behalf of the people. He is working to save his own skin. Because he knows that if he loses, he is going to fucking jail. He withheld the money to get the investigation into LITERALLY A NOTHINGBURGER, for personal gain.

There was no investigation into Hunter Biden because he wasn't part of the company when it was being investigated.

So, your bullshit argument of "both sides" doesn't fucking apply here.

- - - Updated - - -



Ron Johnson was one of the Senators that signed Biden's letter to get rid of the prosecutor that Biden bragged about getting rid of.

Already stated my opinion on the son. The son doesn't matter to me at all, and I don't care whether he had backing of every democrat and republican in congress. We shouldn't be withholding aid from a country for such a specific reason, and the reasons Trump did, as stated too. I was against cutting off aid to the central American countries who have refugees coming our way too. We're sending the money for a reason, and using that money as a cudgel against the government isn't hurting the government, it is hurting the people. Plus, fire one corrupt person, he will be replaced by two more. Not necessarily in the same position, but corruption protects its own power. I don't view Biden's "crime" nearly as harshly as I do Trump's, but I definitely don't view either of them in a good light. This isn't a good time in our country, and no one is going to come out of this spotless.

[shimerra]

Already stated my opinion on the son. The son doesn't matter to me at all, and I don't care whether he had backing of every democrat and republican in congress. We shouldn't be withholding aid from a country for such a specific reason, and the reasons Trump did, as stated too. I was against cutting off aid to the central American countries who have refugees coming our way too. We're sending the money for a reason, and using that money as a cudgel against the government isn't hurting the government, it is hurting the people. Plus, fire one corrupt person, he will be replaced by two more. Not necessarily in the same position, but corruption protects its own power. I don't view Biden's "crime" nearly as harshly as I do Trump's, but I definitely don't view either of them in a good light. This isn't a good time in our country, and no one is going to come out of this spotless.

We shouldn't be withholding aid because we have concerns about the main guy in charge of prosecuting corruption may actually be corrupt and thus our money be spent not for the reasons we are giving it? Biden was literally speaking on behalf of the administration and congress to ensure money we're giving them was spent properly given significant concerns we had about the man in charge of punishing people who would misuse it.

The whole fire one replaced by two is so childish and lazy it doesn't even warrant a mention.

What a stupid fucking thing to say. Mindbogglingly so. Biden committed no crime and since it seems to need to be spelled out for you to think otherwise at this point is wrong and stupid. Feel free to disagree with the action but Biden following American interests and protecting how our money is spent and acting in the administration, congress, and the tax payer's interest is not the same as Trump subverting and stonewalling congress for personal gain.

[Orbitus]

Already stated my opinion on the son. The son doesn't matter to me at all, and I don't care whether he had backing of every democrat and republican in congress. We shouldn't be withholding aid from a country for such a specific reason, and the reasons Trump did, as stated too. I was against cutting off aid to the central American countries who have refugees coming our way too. We're sending the money for a reason, and using that money as a cudgel against the government isn't hurting the government, it is hurting the people. Plus, fire one corrupt person, he will be replaced by two more. Not necessarily in the same position, but corruption protects its own power. I don't view Biden's "crime" nearly as harshly as I do Trump's, but I definitely don't view either of them in a good light. This isn't a good time in our country, and no one is going to come out of this spotless.

Biden had backing of both Democrats AND Republicans. And we fired that prosecutor and the next guy did his job just fine. Biden is clear here. There is no there there for Biden. And I don't even want him as a candidate, I would rather have Sanders or Warren, but if Biden gets the nomination? I would still vote for him over the fucking traitor in the whitehouse.

[Edge-]

Oversight subpoena'd the White House for documents related to Ukraine - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/pol...ouse-documents

Let's see how this plays out.

[cubby]

So, they knew about it over a month before everyone else did and they seriously don't have better defenses for it?

It's possible that they thought it either wasn't a violation (because look at their talking points now), was hoping it wouldn't be discovered (because look at where they hid it), or that the DOJ "pardon" would cover any questions.

They are so used to violating almost every law we have at this point they don't realize how far out of reality they are existing. This turning of GOP Senators, even just one or two, so early in the process, is very significant.

[PACOX]

Already stated my opinion on the son. The son doesn't matter to me at all, and I don't care whether he had backing of every democrat and republican in congress. We shouldn't be withholding aid from a country for such a specific reason, and the reasons Trump did, as stated too. I was against cutting off aid to the central American countries who have refugees coming our way too. We're sending the money for a reason, and using that money as a cudgel against the government isn't hurting the government, it is hurting the people. Plus, fire one corrupt person, he will be replaced by two more. Not necessarily in the same position, but corruption protects its own power. I don't view Biden's "crime" nearly as harshly as I do Trump's, but I definitely don't view either of them in a good light. This isn't a good time in our country, and no one is going to come out of this spotless.

The son matters to me because the federal government does not get to investigate you because you and it are politically opposed.