Trump didn't openly extort Zelensky. He simply made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

Funny, but I was about to observe the same about you and another poster. (Personal insults are prohibited, by the way. Just a word to the wise.)

 

But Trump can?

 

No. I mean the mafia families. Like Trump's

 

No, the Ukranians can. Seems to me the questions are, 1) can he ask them to do so (that's an easy yes), and 2) can he accept and review and cite their report.

The second is more complicated because of the "thing of value" issue.

But here's an interesting possibility. Suppose Ukraine tells Giuliani, as I bet they will, "We looked. There's nothing there."

Trump supporters will say, "No harm, no foul."
Trump haters haven't even gotten over the election, much less Russia's so called collusion. This is just one more article of impeachment they'll throw out there, no matter the facts or the law.

Who knows, maybe this one will stick.

Since the Dems in the House are already ready to recommend removal from office, they don't really want or think we need a trial in the Senate to convict. It's a loser there anyway.

Unless those golden shower tapes materialize, LOL.

 

So my case is made...

That is a big fat no! That's like saying that don Corleone had a right to "ask" the movie director to cast his godson.

 

Fortunately, the people who actually vote on these things deliberate after reviewing the evidence in a formal setting presided over by the Chief Justice. Intent matters. Trump may even be given the right to tell his side of the story in terms of intent.

Due process stinks, don't it?

 

Well, if it is proved to my satisfaction (after trial in the senate, not impassioned internet discussion) that he meant "you'd better get the dirt on Biden or you'll never get that assistance, " then your case is made. But we aren't there yet. Sorry.

Unsettling how many people are sharpening io the guillotine before the trial.

 

If they deliberate after reviewing the evidence... Trump is cooked!

 

You do understand that this is only one of... probably over a hundred... instances of abuse of power? And that's not even counting things like emoluments, conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws, conspiracy to engage a foreign power in our elections, ... If this were Trump's only crime, congress probably wouldn't even bother. But this is a drop in the bucket. A more honest statement on your end would be that if any one of the hundreds of violations he is likely guilty of are proven, I will have made my case. Because my case is that we have one of the worst white-collar criminals in American History sitting in the White House.

 

The White House has admitted moving details of a telephone call between Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart to a classified server.

The admission appears to back up one of the claims made by a whistleblower about efforts to conceal evidence of the controversial call, which has led to an impeachment investigation against the president.

The White House official said staff had been directed by National Security Council lawyers to move records of the call to a server usually used to store classified information. They said: “NSC lawyers directed that the classified document be handled appropriately.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...house-secret-server-impeachment-a9123536.html

White House officials say that the call was classified, meaning there was nothing wrong in moving it to that server.

The American people and members of Congress have been able to read the transcript of that call. Nothing was redacted. What was classified?

That 's the problem with Trump's malfeasance. White House officials are forced to lie to protect the President.

Is this the last straw for those officials? Did Trump's abject stupidity go too far this time? There are indications of that, including the whistleblower and those who helped the whistleblower.

 

Few Republicans are defending Trump. The defense is so thin it is nearly invisible, most of it consists of mocking. Their defense goes something like this: Donald Trump never said to Zelensky, "I won't do X unless you give me Y." He never said the phrase "quid pro quo." Therefore, nothing to see here!

"Wow. Impeachment over this?," Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted after reading the Ukraine call transcript. "What a nothing (non-quid pro quo) burger."

Asked what he would call quid pro quo, Graham said, "'Uh, hey pal, you know, you need to like, go after the Bidens or I ain't gonna give you any money,' [He'd] be really, like, thuggish about it." Graham must think Trump is really stupid.

So does Jay Sekulow, one of Trump's lawyers. "I think it's important to understand what we don't have, and what we don't have is a quid pro quo,'" said Sekulow. "In other words, 'I will do this, you do this.' That is absent." Gee, ya think. This guy is one of Trump's lawyers, and that is the best he can do?

Other questionable defensive remarks from Republicans would include it’s a “he said, she said” case (Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, Tenn.), that the whistleblower had “zero first-hand knowledge” (House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, La.) or “political bias” (Rep. Devin Nunes, Calif., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Calif.), that “these attacks are lies” (Rep. Jeff Duncan, S.C.) or, contrary to the evidence, that the real villain is Joe Biden.

Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, topped them all at Maguire's hearing. “Information warfare operation . . . Russia collusion hoax . . . hearsay . . . cabal of leakers . . . another Steele dossier . . . Russia hoax [again] . . . public spectacle . . . Fake news. . . Russia hoax [yet again] . . . Democrats doing the exact same thing . . . Joe Biden . . . Fusion GPS . . . Nude pictures of Trump . . . unhinged and dangerous . . . dishonest, grotesque . . . charade.”

The comments speak for themselves. What the White House put out this week was enough: The President broke the law when he solicited political help from Ukraine. In doing so, he put his political interests above the national interest. How can Republicans defend the indefensible?

They can't, and it shows.

 

Trump said, "I would like you to find out about 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."

Trump abused his official powers "to solicit interference" from Ukraine in the upcoming 2020 election, and the White House took steps to cover it up.

Several White House officials were "deeply disturbed" by Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and tried to "lock down" all records of the phone call, especially the word-for-word transcript produced by the White House.

White House lawyers directed officials to remove the transcript of the call from a computer system that stores them for Cabinet-level officials and instead put the transcript in a system for especially sensitive information.

The White House has admitted moving details of a telephone call between Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart to a classified server. They claimed the
call was classified. The American people and members of Congress have been able to read the transcript of that call. Nothing was redacted. Nothing was classified.

It is interesting to note that Trump, those in the White House defending Trump, the few Republicans in Congress willing to defend Trump, and Trump supporters on this thread never go into the specifics of the call's transcript or the whistleblower's complaint. They use various vague, outdated characterizations, pretend the call was innocent, and try desperately to change the subject, but they dare not venture into the substance of the alleged impeachment charges against Trump.



Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

Rep. Adam Schiff totally made up my conversation with Ukraine President and read it to Congress and Millions. He must resign and be investigated. He has been doing this for two years. He is a sick man!

6:29 AM - Sep 27, 2019

 

No, but he can ask the president of Ukraine.

 

That's an indictment. Don't confuse it with evidence, and don't forget that Trump gets his turn at the trial.

 

Nope. In this case you actually have neither a quid pro quo nor an abuse of power.

 

NBC of all sources offers a pretty balanced view, though obviously they are itching for removal:

[But] does the president have the power to withhold foreign aid at a whim? Sometimes, yes, he might.

Congress has previously passed legislation dealing with foreign economic assistance. Some legislation purports to instruct the president to prevent disbursements to foreign nations that have engaged in disapproved conduct ....

The president's possible defense emerges from foreign affairs history. He could claim that (1) he has broad authority to conduct foreign affairs; (2) even though Congress has enumerated foreign affairs powers, the Constitution is silent on whether he can withhold foreign aid; (3) some statute, somewhere, allows him to withhold foreign aid, and even possibly (4), the law lets him condition such aid on another country doing something beneficial for the United States, such as — and especially — rooting out corruption.

 

That's a dishonest or ridiculous use of the word "interference". Asking Ukraine to fabricate a story and disseminate it among the American electorate might constitute interference, but Trump asking them to give him truthful information which he might or might not have used? Uh, no.

Of course, one wonders how the information could prejudice Biden since his own strong arming of Ukraine while veep, to get rid of a prosecutor was so innocent. Maybe it was. But if so, who cares?

I wonder how the left would react if Ukraine tried to strong arm Trump, or make it Eric Holder under Obama into firing the Attorney General. Cool?

That's a laugh. I provided a link above to the transcript. How specific can I get?

 

"Trump abused his official powers "to solicit interference" from Ukraine in the upcoming 2020 election".

Problem is while it does look like this^^^ 1. You can't prove that was the reason behind the call as of now and 2. People are going to question Democrats who say that because they're inferring malicious intent for Trump but don't for Biden so it doesn't look like truth telling but partisan hackery

"It is interesting to note that Trump, those in the White House defending Trump, the few Republicans in Congress willing to defend Trump, and Trump supporters on this thread never go into the specifics of the call's transcript or the whistleblower's complaint"

It's also interesting that Democrats instead of referencing the actual transcript ad lib and say Mafia boss. Why because in the transcript there is no explicit quid pro quo and you would need that to rule out Trump doing legit investigation because after all he's in charge of the DOJ

 

Well have you said Trump is trying to be a mob boss the word Mafia or Tony Saprano ??? That's the hard hitting truth /s

 

Did Trump say if you do x I'll give you y?

Yes or no?

 

Who cares, it's immaterial.

 

I'll take the none answer as an answer

No it's not at all because without it you can't rule out legitimate investigation which would be apart of the presidents purview

 

I don't mind so much that the left analyzes every thing with a disapproving scowl and through a lens of what looks like hatred (isn't it?), but this whole controversy I think arises from another contortion to see a "thing of value" in the disclosure to Trump of the facts in Joe Biden's insistence of the removal of the Ukrainian prosecutor who had reportedly eyed a gas corporation that Biden's son sits on.

We just went through this madness in the Russia circus:

• "Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer has argued [not concluded, as he has no authority] that “dirt on Clinton,” otherwise known as opposition research, could very well be a thing of value for campaign-finance-law purposes. Ex–FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith has argued to the contrary that it could not. On page 187, the Mueller report noted that no court case has yet applied the foreign-donor ban to opposition research, and that being the first to apply the law this way may raise First Amendment questions."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...n-finance-loopholes-helped-trump-team/587671/

So even the Trump haters at the Atlantic can see two defense at a glance: 1) it's not clearly prohibited, and 2) even if it is, Trump has First Amendment rights like you, and so any finding that it is prohibited may be unconstitutional. And no one -- no one -- has made a convincing argument that political dirt is unarguably a thing of value under the election laws.

So, make the argument if you must that Trump was engaged in electioneering as opposed to diplomacy in the phone call, but please don't pretend that he has no defense to the "thing of value" element of his "crime." He has at least two.

This is political fraudulence and I think Trump will get more votes out of it than he loses.

 

Let's recap.

Trump ASKED for foreign help in the form of a foreign government manufacturing dirt on his political opponent.

That in ITSELF is illegal

The fact that we all saw in that phone memo (it was NOT a transcript) that he was strong arming Zelensky just makes it worse

 

Another way of looking at it:

“The question [of valuation] could be especially difficult where the information consisted simply of the recounting of historically accurate facts.”

From the Mueller report, p. 187-188, I think.