Forget the Ukraine, how did President Trump manage to rig a DNA test, to make Hunter Biden look like heel, to make his father, Joe Biden, lose the Democrat nomination? The guy’s amazing. Is there anything he can’t do?
Joe Doakes
Conceal his mental decline forever?
“The demand was to announce an investigation, not actually start one.” ~ Gordon Sondland
All Trump wanted was the ability to say “Biden is under investigation” all through the election.
Can anyone dispute that was a “thing of value”?
It’s amusing, in an apocalyptic sort of way, that people are still asking “what will the Republicans’ defense be to this,” when the defense is and always has been “forget-about-it”
The evolution of a Trump Scandal
It never happened
Okay it might have happened
Of course it happened — so what
It happened, but it wasn’t wrong
It happened, it was wrong, but it was not impeachable
It’s impeachable — but I don’t care
Lest we forget, calling for the investigation of the hiring of Hunter Biden, who accepted a position in the natural gas industry of Ukraine despite being wholly unqualified except to provide executive access to his father, was not only acceptable, but mandatory.
As I’ve noted before, it’s my view that had Ukraine dared to investigate a former VP’s son, that would have signaled to the entire criminal justice establishment there that it was OK to prosecute the politically connected, and the long, hard slog to a viable state with low levels of corruption could begin.
Thanks again, Democrats, for taking a stand for corruption. I am quite frankly happy that Trump raised this issue, quid pro quo or no. Running for office shouldn’t insulate you from investigation.
Clinton, Biden and the Chicago-mafia sold access on an industrial scale.
Then Trump looked into it.
Now Pelosi, Schiff and the media are telling us to ignore all that corruption and instead look into the looking into.
The reprobates have been able to protect the Biden’s, and to mute the discussion of their perfidy, but once the circus gets to the Senate it’s off like a prom dress.
The reprobates have to understand this, so I wonder what they hope they will get out of this. The House circus has been ineffective at best; a disaster for them at times. They haven’t convinced anyone to rethink whatever they believed at the start, and they face a real shitshow in the Senate.
The Biden’s little scam is classic extortion: A threat made for financial remuneration. That is 100% guaranteed to get dragged out and run under a microscope; quite honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get referred to the DOJ.
The White House had the back of witnesses who refused to abide by Schiff’s subpoena’s. Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and one who is dragging around a carpet bag full of disgrace; no one has his back. It will be show up, or go to prison.
If I’m Kreapy Uncle Joe, I’m sticking pins in my Schiff voodoo doll right now.
BTW, Shifty Schiff made reference to the Mob in his opening statement. I think McConnell would be perfectly within his rights to show a clip from the Soprano’s, where Tony negotiates no-show jobs for his crew with the union boss.
If Republicans actually believed the president to be innocent, they would seek the relevant documents and sworn testimony of the top aides who now dodge accountability.
I have yet to hear anyone say what Trump did was appropriate — its all just a gaslighting and conspiracy theories.
Sad.
Hey, lay off Hunter Biden – he’s just trying to feed his family!
Still waiting on all those subpoenas that Obama dodged.
But let’s talk about something else, if Congress can constitutionally subpoena working papers from the executive branch, does it not figure that the executive can subpoena working documents from Congress? Uh, Adam Schiff….., you might want to start gathering material now.
But these are constitutional matters, clearly within the power of the Supreme Court to decide – and Emery knows this, but pretends not to.
Trump doubles down on debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory ~ AP
Shouldn’t the headline read:
“GOP repeats Russian Security Services talking points?”
Someone should tell Trump not to go repeating conspiracy theories that have been confirmed as having been floated by Russian intelligence agencies.
I’m wondering why populists such as Trump lie all the time. Can they not govern without lying all the time?
Is this a new way of becoming popular among voters these days? Do they become popular because they lie all the time, or despite their lying all the time? I’d like to believe it’s only a certain group of voters who approve of constant lying, but this certain group seems to be a rather big part of voters. Or is it more the case that a certain group of voters are too thick to see Trump is constantly lying?
Or is it more the case that there is some psychological block in their mind from seeing the truth despite the fact there is nothing particularly wrong with their general level of cognitive function including intelligence?
EI, if Trump is a guilty as you seem to think, why is it that he’s saying “let’s go forward with the trial and let the GOP bring forth the witnesses Adam Schiff doesn’t want to hear.”?
Come on, buddy. Read between the lines. The testimony that has occurred so far is split on whether insiders perceived any quid pro quo arrangement. There is precious little of that testimony that would be admissible in court. Do you think a guy who’s been party to as many lawsuits as Trump has is missing this? Really?
I’m starting to think that there will be convictions in this case, but they will be of Adam Schiff and Mr. Ciaramella, maybe Hunter and Joe Biden too, and they will not be in the Senate. There is quite likely something in the statutes that will be found out when we find out precisely who was discussing this information with Ciaramella–quite likely someone without the required security clearance and/or need to know. Looking more like rope-a-dope all the time.
That’s an interesting endorsement of presidential power after 8 years of hearing about Obama.
Question: Mr. President, what exactly did you hope Zelensky would do about the Bidens after your phone call? Exactly.
TRUMP: “Well, I would think that, if they were honest about it, they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-67/?utm_source=link&utm_medium=header
What the whole thing ultimately boils down to is this: the President and his supporters aren’t disputing what happened and they don’t care that it’s wrong.
But it’s not wrong.
Biden is corrupt. He accepts money for access. He launders it through his son so he can claim to have clean hands, the way Hillary laundered it through her foundation and Al Gore laundered it through Buddhist monks. But it’s all the same game: pay to play.
Corruption should be investigated so it can be punished. The fact that a corruption investigation weakens the corrupt politician’s chances of being elected so he can continue the corruption, is not a bug, it’s a feature.
Democrats: Trump should be investigated since he said that Trump should be investigated, but we’ll look the other way when Hilliary (fixed it for ya, Joe) takes over a hundred million bucks from the Russians after a deal that gives them access to U.S. uranium, and we’ll look the other way when Obama takes a book deal that can’t possibly be paid back by book sales, and we’ll look the other way when the Bidens get sweetheart deals from the very nations he was supposed to be working diplomacy with while getting prosecutors investigating his son fired….
I have been entertaining the notion (for myself only) that the reason that nobody (or very few) Democrats and their associates have been invited into the world of legal/judicial/criminal ramifications for their actions is that it’s been too early. The headlines, the activities all have to have an immediate and direct effect on the election because as we’ve seen (even with our own little lefties), the left will (attempt to) gaslight the severity and number of their treasons.
So, I was wondering if this is the next phase? Funny, be careful what you wish for.
President Trump wants to have a Senate impeachment trial, expects Joe and Hunter Biden and whistleblower would be among the witnesses
Let Trump become a raisin in the sun.
The House Judiciary should hold off on taking up the impeachment hearings until after the holidays.
Wait until the courts have ruled on getting the unredacted Mueller report and Trump’s tax records; plus ordering the big players in the loop to have to testify under oath.
Democrats should slow it down — let it breath for a while. Pace themselves.
Don’t let the Republicans get away with their stonewalling tactics. Innocent people never do that.
So, let me see if I got this. Don’t let the Republicans use stonewalling tactic – the result of which is to slow things down, but Democrats should slow things down.
Innocent people never use stonewalling tactics? So we can just skip the trial and put Obama and Hilliary in jail, then?
I love this game, Emery. You might want to develop some self-awareness, though.
Justice Department Watchdog Finds Proper Legal Basis, But Errors, in Russia Probe
Horowitz will conclude that the application still had a proper legal and factual basis, and, more broadly, that FBI officials did not act improperly in opening the Russia investigation, according to the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive report.
The report generally rebuts accusations of a political conspiracy among senior law enforcement officials against the Trump campaign to favor Democrat Hillary Clinton while also knocking the bureau for procedural shortcomings in the FBI, the officials said. On balance, they said, it provides a mixed assessment of the FBI and Justice Department’s undertaking of a probe that became highly politicized and divided the nation.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inspector-general-alleges-fbi-lawyer-altered-email-related-to-russia-probe-11574437554
By the time Trump goes on Fox, or tweets, or pontificates by the helicopter he will say the report has ensnared all the top people in the FBI. His followers will believe him. I will be left to continue to wonder what kind of country we have become and how much further we will slide.
“All Trump wanted was the ability to say “Biden is under investigation” all through the election.”
Don’t be stupid. Trump could have said that even if the Ukrainians had never heard of “Joe Biden.” And Hunter Biden’s activities should have been investigated, Lord knows he’s been investigated again and again in this country, by local authorities.
Trump is a very cynical person. I believe that he has long thought that all politicians are crooks — they spout platitudes about serving the people, but they are using their offices as a racket to enrich themselves and their friends (total bipartisanship on this aspect of public life). He doesn’t like Biden or Hillary or Warren cynically playing the system while being treated like angels (with sometimes soiled wings) by the same media that demonizes him.
What do you call someone who wants to impeach a president for exposing a crime then wants to elect the guy who committed the crime?
A Democrat.
Trump’s delusional call to Fox News yesterday shows how important it is to understand the fantasy land in which so many Trump supporters have imprisoned themselves.
Republicans and Trump supporters in general are now embracing this lunacy conspiracy theory too in their defense of Trump. Reminds me of when your mom said well if everyone did it would you jump off a bridge?
Answer, apparently: Yes
Shouldn’t comments actually make a point or refer to something tangible *before* going into the ad homs?
I’ll say this about Trump, contact with him seems to reveal character as well as just about anything there is. He is a sort of walking ethical litmus test.
One that Rudy Giuliani like so many before, just failed.
Emery, how many times do you have to proven wrong before you begin to question your premises?
You predicted a Hillary landslide. You were wrong.
You were certain that Mueller would find proof that Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Once again, you were wrong. These are not small matters.
You need to ask yourself what am I certain of that is unsupported by empirical evidence?
So much of the quid pro quo case against Trump depends on you knowing the state of Trump’s mind. Not Giuiani’s state of mind, not Sondman’s state of mind.
The aid was not withheld, and the Ukranian’s seem to have had no idea there was a quid pro quo attached to military aid.
The case is such weak sauce, I am beginning to doubt Pelosi will let the case go to the senate. That is a wild card, since McConnell controls the process in the senate, and we’ve seen how important control of process has been to Pelosi in the House.
The senate’s best move would be to review the fact that Hillary & the DNC sought and obtained Ukrainian assistance in investigating Manafort in the summer of 2016.
Or have you forgotten about that?
MP, read the last two EI comments. They’re incoherent.
Apparently the latest GOP defense to the impeachment hearings, in essence, is that facts are irrelevant and that Trump has the power to do whatever he wants, even if it seems inappropriate, improper, or simply wrong.
Emery, you are talking nonsense. You will be very disappointed when Trump is not booted out of office. I will not be surpised, given the weakness of the case against him. This case amounts to “He can’t do it because he is Trump.”
i know that the MSM and hard left anti-Trump websites (hard to tell the difference these days) don’t talk about this much, but Pelosi’s majority exists because Democrats were elected in districts Trump won. These new Democrat congressmen have no long record of incumbency, and most ran promising they weren’t interested in impeaching Trump. To bring them over, Schiff’s case has got to be so good that he sways these district’s voters. Schiff has put processes into place that prevent Trump’s allies in teh house from mounting a competent defense. Schiff is playing a game he can’t win, and if Pelosi wasn’t borderline senile she would know it.
Anti-Trumpers Ben Shapiro and Richard Epstein, among others, would be thrilled to see Trump step down and be replaced by Pence. Even they say that the Schiff’s impeachment process is a clownshow, and that what Trump has done is not impeachable.
So this Clinesmith FBI lawyer who made false statements on on the FISA warrant to tap Carter Page & Trump didn’t just make a false statement on the FISA app — he also falsified an email meant to support the false statement on the FISA app. He was also one of the lawyers who was kicked off of Mueller’s team for exhibiting blatant anti-Trump sentiments.
It is one of the great political divides that half the country views the goings at the FBI — political actions designed to favor a certian presidential candidate, illegal leaks, and adultery between agents — as horrors, while the other half considers them heroic.
“If you read my note to the teller, you can plainly see that there was absolutely no linkage between my simple statement of fact about having a gun and my totally voluntary request to receive a bag of cash. No quid pro quo, no robbery, no crime!”
Re: ‘this Clinesmith FBI lawyer’
“The conduct of the FBI employee didn’t alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had a proper legal and factual basis, an official told the NYT, which said the lawyer was forced out.”
So, it seems the real bottom line is that one bad apple didn’t spoil the barrel. There is also that pesky little thing of 140 contacts involving the Russians and the Trump Campaign.
I think this part is really…well, kind of crazy-cool!
Republicans have criticized any use of political opposition research in applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wiretaps, which are among the most intrusive tools investigators have and are highly regulated.
And yet, somehow, Republicans are okay with Trump using foreign aid to lean on an ally to get it to do political opposition research for him!
You and others on SiTD been predicting a major scandal involving the Obama administration as a result of this particular IG investigation.
How does that crow taste?
“The conduct of the FBI employee didn’t alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had a proper legal and factual basis, an official told the NYT, which said the lawyer was forced out.”
This quote is from an unnamed source to a trump-hating MSM outlet. This is called “getting ahead of the news cycle” or “framing the narrative.”
If the changed document made no difference, why did Clinesmith sacrifice his career for it?
Really, Emery, use your common sense.
And who, exactly, has been predicting a major scandal concerning the IG investigation? No me. Not Mitch. Obviously, if the MSM was doing its job, there would be a major scandal about Obama officials ginning up an investigation against Trump, but it won’t happen as long as the MSM has power to stop it.
And today Glenn Simpson, the dude who commissioned the Steele dossier, goes on Meet the Press & says he was made a patsy by Russian intel. Lol, this is kind of the opposite of what the Dems have been saying for years, that Trump was a Russian patsy & Simpson found him out.
But what about Chalupa? Nellie Ohr? Fusion GPS? 30,000 emails? Crowdstrike? —Benghazi?
You sound like Devin Nunes. At least you’ll always have Uranium one ☝️
You are flailing again, Emery.
It’s really not an effective attack on Trump to bring up Hillary’s episodes of corruption and incompetence. She lost for a reason, you know.
Malignantly narcissistic leaders inspire uncritical devotion in their followers who share their delusions of grandeur and victimhood. This creates a mutually reinforced narcissistic trance that allows and excuses any misdeeds and malfeasance.
More talk of Hillary?
Lighter commenting today as I try to think up a legal justification for Trump’s withholding of security assistance to Ukraine.
MP, it’s worth seeing this video (via this tweet, if you ever decide to respond to any leftist weirdos about Trump. Take as needed whenever you think you might start writing a response.
Woolly: you often comment about “never-Trumpers.
It’s rather confusing — how many “never Trumpers” are actually part of the administration, and do they also get credit for being “deep state?”
#nevertrumpers refers to republicans (like Bill Cristol).
I rarely hear Republicans give blanket approval to Trump. None of the conservative commenters on SITD give Trump blanket approval; it’s heavily qualified. Ben Shapiro & Richard Epstein thought Trump was a disastrous candidate, are shocked that he won, and when they praise him, it is really praise for unintentionally doing the right thing, such as allowing the federalist Society to vet his judicial nominees.
I understand that there are people who think that Trump is great in every way. Sean Hannity (an entertainer, not a politician) is like that.
Lighter commenting today as I try to think up a legal justification for Trump’s withholding of security assistance to Ukraine.
Because if the Bidens can be investigated or prosecuted in Ukraine, anyone can, and hence you can put the kibosh on corruption there with one fell swoop. Assuming, of course, that it is actually against the law to take an obvious bribe from the national gas company there.
And if you put the kibosh on corruption, suddenly you might find an awful lot of citizens are suddenly willing to fight for their country.
“Lighter commenting today as I try to think up a legal justification for Trump’s withholding of security assistance to Ukraine.”
How’s this?
Ukraine has a corruption problem & Trump didn’t want to give them money that would be lost to corruption?
Are we not allowed to urge the Ukrainians to investigate corruption if the trail leads to the Biden family?
Afghanistan is a corruption problem. Iraq is a corruption problem. Russia and China are both corruption problems — yet Trump never mentions it …..
Woolly wrote: “I rarely hear Republicans give blanket approval to Trump”
As I see it — Trump is like a “Post Tortoise”.
When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that’s a post tortoise. You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he’s up there, he’s elevated beyond his ability to function and you have to wonder what kind of dumb ass put him there to begin with.
Democrats put him there, by nominating Hillary to run against him, a woman so widely despised that voters cast their ballots for someone they hated even more, just to spite her.
Democrats are poised to do it again, next Fall.
Regarding the notion that “Trump never mentioned this”, the thought that these things might be hinted at in diplomacy, instead of stated outright, apparently escapes Emery.
^^ Hint — it’s not about corruption, it’s about getting dirt on his political opponents.