Sessions has resigned

[Tom Sawyer]

So Dems should go about appealing to the stupidity, ignorance, fear, and hate found in human nature like Republicans do?

Since they're trying to get Americans to vote for them, this sounds like a plan.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I wrote about what we, the public knows on a factual basis. The Trump Tower meeting is very serious and we have enough facts with which to form an analysis approaching reasonable. It may not seem all that juicy, but don't underestimate it. The un-indicted co-conspirator case, with respect to Michael Cohen, is also a known. Between those two cases, there could be as many as 10 criminal charges brought against Trump.

And that's just what we know for sure.

The whole thing about Trump being a Russian asset is pure speculation at this point.

- - - Updated - - -

He'll fire Mueller and squash the investigation before the next congress is seated.

Thus insuring an impeachment for obstruction of justice. Even a Republican Senate would be unlikely to impede such an impeachment since most are patriots first and Trump supporters second, if at all.

I believe that the failure of the Democratic party is rooted in this type of misplaced faith in human nature.

So Dems should go about appealing to the stupidity, ignorance, fear, and hate found in human nature like Republicans do?

Much like poster, Gun Nut is a provocateur.

 

[Max Rockatansky]

I did explain in the post. It's not that he doesn't get nailed. He gets nailed. He just settles out of court, because his lawyers are all prepared to drag everything out for as long as possible.
Seriously, though, if Trump thought in terms of 'buffers' he would have at least appeared to divest himself of his business interests to avoid emolument violations. Funnel the money into accounts he has access to, but not directly under his name.

Trump, instead, behaves as someone who thinks he'll never get caught, or if caught he can just brazen his way out of it. Lie, and throw lawyers at it, until they go away.

Agreed about Federal legal assets, but unless you're advocating a Federal vendetta, then those investigations will stop when it's clear there's nothing to find or that can be proved.

Not a vendetta, but I still don't think Trump wanted or expected to win, so he did not spend nearly enough time covering his backtrail.
The only thing taking time right now is that Mueller wants to nail down absolutely everything before he goes public.

If Trump has violated the law, why aren’t there charges?

 

[Gun Nut]

I believe that the failure of the Democratic party is rooted in this type of misplaced faith in human nature.

And to what do you attribute the failure of the Rethuglican Party?
Democrats flip 43rd state legislative seat since Trump took office

Looking at history, that was not the success it has been over the past decades when just about every president's party looses both the House and Senate. That is the norm. Today, the Dems barely accomplished half (just the House) of what every other instance of the party has been able to accomplish that way.

The Republicans picked up ADDITIONAL seats in the Senate. That's like losing a football game 17 to -3. How the fuck did you get a -3?? Now that takes a special kind of stupid.
Your "blue wave" was barely a tiny ripple.

 

[Gun Nut]

I wrote about what we, the public knows on a factual basis. The Trump Tower meeting is very serious and we have enough facts with which to form an analysis approaching reasonable. It may not seem all that juicy, but don't underestimate it. The un-indicted co-conspirator case, with respect to Michael Cohen, is also a known. Between those two cases, there could be as many as 10 criminal charges brought against Trump.

And that's just what we know for sure.

The whole thing about Trump being a Russian asset is pure speculation at this point.

- - - Updated - - -

Thus insuring an impeachment for obstruction of justice. Even a Republican Senate would be unlikely to impede such an impeachment since most are patriots first and Trump supporters second, if at all.

I believe that the failure of the Democratic party is rooted in this type of misplaced faith in human nature.

So Dems should go about appealing to the stupidity, ignorance, fear, and hate found in human nature like Republicans do?

Much like poster, Gun Nut is a provocateur.

Being "triggered" doesn't mean what triggered you is a "provocateur".
Yes. What Opoponax said.

- - - Updated - - -

I did explain in the post. It's not that he doesn't get nailed. He gets nailed. He just settles out of court, because his lawyers are all prepared to drag everything out for as long as possible.
Seriously, though, if Trump thought in terms of 'buffers' he would have at least appeared to divest himself of his business interests to avoid emolument violations. Funnel the money into accounts he has access to, but not directly under his name.

Trump, instead, behaves as someone who thinks he'll never get caught, or if caught he can just brazen his way out of it. Lie, and throw lawyers at it, until they go away.

Agreed about Federal legal assets, but unless you're advocating a Federal vendetta, then those investigations will stop when it's clear there's nothing to find or that can be proved.

Not a vendetta, but I still don't think Trump wanted or expected to win, so he did not spend nearly enough time covering his backtrail.
The only thing taking time right now is that Mueller wants to nail down absolutely everything before he goes public.

If Trump has violated the law, why aren’t there charges?

Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule that a sitting President cannot be charged with a (Federal?) crime?
Dozens of others related to his scheme were, in fact, indicted.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule that a sitting President cannot be charged with a (Federal?) crime?

No.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule that a sitting President cannot be charged with a (Federal?) crime?

No.

Well, I think they're about to.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I did explain in the post. It's not that he doesn't get nailed. He gets nailed. He just settles out of court, because his lawyers are all prepared to drag everything out for as long as possible.
Seriously, though, if Trump thought in terms of 'buffers' he would have at least appeared to divest himself of his business interests to avoid emolument violations. Funnel the money into accounts he has access to, but not directly under his name.

Trump, instead, behaves as someone who thinks he'll never get caught, or if caught he can just brazen his way out of it. Lie, and throw lawyers at it, until they go away.

Agreed about Federal legal assets, but unless you're advocating a Federal vendetta, then those investigations will stop when it's clear there's nothing to find or that can be proved.

Not a vendetta, but I still don't think Trump wanted or expected to win, so he did not spend nearly enough time covering his backtrail.
The only thing taking time right now is that Mueller wants to nail down absolutely everything before he goes public.

If Trump has violated the law, why aren’t there charges?

He has violated the law and has faced a slew of charges. 3500 lawsuits in state and federal courts, including criminal violations and litigation.

Contract disputes, defamation, sexual harassment, tax code violations. Some have been dismissed, many have been resolved without a clear public record of what happened.

 

[blastula]

I believe that the failure of the Democratic party is rooted in this type of misplaced faith in human nature.

And to what do you attribute the failure of the Rethuglican Party?
Democrats flip 43rd state legislative seat since Trump took office

Looking at history, that was not the success it has been over the past decades when just about every president's party looses both the House and Senate. That is the norm. Today, the Dems barely accomplished half (just the House) of what every other instance of the party has been able to accomplish that way.

The Republicans picked up ADDITIONAL seats in the Senate. That's like losing a football game 17 to -3. How the fuck did you get a -3?? Now that takes a special kind of stupid.
Your "blue wave" was barely a tiny ripple.

No, that's completely ignorant of the electoral conditions. It was a very good night for Democrats, the best net gain in the House since after Watergate. Criminal Republican presidents are good for electing Dems.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule that a sitting President cannot be charged with a (Federal?) crime?

No.

Well, I think they're about to.

That would take a pending court case for them to accept and then rule on. To the best of my knowledge, no such cases have made there way up the appellate river, so to speak.

You may be thinking of Gamble v. US that some have argued--if upheld--would mean Presidential pardons could also apply to State crimes, but that's evidently something Mueller already accounted for:

In reality, though, the Mueller investigation seems to have made itself safe on that front. Pardons were a significant problem for Mueller a few months ago, but not because of Gamble. The problem was that many of the relevant states where crimes were committed—for example, New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, California—already had their own double jeopardy rules in place locally. Mueller would have already had to strategize his criminal charges and guilty pleas around those rules. For example, Mueller’s charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort likely preserved many state prosecutions. By luck, more charges were still available even after his trial, thanks ironically to a lone hold-out juror. Those deadlocked charges left a mistrial that could theoretically be retried on the federal or state level without a double jeopardy problem, with or without Gamble. When Manafort pleaded guilty last month, Mueller seemed to leave the door open on many charges by state prosecutors. By now, Manafort has likely proffered whatever potentially incriminating information he has to Mueller’s grand jury under oath, and even if he tries to back out of cooperation, it is hard to unring that bell.
...
But now that Mueller has so many major figures cooperating or facing a wide range of potential charges, the danger of pleas followed by leverage-removing pardons is probably inconsequential. The problem remains only for 1) conspirators who committed too small a number of crimes; 2) which would be covered by both federal and state law; and 3) are in states that do not have double jeopardy protections already, as in New York, etc.; and 4) are close enough to Trump or have such incriminating information beyond what Manafort, etc. have provided that Trump would finally use his pardon power to protect himself. That’s an unlikely combination.

At this stage, Gamble will not help Manafort, Cohen, and Flynn, and it probably won’t help any significant cooperating witness.

Plus, there is this, from This overlooked part of the Constitution could stop Trump from abusing his pardon power:

If President Trump is counting on his pardon power as a way of eluding special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, he is mistaken. He is ignoring a core part of the Constitution that most of us have overlooked, too. Most people assume that the president wields absolute authority to pardon others and potentially even himself. However, the Constitution, correctly understood, imposes limits on a president’s ability to grant pardons if they are issued for the purpose of self-protection.

This is not because of some abstract notion of political morality or a vague commitment to the rule of law. It is not because of the maxim, “No one may be the judge in his own case,” because a pardon is an executive action, not a judicial act.

Rather, the answer lies in a neglected part of the Constitution: Article II, Section 3, which directs that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Underscoring that directive is the fact that the only oath whose precise formulation is detailed in the Constitution is the one taken by the president: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.” The Constitution refers to many offices as “Office of Trust,” invoking the legal concept of trusteeship, but the president’s faithfulness is the one most explicitly commanded by the document.

The language of faith here is no accident: The concept flows from the Latin “fiducia,” meaning faith. Lawyers in the 18th century used the phrase “faithfully execute” in legal instruments such as trusts to impose duties of loyalty and care to others, and the phrase appears in many colonial corporate charters and early state constitutions. The phrase “faithfully execute” incorporates the president’s obligation to have fidelity to the best interests of the people. Think of the common-law concept of fiduciary duty applied to lawyers and agents, transplanted to the public sector. These commitments are as foundational to constitutional law as they are to business ethics and corporate law.

The framers imported the well-known fiduciary duty of loyalty from the common law precisely to constrain the exercise of the president’s powers under the Constitution. They used the language of faith and trust to signal to courts and to officials that they were invoking well-known commands of loyalty long recognized at common law. Our Constitution’s designers wanted public officials to be subject to the same kinds of fiduciary obligations that CEOs, trustees and lawyers are routinely held to in the private sector. Those duties prohibit self-dealing and acting under a conflict of interest.

Therefore, “self-pardoning” or pardoning your closest associates for self-interested reasons should not pass legal muster, because it violates the fiduciary law of public office. If the president tries to pardon himself, he is engaged in blatant self-dealing, transgressing both his oath and the primary prohibition to which all fiduciaries are subject. If the president pardons his associates primarily out of a motivation to protect himself, those pardons would also be invalid as disloyal, and federal courts should probably allow those prosecutions to proceed notwithstanding the pardon; indeed, even if a president succeeds in releasing a pardoned criminal, a successor president would not have to recognize an invalid pardon. The extent to which courts will entertain these limits on the pardon power of the president is as yet untested — but courts through the ages have directly enforced the fiduciary duties of office against public servants. Ultimately, a president is not allowed to put his own narrow interest over the public interest because he is constrained by his oath and his office.

As the piece notes, it hasn't been tested, but that's in our favor, not Trump's as the assumption in that case would be for original intent and, you know, common sense, but more importantly, any such attempt by Trump would not just be automatically granted. There is a process for pardons and each stage of the process, something like this could easily disrupt that process at the very least so that it never obtains and/or bleeds into the next administration and the next President rescinds the pardon.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

If Trump has violated the law, why aren’t there charges?

He has violated the law and has faced a slew of charges. 3500 lawsuits in state and federal courts, including criminal violations and litigation.

Contract disputes, defamation, sexual harassment, tax code violations. Some have been dismissed, many have been resolved without a clear public record of what happened.

And impeachment proposals have already been submitted, they just were defeated and therefore were never taken to the next level. That was then.

What will happen next is Mueller will finalize his report and send it to Congress most likely in the first week of January when the garbage is out and the Dems are back in the House. But as I noted in either this thread or another one like it, now that the House is sane again, they will also restart their own investigation, so it will likely be a two-fold process; Mueller submits his report and then the House acts off of his recommendations and begins their own unfettered investigation (iow, all the shit they couldn't reveal previously will be revealed, including Trump's tax returns). That kind of shit.

Whether or not they decide to move toward impeachment will, of course, depend on how detailed/thorough is Mueller's report (which should be excessively detailed). They may decide to just hold months of public hearings and reveal everything in a bid to destroy any hopes of Trump running in 2020 instead of officially going up against a Republican Senate.

Again, it all depends on the nature of the evidence and the thoroughness of Mueller's report. It will either be so detailed as to force enough Republicans in the Senate to let it be known (in secret) that they would vote for impeachment, or not. These kinds of things are always negotiated behind the scenes.

My guess is that Mueller has more than enough evidence to force even the most obstinate Republicans away from drowning with Trump. For them, it's all about the voters. We just saw a VERY compelling correction that brought us back to the real map of public opinion (the 2012 map[/uel]) and that's without Mueller's report.

Trump's support in the midterms was poison for some 70% of the people he endorsed and that's only going to get much much worse with every word out of Mueller's mouth, let alone public hearings in the House of people the Republicans refused to allow be public.

By the time Mueller and the House Dems are done with Trump, the Senate Republicans will see that his only support is among the 10-15% die hard nazis fuckheads and that just won't be enough to back him any more (for most of them; there will always be a handful of people sucking his cock and/or bought by Putin, like McConnell, but they would likely also find ways to distance themselves).

In short, the case will be made so that even DK fuckheads will have no choice but to go, "Oh, shit. Yeah, he's guilty as fuck."

Not all, but more than enough for the requisite number of Republican Senators to pledge his demise and then he's fucked.

They will offer resignation, but he'll likely (stupidly) refuse it at first. He'll chum Kushner, but that won't be enough. He'll chum Jr. next, but that won't be enough (most likely because they're both already fucked). They'll threaten Ivanka last--the only thing he's in love with--and that will be the final straw and he'll resign.

At heart, he's a coward and a quitter, it's just a matter of bashing it into his skull hard enough for him to finally see reality.

 

[ZiprHead]

Napolitano: Acting AG ‘does not qualify under the law’ to take job

Fox News legal commentator Andrew Napolitano on Thursday said the man President Trump named as Acting attorney general "does not qualify under the law" to take the job.

Napolitano's remarks come a day after Trump announced that Matthew Whitaker would take over the Justice Department as acting attorney general after Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned from his post at Trump's request.

"There’s only three ways a person can become acting attorney general," Napolitano said. "One, if you are the deputy attorney general — Rod Rosenstein — the president signs an executive order and makes you acting."

"Two is if you are already in the Department of Justice and have a job that requires Senate confirmation and you have received confirmation," Napolitano added. "That is not the case with Matt Whitaker because he’s the chief of staff. That does not require Senate confirmation."

Whitaker's most recent post was chief of staff to Sessions at the Justice Department.

"Three is a recess appointment, which is not relevant here because the Senate is not in recess," Napolitano continued.

 

[Max Rockatansky]

Napolitano: Acting AG ‘does not qualify under the law’ to take job

Fox News legal commentator Andrew Napolitano on Thursday said the man President Trump named as Acting attorney general "does not qualify under the law" to take the job.

Napolitano's remarks come a day after Trump announced that Matthew Whitaker would take over the Justice Department as acting attorney general after Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned from his post at Trump's request.

"There’s only three ways a person can become acting attorney general," Napolitano said. "One, if you are the deputy attorney general — Rod Rosenstein — the president signs an executive order and makes you acting."

"Two is if you are already in the Department of Justice and have a job that requires Senate confirmation and you have received confirmation," Napolitano added. "That is not the case with Matt Whitaker because he’s the chief of staff. That does not require Senate confirmation."

Whitaker's most recent post was chief of staff to Sessions at the Justice Department.

"Three is a recess appointment, which is not relevant here because the Senate is not in recess," Napolitano continued.

I hope Congress, lame duck or not, has the balls to call Trump on this.

 

[Elixir]

I believe that the failure of the Democratic party is rooted in this type of misplaced faith in human nature.

And to what do you attribute the failure of the Rethuglican Party?
Democrats flip 43rd state legislative seat since Trump took office

Looking at history, that was not the success it has been over the past decades when just about every president's party looses both the House and Senate. That is the norm. Today, the Dems barely accomplished half (just the House) of what every other instance of the party has been able to accomplish that way.

The Republicans picked up ADDITIONAL seats in the Senate. That's like losing a football game 17 to -3. How the fuck did you get a -3?? Now that takes a special kind of stupid.
Your "blue wave" was barely a tiny ripple.

367 State Legislative seats and at least seven Governorships turned blue after the elections. After this astounding Republican success, all I can do is cheer them on.

The Republicans already had the Senate, they lost the House, they lost over 300 state-level seats , they lost at least 7 Governorships...so what did they "win" again?

Like a good little Trumpsucker, you get pissed on and believe Cheato when he tells you it's blessed rain. Stay the course, dude!

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

And it looks more and more like they could lose two of the Senate seats they prematurely celebrated: The Arizona, Florida, and Georgia election recounts, explained.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Trump does not hate marijuana.

Sessions does hate marijuana.

Forgive me if I fail to weep over this firing.

 

[blastula]

Poe?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Sessions is a drug warrior. He had made it clear that he hates state legalization laws and desires to forcefully enforce federal laws in states where the people dared to legalizes. Forgive me if I fail to weep. This is not a Poe.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Sessions is a drug warrior. He had made it clear that he hates state legalization laws and desires to forcefully enforce federal laws in states where the people dared to legalizes. Forgive me if I fail to weep. This is not a Poe.

So you're for states' rights when it's about pot but against states' rights when it's about guns.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Sessions is a drug warrior. He had made it clear that he hates state legalization laws and desires to forcefully enforce federal laws in states where the people dared to legalizes. Forgive me if I fail to weep. This is not a Poe.

So you're for states' rights when it's about pot but against states' rights when it's about guns.

I'm in favor of peoples rights when it's about people. Having the state violate your rights is just as bad as having the fed violate your rights. The only way to interpret it otherwise, given my posting history, is to think of the government as the end-all and be-all of society, and the only question is which layer of government should have complete rule. I say that the people have rights that no layer of government should infringe. It is so simple only a fascist could fail to understand.