The Closeted Senator from South Carolina has said he won't even listen to witness testimony - f**king ridiculous.

But I do see that he is going after Biden - those photos Trump has of Lindsey and his pool boy must be pretty graphic

This whole spectacle is ridiculous.

I despair of the Dems sometimes. Did they learn nothing from Harry Reid's f*ck up?

This was POTUS for pol BAU - albeit executed pretty clumsily (because Trump is a moron). When, as they certainly will, the Dems hold the WH but not the House, they are going to get this precedent rammed back at them with an incremental topping of partisanship.

And does anyone seriously think Hunter Biden wasn't upto his nuts in shit?

if Trump sees a need to go after Hunter Biden, or even both Biden's that's fine. Present concerns/evidence to the DoJ and they'll investigate, it's sort of what they do. However don't use American taxpayer money already appropriated by Congress to aid another nation state under attack from Russia to pursue via your personal attorney an act of bribery that serves your domestic political agenda not the national interest based largely on some nonsensical conspiracy theories put forward by Russia

And don't then spend time trying to cover up said act and intimidate witnesses with some disgusting individual attacks using the bully pulpit of the president.

This whole spectacle is ridiculous.

I despair of the Dems sometimes. Did they learn nothing from Harry Reid's f*ck up?

This was POTUS for pol BAU - albeit executed pretty clumsily (because Trump is a moron). When, as they certainly will, the Dems hold the WH but not the House, they are going to get this precedent rammed back at them with an incremental topping of partisanship.

And does anyone seriously think Hunter Biden wasn't upto his nuts in shit?

Why not?

Because it's illegal. And impeachable.

In 2100 when the emotion has subsided and no one is alive with first hand memory of Trump, these are the things that will leap out to the historians and they will say 'hang on, the Dems were doing WHAT?'

Actually - I take that back. You're not deluded, you know this is nonsense. What you are is spending a monumental amount of time saying the same bullsh*t over and over, and it's tedious. You must be amusing yourselves but it kills any genuine conversation about what is a pretty interesting topic if you stop trying to gaslight everyone.

A futile post, that will no doubt receive a furious bout of indignation and further nonsense, but f*ck me...what a waste of time.

The Constitution says nothing about witness intimidation.

I'm not sure that you want to discuss so much as have everyone agree with you.

Anyway, speaking of gaslighting have you seen this?

https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/1 ... 13121?s=20

Actually - I take that back. You're not deluded, you know this is nonsense. What you are is spending a monumental amount of time saying the same bullsh*t over and over, and it's tedious. You must be amusing yourselves but it kills any genuine conversation about what is a pretty interesting topic if you stop trying to gaslight everyone.

A futile post, that will no doubt receive a furious bout of indignation and further nonsense, but f*ck me...what a waste of time.

if Trump sees a need to go after Hunter Biden, or even both Biden's that's fine. Present concerns/evidence to the DoJ and they'll investigate, it's sort of what they do. However don't use American taxpayer money already appropriated by Congress to aid another nation state under attack from Russia to pursue via your personal attorney an act of bribery that serves your domestic political agenda not the national interest based largely on some nonsensical conspiracy theories put forward by Russia

And don't then spend time trying to cover up said act and intimidate witnesses with some disgusting individual attacks using the bully pulpit of the president.

And you are still missing the point. It really doesn't matter what is in Trumps heart and how "genuine" his concerns are. Objectively, you are still left runing a dog and pony show through the media because a sitting president asked to have a corrupt arrangement investigated.

Why not?

Yes, because what's really important in all this is what historians will think nearly a century from now...

I'll tell you what historians will say long before then. 20 years from now there will be libraries of books delivering detailed expositions of the Trump administration as the gold-standard in American political corruption. Essay upon essay, an entire body of academic work under the subcategory of 'How The F*ck Did We Let That Happen?'

He didn't ask to have it investigated. He asked that they say it was being investigated, and to say so publicly. Ignoring that distinction and saying it doesn't matter how genuine his concerns were, is to miss the point entirely.

Now you see this is one of those Trumpbiguities. They are quite amazing. Here, to my mind, is what is in play around that whole bit:

1. If he only asked for a statement then that is substantively less bad than actually asking for an investigation into a political rival.

He didn't ask to have it investigated. He asked that they say it was being investigated, and to say so publicly. Ignoring that distinction and saying it doesn't matter how genuine his concerns were, is to miss the point entirely.

The Constitution says nothing about witness intimidation.

Now you see this is one of those Trumpbiguities. They are quite amazing. Here, to my mind, is what is in play around that whole bit:

1. If he only asked for a statement then that is substantively less bad than actually asking for an investigation into a political rival.
2. But it undermines a talking point about Trump seeking to have corruption investigated.
3. Except I think Trump actually thinks the Bidens are corrupt (leaving aside any hypocrisy on that point), and probably actually wanted it to be investigated at some point in some way.
4. So he possibly asked for an actual investigation but if that happens then it undermines the credibility of Sondland's testimony.

I doubt anyone can say one thing about that whole thing that covers all of that stuff off. And it's partly because with Trump we are dealing with chaos incarnate. A guy who just says stuff, without too much reflection, but driven by some preternatural instinct for power and weakness and the main point.

Now you see this is one of those Trumpbiguities. They are quite amazing. Here, to my mind, is what is in play around that whole bit:

1. If he only asked for a statement then that is substantively less bad than actually asking for an investigation into a political rival.

Precisely the opposite is true. He could try to justify asking for a genuine investigation in the interests of attacking corruption. (Except we know he isn't) To ask only for an announcement of an investigation into a political rival, specifically a public announcement, shows he was only interested in smearing that opponent.

Interesting.

Not interesting. I am the arbiter of interesting.

It's worse than I thought.

Try arguing the points. You guys have about 2 posts worth of material before you go to the matresses.

Bribery is impeachable and Trump is bang to rights.

Even assuming Trump's intent was corrupt, this is not the bribery the Framers had in mind in the impeachment clause. The Constitution makes bribery a predicate for impeaching and removing a president. Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff is pushing the theory that President Trump has committed impeachable bribery because, as Schiff sees it, the president’s conduct violates a subsection of the federal bribery statute.

As in most criminal statutes, Congress includes several crimes in the bribery law. The offenses have gradations of seriousness, ranging from directly paying a public official a lavish bribe, to a public official’s indirectly agreeing to receive (but not ultimately receiving) some “thing of value” to be influenced in some official act. Like some of the lesser bribery offenses, the one Schiff is homing in on does not require an actual bribery (in the sense of an actual payoff).

Specifically, he is accusing the president of making a “corrupt demand.”

Under the law, if a public official, with corrupt intent, demands that someone provide him a bribe (a “thing of value”) as a condition for performing an “official act,” that is enough to prove guilt, even if the official drops the demand before something of value is exchanged. The Democrats’ theory is that Trump, intending nothing other the advancement of his own political interests (i.e., improving his 2020 reelection chances), corruptly demanded that Ukraine conduct investigations of his political rivals in exchange for two official acts — viz., granting a White House visit for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and transferring $400 million in military aid authorized by Congress to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression.

Schiff theorizes that this statutory bribery crime was complete when the demand was made; it makes no difference that the demand was dropped, and the Ukrainians got their aid. (Zelensky has not yet visited the White House, but Trump did meet him publicly at a session attendant to the annual U.N. festivities in September.)

To be clear, I do not believe Trump could be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt of bribery because there are significant proof problems, on the issues of both (a) corrupt intent and (b) the causal connection between the purported demand and the official acts. (On the latter, I’ve argued that it is foolish for Republicans to deny the existence of a quid pro quo; that does not mean the proof is strong enough to convict in court — so far, the circumstantial evidence that Trump ordered the defense aid to be withheld is not airtight.)

For present purposes, though, I want to focus on bribery — specifically, on what the Framers had in mind when they wrote bribery into the Constitution as a predicate for impeachment.

Hint: It was not the above-described federal bribery statute, the current version of which was enacted in 1962, some 175 years after the Constitution was written.

The Framers made “Treason, Bribery, and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” the triggers for impeachment. Obviously, they were referring to bribery of a high order, on the scale of treason. The latter offense involves making war on the U.S., including giving the enemy aid and comfort. Enemies are foreign powers with which we are at war. The Framers, however, were worried that other foreign powers — even ones with which we are at peace — could corrupt an American president. Bribery was meant to fill that gap. It made impeachment available if a president was bribed by a foreign power to put the might of the United States in the service of the foreign power at the expense of the American people.

Schiff and the Democrats would reject this construction of bribery in the Constitution. Their position is that if it’s bribery under the federal statute, that’s good enough to impeach a president.

But is that really what they think?

On Wednesday, Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified about the two afore-described “official acts” that the Ukrainians sought from President Trump. Sondland said he could only be sure about one of them: the White House visit. As for the second, Sondland could only “deduce” that Trump was holding back on the defense aid to nudge Ukraine into announcing the investigations. Over time, Sondland inferred that the aid was being delayed and worried that it might not be transferred. He directly asked President Trump, who exclaimed that there was “no quid pro quo” — though this was less than convincing: Trump continued to insist that he wanted to Zelensky to do what was “right,” and Sondland understood that the aid was caught in a “stalemate” that could be undone only if it announced it would do the investigations.

Democrats spent most of Sondland’s hours of testimony pushing him very hard on this second official act, the provision of defense aid. Schiff and majority counsel, Daniel Goldman, repeatedly walked Sondland through the timeline and got him to agree that he’d “put two and two together.” Why the vigorous effort to induce an admission (which Sondland could not give) that the aid was absolutely conditional on the investigations?

Because Schiff knows that not all bribery is created equal. He knows the first official act is not good enough for impeachment, even if it’s good enough for the federal bribery statute. That is: No one in America except the most ardent anti-Trumpers is going to support the impeachment of the president of the United States over the mere denial of a White House visit to a foreign politician.

Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that all the facts were as the Democrats claim, including that the president’s intent was corrupt. That would indeed establish a corrupt demand under the bribery statute, just as Schiff theorizes. But Schiff knows, like everyone knows, that that would not be close to the bribery needed to justify impeaching and removing a president.

And that’s because the Democrats’ theory is simply wrong. A violation of the federal bribery statute is not the bribery the Framers had in mind in the impeachment clause.

Schiff is anxious to tie the defense aid to the quid pro quo, too, because it’s clearly more serious than denying the White House visit. But that betrays his real problem: A statutory bribery offense is not necessarily enough. Even if he can prove one, there’s a big leap to impeachment and removal.

As we’ve said several times, impeachment is political, not legal. Congress does not need to prove a statutory crime; and no court can tell the House what an impeachable offense is — the brute fact is that Democrats are the majority, and they have the raw power to cite any alleged misconduct that can win a simple majority vote.

Yet, in the GOP-controlled Senate, a two-thirds’ supermajority is necessary to convict and remove a president from power. If House Democrats go down their bribery road, the Senate will have the opportunity to consider what the Framers had in mind when they put bribery in the impeachment clause. Here’s betting the senators will not conclude that a “corrupt demand” makes the cut.