RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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NYTIMES OPED MOVING TOWARDS OFFICIAL IMPEACHMENT TERRITORY!
(by the same content referenced on the first page of this thread 1 year ago btw)
Opinion | An Article of Impeachment Against Donald J. Trump
An Article of Impeachment Against Donald J. Trump
David LeonhardtJAN. 28, 2018
President Trump arriving at the White House on Friday. Eric Thayer for The New York Times
There are good reasons to be wary of impeachment talk. Congressional Republicans show zero interest, and they’re the ones in charge. Democrats, for their part, need to focus on retaking Congress, and railing about impeachment probably won’t help them win votes.
But let’s set aside realpolitik for a few minutes and ask a different question: Is serious consideration of impeachment fair? I think the answer is yes. The evidence is now quite strong that Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice. Many legal scholars believe a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. So the proper remedy for a president credibly accused of obstructing justice is impeachment.
The first article of impeachment against Richard Nixon argued that he had “prevented, obstructed and impeded the administration of justice.” One of the two impeachment articles that the House passed against Bill Clinton used that identical phrase. In both cases, the article then laid out the evidence with a numbered list. Nixon’s version had nine items. Clinton’s had seven. Each list was meant to show that the president had intentionally tried to subvert a federal investigation.
Given last week’s news — that Trump has already tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign — it’s time to put together the same sort of list for Trump. Of course, this list is based only on publicly available information. Mueller, no doubt, knows more.
1. During a dinner at the White House on Jan. 27, 2017, Trump asked for a pledge of “loyalty” from James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, who was overseeing the investigation of the Trump campaign.
2. On Feb. 14, Trump directed several other officials to leave the Oval Office so he could speak privately with Comey. He then told Comey to “let this go,” referring to the investigation of Michael Flynn, who had resigned the previous day as Trump’s national security adviser.
3. On March 22, Trump directed several other officials to leave a White House briefing so he could speak privately with Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director. Trump asked them to persuade Comey to back off investigating Flynn.
4. In March and April, Trump told Comey in phone calls that he wanted Comey to lift the ”cloud” of the investigation.
5. On May 9, Trump fired Comey as F.B.I. director. On May 10, Trump told Russian officials that the firing had “taken off” the “great pressure” of the Russia investigation. On May 11, he told NBC News that the firing was because of “this Russia thing.”
6. On May 17, shortly after hearing that the Justice Department had appointed Mueller to take over the Russia investigation, Trump berated Jeff Sessions, the attorney general. The appointment had caused the administration again to lose control over the investigation, and Trump accused Sessions of “disloyalty.”
7. In June, Trump explored several options to retake control. At one point, he ordered the firing of Mueller, before the White House counsel resisted.
8. On July 8, aboard Air Force One, Trump helped draft a false public statement for his son, Donald Trump Jr. The statement claimed that a 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer was about adoption policy. Trump Jr. later acknowledged that the meeting was to discuss damaging information the Russian government had about Hillary Clinton.
9. On July 26, in a tweet, Trump called for the firing of Andrew McCabe, the F.B.I.’s deputy director, a potential corroborating witness for Comey’s conversations with Trump. The tweet was part of Trump’s efforts, discussed with White House aides, to discredit F.B.I. officials.
10. Throughout, Trump (and this quotation comes from the Nixon article of impeachment) “made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States.” Among other things, Trump repeatedly made untruthful statements about American intelligence agencies’ conclusions regarding Russia’s role in the 2016 election.
Obstruction of justice depends on a person’s intent — what legal experts often call “corrupt intent.” This list is so damning because it reveals Trump’s intent.
He has inserted himself into the details of a criminal investigation in ways that previous presidents rarely if ever did. (They left individual investigations to the attorney general.) And he has done so in ways that show he understands he’s doing something wrong. He has cleared the room before trying to influence the investigation. He directed his son to lie, and he himself has lied.
When the framers were debating impeachment at the Constitutional Convention, George Mason asked: “Shall any man be above justice?”
The same question faces us now: Can a president use the power of his office to hold himself above the law? Trump is unlikely to face impeachment anytime soon, or perhaps anytime at all. But it’s time for all of us — voters, members of Congress, Trump’s own staff — to be honest about what he’s done. He has obstructed justice.
He may not be finished doing so, either.
No more unrelated stories in here please. This is serious now. Focus.
CurrencyChase
Banned
Yeah breh. This is the 1st time i feel that America is done for. Trump is looking untouchable backed by the GOP. I wouldn't even be surprised if Mueller (our last hope) is fired within the next 2 weeks. And when mid-terms comes, the Russians will interfere again with collaboration from the GOP. This country might be done. Straight Oligarchy country.i completely get regular partisan bullshyt.
thats to be expected.
what i dont understand is how the fukk we got to THIS POINT.
nothing matters any more
nothing
anybody with an R by their name or an ICE badge can just do whatever the fukk they want
collude
lie
extort
make up rules as you go along
release bogus reports
slander the entire IC
im gonna have to make a trip to the liquor store
i need several drinks
ExodusNirvana
Change is inevitable...
Things are about to get hectic 
choc_cardigan
Squad
AboutThings are about to get hectic
State of union gonna be lit
Funny How Fox Never Mentions That the Alleged FBI-Steele Conspiracy Can Be Traced Back to One of the GOP’s Biggest Donors
Ben Mathis-LilleyJan 29, 20188:38 PM
The Slatest
Paul Singer in Washington D.C. in 2009.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Earlier Monday, news broke that deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe has stepped down. Published reports had already indicated McCabe was planning to retire soon, and today’s move appears to have been initiated by the bureau’s generally well-respected new director, Christopher Wray, rather than by the Trump administration.
But McCabe was nonetheless in the spotlight in the first place because he’s been accused by House Republicans, Fox News hosts, and Donald Trump himself of being biased against the president. McCabe’s wife ran unsuccessfully for office in 2015 and took campaign money that had been raised, indirectly, by Hillary Clinton; McCabe is also specifically said to be implicated by the vaunted classified memo that Republican Rep. Devin Nunes has prepared about an alleged cell of anti-Trump conspirators within the FBI and Department of Justice. His departure has thus been heralded by right-wing observers such as the president’s son Don Jr. as evidence that the memo—which the House Intelligence Committee just began the process of declassifying—constitutes irrefutable and paradigm-altering evidence of an anti-Trump conspiracy.
Digging down even further, the premise of Nunes’ memo is apparently that McCabe and other Obama-Clinton loyalist “deep state” hacks abused surveillance laws by using the allegedly phony “Steele dossier” of Trump-Russia allegations to justify surveillance of the Trump campaign. In Fox News/Nunes mythology, the dossier—compiled by private investigator Christopher Steele for the research firm Fusion GPS—is the only reason the Trump-Russia FBI/Mueller investigation exists. And because Fusion GPS’ work was partly funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, the entire investigation—per Nunes, Don Jr. et. al— is therefore a partisan hit job with no validity.
This case has all sorts of holes in it, but the one that’s most egregiously ignored is that the first person to fund Fusion GPS’ research into Donald Trump was one of the top donors in the Republican Party. From an October 2017 Washington Examiner report:
Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS.
The Free Beacon funded the project from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, whereupon it withdrew funding and the project was picked up by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The Free Beacon (which, for the record, appears to have stopped paying Fusion before the research firm brought on Christopher Steele) is in turn “largely funded” by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, a prolific conservative donor who supported Marco Rubio in the 2016 primary but would then go on to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. The person who first got the ball rolling on the alleged conspiracy of lies to destroy Donald Trump is a Republican who has donated to Donald Trump.
In other words, one possible way to explain the Trump-Russia investigation is that it’s a Deep State scheme so powerful that it unites Obama-era civil servants like Andrew McCabe and a billionaire patron of free-market conservative economic activism. The other is that a variety of people with differing motivations and interests, some tied to Hillary and the Democratic Party but many not, have independently found substantive reasons to suspect Donald Trump and his campaign of improper ties to Russia. Which c ould it possibly be?
THIS dude is a fukking FED 
Triipe
All Star
Nap posting massive NYTimes op-eds like they hold weight 
shyts about as relevant as Jason Chaffetz's blogspot
Said it a minute ago, Wray is the one making personnel decisions at the FBI, stop trying to boogyman the white house for something they didn't have a role in.
shyts about as relevant as Jason Chaffetz's blogspotSaid it a minute ago, Wray is the one making personnel decisions at the FBI, stop trying to boogyman the white house for something they didn't have a role in.