What is “the real disease”? — Brett

People so lost and in desperate need of a Shepard that they’ll latch on to even the most vile celebrity that claims to speak for them.

Sorry, that’s my last comment.

Why "crimes"? My understanding of the Constitution Is that the impeachment process is one of only two legal ways (three, if he's up for election again) to get rid of a bad president. Impeachment is he House's way of saying he's bad; conviction in the Senate is their of saying that they agree - if only Congressmen were all that honest!

I buy the notion that if Trump robbed a bank or murdered someone, he has to be impeached before he can be arrested and prosecuted - the 25th amendment being a variant form of impeachment, as I read it.

Sorry, that’s my last comment. — Brett

:party:

There are people, myself included, who see the Impeachment process being used as a tool to remove an elected President. — Brett

The $400 million that was appropriated for Ukraine had been approved by Congress - i.e. 'the people' - and then withheld by the President for his own advantage.

If Trump was being impeached merely because of differences over policy then this view would be correct. But he's being impeached because he breaks the rules of the office.

Barr did a recent interview on NBC, and If Barr is right it’s looking like the hoax is worse than Watergate. We’re talking about the use of state power to spy on a political campaign, all of it fanned by an irresponsible press.

Folks, can you imagine what Russia’s President Putin is saying to himself today? “I can’t believe my luck! I not only got Trump to parrot my conspiracy theories, I got his whole party to do it! And for free! Who ever thought Americans would so easily sell out their own Constitution for one man? My God, I have Russian lawmakers in my own Parliament who’d quit before doing that. But it proves my point: America is no different from Russia, so spare me the lectures.” — Thomas L Freidman

It’s a fact that ‘contempt of Congress’ is a crime. Its civilian equivalent is ‘contempt of court’. And yet Trump bathes in contempt of Congress. He revels in it, relishes in it, in front of stadiums full of cheering supporters. He belittles the whole process of impeachment as ‘Impeachment Lite’, even though many serious career officials have risked their jobs to testify and even though all of the facts and the whole process is impeccably grounded in constitutional law. He hurls insults at his accusers like the schoolyard bully he is. His campaign plans to exploit impeachment for fundraising and votes.

If that is not ‘contempt of Congress’, then what could possibly be?

America, if you sign off on this, then you will deserve the terrible fate that awaits you. And for the rest of us, the tragedy is: this is America.

If Barr is right — NOS4A2

Barr is not right.

...and If Barr is right... — NOS4A2

Tell me another one bro... According to Barr, the entire investigation was based on "a vague statement made in a bar". Further, one witness recants, and the proceeding "collapses", therefore the FBI ought to have closed the investigation at that time. Barr plucks a few supportive pieces of evidence, not mentioning the sea of damning evidence, and reports that this is the way that "I felt", about this. I couldn't sit through the entire interview, it was getting too ridiculous

But what really exposes his twisted perspective is the fact that when evidence arose that the Russians were meddling in the election, Barr says the US government should have approached the Trump campaign rather than approaching the Russian government to tell them to stop. However, he also maintains that there was no evidence of collusion.

How does it make any sense not to approach the Russian government, when the evidence indicated their involvement? What sense would it make to approach the Trump campaign when collusion was not evident Furthermore, why would it not make sense to investigate for any evidence of collusion? When the killer is caught with the smoking gun, it is the due diligence of the police force to investigate the possibilities of conspiracy. Clearly there was motive.

Large amounts of money went to American farmers to insulate them from the effects of the trade war.

Trump is very likely to win again in 2020. Get philosophical about it.

On the bright side, we know NOS4A2 is just some guy. He's not Russian because he hasnt leaked any UK documents like the Russians did on Reddit recently.

They didn’t tell the victims of the crime and instead investigated them. Barr also said exculpatory evidence was withheld from warrant applications, as confirmed by the IG report, meaning it is likely the victims were known to be innocent long before the FBI stopped investigating them. But they did it anyway.

So why would they do that? Why would they withhold exculpatory evidence from warrant applications? Why would they continue to investigate Americans for a number of years despite knowing long before that they were innocent? To defend the republic, democracy, or some other euphemism?

Impeachment is falling apart as the charade becomes more evident.

Based on the testimony from Sondland and other witnesses, the final report from the House Intelligence Committee concluded last week that Sondland made this offer of a quid pro quo clear to Yermak that day in Warsaw. “Following this meeting, Ambassador Sondland pulled aside President Zelensky’s advisor, Mr. Yermak, to explain that the hold on security assistance was conditioned on the public announcement of the Burisma/Biden and the 2016 election interference investigations,” the report states.

Yermak disputes this. “Gordon and I were never alone together,” he said when TIME asked about the Warsaw meeting. “We bumped into each other in the hallway next to the escalator, as I was walking out.” He recalls that several members of the American and Ukrainian delegations were also nearby, as well as bodyguards and hotel staff, though he was not sure whether any of them heard his brief conversation with Sondland. “And I remember – everything is fine with my memory – we talked about how well the meeting went. That’s all we talked about,” Yermak says.

These comments cast doubt on an important moment in the impeachment inquiry’s reconstruction of events: specifically, the only known point at which an American official directly tells the Ukrainians about the link between U.S. aid and the announcement of specific investigations.

Exclusive: Top Ukraine Official Andriy Yermak Casts Doubt on Key Impeachment Testimony

Deep state or stupid state?

As IG Horowitz explains his report in the senate hearing, it is becoming more and more apparent that the FBI completely failed, top to bottom, in this investigation. He correctly says there is no evidence of political bias given the evidence, but the alternative to political bias in order to explain these failures is incompetence. So true believers will have to wonder if they were duped by political bias or admit they merely trusted incompetent agents as they failed in their duties.

The investigation didn’t fail. It resulted in 7 jailings, numerous arrests and the exposure of a foreign interference network.

The fact that Trump and his henchmen are simply dismissing the Impeachment is once again, evidence of their contempt for the rule of law, to say nothing of standards of truth. As Fiona Hill testified on the last day of the public hearings, the Republican Party has somehow gotten itself into the position of defending Russian disinformation. I suppose it's an example of the corruption caused by proximity to power.

America, if you sign off on this, then you will deserve the terrible fate that awaits you. — Wayfarer

I first wanted to say "fuck you!" But... I've decided that that would not be the best reply. Do not say that every American deserves Trump, it's just not true and you ought know better than to say such a bullshit claim.

Well, if you're American voter, write to a Republican congressman and demand that he or she at least considers the evidence, rather than simply joining the chorus of 'he's done nothing wrong'.

Ray Charles could see that Trump is the epitome of obstructing justice, and has been since the inauguration. I would be more surprised if something were done, than if something were not. Both parties... the entire bi-partisan governmental system in the States has been monetarily corrupt for so long that it has been legalized.

So...

Say what you like. Cheer for one side or other. Indulge in the day to day entertainment value. Continue to belittle other people as a result of differences in political views fed primarily by propaganda. It's puppeteering at it's autonomous finest....

The problem of course, is that when anything goes... anything stays... and...

Trump if proof.

As I've said more times than I can remember... Trump is not the problem. He is a symptom thereof.

They didn’t tell the victims of the crime and instead investigated them. — NOS4A2

The DNC was hacked and information exposed by WikiLeaks. The victim was the Trump campaign? That's a stretch of the imagination.

The DNC was hacked and information exposed by WikiLeaks. The victim was the Trump campaign? That's a stretch of the imagination.

I was told Russians were trying to infiltrate their campaign. I make an entire argument and you quibble about one word.

Poor jealous Donald lashing out at a teenage girl.

Such a creep.

Not poor little Greta. How dare he?

How dare he? — NOS4A2

My guess: sociopathy.

He was warned in August (17th?) https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/31/politics/trump-2016-russia-warnings/index.html

The investigation itself was only opened on July 31.

It wasn’t a briefing so much as it was an opportunity to investigate the campaign.

M. Horowitz: (15:48)
They sent one of the supervisory agents from the Crossfire Hurricane team to the briefing, and that agent prepared a report to the file of the briefing.

Lindsey Graham: (16:00)
About what Trump said?

M. Horowitz: (16:01)
About what Mr. Trump said and what Mr. Flynn said.

Lindsey Graham: (16:04)
Okay. So when we get defensively briefed tomorrow, would it be okay for FBI agents to open up 302s on what we said?

M. Horowitz: (16:15)
We have very significant concerns about that, and I would note that in Director Wray’s response, he underlined that that would not occur going forward.

Lindsey Graham: (16:22)
To those who can set aside how I feel about Trump for a minute, under the guise of protecting the campaign from Russian influence, they never lift a finger to protect the campaign. Every time they had information that the people they suspected were working for the Russians, it went the other way and they kept going. When they did generically brief candidate Trump, they sent an FBI agent in to do a 302. If this doesn’t bother you, you hate Trump way too much. Was that FBI agent spying on Donald Trump when he went in there?

https://www.rev.com/blog/inspector-general-report-hearing-transcript-michael-horowitz-testifies-on-fbis-findings


They weren’t protecting the campaigns; they were gathering intel, spying on them. Besides that, the strategic briefing was merely a “baseline” of security threats, including both Russian and Chinese threats, and nothing specific nor any warning to the Trump campaign about Russian infiltration into their campaign.

I was addressing your claim that "they didn’t tell the victims of the crime."

They weren’t protecting the campaign; they were gathering intel, spying on them. — NOS4A2

They were there to "get General Flynn to inadvertently offer information that might be helpful to the FBI in their investigation" as "he was a subject of an FBI investigation at the time."

So if you're alleging that the FBI were using the briefing as a pretext to target Trump and to try to damage his election chances (or whatever it is this conspiracy theory is) then the facts aren't on your side.

They were there to "get General Flynn to inadvertently offer information that might be helpful to the FBI in their investigation" as "he was a subject of an FBI investigation at the time".

So if you're alleging that the FBI were using the briefing as a pretext to target Trump and to try to damage his election chances (or whatever it is this conspiracy theory is) then the facts aren't on your side.

I’m only alleging that they weren’t warning Trump that Russia was trying to infiltrate their campaign. They decided against informing the campaign about the information the FBI received from the “friendly foreign government”. It wasn’t a defensive or security briefing. It was a strategic briefing. The facts are not on your side.

You're right about them not being told. My source was outdated.

It’s because the FBI lied to judiciary committee, lied to Congress, lied to the media. I too thought the same until I read the report, which thoroughly refutes the FBI’s claims. It’s a bloody shame.