The Impeachment Process Has Officially Begun (15 Viewers)

[Andrus]

By Laura Bassett

After months of internal arguing among Democrats over whether to impeach President Donald Trump, the dam is finally breaking in favor of trying to remove him from office. The Washington Post reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would announce a formal impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, following a bombshell report that Trump illegally asked Ukraine’s government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, one of his political opponents. (He essentially admitted to having done so over the weekend.)

“Now that we have the facts, we’re ready,” Pelosi said Tuesday morning at a forum hosted by The Atlantic. At 5 p.m. the same day, she was back with more. "The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the constitution, especially when the president says Article Two says I can do whatever I want," referring to the segment of the Constitution that defines the power of the executive branch of the government. Pelosi's message was that checks and balances of those branches are just as central to the Constitution. And one more thing: "Today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry," she said at a conference broadcast on Twitter by the Huffington Post. ...

Read the Full Story - InStyle

 

[wardorican]

So, you think that means that the process can't be abused?
What do you think the IG is doing?

Let's not change the subject, I am interested in your thought process here given your response of, "it's signed by a judge."

You've changed the subject. This isn't about FISA, or whatever. This is about impeachment, and the recent activities involving Ukraine, Trump, and RG (among others), and if that activity was an abuse of power, or something else worthy of impeachment.

You can choose to back up your comment about "That's fine, they can dismiss it outright so long as the DOJ does it's job and we see some members of the IC indicted. " As to what, that means exactly, and why, or how that fits into the idea of impeachment, or you can crawfish out of it and get into a semantics argument about something unrelated. Just realize, you are changing the subject, and it seems like it is to simply deflect something you're having a harder time defending.

It is always amazing at what lengths people will go to get into granular details to try to find logic traps in some areas that serve them, but will totally "it's basically this" on other topics. Just be consistent. Otherwise, you're probably just partisan.

 

[Dragon]

I will answer

1. loaded question. It has not been established that there was a criminal act.
2. Refer to nbr 1.


If you want to get honest answers to your question, maybe not throw gas through out the questioning. I mean if they are the enemy, why are we giving them funding?

Hacking an email server IS a criminal act which has been confirmed. Here you go

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-clinton-arizona-hack/

you will find links both to indictments and official JD reports there....

Mueller’s report also found a cause-and-effect between Trump’s remarks in July 2016 and subsequent cyberattacks.

“I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” said then-candidate Trump at a press conference, referring to emails Clinton stored on a personal email server while she headed the State Department. Mueller’s report said “within approximately five hours” of those remarks, GRU officers began targeting for the first time Clinton’s personal office.

So maybe you will answer my questions now ?

 

[Ayo]

You've changed the subject. This isn't about FISA, or whatever. This is about impeachment, and the recent activities involving Ukraine, Trump, and RG (among others), and if that activity was an abuse of power, or something else worthy of impeachment...

Just realize, you are changing the subject, and it seems like it is to simply deflect something you're having a harder time defending.

it also undermines a poster's criticisms of others resorting to 'whataboutism'

 

[Lazybones]

Hacking an email server IS a criminal act which has been confirmed. Here you go

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-clinton-arizona-hack/

you will find links both to indictments and official JD reports there....





So maybe you will answer my questions now ?

1. if you are referring to the Russian hacks as the enemy, please show where trump paid for the research. As you recall Hillary (the DNC) paid for the steele dossier.
2. You are making assumptions that are not proven.

 

[Dragon]

1. if you are referring to the Russian hacks as the enemy, please show where trump paid for the research. As you recall Hillary (the DNC) paid for the steele dossier.
2. You are making assumptions that are not proven.

Trump ASKED for it and as someone mentioned previously just asking is actually illegal

From the document I linked above:

Mueller’s report also found a cause-and-effect between Trump’s remarks in July 2016 and subsequent cyberattacks.

“I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” said then-candidate Trump at a press conference, referring to emails Clinton stored on a personal email server while she headed the State Department. Mueller’s report said “within approximately five hours” of those remarks, GRU officers began targeting for the first time Clinton’s personal office.

 

[LA - L.A.]

Deputy Asst. Secretary of State George Kent testified yesterday that:

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney organized a meeting this spring in which officials were determined to take Ukraine policy out of the traditional channels, putting Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and special U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker in charge instead, a top State Department official told lawmakers Tuesday.

George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, told House investigators he was instructed to “lay low,” focus on the five other countries in his portfolio and defer to Volker, Sondland and Perry — who called themselves the “three amigos” — on matters related to Ukraine, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) told reporters Tuesday. Kent took that as a sign, Connolly added, that having been critical of the plan he was being pushed aside “because what he was saying was not welcome” at high levels of the government.

Mulvaney’s meeting, which Kent told lawmakers took place on May 23, according to Connolly, was just days after the administration recalled Marie Yovanovitch from her post as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch spoke to House investigators last week about the campaign against her, which she and other former diplomats have said was organized by President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-state-department-official-expected-to-face-questions-about-ukraine-and-giuliani/2019/10/14/8ba23d18-eeca-11e9-b2da-606ba1ef30e3_story.html

The effort to circumvent the traditional diplomatic channels at the State Department seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to do something that Trump claims is allegedly perfectly okay and that every president has done.

 

[MT15]

I will answer

1. loaded question. It has not been established that there was a criminal act.
2. Refer to nbr 1.


If you want to get honest answers to your question, maybe not throw gas through out the questioning. I mean if they are the enemy, why are we giving them funding?

Framing aside, impeachment doesn’t require an actual crime, although there probably was a crime committed by the president.

Simply put, either you believe that it’s possible the president abused his power by using the federal government to further his political campaign or not. To everyone except staunch supporters it’s really starting to look like this happened. And not as an impulsive ask on a phone call, but as a sustained campaign carried out in part by political appointees and even people with no connection to the federal government.

It’s a serious allegation that deserves to be investigated. Which is exactly what is happening.

 

[Archies Ghost]

Paying foreign nationals to dig up dirt on your political opponents is perfectly okay unless it isn't okay, in which case we need to investigate it using the dirt the foreign nationals made up as the basis for the investigation. This is bad comedy played out for close to three years now.

Now we are seeking to impeach a president for asking a foreign government to investigate plainly obvious corruption by a previous administration.

We no longer have to travel to visit a banana republic.

Oh yes, I know. Everything that could possibly point to the corruption of the previous administration or candidates opposing Orange Man Bad has been thoroughly "debunked" and the current DOJ investigations into all of this is a vast conspiracy instigated by Orange Man Bad to provide cover during his wholly justified and wholly apolitical, secret impeachment inquiry.

It is as if the average American left board denizen is incapable of contemplating the possibility that Orange Man Bad may be the least corrupt politician in DC and all of this is an attempt to keep the long con in play by getting rid of the disrupter in chief.

Imagine that scenario, if you can.

One should seriously consider all possibilities in order to make a reasonable conclusion.

I don't think any of this is left versus right. I see it as DC versus the American people.


Why are the Democrats so desperate to push an impeachment narrative 12 months from the election?

Why is the impeachment inquiry in the intelligence committee headed by a chairman known to "embellish" who also has an obvious personal animus towards the President?

The Democrat establishment reaction to the presidency of DJT has been fairly obviously driven by fear. The Republicans also reacted the same way for quite a long while, even refusing to push his agenda when in control of Congress and subsequently losing the House. Many Republicans have since turned to support DJT because his actions in office are a net positive for the conservative agenda and he has demonstrated an incredible resistance to an unprecedented assault.

My overarching question is "What are all these DC pols so afraid of?"

The only cogent answer is that they fear exposure by someone refusing to play the game.

 

[Taurus]

Paying foreign nationals to dig up dirt on your political opponents is perfectly okay unless it isn't okay, in which case we need to investigate it using the dirt the foreign nationals made up as the basis for the investigation. This is bad comedy played out for close to three years now.

Now we are seeking to impeach a president for asking a foreign government to investigate plainly obvious corruption by a previous administration.

We no longer have to travel to visit a banana republic.

Oh yes, I know. Everything that could possibly point to the corruption of the previous administration or candidates opposing Orange Man Bad has been thoroughly "debunked" and the current DOJ investigations into all of this is a vast conspiracy instigated by Orange Man Bad to provide cover during his wholly justified and wholly apolitical, secret impeachment inquiry.

It is as if the average American left board denizen is incapable of contemplating the possibility that Orange Man Bad may be the least corrupt politician in DC and all of this is an attempt to keep the long con in play by getting rid of the disrupter in chief.

Imagine that scenario, if you can.

One should seriously consider all possibilities in order to make a reasonable conclusion.

I don't think any of this is left versus right. I see it as DC versus the American people.


Why are the Democrats so desperate to push an impeachment narrative 12 months from the election?

Why is the impeachment inquiry in the intelligence committee headed by a chairman known to "embellish" who also has an obvious personal animus towards the President?

The Democrat establishment reaction to the presidency of DJT has been fairly obviously driven by fear. The Republicans also reacted the same way for quite a long while, even refusing to push his agenda when in control of Congress and subsequently losing the House. Many Republicans have since turned to support DJT because his actions in office are a net positive for the conservative agenda and he has demonstrated an incredible resistance to an unprecedented assault.

My overarching question is "What are all these DC pols so afraid of?"

The only cogent answer is that they fear exposure by someone refusing to play the game.

Or maybe, like most Americans, they see bribery, obstruction of justice and blatant abuse of power to be cause for impeachment.
There are ways, legal and above board, to investigate corruption. Trump refused to use those ways, preferring to lean on a foreign nation to invent dirt on his opponent purely for his own gain.
Consider the possibility that the Orange Bad Man truly is who his tweets, speeches and actions say he is: a clueless, malignant narcissist who has never taken the job seriously.

 

[MT15]

Archie I know I’ve asked a couple times. What exactly is Joe Biden accused of? What exactly are the corrupt acts?

And this is purely rhetorical, how does someone come to believe that a habitual liar who cheated countless business associates during his whole life, who continues to exhibit a raging narcissistic personality disorder, who has sunk to lower levels of public discourse than any other politician is someone who is going to root out the corruption in DC? That’s one I will probably never understand.

Rudy is neck deep in corruption in Ukraine and elsewhere. This is who you think is working to root out corruption?

I cannot fathom this.

Oh, and my reaction to Trump is not driven by fear, it’s driven by revulsion to his obvious corruption. Truly.

 

[wardorican]

Paying foreign nationals to dig up dirt on your political opponents is perfectly okay unless it isn't okay, in which case we need to investigate it using the dirt the foreign nationals made up as the basis for the investigation. This is bad comedy played out for close to three years now.

Now we are seeking to impeach a president for asking a foreign government to investigate plainly obvious corruption by a previous administration.

We no longer have to travel to visit a banana republic.

Oh yes, I know. Everything that could possibly point to the corruption of the previous administration or candidates opposing Orange Man Bad has been thoroughly "debunked" and the current DOJ investigations into all of this is a vast conspiracy instigated by Orange Man Bad to provide cover during his wholly justified and wholly apolitical, secret impeachment inquiry.

It is as if the average American left board denizen is incapable of contemplating the possibility that Orange Man Bad may be the least corrupt politician in DC and all of this is an attempt to keep the long con in play by getting rid of the disrupter in chief.

Imagine that scenario, if you can.

One should seriously consider all possibilities in order to make a reasonable conclusion.

I don't think any of this is left versus right. I see it as DC versus the American people.


Why are the Democrats so desperate to push an impeachment narrative 12 months from the election?

Why is the impeachment inquiry in the intelligence committee headed by a chairman known to "embellish" who also has an obvious personal animus towards the President?

The Democrat establishment reaction to the presidency of DJT has been fairly obviously driven by fear. The Republicans also reacted the same way for quite a long while, even refusing to push his agenda when in control of Congress and subsequently losing the House. Many Republicans have since turned to support DJT because his actions in office are a net positive for the conservative agenda and he has demonstrated an incredible resistance to an unprecedented assault.

My overarching question is "What are all these DC pols so afraid of?"

The only cogent answer is that they fear exposure by someone refusing to play the game.

I'll have to get more into this when I am at a computer, not my phone.

A private person, or a campaign, getting opposition research, regardless of that person's nationality is one thing. Not even sure if it is even a problem.

A president, senator, governor, etc using their political power, to get or push a foreign country to use resources for something within national security is another.

A president, senator, governor, etc using their political power, to get or push a foreign country to use resources for something that personally benefits them (directly, or helps get re elected.. beyond just doing a good job) is problematic.

I've been on record saying, a part of me wonders how much of this is from going against the military industrial complex, but he hasn't cut funding. Just potentially destabilized a region.

Anyway, the timing is due to his phone call with Ukraine. This fell on the Democrats lap. It's not their fault he did this now.

 

[Lazybones]

Trump ASKED for it and as someone mentioned previously just asking is actually illegal

From the document I linked above:

What you quoted was not a crime. His quotes were In reference to Hillary wiping those 30k emails off of her server. Let’s not pretend this was anything any different.

But for conversation, if it were a crime, why was the DNC also not prosecuted? The DNC actually paid for a document, from a foreign agent, on a political opponent. What am I missin?

 

[Lazybones]

Or maybe, like most Americans, they see bribery, obstruction of justice and blatant abuse of power to be cause for impeachment.
There are ways, legal and above board, to investigate corruption. Trump refused to use those ways, preferring to lean on a foreign nation to invent dirt on his opponent purely for his own gain.
Consider the possibility that the Orange Bad Man truly is who his tweets, speeches and actions say he is: a clueless, malignant narcissist who has never taken the job seriously.

Do you guys really think the continuous use of hyperbole helps build the case against trump? The basis of his support comes from the disdain of the petulance from the left and the media.
We get it the whole world thinks he is a stupid narcissistic misogynist racist bigot homophobe horrible person. If you really think that type of language is helpful in defeating trump. All I can do is lol

 

[V Chip]

But for conversation, if it were a crime, why was the DNC also not prosecuted? The DNC actually paid for a document, from a foreign agent, on a political opponent. What am I missin?

The blatantly obvious.

First off the DNC didn't pay a foreign agent. Not sure why that keeps getting said, but Fusion GPS is an American company. It doesn't matter in the long run, but I'm just correcting a falsehood being reiterated over and over by the right.

Second, Fusion DPS is a company offering services. If Trump had bought opposition research from Fusion DPS, this would not be an issue. There is nothing wrong with paying a company for its services, even if you are digging into political rivals, even if it is a foreign company.

Third, the Ukranian government is not a company offering services. That should also be obvious, but just in case.....

Fourth, anyone asking a foreign government to get dirt on a political rival is really, really sketchy.

Fifth, DJT didn't just ask for the dirt -- he made an overt quid-pro-quo by mentioning the favor in response to the Ukranian President mentioning the aid package from the US. Trump was dangling the aid as an incentive to get the Ukranian government to do what he was asking. That's criminal at worse and definitely an impeachable offense.

 

[Dragon]

What you quoted was not a crime. His quotes were In reference to Hillary wiping those 30k emails off of her server. Let’s not pretend this was anything any different.

But for conversation, if it were a crime, why was the DNC also not prosecuted? The DNC actually paid for a document, from a foreign agent, on a political opponent. What am I missin?

He asked a foreign country to facilitate or commit a crime on his behalf. - Which they started doing less than 6 hours after he asked according to official US intelligence sources (link in previous post). Rubio and later DNC hired a fully legal company to do oppositional research. Can't you see the difference in this?

And in the second situation Trump is witholding vital aid to a country under attack until he got his "favor" which is blackmail and abuse of office.

And I still need an answer from you

Do you personally support and agree with those actions by Trump?

 

[Lazybones]

He asked a foreign country to facilitate or commit a crime on his behalf. - Which they started doing less than 6 hours after he asked according to official US intelligence sources (link in previous post). Rubio and later DNC hired a fully legal company to do oppositional research. Can't you see the difference in this?

And in the second situation Trump is witholding vital aid to a country under attack until he got his "favor" which is blackmail and abuse of office.

And I still need an answer from you

Do you personally support and agree with those actions by Trump?

I will say again, if everything was as cut and dry, we should have seen a conviction. Or in this case an impeachment.

Do I agree with Trumps actions pertaining to the mueller investigation and the impeachment bs. In the scheme of politics I think this stuff has always happened. I don’t see a difference in hiring a US company with a British National heading the case vs what trump said about Hillary’s email. I think the DNC is worse. However neither one of them really move my needle.

Now your turn. If this turns out the same way mueller did, will you have a different opinion of the left in Washington and the media?

 

[Beach Friends]

He asked a foreign country to facilitate or commit a crime on his behalf. - Which they started doing less than 6 hours after he asked according to official US intelligence sources (link in previous post). Rubio and later DNC hired a fully legal company to do oppositional research. Can't you see the difference in this?

And in the second situation Trump is witholding vital aid to a country under attack until he got his "favor" which is blackmail and abuse of office.

And I still need an answer from you

Do you personally support and agree with those actions by Trump?

I do. I agree whole heartedly and I hope that the Ukrainian investigation is thorough, transparent and complete.

I have zero problem with Trump giving the Ukraine the green light. And just in case they don't already have it, I hope we forward to them a copy of the video where Biden bragged about having a Ukrainian prosecutor fired under threat of withholding aid. I think it would be great place to start.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

I will say again, if everything was as cut and dry, we should have seen a conviction. Or in this case an impeachment.

Do I agree with Trumps actions pertaining to the mueller investigation and the impeachment bs. In the scheme of politics I think this stuff has always happened. I don’t see a difference in hiring a US company with a British National heading the case vs what trump said about Hillary’s email. I think the DNC is worse. However neither one of them really move my needle.

Now your turn. If this turns out the same way mueller did, will you have a different opinion of the left in Washington and the media?

How do you think the Mueller investigation turned out, exactly?