Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

seems to be a similar timeline right about now.

except for the RussiaRussiaRussia omg-here's-the-smoking-gun beat since November...

Let us keep in mind that Nixon at the beginning of the Watergate news cycle and Trump at the beginning of RussiaRussiaRussiagate were distinctly different public figures in distinctly different contexts.

yes, that too

NYT: G.O.P. Weighs Less Ambitious Tax Plan After Health Bill Loss

ya think?

except for the RussiaRussiaRussia omg-here's-the-smoking-gun beat since November...

it's almost as if there are people behind the scenes trying to bury the investigation!

there's a difference between pressing to investigate and MY GOD A PREZ-ELECT'S TEAM HAS NEVER TALKED TO FURRINERS

I'm as sympathetic as anyone to calls for levelheaded temperance wrt Russiagate, but that's an impressively obtuse hot take.

I'm not gonna claim there was definitely treason, or even anything necessarily prosecutable, but between the admin's completely nonsensical explanation of why Flynn had to be let go and the fact that they're now pretending they don't remember who was the campaign manager for five months in the middle of 2016 it's pretty clear that something very strange is afoot, saying "oh it's the Dems own Benghazi" is pretty ridiculous IMO

yeah, i never said that last thing

"treason" still makes me chuckle

MY GOD A PREZ-ELECT'S TEAM HAS NEVER TALKED TO FURRINERS

Is anyone on this board pushing this angle? With or without "comedy" hillbilly accent?

hyperbole, dawg (see frogbs and several hundred others above)

Tbh I can't remember anybody itt acting like the issue is that the president-elect's team "talked to foreigners"? But maybe I'm missing a layer of your argument here.

maybe I'm missing a layer of your argument here.

Wouldn't there have to be a second layer to his ILX persona for that to be possible?

You might've missed the 'Clinton is awful' subtext.

They spoke to the Russian ambassador while it was obvious Russia was interfering in the election. There are people who are complaining about that, but it's not really the same as 'talking to foreigners'. Most of the scandals has come from them lying about it afterwards.

Do we have an accounting of all the non-Slavic furriners Team Trump spoke to prior to the election?

would anyone care? maybe he gave Heartthrob Trudeau the heads-up on the pipeline.

I heard he held secret high-level talks with Scotland on critical golfing issues

More fun!

https://twitter.com/christinawilkie/status/846409374956507136

White House says it learned of Nunes' visit from press reports. This is very hard to believe.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C78M0s4XgAAHy82.jpg:large

I wonder whose cackle this was:

https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/846438195512446976

Read Spicer's claim Trump 'walked away' from 'bad' health care deal to senior WH staffer -- who laughed, laughed then laughed and said 'no.'

"treason" still makes me chuckle

If selling state secrets to a foreign power is considered treason, then it would be reasonable to consider selling US foreign policy in return for a sizable bribe as entering similar territory. The idea that Trump would be venal enough to accept cash or stock worth, let's say $50 million or upwards, in return for lifting sanctions doesn't seem utterly laughable to me. The status that money buys seems to be at the very center of his being and he appears to me to be arrogant enough to think he could do it and suffer no consequences.

The idea that, if this deal really happened, sufficient proof could be obtained to verify it seems to me extremely improbable. More than one Trump loyalist involved would have to testify to it and some damning documentary evidence would have to back them up. One may imagine it happening, but one may imagine endless things that will never come to pass.

In the meantime, stopping the republican agenda seems like a more fruitful area for us mere citizens to engage in.

selling state secrets to a foreign power is espionage, not treason

why can it not be both?

if arranging with a foreign government we've sanctioned for invading another country to lift those sanctions if they release emails they've stolen from the other candidate's presidential campaign is treasonous, then i don't ever want to be patriotic ; )

my hypothetical regarded a quid pro quo of $50 million or upwards, not merely the release of emails. I take your point, though it is unrelated to mine.

treason is very narrowly defined in u.s. law, and the things trump and his team are accused of do not meet it:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381

what are they accused of?

more suspected than accused. those who are doing the accusing have no authority and atm poor quality evidence.

still can't get over the fact that Trump's campaign manager was literally being paid eight figures to push Putin's agenda

18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason...

"giving aid and comfort" to "enemies" does not seem to be a particularly narrow definition to me, unless these are terms of art, much narrowed by case law not cited.

"Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States...adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort..."

helping putin subvert the us electoral process seems as though it might qualify

I am not a legal scholar but it has been my understanding that that phrase is interpreted as "aiding an enemy combatant's troops during a battle". Had we declared war on Russia before the election, there might be a case.

my understanding is: russia is not at war w/ the united states, so putin's government does not qualify as an "enemy" for legal purposes. ppl who spied for the germans during WW2 were charged with treason, but ppl who spied for the soviets during the cold war were generally charged with espionage. if the soviet union didn't qualify i can't imagine putin does.

obv this is in no way meant as a defense of trump et al, i just think it weakens our case if we throw around the word "treason" this casually.

yes otm (thanks, John Marshall!) and my side loves doing it

so what if these fuckers are treasonous ? Trump down to let's say Sessions , they are found guilty we impeach them all . But the republican party is still in power through proven nefouse means. hypothetically what's to stop another party from doing the same thing ? Colluding with a foreign country by any means to get their party in with some stooge expendable President and administration. We just aren't set up in any way to handle this sort of thing.

Espionage still carries the death penalty, though, right?

I'm just saying, I don't think the administration will say 'no no, it was just espionage' in from of a jury...

Also, the US Constitution sets a high bar on evidence required for treason, so prosecutors always prefer other charges simply as a matter of their own convenience. After all, the Rosenbergs were charged with espionage, which was an easier standard to meet in court, and still were executed, so that no higher penalty was foregone by choosing the 'lesser' charge.

yea Trump getting impeached seems very much like a fever dream, but the Trump admin being rendered toothless seems to be...well kinda what's been happening already

espionage is a capital offense in theory but afaik the rosenbergs were the last ppl to be executed for it in the u.s.

for that matter the list of ppl who have been successfully convicted of treason here is fairly low.

Devin Nunes is very annoyed with all these tedious questions!

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/846458763280338944

Nunes to me just now: “I had to go to the White House to meet with a source. Can no one go to the White House anymore?”

if a unit of treason is called a 'benghazi' . . . how many benghazis is it to hire one of vladimir putin's top lobbyists to be your presidential campaign manager?

A much more interesting idea than "treason", since we are bouncing off into this weed patch, is "high crimes and misdemeanors", which phrase has never been subjected to interpretation in case law because it does not apply to cases brought in the judicial branch. To my recollection, there have only been three bills of impeachment drawn up (Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Clinton) and only two impeachment trials (Johnson & Clinton) both ending in acquittals. (imo, Nixon would have been successfully impeached had it come to that.)

To my way of thinking, the phrase was intended to broadly convey the idea of malfeasance, corruption, or any other abuses of office determined by the people's representatives to seriously damage the nation or abrogate the oath of office. It's always been a strange, slippery phrase, but it was intended to be.

hypothetically what's to stop another party from doing the same thing ? Colluding with a foreign country by any means to get their party in with some stooge expendable President and administration.

I hate these mousefuckers as much as anyone here, but I find these hypotheticals really hard to focus on and/or apply.

When I try to universalize any of this, my brain just gives up. We keep trying to analyze and postmortem 2016 as if anything like it had ever happened, and as if anything like it can reoccur.

What other foreign country is a candidate for this sort of thing? What other campaign, what other candidate, what other presidential race could any of this be a lesson for? 2048, in which cyborg Franken faces off against zombie Omarosa, but it turns out that Armenian zombiephobes secretly tapped into the campaign managers' brainwaves?

We can't say how the race would have gone without Russian meddling, because we'd need a control group or a test case where everything else was comparable - and nothing, nothing is comparable to Trump v. Clinton. It's possible that nothing ever will be. We're through the looking glass. Is the next race Pence vs. Booker with a disgraced Trump running a third-party write-in campaign from jail? Or is it asymmetrical - Palin vs. Biden? Paltrow vs. Gowdy? Kanye vs. Nixon-brain-in-a-jar? Nobody fucking knows.

No grand point, here, I'm just confused and tired.

yeah i'm pretty high atm and i really didn't think that out just kinda thinking out loud

(MEGA THREAD) yeah i'm pretty high atm and i really didn't think that out just kinda thinking out loud

no matter how high anyone is, jared taking command is at least criminal nepotism at the highest rank of the american federal government. why do republicans hate the constitution?

Well...why was Bobby JFK's Attorney General again? (I'm not pulling a 'both sides do it' argument here, I've just still never understood how THAT happened.)

to piss off LBJ

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3110

I think this is what you're looking for, qualmsley

http://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/wills_1-052412.jpg