House Speaker Pelosi to announce formal impeachment inquiry of Trump

[JimL]

The Mueller Report obliterated the whole collusion fantasy resulting in even not a fine mist remaining. Of course you'd know that had you bothered to have actually read it rather than wasting time demanding that everyone else read it (especially those of us who actually did).

That you are unwilling and/or incapable of accepting that fact is nobody's problem but your own yet eventually you'll just have to...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40116[/ATTACH]

And you are simply making an assertion of your belief which in fact is contradicted by the report itself. 10 cases of obstruction, manafort trading internal polling data with Russians, Trump publicly requesting Russian help, and getting it. So, you can assert all you want, and pretend to have read the report all you want, but we all know that you either didn't read it, or you've been conditioned to see only what you want to see. That's a sad fact we'll just have to accept about you hard core Trumpsters.

[rogue06]

You continue to claim that yet have shown no real evidence of having read the report itself. If you had, one would have to hope you'd be disturbed by the report's detailing of the >100 contacts with Russian officials or cut-outs, why Manafort was sharing detailed US polling data with a Russian-linked oligarch, why Don Jr. avoided a campaign finance charge over his meeting with Russian-linked officials (because maybe he didn't know the intricacies of campaign finance law) and why Trump and others tried to hide the meeting from the public, or the four counts of obstruction of justice that meet the criteria for a criminal charge.

And I'm absolutely sure that had you read the report with an objective mind toward truth, you would've been struck by how it explicitly sets out in the first page how "collusion" isn't a subject of the report at all but rather criminal coordination of a conspiracy.

But, true, none of these are Breitbart or Gateway Pundit, or whatever weird blog Rudy Giuliani is flashing in front of Fox News cameras tonight.

--Sam

Not long after it was released I was quoting from it extensively in multiple posts and occasionally cited what section and/or page what I quoted was from which should suffice to demonstrate that I plowed through the 400+ pages unlike yourself.

The fact that you are still deeply ensnared by the collusion delusion reveals that you put your trust in news sources that keep telling you want you want to hear and wish to believe all the while impugning any source that doesn't conform to your carefully crafted fantasy world. It is this that makes you unfit to declare which news services are valid or accurate in this regard and which are not.

[Sam]

Not long after it was released I was quoting from it extensively in multiple posts and occasionally cited what section and/or page what I quoted was from which should suffice to demonstrate that I plowed through the 400+ pages unlike yourself.

The fact that you are still deeply ensnared by the collusion delusion reveals that you put your trust in news sources that keep telling you want you want to hear and wish to believe all the while impugning any source that doesn't conform to your carefully crafted fantasy world. It is this that makes you unfit to declare which news services are valid or accurate in this regard and which are not.

You can keep trying, man, but if you keep repeating things that are evidently false and refuted by Page 1, saying that you've read to Page 448 doesn't give you much credibility.

EDIT: Ope - Page 2*

--Sam

[rogue06]

You can keep trying, man, but if you keep repeating things that are evidently false and refuted by Page 1, saying that you've read to Page 448 doesn't give you much credibility.

EDIT: Ope - Page 2*

--Sam

Coming from someone who thinks that the Mueller Report validates his collusion delusion

[Sam]

Coming from someone who thinks that the Mueller Report validates his collusion delusion

Validates? I never said that. The report certainly contains copious evidence of collusion but the report specifically did not examine collusion as a category and come to a conclusion on the merit of the charge.

I make this distinction because the report does. You, conversely, continue to falsely claim that the report "obliterated the whole collusion fantasy".

One of us is careful when referring to the report. One of us not.

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--Sam

[rogue06]

Sam, why do you think that nearly all of the Democrats in the House and Senate and nearly all the MSM dropped their claims of collusion after the release of the Mueller Report and immediately pivoted to "obstruction"? Why would they drop the really serious charge and instead settle for a much less serious one unless the former had been thoroughly debunked?

[Mountain Man]

Sam, why do you think that nearly all of the Democrats in the House and Senate and nearly all the MSM dropped their claims of collusion after the release of the Mueller Report and immediately pivoted to "obstruction"? Why would they drop the really serious charge and instead settle for a much less serious one unless the former had been thoroughly debunked?

And why have they now dropped the obstruction narrative in favor of this Ukraine nonsense?

[Sam]

Sam, why do you think that nearly all of the Democrats in the House and Senate and nearly all the MSM dropped their claims of collusion after the release of the Mueller Report and immediately pivoted to "obstruction"? Why would they drop the really serious charge and instead settle for a much less serious one unless the former had been thoroughly debunked?

1) Many didn't drop "collusion" -- NatSec commentators and numerous others noted repeatedly that Mueller didn't address collusion, that we haven't seen the counterintelligence report, that the Mueller report contained a wide array of contacts we'd describe as collusion, etc. The volume did go down, but that's for a lot of reasons, not least of which ...

2) ... obstruction of justice was a focus of the Mueller report and Mueller's team found strong evidence that Trump committed felony acts of obstruction during his term - including obstructive acts that limited the ability of the investigation to establish coordination between Trump campaign officials and Russian officials. Obstruction of justice isn't a "much less serious" charge, at least not legally. As Trump & his allies told news outlets repeatedly in the ramp up to the Mueller report's release, "collusion isn't a crime". But obstruction of justice is. Outside legality, both collusion and obstruction impede or prevent the fair exercise of a democratic state. They are both serious matters. And, while the Mueller report is relatively silent on what we colloquially call collusion, it is decidedly not silent on obstruction and comes really close to explicitly saying that if Trump weren't president and so protected by the OLC opinion, he'd be facing numerous charges of felony obstruction.


So there's that. Why do you think that Barr thought it necessary to mislead the public about the nature of the report in his four-page summary or why others in the Trump-allied media have parroted the false claim "No collusion, no obstruction!" when Mueller didn't examine collusion and found strong evidence for obstruction? If the report so clearly exonerates Trump, why do people need to mislead or outright lie about its content?

--Sam

[rogue06]

I already noted that there are a few die-hard hold outs.

So instead of pointing out that not "everybody" dropped it (which I never implied much less said) can you address the actual question?

[Sam]

I already noted that there are a few die-hard hold outs.

So instead of pointing out that not "everybody" dropped it (which I never implied much less said) can you address the actual question?

I addressed the question and didn't use the word "everybody" anywhere so I'm not sure why that's in quotes.

I gave you a substantive answer. You can respond to it or not but what you've got above is sufficient.

--Sam

[Juvenal]

How Americans’ Views On Impeachment Have Changed In Just One Week

By Anna Rothschild
Filed under Impeachment
Published Oct. 4, 2019

It’s been a little over a week since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House is conducting an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Are Americans in support of impeachment? FiveThirtyEight looks at the polls.

Do Americans Support Impeaching Trump?

By Aaron Bycoffe, Ella Koeze and Nathaniel Rakich
Filed under Impeachment
Published Oct. 2, 2019

An updating calculation of support for and opposition to impeachment, accounting for each poll's quality, recency, sample size and partisan lean, since Aug. 1, 2018
UPDATED OCT. 8, 2019, AT 4:00 PM

2019-10-08_17-19-08.gif

2019-10-08_17-21-33 (1).gif

Gifs created, by me, in Snagit.

This poll aggregation is directed toward support for impeachment itself, not an impeachment inquiry. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic and Independent numbers have skyrocketed. But in practical terms, the increased support from Republicans is more noteworthy.

[Juvenal]

George Conway and other prominent conservatives call for ‘expeditious’ impeachment probe

By Colby Itkowitz
October 10 at 6:00 AM

More than a dozen prominent conservative lawyers, including George T. Conway III, offered their legal reasoning for an “expeditious” impeachment probe into President Trump, creating a document they hope will be read by Republicans who continue to stand by the president.

The 16 attorneys, many of whom worked in Republican administrations, wrote in a joint statement to be released Thursday morning that Trump’s now infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the text messages between diplomats and Trump’s public call for China to investigate a political opponent are “undisputed” events that amount to Trump violating his oath of office.

“We have not just a political candidate open to receiving foreign assistance to better his chances at winning an election, but a current president openly and privately calling on foreign governments to actively interfere in the most sacred of U.S. democratic processes, our elections,” they wrote.

Conway, husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and outspoken Trump critic, helped form a coalition of like-minded conservatives a year ago who wanted to call out what they deemed illegal and unconstitutional behavior by the president. The signatories are members of that group, Checks and Balances.

Press Release
New Statement from Checks and Balances on President Trump’s Abuse of Office
October 10, 2019

/s/

Jonathan H. Adler
Donald B. Ayer
George T. Conway III
Carrie F. Cordero
Charles Fried
Stuart M. Gerson
Peter D. Keisler
Orin S. Kerr
Marisa C. Maleck
Trevor Potter
Alan Charles Raul
Jonathan C. Rose
Paul Rosenzweig
Andrew Sagor
Jaime D. Sneider
J.W. Verret

[NorrinRadd]

"Prominent"?