Originally posted by Sam
View Post
Announcement
Collapse
Civics 101 Guidelines
Want to argue about politics? Healthcare reform? Taxes? Governments? You've come to the right place!
Try to keep it civil though. The rules still apply here.
Try to keep it civil though. The rules still apply here.
See more
See less
Impeachment Related: GAO Determines Trump Violated Impoundment Control Act
Collapse
X
-
"The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
GK Chesterton; Orthodoxy
-
Originally posted by Mountain Man View PostAnd what crime is that? Cite the specific legal statute that was supposedly violated and the evidence that you could take court to prove it.
Comment
-
Originally posted by JimL View PostThe abuse of power crimes for which he is about to go to trial. Or are you not aware that he is going to trial.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
Comment
-
It is not necessary to cite any violation of criminal code to justify impeachment; that argument has been raised and answered in numerous other threads and a repeat of a repeat serves as a distraction here.
The GAO has determined that Trump violated the law. That violation is alleged to have occurred as part of an effort by Trump to abuse his power in using official government resources for personal, political ends.
If folks want to talk about how the GAO wrongly determined the administration's violation, that's meritorious. If people want to to argue about how the violation ties into impeachment, that's meritorious. If people just want to keep arguing "What crimes did the President commit?", we've had that discussion and it's mooted for our purposes here.
--Sam"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
Comment
-
Originally posted by Sam View PostIt is not necessary to cite any violation of criminal code to justify impeachment;
Perhaps you should explain this to JimL.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Sam View PostI'm sorry but I don't see how that's relevant to this discussion.
Your claim was that the OMB footnotes to DOD constituted "notification to Congress" and so GAO's ruling was in error.
Apart from that, we're not talking about what the typical remedy for violating the ICA is. As mentioned before, Trump violated the ICA as part of a wider effort to abuse his power for personal gain -- that's what he's being impeached for.
The violation of the ICA is just an element, one that should factor into the "Where's the crime?" question. This isn't a criminal violation, of course, but impeachment doesn't require a criminal violation.
--SamThat's what
- She
Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
- Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)
I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
- Stephen R. Donaldson
Comment
-
Originally posted by **** View PostThe abuse of power crimes for which he is about to go to trial. Or are you not aware that he is going to trial.
Originally posted by Mountain Man View PostAnd what crime is that? Cite the specific legal statute that was supposedly violated and the evidence that you could take court to prove it.Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
Than a fool in the eyes of God
From "Fools Gold" by Petra
Comment
-
Originally posted by Mountain Man View PostHere is what I asked:
Simply repeating your assertion doesn't answer the question.
--Sam"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
Comment
-
Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostYou can't just insert the word "crimes" and magically make it a crime, let alone multiple crimes, Jim.
Comment
-
Originally posted by JimL View PostThey are crimes in so far as the the office of the president goes. Abuse of power are not necessarily crimes as codified by law though they certainly can be and are included in this case. Again, Andrew Johnson was impeached 35-19 and was saved in the Senate by one vote for abuse of power, not for "what you're calling a "crime," not for violating an actual law.
I'll see myself out.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Bill the Cat View PostThis is a procedural issue, not a criminal one.
I still am convinced that it is. But, in spite of my belief, even if I am incorrect, the remedy was in place in the law, and the Comptroller did not exercise it. It is not up to the POTUS to make the Comptroller comply.
And he will remain in office because his actions were for the benefit of the US, not his personal gain. That his personal interests happened to align with the intended purpose of what was good of the US is irrelivant - a fact that the House Dems ignored to their dying breath.
Impeachment only requires a vote. It requires nothing more than "I don't like you, Mr. President"
1) An OMB footnote to DOD constitutes a legitimate notification of Congress
... and, actually, we can stop there because that's self-evidently false. You can't conceivably argue that one executive agency notifying a different executive agency in a footnote constitutes a "notification to Congress". It's just not and anyone who says it is would have to be so self-delusional that they'll believe anything that advances their interests. It's the same sort of delusion that allows one to say that Trump acted in the nation's interest, despite the entirety of his diplomatic and national security agencies advocating against the actions his own attorney said were personal pursuits and explicitly not part of his presidential duties.
The core issue for this thread was that Trump's hold on Ukrainian security funds violated the law, that Trump ordered this violation as a part of his effort to abuse his power, and that the Trump administration is still obstructing Congress by refusing to release information to GAO. If the counterargument is that OMB didn't violate its duty to notify Congress because it notified DOD, there's no question as to the first charge and little point in debating the second.
--Sam"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
Comment
-
Originally posted by Sam View PostAllow me to be more specific: change people's usernames with the quote function at all and you'll be asked to leave, with moderation requested if necessary.
--SamSome may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
Than a fool in the eyes of God
From "Fools Gold" by Petra
Comment
-
Andrew Johnson was impeached 35-19 and was saved in the Senate by one vote for abuse of power...Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
Than a fool in the eyes of God
From "Fools Gold" by Petra
Comment
-
Originally posted by Sam View PostThe substance of your argument is:
1) An OMB footnote to DOD constitutes a legitimate notification of Congress
... and, actually, we can stop there because that's self-evidently false.
You can't conceivably argue that one executive agency notifying a different executive agency in a footnote constitutes a "notification to Congress". It's just not and anyone who says it is would have to be so self-delusional that they'll believe anything that advances their interests.
It's the same sort of delusion that allows one to say that Trump acted in the nation's interest, despite the entirety of his diplomatic and national security agencies advocating against the actions his own attorney said were personal pursuits and explicitly not part of his presidential duties.
The core issue for this thread was that Trump's hold on Ukrainian security funds violated the law, that Trump ordered this violation as a part of his effort to abuse his power, and that the Trump administration is still obstructing Congress by refusing to release information to GAO. If the counterargument is that OMB didn't violate its duty to notify Congress because it notified DOD, there's no question as to the first charge and little point in debating the second.
--SamThat's what
- She
Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
- Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)
I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
- Stephen R. Donaldson
Comment
-
Originally posted by Bill the Cat View PostNo it isn't. It happens frequently. Have you ever had to prepare a budget to send to DoD? I have. Footnotes or line items in a spreadsheet are legitimate notifications because the entire document is an official record. There is no official DoD format for a notification to Congress.
It happens every day, Sam.
Citation? I know some Obama leftover lackeys were disagreeing, but I'd like to see your proof that "the entirety" were against it.
Precisely. One has to make a blatant assumption that Trump ordered the hold in order to abuse his power. Only Trump can answer that. And thus far, the evidence is pretty favorable that it was a policy decision, not a personal one.
A note to the Department of Defense is, by definition, not a notification to Congress. And Sandy testified that the footnote was inserted because a direct notification to Congress would have caused problems when members of Congress demanded to know why the funds were being withheld. This isn't a point of argument: you either acknowledge that Congress was not directly notified of the hold, as the law demands, or you exist in an alt-world where the Pentagon getting a footnote notification counts as a direct notification to Congress. But in this world, such an assertion is logically and definitionally false.
Trump-appointed diplomatic and budgetary officials testified that Trump's hold of Ukrainian security funds ran against US diplomatic and national security interests, as well as the consensus in the agencies responsible for those affairs. Trump-appointed diplomatic personnel testified that Trump's quid quo pro requests to investigate Biden was improper and counter to US diplomatic interests. Diplomatic officials even warned that Trump's assertion that Ukraine was responsible for the DNC/DSCC hack, rather than Russia, was a propaganda effort by the Russian government. This has all been poured over and litigated numerous times. To reduce it to "Obama leftover lackeys" shows a gross incompetence of handling the basic facts surrounding the last four months.
And, as those testimonies and documentary evidence has amply shown, this was far from a policy decision. It was, in fact, something that policy workers in both the diplomatic agencies and budgetary agencies had to work against, as the OMB correspondence during the hold shows quite clearly.
But if your contention is that only Trump can answer for his motivations (clearly a false assertion but let's roll with it), then you would rationally expect -- even demand -- that Trump be deposed under oath, as Clinton was?
--Sam"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
Comment
Related Threads
Collapse
Topics | Statistics | Last Post | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Started by Cow Poke, Today, 09:08 AM
|
6 responses
43 views
0 likes
|
Last Post
by RumTumTugger
Today, 10:30 AM
|
||
Started by CivilDiscourse, Today, 07:44 AM
|
0 responses
16 views
0 likes
|
Last Post Today, 07:44 AM | ||
Started by seer, Today, 07:04 AM
|
29 responses
110 views
0 likes
|
Last Post
by Sparko
Today, 12:38 PM
|
||
Started by seer, 04-21-2024, 01:11 PM
|
100 responses
553 views
0 likes
|
Last Post Today, 12:51 PM | ||
Started by seer, 04-19-2024, 02:09 PM
|
19 responses
163 views
0 likes
|
Last Post
by rogue06
Today, 07:45 AM
|
Comment