Bill Of Impeachment: Article I, Obstruction Of Justice

[RayThom]

And now, all jokes aside... Bernie Knows Best:




The Kingdom IS Crumbling.

[Lord Jim]

And yet more gross misconduct...

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, only replying: “I agree he is a good guy.”

In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.

“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”

Mr. Comey created similar memos — including some that are classified — about every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the two people said. It is unclear whether Mr. Comey told the Justice Department about the conversation or his memos.

Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey last week. Trump administration officials have provided multiple, conflicting accounts of the reasoning behind Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Mr. Trump said in a television interview that one of the reasons was because he believed “this Russia thing” was a “made-up story.”

The Feb. 14 meeting took place just a day after Mr. Flynn was forced out of his job after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Despite the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey, the investigation of Mr. Flynn has proceeded. In Virginia, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas in recent weeks for records related to Mr. Flynn. Part of the Flynn investigation is centered on his financial ties to Russia and Turkey.

Mr. Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.

Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

Mr. Trump then turned the discussion to Mr. Flynn.

After writing up a memo that outlined the meeting, Mr. Comey shared it with senior F.B.I. officials. Mr. Comey and his aides perceived Mr. Trump’s comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret — even from the F.B.I. agents working on the Russia investigation — so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.

Mr. Comey was known among his closest advisers to document conversations that he believed would later be called into question, according to two former confidants, who said Mr. Comey was uncomfortable at times with his relationship with Mr. Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/p ... ation.html

[Lord Jim]

Meanwhile, back at the previous scandal...You remember, the one that broke way back yesterday...

A President can be Impeached for violating his Oath Of Office, even if that violation does not constitute a statutory violation:

Let’s dispense with one easy rabbit hole that a lot of people are likely to go down this evening: the President did not “leak” classified information in violation of law. He is allowed to do what he did. If anyone other than the President disclosed codeword intelligence to the Russians in such fashion, he’d likely be facing a long prison term. But Nixon’s infamous comment that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal” is actually true about some things. Classified information is one of them. The nature of the system is that the President gets to disclose what he wants.

The reason is that the very purpose of the classification system is to protect information the President, usually through his subordinates, thinks sensitive. So the President determines the system of designating classified information through Executive Order, and he is entitled to depart from it at will. Currently, Executive Order 13526 governs national security information.

The Supreme Court has stated in Department of the Navy v. Egan that “[the President’s] authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security ... flows primarily from this Constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.” Because of his broad constitutional authority in this realm, the president can, at any time, either declassify information or decide whom to share it with.

In short, Trump did not violate any criminal law concerning the disclosure of classified information here. The question of criminality, however, is by no means the end of the analysis.

Questions of criminality aside, we turn to the far more significant issues: If the President gave this information away through carelessness or neglect, he has arguably breached his oath of office. As Quinta and Ben have elaborated on in some detail, in taking the oath President Trump swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” to the best of his ability. It’s very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President.

Violating the oath of office does not require violating a criminal statute. If the President decided to write the nuclear codes on a sticky note on his desk and then took a photo of it and tweeted it, he would not technically have violated any criminal law–just as he hasn’t here. He has the constitutional authority to dictate that the safeguarding of nuclear materials shall be done through sticky notes in plain sight and tweeted, even the authority to declassify the codes outright. Yet, we would all understand this degree of negligence to be a gross violation of his oath of office.

Congress has alleged oath violations—albeit violations tied to criminal allegations or breaches of statutory obligations—all three times it has passed or considered seriously articles of impeachment against presidents: against Andrew Johnson (“unmindful of the high duties of his oath of office”), Richard Nixon (“contrary to his oath”), and Bill Clinton (“in violation of his constitutional oath”). Further, two of the three articles of impeachment against Nixon alleged no direct violation of the law. Instead, they concerned Nixon’s abuse of his power as President, which, like the President putting the nuclear codes on Twitter, is an offense that can only be committed by the President and has thus never been explicitly prohibited in criminal law.

There’s thus no reason why Congress couldn’t consider a grotesque violation of the President’s oath as a standalone basis for impeachment—a high crime and misdemeanor in and of itself. This is particularly plausible in a case like this, where the oath violation involves giving sensitive information to an adversary foreign power.

This is part of a longer article, well worth reading in its entirety:

https://lawfareblog.com/bombshell-initi ... ging-story

[BoSoxGal]

It will be a long and painful process, but surely impeachment is now inevitable, given Trump's request that Comey quit the investigation into Flynn.

Surely the Republicans can't ignore that?

[Bicycle Bill]

Surely the Republicans can't ignore that?

The fact that he ran as a Republican, won the office, and is POTUS #45 means that they will all put on blinders, chant "we won, you lost, get over it", and continue to ignore the turd in the punchbowl.

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

I would think the repubs would welcome Pence as president after Trump--he would do a lot more to advance their agenda than Trump ever could. But I would think they are concerned of the effect of an impeachment on the midterm election, so we may well have this status quo for 2 years before they do anything.

[ex-khobar Andy]

In today's NYT the is a column from Ross Douthat advocating a 25th amendment solution. That requires 2/3 of congress and the cabinet to attest that the President is unfit for office, and was originally written with some sort of medical event in mind.

There is a comment BTL from Michael Liss in NYC which I think bears wider reading:

While Mr. Douthat makes excellent points, there is something that professional Republicans have a hard time grasping. Trump won the election, not Pence. Pence was an obscure and fading Governor before he was picked. His primary attributes were that he was liked by the Evangelical Right, and he was bland, but supportive. Trump won the election by forming a new coalition with arguments and an appeal that a conventional politician could not match. The new Trump voters did not vote for bland hard-line Republicanism--they voted for a post-partisan Mr. Fixit. Trump was the currency that bought their loyalty, and the GOP to power. Take Trump out of the equation, elevate Pence, and follow through with legislation to radically remake this country into a conservative "paradise" and a lot of people are going to feel cheated. And if it can be shown that Trump won with Russian help and andhis campaign's collusion, his election--and Pence's position, as well as the entire conservative legislative agenda, parts of which are broadly unpopular, will be seen as a product of fraud by many. If Trump is truly mentally unfit and incapable, then yes, he should be removed under the 25th. If he has committed impeachable offensives, then he should be impeached and convicted. But just tossing him because you'd rather have Pence and then pretending Pence has a mandate would be just as much a crisis. Maybe we wouldn't blow the world up. But we would seriously damage democracy.

I think this gets to the heart of the constitutional issue. If we believe that the election was stolen (Russia, fraud, lies, mass doping of the population with secret gases piped into voting booths, whatever) then how is Pence a solution? If we go with originality intent, then the VP to whom the office should pass would be the person who obtained the second place in the EC. Simply put, there is no fitting solution in the Constitution as amended.

[Bicycle Bill]

All this talk about who takes over if Trump resigns or otherwise gets the heave-ho .... let's go back forty-some years.

Early 1970s. Nixon's second term, and Spiro Agnew is his Veep.  Agnew himself resigns over his own problems, leaving the post vacant for a while until somehow Michigan representative/House minority leader Gerald Ford finds himself, under provisions of the 25th Amendment, a heartbeat away from the highest office in the land.

Then comes the Watergate scandal, implicating CREEP (Committee to RE-Elect the President), along with various leaks, the revelation that Nixon regularly (and secretly) taped conversations in the Oval Office, the mysterious gap on said tapes, and various other leaks, reports, accusation, and innuendoes that seem to deliver a preponderance of evidence to prove that while the Watergate break-in and other acts of political espionage may not have been entirely Tricky Dickie's idea and done under his orders, he was far more aware of what was being done than he was trying to make us believe.  So he basically runs for the county line, reaching it about two steps ahead of the sheriff, and tenders his own resignation.  The microphones have barely been tuned off before good ol' Jerry, the new POTUS, issues Executive Proclamation 4311 — the fastest pardon ever granted in this or any other world — effectively sweeping the whole damned pile of elephant dung under the rug; out of sight, out of mind.

So if Trump goes, Pence is the next POTUS.  You don't think that as soon as Pence would take his hand off the Bible he wouldn't deliver his own word-for-word version of Executive Proclamation 4311, with only the effective dates and the name of the guilty being changed?

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

that's assuming two things, neither of which is a given:

1. Trump can be convinced of resigning--if he were impeached and removed from office, I think Pence might be far less likely to pardon him; it didn't help Ford get a second term and somehow I doubt it would help the next president who pardoned the only president to be removed from office.

2. Trump doesn't do anything to piss Pence off (which is doubtful at best).

[Lord Jim]

The latest Public Policy Polling survey found that nearly half (48%) of Americans supported impeachment proceedings for Trump, while just 41% said they would not support them.

That poll, like the first, was taken May 12-14, among 692 registered voters, before news emerged that Trump disclosed highly classified information to Russian diplomats and before news broke that Trump explicitly asked Comey to end the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn before firing the now ex-FBI chief.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3173051

[Scooter]

So the numbers now are more like 64% for and 27% against...

[Econoline]

[BoSoxGal]

[Guinevere]

1/21/19

[RayThom]

1/21/19

Much sooner... I hope. But after the midterm elections is probably a solid guess.

President Pence? That sounds almost as bad but at least he stands for something.

[Big RR]

President Pence? That sounds almost as bad but at least he stands for something.

true, but what he stands for scares the hell out of me; it says a lot that I'd prefer him to a president trump.

[BoSoxGal]

Take back the House, take Pence down for his lies related to Russiagate, end up with President Pelosi.


There are no good options here, folks. But I'd tolerate that one.

[Big RR]

Well since we are speculating, before that could happen my guess is that Pence would appoint a new VP and resign before any impeachment. Not sure who the new VP would be, but because the Senate would need to confirm (as I recall), it would have to be someone not seen as an Tea Partier--maybe McCain? Not something I'd want but I could live with that as well.

[RayThom]

... Not sure who the new VP would be, but because the Senate would need to confirm (as I recall), it would have to be someone not seen as an Tea Partier--maybe McCain?...

How about Donald Jr.? This would keep Lord Dampnut's base happy, all the while being absolutely clueless.

[Bicycle Bill]

How appropriate that someone photoshopped Sasquatch into the picture — he's a perfect representation of the current POTUS:
► Bad hair.
► Doesn't pay taxes.
► Keeps to himself and his own kind.
► Does pretty much what he wants to do.
► Communicates by grunting or other short outbursts.
► And no one knows what his intentions are.

-"BB"-