“Gin up” is what Ghouli and Hannity do. It works with morons, imbeciles and crypt-dwellers.
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Nope he is gone, had the retirement party and split effective May 11.
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Overall, I agree with you on the urgency. I’m not trying to justify Mueller not testifying, I’m trying to explain it via the public record of who he is. But, regarding whether he is or is not “the man who he was said to be,” that all depends on who is doing the saying and what they said. He was never going to be someone who would agree with you that Trump is an “aspiring fascist.” And I’m sure that he understands that sometimes, regrettably, criminals evade the law. So I don’t see him seeing either of those two things as sufficient motivations to testify if he feels like doing so voluntarily would weaken the report itself by making him more easily cast as a partisan actor. And I think that’s a real concern. But I also think that he’s overestimating the abstract power of a report that people aren’t reading, so I think that he should testify. But since it looks like he won’t voluntarily, its up to Nadler to subpoena him.
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Oops, overlooked that. Did he get a Timex for his years of servicing the GOP?
So far, Justin Amash is the member of Congress who has done the best job explaining what’s in the report.
Nadler wants Mueller himself to do it.
Maybe our side could give it a shot instead of relying on republicans.
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Loaded headline language here, TPM. “Gin up” sounds like “artificially inflate” or “manipulate.” Don’t see you use that language all that often with Trump and Graham, et al., and don’t want to see you use it on Nadler when he is facing a wall of resistance in the WH, the GOP, some of the media, some of the public, and even his own party. “Build” is reasonable, but not “gin up.” Again, “gin up” is loaded and negatively so.
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If I were to construct a hearing schedule for the Dems, it would go like this (btw, they should’ve been doing this much earlier).
Group 1 - The Prosecutors/Investigators:
Robert Mueller
Andrew Weissman
Greg Andres
Zainab Ahmad
James Quarles
Brandon Von Grack
Jeannie Rhee
1-2 FBI agents that assisted Mueller
Group 2 - The ‘Oranges’ of the Investigation (the friendlies)
James Comey
Andrew McCabe
Peter Strzok
Lisa Page
James Baker
John Brennan
James Clapper
Stephen Halper
Dana Boente
Group 3 - Russia Cyberwar/Intel experts
Christopher Steele
Clinton Watts
Glenn Simpson
(Brennan/Clapper)
Other nat sec experts from Obama era
Group 4 - The Rasputin
Rod Rosenstein
Group 5 - Obstruction Witnesses (WH phase)
Don McGahn
Hope Hicks
Reince Priebus
Chris Christie
Steve Bannon
Rudy Giuliani
Ty Cobb
Uttam Dhillon
Rob Porter
Josh Raffel
Jeff Sessions
Matt Whitaker
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Sean Spicer
Dan Coats
John Dowd
Group 6 - The Trump Campaign
Rick Gates
George Papadopoulos
Corey Lewandowski
Jeff Sessions
Carter Page
Steve Bannon
Group 7 - Russian/Wikileaks Connected Rat F***ers
Felix Sater
Dmitri Simes
Erik Prince
George Nader
Sam Patten
Ted Malloch
Petr Aven
Rob Goldstone
Ike Kaveladze
Rinat Akmetshin
Jerome Corsi
Randy Credico
Mariia Butina
Someone connected to Peter Smith
Group 8 - Transition and Administration
Michael Flynn
KT McFarland
Michael Ledeen
Mike Pence
Group 9 - The Family & Businesses
Michael Cohen
Donald Trump Jr
Ivanka Trump
Eric Trump
Alan Weisselberg
The bodyguard
Rhona Graff
Among others.
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Not being able to exonerate someone is quite different from saying they are guilty.
Mueller stated a number of things. Here’s one:
We concluded that we would not reach a determination, one way or the other, about whether the president committed a crime.
Makes crystal-clear that his statement was not tantamount to declaring that Trump committed a crime.
So that’s that.
But then he also said the following:
If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.
In other words: “The evidence we were able to recover prevented us from concluding that Trump hadn’t committed a crime.”
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Maybe, but in this case and at this point, it’s a ridiculous concern.
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Even if all Mueller does is read highlights from the report, get it on TV. It adds weight and attention. Very few people actually read the report but, many will watch Mueller talk about it on TV.
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Great. Let’s see that subpoena then.
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True, but it has been good to me for a bit. Lulling me into a false sense of complacency.
What happened this round was a comment that I completed, once sent, was revealed to still exist in as a work in process and back stepped from my final posting. Then I also discovered the back stepped version had posted as well. Confused the heck out of me.
The comment system nothing less than creative at times.
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Exactly.
Adjust your snark meter. I know there very likely going as fast as they can.
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One very good way to “win over the American people” would be to *start impeachment proceedings.*The evidence publicly revealed would be more than adequate to persuade anyone who isn’t a treacherous republican that Fake President Trump belongs in jail.
And stop allowing repugs to bully them.
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They’ll look like fools when Lindsey Graham subpoenas Mueller first.
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The US Constitution says to impeach High Crimes and Misdemeanors, not have a dialog with the people.
The whole reason we elect senators and representatives is to run and protect the country as the Constitution directs, not to chit-chat with us (aka: don’t do their job until poll results say its safe).
Very good!
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In 1996, Bill Clinton saw his popularity boosted and won re-election during (because of?) his impeachment.
If we do NOT impeach, Trump cannot use it against us, and we need to beat him on our own merits.
If we DO, it will be all you hear about for a year, and, in reality, it WILL use up all of Congress’s time (infrastructure week every week), and we STILL need to beat him on our own merits.
This is an easy decision. Pelosi is 100% right.
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Here is something else that belongs in that conversation: in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, there was an op-ed by a man who teaches constitutional law at Hampden-Sydney College (can’t recall his name, sorry) pointing out that it is not necessary for something to rise to the level of an actual crime for it to be an impeachable offense. Trump and his defenders are trying to make the argument that Mueller charged no crimes, therefore there is no case for impeachment. This is the same argument, he said, which Richard Nixon tried to make, and which was largely knocked down at the time. This is why the constitution uses the phraseology “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It was an indefinite term even in the 18th century, because the writers of the Constitution wanted Congress to be able to remove a president for something that might fall short of a legally defined criminal offense, but still was something that indicated a degree of corruption or ineptitude that made the target of the impeachment unfit for public office.
So it doesn’t matter that Mueller did not find sufficient evidence to suggest that Trump was guilt of criminal conspiracy with the Russians; he clearly was happy to receive help from them, whatever damage that did to the country’s electoral process, and Congress is perfectly free to decide that could be something worthy of impeachment.
And for certain there is a good deal of evidence that Trump was trying very hard to obstruct Mueller’s investigation, and that he continues to try to obstruct investigations of his activities during his presidency and corrupt acts he may have been engaged in prior to assuming office. And those, too are not off the table, even if they might not result in a conviction above reasonable doubt in a court of law. As the writer of the op-ed also pointed out, impeachment and removal from office is not a loss of life, liberty, or property. If Trump were impeached and convicted, he would still be free to return to his home and live his life without any further legal restraint; he simply would not be able to continue to exercise political power on the office of president.
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