(04-18-2019, 07:51 PM)MalabarJag Wrote:

(04-18-2019, 03:40 PM)TJBender Wrote: This is why I need to find time to sit down and read the thing, at least the sections that both sides have latched onto. In my mind, telling someone to take an action that would obstruct an investigation is the same as obstructing justice, whether that person carries out your request or not. Is that really what the report says, and if so, what corroboration is there for it? A thinly-veiled suggestion that the President directed others to obstruct justice in an investigation of himself is a heavy hammer to drop without corroboration from multiple people who saw it happen.

What action would have obstructed the investigation if carried out? Letting Flynn off the hook? Asking NSA for evidence? Neither of those actions are obstruction except in the wet dreams of the anti-Trumpers.

Telling Don McGahn to fire Mueller, for one. That's what got Nixon thrown out the door.

As for the rest, it's a series of actions that by themselves wouldn't merit more than a second glance. When put together and when they're surrounding an active investigation of the President, some of them start to look like intent to obstruct. Firing Comey isn't obstruction unless it was specifically because of the Russia investigation, and I've yet to see any proof that it was. The President telling the intelligence community to release statements supporting him, well, that's shady. Constantly attacking the people investigating you in a very public forum, well, that's also shady. If this were an isolated incident, that'd be one thing, but this is a President who, by the looks of things, was actively trying to interfere with an ongoing investigation of himself. I'm not going to jump on a table and shout impeachment because all we have here is a series of events that, like I said, taken out of context are just a President being a President (aside from ordering McGahn to fire Mueller, that's big). I will say that both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees should independently continue investigations solely along the obstruction path. I don't care what letter appears in parentheses after a President's name, if there's clear evidence that he was attempting to bring an end to an investigation of himself and his closest advisers, then there must be serious repercussions. We might as well not have a justice system if that is what happened and people aren't held accountable for it.

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