(04-18-2019, 09:03 PM)MalabarJag Wrote:

(04-18-2019, 08:11 PM)TJBender Wrote: 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.

Telling who to fire Mueller? Mueller was under Sessions and Rosenstein, not Don McGahn or anybody else I've never heard of.

Asking for supporting evidence is shady? Asking to end an investigation that has no basis in fact is deserving of "serious repercussions"?

The rest of your statement is a real stretch. Are you suggesting that complaining about a false charge or the people claiming it is a crime? That would mean that every innocent defendant would be committing a crime by defending himself.

1. Being an idiot does not excuse Trump from telling his White House counsel to ensure the firing of the special counsel sent to investigate him.
2. He wasn't "asking for supporting evidence". He was asking intelligence community officials to put out statements saying that he was not linked to Russia.
3. Let's say I'm the King of France. Let's assume that I've been named as a person of interest in the burning of the Notre Dame because my own personal construction company stood to gain a massive contract for its rebuilding. I know that's ridiculous, and in fact it's a false allegation. If I go visit the lead inspector and tell him that I'd like him to "lift the cloud", isn't that interfering with the investigation? If I call my chief of staff and tell him to fire the lead inspector, how am I not obstructing that investigation? Obstruction is obstruction, regardless of whether there was actually a crime at the bottom of the rabbit hole.

The obstruction of justice side of things should be further explored. Nothing else that I've seen so far merits a second thought, but if a President tried to use his own power to short-circuit an investigation into himself, I don't know of a planet out there where that's not a problem.

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