(04-19-2019, 08:04 AM)MalabarJag Wrote:

(04-18-2019, 11:10 PM)TJBender Wrote: 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.

1. Makes sense. White House Council is the first person to ask in a long chain, because it's WHC's job to know the law. Trump is not a lawyer. Nonetheless, since there was no crime specified, a Special Council investigation was illegal in the first place and Trump was completely within his rights to fire Mueller. That he didn't is the opposite of obstruction.

2. That's your spin in it. He could very well have expected an agency like NSA who has a huge amount of illegally obtained info on everyone to have actual proof that the collusion scam was a scam. If I were in Trump's shoes I would have expected NSA to have such evidence.

3. "You're the king of France!"

3. What you are saying is that Trump is not allowed to defend himself against false charges. Does that apply only to rulers in your mind, or is no one allowed to defend himself against false charges? Do you think that that Trump should have less rights than Joe Sixpack? Is it OK in your worldview that the FBI put Hillary above the law while they put Trump below the law? Shouldn't the law be applied the same to everyone?

For starters, Hillary should have been prosecuted for any number of reasons. I'm sure Trump realizes, despite his grandstanding, that spending time and resources going after her now will fire up his already fired up base and alienate most everyone else. It's not going to happen, but it should.

The difference between Trump defending himself from false charges and me defending myself from them is that I can't pick up the phone and direct my subordinates to fire the people investigating me. That's the big red line, and that's what needs to be explored. If there's nothing there, there's nothing there, but I would certainly like to know if the President tried to abuse his powers to interfere with an investigation of himself. I don't see how someone looking at it from 10,000 feet couldn't be asking that question. It's the only thing in the shreds of report and numerous summaries I've read that still bothers me, and I'd like to see both Judiciary Committees look into it and see what's there.

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