jcsmith

1 minute ago, Hanaguma said:

A two year investigation with hundreds of interviews, subpoenas, and investigators, could not come up with the evidence. Isn't that enough?

He certainly took the aid of Russia and knew where it was coming from. He was certainly aware of what Russia was doing, even if there is no evidence of him coordinating in it. His staff (Manafort) certainly fed them information including poll data. His family and staff certainly took a meeting with them to attempt to obtain information. His son and staff certainly received information from Wikileaks. There is plenty of evidence to support that. And according to Mueller many people interviewed lied to him. Several people destroyed evidence. Trump refused to be interviewed by him without a prolonged legal fight that Mueller elected not to engage in. 

So the best case scenario there is that Trump willingly took the aid of a foreign power to get himself elected. Unanswered questions is why does he feel so obviously beholden to Putin? That remains unanswered. Maybe it will never be answered. But it is certainly suspicious.

Obstruction though seems like there's a very solid case for it here, but policy would not allow indicting of a sitting president. If there is, the big question is why? What was he covering up? That's may not be a legal battle, but from a political standpoint it does matter.

6 minutes ago, tlandtday said:

Let the voters decide.  The ones who are being disrespected by this entire process.  Those that have had their democratically elected President obstructed at every turn he takes. Let's see what they say.  If Trump is so terrible he cannot stand a chance at winning or do you have so little faith or belief in the electorate?  Is that what this is really all about?  Discredit the government and discredit the voters so you can put your own in?

I doubt democrats attempt to impeach Trump unless a significant number republicans in the senate are willing to do so and to date the GOP has shown that they will die on the sword for Trump. But I don't think there is much chance that Trump will be re-elected. 

That having been said, I see that predictably nobody is going to take a chance to answer any of those big five questions I asked. If you are unable to justify why Trump did these things then how can you support him with a clean conscience?

7 minutes ago, tlandtday said:

Problem is you are leading with what amounts to hearsay.  Provide some solid proof of this quote by Trump then we can continue the discussion.

Hearsay? There is a 448 page document on the incident with the full report here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5955379-Redacted-Mueller-Report.html#document/

That having been said anytime it's Trump's word in public vs. other figures word under oath with the pressure of perjury or lying to the FBI if they are dishonest... It's pretty hard to believe the pathological liar over someone who would be jailed if they lied...

11 minutes ago, tlandtday said:

It should be pretty clear to any rational thinker by now that this is nothing more than political assassination minus the gun.  They will attempt to remove Trump at all costs with no attention paid to justice or motivation.  Their gun just may backfire we shall see.

Pretty clear to any rational thinker? 

There is little doubt really that Trump obstructed justice. Mueller only didn't conclude that because he felt he could not indict a sitting president and as a result of that it would be unfair to conclude that. It's obvious from that report that he felt Trump obstructed justice though and he most notably said that if he found otherwise he would have exonerated him... but he did not.

He also laid out Manafort handing over polling data, battleground state information, etc to Russian intelligence. Don Jr accessing wikileaks information, etc. He could not determine criminal liability for those things, but noted that many of Trump's cabinet lied to them repeatedly and some deleted evidence. Trump meanwhile never granted him an interview, and in the written interview the man with the greatest memory of all time couldn't remember 27 times... and gave vague and useless answers to numerous other questions. Mueller basically concluded that the only way to resolve that would be to have a long legal battle to force testimony which he declined to do and instead issued the report. 

That is not political assassination. Nor is it a witch hunt.  It's a prosecutor laying out 448 pages of facts which paint Trump in a very negative light... Only to watch William Barr spin it in a way that seemed like it was overwhelmingly positive to him,  then watching Fox News and Trump's supporters claim victory for a month before he released the document which clearly shows otherwise. 

The big questions:

- If Trump was innocent why did he feel that the special counsel was the end of his presidency, and that he was screwed.

- If Trump was innocent then why did he obstruct justice at every turn?
- If Trump was innocent why did he direct his son to lie about the tower meeting?

- If Trump was innocent why did he continue to lie about the Moscow Trump Tower until he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar?
- If there was no wrongdoing then why did numerous members of his own cabinet or counsel refuse to execute things he ordered them to do? They essentially protected him from himself and protected themselves from criminal wrongdoing that he was ordering them to execute.

Those are hard questions to answer. But I'd invite you to take a crack.

23 minutes ago, oilinki said:

Why to let USA to stagnate for further 2 years with Trump being the president of the USA?

I don't disagree with you, but I think the problem is that the GOP will not impeach Trump. They'll tear down the FBI, concoct grand conspiracies which hurt the country, all the while watching the U.S. Foreign policy sink deeper and deeper before they do.

3 hours ago, roobaa01 said:

yes miller is a good choice standing for a hardline policy

His own family begs to differ... 

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351

17 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

He could be refusing to release them to elicit just such a reaction from the haters. I'm sure he enjoys a good wind up. It may be the only pleasure he gets from being POTUS.

I suppose he could also be a superhero in his off hours. The likelihood of that being true is next to nil. He's held off releasing them for three years now using false grounds. There is a reason for that and it has nothing to do with winding people up. The fact that he has claimed he's under audit and will release gladly after the audit, and then yet years go by and now is willing to fight to keep them from going public almost certainly means that there is either embarrassing or incriminating (or both) that may come from them being released.

The disturbing thing here is that the claim is that the Mueller team prepared a lengthy summary of cleared information that was meant to the public and more damning to Trump on obstruction. But Barr choose not to release that and to instead release his own 4 page summary and still hasn't released theirs. The DOJ did not deny that this summary was written by the Mueller team in their response today. If this turns out to be true, then it's pretty obvious why Barr was Trump's choice. Not that it wasn't already.

2 hours ago, roobaa01 said:

why ?? coz of fake news media spreading collusion lies, dems spreading collusion lies like schiff on tv "collusion details are in plain sight " may be he was drugged by russian agents saying that 5555

The news didn't make up the tower meeting. They didn't make up the letter clearly saying that it was about Russia's effort to help get Trump elected. It didn't make his son respond that he loved it, and forward it to all of the higher ups in the Trump campaign... who then took the meeting. It didn't make Trump side with Putin over his own intelligence. Nor did it make Mike Flynn get tied up smoothing things over with them... Nor did it make Trump refuse to do anything about Flynn until forced by it leaking. It didn't make Trump go on national TV and ask Russia to help with the emails. Or Russian hackers spam the internet right after the Access Hollywood Tape came out to change the subject. They didn't make Trump look like a whipped dog any time he's with Putin. Nor did they make him have numerous meeting with Putin with nobody else other than translators present, or him taking their notes. It didn't force him to fire Comey and then admit on national TV that it was over Russia. Nor did it make him invite the Russian ambassador to the white house right after and tell them that after firing Comey it should help alleviate the tension. Nor did it make him hand off top secret intel from Israel to the Russian government, who was backing the opposition. It didn't force Stone to work on back deals with Wikileaks, nor did it force Jared Kushner to seek a secret backchannel with Russia. It didn't force Trump to be working on a Moscow Tower Deal all the while lying to the American public that he had no dealings in Moscow. It didn't force him into shady dealings with the very bank that has been caught laundering money for Russia. 

While Trump may have evaded committing a crime here, all of the above is true. And it is damning.

32 minutes ago, Baerboxer said:

 

That's right Eric. The PTP PM candidate is new fresh and not controlled by Thaksin is she? 

The idea that an unelected government is better than a Thaksin government is ridiculous. I'm not a fan of Thaksin but his party wins election after election for a reason. It is the will of the Thai people. And the junta controlled government has not proven itself to be any less corrupt. The only difference is that they have no mass protests, because the military actually does its job in enforcing this, which they do not do when they are not in control. 

It's time for Thailand to turn the corner. Have legitimate elections. Live by the results of those elections. Follow the rule of law. Don't try to stack elections to get the outcome you desire. Stop enforcing the laws in a one-sided manner. Follow the will of the people and if they are unhappy with the results, allow them to overthrow you in the next election. Why is that so difficult?

9 hours ago, steven100 said:

Get over it and move on ...... 

Get over yourself.

It should be noted that in the vast majority of developed countries you wouldn't even think of a coup being a possibility. Trying to perform one would be treasonous. But in Thailand it's business as usual.

This has nothing to do with the IRS protecting him. It has everything to do with putting this stuff under the microscope. He's made a lot of public declarations, and if this information gets out into the public there will be many more eyes on following not only where cases of tax fraud or evasion exist, but of tracing where the money is coming from. Trump for example claims he has no interests in Russia, which we know was not true at the time he was making the statement. Once his tax returns are opened up you can bet that publications like the NY Times and Washington Post are going to have sleuths checking into where large investments are coming from and looking money laundering and connecting the dots.

Maybe they find nothing. But the fact that he has continually lied about releasing the tax returns, it's awful fishy.

3 minutes ago, killerbeez said:

I believe Cohen. He's never lied before. Why would he start now?

What I found interesting is that the republican congressman did not once attack what he said. They never rebutted it. Instead they attacked his character. He brought physical evidence which they ignored. And instead talked about what a despicable person he was... for committing crimes at the behest of Trump... And about what a huge liar he was... all the while ignoring that they are doing this to defend a President who has told 9000 lies in two years. 

What I personally found interesting is the only thing Russia related that he was allowed to talk about was the Stone phone call. Why was that? Stone and Assange both called it false immediately after (Stone likely violating a gag order). Donald Trump is on record telling Mueller he never discussed this with Stone. But if that conversation happened in the oval office, there's going to be a record of it. And if that is corroborated then it's game over. The fact that they allowed Cohen to speak about this and nothing else regarding Russia is intriguing. 

How can you support a guy who rejects information from the experts, in favor of wild conspiracy theories that he saw on the internet?

6 hours ago, roobaa01 said:

again one fairy tale stories which thus far have produced no russian collusion results but lots of red tape with more than usd 25 mill. wasted by mueller and his gang.

 

wbr

roobaa01

The Mueller investigation has confiscated more money than it has spent so far... And resulted in dozens of indictments and convictions. 

In the past couple of days we've learned:

- Manafort lied while supposedly being a cooperating witness to Mueller, and reported information he learned about their investigation back to Trump.

- Cohen admit he lied to defend Trump about business interests in Russia after the campaign. This is also big because Cohen told the same story as others who testified to congress and there is likely documentation from his office raid to support it. If that is true it would indicate there was likely coordination in getting their story straight and that others also lied to congress.

- We learned that Trump was dealing with high end Russian officials, not business dealings, with people with ties to the Russian government. That a $50M penthouse was promised. That financial backing from a Russian source was secured. Meanwhile he repeatedly denied having any ties or dealings with them while this was ongoing. 

- We learned that Manafort had 3 meetings with Julian Assange. Including one in March 2016. 

- We learned that Stone and Corsi were communicating about the Wikileaks leaks and the stolen emails before it happened and there is a communication trail. And that Stone was in contact with Trump the next day. 

- Deutsche Bank and the guy who used to do Trump's taxes both raided yesterday. 

If Trump lied at all in his written statements to Mueller just before this all happened, his story is locked in. He's screwed. It seems to me that the walls are closing in.