The Trump Confession To Article II Of Impeachment(?)! (Really Public, Too!)

[mascale]

Apparently one of the staffers of one of the House Managers finally upstaged a Trump Tweet! Regarding the documents supportive of the House Impeachment Articles: "The second article of impeachment was for obstruction of Congress: Covering up witnesses and documents from the American people. This morning the President not only confessed to it, he bragged about it."

Contempt of Congress in fact is a standard criminal charge (aka, crime), in the United States. Putin can do what he wants, just comparing.

Trump Admits to Withholding Evidence From Impeachment Inquiry

________________________
"President Trump appeared to admit Wednesday that he is comfortable with how his impeachment trial is playing out in the Senate—because the White House is withholding evidence about his dealings with Ukraine. “Honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material,” the president told reporters in Davos, Switzerland, where he is attending the World Economic Forum, regarding the documents the White House has refused to turn over. “When we released that conversation, all hell broke out with the Democrats because they say, wait a minute, this is much different than shifty Schiff told us, so we’re doing very well. I got to watch enough, I thought our team did a very good job,” Trump said, referencing House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who has spearheaded the House impeachment inquiry against the president."

"Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), one of the seven congressional impeachment managers, blasted Trump’s admission on Twitter, writing, 'The second article of impeachment was for obstruction of Congress: covering up witnesses and documents from the American people. This morning the President not only confessed to it, he bragged about it.'"

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Moses had the audacity to ascribe Pharaoh's subjugation math to a deity, even, (Deut 23: 19-20))

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I thought the House had incontrovertible evidence??? Were they lying?

 

[mascale]

Does John Donald Trump ever get his facts straight?

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(". . .Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done. . ." (Matt 25:14-30)

 

[Zander]

Claiming executive privilege is not a crime, it is not obstruction. The president can invoke executive privilege in order to withhold some internal executive branch communications from the other branches of government. The privilege is based on the separation of powers between the branches.

Executive privilege has been invoked since the U.S.'s early days but isn't in the Constitution. It was only in 1974, when Richard Nixon tried to prevent the release of White House tapes during the Watergate investigation, that the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality, and set some parameters for it. The Court ruled that no claim on executive privilege is absolute, and can also be overcome if evidence is needed in a criminal trial.

Obama used the same executive privilege to withhold documents about fast and furious.

 

[Maxdeath]

Does John Donald Trump ever get his facts straight?

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(". . .Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done. . ." (Matt 25:14-30)

???? Who is John Trump?

Daily Beast? Perhaps something from the Onion also.

 

[mascale]

Properly put, Proper Context!


Executive privilege has been invoked since the U.S.'s early days but isn't in the Constitution. It was only in 1974, when Richard Nixon tried to prevent the release of White House tapes during the Watergate investigation, that the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality, and set some parameters for it. The Court ruled that no claim on executive privilege is absolute, and can also be overcome if evidence is needed in a criminal trial.

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Like Moses being Pharaoh-trained, (Acts 7), even before the Roman Subjugating Empire!)

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Does John Donald Trump ever get his facts straight?

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(". . .Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done. . ." (Matt 25:14-30)

Where's the incontrovertible evidence?

 

[mascale]

The President spoke to an international audience.

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Anglicans and Catholics do their prayers, allegedly! Jews seem to yell alot, and dance around other people's streets--really early in the morning! Moslems block traffic at odd hours of the day. Communists do none of the above, and then there are the primitive peoples(?).Squirrels are not found to consider any of this at all really necessary!)

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Uh huh.

 

[Crepitus]

The president can invoke executive privilege in order to withhold some internal executive branch communications from the other branches of government

Some, not all.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The president can invoke executive privilege in order to withhold some internal executive branch communications from the other branches of government

Some, not all.

How is he withholding ALL evidence when you're telling us that you have an airtight case complete with overwhelming, incontrovertible evidence?

There's a big disconnect somewhere

 

[Norman]

Any minute now...

I do think it is good that we get to vote the democrats out for a good reason.

 

[Kilroy2]

“Honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material,”

So why don't you show us this material Mr President

 

[CrusaderFrank]

“Honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material,”

So why don't you show us this material Mr President

You're thinking like you're Back in the USSR. In America, no one ever has to prove their innocence.

Maybe Iran Nan sent the 2 non crimes backed with no evidence because she thought she thought she was her beloved USSR

 

[mascale]

NY Times June 19, 2019, is more instructive. 2018 House vote went decidedly Democrat, already.
________________________________________
President Trump has been on an executive privilege extravaganza. In the past month, he’s asserted it to block Congress from obtaining documents about the census citizenship question, invoked it to try to bar the full Mueller report from being given to Congress, and used it to bar his former White House counsel, Don McGahn, from providing documents to Congress.

Executive privilege has a legitimate core, but Mr. Trump’s attempts are going to wind up undermining that core, and make it harder for future presidents to govern. He is essentially saying that he will not turn over information to Congress about potential wrongdoing — the absolute weakest claim to executive privilege along the spectrum of possible claims.

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public’s need for transparency and the government’s need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive. The Constitution erred on the side of transparency, with no mention whatsoever of executive privilege in its original text. But the experience of constitutional government (what some might call a “living Constitution”) is that presidents over time have found a need for their advisers to give them frank information without fear of embarrassment, and the privilege has been used for these sorts of routine matters, by both Democratic and Republican presidents alike.

Then came Richard Nixon. He asserted executive privilege to try to block turning over tapes that implicated him and his staff in criminal activity. It didn’t go well for him. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Mr. Nixon, saying a president was not above the law. Because the evidence contained on the tapes suggested wrongdoing, the privilege could not be used to shield his and his staff’s misconduct from sunlight. The Supreme Court decision was signed by three justices appointed by none other than Mr. Nixon.

over a dozen times; in one instance, he tried to block two White House officials from testifying in the Monica Lewinsky investigation. Ken Starr’s impeachment referral to Congress actually enumerated this as a reason for impeachment — arguing that Mr. Clinton had abused executive privilege.

This use of executive privilege — to shield personal wrongdoing — had strong echoes of Mr. Nixon, and for that reason attracted a lot of scrutiny, not simply in Congress but also in the courts. He lost his battle to shield his aides from testifying and ultimately eroded his claim to secrecy more generally. By looking profligate and personal in his use of the privilege, he cried wolf too many times, and he found it much harder to use it in circumstances, like the pardons for former members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, known by its Spanish acronym F.A.L.N., which waged a violent campaign for the independence of Puerto Rico (President Clinton offered them clemency in 1999 because, he said, their sentences were out of proportion with their offenses).

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were clearly influenced by the Clinton experience and invoked privilege only sparingly (six times for Bush, one for Obama). That was on par for the post-Nixon presidents (Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush each invoked it only once; President Reagan, three times). President Trump, by contrast, is well on his way to following the Nixon-Clinton precedents. Neither ended particularly well.

There is a deep reason for that. Americans can tolerate some secrecy, particularly when it is rooted in protection of the public’s interests. But when the claims appear to hide wrongdoing, they begin to curdle. Instead of safeguarding high-minded principles, the claims look personal, and more like something a king would do. And that is just about what Mr. Trump’s latest invocations look like.

In the teeth of a redacted report that all but labels Mr. Trump a criminal, the president’s claim to try to block the full Mueller report from coming out looks like he is trying to shield evidence of his wrongdoing. The report says: “Substantial evidence indicates that the president’s attempts to remove the special counsel were linked to the special counsel’s oversight of investigations that involved the president’s conduct — and, most immediately, to reports that the president was being investigated for potential obstruction of justice.”

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Many would say that the Moses Atrocity--Deut 23:19-20 could be said a response to the famous question about the Nixon White House: "What did he known, and When did he know it!" Arithmetic was known to Pharaoh, way ahead of Moses!)


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Mr. Trump’s attempt to block Mr. McGahn from providing documents, and presumably giving oral testimony to Congress, is no doubt motivated by a fear of what it will look like on TV when Mr. Trump’s former White House counsel says to the cameras what he already said to Mr. Mueller behind closed doors: Mr. Trump ordered him to fire Mr. Mueller, and he disregarded the order.

Mr. Trump’s use of privilege to block information about his administration’s attempt to alter the census, after a federal judge found Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross’s stated reason for doing so not credible and in the wake of striking new evidence suggesting Republican machinations to add a citizenship question to suppress minority voting, appears again to be dubious. It reeks of trying to block the cold truth about the assertions Mr. Ross and Justice Department lawyers have made from coming out. They claimed that Secretary Ross added the citizenship question to help implement the Voting Rights Act. Put aside the plausibility of an argument that this administration has suddenly become concerned with enforcing the Voting Rights Act; the fact that Mr. Trump is afraid to show the documents, which aren’t about secret law enforcement or intelligence operations, raises serious concerns about whether this is anything close to a principled use of the privilege.

Every time a president invokes executive privilege, there are three relevant audiences he has to think about: the courts, Congress and the public. Each has reasons to be worried about Mr. Trump’s profligate invocations. Presidents have a limited reservoir of secrecy available to them — the more they look wanton, the more these other entities grow concerned. And the worst part is that when they abuse the privilege, they risk generating legal precedents that will make it harder for future presidents to use the privilege in settings when they legitimately need it.

It is sometimes said that this Supreme Court will do nothing against this president, that a body with a majority composed of justices appointed by Republican presidents will not rule against him.

But the experience of President Nixon was instructive. The Supreme Court is composed of life-tenured justices for a reason. No one, particularly this president, should assume that politics will protect him in the highest court in the land

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Many would say that the Moses Atrocity--Deut 23:19-20 could be said a response to the famous question about the Nixon White House: "What did he known, and When did he know it!" Arithmetic was known to Pharaoh, way ahead of Moses!)

 

[CrusaderFrank]

NY Times June 19, 2019, is more instructive. 2018 House vote went decidedly Democrat, already.
________________________________________
President Trump has been on an executive privilege extravaganza. In the past month, he’s asserted it to block Congress from obtaining documents about the census citizenship question, invoked it to try to bar the full Mueller report from being given to Congress, and used it to bar his former White House counsel, Don McGahn, from providing documents to Congress.

Executive privilege has a legitimate core, but Mr. Trump’s attempts are going to wind up undermining that core, and make it harder for future presidents to govern. He is essentially saying that he will not turn over information to Congress about potential wrongdoing — the absolute weakest claim to executive privilege along the spectrum of possible claims.

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public’s need for transparency and the government’s need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive. The Constitution erred on the side of transparency, with no mention whatsoever of executive privilege in its original text. But the experience of constitutional government (what some might call a “living Constitution”) is that presidents over time have found a need for their advisers to give them frank information without fear of embarrassment, and the privilege has been used for these sorts of routine matters, by both Democratic and Republican presidents alike.

Then came Richard Nixon. He asserted executive privilege to try to block turning over tapes that implicated him and his staff in criminal activity. It didn’t go well for him. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Mr. Nixon, saying a president was not above the law. Because the evidence contained on the tapes suggested wrongdoing, the privilege could not be used to shield his and his staff’s misconduct from sunlight. The Supreme Court decision was signed by three justices appointed by none other than Mr. Nixon.

over a dozen times; in one instance, he tried to block two White House officials from testifying in the Monica Lewinsky investigation. Ken Starr’s impeachment referral to Congress actually enumerated this as a reason for impeachment — arguing that Mr. Clinton had abused executive privilege.

This use of executive privilege — to shield personal wrongdoing — had strong echoes of Mr. Nixon, and for that reason attracted a lot of scrutiny, not simply in Congress but also in the courts. He lost his battle to shield his aides from testifying and ultimately eroded his claim to secrecy more generally. By looking profligate and personal in his use of the privilege, he cried wolf too many times, and he found it much harder to use it in circumstances, like the pardons for former members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, known by its Spanish acronym F.A.L.N., which waged a violent campaign for the independence of Puerto Rico (President Clinton offered them clemency in 1999 because, he said, their sentences were out of proportion with their offenses).

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Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were clearly influenced by the Clinton experience and invoked privilege only sparingly (six times for Bush, one for Obama). That was on par for the post-Nixon presidents (Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush each invoked it only once; President Reagan, three times). President Trump, by contrast, is well on his way to following the Nixon-Clinton precedents. Neither ended particularly well.

There is a deep reason for that. Americans can tolerate some secrecy, particularly when it is rooted in protection of the public’s interests. But when the claims appear to hide wrongdoing, they begin to curdle. Instead of safeguarding high-minded principles, the claims look personal, and more like something a king would do. And that is just about what Mr. Trump’s latest invocations look like.

In the teeth of a redacted report that all but labels Mr. Trump a criminal, the president’s claim to try to block the full Mueller report from coming out looks like he is trying to shield evidence of his wrongdoing. The report says: “Substantial evidence indicates that the president’s attempts to remove the special counsel were linked to the special counsel’s oversight of investigations that involved the president’s conduct — and, most immediately, to reports that the president was being investigated for potential obstruction of justice.”

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Many would say that the Moses Atrocity--Deut 23:19-20 could be said a response to the famous question about the Nixon White House: "What did he known, and When did he know it!" Arithmetic was known to Pharaoh, way ahead of Moses!)


‘The Longing for Less’ Gets at the Big Appeal of Minimalism

After Culinary and Literary Acclaim, She’s Moving to the Woods

What Happened to Choupette?

Mr. Trump’s attempt to block Mr. McGahn from providing documents, and presumably giving oral testimony to Congress, is no doubt motivated by a fear of what it will look like on TV when Mr. Trump’s former White House counsel says to the cameras what he already said to Mr. Mueller behind closed doors: Mr. Trump ordered him to fire Mr. Mueller, and he disregarded the order.

Mr. Trump’s use of privilege to block information about his administration’s attempt to alter the census, after a federal judge found Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross’s stated reason for doing so not credible and in the wake of striking new evidence suggesting Republican machinations to add a citizenship question to suppress minority voting, appears again to be dubious. It reeks of trying to block the cold truth about the assertions Mr. Ross and Justice Department lawyers have made from coming out. They claimed that Secretary Ross added the citizenship question to help implement the Voting Rights Act. Put aside the plausibility of an argument that this administration has suddenly become concerned with enforcing the Voting Rights Act; the fact that Mr. Trump is afraid to show the documents, which aren’t about secret law enforcement or intelligence operations, raises serious concerns about whether this is anything close to a principled use of the privilege.

Every time a president invokes executive privilege, there are three relevant audiences he has to think about: the courts, Congress and the public. Each has reasons to be worried about Mr. Trump’s profligate invocations. Presidents have a limited reservoir of secrecy available to them — the more they look wanton, the more these other entities grow concerned. And the worst part is that when they abuse the privilege, they risk generating legal precedents that will make it harder for future presidents to use the privilege in settings when they legitimately need it.

It is sometimes said that this Supreme Court will do nothing against this president, that a body with a majority composed of justices appointed by Republican presidents will not rule against him.

But the experience of President Nixon was instructive. The Supreme Court is composed of life-tenured justices for a reason. No one, particularly this president, should assume that politics will protect him in the highest court in the land

So that's how McConnell made all of the House evidence disappear, er, or something.

You're not helping your case

 

[007]

The ENTIRE democrap impeachment, that they've been working on since BEFORE he was elected, the two farcical articles they have, are based SOLELY on HEARSAY, SPECULATION, INNUENDO, QUADRUPLE GOSSIP and a MASSIVE dose of BUTT HURT.

How DARE Trump get elected and then ACT LIKE A PRESIDENT? The democrats have been APOPLECTIC ever since. To actually want to DRAIN THE SWAMP. To actually IGNORE their career, leftist, NOT elected deep state, and DO THINGS ON HIS OWN.

HOW DARE HIM.

The modern day democrat party is acting EXACTLY like HITLER and the NAZI party.

 

[mascale]

The Constitution took the election win of Secretary Clinton away from the popular vote winner. The Constitution creates the mechanism to take the popular vote away from the popular vote loser. The Constitution says nothing about, "Executive Privilege."

Some people actually follow the polls.

Democrats are entitled to more than some of the evidence, court-decided!

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Some people do let Acts & bear upon Old Testament Moses, for example!)

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The Constitution took the election win of Secretary Clinton away from the popular vote winner. The Constitution creates the mechanism to take the popular vote away from the popular vote loser. The Constitution says nothing about, "Executive Privilege."

Some people actually follow the polls.

Democrats are entitled to more than some of the evidence, court-decided!

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Some people do let Acts & bear upon Old Testament Moses, for example!)

Are you on drugs?

 

[cnm]

But what has been admitted is hardly the point. It's pretty much conceded Individual1 has done everything alleged. Neither the Republican Senate nor his base cares.