Impeachment hearings

[_mikwut]

Doc,

That is utterly ridiculous. To completely lower the standards for impeachment and at the same time to completely lower a mens rea is nuts, but carry on I believe the whole thing is nuts not just one side of it. A rational basis is all that is necessary. Here is the pdf to the book Trump in interviews admitted he read well before any of the drama exploded, http://willzuzak.ca/cl/corruption/Schwe ... mpires.pdf just go to the Biden chapter. What and where can I find the evidential debunking of that?

Did you really just compare a human political drama that still contains many unknowns with shooting a man in broad daylight? God man, the nuttiness of both sides is insane.

After reading your post I regret every one of those jury instructions I had to prepare where that silly intent element found its way in, God I am doof.

mikwut

[_mikwut]

That's not correct at all. The President still has to operate within the rule of law and use powers of office appropriately to achieve aims. He abused his office even on the theory that Biden deserved investigation.

Then show how he broke every element of the rule of law you are relying on that doesn't require a mens rea. Please post the statute so I can review each element to facts. You are just lowering an impeachable offense to a mistake.

mikwut

[_EAllusion]

The focus is on Joe Biden right now, the Democratic frontrunner who polls best in head-to-heads with Trump, but have fun in the near future if the nominee is any of the other Democratic candidates with a decent shot. They all have things that a scandal can be misleadingly manufactured out of. Pete Buttigieg? Campaign finance violations in South Bend. Warren? Falsifying records for Texas bar application. Sanders? Aiding his wife's financial mismanagement of a failed college.

After Trump is acquitted in the Senate, the odds are decent that we'll get an announced investigation against whichever one wins with wall-to-wall right-wing media coverage of the same. How will mainstream media sources treat this? Lol.

Weird that

1) corrupt authoritarians suppressing political opposition through fake anti-corruption efforts is a consistent feature of authoritarian-controlled countries all over the globe

2) Trump having a lengthy record of admiring how authoritarian despots operate while consistently defending and praising them as President.

3) the Republican party shows all sorts of signs of right-wing authoritarianism

and

4)it turning out that people who run against Trump are so corrupt that they need to be investigated and dealt with by law enforcement. What a totally fortunate coincidence for him. How lucky.

[_mikwut]

Nice statute.

Mens rea doesn't matter because your narrative is the only possible truth. Nice.

mikwut

[_honorentheos]

You don't get to extort foreign allies by withholding lawfully appropriated aid to work with your personal attorney to announce a prewritten statement of investigations into your political opponent (tainting any real fact finding that could occur in the process), even if that opponent did illicit things. That you don't get this is wild. That's an egregious abuse of office regardless of whether the person is guilty.

That you seem to not get the above is simply ridiculously picking and choosing a narrative that works for whatever you want it to do is certainly something.

What Biden did does matter, and it matters in both reality and in the fictional hypothetical being tossed around. Saying it doesn't is playing to a conservative mischaracterization of Democrat motives that is stupid as well as ridiculous.

What matters is in reality, what Biden did isn't what Republicans are playing off as being. And if you want to play at what ifs, it would be the scandal of the decade were it true.

It's not. Though I again I wonder if your stance on this is primarily built on holding a much more narrow and pessimistic view of Bidens actions that suggests you need to buffer it from Trump's actions. Your version of reality may be much closer to the hypothetical and, frankly, I've not seen you lay out what you think happened there which is quite suspicious in this light.

[_canpakes]

Here is the pdf to the book Trump in interviews admitted he read well before any of the drama exploded, http://willzuzak.ca/cl/corruption/Schwe ... mpires.pdf just go to the Biden chapter.

Well, I guess that Trump never made it to Chapter 12, or he would have had to announce investigations into himself and his own family as well, based on the reasoning you're offering here.

[_EAllusion]

Nice statute.

Mens rea doesn't matter because your narrative is the only possible truth. Nice.

mikwut

Heh. You're complaining because I didn't write a reply to your post in under 15 minutes of you having posted it?

Abuse of office doesn't require a statutory violation, which you know, nor does "rule of law" refer exclusively to statutory violations, which you also know. It also looks like you're back on the radical skepticism train when backed into a corner. Anything is possible gets warped into anyone who points to the evidence strongly favoring a position is close-minded.

Then all that aside, you are being misleading here. A official can have corrupt intent to coercively bribe or extort someone when the desired thing of value is an official act even if that official believes that act is proper. Again, judges can't trade favors to jurors for guilty convictions even if they believe the defendant is guilty or if the defendant actually is guilty. It's not a rejection of intent to note the President abused his office even if the President believes Joe Biden is guilty of corruption. He certainly intended to pressure Ukraine with a thing of value.

The subtext of this seems to be that you think the President has limitless powers in this context and therefore anything he does, so long as it is aimed at a sincere belief in Biden's corruption, is fine. It's ridiculous to pretend that's what's going on, but even on that hypothetical, it is not true. The President is not a tyrant; the office's powers are limited both by law and by propriety, and he cannot simply end-run any limitation to get what he wants.

[_EAllusion]

What matters is in reality, what Biden did isn't what Republicans are playing off as being. And if you want to play at what ifs, it would be the scandal of the decade were it true.

It wouldn't even be a top 5 Trump scandal, so "scandal of the decade" is overselling it in our new reality, but it would be quite bad if true, yes. Independent of what Trump did, we'd be able to condemn Joe Biden for his malfeasance and take criminal action if any is appropriate. It's just this doesn't do anything to change Trump having abused his office.

Nixon wouldn't have been scot free if he asserted that he thought the Democrats being spied on were breaking the law, nor would he be if they actually were. The break-in was still unlawful and he still participated in series of actions that abused his office to cover it up. If he believed that Democrats were breaking the law, then he should've been able to demonstrate probable cause through ordinary lawful means to justify a wire tap. And he shouldn't have tried to cover it up. Belief in the impropriety of their targets isn't a free pass for the President to do anything they want to get them.

It's not. Though I again I wonder if your stance on this is primarily built on holding a much more narrow and pessimistic view of Bidens actions that suggests you need to buffer it from Trump's actions. Your version of reality may be much closer to the hypothetical and, frankly, I've not seen you lay out what you think happened there which is quite suspicious in this light.

Lol. You need to quit huffing golden-mean fallacy.

[_moksha]

Belief in the impropriety of their targets isn't a free pass for the President to do anything they want to get them.

This was a diversionary excuse. Trump's motivations in advancing both Russian interests and his own were the real criminal improprieties.

[_moksha]

Does anyone have an opinion about the recent actions of Attorney General William Barr?