It’s not unreasonable to require that the president of the United States does not commit high crimes while in office. It doesn’t matter why the investigation was initiated. If he attempted to obstruct justice he should be impeached. Period.
The president might be a criminal and you think it doesn’t count because the investigation was started for unrelated reasons?
There’s nothing that can be said over the internet to change the mind of someone who thinks like this, but wow it sure is frustrating to read this garbage.
No one said that he should get away with criminal activity. The problem is that the entire media has been overwhelmed with the Russia collusion narrative for almost 3 years at the exclusion of much more important problems with actual evidence. And now that collusion wasn't found, the Russiagate conspiracy theorists shift attention to petty crimes of little consequence. Most politicians in high office are guilty of similar crimes on both sides of the aisle, and worse. How about: Illegal and unconstitutional NSA surveillance of the entire domestic population; collusion with the medical, financial, and military industries to the point of bankrupting the country; collusion orders of magnitude worse than anything Russia is accused of with Saudi Arabia and Israel, which is backed by explicit evidence, such as the 100 billion arms sale to Saudi, the Yemen war veto, moving of the Israel embassy to Jerusalem, the very existence of AIPAC lobbying, the "giving" of the Golan Heights to Israel, and the unconstitutional anti-Israel boycott laws on the books of many states.
But no, we must waste three years on a phantom conspiracy with no evidence because of political revenge. Consolation prize is we get to complain about obstruction of justice that will never get prosecuted because Pelosi is in on the corruption herself.
From Trump’s perspective it was a “witch-hunt” investigation which hamstrung his Presidency from the start.
And in fact by the end there was not compelling evidence that Trump or his Campaign coordinated with Russia at all.
There were many dirty tricks and bad actors which served to perpetuate the investigation, which by the way cost many many millions for innocent people to defend themselves against. And they are innocent until proven guilty.
Trump knows he did not collude or conspire or cooperate with Russia to defeat Clinton, and yet the investigation grinds on for hundreds of days while he is trying to enact policy to improve the lives for millions of Americans. That’s his mindset.
Flynn, Papadopoulos, and Cohen lied to Congress or investigators, which impeded the investigation, and were charged for it. No such charges were brought against Trump.
We don’t have to speculate about what trump’s mindset was at the start of the investigation. The mueller report gives precise details about trumps state of mind. After learning about the investigation for the first time Trump slumped back in his chair and said to attorney general Jeff sessions “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked. You were supposed to protect me.”
> ”Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”
> How could you let this happen, Jeff?” The President said the position of Attorney General was his most important appointment and that Sessions had “let [him] down,” contrasting him to Eric Holder and Robert Kennedy.
> Sessions recalled that the President said to him, “you were supposed to protect me,” or words to that effect. The President returned to the consequences of the appointment and said, “Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
And I’d say the same thing as a completely innocent man in the same position. Trump truly was fucked, badly, for hundreds of days. Sessions was supposed to protect Trump from a special counsel which did in fact derail his Presidency to pursue a fruitless investigation.
By any account, if the media had their way, it would have been the end of his Presidency.
I’m sort of amazed by his grit in getting through the whole thing intact. Many times I expected he would resign just to try to escape it. I can’t imagine millions of people and almost the entire mass media absolutely convinced that you’re an agent of Russia, Clapper on CNN saying you’re Putin’s asset, all without any evidence.
In fact, the investigation did not establish that there was a “quid pro quo” relationship with Russia.
> “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump
presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
It would be more accurate to say that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
This is not quid pro quo, it’s not collusion, and it’s not cooperation. It is benefiting from blood in the water.
Trump also benefited significantly from Bernie Sanders’ attacks on Clinton and the fact that many of his voters wouldn’t vote for her. Trump did not collude or cooperate with Sanders either.
The FBI "did not establish" that Al Capone had people killed. The court of law "did not establish" that OJ Simpson murdered his ex wife and her friend. Yet they very clearly did those things.
The issue I see with your assertion is that we know from past presidential scandals how enormously difficult it is to elucidate criminal activity; it took years before the Watergate investigations finally uncovered enough evidence to expose Nixon's crimes, and Reagan served a full eight years in spite of his illegal involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. Yet despite the contents of the Mueller Report, we have a large portion of the citizenry (most of whom haven't even read it) who are already certain that Trump is innocent, after only two years of investigation. The citizenry was certain of Nixon's innocence after two years of Watergate as well; they "did not establish" that he had committed any crimes at that time. But he clearly did.
It appears that you need to be convinced that a crime was not committed. That you have the presumption of guilt and you will stick with that because in your gut you feel like he must have been complicit in the election meddling.
I take the opposite approach. I need to see evidence that the Trump Campaign actually conspired or coordinated with Russia before I will believe or assume that they did.
I also take the position that this accusation was politically motivated from the very start, and has no evidentiary basis. That illegal warrants, illegal leaks, and slanted and straight up false reporting were used in furtherance of those same political goals. And all this makes me doubly determined not to accept anything but evidence before entertaining the notion that there was collusion or coordination or cooperation.
I am definitely not certain that Trump did not collude with Russia. What I am certain of is that there was never any direct evidence of collusion, the media and the democrats knew this, and still decided to run with it to drum up ratings and political capital. And in the end using lies to push a narrative, no matter how good the intention, usually blows up in your face, with the crazy Trump now shored up even more for the next election. I really do hope a progressive wins the next democratic primary. Otherwise we are in for another 4 years.
The president might be a criminal and you think it doesn’t count because the investigation was started for unrelated reasons?
There’s nothing that can be said over the internet to change the mind of someone who thinks like this, but wow it sure is frustrating to read this garbage.