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Rep Amash “R” Congressman from Michigan is bashed by a voter
Below I’ve posted a clip from Fox News of Trump supporter Anna Timmer lecturing Michigan Rep. Justin Amash at a Grand Rapids town hall after he called for impeachment proceedings against the president. The run time is about five minutes and I’m hoping people here who live in Michigan see this and comment, although all members are encouraged to do so.
Published in General
Look at this thread and make up your own mind about the dynamics of this situation.
Matt Lewis wants what he wants. I’m underwhelmed. He literally makes a big deal about his “centrism”. It’s all nonsense.
Not my district. Can’t vote for or against him. My Congresscritter is one of the commies, unfortunately.
Those centrists do not need to do away with the Civil Rights Act of the 1960’s. All they need to do is keep promoting the notion that the hundreds of thousands of people a year who come to our nation from other places need and deserve to be a protected class. Also that they need to have “out of state” tuition structures abolished, and they need to have jobs Americans might work if it was possible for them to do that.
This is not only about entry level jobs. While visiting Mountain View Calif in Silicon Valley recently, it seemed that every third person I saw was here from India.
And of course while working the jobs we no longer need that allow them to afford the apartments and cars we apparently no longer want, they also qualify for benefits such as AFDC checks, food stamps and housing vouchers.
The protected class has an endless amount of protections. When in summer of 2017, illegal migrant Zarate brought a gun into a heavily populated tourist area, shot that gun off on a pier and killed Natalie Stenle, liberals offered up attorneys wearing 6 thousand dollars suits and sporting 300 dollar haircuts to defend him in court. All because after all, it would otherwise be unfair for this alcoholic low life to have to go to court without a vast army of people wanting to protect him. How could anyone expect an alcoholic lowlife to understand the rules of his new land? Never mind that no other nation offers immigrants these protections. We are supposed to be “better” than that, I guess.
I’ll comment as a former voter from Michigan and a longtime libertarian (small ell). Justin Amash is a traitor to the cause! The number one priority of all liberty-minded people since the enlightenment has been freedom from the tyranny of government–most specifically unjust prosecution and invasion of privacy. Please see the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights to understand the importance of protecting individuals from government. Here, in the greatest usurpation of citizens rights by the executive branch in the countries history, he has chosen to join the side of the tyrants. He chosen to support Comey and his lying and abuse of the FBI and Brennan and his lying and abuse of CIA and Clapper and his abuse of the NSA. Un-be-lievable!
I hope no one mistakes Waters World for journalism. Several points, not in any specific order of importance.
1) She details that the room was full of Democrats who were shaking their heads and fists at her as she talked. The video footage they show in the clip does not show that. It just shows her yelling at him, with the crowd sitting down in a calm manner. So from what we can see and what she says it appears she is lying. That goes to discrediting her testimony.
2) Amash, according to 538, has voted in line with Trump 62% of the time—which does not mean he voted against it all other times, as 538 details in the link. (it is the lowest of all Republicans in Congress, however) Amash is the second highest rated conservative, according to trump friendly conservative activist rating groups (like ACU), in the Michigan delegation at 87, on a scale of 0 to 100.
So the allegation that Amash is some Trump hating Democrat seems like typical sensationalism, compare 62 percent to Pelosi’s 18 percent on 538.
3) The assertion from Waters that voting with Trump is what makes a Republican a Republican is quite foolish, to say the least. Waters needs to go out to some flyover states if he thinks Republicans only care about Trump. In fact right now a fair number of them would be displeased with his tariff usage in several instances. The GOP is far more diverse and heterogenous than he thinks.
4) The claim that Amash will lose to a primary challenger is wishful thinking, and runs completely against recent history. The guy has won the district race 4 times now. He won his last election by 11 points. That is a blowout in political terms. In 2016 and 2018, remember that he was an ardent critic of Trump from 2016 onwards, Amash wasn’t even primaried. You don’t win elections repeatedly by wide margins unless you are serving a strong majority of your constituents well, or are some wonder candidate.
5) Impeachment is not a political divider. At best it can be used to bolster pre-existing divides. Amash isn’t going to lose his seat because of his impeachment statements. If blood was in the water you would see more than 2 challengers looking to primary.
@couldbeanyone
What do you want to see happen and why?
On what?
I caught the full filmed capture of the woman’s statements to Amash, and it did seem like many in the crowd were not happy with her comments. I’ll see if I can find those filmed portions, IIRC they were from Facebook. I chose Waters’ World as that way, the non-facebook users among us could watch the presentation.
I never said Waters is a journalist. Today it is June 10th 2019. Right now I know of very few journalists – if you know of some, pls point me their way. The one I think of all the time is currently in lockup in Great Britain for exposing Hillary and others via Wikileaks.
It seems that the Washington Examiner caught her being heckled as a Fascist by some in that crowd. Part of the Examiner’s report on this matter, found at https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/maga-woman-who-confronts-amash-over-trump-heckled-as-fascist-by-his-supporters:
Anna S: “You talk about the Constitution and how important that is, but yet nothing that Mueller came out [with] says President Trump was unconstitutional. It was a smear attack.”
It was one of the few moments of hostility as some members of the audience heckled her with cries of “fascist” until Amash stepped in to silence the crowd. He responded by explaining he remained true to his commitment to voters.
“I haven’t changed. I am who I always said I was. I am a principled, constitutional conservative,” he said. “I heard your comments about the Mueller report, but you haven’t stated any facts.”
####
I tend to concur with Waters on this.
The Hon Amash did not stand with the President on the immigration or sanctuary city issues, and he is all balls in as far as impeachment. He also seems to lack any type of legal awareness. If the FISA situation was not a legal one, than none of the material that came out due to the Mueller investigation should be relevant. (Of course, most of us will accept it, as it points to how the President did not commit a crime.)
It also should be noted that no one stating that Trump obstructed justice can be taken seriously. If a crime has not been committed, do we really want to state that simply by being angry and annoyed, then some individual who is being spied on and who objects to that surveillance means the individual has obstructed justice? To obstruct justice indicates that there has to be a crime that was committed. With no evidence of any crime, there can be no obstruction.
This last paragraph is very important. If the above statement about illegal surveillance is not true, then it means we have moved from a society in which we are innocent until proven guilty into a society whose new norm is that we are guilty until the authorities finally can prove we have committed some offense.
Nevertheless let’s cut to the chase. Is there a reasonable basis for impeaching Trump? If one believes the answer is “no” (or resoundingly “no”), Amash comes off looking like a dimwit and/or a political opportunist carrying his policy difference to an entirely different level. If the answer is “yes,” we’ll agree to disagree.
Does everyone who think trump has not committed an impeachable offense assume their opposites are motivated by self interest or stupidity? If so then they have no good faith and sound like they are coming from an pre-assumed posture. That doesn’t like people interested in truth.
To my knowledge Amash is coming from the obstruction of justice camp that Trump should be impeached. The record does reflect that Trump attempted to impede upon the investigation, obstruct, but was thwarted by underlings, and so it did not happen.
I myself do not really care about impeachment and I find the Trump arguments anymore to be people projecting what they want onto him—which makes it boring and tiresome. Some want him to be the avatar of building a border wall. Others want him to be the avatar of a new religious awakening. And others still want him to be the avatar of a new populist movement. (Some a combination of both.)
Hardly any of those will come to pass. Trump is a flash in the pan. He will most likely lose in 2020 because of coalition erosion and his “mark” on the party has been amazingly little to nothing, and I say that as someone who works politically at the state level. At least when he is no longer President we won’t have as much tiresome virtue (tribal) signaling, but I could be wrong.
Christian theology aside, if one sins in thought, or even in word, but not in deed, then one hasn’t broken the law.
These days, it depends on what jurisdiction, apparently.
The last is irrelevant to the question at hand–Amash and impeachment. And yes, given the lack of evidence that Trump has committed an impeachable offense after two years of an arguably partisan investigation , combined with Amash’s libertarian policy differences, it’s reasonable to conclude that Amash is either not particularly bright or a political opportunist. While both might work, I’ll admit to being strongly in the latter camp.
Parlor pink here in my district in Arizona.
Both parties are permanently changed, but Trump is the symptom not the cause. In a two-party system the parties will continually evolve their policies to attract 50.1% of the voters. The Dems are moving towards identity politics and a heavy govt/big welfare state. The GOP is picking up what is left, anti-identity politics and less heavy govt/mid welfare state. The Dems are focused on white elites and GOP is left with the blue collar folks. The sorting will continue as the elites are concentrating in cosmopolitan areas and the rest of folks go to GOP. It is government sector unions vs. private sector unions. If the GOP tries to go back to Middle East adventurism and open borders as their touchstone, then that is political suicide as there is not enough votes to win office.
That is speculation at best. Where are these new blue collar GOP politicians who lead the party or are taking low power rung positions in the party leadership? Where are the primaries putting these new candidates in? Currently none are, and the only blue collar politician I can think of was attacked in 2016 as being a globalist.
The Republican Party has many interests and factions in it but a blue collar workers party it is not. How would the people with the least social capital come to dominate an institution that relies on social capital in spades?
But this gets back to my point. You are projecting what you want onto the current scene. You want there to be some monumental realignment but the facts on the ground disagree. When Trump took office who staffed most of the White House positions? It was establishment Republicans.
And policy is more or less identical to previous Republican Presidents. US military is active across the globe, executive deregulation occurred, conservative judicial appointments, and tax cuts happened. Might as well have been George W Bush—add tariff fighting and tweeting all the time to get Trump.
Even voter demographics didn’t change that much between 2012 and 2016, and 2018 was not something to be proud of. That darn establishment persists for a reason.
What is puzzling to me is that no one has decided to link to what the heck Representative Amash himself said. Here is a 3 minute clip of what Representative Amash said. Somehow it appears that the Fox News Channel failed to include this clip, but decided to go only with what a disgruntled constituent said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqjoBtqe1Fo
The Republican Party will be permanently changed only if Trump is re-elected. This is perhaps the strongest reason for him to be rejected by conservatives so that the populists are driven back to the Democratic Party where they belong.
I have not read the Mueller Report and will pretend to be an expert on its findings or conclusions but to my knowledge Amash claims that Barr was misleading with his interpretation and argues from the obstruction angle. Amash could be wrong in that assertion but maybe he just genuinely believes that the President ought to be held responsible for his failed attempts at obstruction, which was linked in the Washington examiner article.
In my opinion the plan will not work. But what would he have to gain from his criticism? I doubt it will increase his likelihood of getting a senate seat against Garry Peters or the Presidency, as he stated in the examiner article. This is all besides the point that he has been a critic of the President from the start anyways. I find personal gain as the motive to be unlikely given said information.
More on what Amash actually said, and not what someone says what they think about what he said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NelwanKdVlg
The entire Mueller Report is quite a task to read. However, Mueller created both an Introduction and an Executive Summary as to Volume I: Collusion and Volume II: Obstruction. Here they are:
http://ricochet.com/615718/the-mueller-report-in-four-summaries/
Bill Kristol is for Justin Amash for POTUS.
Someone should do something.
And what, pray tell, did you @garyrobbins find enlightening about that clip of Amash? He claims Mueller set forth several incidents where Trump might have committed a crime. That would be obstruction only, because Mueller had just spent 200 plus pages agonizingly concluding Trump committed no actual crime, that being conspiratorial collusion with Russians. So after having stated, according to Bill Barr, with three witnesses in the room, that he (Mueller) did not use the DOJ rule of not indicting a sitting President as an influencer in his final inability to conclude anything on obstruction, Mueller then gives a 9 minute parting shot, as he rides off on his unicorn, insinuating that the “RULE” was the reason he didn’t indict. Oh, and then, 2 hours into his ride into the sunset, he has to backtrack and state, as Gilda Radner used for her punch line…Never Mind!! Robert Mueller really needs to find a good rocking chair. In the meantime, here is the very calm and thoughtful Congressman Amash, explaining ever so seriously to his audience, there really need be NO crime for Congress to impeach. They just don’t like the guy. He’s not a cool dude. Impeach Him!! Well that certainly may be true Mr. Amash, but it sure wouldn’t fly with the 65 million folks who voted for Trump and worship the ground he stands on. Is this what we call a serious person these days?
Amash would be better than Trump.
Do you truly think that the 65 million people who voted for Trump “worship the ground he stands on”? My sainted mother voted for Trump, given the alternative, but I can tell you that she does not worship the ground that he stands on.
Nixon won 49 states, however he was on the way to being impeached when he resigned. Do you think that Trump should have been impeached?
It sure looks like you have never read the six page Executive Summary to Volume II: Obstruction. The bottom line was:
“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President ‘s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
I think that it would be worth your time to read the six page executive summary. Here it is:
“EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO VOLUME II
“Our obstruction -of-justice inquiry focused on a series of actions by the President that related to the Russian -interference investigations, including the President’s conduct towards the law enforcement officials overseeing the investigations and the witnesses to relevant events.
“FACTUAL RESULTS OF THE OBSTRUCTION INVESTIGATION
“The key issues and events we examined include the following:
“The Campaign’s response to reports about Russian support for Trump. During the 2016 presidential campaign, questions arose about the Russian government’s apparent support for candidate Trump. After WikiLeaks released politically damaging Democratic Party emails that were reported to have been hacked by Russia, Trump publicly expressed skepticism that Russia was responsible for the hacks at the same time that he and other Campaign officials privately sought information [Redacted: Harm to Ongoing Matter] about any further planned WikiLeaks releases. Trump also denied having any business in or connections to Russia, even though as late as June 2016 the Trump Organization had been pursuing a licensing deal for a skyscraper to be built in Russia called Trump Tower Moscow. After the election, the President expressed concerns to advisors that reports of Russia’s election interference might lead the public to question the legitimacy of his election.
“Conduct involving FBI Director Comey and Michael Flynn. In mid-January 2017, incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn falsely denied to the Vice President, other administration officials, and FBI agents that he had talked to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about Russia ‘s response to U.S. sanctions on Russia for its election interference. On January 27, the day after the President was told that Flynn had lied to the Vice President and had made similar statements to the FBI, the President invited FBI Director Comey to a private dinner at the White House and told Comey that he needed loyalty. On February 14, the day after the President requested Flynn’s resignation, the President told an outside advisor, “Now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over.” The advisor disagreed and said the investigations would continue.
“Later that afternoon, the President cleared the Oval Office to have a one-on-one meeting with Comey. Referring to the FBI’s investigation of Flynn, the President said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” Shortly after requesting Flynn’s resignation and speaking privately to Comey, the President sought to have Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland draft an internal letter stating that the President had not directed Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak. McFarland declined because she did not know whether that was true, and a White House Counsel’s Office attorney thought that the request would look like a quid pro quo for an ambassadorship she had been offered.
“The President’s reaction to the continuing Russia investigation. In February 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions began to assess whether he had to recuse himself from campaign related investigations because of his role in the Trump Campaign. Tn early March, the President told White House Counsel Donald McGahn to stop Sessions from recusing. And after Sessions announced his recusal on March 2, the President expressed anger at the decision and told advisors that he should have an Attorney General who would protect him. That weekend, the President took Sessions aside at an event and urged him to “unrecuse.” Later in March, Comey publicly disclosed at a congressional hearing that the FBI was investigating “the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” including any links or coordination between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign. In the following days, the President reached out to the Director of National Intelligence and the leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) to ask them what they could do to publicly dispel the suggestion that the President had any connection to the Russian election-interference effort. The President also twice called Comey directly, notwithstanding guidance from McGahn to avoid direct contacts with the Department of Justice. Comey had previously assured the President that the FBI was not investigating him personally, and the President asked Comey to “lift the cloud “of the Russia investigation by saying that publicly.
“The President’s termination of Comey. On May 3, 2017, Comey testified in a congressional hearing, but declined to answer questions about whether the President was personally under investigation. Within days, the President decided to terminate Comey. The President insisted that the termination letter, which was written for public release, state that Comey had informed the President that he was not under investigation. The day of the firing, the White House maintained that Comey’s termination resulted from independent recommendations from the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General that Comey should be discharged for mishandling the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But the President had decided to fire Comey before hearing from the Department of Justice. The day after firing Comey, the President told Russian officials that he had “faced great pressure because of Russia, “which had been “taken off’ by Comey’s firing. The next day, the President acknowledged in a television interview that he was going to fire Comey regardless of the Department of Justice’s recommendation and that when he “decided to just do it,” he was thinking that “this thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.” In response to a question about whether he was angry with Comey about the Russia investigation, the President said, “As far as I’m concerned, I want that thing to be absolutely done properly,” adding that firing Comey “might even lengthen out the investigation.”
“The appointment of a Special Counsel and efforts to remove him. On May 17, 2017, the Acting Attorney General for the Russia investigation appointed a Special Counsel to conduct the investigation and related matters. The President reacted to news that a Special Counsel had been appointed by telling advisors that it was “the end of his presidency” and demanding that Sessions resign. Sessions submitted his resignation, but the President ultimately did not accept it. The President told aides that the Special Counsel had conflicts of interest and suggested that the Special Counsel therefore could not serve. The President’s advisors told him the asserted conflicts were meritless and had already been considered by the Department of Justice.
“On June 14, 2017, the media report ed that the Special Counsel’s Office was investigating whether the President had obstructed justice. Press reports called this “a major turning point “in the investigation: while Comey had told the President he was not under investigation, following Comey’s firing, the President now was under investigation. The President reacted to this news with a series of tweets criticizing the Department of Justice and the Special Counsel’s investigation. On June 17, 2017, the President called McGahn at home and directed him to call the Acting Attorney General and say that the Special Counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed. McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.
“Efforts to curtail the Special Counsel’s investigation. Two days after directing McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed, the President made another attempt to affect the course of the Russia investigation. On June 19, 2017, the President met one-on-one in the Oval Office with his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, a trusted advisor outside the government, and dictated a message for Lewandowski to deliver to Sessions. The message said that Sessions should publicly announce that, notwithstanding his recusal from the Russia investigation , the investigation was “very unfair “ to the President, the President had done nothing wrong , and Sessions planned to meet with the Special Counsel and “let [him] move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections.” Lewandowski said he understood what the President wanted Sessions to do.
“One month later, in another private meeting with Lewandowski on July 19, 2017, the President asked about the status of his message for Sessions to limit the Special Counsel investigation to future election interference. Lewandowski told the President that the message would be delivered soon. Hours after that meeting, the President publicly criticized Sessions in an interview with the New York Times, and then issued a series of tweets making it clear that Sessions’s job was in jeopardy. Lewandowski did not want to deliver the President’s message personally, so he asked senior White House official Rick Dearborn to deliver it to Sessions. Dearborn was uncomfortable with the task and did not follow through.
“Efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence. In the summer of 2017, the President learned that media outlets were asking questions about the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between senior campaign officials, including Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer who was said to be offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” On several occasions, the President directed aides not to publicly disclose the emails setting up the June 9 meeting, suggesting that the emails would not leak and that the number of lawyers with access to them should be limited. Before the emails became public, the President edited a press statement for Trump Jr. by deleting a line that acknowledged that the meeting was with “an individual who [Trump Jr.] was told might have information helpful to the campaign” and instead said only that the meeting was about adoptions of Russian children. When the press asked questions about the President ‘s involvement in Trump Jr.’ s statement, the President’s personal lawyer repeatedly denied the President had played any role.
“Further efforts to have the Attorney General take control of the investigation. In early summer 2017, the President called Sessions at home and again asked him to reverse his recusal from the Russia investigation. Sessions did not reverse his recusal. In October 2017, the President met privately with Sessions in the Oval Office and asked him to “take [a] look” at investigating Clinton. In December 2017, shortly after Flynn pleaded guilty pursuant to a cooperation agreement, the President met with Sessions in the Oval Office and suggested, according to notes taken by a senior advisor, that if Sessions unrecused and took back supervision of the Russia investigation, he would be a “hero.” The President told Sessions, “I’m not going to do anything or direct you to do anything. I just want to be treated fairly.” In response, Sessions volunteered that he had never seen anything “improper “on the campaign and told the President there was a “w hole new leadership team” in place. He did not unrecuse.
“Efforts to have McGahn deny that the President had ordered him to have the Special Counsel removed. In early 2018, the press reported that the President had directed McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed in June 2017 and that McGahn had threatened to resign rather than carry out the order. The President reacted to the news stories by directing White House officials to tell McGahn to dispute the story and create a record stating he had not been ordered to have the Special Counsel removed. McGahn told those officials that the media reports were accurate in stating that the President had directed McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed. The President then met with McGahn in the Oval Office and again pressured him to deny the reports. In the same meeting, the President also asked McGahn why he had told the Special Counsel about the President ‘s effort to remove the Special Counsel and why McGahn took notes of his conversations with the President. McGahn refused to back away from what he remembered happening and perceived the President to be testing his mettle.
“Conduct towards Flynn, Manafort [Redacted: Harm to Ongoing Matter] After Flynn withdrew from a joint defense agreement with the President and began cooperating with the government, the President ‘s personal counsel left a message for Flynn ‘s attorneys reminding them of the President ‘s warm feelings towards Flynn, which he said “still remains,” and asking for a “heads up” if Flynn knew “information that implicates the President.” When Flynn ‘s counsel reiterated that Flynn could no longer share information pursuant to a joint defense agreement, the President’s personal counsel said he would make sure that the President knew that Flynn ‘s actions reflected “hostility” towards the President. During Manafort ‘s prosecution and when the jury in his criminal. trial was deliberating, the President praised Manafort in public, said that Manafort was being treated unfairly, and declined to rule out a pardon. After Manafort was convicted, the President called Manafort “a brave man” for refusing to “break” and said that “flipping” “almost ought to be outlawed. [Redacted: Harm to Ongoing Matter]
“Conduct involving Michael Cohen. The President ‘s conduct towards Michael Cohen, a former Trump Organization executive, changed from praise for Cohen when he falsely minimized the President’s involvement in the Trump Tower Moscow project, to castigation of Cohen when he became a cooperating witness. From September 2015 to June 2016, Cohen had pursued the Trump Tower Moscow project on behalf of the Trump Organization and had briefed candidate Trump on the project numerous times, including discussing whether Trump should travel to Russia to advance the deal. In 2017 , Cohen provided false testimony to Congress about the project, including stating that he had only briefed Trump on the project three times and never discussed travel to Russia with him, in an effort to adhere to a “party line” that Cohen said was developed to minimize the President’s connections to Russia. While preparing for his congressional testimony, Cohen had extensive discussions with the President ‘s personal counsel, who, according to Cohen, said that Cohen should “stay on message” and not contradict the President. After the FBI searched Cohen’s home and office in April 2018, the President publicly asserted that Cohen would not “flip,” contacted him directly to tell him to “stay strong,” and privately passed messages of support to him. Cohen also discussed pardons with the President’s personal counsel and believed that if he stayed on message he would be taken care of. But after Cohen began cooperating with the government in the summer of 2018, the President publicly criticized him, called him a “rat,” and suggested that his family members had committed crimes.
“Overarching factual issues. We did not make a traditional prosecution decision about these facts, but the evidence we obtained supports several general statements about the President ‘s conduct.
“Several features of the conduct we investigated distinguish it from typical obstruction-of justice cases. First, the investigation concerned the President, and some of his actions, such as firing the FBI director, involved facially lawful acts within his Article II authority, which raises constitutional issues discussed below. At the same time, the President’s position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful mean s of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers, and potential witnesses-all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis. Second, unlike cases in which a subject engages in obstruction of justice to cover up a crime, the evidence we obtained did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference. Although the obstruction statutes do not require proof of such a crime, the absence of that evidence affects the analysis of the President’s intent and requires consideration of other possible motives for his conduct. Third, many of the President’s acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, took place in public view. That circumstance is unusual, but no principle of law excludes public acts from the reach of the obstruction laws. If the likely effect of public acts is to influence witnesses or alter their testimony, the harm to the justice system’s integrity is the same.
“Although the series of events we investigated involved discrete acts, the overall pattern of the President’s conduct towards the investigations can shed light on the nature of the President ‘s acts and the inferences that can be drawn about his intent. In particular, the actions we investigated can be divided into two phases, reflecting a possible shift in the President’s motives. The first phase covered the period from the President ‘s first interactions with Comey through the President’s firing of Comey. During that time, the President had been repeatedly told he was not personally under investigation. Soon after the firing of Comey and the appointment of the Special Counsel, however, the President became aware that his own conduct was being investigated in an obstruction-of-justice inquiry. At that point, the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation. Judgments about the nature of the President ‘s motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.
“STATUTORY AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEFENSES
“The President’s counsel raised statutory and constitutional defenses to a possible obstruction-of-justice analysis of the conduct we investigated. We concluded that none of those legal defenses provided a basis for declining to investigate the facts.
“Statutory defenses. Consistent with precedent and the Department of Justice’s general approach to interpreting obstruction statutes, we concluded that several statutes could apply here. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1505, 1512(b)(3), 1512(c)(2). Section 1512(c)(2) is an omnibus obstruction-of-justice provision that covers a range of obstructive acts directed at pending or contemplated official proceedings. No principle of statutory construction justifies narrowing the provision to cover only conduct that impairs the integrity or availability of evidence. Sections 1503 and 1505 also offer broad protection against obstructive acts directed at pending grand jury, judicial, administrative, and congressional proceedings, and they are supplemented by a provision in Section 1512(6) aimed specifically at conduct intended to prevent or hinder the communication to law enforcement of information related to a federal crime.
“Constitutional defenses. As for constitutional defenses arising from the President’s status as the head of the Executive Branch, we recognized that the Department of Justice and the courts have not. definitively resolved these issues. We therefore examined those issues through the framework established by Supreme Court precedent governing separation-of-powers issues. The Department of Justice and the President’s personal counsel have recognized that the President is subject to statutes that prohibit obstruction of justice by bribing a witness or suborning perjury because that conduct does not implicate his constitutional authority. With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.
“Under applicable Supreme Court precedent, the Constitution does not categorically and permanently immunize a President for obstructing justice through the use of his Article II powers. The separation-of-powers doctrine authorizes Congress to protect official proceedings, including those of courts and grand juries, from corrupt, obstructive acts regard less of their source. We also concluded that any inroad on presidential authority that would occur from prohibiting corrupt acts does not undermine the President’s ability to fulfill his constitutional mission. The term “corruptly “sets a demanding standard. It requires a concrete showing that a person acted with an intent to obtain an improper advantage for himself or someone else, inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others. A preclusion of “corrupt” official action does not diminish the President’s ability to exercise Article II powers. For example, the proper supervision of criminal law does not demand freedom for the President to act with a corrupt intention of shielding himself from criminal punishment, avoiding financial liability, or preventing personal embarrassment. To the contrary, a statute that prohibits official action undertaken for such corrupt purposes furthers, rather than hinders, the impartial and evenhanded administration of the law. It also aligns with the President’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws. Finally, we concluded that in the rare case in which a criminal investigation of the President ‘s conduct is justified, inquiries to determine whether the President acted for a corrupt motive should not impermissibly chill his performance of his constitutionally assigned duties. The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President ‘s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.
“CONCLUSION
“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President ‘s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. (Emphasis Added.)”
Just whose coalition is eroding? Trump was awarded the Oval Office in 2016 due to the tremendous number of independent voters, who recently have been joined by many WalkAways.
The Pew Survey was joined by the Gallup pollsters in 2017 with confirmation that few people are that loyal to either party. In 2008, only 26% of all American voters considered themselves to be R loyalists. While 36% considered themselves to be Dem loyalists. In 2016 those numbers were flipped, although additionally each side lost 1.5% voters to the independent crowd.
That means that right now the largest contingent of voters is the independent crowd. That crowd counts 41 to 43 % of all registered American voters as willing to vote for someone new or someone they feel represents them, regardless of party.
As long as Trump continues to oppose immigration and to oppose the Globalists’ wet dream of trade agreements, and also stays the course in avoiding any sympathy for ID politics, he will be re-elected. My one concern is the voting machinery – which here in Calif has shaved countless indie and R votes – and even Bernie Sanders votes – over to the DNC.
“Centrists” and neocons will have a cow if he wins. The list of Republicans that won’t have a cow is tiny. See comment #1.
Aren’t you in Andy Biggs’ district?