[POLITICS] If Trump is Innocent, he should prove it
- Thread starter Saelune
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Ok, first of all, I'd ask you not to do that. If you want to dispute my characterization, that's one thing, but "fixed that for you" is needlessly condescending. Second, you invoke poorly. Trump attesting that he was thinking about "the Russia thing" when he fired Comey and Sanders suggesting that removing Comey would help the investigation come to its conclusion is not hearsay, that's circumstantial evidence, as is his repeated griping about how he wouldn't have appointed Sessions if he knew Sessions was going to recuse himself from the investigation. Trump's lawyers admitting that Trump himself was heavily involved in his son's false testimony about the Trump Tower meeting is not hearsay. McCabe's claim that Rosenstein was directed by Trump to pen up a memo he could use to justify Comey's firing is not hearsay, it's testimony. Coats and Rogers claiming that Trump had asked them to publicly state that there was no evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russia is not hearsay. That's, again, testimony.tstorm823 said:
Of what was cited, the claim you'd have the best chance of applying hearsay to would be the reason behind Corallo's resignation. The White House officials saying they overheard conversations asking about how to get Comey to shut down the investigation? Not hearsay. Borrowing from the Bar association for a moment, this is perhaps best demonstrated with their example scenarios:
Based on the nature of your responses at this point, I feel obliged to remind you that the question at this juncture is not whether or not these prove beyond reasonable doubt that Trump obstructed or attempted to obstruct justice. The question is whether there is enough evidence to charge him.
On the one hand "proving innocence" isn't generally at all how it works. In fact, there's no way the report proves he is innocent unless it has a massive amount of exculpatory evidence in it, the best it is likely to do is show a lack of ability to find he proof of guilt.Saelune said:
At the same time, I also have a preference for primary sources and a distrust for politically inflamed "interpretations of those sources.
Hypocrite? Yeah. Dishonest as all hell? Even more than the average politician. Criminal? That needs proof to back it. Proof that supposedly just isn't there in the Mueller report (and I can go no farther than "supposedly" until it gets released or leaked).Saelune said:
Trump should also disprove UFO conspiracies whilst he's at it.
He could take a crack at the JFK thing too.
But, if I'm going to be honest, I think the president has better things to do than play Mythbusters.
He could take a crack at the JFK thing too.
But, if I'm going to be honest, I think the president has better things to do than play Mythbusters.
Surely the more time he spends playing golf the less time he has to fuck up the country. You should WANT him to be playing golf.Saelune said:
I want a government that isn't absolute garbage. I want a President who is not a terrorist White Supremacist who murders children by locking them in cages after ripping them from their families.Here Comes Tomorrow said:
I want Trump to be removed from office.
Those things aren't hearsay, they also aren't things that suggest he was trying to undermine or end the investigation. The hearsay is all the stories we've gotten over the past 2 years claiming things like "Trump in private says he's gonna fire Mueller and pardon himself". Your list is just bad evidence for your claim.Asita said:
1) He said he fired Comey while thinking about the Russia thing, now hear the whole context, because he thought the FBI was turning into a trash fire while Comey was grandstanding about an investigation into nothing. That's a totally reasonable statement. And it came like a week after Comey was asking for large sums of money to expand an investigation into nothing. That's not "I fired him to end the investigation." Remember, the investigation didn't end with Comey. That's "I fired him cause he's wasting FBI resources on a wild goose chase."
2) Of course he griped about Sessions recusing himself, it made Trump looked guilty. Sessions recusing itself looks like reason to believe Trump colluded with Russia. Now we know he didn't. Saying "I wouldn't have appointed him to that position if I knew he was gonna make me look like I'm guilty of being a Russian plant" is a completely reasonable thing. I haven't seen anything to lead me to believe that after Sessions was gone, Trump suddenly had hands-on power over the Russia investigation, so I don't know if the recusal had any impact on the actual process, it just looked super bad.
3) Testimony by Cohen doesn't count as evidence for anything.
4) I don't think Trump Jr actually lied about the Trump Tower meeting. He didn't give full information of what he thought the meeting was going to be, but he said they were lobbying about US-Russia adoptions and I believe that's what they were talking about. The "informant" instigated the meeting by offering dirt on Clinton, but that's not what they ended up talking about when it happened, and that's why the exchange ended there.
5) Asking your expert adviser to give you backup on firing Comey is reasonable. Would you prefer he fire him without that justification? You only think this looks bad because you're judging it on the basis that Comey didn't deserve to fired and Trump was makiong up excuses to try and end the investigation. But the investigation didn't end, and Rosenstein gave perfectly legitimate justifications. You're thinking Trumps asking a lackey to make things up, but he was asking a respected individual to lend him his expertise.
I am by no means sold on that. Trump is a sleazebag, yes. But the whole investigation, he's consistently said he has the power to stop it, he wasn't going to stop it, and he would come out clean in the end. Well, all of those things have proven correct. To set the bar low, Donald Trump is the least guilty person they investigated.
Well, I'm sorry, but a reality of living in a democracy is that the entire country can't just grind to a halt to cater to the whims of an individual.Saelune said:
I'm pretty sure you'll find Trump himself is on record somewhere saying he fired Comey over the Russia thing. Of course, he says lots of shit - but it's still problematic he's said stuff like that. So accountability and transparency, please.tstorm823 said:
Sure. These are all face value reasons why it's potentially okay. But as you sort of note, the problem is that it's at best it's unwise and potentially not okay. And this is again exactly what transparency and accountability is for.
And this is a lot of my problem with Trump, because this sort of shit is non-stop. Nepotism for family, friends and cronies. Refusing to clearly separate his business interests from governance. Non-stop poor choices of subordinates (all those constant firings and resignations). Abuse of process, such as dodgy national emergencies. Chaos and whimsy: announcing policy without consultation leaving state secretaries and their departments, party legislators clueless, these policies often rolled back.
Even if all technically legal, this is appalling governance and the ripest of breeding grounds for dysfunction and corruption which a lot of Americans seem to me to be disturbingly unconcerned about.
Circumstantial evidence, perhaps. But not bad evidence.tstorm823 said:
To your other points:
1) Aside from the fact that the FBI itself disputes the White House's characterization of Comey, it's also very telling that the message you're citing is not the message they started with. Point of fact, the stated rationale changed quite frequently in the wake of Comey's firing. Your rationale here is actually quite perplexing as firing Comey the wake of him asking for more resources for the investigation (the DoJ denies that such a request was ever made), that's actually more damning, not less, as it provides circumstantial evidence for an attempt to stop the investigation, cutting off the head of the snake, as it were.
2) Sessions recused himself because as a prominent member of Trump's election campaign, he was by necessity too close to a case focusing on Trump's team. Recusal is standard operating procedure under circumstances wherein the judge might even be perceived to have a vested interest in one outcome or another, or otherwise have a conflict of interest, and Sessions did so at the advice of the Justice Department.
And don't be obtuse. The implication isn't that Trump "had hands-on power over the investigation after Sessions was gone". The implication is that he wanted someone as AG who would influence the investigation in his favor, as further suggested by him reportedly telling his aides that he needed a loyalist overseeing the investigation. See also how the people he subsequently considered for the position being very vocal proponents of swiftly ending (or sabotaging, in the case of Whitaker's suggestion of quietly ending it by defunding it) the investigation. Ie, we have reason to believe that he wanted someone on the bench who would bury the investigation for him.
3) We're talking about Comey, not Cohen. Cohen is non-sequitur. If you're actually referring to Comey, you've got no reason to doubt him so severely.
4) You mean besides the claim that Sr. didn't even know about the meeting? Besides the statement strongly implying that the meeting wasn't arranged for the purpose of getting political dirt, but that the adoption talk was the goal all along? Besides Jr, Kushner, and Trump's lawyers allegedly favoring a more accurate statement only to be overruled by Trump, who favored the misleading variation we got?
5) To the overall point: No, it's not reasonable to tell your advisors to pen up a reason that would justify your decision fire someone. And that Trump did that is a matter of public record. He has since admitted in interviews that he was going to fire Comey regardless of what Rosenstein wrote. And I quote:
To borrow from fiction for a moment, have you ever seen A Few Good Men or Philadelphia? Because, if so, the chain of events should seem remarkably familiar.
To the point of why I think it looks bad: I think it looks bad because we know that Stephen Miller drafted the letter of dismissal for Comey on March 7. We know that when Trump shared it with Kushner, McGahn, and Pence on March 8, McGahn objected to it and bounced it over to Rosenstein to write a more defensible one. We know from Rosenstein's own account that Trump ordered to write the memo, and that he had to go against Trump's wishes to reference Russia in the memo.
I think it looks bad because the very next day Trump said that he felt that he felt that firing Comey took a great pressure off of him with regards to Russia, and because a few days after that in an NBC interview he admitted that the investigation was part of his rationale for firing Comey. I think it looks bad because Trump tweeting that Comey better hope that there were no secret recordings of their meetings sounds suspiciously like attempted witness tampering.
I think it looks bad because FBI sources have claimed that Comey was fired because he refused to end the investigation (and yes, that one is hearsay). I think it looks bad because of White House officials probing whether they could actually ask Comey to shut down the investigation into Flynn.
So no, I do not "only think this looks bad because you're judging it on the basis that Comey didn't deserve to fired and Trump was makiong up excuses to try and end the investigation". I think this looks bad because while you might dismiss any one piece of evidence as coincidental, at this point suggesting that all these points were incidental and coincidentally suggested the same conclusion strains credulity.
The people who flipped are still cooperating with prosecutors and Mueller's Grand Jury is still ongoing. Nothing Barr or any Republican says will ever change those facts. Don't let them set the narrative that it's over.
You're not proving a negative, though. Proving a negative essentially applies to proving the non-existence of something. But a state of innocence is something that exists, therefore it can be proven: by supplying a load of evidence that firmly demonstrates guilt cannot be the case.Myria said:
We can add to that "grey area". Is someone's conduct technically legal, but otherwise dangerous, problematic or unethical. In many cases, such as conduct of public officials, this is important to know - not least because we might want to do things like tighten up regulations and oversight.
There is more evidence that Trump is guilty than that he is not.
He praises Putin, Russia, and other dictators and other traditional enemies of the US often. Also often criticizes our allies. He takes Putin at his word, but not anyone telling him Putin isn't trustworthy.
He has secret meetings with Russia that he keeps lying about.
He has been proven to have lied about his wealth to become wealthy. Why is that not a bigger deal?
He refuses to submit tax reports. He refuses to work with the investigation. For so many who defend Trump via rule of law, they sure don't seem to trust in the notion that if you're innocent you have nothing to hide.
Tons of his underlings have been formally arrested and found guilty.
He blames Hillary of crimes she did not commit, forces investigation of her that actually prove to find her innocent, but refuses to do the same for himself? Hypocrisy is not a good legal defense.
Trump needs to put up or shut up and go to jail.
He praises Putin, Russia, and other dictators and other traditional enemies of the US often. Also often criticizes our allies. He takes Putin at his word, but not anyone telling him Putin isn't trustworthy.
He has secret meetings with Russia that he keeps lying about.
He has been proven to have lied about his wealth to become wealthy. Why is that not a bigger deal?
He refuses to submit tax reports. He refuses to work with the investigation. For so many who defend Trump via rule of law, they sure don't seem to trust in the notion that if you're innocent you have nothing to hide.
Tons of his underlings have been formally arrested and found guilty.
He blames Hillary of crimes she did not commit, forces investigation of her that actually prove to find her innocent, but refuses to do the same for himself? Hypocrisy is not a good legal defense.
Trump needs to put up or shut up and go to jail.