Mr. Trump flings his feces so regularly and so wildly that it’s often hard to see any plan or pattern in the spatter.   I recently heard three Trump tweets read aloud, in context, and it blew my mind a little.  I share them here, the president’s swing from euphoria to paranoid, arguably coherent Hitler-in-the-bunker raving.   It is good, sometimes, to step back, with the aid of hindsight, and look more closely at the thing that went by in a blur.

The tweets were read by a lawyer on an episode of an excellent podcast called “What Trump can teach us about Con Law”– Con Law being law student-speak for constitutional law.   Mr. Trump never studied Con Law (obviously), and so each time he sets off a complicated constitutional shit storm the host of the podcast, and his neighbor and friend, a constitutional law professor, dissect the particular constitutional issue involved.   The most recent episode was called Contempt Power.   It laid out the limited options Congress has for holding people openly contemptuous of its constitutional powers to account.   

As you might imagine, in the end, real enforcement depends on the federal courts who can order compliance.  Courts packed with conservative judges vetted by the Federalist Society for their extreme right wing bona fides and appointed in record numbers by the man who demonstrates his contempt for the constitution daily are not a sure bet to rule by the spirit and the letter of the law.   Additionally, even the fairest and most non-political of courts can take years to decide on a political matter.

The lack of  a speedy legal way to compel people who tell Congress to fuck off  to follow the law is another reason why impeachment, (once Americans are on board in sufficient numbers– and the Democrats have to keep pushing here), is the only real constitutional tool for a full investigation and excision of this tumor of a president.  

The professor read the president’s first tweet after Barr announced, falsely, that the Mueller report had exonerated Mr. Trump.   Hearing the tweets read out loud really drove home how wild and mad this prolifically tweeting president actually is.   Trump was euphoric after Barr cleared him, tweeting:

Never mind that Mueller’s summary ends with these words (words that would not be seen by the rest of us for several more weeks, as Barr redacted and continued misrepresenting Mueller’s report):

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, however, 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,

Then it was only a matter of a few more weeks until Barr, after a wildly spinning hour long informercial for “his client’s” innocence, released the redacted report, including the redacted summaries that Mueller had prepared, and redacted, for immediate release on March 24th.   Trump outdid himself with the celebratory tweet this time:

HBO was not crazy about the president’s appropriation of their copyrighted Game of Thrones motif as Trump seemingly portrayed himself as the Night King, supreme leader of the massive and inexhaustible zombie army that threatened to wipe out humanity (and was finally defeated, after epic carnage, toward the end of this final season).

At this point Trump seemed to have won, declaring the game over.  Set and match.  Suck it, bitches.

Then people started reading the redacted report, released the day before Good Friday, which coincided this year with the first night of Passover. The release was timed to minimize the damage of the actual report.  Trump-haters nonetheless jumped on the redacted report, even as many of them prepared for religious holidays.  

It was, shockingly, nothing like the report that Barr had summarized in the letter he later hotly denied was a summary.  In fairness to Barr, nothing in his letter conclusively indicated that it was intended as a summary, unless you want to nitpick and single out the last sentence in paragraph two:

Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation 

We now know (as we learned weeks later just before Barr testily testified before Lindsey Graham and friends) that Mueller immediately wrote to Barr to protest the misrepresentation of his report, the confusion in the minds of America that Barr’s misleading summary and ongoing distortions had created.   Unprecedented, as far as I know, for a Special Counsel to write a letter of protest to his boss about the deliberate mischaracterization of his work, and make it part of the public record.    At the time, the day before Good Friday, all we had was the redacted report released on the eve of two major holidays right before the weekend.   The president knew people were going to start talking about this “game over”/”no do-overs”, in light of new evidence,, so, beginning at 4:53 a.m. the  next morning our president tweeted this:

Finally, time for vengeance, to bring justice (think Texas-style) to some “very sick and dangerous people” guilty of “very serious” capital crimes.   Traitors will be hung from lamp posts, eleven and twelve year-old German boys will fight in the streets of Berlin until the last of them are killed… if the Reich is too weak to survive it deserves to be exterminated, I have been stabbed in the back by very sick, dangerous traitors…

The day after Mr. Trump’s paroxysm on twitter, some of the finest people, the finest people, celebrated the birthday of Mr. Hitler, who turned 129 this year, on April 20th, the day after Good Friday and the first night of Passover. 

from the report:

Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment [that Trump did not act with corrupt intent and did not commit felonies]. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.  [1]

And, if you are still on the fence about the importance of moving forward on impeachment hearings, take three minutes to watch this excellent short video  on the five major benefits of beginning an impeachment of President Obstruction.

[1] Mueller also wrote, with no ambiguity whatsoever:

The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

I had a professor in law school who drilled his students to begin every answer to a legal question with “it depends.”   He’d stop us if we forgot to begin our answer that way, smile encouragingly as one of us began with this phrase and wave his hand for the follow up, an explanation of the devilish details on which your actual answer depends.  He was no radical, as far as I know (he taught Intellectual Property, the area he also practiced), but that qualification, “it depends”, turns out to be the key to all critical discussion of our laws.

If you are eighteen and your girlfriend is sixteen, in many states you can be easily convicted of statutory rape.   Will every eighteen year-old sleeping with his sixteen year-old girl friend be prosecuted for this crime? Obviously not, but why not?   It depends.  On who the boy is, who the girl is, who their families are.  A prep school kid from a rich family can be excused for letting his heart rule him that way.   It seems so unfair to let this youthful love affair (even — yea, especially–  if it is only one night long) destroy the boy’s entire life!    A hard boy from the ghetto will generally get a less generous pass from the law for letting his heart decide what the law should be.   Additionally, justice reasons, the kid from the ghetto should know exactly how ungenerous his pass will be.    Impossible to compare the lives of those two boys, one a hard criminal type, the other the finest sort our society produces!

Is contempt of a subpoena to testify a crime?   It depends.

The Attorney General is instructing the president on a (very weak) “protective presidential privilege” defense for his ongoing obstruction of justice.  He has given Trump’s energetic attempts to cover up all potentially damaging information against him the tiniest, most obscene fig leaf of legal cover.   On the plus side, from Barr’s experienced point of view, when Obama was challenged on a similarly weak assertion of presidential privilege, it took the courts four years to decide that his weak-ass defense could not stand.    

A random note about time:   four years is the difference between Mr. Hitler as Time Magazine Man of the Year, for restoring German power and prestige,  and Mr. Hitler as a Hall of Fame mass murderer at the top of his game, gleefully slaughtering in the East.  

Back to contempt of a subpoena to testify, or to release documents.

Chelsea Manning, who leaked, among other things, video footage of American soldiers committing war crimes, murdering civilians and civilians who went to rescue the surviving machine gunned civilians, with the full backing of their commander (“light ’em up!”), was locked up for seven years, after being sentenced to thirty-five years for giving the files to Wikileaks.    She recently was locked up for more than two months for failing to comply with a grand jury subpoena (she got out yesterday or today, temporarily).  They are trying to force her to give additional testimony that will aid in convicting Mr. Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and locking him up under the jail for the rest of his natural life.

[1] You can read that basics about Contempt of Congress HERE. 

There’s a good discussion of what Congress can do to give teeth to a contempt citation HERE

A person cited for contempt of Congress can be arrested by the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Representatives and dragged into Congress.  The last time this procedure was used was a long time ago.  Gratifying as it would be to see Barr dragged into the House in handcuffs, it would just as likely be a bloodbath as a cornered, twitchy, enraged Barr could use his own armed agents to repel the sergeant-at-arms in a hail of bullets.   I would put nothing past the smug, contemptuous Nazi bastard.

Here are a couple of powerful government appointees who were held in contempt in recent times (from the table at the bottom of the Wiki):

Eric Holder, Attorney General under Obama, was found in contempt of Congress (by a vote of 255-67, no less) in 2012.

Note also that Anne Gorsuch, mother of our own Neil Gorsuch, was, like her son, a faithful soldier whose service to her masters included allowing herself to be cited for contempt of Congress.

A good Nazi is loyal to his leader, above all else.   The original Nazis back in Germany believed in strict obedience to the will of their infallible leader, uber alles.   The Fuhrer’s every word had the force of absolute law — they phrased it, in their inimitable language: Fuhrerworte haben Gesetzeskrafte.  Fuhrerworte was left to an army of Nazi lawyers to write indelibly into the German legal code of the time.    

You can read all about Nazis and their hierarchy of obedience to orders in many excellent books.  One I recommend, if you are only ready to read one short book about these very fine people, is Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem.

In that detailed and philosophical account of the prosecution of an unremarkable high school drop-out who rose to become a major cog in the industrialized Nazi killing apparatus, you will see numerous examples of ambitious men, unhindered by restrictive principles, hitching their destinies to an infallible, all-powerful Fuhrer, a man chosen by a certain type of savage pagan god as the instrument to dominate and slaughter every hated enemy of The People.  

A central trait of Nazis is rubbing the faces of despised people in Nazi imposed shame.  Nothing is more hilarious to a Nazi (or your equally fine klansman, for that matter) than watching a good bit of rough humiliating violence inflicted on a hated, subhuman enemy.  They forcibly cut the beards off of religious men, kicked children, humiliated enemies at every opportunity, stripped people naked as they marched them to anonymous deaths.

We are cautioned against comparing bad people who misuse their power to Nazis, that this sort of easy hyperbole undermines credibility (even when talking about people who openly applaud the beliefs of actual Nazis).  So I don’t compare Trump, a dictator wannabe, to his most famous all-powerful countryman, Mr. Hitler.  It’s a cheap comparison of two great men, right?  Forget the lying ex-wife who scurrilously claimed Trump kept one of the few books he ever read, the Collected Speeches of Adolf Hitler, on the gold-plated nightstand next to his gold-plated bed. [1]

The raging bitches I am comparing to ambitious young Nazis are the token Jews in Mr. Trump’s xenophobic, racist inner circle.   Stephen Miller, a nominally Jewish troll who needs no introduction, is one of the few remaining original Trump loyalists still loyally advising the president to remain ruthless with his many enemies.  Miller, you will recall, rode in on the coattails of disgraced former Trump ally Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the first mainstream politician to endorse Trump in his then quixotic-seeming run for president.   The other skanky bitch I have in mind is the son of a convicted Jewish felon, the hereditary billionaire grandson of humble survivors of the Nazi holocaust.   You know him as Jared, the president’s loyal son-in-law. 

I have only one thing to say, at the moment, about Jared Kushner, a man, like his father-in-law, born stinking rich and possessing zero qualifications for his present job as a world leader.   Jared has apparently decided (probably in consultation with Miller and Trump himself) that the details of his “peace plan” for Palestinians shall be be announced immediately after conclusion of the holiest holy days of the Muslim year, Ramadan.   This month-long religious duty requires devout Muslims to fast during daylight hours for the duration of this period of prayer and self-reflection.

When Ramadan ends, there is a celebratory feast  عيد الفطر] ] to mark the end of this period of religiously mandated privation.  It is during this feast that Mr. Kushner will announce his “peace plan” for the Palestinians.  One can only imagine the generous humanity, fairness and decency of untutored C-student Jared’s historic proposal to the people he considers the rightfully hated enemies of his ancestral homeland.   The timing of its release: pure, in-your-fucking face Nazi.

Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, is the tenth of ten days of repentance.   A Jew is supposed to fast on that day, reflecting on any other harm he may have done to his fellow creatures and doing whatever is possible to repair that harm.   The Nazis took no greater delight than mischievously scheduling some really hateful shit for the moment when Jews were taking their first drink of water, eating the first food in twenty four hours, after a day of prayer and soul-searching.   “Here, have this with your bread, my dear Jewish friends,” said the playful Nazi, offering a bit of Xyklon B to spice up the festivities.

I don’t call Miller, the advocate of ruthless child separation at the border, a Nazi.   Though, in fairness, this kind of vicious state-sponsored terrorism is exactly what the Nazis routinely did.   I don’t call announcing a peace plan to enshrine the intolerable status quo on the very night that ends the holiest days in the target population’s year a Nazi-like thing to do.  Though, in fairness, it’s exactly the kind of thing the fucks who fully intended to kill all of Jared’s grandparents loved to do.

I’m just sayin’.

[1] once again, those America-hating commies at Business Insider with a lying hatchet job on, arguably, the greatest German in history.  Here’s a nice little tranche from those rabid freedom-hater’s 2015 hit piece on Mr. Trump:

When Brenner asked Trump about how he came to possess Hitler’s speeches, “Trump hesitated” and then said, “Who told you that?”

“I don’t remember,” Brenner reportedly replied.

Trump then recalled, “Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of ‘Mein Kampf,’ and he’s a Jew.”

Brenner added that Davis did acknowledge that he gave Trump a book about Hitler.

“But it was ‘My New Order,’ Hitler’s speeches, not ‘Mein Kampf,'” Davis reportedly said. “I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”

After Trump and Brenner changed topics, Trump returned to the subject and reportedly said, “If, I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”

 source

I take back any disparaging thing I’ve said about Robert Mueller III in the last few days (particularly “fucking eagle scout”).   Here is the letter he wrote to William Barr, a pathetic porcine puppet for a puerile president [1]  MORE THAN A MONTH AGO!   How much bullshit would America have been spared, if AG Barr, pathetic porcine puppet that he is, had heeded Mueller’s concise letter instead of concealing it and continuing to knowingly lie to the American people.

In this letter Mueller lays out the law to a corrupt supervisor placed in the job  based on a shameless audition and his stated and reiterated promise to POTUS  to support him no matter what, to obstruct, mislead, mischaracterize, posit ridiculous shit, stonewall, obfuscate, spread deliberate misinformation, claim to be starting investigations based on Trump’s fantasy about being spied on by a man so far superior to him he could not have been born in America, no way, anything no matter how debasing, to protect the president at all costs, including integrity and common decency.  

A small price to pay for power and the further chance to advance a wildly unpopular political agenda.

Barr’s smug asshole response today about this letter, which was sent by Mueller to make a record of his attempt to immediately correct misstatements Barr had made and offered him a fully redacted summary of the findings, was that Mueller should have simply called him on the phone instead of having “an assistant” write this troublesome, unnecessary letter that was, rightfully, shielded from public view for more than a month while Barr continued to make a long, baseless informercial for his boss, the American People, errrr, Donald J. Trump.  

Here you go.  My hat is once again off to Robert Mueller, whose investigation did not leak at all, until it was absolutely necessary that it did, and then, just one crucial page, to preserve a bit more evidence.  Beautifully done, Mr. Mueller::

[1] from a tweet by Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe

The Devil, as they say, is always in the details.  In bizarro Trumpworld, nothing is prohibited to the Boss unless there is proof of an actual crime BEYOND THE SHADOW OF ANY DOUBT.  In the case of doubt, Trump wins.   He’s staked his entire career on this principle of unaccountability, perfecting it as a young adult under the tutleage of  satanic Roy Cohn.  

Me standing over a dead body with a bloody knife in my hand, shirt and face spattered with blood matching the victim’s, is not proof I killed the butchered dead piece of shit (who deserved it in any case) — unless there were ten eye witnesses who all pass polygraphs.  And even then…

Mueller lays out, in lawyerly detail, his reasoning for not indicting Trump for obstruction, or even opining more straight forwardly about the strength of a strong case against the president,  in spite of what appears to be a clear, well-corroborated, largely public course of obstructive conduct.   A seamless pattern of attempts by the “most transparent president” in history (also, man with, by far, the largest penis of any president) to thwart a legal investigation, in fact.   The president’s contempt of the legal system could not be more “in your fucking face”.

Read the fine print of the Mueller report, where the devil cavorts.   Mueller argues, in point three (below), that it would be unfair to indict the president for a serious, impeachable, crime and then have him wait, possibly years, to clear his good (or, in this case, bad) name in court.  It would hurt the president’s credibility, unnecessarily compromise him and impose a serious political disability on him.  According to Mueller, quoting the OLC opinion, the “stigma and opprobrium” [of being charged and having to wait years to clear his name in court] “could impair the president’s ability to govern.”  So, no indictment.  Not for a rip-snorting Republican electoral college winner, anyway.   Fair is fair. 

Read it and weep, boys and girls.   Mueller, the fucking eagle scout:

I am starting to like the sound of the Democratic talking point when asked about impeachment: “we’re not there yet.”   Meaning, we the American electorate, and the fifteen or so Republican senators needed to convict in the Senate, are not yet faced with overwhelming, incontrovertible proof of this cruel, stubborn, vain president’s guilt.  

That he is guilty as hell, and keeps doubling down on his guilt by adding obstructive acts to his obstruction in progress, there is no doubt in my mind.   But I’m not the one who needs to be convinced.

It’s a good argument for the American people (the ones, in the end, who need to be convinced): “the motherfucker left us with no choice but to actually drag his dirty ass into the only court available for prosecuting such a powerful, untruthful and eternally unaccountable man.”  Contempt of Congress?  

Fucking prove it, you contemptible, powerless, loser assholes!  Make me!   Make me, bitches!!!

Thanks to The Intercept, who put the entire redacted Mueller report on-line.   James Risen and others have annotated it here.

The following short passage added to Mueller’s carefully worded report on his investigation into the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russia in the 2016 election would have completely changed the topography of the political discussion, and, frankly, cut through a lot of fucking bullshit to directly defend our democracy: 

While I have abided by the opinions of the DOJ memos stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and have therefore refrained from making a traditional prosecutorial judgment in this report,  I am making my findings clear and explicit to avoid any confusion about my conclusions.  I underscore what I have found because I am aware that any ambiguity in this report will be weaponized by partisans on both sides of the political divide regarding the president and his actions.  

I therefore clarify the findings of my report as the only way, consistent with the constitution, in our present highly partisan political moment, to hold a colorably corrupt president to account for possibly abusing the powers of the office.   I wish to remove any ambiguity about the meaning of a passage like the following (which does not draw any conclusion about guilt or innocence):

The president and his personal counsel made repeated statements suggesting that a pardon was a possibility for [Paul] Manafort, while also making it clear that the president did not want Manafort to “flip” and cooperate with the government.

There are many triable issues of fact raised in my report.    Had the acts detailed here been committed by someone other than the president of the United States, I would not hesitate to recommend prosecution.   I have, in fact, indicted and prosecuted several people closely associated with the president whose related misdeeds and lying under oath were uncovered in the course of this investigation.

Investigation of the Trump campaign’s coordination with the Russian Federation was hampered, and in some cases thwarted, by witnesses who lied and important parties who refused to be interviewed, or answer written questions with candor, including, significantly, the president and his son, Donald Junior.   Therefore, I could make no concrete determination regarding criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

On the matter of the long course of obstruction of this investigation by the president and his associates, there is far more evidence and less ambiguity.   

While DOJ policy is against indictment of a sitting president, based on the evidence of consistent efforts to obstruct my investigation, I recommend the indictment of Donald J. Trump, for an ongoing pattern of obstruction of justice [1], with prosecution to be deferred until after his term in office.

The evidence my committee uncovered, as I have stated, clearly does not exonerate the president.   Neither should any American be found guilty of crimes without a trial by a jury of his peers.   The many triable issues of fact my investigation uncovered make that trial a necessity if we are to adhere to the principle that no person is above the law.

(thanks to Bill Maher for putting the idea in my head that Mueller exacerbated the crisis, by his meticulous, lawyerly finding that… let the Republican-controlled Senate decide whether their master is guilty … and to Lawrence O’Donnell for the deferred prosecution idea.)

[1]   The third article of impeachment drafted for Nixon related to his contempt of Congress, based on his defiance of subpoenas and refusal to produce documents and other evidence.  Article III, when it was announced, reportedly made Nixon cry (and possibly say “this is the end of my presidency, I’m fucked”).   It read in part that the president:

failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives on April 11, 1974, May 15, 1974, May 30, 1974, and June 24, 1974, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas.   ^source

I don’t understand what is hard about this.   Even for spineless Democrats strategizing about how to defeat the worst president in American history in a year and a half.   As that president uses his powers to try to  run out the clock prior to the climactic final phase of his four year re-election campaign.

Mueller stated at the outset of his summary that he was bound by the current DOJ policy about not indicting a sitting president.  He declared that for this reason he would not make a traditional prosecutorial judgment about indicting the president for anything.

The purpose of his investigation, he states, was to uncover facts, compile and preserve evidence, compel testimony, indict anyone involved in illegal activity who was not covered by the DOJ policy regarding the sitting president.   Several of Trump’s close associates have already been indicted, a few convicted, a couple are already serving prison sentences.   Or, as William Barr continues to say: nothing to see here.

Robert Mueller detailed many specific instances of the president acting with corrupt intent, ordering subordinates to lie about matters of national importance (as Trump’s new attorney general has been doing recently about Mueller’s report, about Obama’s “spying”, about Mueller “acknowledging” that the president was “frustrated and angry” and so on), sometimes to commit illegal acts, other times only unethical ones, consistently obstructing a legal investigation into his corrupt dealings as they related to Russia and the effect Russian interference had on the outcome of the 2016 election.  

Mueller (who was not looking to indict the president in any case) did not find enough evidence of criminal coordination with Russia to support a criminal charge of conspiracy between Trump and Russia, though he provided a trove of evidence to show the many instances of “collusion” or “coordination” we all know about.  Not enough to support a criminal charge of conspiracy, a very high bar, but plenty to show a clear pattern of working together for a common goal, using not always legal means.

Mueller’s report on Trump’s many attempts to obstruct justice, on the other hand, contains far less ambiguity.  Trump is still, as I tap away here, actively and publicly attempting to obstruct justice.    He’s recently done the only thing he knows how to do, double down and fight, vowing to obstruct any further attempts to investigate him all the way up to a Supreme Court he imagines will take his side.

 Trump claims, nonsensically, that the Mueller report totally exonerated him (it explicitly did not) and that it was, at the same time, a partisan hit job by the same powerful liars that falsely attacked Boof Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.

It is time to impeach Donald Trump and put him on trial in the Senate.   Mueller’s report makes this clear.

Trump’s behavior since the report was belatedly made (mostly) public makes it even clearer.  The redacted report Barr released has all twelve (or is it 14?) related criminal referrals completely blacked out, including the names of the subjects of those referrals.  Is Ivanka named?  Jared? Don Jr.?   Only Barr, Mueller and the White House know.  

Meanwhile, “the most transparent president in history” vows to fight to keep everything secret, including his financial information, especially that.  There may be a federal financial disclosure law he is ordering Steve Mnuchin to violate, but, here too, Mr. Trump has vowed to fight all the way to the Supreme Court.  

One fact does not need proof– Trump, when threatened by the law, lawyers up as he has in literally thousands of lawsuits.  Let his lawyers defend him in the Senate.

Mueller presented ample evidence of the president’s ongoing attempts to obstruct any investigation of Trump’s often shady, sometimes illegal, activities.   Then Mueller wrote, directly before the line that said CONCLUSION:

I have been practicing my cursive writing (if not my photography) with this excellent little sentence, dipping a nib in ink and inscribing it on the back of the letters I am writing these days:  

The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

Could Robert Mueller have been more clear?  The exercise of the president’s legitimate duties under Article II, Mueller reminds us, may not be unduly questioned by the other branches of government.   In contrast, the constitution offers no such exemption for the corrupt exercise, the misuse and abuse, of the considerable powers of the presidency.   It is the clear duty of Congress to rein in a corrupt president.  As Mueller also wrote:

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.

Yet Democrats still waver.  What about the optics?   It hurt the Republicans when they tried to impeach Clinton over lying about a blow job and his efforts to cover up that affair becoming public [1].   Let’s defeat Trump on the issues, this election is about values, not Trump.   Let’s not look like partisans!  We don’t have the votes in the Senate… the Republicans will make us look bad…

Shut up and do your constitutional duty.  Listen to Elizabeth Warren, she’s right. This is about defending the rule of law in a democracy, not politics (repulsive as Trump’s policies and politics are).

The Democratic fear is based on the backlash Republicans experienced after the Clinton impeachment failed. Let’s not forget that in 1999 50 (fifty) of those Republican partisans who were in the Senate for the impeachment trial (fucking Mitch McConnell voting ‘guilty’ on both counts, as did Jeff Sessions, Strom Thurmond and 47 other outraged patriots) voted to convict Clinton and remove him from office.  FIFTY. Over lying about a blow job. [2]

I urge all Americans to read Mueller’s executive summary of obstruction of justice, Volume II, then call your elected officials, Democratic and Republican alike, and ask them why they are not moving toward impeachment to rein in this corrupt abuser of power, and of everything else.

NOTES

[1]  Wikipedia:

The trial in the United States Senate began right after the seating of the 106th Congress, in which the Republican Party held 55 Senate seats. A two-thirds vote (67 senators) was required to remove Clinton from office. Fifty senators voted to remove Clinton on the obstruction of justice charge and 45 voted to remove him on the perjury charge; no member of his ownDemocratic Party voted guilty on either charge. Clinton, like Johnson a century earlier, was acquitted on all charges.

source

[2] more shameful shit from the Clinton impeachment:

A much-quoted statement from Clinton’s grand jury testimony showed him questioning the precise use of the word “is”. Contending that his statement that “there’s nothing going on between us” had been truthful because he had no ongoing relationship with Lewinsky at the time he was questioned, Clinton said, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement”.^[7] Starr obtained further evidence of inappropriate behavior by seizing the computer hard drive and email records of Monica Lewinsky. Based on the president’s conflicting testimony, Starr concluded that Clinton had committed perjury. Starr submitted his findings to Congress in a lengthy document (the so-called Starr Report), and simultaneously posted the report, which included descriptions of encounters between Clinton and Lewinsky, on the Internet.^[8] Starr was criticized by Democrats for spending $70 million on an investigation that substantiated only perjury and obstruction of justice.^[9] Critics of Starr also contend that his investigation was highly politicized because it regularly leaked tidbits of information to the press in violation of legal ethics, and because his report included lengthy descriptions which were humiliating yet irrelevant to the legal case.^[10][11]