It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that President William Jefferson Clinton perjured himself before a Federal grand jury and has persisted in a continuous pattern of lying and obstructing justice. The chief law-enforcement officer of the land, whose oath of office calls on him to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, crossed the line and failed to defend and protect the law and, in fact, attacked the law and the rights of a fellow citizen. Under our Constitution, equal justice requires that he forfeit his office. For these reasons, I felt compelled to vote to convict and remove the President from office. . . .
It is crucial to our system of justice that we demand the truth. I fear that an acquittal of this President will weaken the legal system by providing an option for those who consider being less than truthful in court. Whereas the handling of the case against President Nixon clearly strengthened the nation’s respect for law, justice and truth, the Clinton impeachment may unfortunately have the opposite result.
I think the biggest part of the Optimism around the Trump presidency is that basically they are too stupid to do anything and get away with it.
I mean Jesus tapdancing christ, you have a guy who is overseeing some part of the investigation of the Trump administration having ties to Russia, lying (or either being deliberately vague) about his previous contact with the Russian government, who it turns out is likely involved in the KGB in some way.
Again, the Oscar winning film about this in 20 years is going to be really good. I can take my kids to this and say that I voted against this buffon.
Sessions, for his part, made a similar argument in his statement: “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”
Sessions seems to misunderstand the allegations in his statement. It’s not whether he met with Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign, but whether he spoke with them in any capacity despite telling Congress he had no communications with Russians. His spokesperson’s statement and his own statement only deny that he spoke with Russian officials as a campaign surrogate, but he still apparently communicated with a Russian official as a senator.
The Post report suggests that Sessions’s contact with Kislyak, even as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time, was unusual. Among the 20 (of 26) members of the committee who responded to the Post, none of them met with Russia’s ambassador last year.
And the funny thing is he never answered Franken’s question. He was asked that if information came to light that there had been meetings between campaign staffers and the Russians, what would Sessions do (as AG)? Franken was trying to assess whether Sessions could be impartial in such an instance.
Sessions didn’t address that question, but volunteered that he had been referred to as part of the campaign and that he’d had no contact with the Russians.
If during the confirmation he had said me met with the Russian Ambassador but it had nothing to do with Trump, it certainly would have had more weight than him saying it now after denying having any contact at all while under oath. Christ.
Yep. Still, I’m not holding out hope this goes anywhere, but between Sessions lying and Pruitt lying …
Nah, Republicans control Congress and they haven’t passed their priorities yet.
What an idiot. All he had to do was say he’d met them as part of his job.
Now it looks like - particularly with all the people saying that it’s not normal for his job to involve meeting Russian ambassadors - he was trying to hide it. Trump’s administration is about to lose another position I guess!
One would hope. Sessions should not be AG for a laundry list of reasons.
Which is why I suspect Trump and the GOP will fight tooth and nail to keep him there. Any by fight I mean they’ll just sit there doing literally nothing and hope everyone forgets about him.
I mean, with Ross it would be far more surprising if he weren’t. He’s a former investment banker and global distressed asset investor, specialising in extractive industries and raw materials. You can’t really escape some connection with Russia doing work like that. Same with Mnuchin and Trump’s other billionaire appointees.
He’s the head of the Nation’s law enforcement… he pretty much calls the shots, unless Congress runs its OWN investigation. And Congress lacks the balls to do that.
