Hmm, I wonder if you would extend the same courtesy to Clinton. :)
#whatabouttism
-Tom
I get what you’re saying but this ultimately leads to impossibility. As an example, LBJ tried to arrange a cease-fire and negotiated peace with North Vietnam, because (among other reasons) he knew the war was killing his chances for re-election. Nixon the candidate intervened by negotiating with the North to prevent such a deal. Both of them wanted to be elected, but only one of them was the actual President, permitted by law to carry out the foreign policy of the US. Was it a crime for LBJ to offer ‘stop shooting at us and we’ll stop shooting at you’ because he wanted to be President? Maybe, but you could never determine his motivations, and he was actually the President. Was it a crime for Nixon to say ‘keep shooting at us and I’ll give you a better deal after I get elected’? Yes, certain, because Nixon was not the President and he was barred by law from conducting foreign policy on behalf of the US.
Similar situation pertained wrt the Carter, the hostages, and Reagan queering Carter’s deal to bring them home. Both wanted to be elected, but Reagan committed a crime and Carter didn’t, because Carter was the
President and Reagan was not.
Edit: The impossibility is this: Once LBJ decides that he can’t get re-elected unless he ends the war, he can’t end the war if your reading of the law is correct, because that would be something of value (an end of bombing for NV) in return for something of value (re-election for LBJ) a classic tit for tat. A bribe. That’s an absurd result, so it seems reasonable to me that there must be more leeway for actual Presidents to conduct foreign policy this way.
Then it’s a violation of the Logan Act.
No, not really. USC 52 §30121 doesn’t care whether you’re a foreign agent or foreign national. You can’t contribute things of value to political campaigns.
Well, yeah - that’s a campaign finance violation, but I was figuring we were talking about “the big guns” of collusion/treason/what not. Or… are we not?
I think it would be hard to make a legal case for treason, which has a fairly specific meaning in settled law.
Collusion isn’t actually a crime, though ‘conspiracy to commit a crime’ is. Certainly conspiracy charges would accompany any charges under USC 52 §30121. E.g. the Russians gave the thing of value, but the recipients conspired to accept it.
In addition to campaign finance violations, might there be a conspiracy to receive stolen property, or aiding and abetting hacking after the fact, if campaign figures solicited documents hacked from DNC or Podesta.
My suspicion is that if Mueller is able to come up with something hard against the president himself, it will be in bank fraud/money laundering realm, like they got Manafort – something like getting loans while claiming assets that were really controlled by others (Russian mobsters).
Yes, this is most likely i think. In terms of actual criminal acts, i suspect that Trump’s financial dealings are going to dwarf the stuff that happened during the campaign.
The flip side is that something doesn’t need to be illegal to make you unfit to lead the country.
Yes, receiving stolen property and accessory are clearly in the bounds of possibility, IMO. They have in effect been demonstrated already, or nearly so, as has obstruction of justice.
What is unlikely to happen is an indictment of Trump. Not because he shouldn’t be - he’s transparently guilty - but because Mueller can’t indict anyone without the permission of the DOJ, and he will not get that permission. On the other hand, I think it possible Jr will be indicted, and maybe Kushner, though he hasn’t been quite as stupid as Jr.
And of course Trump will pardon them if they are indicted, so there’s that.
I also agree with this, only I doubt it will lead to an indictmentment of Trump because the DOJ will not indict him. They’ll simply shrug and say it’s an issue for Congress to deal with, and Congress will do nothing.
Ah, got it. Thanks.
I do think they made poor decisions here that will eventually be overturned or reimagined by a saner court. Please don’t think I would care if that meant Menendez went to jail. What he did should be considered corruption for an elected official.
If either of them did. There is ample evidence that Trump solicited a personal and business relationship with Putin (from Trump’s own words), and also that Putin’s government solicited a relationship with the Trump campaign. So there is evidence of financial ties, specific discussion of quid pro quo arrangements, material aid in the form of election meddling, and favors done by Trump. I suppose it’s possible all these things are purely coincidental, but it’s also possible OJ was framed.
In truth, I would rather not treat it that way, but it’s clear that’s what gman is doing, e.g. simply throwing arguments at the wall to see what sticks. I don’t have any sense that he’s committed to any position other than contrariness, or that he could be convinced to admit the value and force of any argument on the other side. I’m not arguing to convince him; I’m arguing for the benefit of the audience because he’s unredeemable. I’m sure other people find it as tedious as I do right now.
Also, I’d be happy to move it to a more appropriate thread, but this is where gman is.
Where is the evidence that the Trump campaign agreed to do X in exchange for Y? I have seen the argument that Manafort was in debt to oligarchs and offered them help, but I have not seen an explicit exchange, ie, we will push to lower sanctions if you run a disinformation campaign, or hack the DNC servers, or give us the stolen emails.
Dude, the Logan Act came from the 1800s, when we didn’t have the Internet. The point was to prevent people from going overseas and claiming to be US representatives and signing deals with foreign governments without authorization. This is absurd.
State Dept in 1975, apparently the last time anyone seriously considered using this 200-year old statute:
Dude, the second amendment came from the 1700s, when we didn’t have automatic weapons.
See how stupid that sounds?
It’s a good law. Private citizens shouldn’t be able to undermine the policy of the government by entering into negotiations with foreign powers. Don’t you agree?
As I mentioned earlier, I think this is the only way you can defend Trump.
-Tom
The evidence at this point is all reasonable inferences. In other words, they wouldn’t currently hold up in a court of a law or a discussion with gman. But please stand by for Mueller to finish!
-Tom
They should not be able to make deals on behalf of the US if they are not US agents. They can negotiate as candidates, for sure.
I mention the date of the Logan Act not because old laws are irrelevant, but because it was signed when it was actually a real problem to have people claiming to be US representatives, and there was no easy way to verify it.
You are now seeing Democrats, after the Helsinki disaster, increasingly taking exactly this approach. It is new messaging from very high up. What was once “impeachment would be a gift to the GOP” is now “let’s wait and see what Mueller says.” Interestingly, Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Rep running to unseat Cruz, is the only one with his own spin on it: He says impeachment is effectively an indictment (which it basically is), and that there’s enough for that, even if not a conviction.
I question the wisdom of indicting someone you do not yet have enough to convict on, but he’s a prominent Democrat in a red state advocating it, so it’s not as risky as it once was.
They cannot do so legally, because of the Logan Act. This isn’t a difficult legal question. You can argue that the law doesn’t get enforced often, or even ever, but there’s no debate about what the law says. I offered some examples of why it is a good law, e.g. Nixon’s and Reagan’s crimes that either killed many more American soldiers or kept Americans hostage for longer than they would otherwise have been. Maybe you should apply your ‘understanding’ of the law to those examples?