President Trump Fires FBI Director Comey

Prozyan said:

I suggested otherwise?

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Sounded like it.

And if firing Comey and sharing intel with Russia was not enough, I give you the next falling ax:

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

Comey had been writing up memos about meetings with Trump and sharing those memos with others while keeping quiet about it in order to keep anything from affecting the ongoing investigation.

WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. ...

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. ...

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Now someone with copies of the memos has leaked them to the NYT.

http://nation.foxnews.com/2017/05/1...house-officials-were-not-fox-news-sunday-week



WTF? Is it just me or does Chris have a twinkle in his eye?

shakeysix said:

http://nation.foxnews.com/2017/05/1...house-officials-were-not-fox-news-sunday-week

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Well that's a bit stunning. I don't think we get FoxNews, but is Chris Wallace someone who would normally voice negative about the current regime?

He strikes me as one of the less hidebound Fuxers. This is odd, though. Trump usually has no problem packing that show with his Charlie McCarthys. I don't watch Fux but do tune in when I want to get my money's worth out of my high blood pressure pills. --s6

Rats and sinking ships comes to mind.

MaeZe said:

And if firing Comey and sharing intel with Russia was not enough, I give you the next falling ax:

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

Comey had been writing up memos about meetings with Trump and sharing those memos with others while keeping quiet about it in order to keep anything from affecting the ongoing investigation.

Now someone with copies of the memos has leaked them to the NYT.

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(emphasis mine)

"Someone" leaked copies of the memos to the Times? Gee...I wonder who? There's only 36,000 FBI agents and employees. Maybe one or two of them didn't think Comey was the screw-up Trump says he was?

I don't even have to wait for someone to ask Mitch McConjob and the rest of the GOP cabal what they think about the revelation of Trump asking Comey to drop the Michael Flynn investigation. I already know he'll say, "Meh. Idle dinner talk chat. What's the big deal?"

Here's the big deal. Obstruction of justice. Say it with me. It sounds like music.

rugcat said:

Except, possibly, Republican lawmakers who fear for their own reelection. And we're not there yet, if we ever will be.

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It never ceases to amaze me that in a country where independent voters now outnumber either party, so many senators and representatives are still so secure in their seats. I get that most Republicans will vote for a Republican every time, and most Democrats will vote for a Democrat every time (because the people who are registered with a party tend to be issues focused and are pretty strongly in agreement with most of their chosen party's positions), but why don't the independents turn on these guys when they're revealed as completely spineless or sleazy?

rugcat said:

I very much doubt anything will come of this. Nothing can be done about it unless and until Trump is impeached. As long as a president is currently in office, by law, he or she cannot be touched. Impeachment is the only option.

That requires the house to impeach and then 67 senators to convict. Given the current crop of Republicans in Congress, I can't see anything Trump could do that would result in an impeachment.

Except, possibly, Republican lawmakers who fear for their own reelection. And we're not there yet, if we ever will be.

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That's not really true -- in practice, that's been the practice, that impeachment has been the go-to, and people have decided that it SEEMS not ok to prosecute the president, but it's not like there's a law that says no one can prosecute a sitting president no matter what.

If he did go out and shoot someone, I think there'd be a move to arrest him. It's an open question. A prosecutor could theoretically bring charges,, or an indictment. I don't know what'd happen, no one really does, because precedent has decided it's improper, but that's basically just precedent, not the rule of law.

Given we've never had anything like this POTUS before, it's hard to make any predictions except that it won't happen over night.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller is on CNN now claiming because Comey didn't report Trump right away, this is about Comey getting even. I don't see that working given Comey does quite well under oath.

rugcat said:

Apparently the answer to whether a sitting president can be arrested and tried for a crime is indeed unclear.

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Richard Nixon, at one uncomfortable point during the Watergate scandal, said at a press conference:

"When the President does it, it is not a crime."

We all know how well that was accepted.

caw

From Politico

[h=1]White House on edge: 'We are kind of helpless'[/h]

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Republicans outside the administration didn’t mince words. “We've seen this movie before,” Sen. John McCain said at a dinner for the International Republican Institute. “I think it appears at a point where it’s of Watergate size and scale.”

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White House officials said there would be no more comments Tuesday evening.
“And we are hoping the president doesn’t tweet,” one said. “Fingers crossed.”

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Yeah, good luck with that.

The Democrats are putting the brakes on the impeachment talk for 2 reasons, first what has happened so far has not given them enough concrete facts to proceed and second, they don't want Trump out of office because he is doing so much for them just by being himself.

Has anyone else noticed the irony that the "tapes" Trump referred to, were in fact recorded by the RUSSIANS???? It's like he is saying, see, I knew the Russians were our allies! No. He is a much better 2020 campaign slogan for the Democrats. Joe Scarborough made the point this morning that Nixon and Clinton had wagon circlers-- loyal political supporters who stayed with them.

Powerful Republicans have been slow to condemn Trump but no one is jumping to his defense, either. Even their support statements are weak and weary. They have seen how disloyal and devious, Trump is to his own people. They know him for what he is and they fear him. In their hearts, I am betting that they are itching to put Pence or another of their hand picked morally upright intolerants in his place just as soon as they can safely sweep him out the back door. As long as he is in power the whole party is in danger.

The Democrats want the memos, not Trump's head. Those Comey memos are gold so they must go to a bipartisan team. Once they have the memos they can tailor their questions to Comey to cause the most discomfort to the GOP. I have a feeling--have heard a rumor but from a source so off the wall I won't give it credit--one of my ultra---nay, wild eyed-- liberal BIL's web places. According to this rant there are more than one memo. There is a whole treasure chest of them from waaay back.

At least one of them concerns Trump's asking how to go about jailing--not firing but jailing--certain reporters. I know--up there at the top of the conspiracy manure pile, with the Vince Foster murder and Pizza Gate. And not something any of us would want to accept as credible. On the other hand, as an old teacher, I would have to say "Well, that does sound like something only Donnie would be stupid enough to put in writing but let's give the boy the benefit of the doubt until we have proof."

Why didn't Comey take his concerns to someone over him? This is a silly question to anyone who has ever been in his shoes. In my own mundane professional career, as a caseworker for the State of Kansas-- trust me, Kansas State employees have more drama than afternoon television-- as an educator in a Junior college that was right up there with the Middle East in political strife and then, there is the everyday nightmare of teaching under a rural school board that has been taken over by the Religious Right. Early in the game I learned to document everything.

First I jotted daily notes on a big desk calendar and then expanded what I saw could be useful later when the truth became cloudy. Yeah--I have been accused of being overly anxious about controlling the future. I don't like lies and I don't like skullduggery. The first thing I noticed about Comey was that he has the same poker up his ass! I am sure he was not just documenting the Flynn thing. I will bet you--well, nothing more than 5$--that he was not forthcoming with the Flynn stuff because he was making a case about the whole Trump lunacy. He knew something was going to jump out of the bushes and smack him down but he just didn't know what. So he was covering everything. Now--this is only me but you will have to admit, loonier things have happened and recently. We at least need to go through the wastepaper basket and piece together all the notes.


A word about the weather: A small town near here, Pawnee Rock, was hit by a tornado last night. No one was hurt but half the houses in town were leveled. Granted, that half was only 7 houses but it is an incredible blow to the town. My sister's classroom aide had damage to her farm and several houses were destroyed in Barton County, my home county. There are leaking propane tanks and power lines down right now. Crews are clearing the highways of rubble. When it is safe the local high school kids will be bussed in to help with the clean up. I have been in on two of these clean ups in past years. Not sure what I can do now, at my advanced age. I might ride on the bus to clean with my old high school. Or I might join the squeegee people--folks who gather up the photographs from the fields and ditches, squeegee them clean, hang them to dry and then work to return them to their families. Twenty five years ago a kindly woman saved many of my sisters photos after they lost their home in a flood.

My point? Nobody asks anyone's politics after a tornado. Politics didn't even make the local news this morning. Instead we saw people with flashlights calling for each other, people pulling people out of overturned cars and wrecked houses, strangers coming off the highway to help strangers. The first thing is to love and respect each other. And then we can clean up the mess--s6

zerosystem said:

Does anyone feel sorry for Sean Spicer, Mike Pence or Sarah Huckabee-Sanders? I can't imagine what it must be like to have to defend Trump's erratic behavior on a daily basis. I'm sure even they must be sick of it at some level.

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Personally, I'm waiting for their tell-all books. I bet their agents are already shopping them around.

Glad you didn't have to broom it around, but sorry the other people lost homes.

I was saying the other day to a friend that I don't think I actually want Trump ousted. Pence is a evil, utter believer, very tied to the hard right wing, very deeply dumb, and an actual politician. His installation would, I think, be a big WHEW, dodged a bullet, for people, while the extreme right moved to implement some terrifying shit as everyone felt normal again. Trump is unhinged, which is terrifying, but Pence is terrifying in a whole other way.

Wow--my brother in law isn't as conspiracy crazy as I thought. The NYT mentions a Comey memo about Trump asking how to jail reporters! --s6

Yes, for... reporting things.

Amendments, for fun and profit. Also like, fifth or sixth fucking grade social studies, ffs -- and seventh and eighth, and high school, and college and...

The Republicans in the House, at least, have come up with a response to the Comey memo: Trump was joking and Comey (I may be putting my own interpretation on this part) was too much of a stuffed shirt to get it. Huffpo link, although there are many others reporting this now.

So does this mean they feel forced to believe it if Comey wrote it? And how do they explain Trump ushering the other two out of the room before he "joked."

shakeysix said:

Wow--my brother in law isn't as conspiracy crazy as I thought. The NYT mentions a Comey memo about Trump asking how to jail reporters! --s6

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I don't know why this should surprise me, maybe because I hadn't heard it yet.

Donald Trump 'asked FBI director James Comey to consider imprisoning reporters'

Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

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rugcat said:

I very much doubt anything will come of this. Nothing can be done about it unless and until Trump is impeached. As long as a president is currently in office, by law, he or she cannot be touched. Impeachment is the only option.

That requires the house to impeach and then 67 senators to convict. Given the current crop of Republicans in Congress, I can't see anything Trump could do that would result in an impeachment.

Except, possibly, Republican lawmakers who fear for their own reelection. And we're not there yet, if we ever will be.

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Yep. You're right. At the moment.

In one week we've seen Trump go from the highs of getting his Obamacare-killing plot to the absurdities of firing the FBI chief, giving away classified information to an adversarial nation, and risk his entire presidency on trying to dragoon the FBI chief into pledging loyalty to him and oh, by the way, could you call the dogs off of Michael Flynn?

There's no single high crime or misdemeanor on the table which makes a compelling case for impeaching Trump. However, the totality of these 117 days do make a compelling case that this guy isn't up to the job and may never be. Trump is such a glaring example of executive incompetence, there will inevitably come a flashpoint when those Republicans defending him out of party loyalty will cast him aside to ensure political survival.

We're not at a point where impeaching Trump is a dead certainty, but we can certainly bring it up in normal conversation.

This may get a lot worse before it gets any better. Trump is as unfit for the presidency as Barack Obama say he was and is the disaster those of us who voted in the majority against him knew he would be. Trumps insane reign of error is now beyond question.

Certainly Trump's eulogy has been written before. Many of us gleeful at his troubles now also thought he was cooked several times over during the campaign. If we've learned anything about Trump supporters, they are fiercely loyal and the more the media and the Left trashes him, the more they fling bouquets. These historically stupid mistakes by Trump will not derail the faith of the true believers.

Everybody else...ehhh.

The only question for me is how much worse does it have to get for America before Republicans wake up to the fact they are not only Republicans, but Americans too?

THIS JUST ANNOUNCED:


Bowing to public and Congressional pressure, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Bob Mueller on Wednesday to be a special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, Justice Department officials said.
Mueller will take command of the prosecutors and FBI agents who are working on the far reaching Russia investigation, which spans multiple FBI field offices on both coasts.
Mueller led the FBI for 12 years under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

CNN is reporting that the DOJ has appointed Robert Mueller Special Counsel to conduct the Russia/Trump campaign investigation.