Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

That he's altered our political landscape for the better is just nuance?

The House majority filed charges, which didn't convince enough senators... Trump was not convicted (on either charge). Are you one of those, people who believe being charged is the same as being convicted?

Ah! Nuance!

In politics, when you are charged seriously enough, you step down, guilty or not.

Impeachment is not equivalent to a vote-of-no-confidence; we don't have such in our system. (But you have no interest in our system!)

Attorney General William Barr has appointed U.S. attorney John Durham as special counsel to secure his probe into the origins of the Russia investigation as president-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office.

The authority of the special counsel will make it more difficult for the incoming Biden administration to fire Durham, allowing the attorney to continue his work on the probe. The order appointing Durham special counsel is dated October 19; however, Barr wrote that the order should not be made public until after the general election, “because legitimate investigative and privacy concerns warrant confidentiality.”

“I decided the best thing to do would be to appoint them under the same regulation that covered [Robert] Mueller, to provide Durham and his team some assurance that they’d be able to complete their work regardless of the outcome of the election,” Barr told the Associated Press.

Durham’s investigation “is focused on the activities of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation within the FBI,” Barr said.

Crossfire Hurricane was the name given to the FBI’s investigation of possible collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives. The more than two-year probe yielded no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to disrupt the 2016 election.

As a result of Durham’s investigation, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to altering an email that he used to apply for a FISA warrant against former Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith was involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation from its early stages. In August 2016, the FBI agents who opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation gave Trump his first intelligence briefing, and Clinesmith approved a summary of that briefing along with former agent Peter Strzok.

(thanks to NR)

Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that the Justice Department has not found evidence of voter fraud widespread enough to change the outcome of this year’s presidential election, prompting a recrimination from the Trump campaign legal team, which claims the DOJ is unaware of the totality of the evidence they’ve gathered to substantiate their fraud allegations.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said in remarks to the Associated Press.

The statement from the attorney general comes after Barr suggested earlier this year that the high levels of mail ballots this year due to people opting to stay home during the pandemic could become a breeding ground for fraud.

Shortly after the election, Barr authorized federal prosecutors across the country to probe “substantial allegations” of potential voter fraud. However, the DOJ has not seen evidence of certain illegal voting irregularities the Trump campaign claimed occurred, the attorney general said.

“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said, apparently referring to allegations from since-dismissed Trump lawyer Sidney Powell that election systems flipped votes from Trump to Biden.

“There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and people don’t like something they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate,’” Barr said.

The Trump campaign’s legal team responded to Barr’s update in a statement, saying “there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation.”


“We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined,” read the statement from Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis. “We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud. As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ. The Justice Department also hasn’t audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth.”

“Again, with the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud,” the attorneys said.

Giuliani and Ellis vow to continue their “pursuit of the truth through the judicial system and state legislatures.”

Since Joe Biden eked out a victory in the election earlier this month, flipping several key battleground states Trump won in 2016 by razor-thin margins, the Trump campaign has launched a slew of more than 40 lawsuits challenging the vote results in six swing states.

Late last month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from the Trump campaign that sought to invalidate millions of votes in Pennsylvania and block the certification of the state’s election results. The campaign subsequently lost its appeal of that decision.

In Michigan, the campaign dropped a federal suit last month that had sought to block the certification of ballots in deep blue Detroit. Republicans had claimed that GOP poll watchers were not allowed meaningful access to observe the ballot counting process in Detroit.

Even as late as Tuesday the campaign was still launching new challenges, filing a new lawsuit in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court alleging that abuse of absentee voting affected 220,000 ballots in the battleground state that President-elect Joe Biden won.

Trump has so far refused to concede the election to Biden and has claimed he won a second term “by a lot” even as his legal team fails to produce of voter fraud on a scale widespread enough to affect the outcome of the race and the former vice president’s victory.

(National Review)

If the new administration allows Durham to complete the investigation, it can be confident that the result will have integrity. Plus, Durham would be reporting to the attorney general Biden has appointed.

To the contrary, if Durham is shunted aside and the matter is abruptly dropped, half the country will assume this was done corruptly. If, as President-elect Biden maintains, he wants to unite the country, that would not be the way to do it.

(article)

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"Despise"? Do you mean that literally or is that just a substitute for a pejorative?
Lichtman is an avowed Democrat. Him I understand. You are -- what? Would you care to assume some sort of understandable political label?

It's simple - I am not an American and don't care to be. You of course will not understand that.

And I will not understand blind partisanship.

You define your politics by claiming to be not an American, and your aspiration is to remain not an American?

Since you see it where it is not, your obstinacy is to be admired!

there is no "my politics" when it comes to America

Quote from: ersi on 2020-12-02, 02:47:45

there is no "my politics" when it comes to America

I wasn't asking about your politics "when it comes to America"...

“I know how to fix it,” was a hollow claim four years ago and it remains so today, as Trump winds down his last month in office. It’s also unfortunate that two primo examples of Trump’s ineptitude landed with full force over the past week. They’re reminders of the devastating consequences of living with a president who has no interest in putting his shoulder to the wheel so he can capably manage the country’s affairs.

The first example — what increasingly looks to be a haphazard rollout and distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine to the American public — shouldn’t come as a complete surprise..... More than 310,000 Americans are dead, and Covid-19 continues to savage every state.

[...]

Several states that were promised shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine said late last week that their orders had been substantially cut, prompting fears that Warp Speed won’t meet its delivery goals. The government said this was the result of states expediting their vaccine orders and Pfizer not having available supplies. But Pfizer pushed back against that narrative, saying it had vaccines sitting in warehouses awaiting shipment guidance.

Who might step in and settle these differences? The president. Is he doing that? No.

[...]

Which brings us to our second example: The massive, global Russian cyberattack on government agencies and corporations that began last spring but was uncovered and made public only over the past several days. What have we heard from Trump?

Moments like this, when national security is at risk because the computer networks we all rely on to communicate, transact and function have been penetrated and plundered, are when presidents prove their mettle. Presidents also have much more latitude to act independently and quickly when national security is at stake. But Trump has been AWOL, refusing to say anything about the cyberattacks apart from a pair of Saturday tweets defending Russia, blaming China and minimizing the severity of the hack.

Competence should be a basic requirement for the presidency, but Trump managed to hoodwink his supporters so effectively that they either still consider him competent or are indifferent. He has few concerns himself because he’s a man born into wealth and privilege who has never worked particularly hard or suffered the more brutal consequences of his own ineptitude and malfeasance. He remains in character, alas, right to the bitter end of his presidency.

The reasons for Ms. Vrablic’s abrupt resignation were not clear. Deutsche Bank in August opened an internal review into a 2013 real estate transaction between Ms. Vrablic and a company owned in part by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Mr. Trump and a client of Ms. Vrablic’s. Dominic Scalzi, a longtime colleague of Ms. Vrablic’s who played a role in that transaction, will also leave the bank.

Ms. Vrablic and Mr. Scalzi joined Deutsche Bank in 2006 from Bank of America. Ms. Vrablic quickly made a name for herself as one of her division’s leading rainmakers. In 2011, she landed a prominent new client: Mr. Trump, who for decades had been mostly off limits to the mainstream banking world because of his tendency to default on loans.

"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify," Trump wrote. "USA demands the truth!"

Trump's tweet was censored by Twitter. A label was attached which said it, "can't be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence."

What's the 25th Amendment? Plead insanity?

By the way, both Bill Kristol and Rachel Maddow demand another impeachment against Trump immediately. Who would ever have thought these two can agree?!

Trump is currently deplatformed from most social media.

If Trump tries to use a non-government account (say, if he created a new account), it would be permanently suspended “at first detection” according to Twitter.

Later on Friday evening, Trump tested that policy by tweeting the same messages from @TeamTrump, the Trump campaign’s official account. The messages remained active for a few minutes before the account was suspended.

Not in the EU though

Trump has been asking aides, friends and other associates whether they’d like a pardon. When one such person declined Trump’s offer for a pardon — explaining that they faced no charges, committed no crimes and therefore had no need for clemency — “Trump’s response was, ‘Yeah, well, but you never know. They’re going to come after us all. Maybe it’s not a bad idea. Just let me know,’ ” according to another senior administration official briefed on the conversation.