Trump is legally empowered to post every secret the US government has on Facebook. That's not a real justification for him doing so.

You're aware of US history, right? Do you recall the consequences of Special Counsel Jaworski and Independent Counsel Starr? The president isn't above the law.

Is he? I don't know.

Trump is allowed to fire Comey. Comey could be little better than your common shit, or the best bureaucrat this country has ever seen, Trump possesses the constitutional authority to fire him.

Why did Trump fire Comey? Irrelevant. I might like to know, you might like to know, but Mueller certainly has no right to decide if Trump's "decision making" constitutes obstruction of justice. Trump exercised powers legally entitled to him. Mueller does not possess those powers, and has absolutely no right to question him.

Again, just because a president is legally able to do something, doesn't mean it's justified, or above scrutinizing.

I don't think most legal scholars believe Trump firing Comey would get charged as obstruction itself... but it's another example of him trying to influence the Russia investigation.

DOJ officials have the right to investigate superiors. If they couldn't do that, the rule of law in this country wouldn't exist.

I fundamentally disagree.

If Trump shot someone on 5th avenue, he should go to jail.

If Trump fired Comey because Comey discovered Trump was the Devil himself, Trump is legally blameless. Voters might not want him for a second term, that's their prerogative, but trying to force him out is a thinly veiled coup.

there's a line between appropriate investigation of a narrow criminal act and abuse of investigative authority weaponized for political purposes
Comey's initial months of wiretapping figures in Trump's orbit might have danced around the edges of the line between the two, perhaps crossing the line, perhaps not. McCabe on the other hand jumped clear past it and went full blown Hoover

because if DoJ officials abuse their investigative powers, the rule of law in this country doesn't exist

The most you can say is that while Trump is in office he is legally blameless. Once he gets out of office either by impeachment or because a term ended he can be tried and convicted of crimes while in office. Even so, there's nothing that explicitly says the president can't have a criminal trial going on, even if the punishment on conviction isn't something that can be carried out until he is removed from office. It's not a simple legal question.

I understand the argument from some conservatives that the president is the head of the executive branch(and therefore, the chief law enforcement officer), and it should be congress that investigates him. But in practice, that would result in a bad outcome nearly every time. If you have the president's party controlling both houses, no investigation happens. Even if it does, Congress doesn't have the necessary powers to conduct a thorough investigation. You need an independent body that follows the rule of law, which is why the norm of presidents keeping a distance from DOJ is so important.

Who is trying to force him out? I think most lawyers acknowledge that the Comey firing by itself is not obstruction of justice. Even if Mueller thought it was, all he would do is send the information to Barr, and Barr would send it to Congress. Where is the thinly veiled coup?

I think history will look at the Mueller investigation as one of the best run and most successful... literally the opposite of Ken Starr. I know you Trump people can't see that now through the orange colored glasses... but it's remarkable how his team doesn't leak at all, and pretty much the only time he's said anything is to dispute a story saying Trump suborned perjury. Mueller has done his best to not be a political actor. He's also stayed focused on the core issue. If Trump and his team really didn't collude, I think in the end they'll be glad Mueller was in charge, because he's credible to everyone outside the right-wing nuttery class.

Now please reply with a wall of text I won't read.

This post was edited by IceMage on Mar 16 2019 06:19am

7:15-16:30

Interview with mccabe if anyone is interested

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/steele-admitted-in-court-he-used-unverified-website-to-support-the-trump-dossier

>When asked if he discovered “anything of relevance concerning Webzilla” during the verification process, Steele replied: “We did. It was an article I have got here which was posted on July 28, 2009, on something called CNN iReport.”

>"I do not have any particular knowledge of that," Steele said when asked what was his understanding of how the iReport website worked.

>When asked if he understood that content on the site was not generated by CNN reporters, he said, "I do not." He was then asked: “Do you understand that they have no connection to any CNN reporters?” Steele replied, “I do not.”

>He was pressed on this further: “Do you understand that CNN iReports are or were nothing more than any random individuals’ assertions on the Internet?” Steele replied: “No, I obviously presume that if it is on a CNN site that it may has some kind of CNN status. Albeit that it may be an independent person posting on the site."

>When asked about his methodology for searching for this information, Steele described it as “what we could call an open source search,” which he defined as “where you go into the Internet and you access material that is available on the Internet that is of relevance or reference to the issue at hand or the person under consideration.”

>Steele said his dossier contained "raw intelligence" that he admitted could contain untrue or even "deliberately false information."

So again more confirmation of what I've long suspected, that much of Steele's dossier was more or less assembled from trawling random fanfics on 4chan