Quote (IceMage @ Mar 16 2019 07:09am)

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?

Quote (Saucisson6000 @ Mar 16 2019 10:06am)

Astounding to hear trump saying;

'there should be no Mueller report'

a day after House unanimously votes to make it public

Quote (bogie160 @ Mar 16 2019 11:44am)

You don't trust the duly elected president, and you don't trust a duly elected Congress, but you trust unelected bureaucrats?

That's not quite the argument, though. The argument is that the President cannot be investigated for exercising his constitutional powers. He is subject to congressional oversight and to the voters, not his subordinates.

Quote (bogie160 @ Mar 15 2019 08:33pm)

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.

Quote (Ghot @ 18 Mar 2019 18:42)

Quote

When I read the complaint against Manafort, I was struck not only by the overlap but the overkill. I had never seen the Manhattan district attorney bring such a case, but I could be mistaken. After all, Vance proclaimed he had a sacred duty to protect the “integrity of our residential mortgage market.” That was news in itself. The core allegation was that Manafort lied about a condo being used as a home by his family, as opposed to a rental property. If that type of misrepresentation were truly prosecuted with vigor, New York would be a ghost town. In the land of rent controlled apartments, fraudulent practices are the norm. Indeed, Aaron Carr of the Housing Rights Initiative, a nonprofit housing watchdog group, declared recently that in New York “rent fraud is like finding rain in a rain storm.”

Given the absence of past serious criminal prosecutions, I reached out to the office of Vance with a simple request: Could he show me other cases like this where he prosecuted people like Manafort to uphold the integrity of the residential mortgage market? After repeated attempts, the office declined to respond. I then searched New York cases on Lexis Nexis, which contains all published opinions, and found only a handful of opinions on mortgage fraud in New York and nothing on point from Vance. While there are just the published opinions, there is no evidence of his focus on misrepresentation of rental properties before the Trump era.

Quote (Goomshill @ Mar 19 2019 04:33pm)

Quote (IceMage @ Mar 19 2019 05:29pm)

This is worth reading. I was ready to open it up, see a Trump hack, and close it, but Turley is legit.

He makes a bunch of great points. I think this sort of shows you how a president's willingness to violate norms and be shielded from political fallout creates an incentive for others to violate norms as well.