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On June 09 2017 01:12 xDaunt wrote:Here's the moneyshot on the "I hope" nonsense in case anyone missed it: Show nested quote +
Risch: "Boy you nailed this down on page 5 paragraph 3, you put this in quotes, words matter, you wrote down the words so we could all have the words in front of us now. There are 28 words there that are in quotes and it says, 'I hope', this is the President speaking, 'I hope you can see your way claer to letting this go, to letting Flynn go...I hope you can let this go.'"
"Now those are his exact words, is that correct"
Comey: "Correct."
Risch: "And you wrote them here and you put them in quotes?"
Comey: "Correct."
Risch: "Thank you for that. He did not direct you to let it go."
Comey: "Not in his words, no."
Risch: "He did not order you to let it go."
Comey: "Again, those words are not an order."
Risch: "He said 'I hope'. Now, like me you probably did 100's of cases, maybe 1,000s of cases charging people with criminal offenses. And, of course, you have knowlege of the 1,000s of cases out there where people have been charged. Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice, for that matter of any other criminal offense, where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?"
Comey: "I don't know well enough to answer. And the reason I keep saying 'his words' is I took it as a direction..."
Risch: "You may have taken it as a direction but that is not what he said. He said, 'I hope.' You don't know of anyone who has ever been charged for hoping something, is that a fair statement?"
Comey: "I don't as I sit here."
I don't get it. How does that say anything other than that Comey hasn't studied the case law about precedents for whether "I hope" can be considered an order or not. He said he interpreted it as a direction (which he ignored). Everything after that is just waffle. It literally doesn't matter at all whether Comey knows about some case where someone was prosecuted for obstruction of justice based on that formulation. It matters whether a prosecutor thinks there is enough there to build a case on, and then it's up to a judge and jury to decide whether obstruction of justice really did take place. Or more accurately right now, it would be up to congress to decide whether Trump is impeachable over it.
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If nothing else, there's no sign whatsoever that Republicans will contest the truth of these memos. We'll see if Trump thinks the same.
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On June 09 2017 01:17 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Countdown to resignation or firing in 10...9...
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On June 09 2017 01:15 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2017 01:08 xDaunt wrote:On June 09 2017 01:04 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 09 2017 00:59 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Trump is so fucked if there are tapes. Considering from a legal perspective Comey's memos are functionally tapes, Trump's fucked if he wants to dispute events unless there ARE tapes and they show Comey was a liar. It's hard to say pit Trump's word against Comey's when the very first thing Trump did was lie about what the FBI thought of Comey. A couple things here. First, the memos aren't as good as tapes. These are Comey's recollections. Second, the memos are not going to be helpful to Comey because he is going to be limited by what's in them. Let's just presume that Comey isn't an idiot and his opening remarks are entirely consistent with his memos factually (if they're not, then Comey is a liar, and Trump wins anyway). If that's the case, then Trump doesn't have anything to worry about because all that's in the memos isn't going to be enough to show obstruction of justice. The taken-immediately-afterwards memorandums and recollections of an FBI agent are about as good as you can get, bar actual tapes. If Trump wants to contest the contents of any of the memos, he needs tapes. Period. The memos are designed to show intent for Trump to obstruct by firing, not necessarily by what Trump did in the memos themselves. This is why Republicans aren't touching on the firing at all, because it's a hot garbage fire. If Trump could refute the memos and spin his outrageous "my statements should be taken literally" about everything he said after the fact, it would be harder to show any intent to obstruct the Russia investigation.
Actually, the memos don't really show that intent. That's the problem with them. You have to read in between all sorts of lines to gather that intent. Trump's action as set forth in those memos is inconsistent with interfering with the investigation. Yes, he wanted the investigation to stop, but at no point did he do anything to impede it. This leaves the door open to more plausible explanations for Comey's firing (like the one that I laid out yesterday) and gives Trump carte blanche to shape his own narrative. In short, Democrats need something else. I'm not saying that it's not out there, but they aren't there yet.
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Canada13410 Posts
WHY ARE WE ON EMAILS AGAIN WHY
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This Nixon administration speed run is lit as fuck.
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On June 09 2017 01:21 ZeromuS wrote:
WHY ARE WE ON EMAILS AGAIN WHY
It's an important point of discussion. Just because you don't want to hear the truth that Lynch's justice department was impartial, and then lead to comey doing the press conference which then lead to the letter pre election week, which then impacted where we are now in a significant way, doesn't mean its not worth bringing it up. Comey has a chance to shed light into their bs meeting on the tarmac. Stop selectively choosing which of these partisan hacks to focus on, let's find out about all of them.
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There's a lot of focus on "honestly loyal." I wonder what is up with that?
James Cormey just said he beleives he was fired because of the investigation. We already know that seeing as Trump said it though.
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On June 09 2017 01:21 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2017 01:15 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 09 2017 01:08 xDaunt wrote:On June 09 2017 01:04 TheTenthDoc wrote:On June 09 2017 00:59 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Trump is so fucked if there are tapes. Considering from a legal perspective Comey's memos are functionally tapes, Trump's fucked if he wants to dispute events unless there ARE tapes and they show Comey was a liar. It's hard to say pit Trump's word against Comey's when the very first thing Trump did was lie about what the FBI thought of Comey. A couple things here. First, the memos aren't as good as tapes. These are Comey's recollections. Second, the memos are not going to be helpful to Comey because he is going to be limited by what's in them. Let's just presume that Comey isn't an idiot and his opening remarks are entirely consistent with his memos factually (if they're not, then Comey is a liar, and Trump wins anyway). If that's the case, then Trump doesn't have anything to worry about because all that's in the memos isn't going to be enough to show obstruction of justice. The taken-immediately-afterwards memorandums and recollections of an FBI agent are about as good as you can get, bar actual tapes. If Trump wants to contest the contents of any of the memos, he needs tapes. Period. The memos are designed to show intent for Trump to obstruct by firing, not necessarily by what Trump did in the memos themselves. This is why Republicans aren't touching on the firing at all, because it's a hot garbage fire. If Trump could refute the memos and spin his outrageous "my statements should be taken literally" about everything he said after the fact, it would be harder to show any intent to obstruct the Russia investigation. Actually, the memos don't really show that intent. That's the problem with them. You have to read in between all sorts of lines to gather that intent. Trump's action as set forth in those memos is inconsistent with interfering with the investigation. Yes, he wanted the investigation to stop, but at no point did he do anything to impede it. This leaves the door open to more plausible explanations for Comey's firing (like the one that I laid out yesterday) and gives Trump carte blanche to shape his own narrative. In short, Democrats need something else. I'm not saying that it's not out there, but they aren't there yet.
The memos clearly show Trump wanted the investigation to stop sooner rather than later. And then fired Comey. There's no space "I wanted the investigation to conclude naturally" if you take them as fact.
100% confirming Trump explicitly told Comey he wanted the investigation over with is a big deal for building a link of "Trump unhappy investigation isn't over-> fire Comey." Without the former, we just have a firing and then potentially Trump being (incorrectly) happy the investigation was going to be over sooner.
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On June 09 2017 01:26 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There's a lot of focus on "honestly loyal." I wonder what is up with that?
James Cormey just said he beleives he was fired because of the investigation. We already know that seeing as Trump said it though.
it was his response to trumps repeated requests for loyalty. it's a fairly important conversation in the way of proving trump fired comey because he wouldn't be his puppet.
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Well there it is. "I was fired because of the way I was conducting the Russia investigation." Trump now has to dispute or else it is obstruction. If you choose to defend this, you are defending wanton abuse of power and you don't give a crap about the rule of law.
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The weird thing about the GOP's line of defense here seems to be that the two statements:
1. Trump saying "I hope"
2. Trump saying he fired Comey because of Russia investigations
Require different criteria for interpreting Trump's words to get Trump out of the situation. In one case you have to take the words quite literally (I hope) and in the other you need to hand wave the words as being less literal.
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And the obvious rebuttal is "where is the gun?"
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'I was fired, to change the way the Russian investigation was conducted.'
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EPT
