It’s already clear to me from watching Jonathan Turley defend the president against obstruction of justice charges that the criminal defense for Donald Trump is going to rely on the fact that a person who doesn’t know right from wrong doesn’t necessarily have criminal intent if they do wrong. Turley, for example, blandly explained that the way that Trump acted towards Mueller isn’t much different from how he acts against any number of officials who he fires or threatens to fire. He’s always pissed off. He wants to fire John Kelly and Don McGahn and Jeff Sessions, but he doesn’t. He’s always doing improper things that violate norms, so it’s not necessarily true that his intent is to intimidate career FBI officers into not testifying against him when he names them publicly and sends his goons after them.
If there is an impeachment trial, I expect that Turley will defend the president. He’ll be a lot more effective than Dershowitz would be, I think.
if there is an impeachment trial, I expect that its decision will depend much more on political circumstances than anything the lawyers say.
Dershowitz is so slimy that having him defend you is all the proof I need that you’re guilty.
I’ve always found it weird that Dershowitz has a reputation as a liberal. He was vocally pro-torture even pre 9/11, mostly in support of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. He was for Bush’s war in Iraq, and he has been war-mongering against Iran for decades. ANd
Does he have any actual liberal views?
How is that a defense when he tells other people to leave the room before asking Comey to “let it go” with Flynn? He knew what he was doing and that it was wrong.
I suppose it is better than Dershowitz’s “he can’t obstruct if obstructing involves firing people, and it can only be obstruction if he instructed people to commit crimes”. Has he explained if witness tampering is part of the preaident’s declared constitutional powers?
This is an argument for holding an impeachment trial in spite of the fact that the Republicans will keep him in office – if his defense is that he has no idea what he is doing that discredits everything he tries to do. If we Democrats manage to take the Senate, for example, it’s a free ticket to refuse any judicial nominees he makes.
I had presumed that if the Dems take the senate there would never be another Trump judge in any event! One wouldn’t need any kind of special “reason” to refuse.
No more democratically illegitimate judges.
Probably not anyway, but a good cover story is helpful politically.
The defense that the donald is too stupid to be held responsible for obstruction only works if there is no money from the Russians involved. The donald, his family, his campaign and the Russians seem to have been so desperate to launder millions of dollars.
Greed may force the donald from the WH.
I admit that I don’t even know enough about the laws in these investigations to ask smart questions. It all seems very undefined and muddled right now and I can’t keep things sorted out very well.
Here and there I’ve read analysis by actual judges who have said that there doesn’t seem to be viable proof of obstruction and Trump would likely not be charged. That sounds discouraging.
I have faith that Mueller is doing a good job and deflecting all the crap that Trump supporters are dumping on him and his investigation. I am glad there have been charges filed against participants so far. I don’t doubt that there has been Russian influence from the beginning.
I just fear that it will all come down to a tepid result with a few underlings getting a slap on the wrist. I wish I knew better!
That’s the standard for impeachment, as “defined” by the Constitution.
I think the bottom line has been correctly described as: impeachable (and, crucially, “convictable”) “high crimes and misdemeanors” are whatever 2/3 of Congress say they are.
Ah, so now the story is that the bestest, most incredible Stable Genius(tm) does not (and cannot be expected to) know or understand the concept behind obstruction of justice. This as Prez of the US! Well, the American boob of 2018 will believe anything, and bigly, I guess…
If Turley’s legal analysis is correct, then it means Der Trumper will have publicly admitted himself manifestly unfit for the office, and the only thing a serious nation and national legislature could do is remove him from power ASAP.
Trumper is not going to be charged with crimes. The goal of this national exercise has to be to attempt to inform the citizenry (those not assiduously willfully ignorant) of the facts–that we have a political criminal in the WH–and attempt to force his resignation, ala Nixon. This could occur with or without impeachment and trial. Mueller’s report obviously is going to provide an (imagined) Dem House with more than enough evidence to legitimately demand impeachment and trial. Without a Dem House, nothing is ever going to happen to Trumper. With a Dem House, something might happen.
Does a Prez Pence pardon Trumper as inevitably as Ford did Nixon?
. . . ignorant” = only 55-60ish% (give or take, depending on specific topic).
Wherein lies the crux of our current, likely fatal (whether “merely” civilizationally or indeed evolutionarily) crisis.
But how ironic that our globally dominant Taker* culture stands at the brink of rendering our species — the only species we know of with the capacity to make this analysis — an evolutionary dead end in the grand scheme of things.
*employing Daniel Quinn’s/Ishmael’s terminology from Quinn’s indispensable trilogy (Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael)
“If Turley’s legal analysis is correct, then it means Der Trumper will have publicly admitted himself manifestly unfit for the office, and the only thing a serious nation and national legislature could do is remove him from power ASAP.”
Would that it be true!!
Pence is already pretty unpopular outside of his Christian fundamentalist base and pardoning Der Trumper won’t make him any more popular. However even if the scenario you describe pans out (and this seems unlikely) this doesn’t help Der Trumper since, no longer being President, NY state will indict him on numerous counts of money laundering, wire fraud, tax evasion, etc., etc. The Orange Monster will soon after that be wearing an orange jumpsuit.
We`ve been down this road before, with Reagan. The idea (as first trumpeted by Michael Kinsley in The New Republic — I remember vividly) was that Reagan was either complicit in trading arms for hostages, in which case he was guilty of criminal actions, or he was unaware of what was going on in the White House in which case he, by definition, was so grossly negligent and incompetent that he was unfit to be President…and in either case he would have to be removed from office.
It didn’t work. It didn’t work because, yes, the equation is airtight, and the conditions were met (he didn’t seem to know, although unlike Clinton he wasn’t forced to testify, because it would have been too mean to do that to nice Mr. Reagan)…and, somehow, nobody cared. The world kept turning; Reagan wandered to Wrigley Field to call a ball game (in his final six months in office); Bush got elected via Willie Horton ads and Dukakis’ tone-deafness and then pardoned everyone, and that was that.
It may work this time, but I’m skeptical. The “let Reagan be Reagan” argument, tautological as it is, seems to apply to Trump even more tenaciously: whenever he fucks up, his supporters insist he’s such a diamond-in-the-rough that how dare you measure him by ordinary Washington standards; those are precisely the old, failed ways that Trump is heroically shunting aside. So even if you conclusively show him lying his ass off or understanding nothing, it’s still a narrative of superiority and success (as Michael Wolff depicted so well) where “competence” is an elite conspiracy to be overcome and beaten down.
. . . spot-on, imo:
But I have to ask: do you find it scary to be so in tune with what goes on in the “minds” of Trump supporters? (Meaning “in tune” in the sense of having your receiver exquisitely tuned to the frequency on which their “brains” transmit, not in the sense of agreement, of course.)
I admit it has occurred to me…but as a fiction author it’s part of the game. Critics have accused me of focusing overmuch on unlikable characters, and I plead guilty; I’m fascinated by the thought processes of people whose opinions and actions I hold in low regard — mostly because the line between virtue and vice can seem so trivial; it’s easy to trip over. (See the discussion recently on Rectification of Names about Arendt and The Banality of Evil.)
. . . to good use, then.
I simply don’t get Turley’s rationale. Why is he taking this position or is it simply his schtick to always take the opposite view of an issue/group which one would expect him to take?
During the GWB years he was all over the MSNBC shows and taking the anti GWB/GOP position, and now he’s firmly entrenched in the Trump camp. I genuinely would like to know what undergirds his belief system or is it just that he’s a contrarian above all else?
. . . an excellent question.
I think this tells us much more about Turley than about American criminal law—because if Turley is right, the law is an ass.
In a sane world, while the “he doesn’t know what he’s doing” defense might work in a criminal trial, it would be a disaster during impeachment because impeachment is a political thing, and the argument that the president doesn’t know right from wrong is in itself grounds for removal from office.
Unfortunately, in the corrupt oligopoly that we find ourselves in now, neither logic or decency will matter to enough Republicans to make a difference- they are pretty much all in, and will go down with the ship. They will not vote to impeach, let alone convict him in the Senate. One of the reasons that they will put party before country is that they know that “going down with the ship” means that they just end up as another fallen soldier at the service of of the right wing army and will be justly rewarded for their actions. For those who weren’t as successful in enriching themselves during their terms as Bob Corker, they will either end up on the dole with a cushy position within the vast wingnut welfare empire, or as a high priced lobbyist, capitalizing on their corrupt careers. The likelihood of them being ostracized, fined, imprisoned or facing any sort of negative repercussions for their enabling and participation in this criminal administration is low.
One of the things that Democrats really need to do, if they ever get power again and are serious about restoring our democracy, is to go after the billionaires who have funded and enabled these corrupt monsters.
“One of the things that Democrats really need to do, if they ever get power again and are serious about restoring our democracy, is to go after the billionaires who have funded and enabled these corrupt monsters. ” In the BiPartisan Tyranny, the difference between corporately funded and controlled parties is the colour of lipstick on the pig, The GOP are openly asshats while the Dems are apologetic about it….but that does not halt progress of the Agenda.
“One of the things that Democrats really need to do, if they ever get power again and are serious about restoring our democracy, is to go after the billionaires who have funded and enabled these corrupt monsters. ” In the BiPartisan Tyranny, the difference between corporately funded and controlled parties is the colour of lipstick on the pig, The GOP are openly asshats while the Dems are apologetic about it….but that does not halt progress of the Agenda.
Turley the Toady. He was on TV all during the Clinton-Lewinski affair, always looking like he was sucking on a lemon, always anti-Clinton.
I have always enjoyed Jeffrey Toobin’s work, be it on the 2000 election or the O.J. case. I think most lawyers probably enjoy him, because he’s very down to earth while usually being right. His bewilderment at Jay Sekulow’s tortured legal reasoning is a joy to behold, and he obviously finds Turley to be an ass.
I have no doubt how Turley will back Trump through all this (Turley thinks “Democrats! Eww!”). A total stroke.
. . . Cuz then your headline would make sense to me in the context of the content of your post.
If “we” was intended, though, I can’t make sense of it. Or were you maybe going for some clever twist whose turns I just can’t quite follow?
Unfortunately, sounds as if Turley is on solid legal ground when it concerns high level USG officials and former officials. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was quite clear that “knowledge and intent” were critical elements in his decision to pass on indicating Armitage and Rove and not to delve further into Cheney’s role. David Corn Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong
More recently, those were the two elements that figured prominently in Comey’s decision to close the Clinton email investigation without bringing any charges.
Seemingly all but forgotten by most except Corn and a few others:
Corn was not close to being cynical enough in 2007 – Oct. 2007 The Hill:
Mission Accomplished – GWB didn’t knowingly and with intent lie the country into a $4 trillion war. The beating of the Bush was a very bad president by Atrios and me notwithstanding.
This was actually a pretty good comment — one I’d consider uprating — right up until the last sentence, where you just couldn’t resist falling into your characteristic pose of know-it-all condescension (and, well, there was the garbled wording, too):
After several re-readings of that, my best guess is that you were going for:
or
or
(See, there are several ways to make it make sense in American English.)
Actually, upon further review, I have to take back “right up until the last sentence”, though. There was this earlier gem of condescension:
Translation: ” . . . most except Corn and a few others [i.e., including me . . . and excluding you!]”
You seem not to have noticed that a substantial proportion (not all, obviously!) of commenters populating this place are quite smart, very well-informed, rational, thoughtful, decent folks. Some more so than yourself on multiple topics — I guarantee it. Yet you persistently adopt this pose of condescension.
Then, when such folks are put off by this, you wonder and whine about (occasionally right ‘out loud’ in these very pages) why your ‘contributions’ aren’t better received. Go figure.
I took it that what she meant to write was “The beating of the Bush was a very bad precedent notwithstanding [the efforts of] Atrios and myself.
. . . Regardless (and even though your translation makes no more sense to me than the original), that we arrived at such different understandings supports my point, no? Whatever the intended meaning, it was not clear from how it was expressed. As I said, I had to re-read it multiple times to derive even a plausible-seeming interpretation of the intended meaning, but who knows if I’m right? That’s the (secondary) problem!
Well if we want to parse this. Marie links that fifty one percent in 2017approve of Bush. And so even though Bush lied about entering the war, it now appears his mission was accomplished,as more like him now than not. And so the last sentence is simply referring to the fact that Marie and Atrios failed despite beating up on Bush in the past. Could have been clearer. But there it is.
I mucked up that last sentence as I noticed the time and that I had to leave right then.
Should have read: …beating the GWB was a very bad President drum. Atrios is the only blogger I’ve seen that frequently hits this point.
“Seemingly all but forgotten by most except Corn and a few others” required no translation (and most definitely not from you). It’s a “if the shoe doesn’t fit” sort of comment and only spoke to the public-at-large and wasn’t directed at anyone here. And considering that half of Democrats today have a positive opinion of GWB, what are the odds that most Democrats can recall anything about the Plame affair?
It’s very impolite to spin something I (or anyone else for that matter) didn’t say and then use it to beat up on me. I don’t hide my political orientation or even my gender. That last on is very important to me because I’ve been fighting sex discrimination in school, the workplace, and in personal relationships my whole life and often enough that wasn’t easy or pleasant. Therefore, at this late stage in my life, I’m not about to wilt when attacked by blog bullies.
. . . Marie’s lexicon: “anyone who exposes what’s wrong with what I wrote and/or how I wrote it”
Yet you went ahead and hit “post comment” anyway. Bad choice. Also disrespectful and inconsiderate of any potential readers. (You’re not special in that regard, of course.)
Your fix isn’t, as it doesn’t fix the core problem:
Parsing the phrases as written (and thus as they actually read):
‘ . . . beating the GWB [subject clause: (gerund “beating”) object (“the GWB”)] . . . ‘
‘ . . . was [verb] . . . ‘
‘ . . . a very bad President drum.’ [predicate nominative, i.e., “renames”/defines the subject clause ‘beating the GWB’ — thereby demanding the question: WTF is a ‘President Drum’, never mind whether it’s a good, bad, or indifferent one?]
It’s . . . I dunno . . . funny? . . . ironic? . . . telling? . . . that I suggested three [count ’em, 3] different ways to make that comprehensible, and you eschewed all of them, leaving your revision still incoherent. The problem, of course, is that you provide your potential reader with no indication that you’re using the entire phrase ‘GWB was a very bad President’ as an adjective modifying ‘drum’. (At least, I’m still guessing that’s the meaning you were attempting, as I see no plausible, meaningful alternative. Interestingly, this is a bad habit you share with atrios! Hm.) I illustrated 3 ways (hyphenating or setting off with single or double quotes the entire adjectival phrase to indicate that it’s functioning as a single adjective) to fix that. You declined them all.
This is transparent bullshit:
” . . . most except Corn and a few others” literally, explicitly excludes . . . well . . . “most except Corn and a few others”, whether in “the public-at-large” or our little population here. If you want to plead that here, too, you failed at saying what you meant, that’d be one thing. But that is what you said. And it is decidedly not an ‘”if the shoe doesn’t fit” sort of comment”‘. It is an exclusive, elitist, “aren’t we special (and aren’t the rest of you not-special?)” sort of comment, which is perfectly consistent with the other condescending comment I highlighted above and with the rest of your frequently condescending “body of work” here (interesting that you ignored that core point in “responding”). So, contra your denial, my translation looks both needed and accurate. Whether you intend such comments that way or not, that’s how they read. Jus’ sayin’ (again!).
You could profit from these critiques to:
write more clearly to convey your intended meaning and/or persuade more effectively — presumably what motivates you to expend time and effort writing and posting stuff here;
be less off-putting/insulting (and thus more effective at informing/persuading — again, presumably, your motivation for writing here).
Alas, past experience suggests you won’t.
Agree
but that and the rest of that final graf are completely irrelevant non-sequiturs here. ‘Nuf said.
SNL still remembers and it doing its part to remind the public that GWB was very bad while much of the media has been foisting off GWB as good guy:
George W. Bush Returns Cold Open – SNL
. . . only you and atrios were on this . . . er . . . beat?
There you go again; only did not appear in the sentence I wrote that you are taking so much exception to. That’s the sleazy trick dishonest people engage in to smear anyone they’ve taken a dislike to.
Why would I add the SNL contribution to this effort of not revising the real history of GWB if I thought there were only two people doing it? I appreciate that Atrios isn’t letting this drop and currently is one of the few with a platform of any size doing it. That’s what it takes to prevent and/or push back on those that engage in whitewashing (“catapulting the propaganda”) really bad former public officials.
Another worthy effort – Jacob Remes via Eschaton – My hobby: very long political grudges. ANTI-DIVESTMENT – Fareed Zacharia ’86 … (click link to see the post)
As Atrios adds:
He does neglect to mention that not all of those on the wrong side of that debate were Republicans.
Pretty sure I’ve told you this before, but since you write as if that weren’t the case: I read pretty much everything atrios posts (and a fair amount of what he links).
I’ll try this again, on a different tack: I very much doubt that many (any?) among the audience you’ve chosen here at Booman Tribune need reminding that Bush and his admin were “really really bad” (atrios). (Personally, I try to work “war criminals/crimes” into most anything I write here about him/them.) Likewise, I’ve seen no slightest ripple, much less wave, of attempts to rehabilitate him/them from within the population here at the Trib. We’re just the sort of audience that SNL sketch resonates with, which is what makes it so hilarious (though in a still-infuriating sort of way). When you address us as though this were not the situation, it’s annoying.
We’ve already established that it’s garbled and incoherent, but the “only” is pretty clearly implied in there; at the very least, it’s an utterly reasonable inference, especially in light of the frequently condescending substance and tone of your overall opus here:
Notably, this one didn’t even get the “and a few others” hedge you included for “most except Corn”.
Scuse me, but as an attorney (immigration not criminal defense, however) this “defense” strikes me as utter bullshit. Nixon was facing the possibility that impeachment would include a count that he violated his oath of office to “support, defend and protect the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” (My emphasis).
This miserable fuck has done the exact opposite from the moment he took office. And if he is too stupid to understand what his basic responsibilities are, that’s no defense, not when he has advisers who do know. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, especially for the President of the United States.
As for Pence pardoning him, we do need a constitutional amendment preventing any vice-president from pardoning a President impeached and removed from office for crimes committed while in office. Even failing that, recall what happened to Ford after he pardoned Nixon.
I agree with Jordan above – it’s Reagan not Nixon that this situation more closely resembles – and Reagan got away with it.
Nixon would have skated on having had knowledge and intent wrt to the Watergate break-in. Even if they had access to his recording ordering his staff to break into the safe at Brookings.
As to the criminal activities of Nixon, he was never indicted and tried. Thanks to Ford’s full and complete pardon. So, that chapter is unwritten.
So the “magic bullet” that was going to defeat Republicans in 2018 and Trump’s re-election in 2020 is rapidly disappering?
I hope that Democrats in every county in the country are organizing the expansion of their base to overcome this media-generated normalization of Trump. The DCCC’s favorite consultants and media companies haven’t a clue how to overcome what they couldn’t overcome in 2016. Media in 2018 and 2020 is like saturation bombing in Vietnam–useless.
Yes.
And no. Don’t you remember the media nomalization of Nixon, then Ford, then Reagan, GHWB, and GWB? The Democratic could afford to be complacent in the first two instances because they held Congress, but the cost of that complacency was losing and passing down to the next generation the skills required to beat Republicans. The answer that most of that next generation of Democratic politicians came up with is that they were would be more like Republicans. A win here and there (most often when Republican screw-ups became too intolerable) convinced that generation that Truman’s maxim* —If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time — wasn’t true.
Remember when Bill Clinton and DP VIPs were furious that Gore adopted populist rhetoric in 2000?
Remember the dark days after the selection when liberal voices (I’m using liberal in the same way Truman did) were shut out by the media with Fox in the lead? All we had then was the potential of the internet and blogs. Barely a blip but a reason to be optimistic (sure beat the mimeograph machines some of us had back in a prior dark period). Co-option and corruption, along with far too much accommodation, precluded even getting near that potential. TPTB took over and lost to Donald freaking Trump along with losing hundreds (thousands?) of other political offices to Republicans.
From election night 1968 I recall saying in despair, “How will we ever survive four years of Nixon?” What a naive and optimistic young woman I was. Seeing Democrats roll over for Republicans again and again over the decades since has wiped away my naïveté and far too much of my optimism.
Daniel Ellsberg 1973
Those that weren’t around then, should that interview to better appreciate why some of us retched when we heard Clinton bragging about her great relationship with Kissinger.
A more general point from Ellsberg:
The kids aren’t going to save us now either.
*Truman’s 1952 speech and the citation in context is even more interesting:
Democrats, particularly Democratic politicians, have been moaning for decades that polls show that they win on issues but then lose in elections. Never seeming to get that they aren’t invested in the issues that win in polls.