Quote:
Originally Posted by scottw
Constitution for dummies...
The main role of the executive branch is to enforce the nation's laws. It also leads the country's relations with foreign nations, commands the armed forces, and even participates in the lawmaking process. The Constitution makes the president of the United States the head of the executive branch.
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Yes, and relations with foreign nations includes various treaties. For instance, as a matter of fact, not of conjecture, the U.S. has a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Ukraine, as well as with many other countries.
This synopsis from Wikipedia: "Modern states have developed mechanisms for requesting and obtaining evidence for criminal investigations and prosecutions. When evidence or other forms of legal assistance, such as witness statements or the service of documents, are needed from a foreign sovereign, states may attempt to cooperate informally through their respective police agencies or, alternatively, resort to what is typically referred to as requests for “mutual legal assistance." The practice of mutual legal assistance developed from the comity-based system of letters rogatory, though
it is now far more common for states to make mutual legal assistance requests directly to the designated Central Authority within each state. In contemporary practice, such requests may still be made on the basis of reciprocity but may also be made pursuant to bilateral and multilateral treaties that obligate countries to provide assistance.
This assistance may take the form of examining and identifying people, places and things, custodial transfers, and providing assistance with the immobilization of the instruments of criminal activity."
As a matter of fact, not conjecture, we have ongoing DOJ criminal investigations on the matters of the Russian collusion fiasco. Ukraine may have pertinent information that would help clarify and inform those investigations.
Trump's asking for mutual aid in those investigations is not illegal, not unconstitutional, not a high crime or misdemeanor. His phone call to the Ukraine head of state did not become improper or illegal when he made the request for assistance. And the Biden bit FOLLOWED the general request as an also, because he interfered with the Ukraine legal process not by seeking investigatory evidence, but by shutting it down through coercion against the will of the Ukraine head of state. As well, his son was being investigated in the process that Biden coerced the Ukraine to quit.