is it impeachable to ask ukraine to investigate political adversaries?

[Pete F.]

Special counsel Robert Mueller's report made it clear that the Trump campaign was aware of Russian meddling in the election, encouraged it and hoped to benefit from it.
Trump sat on a dias with Putin and said he asked him if he interfered and Putin told him.
Yesterday we found out that trump, in the Oval Office, told several Russians after telling them he fired Comey, said he didn’t care if they interfered, since we do that also
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[spence]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's report made it clear that the Trump campaign was aware of Russian meddling in the election, encouraged it and hoped to benefit from it.
Trump sat on a dias with Putin and said he asked him if he interfered and Putin told him.
Yesterday we found out that trump, in the Oval Office, told several Russians after telling them he fired Comey, said he didn’t care if they interfered, since we do that also
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But her emails Pete.
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[Pete F.]

More Lindsey

If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.

“You know how you make America great again? Tell @realDonaldTrump to go to hell”

If there was ever any doubt that @realDonaldTrump should not be our commander in chief, this stupid statement should end all doubt.

Donald Trump gets his foreign policy from watching television - the Cartoon Network.
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[Pete F.]

I'd rather Bill Clinton lie about oral sex 1,000 times than Trump sell out America's national security for illegal election assistance even once, how about you?
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[scottw]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

I'd rather Bill Clinton lie about oral sex 1,000 times than Trump sell out America's national security for illegal election assistance even once, how about you?
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good job making s%$t up Peto

[scottw]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Trump sat on a dias with Putin

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this should be illegal

[Sea Dangles]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

I'd rather Bill Clinton lie about oral sex 1,000 times than Trump sell out America's national security for illegal election assistance even once, how about you?
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You have no morals and this is the cherry on top. Quite the lucky lady Mrs F must be.
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[spence]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

I'd rather Bill Clinton lie about oral sex 1,000 times than Trump sell out America's national security for illegal election assistance even once, how about you?
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Spot on. Now Russia is freaking out.
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[Pete F.]

Justin Amash
The White House itself released a memorandum of the telephone conversation, and the president has admitted to wrongdoing, even if he claims not to understand why it’s wrong. Nearly every Trump ally’s defense has been an effort to gaslight America.
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[Pete F.]

They’re prepping their chutes

“When Barr did learn of that call...he was ‘surprised and angry’ to discover he had been lumped in with Giuliani,” said “a person familiar with Barr’s thinking.” So an (authorized?) leak from Barr distancing himself from Trump’s call—and from Trump.
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[scottw]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

said “a person familiar with Barr’s thinking."

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that's a good one

why is that in quotes in that sentence?

[spence]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

They’re prepping their chutes

“When Barr did learn of that call...he was ‘surprised and angry’ to discover he had been lumped in with Giuliani,” said “a person familiar with Barr’s thinking.” So an (authorized?) leak from Barr distancing himself from Trump’s call—and from Trump.
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Barr could be prosecuting Rudy soon.
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[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Sea Dangles

You have no morals and this is the cherry on top. Quite the lucky lady Mrs F must be.
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Since you support a serial womanizer, admitted molester, accused rapist and philanderer, does Mr Dangles have an issue with your morals?
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[Pete F.]

Trump implied that the whistleblower committed treason.
This from the man who asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival.

His attacks on whistleblowers will likely increase the very thing that the whistleblower legislation was created to eliminate, leaking.

The ironic part is the man complaining about Fake news and leaking created his image thru an alias (John Baron) leaking fake info and puffery.
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[Pete F.]

In other Trump family news this weekend: Jared is giving Ivanka, Eric & Don Jr tips on visiting daddy in prison. No way Tiffany visits and Barron never knew him as dad.
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[scottw]

time for your medication Peto

[Pete F.]

Cabernet works fine, Trump ought to try it instead of Adderall

Something to sleep on

Three life lessons learned from Nancy Pelosi -

Choose your battles wisely -

Timing is everything -

Give the right person enough rope and they'll hang themself
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[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's report made it clear that the Trump campaign was aware of Russian meddling in the election, encouraged it and hoped to benefit from it.

Mueller's report made it clear that there was insufficient evidence to indict Trump. But you are crafting a string of words here that say there clearly was sufficient evidence. It seems no matter what the facts are, you strive mightily to make them what they are not.

Trump sat on a dias with Putin and said he asked him if he interfered and Putin told him.
Yesterday we found out that trump, in the Oval Office, told several Russians after telling them he fired Comey, said he didn’t care if they interfered, since we do that also
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You have no compunction in letting yourself twist and torture language to suit your arguments. But you give no quarter to Trump's often careless or sloppy diction. You insist that he means exactly what his words, if used precisely, are supposed to mean. So, if he says he doesn't care, it must show that he has no concern whatsoever.

Umm, no. Trumpspeak in this case means that he understands that they do, just as we do (and everybody else does). And that their interference was not especially effective. But that doesn't mean he has absolutely no concerns about it. He did take some steps to limit outside interference.

[Sea Dangles]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Cabernet works fine, Trump ought to try it instead of Adderall

Something to sleep on

Three life lessons learned from Nancy Pelosi -

Choose your battles wisely -

Timing is everything -

Give the right person enough rope and they'll hang themself
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You have done it enough to know but you still have a pulse. Trump has you dancing still despite tightening your noose. Good luck in your quest to expose. Timing is everything as you learned. I hope you apply this new science.
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[Pete F.]

Special counsel Robert Mueller's report made it clear that the Trump campaign was aware of Russian meddling in the election, encouraged it and hoped to benefit from it.

Originally Posted by detbuch

Mueller's report made it clear that there was insufficient evidence to indict Trump.

Mueller was prohibited by DOJ rules from indicting Trump.
He gathered evidence for Trump’s eventual indictments.
Trump’s obstruction was successful in preventing him from obtaining evidence from Ukraine.

Trump pursued the Trump Tower Moscow project throughout the election. He lied about it, saying he had no deals, no business in Russia.
Do you honestly think that he still isn’t trying to make a deal still?
Many people say he is

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[scottw]

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Peto continues to impress...

[Pete F.]

Many people say Trump is guilty of fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, insurance fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy against the United States, and sexual assault. He has attacked our allies and praised our enemies. Seven of his aides have been convicted of felonies. He has praised Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Roy Moore. Trump is a criminal president.
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[Pete F.]

Did Putin manipulateTrump into doing what he did on Ukraine?

Putin certainly benefited when Trump withheld $391 million in military aid to Ukraine. Did the KGB manipulate Trump into believing Ukraine, not Russia, hacked Democratic emails?
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[Sea Dangles]

Trump has 2020
Pete has nightmares
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[Got Stripers]

If Trump is such a lock, why is he extorting a foreign power to dig up dirt on his primary 2020 opponent? If he is such a lock, why is he looking back at Clinton emails in desperation? If he is such a lock why does he attempt to use fear to bolster support, the latest TV spot stating the dems are going to take basically everything away from you; I’m surprised he didn’t add your next born child. He isn’t confident and that’s why he is ok with putting our national security at risk and why he is ok using our tax dollars to open up old investigations and using fear sadly isn’t new for him it’s just his usual MO. You don’t threaten a whistle blower or other concerned individuals, even going so far as to wish the penalty could be they way spies in the old days were dealt with, unless you yourself are concerned about the truth coming out.
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[scottw]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Did Putin manipulateTrump into doing what he did on Ukraine?

Putin certainly benefited when Trump withheld $391 million in military aid to Ukraine. Did the KGB manipulate Trump into believing Ukraine, not Russia, hacked Democratic emails?
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I'm pretty sure trump is a KGB agent, it's where he and putin met...they were classmates

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by scottw

I'm pretty sure trump is a KGB agent, it's where he and putin met...they were classmates

Not quite, but you’re not that far off.

Trump’s first visit to Moscow was in 1987. The visit was arranged by KGB’s top arm, General Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov. In the mid eighties, the General realized the world was changing. Russia would be left far behind, if they couldn’t gather intelligence.
In January 1984, Kryuchkov discussed the problem at a review in Moscow, and then again, six months later, at a conference. The demand was crystal clear, the KGB needed to improve their agent recruitment. Once upon a time, Moscow recruited Western individuals who sympathized with Russian ideology. In the mid-eighties, such individuals were hard to find, if not nonexistent. During these conferences, Kryuchkov suggested using money and flattery to lure recruits.
Hmmm……can you think of any prominent Western figures who’d be lured by money and flattery?

Trump had been a target with the KGB for a long time. According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies had been secretly observing Donald Trump and his newlywed Ivana. At the time, Ivana Zelnickova was a 28 year old model from Czechoslovakia, a communist country.
According to the declassified files, the Czech spies would read the letters Ivana sent back home.
The fact that the KGB was interested in recruiting Donald Trump to be a spy is fact. Whether or not Trump replied favorably to their offers of cash and flattery is questionable, but once upon a time, Donald Trump was almost certainly recruited by the KGB.
To become a full KGB agent, a foreigner had to agree to two things. (An “agent” in a Russian or British context was a secret intelligence source.) One was “conspiratorial collaboration.” The other was willingness to take KGB instruction. — Politico

The bottom line is that Trump had been a recruitment target of the KGB for decades.
The recruitment process started when Trump was introduced to Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin in 1986.
Dubinin’s daughter said: “Trump melted at once. He is an emotional person, somewhat impulsive. He needs recognition. And, of course, when he gets it he likes it. My father’s visit worked on him [Trump] like honey to a bee.”
Six months later, Trump is at an Este Lauder luncheon, and just happens to find himself sitting next to Yuri Durbinin. It just seemed too weird that this ambassador, the one who wound up sending Trump to Moscow for the first time, was magically everywhere that Trump was.

Dubinin’s other daughter, Irina, said that her late father — he died in 2013 — was on a mission as ambassador. This was, she said, to make contact with America’s business elite. For sure, Gorbachev’s Politburo was interested in understanding capitalism. But Dubinin’s invitation to Trump to visit Moscow looks like a classic cultivation exercise, which would have had the KGB’s full support and approval. — Politico
According to The Art of the Deal, Trump toured “a half dozen potential sites for a hotel, including several near Red Square.” “I was impressed with the ambition of Soviet officials to make a deal,” he writes.
It seems that Russia kept flaunting the greatest pieces of real estate in front of Trump’s face. Thirty years ago, Trump was so close to making a deal, that still hasn’t occurred. Perhaps Russia was using these properties as bait, to lure Trump along.

Trump’s first visit to Moscow was relatively unproductive. Trump was shown all these beautiful and lucrative real estate properties. He stayed in a hotel room that Lenin stayed in, most likely it was bugged. And then he went home. But Trump did endure one significant change, when he came back from his first Russian trip. As soon as he got back to America, Trump began tossing around the idea of running for president.
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[scottw]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

John, I edited that to make it shorter

[scottw]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Not quite, but you’re not that far off.


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probably what happened was that trump was abducted when he visited russia and the russians replaced him with an imposter who is now doing the bidding of the russians or perhaps an alien race...run with that

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by scottw

probably what happened was that trump was abducted when he visited russia and the russians replaced him with an imposter who is now doing the bidding of the russians or perhaps an alien race...run with that

Not quite that complicated, they just waited till Trump went bankrupt and bailed him out.

President Donald Trump has attempted to distance himself from allegations of collusion by asserting that he has no business interests in Russia. That’s not for lack of trying: Trump’s efforts to establish a hotel in Moscow go back at least to 1987, when, according to his book The Art of the Deal, he discussed the possibility with the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin. But the questions regarding the Trump campaign’s collusion with the Russian government go beyond whether Trump has business dealings with Russia. It is just as important, if not more, to understand the many ways that Russia has business with Donald Trump.

That Kremlin-linked entities invested significantly in Trump’s properties over the years is not inherently nefarious. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, wealthy Russians have invested heavily in real estate in the West, while Americans were in turn encouraged to invest in Russia. However, in the context of a president under several investigations for his connections to the Kremlin, Russia’s outsize role in Trump’s reemergence from financial tribulations that nearly destroyed his real estate empire merit additional attention. What emerges is the story of a man indebted to Russia through the oligarchs that President Vladimir Putin helped create and now controls.

Upon taking office, Trump superficially distanced himself from the Trump Organization, ceding day-to-day control to his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. However, he still owns and profits from the company, which gives him an ongoing stake in maintaining the relationships that make his company profitable, and leaked internal emails suggest he retains more control over the Trump Organization’s operations than he publicly acknowledges. Moreover, the relationships and transactions described below occurred long before his political career, at a time when both internal and external sources have described him as exerting almost unilateral control over the organization.

Individually and collectively, these relationships form the underpinning of the Russia scandal. The Kremlin has a long history of using compromising information, or kompromat, to exert leverage over businesspeople and politicians, both in Russia and abroad. As a result, the question of whether Trump is financially compromised goes beyond the simple question of whether he or his company is directly in debt to Russian banks—something the president denies but has yet to demonstrate by releasing his tax returns. The president’s myriad financial entanglements with individuals from Russia and the former Soviet Union may provide Russia with such kompromat, especially given the substantial evidence that Trump and the Trump Organization have engaged in questionably legal practices, many of which are outlined below. (The Trump Organization has repeatedly denied, both in specific cases and in general, that it has acted illegally or unethically in its business practices.)

This does not intend to suggest that all of Trump’s clients and partners from Russia and the former Soviet Union are individually connected to the Kremlin, nor that each deal is individually corrupt or connected to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Instead, the goal is to highlight how dependent Trump’s company has been on Russian money, a fact he has repeatedly denied, and to explicate how those connections appear to have laid the foundation for what occurred in 2016. As such, this explainer explores the totality of those business dealings, ranging from projects whose financing comes from sources directly linked to the Kremlin to potentially corrupt dealings in Azerbaijan and Georgia to the allegations that some of Trump’s Russian and Soviet buyers and business partners have used his properties as vehicles for money laundering, all of which could have generated the type of compromising material the Russian government is known to exploit.
Trump almost certainly wouldn’t have survived the period without the financial support of his father, Fred Trump, who not only loaned his son millions of dollars to keep his struggling businesses afloat but also helped orchestrate massive, likely illegal tax fraud schemes to hide those transactions from authorities. Unfortunately for Trump, that safety net disappeared in the late 1990s, first when Trump and his siblings officially took over the family company in 1997 and later when his father died in 1999. But Trump’s financial struggles continued: his flagship companies declared bankruptcy in both 2004 and 2009, with Trump resigning from his position as head of the board of Trump Entertainment Resorts in 2009.

Compounding Trump’s financial problems was the Wall Street stigma his business failures attracted. The Guardian has reported that, in the 1990s, “Wall Street banks, which had previously extended him credit, turned off the tap.” According to The New York Times, bankers went so far as to coin the phrase “the Donald risk” to describe the widespread aversion to lending to Trump. In 2013, one banker told The Atlantic, “If a major institution in New York—whether it was a Chase or a Goldman or a law firm or something—wanted to have a building built . . . I can give you almost 100 percent assurance that Donald would not be on the list.”
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