Impeach

I just listened to a short podcast with one of my favorite lawyers, Ken White, and a couple of others, both of whom believe that impeachment is not a good idea.  Ken doesn't commit, but he's not asked.

I then went to Sarah Kendzior, who gets way out there on the other side, where she's been since before Trump was elected:



I agree with Sarah on this.   And, I want to know whatever happened to the counterintelligence investigation the FBI opened on Trump.  Is it still ongoing?  Did they make a finding?  What exactly did they uncover, if anything?  If there's still a counterintelligence investigation under way - and according to NBC News, there is, but "unclear" whether it involves Trump - the situation and the need for impeachment proceedings is even more urgent.  Not only is Trump unfit in the extreme for office, something completely borne out by the Mueller report, but he may be an agent for a foreign power, wittingly or unwittingly, or at the very least, compromised.

Counterintelligence is also an issue the House Intelligence Committee will explore, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., its chairman. The committee has requested an intelligence briefing on the Mueller investigation but has yet to receive a response, according to a congressional source.

"That's very important for our committee as well as the Financial Services Committee to make sure there's no financial leverage or other leverage that the Russians or the Gulf or anyone else have over the president of the United States," Schiff told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Thursday.

  NBC

The Mueller report isn’t actually close to a full account of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. That’s not just because of the redactions. When he was hired, Mr. Mueller inherited supervision of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation. That is the missing piece of the Mueller report.

[...]

The reason a counterintelligence investigation was opened on him was because he was more interested in shutting down an investigation of Russian interference in our election than in preventing them from doing it again. He was attempting to remove sanctions on Russia at a time when the Obama administration was implementing new sanctions. He was refusing to accept the assessments of the American intelligence community and giving more credence to the weak denials of the Russian government. He was setting up backchannels so he and his team could communicate with Russia without detection by our own counterintelligence teams. He was spouting the Kremlin line on Syria and Crimea and bad-mouthing NATO, the European Union, and the leaders of our closest allies.

[...]

Donald Trump would never get a security clearance because he’s a counterintelligence nightmare.

[...]

He has been vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians since the moment he signed a letter of intent to build a skyscraper in Moscow in October 2015, if not long before that. He spent the last days of his campaign paying off mistresses. He’s run a fraudulent “university” and a fraudulent charity, both of which have been shut down by the authorities. He’s possibly engaged in campaign finance violations, tax evasion, bank fraud, wire fraud, and insurance fraud. He’s famously vain and greedy, known for his legendary grudge holding, and exceptionally dishonest. He won’t reveal his tax returns probably both because he’s nowhere near as wealthy as he wants us to believe he is and because he cheats on his taxes. And he says things of a political nature that are hard to explain all the time, especially about Vladimir Putin and Russia. He’s engaged in highly suspicious financial transactions with Russians, like the 2008 sale of a tear-down mansion to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. He has a long history of doing business with both Sicilian and Russian mobsters.

[...]

He doesn’t necessarily have to be part of some adversary’s plan to deliberately “undermine our democracy and national security,” to be unacceptably vulnerable to such a plan.

  Washington Monthly

The stark reality is that one might have a moderate to high confidence that decisions are being made by an American president who, in the process of getting elected and after assuming office, has acted with the interests of an often-hostile foreign power influencing him.

And that conclusion is deeply worrisome as a national security matter.

A failure by political leaders to condemn the activities of a Trump campaign that openly welcomed Russian hacking and privately encouraged timely releases of damaging information about the campaign’s opponent would put our nation at further risk.

As president, Mr. Trump has taken a series of steps at home and abroad that advance Russian policy interests. At home, he has weakened American democracy, all but paralyzed our ability to act through legislation and vilified key institutions — particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community. Abroad, Mr. Trump has weakened NATO, given Russia an increasingly free hand in Syria, minimized sanctions against Russian actors, questioned America’s commitment to protecting Eastern Europe from Russian aggression and defended Mr. Putin on the world stage.

It’s hard to look toward the 2020 election with anything but concern — we have not come far enough to protect the democratic process from the threat of foreign election interference, and one reason may well be that the man in the Oval Office has been compromised and continues to be influenced, wittingly or otherwise, by a Kremlin eager to see the United States remain vulnerable.

  NYT

Why aren't more people talking about that when they talk about impeachment?

Also, why would Trump commit so many instances of attempting to stop the Russian "collusion" investigation if he knew there was nothing there?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.