and now it begins, BREAKING: Review Into Origins of the Russia Investigation Is Now A Criminal Inquiry

[Vlad the lad]

None of this will happen. Not a single incident you predict will occur. Yep, Barr will bloviate at the demand of Donnie-boy but that will be just about it. A conservative false equivalence no different than Biden on Ukraine, or Hillary's emails, benghazi, and all of the rest of them.

The impeachment of little Donnie-boy will continue. Bolton is in talks to testify and he is pissed. Fatman Barr can do whatever little Donnie-boy requires of him. Fortunately, at least the majority of the country is smart enough to see through the show. Unfortunately, there are still 30-something percent that still need there little Donnie-boy to be their big super hero. You guys would have fared better with Jerry Springer.

You do realize that impeachment has to start first, before it can continue

I can almost hear your screams of frustration all the way over here. Yep, the media has been lying to you and you fell for it. Impeachment still hasn’t started. And it will never start.

[JimZipCode]

This comment makes sense if you’re talking about the previous administration. They were the most corrupt in our history. They would do anything to push their agendas and keep themselves in power. The Constitution nor rule of law meant nothing to them.

I understand the wishful thinking here: but in fact the Trump administration is still in office. I'm sorry to say.

It will probably be years before all the shit comes out, so we can't say that it's proven that the Trump admin is more corrupt than anything we've seen since eg the Teapot Dome era. It hasn't been proven. But it's pretty obvious to anyone who's not polishing Sean Hannity's knob that the Trump administration is more corrupt, more utterly lawless, and more disregarding-of-the-Constitution than anything we've seen in the last ~40 years.

[JimZipCode]

And there is no legitimate impeachment inquiry either???

What on earth could this possibly be referring to?? Are you suggesting that the House has no authority to conduct an inquiry into whether or not impeachable offenses occurred?

[darb72]

I understand the wishful thinking here: but in fact the Trump administration is still in office. I'm sorry to say.

It will probably be years before all the shit comes out, so we can't say that it's proven that the Trump admin is more corrupt than anything we've seen since eg the Teapot Dome era. It hasn't been proven. But it's pretty obvious to anyone who's not polishing Sean Hannity's knob that the Trump administration is more corrupt, more utterly lawless, and more disregarding-of-the-Constitution than anything we've seen in the last ~40 years.

So you have no proof, yet continuing to insist that it's true... Meanwhile we've got ample evidence that the Obama administration was as corrupt as they get.

[JimZipCode]

Yep, the media has been lying to you and you fell for it.

Actually, judging from his post Cornelious doesn't watch Fox News, so probably not.

Impeachment still hasn’t started. And it will never start.

That's a confident prediction.

I suspect Nancy & co will vote yes on articles of impeachment before the end of – oh, let's say January? Honestly that's a pretty slow timeline; but the calendar is a confound. Public hearings will probably start sometime before Thxgiving. Under a normal timeline, maybe three to six wks of that before a House vote on impeachment? Something like that? But I'm not sure whether they want to vote on articles during the holidays (thxg to the NY). It could push into the NY.

[JimZipCode]

So you have no proof, yet continuing to insist that it's true...

Yeah, it's a weird spot. With the way the administration is stonewalling and telling people not to comply with subpoena's etc, the "proof" is not in yet. But the obvious self-dealing and attempts to sidestep law and procedure etc etc etc are SO damn blatant, I'm pretty confident with the assessment.

At a bare minimum, this administration fosters a "friendly environment" for corruption: more like a hothouse, really. It would practically take a miracle for corruption not to be rampant.

Meanwhile we've got ample evidence that the Obama administration was as corrupt as they get.

Shyah. Provably less corrupt than two of the previous three Repub regimes*: so clearly not "as corrupt as they get".




_______________________________________________
* Bush 1 didn't have two terms for things to come to full flower.
Also, honestly he was a professional. I didn't agree with him
politically; but he was able. No way the various shitshows
under Trump would have happened under him.

[steelerhater]

I understand the wishful thinking here: but in fact the Trump administration is still in office. I'm sorry to say.

It will probably be years before all the shit comes out, so we can't say that it's proven that the Trump admin is more corrupt than anything we've seen since eg the Teapot Dome era. It hasn't been proven. But it's pretty obvious to anyone who's not polishing Sean Hannity's knob that the Trump administration is more corrupt, more utterly lawless, and more disregarding-of-the-Constitution than anything we've seen in the last ~40 years.

Actually, it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has a bit of common sense that the Obama administration was just organized crime.

[JimZipCode]

Actually, it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has a bit of common sense that the Obama administration was just organized crime.

Such bullshit.


Hmm: but I guess I will agree with you that by contrast, the Trump administration looks like disorganized crime. These clowns generally seem like they couldn't organize a dog wash.

[JimZipCode]

This comment makes sense if you’re talking about the previous administration. They were the most corrupt in our history. They would do anything to push their agendas and keep themselves in power. The Constitution nor rule of law meant nothing to them.

we've got ample evidence that the Obama administration was as corrupt as they get.

Actually, it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has a bit of common sense that the Obama administration was just organized crime.

It's hard to know how to talk to you guys. Are you just morons, unacquianted with reality? Innocent victims, the inevitable result of pouring Alex Jones et al into your brain for too many years? Or maliciously active participants in the Republican disinformation machine?

Is it that you just haven't seen facts before, so you don't know what they look like? Or are facts completely wasted on you, because you'll wilfully plow over them & ignore them?



Givng you some benefit of the doubt as having a basic willingness to at least consider facts: this guy seems to have done a decent job of tallying things up, although it's no longer current:

Comparing Presidential Administrations by felony arrests and convictions (as of 9/17/2018)
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...s-of-9-17-2018

Trump complicates things
Under previous presidents, it was easy to focus on criminal activities of officials who were paid employees of the federal Executive Brach or paid by the president’s election campaign. (As far as I can tell, Nixon was the only previous president whose campaign staff faced felony indictments. Those individuals were included in my original report.) But under Trump, everything is complicated.
A lot of people involved the Trump Campaign worked for “free.” Not just his family, but others also Paul Manafort and others who hoped to used their role in the campaign to grift or get compensation from foreign nationals. I’ve certainly included them if they had an official campaign title or played a significant role in the campaign.

I appreciate his frank assessment of the methodology concerns, and all the footnotes. Given the "loose organization" of Trump's, uh, management style I can see how there would be questions about who to count and who not.

From the link:

Number of Individuals with Felonies by Presidential Administration (**as of 13 mos ago)

President	Years	#Indicted	#Convicted	#Imprisoned	#convicted-per-yr
Trump	<2*	7[35]	6[7]	5[7]	3.5[4.1]
Obama	8	0	0	0	0
Dubya	8	16	9	9	1.1
Bubba	8	3	2	2	0.25
HW	4	1	1	1	0.25
Ronnie	8	26	16	8	2
Carter	4	1	0	0	0
Ford	2.4	1	1	1	0.4
Nixon	5.6	76	55	15	9.8

*Since this is from over a year ago, Trump had been in office less than two years.

The brackets represent if you include foreign nationals. The writer wasn't sure whether to include them in the regular total, or treat them as a separate group.


That convictions-per-year column at the far right is interesting. If we re-sort by that (using Trump's lower number):

President	#convicted-per-yr
Nixon	9.8
Trump	3.5
Ronnie	2
Dubya	1.1
Ford	0.4
HW	0.25
Bubba	0.25
Carter	0
Obama	0

"As corrupt as they get."

---

For those who don't bother reading the link, the writer notes a couple items, including about Dems. If Clinton's impeachment is treated as an indictment by the House, then his indictment number goes up one.

Petraeus doesn't break up Obama's string of zeroes here because the list only includes felonies. Petraeus was never indicted, and pled guilty to a misdemeanor. He absolutely could have been indicted

(See for example here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...902_story.html )

so if you want to break up Obama's no-hitter, by all means put a 1 in the indictment column.

[Cornelious]

Obama was guilty of Presidenting while black. For many, there is no greater corruption even if your personal lawyer(s) is/are in jail, national security advisor(s) is/are in jail, campaign manager is in jail and you are certain to be impeached in the house.

Of course presidenting while being a woman just might be worse but Trump Nation avoiding that triggering calamity... at least this last time around. Never forget that Obama wore a tan suit and Hillary had her own gmail account!

[blah3]

What on earth could this possibly be referring to?? Are you suggesting that the House has no authority to conduct an inquiry into whether or not impeachable offenses occurred?

Have the authority, yes. Have they done it, no. There’s been no vote to do so. So they don’t have subpoena power. So no matter how often you hear the trump administration is ignoring subpoenas it’s not. They are ignoring requests to thrilled behind closed doors, with only Democrat’s present, and have their testimony lied about or taken completely without context. Oh and with no legal representation. I mean how dare they ignore a banana republic investigation??????

[JimZipCode]

Have the authority, yes. Have they done it, no. There’s been no vote to do so. So they don’t have subpoena power.

Yeah, that's bullshit. There has never been any such procedural requirement. Nothing in the House rules and nothing in the Constitution.

The full House did vote to authorize impeachment inquiries in the cases of Nixon & Clinton. They did not in the case of Andrew Johnson, I don't think (check me there).

So no matter how often you hear the trump administration is ignoring subpoenas it’s not.

It is doing precisely that.

No I'm sorry, that's imprecise. Instructing people not to comply with a subpoena is not "ignoring" it: they're certainly acknowledging the existence of those subpeonas, and responding to them. Just not cooperating with them. But "stonewalling" is not "Ignoring".

Current House rules give the committees subpoena power and other investigatory tools:

116TH CONGRESS REGULATIONS FOR USE OF DEPOSITION AUTHORITY; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 16
(House of Representatives - January 25, 2019)
https://www.congress.gov/congression...rticle/H1216-2

The Trump administration is instructing people not to comply with normal legal Congresisonal subpeonas.

They are ignoring requests to thrilled behind closed doors, with only Democrat’s present

More lies. The full memberships of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight Committees are permitted to attend the closed hearings. That includes the 47 Republican members of those committees; also the two leaders (Majority & Minority) can attend at any time.

In fact, *13* of the lying hypocrite Republicans who staged their walk-in to sessions were members of the three committees and already entitled to attend:

Mo Brooks (R-AL)
Ken Buck (R-CO)
Mark Green (R-TN)
Jody Hice (R-GA)
Jim Jordan (R-OH)
Mark Meadows (R-NC)
Carol Miller (R-WV)
Ralph Norman (R-SC)
Scott Perry (R-PA)
Mark Walker (R-NC)
Steve Watkins (R-KS)
Ron Wright (R-TX)
Lee Zeldin (R-NY)

Some Repub committee members (Steve King R-IA, Duncan Hunter R-CA) have been disallowed because they're under indictment – stripped of their membership on those committees, if I'm not mistaken. But otherwise the full complement of Repub committee members is present (if they show up).

Oct. 16, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/power...732_story.html

Each side gets an equal amount of questions, as dictated by long-standing House rules guiding these interviews.

“It starts one hour, one hour,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), explaining how the questioning moves beyond one-hour blocks for each side. “Then it goes 45, 45, 45, 45, with breaks, occasionally, and breaks for lunch.”

Meadows, one of Trump’s staunchest allies, said each side has been allowed an unlimited amount of questions they can ask of witnesses.

“Oh yeah. Of the witnesses? We have, yeah. You just keep going until you wear out,” Meadows, who has attended all but one session, said during a break Tuesday evening.

More than three weeks since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) launched the impeachment inquiry, Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have spent most of their political capital attacking the credibility of the process Democrats are using — at the same time GOP lawmakers are fully participating in the probe.
...
The gatherings do not take place in the secure hearing room that is normally used to hear classified briefings. Rather, they gather in a conference room with a large table that looks like any random corporate setting. A couple microphones are on the table, and if the committee leaders give opening statements, they tend to be brief and perfunctory.

Then the depositions begin, some going a few hours and others reaching beyond 10 hours. There is no five-minute rule, the way each member is restricted to just five minutes at a public hearing, so the topic areas get much deeper coverage and the political hyperbole is minimal.
...
Witnesses are only allowed to bring personal attorneys, prohibited by rules from having government lawyers accompany them. And lawmakers not on the committees conducting the deposition are expressly forbidden from attending the meetings
...
“Probably the biggest complaint I have is selective leaks by our Democratic colleagues,” Meadows said.

Mark Meadows, quoted above describing in detail how the closed hearings have been conducted, is one of the lying hypocrite Repubs who staged the walk-in at the SCIF.

Oh and with no legal representation.

More lies. White House lawyers are not permitted to attend. But rule #3 from the Congressional Record linked above says:

3. Witnesses may be accompanied at a deposition by
personal, nongovernmental counsel to advise them of their
rights. Only members, committee staff designated by the chair
or ranking minority member, an official reporter, the
witness, and the witness's counsel are permitted to attend.
Observers or counsel for other persons, including counsel for
government agencies, may not attend.

I don't know which witnesses are or are not bringing attorneys. But they're all entitled.

I mean how dare they ignore a banana republic investigation??????

Doing a quick cursory check of the allegations of "fact" you made in your post, it seems like you literally got every single one of them wrong. Let me guess: you watch Fox News?