"If we could have determined the president was NOT GUILTY we would have said so". What does that mean to you?

Mueller said he is guilty by implication. If he could not say the prez was NOT GUILTY unless you are a dodo brain you realize that means HE IS GUILTY. There is no middle here. Thank you for your reply Sharon and Happy Sunday! :)

Here is what I think and what I KNOW, Rosie.  

Depends on whether you are discussing judiciary proceedings or the moral order.

Legally, the opposite or guilty is of course, not guilty.

But morally, the opposite of guilty is innocent.

A legal verdict of not guilty does not imply innocence.

For example, as has been pointed out, Trump may not have legally raped (guilty) his accusers, but he is a rapist at heart (who uses the advantages of his position and money) to violate women and thus he is far from innocent.

Let's just take your last scintillating idea(s).  If we were on a site that favors longer responses where we could back and forth, I would answer all of it, because I like it so much.  

But this one got me going.   Your message is spot-on, but I have to interject because while it is necessary, it IS a digression to the point you are making which I totally agree with.  To be clear, I agree that the desire to do an evil speaks volumes about  character and not just what one almost did.    One can be a thief and not a murderer, but one cannot be a thief and be trusted on a public stage without evidence that the person has learned and changed.  

It is so DIFFICULT to even question the Mueller Report.  I mean WHAT OTHER EVIDENCE DO WE NEED than tapes of TRUMP blabbing and admitting EVERY FREAKING THING for the past 2 and a half years?  WHAT ELSE DO WE NEED???

THAT should have been Mueller's Report.  JUST LOOK, YOU MORONS.  LOOK AT HIM.  READ HIS FREAKING TWEETS.  LOOK AT THE TV. Look at FOX news EVERY DAY.  EVERY. DAY.

That would have been my report and it would have been one paragraph.



I am more apt to trust Obama than Trump.  With my pocketbook, my life, and keeping it safe.  I don't need a report. I need to just look and open my eyes.  I don't need no court of law.  He is not the president.  He was the result of an illegal election.  He keeps talking about how Hilary tried to hack the election.  That is his  TELL.  That is what cons refer to as his give-away.  He accuses what he committed.  He hacked the election.  Mueller made that abundantly clear.  I read that much.  I heard that much.  So, of course, Hilary did it.  He is going to jail, he knows it, so we have to chant lock her up.  He colluded with Russia.  PERIOD.  He is guilty of treason.   What word do we hear out of his lips all the time? TREASON.  

sigh.  


This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at June 30, 2019 12:12 PM MDT

I love your summary of the Mueller report.

 There are enough Dems in the HOUSE to bring impeachment charges NOW. But Nancy Pelosi knows that the Senate will never confirm. That is the holdup.  She doesn't want to start impeachment proceedings until she has enough Republican  Senators on board to pass it! The Senate is now crippled and useless. It is the son of a mitch mcconnell who has destroyed the ability of the Senate to ADVISE AND CONSENT. All he will allow is confirmation of extreme right-wing white populist judges. He has them on every bench he can possibly rig.. He will have none of it vis a vis impeaching. So we're studk. I think IMPEACHMENT inquiry should have begun IMMEDIATELY in January when the Dem majority in the House became  POWERFUL! They blinked. But the outrage among the other representatives is growing and I don't know how long Pelosi is going be able to keep her members on board with her view. Thank you for your thoughtful reply bw! :)

Thank you for setting me straight on the role of the Senate and Mitch McConnell.
I knew Nancy had a critical role in blocking but didn't understand how or why. Somehow those details had slipped past me.
I was perplexed when, after the mid-term elections when more Dems came into the House, impeachment didn't start as soon as it became clear that Trump had blocked the inquiries.
Now, thanks to you, I get it.

Trump only has a year before the next elections.
Could impeachment still occur in that time?
If impeachment was started, could that prevent him from standing for re-election?

Quick summary:

Only the House can impeach the president.  If the House impeaches, the Senate conducts the trial with the Chief Justice presiding.

But impeachment, should it happen, would only be the first step toward ousting Trump from office. To actually remove him, two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to convict him — meaning at least 20 Republican votes would be needed.

It’s quite difficult to impeach, convict, and remove a president from office, so much so that’s it’s never happened in US history. (Two presidents have been impeached but acquitted; another (Nixon) resigned to avoid near-certain impeachment.)

If a sitting president of the United States stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shot a random person in broad daylight, and was caught with a smoking gun, it’s probably a safe bet that Congress would set aside partisanship to vote to impeach him, convict him, and remove him from office. (Probably.)

But most political scandals are not that indisputable, damning, or well-documented. And on any matter where there is some sort of plausible deniability for the president, his political allies will have very strong incentive to give him the benefit of the doubt, even if it means twisting themselves into knots.

The big picture is that rather than being run by any courts, impeachment and any ensuing presidential trial are carried out by the House of Representatives and the Senate, which are partisan bodies. So while it looks and feels a whole lot like a legal or judicial process, in practice impeachment is dominated by politics from start to finish.

Impeachment can happen quickly; here's the timeline on Nixon:

July 27-30, 1974: House Judiciary Committee approves three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, misuse of powers and violation of his oath of office, and failure to comply with House subpoenas.

Aug. 9, 1974: Nixon resigns. (He was told by Senators that he had lost their support and would be convicted by the Senate and removed from office if he didn't resign.)

I do know for a fact that if Trump were impeached this week and convicted and removed from office next week, unless the Senate specifically provided after his conviction in that body that he not be allowed to run for president again in the future, he could still could run in 2020.

The House brings articles of impeachment but the Senate tries the case.  Just bringing impeachment proceedings doesn't mean removal from office - ala Bill Clinton.  In his case, he was brought up on impeachment charges but the Senate refused to convict him and he finished his term in office.  I suspect the same would happen with Trump.  

DOJ means Department of Justice---and yet you don't think the DOJ seeks justice?

• A fair justice system never requires proof of innocence. It is always the job of the prosecution to prove guilt. Why?  Because it is impossible to prove a negative.
  
  Mueller was witnessed telling Barr that the DOJ memo about not indicting a sitting President was not preventing him from making a determination on the obstruction case. 
  
  I look forward to seeing him testify this month. 

This post was edited by my2cents at June 30, 2019 11:51 AM MDT

Wrong.  The principle of assuming innocence is based on the fact that it is better to let 10 guilty defendants go free than to convict one innocent defendant.

He did make a determination on obstruction---that there was sufficient evidence to require further examination by Congress to see if they should act on it.

I look forward to Trump losing in 2020.

Really show me where in the Mueller Report he made such a determination. 

The burden of proof is always on the accuser because we have the assumption of innocence.... If there is no proof then we still have the presumption of innocence. That is the law. 

I guess we could have skipped the special council and just asked Trump whether he did anything wrong involving the Russians and saved us all a lot of angst.

Yes, I see what you mean.  Because that is EXACTLY what Trump thinks. He thinks he can just say things and we are all nodding like his bobble-headded base.  I think Putin was so powerful in his response to hacking that I just GOTTA believe him.  Same with that reporter killed by Khassoghi or however you spell Trump's other powerfully denying buddy.

Just be impassioned and powerful when you lie and that saves a lot of money. This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at June 30, 2019 11:38 AM MDT

I respectfully disagree with you regarding obstruction.  Mueller found at least 10 instances that, had Trump not been president, would have allowed those charges to be brought against Trump.  However, Mueller's position was that he believed that the Constitution prohibits indicting a sitting president, not a lack of evidence.  Trump is still in obstruction mode having issued orders to his staff and former staff to refuse to comply with legitimately issued subpoenas to appear and testify before Congressional committees.  For someone who so adamantly professes his innocence, you would think that he would be happy for anyone and everyone to go before Congress and prove him right - including himself.

If I need an attorney, I'm gonna hire you.  Because you are nice and present well and don't call people names and stuff.

I'm laughing so hard I'm crying.  Thank you for the kind words.  :)

You actually deserve every word.  

Thanks. :)