Although the Repubs will probably have little trouble in ignoring them?

until trump is an outright anchor to oblivion for conservatives, they won't turn. As it stands, that may happen sooner than later. Especially with outcome of tuesdays special election in Georgia

You need enough evidence to sustain a charge, then the trier of fact decides if there is enough evidence to convict. Talking heads have no say in the matter.

He is slick enough to know that he had the authority to fire Comey if he wasn't "under investigation".

Now that he is supposedly under investigation, he no longer has that authority to fire the person that is investigating him.

That is the difference between Comey and Mueller.

The FBI is not in the habit of disclosing evidence to anyone, much less talking heads.

Who are we supposed to believe? Donald Trump or our own lying eyes?

with any russian during campaign (pretending now she did the same shit trump and team did) would be enough for Gowdy or Chaffetz to start an investigation and within days, impeachment.

she would have been impeached before the end of January.

This is madness, we must stop pretending the GOP cares AT ALL about democracy, the constitution, the rule of law, they DONT.

We have observations and assumed causes, but the connections are weak, at best.

Just read a thing about Parscale. The entire article's gist seems to be simple. Parscale, working for the Trump campaign, worked to push negative information about HRC and positive information about DT. The Russians had bots that pushed negative information about HRC. Coincidence? Of course not. How could the Russians have know what to program their bots with, if it's just a coincidence?

And there's the sum total of the causal connection, of the evidence. It's an argument silence: The Russians must remain ignorant of US politics, even on a state-by-state basis, unless a Trump campaign organizer colludes with them.

Sorry, at one time I knew a lot about Russian politics, and not just national-level crap. Depending on what my narrow interest was at the time, it might be down in the Caucasus, or out in the Far East, or someplace else. Coming up to speed on Ukrainian politics also wasn't tough, whether in Kyiv or Odessa or Mariupol. I find lack of imagination a really inconvincing argument.


Most of the evidence is just two people with common connections being in the same room at the same time, plus the assumption on the part of the argument-maker as to what the discussion that must certainly have taken place must have been about. Why was it about that? What else could it be about? It's one thing to speculate on a board like this; it's another to try to make a case in a court of law, or at least it should be.

Only a fraction of the evidence uncovered in the ongoing investigation has been leaked. I suspect that once things are revealed in full, it will be quite apparent what King tRump was up to. He is used to bullying and buying his way out of his crimes and misdeeds. As the saying goes....money talks. Now he is in a whole other universe....one that has many rules and regulations/laws. Since tRump doesn't believe he is required to follow the law, he has continued to behave like he did in the past. He has run up again a huge wall of resistance that is not allowing him to go on with his nefarious deeds. Or at least has slowed him down. And frustrated him no end.

I am itching for this boil on our governing body to come to a head. I want to watch this con man have to face trial for what he has done to our country and to its citizens. I want to watch in living color just as I watched in cold black and white when Nixon faced the same scrutiny with Watergate. Who knew in 1974 that I'd live long enough to see another assault on our Presidency and the remedy applied as written into our Constitution so long ago? Ain't life a grand mystery!?

What stands out in my memory was Nixon boarding Air Force One for the last time, still flashing the victory sign. The relief in my family and friends was so tangible you could almost pick it up and hold it in your hands. It is going to take a while, but I am certain he will go down, with evidence so overwhelming, that the talking heads will fall all over themselves to call for his removal. I long to see him out of the presidency, and in a state court of law where he cannot be pardoned by his replacement.

It will take a while like Nixon's disgrace, but it will happen. We will keep resisting on resisting until then.

They're talking to people who are stupid enough to believe and want to believe there's no evidence.

the standard of proof for conviction in a criminal trial, which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Impeachment is essentially a political act, and it does not require that level of proof - only that which the House thinks warrants bringing the charge in the first place, and the Senate thinks is sufficient that the president should be removed from office for having committed "high crimes and misdemeanors." It's all so political that not too long ago the House thought lying about a blow job was such a crime; fortunately the Senate thought that was stupid.

The fact that Trump is being investigated for obstruction of justice by the Senate committee and by the special prosecutor indicates that both groups think there could be a case but it wouldn't be the same case. Mueller's group is looking for actual crimes; the Senate is not (it is looking at the obstruction issue as part of the larger Russia investigation) because the Senate does not have the power to prosecute. The two groups are working together to develop and analyze evidence but their goals are not necessarily identical.

There is *evidence* of obstruction of justice or these investigators wouldn't be looking into the firing of Comey at all. What happens next is up to them to decide whether they have *proof,* but what the standard of proof is will depend on who's acting on the evidence, since (1) evidence and proof are two entirely different things, and (2) they two groups have different purposes. It's not up to the media or anyone else to say whether there is or isn't enough evidence to convict (Mueller decides that) or to impeach (the House decides that) or to remove from office (the Senate decides that).

The only person in the world at this point who matters is Robert Mueller.

If he sees evidence of obstruction of justice, then he will pursue it. Then, and only then, will we know what evidence exists (beyond what has been reported and what we've seen with our own two eyes).

I think we ascribe too much importance to what the media is reporting amidst on ongoing investigation. Even Trump relies on it...to his major detriment. Yes, a groundswell of public support would push the Republicans to impeach, perhaps, but that impetus won't be coming from media reports.

It'll come directly from the proof proffered by Mr. Mueller.

mountains, thousands of pages, thousands of eye witness accounts, endless testimony

as opposed if this was Hillary, the House would require one person saying they saw her with a russian, ever.

The collective knowledge at Democratic Underground exceeds that of the so called..."talking heads"

Yes, some of them on TV are experts, but then some of us are experts. And many of us have been watching this political stuff as long if not longer than the so called, "talking heads" Forget them, consider the heads that are at
Democratic Underground....OUR HEADS ARE BETTER THAN THEIRS.....

Also, some of the "talking heads" are in fact very knowledgeable - some of them include former FBI agents, federal prosecutors and people who were involved in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations. MSNBC and CNN regularly call on Malcolm Nance, John Dean, Cliff Watts and others who really do know their stuff. Some of the regular anchors are just bloviating to fill air time (Wolf Blitzer, I'm talking to you), but I pay attention to people like Ari Melber and Rachel Maddow who dig down and check their facts.

Nobody knows yet how this is all going to shake down.

Continually gathering evidence and expanding investigation is significant . All else is speculation.

debate

we can be pretty sure there is no collusion and if trump would just stop tweeting he would have no problems at all.

I keep hearing that and it's driving me crazy.

With all those weird meetings that happened they better have evidence of collusion!

They are predicting the outcome trial before the trial even starts.

It's hearsay. Sometimes it's supported, but often it goes away and all that's left is the conclusion.

Trump fired Comey. After never saying anything bad about him, I guess. Thing is, we have to make some assumptions about motives. Our assumptions are always good as far as we're concerned, rooted in absolute fact. Others may differ.

I don't see a quote where Trump said he fired Comey "to stop the Russian investigation." He said he fired him. He said he was a "nut job." After that, we're back to assumptions, now elevated to the level of fact.

The Flynn thing might be interference. But it's a small bit, and relies crucially on interpreting "I hope" in a specific manner. It supports the claim, but it doesn't nail it. Moreover, Trump's pattern of speaking points to his words not being carefully chosen, while a lot of the parsing of his words assumes that they are. I've even seen claims that he's really a super-duper master of rhetoric, so all his outrageous gaffes are actually intentional, to mask what he's really doing. This strikes me as borderline delusional: The guy's got no control over his mouth and very little mental acumen when it comes to making an argument. I can't accept both "he's an idiot" and "he's quite the genius." Much easier to accept that God made man on the 7th day of creation 6000 years ago and that many hundreds of thousands of years ago H. sapiens, today's humans' ancestors, interbred with Neandertals and Denisovians.


However, I'll defend your conclusion. To say there's not evidence is to know that the evidence is lacking. We don't know that. We can't know that.

This is on par with the people who insist in the Cosby case that all the evidence necessary for conviction, all the evidence compelling conviction, was presented in a way that could only lead any reasonable person to find Cosby guilty. Therefore, the only reason for a hung jury is "celebrity", more of the rich and famous have their own rules. Again, they didn't see all the evidence, hear the instructions to the jury, didn't participate in the discussion. They have suspicions, but elevate their suspicions and assumptions to the level of unquestioned fact. (Richard Feynman had a few things to say about this kind of thinking.)

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Drumpf said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

I thought what they were saying is there is not enough evidence that can not be argued against. Everything here talks about how these connections are "obvious" and clearly, etc. Everything that we know about can be interpreted as criminal, but could also be easily swatted away with a counter argument. We should not forget that what Clinton's impeachment came down to was not whether or not he did it, but whether or not it was serious enough to be considered a high crime or misdemeanor.
The argument that they seem to be setting up is that Trump didn't know any better. Yes, ignorance is no excuse. But purgery was reasonably minimized based on content. It is entirely possible that a "not a politician or a criminal, therefore too naive to know better" would be a successful defense for him.

This has to be inarguable and there has to be public outcry because his loyalists are not abandoning him. It would disasterous beyond our imaginations if an impeachment failed.

..if she were elected, over Benghazi and the email scandal, and the fact that Bill met Loretta Lynch on the tarmac, and she wasn't even Russian and we don't know what they talked about, and Democrats are always ready to say we never have enough evidence. With that mindset, we will never have enough evidence, even if it comes straight from the horse's mouth.