The Right Side of the News

Obstruction of Justice and Congress are both illegal. Obstruction of a congressional investigation was one of the articles of impeachment during Watergate.As of now, Trump has personally withheld money from a country fighting for its existence, and while withholding that money he pushed the country's leader to investigate one of his political opponents. He used tax payer money as leverage to benefit his own campaign, and tried to collude with a foreign country to affect the upcoming election. If Obama had done this, you would be screaming for impeachment at the top of your lungs.

What is becoming more and more obvious is that many conservatives have no idea what morality and ethics are, or they are pretending they don't know what they are.Let's say you are an elected official who is in charge of choosing construction bids for government projects. You also own a construction business that is bidding for those contracts. Is this unethical? YES!!!! Even if it can be shown that you are fair when you choose a bid, it is still unethical. You don't have to overtly do the wrong thing to be unethical.If you are the elected leader of a government in charge of foreign policy that will also affect the profits from a company you own and run, that is unethical in every single way possible. When you ask a country for a personal favor that will help you personally while withholding foreign aid, that is extremely unethical. You don't need to ask for an overt quid pro quo, just the request in itself is massively unethical.The fact that Republicans are trying to defend the President by saying he didn't make an overt quid pro quo request only demonstrates that Republicans don't understand ethics or morality. All they are doing is filling up the swamp.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

The Mueller report said just the opposite, that there was obstruction of justice. The only thing that stopped Mueller from prosecuting Trump was that he was president. It is not an allegation that Trump withheld foreign aid from Ukraine. It is not an allegation that Trump asked the leader of Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponent. These are all things that Trump himself said he did.

Then you lack all sense of morality and ethics.

"As such, the investigation "does not conclude that the President committed a crime"; however, "it also does not exonerate him",[25][26] with investigators not confident of Trump's innocence.[27][28][29][30] The report describes ten episodes where Trump could have obstructed justice while president and one before he was elected,[31][32] noting that he privately tried to "control the investigation".[33][34][35] The report further states that Congress can decide whether Trump obstructed justice and take action accordingly,[18][36][37] referencing impeachment.[38][39]"
Mueller report - WikipediaI'm sorry, but you can't make this go away by saying "No it's not". "Volume II of the report addresses obstruction of justice. The investigation intentionally took an approach that could not result in a judgment that Trump committed a crime,[17][18][19] abiding by an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion that a sitting president cannot stand trial,[20][21][22] fearing that charges would affect Trump's governing and preempt impeachment,[18][21][23] and feeling that it would be unfair to accuse Trump of a crime without charges or a trial.[20][21][24] "
Mueller report - WikipediaMueller couldn't charge Trump with a crime because he is President. That's the policy of his office.

Obviously not. Mueller is neither a judge nor a jury so he can't find anyone guilty. What Mueller could do is indict, but the policy of his department states that he can't indict a sitting president. This is a policy that was put in place during the Watergate scandal. Since the justice department can't bring charges against a sitting president, the constitutional solution is impeachment which is the process that is being started now. Yes."The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions."
https://www.justice.gov/...dictment-and-criminal-prosecution That's completely false.

The Department of Justice has a stated policy that they can't charge a sitting president with a crime. The Department of Justice also has a long standing policy of not making accusations without an indictment. This is why grand jury testimony is put under lock and key because it would be unfair to a person to have these accusations made public them without an indictment. Because of the unique situation of a president commiting a potential crime, Mueller found the middle road. He passed on his findings to Congress which is the body responsible for bringing charges against a sitting president. This also included Mueller's opinion that he could not exonerate the president of wrongdoing. Exactly. In case you forgot, there were hundreds of indictments handed out during this investigation, and many convictions. However, the DoJ can't charge the president with a crime. In this case, the evidence they gathered is passed on to Congress which has the power and discretion to charge the president with crimes. This process is called impeachment.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

If Mueller states that Trump committed a crime then that is charging a sitting president with a crime. Mueller isn't allowed to do that. I don't understand why you are having such a hard time understanding this."On May 1, Barr testified that he "didn't exonerate" Trump on obstruction;[44] and that neither he nor Rosenstein had reviewed the underlying evidence in the report.[45] In July 2019, Mueller testified to Congress that a president could be charged with crimes including obstruction of justice after they left office.[46]"
Mueller report - WikipediaIf there was no crime found then they would have said that Trump was exonerated. They didn't say that.Oh yes, and this too:"In his report, Mueller did not ultimately charge the president. He made clear during his afternoon testimony that because of the OLC opinion, his team did not even reach a conclusion about whether the president committed a crime. This point was a major clarification of an earlier exchange in which Mueller seemed to signal that he would have potentially charged the president, were it not for the OLC opinion.""If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Mueller declined to state."
OLC policy: The DOJ policy thatMueller keeps citing for not charging the president with a crime - VoxEdited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

From Mueller's own mouth:If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.--Robert Mueller
OLC policy: The DOJ policy thatMueller keeps citing for not charging the president with a crime - VoxMueller never stated that Trump clearly did not commit obstruction of justice. If that is what his investigation found he would have said so. He didn't say so. I just showed you what stopped him. It is the OLC rule for federal investigators that they can't charge a sitting president with a crime. Are you blind or something? Here it is again:"The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions."
https://www.justice.gov/...dictment-and-criminal-prosecutionIt states in no uncertain terms that it would have been unconstitutional for Meuller to charge the president with a crime. That comes straight from the DoJ website. That is the policy that Mueller was following, and it is that same rule that forbade him from making the conclusion that Trump committed any crimes.Also:"In his report, Mueller did not ultimately charge the president. He made clear during his afternoon testimony that because of the OLC opinion, his team did not even reach a conclusion about whether the president committed a crime. This point was a major clarification of an earlier exchange in which Mueller seemed to signal that he would have potentially charged the president, were it not for the OLC opinion."
OLC policy: The DOJ policy thatMueller keeps citing for not charging the president with a crime - Vox"Based on Justice Department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not make a determination as to whether the President committed a crime. That was our decision then and it remains our decision today."--Robert Mueller
https://www.nbcnews.com/...-indicted-when-he-leaves-n1033901Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

That was a Congressional investigation, and Congress does have the power to indict a president. They aren't the same thing.Again, these are Mueller's own words:"Based on Justice Department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not make a determination as to whether the President committed a crime. That was our decision then and it remains our decision today."--Rober MuellerThey decided from the very start of the investigation that they would never determine if Trump committed a crime because of DoJ policies and basic fairness. The policy stated that they could not indict the president, and if they couldn't indict they weren't going to make accusations because that is the fair thing to do. They determined that it is Congress' power and their power alone to accuse the president of crimes and indict him.

I notice that you can't address anything I stated.From the start of the investigation, Mueller had already decided that he would not accuse the president of committing any crimes, even if there was ample evidence of a crime. FROM THE VERY START. He did this because of policy and his professional ethics.Can you admit this or not?

"Based on Justice Department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not make a determination as to whether the President committed a crime. That was our decision then and it remains our decision today."--Robert MuellerMueller clearly stated that he decided from the outset that he would not determine if Trump committed a crime. He said so himself. It doesn't matter if Meuller could or couldn't. What matters is if Mueller did decide to make a determination if Trump committed a crime, and he decided from the very start that he was not going to make that determination. Mueller was in charge of the investigation and the report, so it is his say so that matters, not Barr's. If you are going to cite Mueller's report, then it is Mueller's decision that is relevant.

That's a bit like saying stealing is not a crime, but theft is. Conspiracy is just the legal parlance for collusion in the same way that theft is the legal term for stealing.

Why do you care that Biden withheld aid to Ukraine until they fired the prosecutor? Biden was standing by our allies when he did that. The entire G-7 and the International Monetary Fund was calling for his resignation because Shokin was absolutely corrupt and in Russia's pocket.

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This would all be a small footnote in history except that by 2016, officials throughout the Obama administration and in Western Europe had come to a consensus that Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, wasn’t doing enough to crack down on corruption. Biden, as he later colorfully recounted, delivered the message that the West wanted Shokin gone or else loan guarantees would be held up, and Shokin was, in turn, fired.

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There was nothing remotely controversial about this at the time. No congressional Republicans complained about it, and the European Union hailed the decision to fire Shokin. The reason there is video footage of Biden touting his personal role in this is it was considered a foreign policy triumph that Biden wanted to claim credit for, not anything sordid or embarrassing.

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But Shokin, of course, didn’t want to go down on the theory that he was corrupt or incompetent. So he started offering another theory: he was fired for going after Burisma by Joe Biden operating on behalf of Hunter Biden.

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The question of whether Shokin was actually investigating Burisma at all is a matter of dispute (the relevant Ukrainian players have told inconsistent stories), but this is clearly not the reason he was fired. The desire to push him out was fully bipartisan in the United States and reflected a consensus across European governments, not than anything idiosyncratic to Biden.
Hunter Biden, Burisma, Ukraine, and Joe Biden explained - Vox

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Biden was entirely in his right to brag about it because he scored a major victory for the US and our European allies when he got Shokin fired. Read my post above.