Replies to post #338958 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Hey asshole, do you think that the ignorant prick you defend would obey the Supreme Court when he has stiffed every single legitimate request for documents and witnesses?

You're dumber than Susan Collins.

So yes, Clinton testified and he paid the price for an open-ended investigation that morphed from Whitewater to the blue dress, pushed by a sanctimonious jagoff and his adulterous accomplices in the GOP House and Senate. I got whiplash watching them step down one after another. Remember? I didn't think so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton

The Speaker-designate, Representative Bob Livingston, chosen by the Republican Party Conference to replace Gingrich as House Speaker, announced the end of his candidacy for Speaker and his resignation from Congress from the floor of the House after his own marital infidelity came to light.[22]

In the same speech, Livingston also encouraged Clinton to resign. Clinton chose to remain in office and urged Livingston to reconsider his resignation.[23] Many other prominent Republican members of Congress (including Dan Burton,[22] Helen Chenoweth,[22] and Henry Hyde,[22] the chief House manager of Clinton's trial in the Senate) had infidelities exposed about this time, all of whom voted for impeachment. Publisher Larry Flynt offered a reward for such information, and many supporters of Clinton accused Republicans of hypocrisy.[22]

Don't lecture me about high horses while defending a lying, amoral, semiliterate, dickhead that ONLY moral imbeciles even attempt to defend. Never effectively.

[fuagf]

ForReal, Column: Bill Clinton testified under oath during his scandal, so come on, President Trump, raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth!

"How many times does it have to be pointed out? Clinton TESTIFIED under oath.
Only when the Supreme Court ordered him to. He fought testifying in the Paula Jones case and the Supreme
Court ruled he had to testify. He then stupidly lied about Monica during that testimony and got caught."

DesertDrifter demolished your impeachment false equivalency, and you gave up on it there.
blackhawks told you what Trump would have done if Mueller had subpoenaed him. More here

By Eric Zorn
Chicago Tribune |
Nov 19, 2019 | 4:42 PM


In this image made from video, President Bill Clinton is sworn in for his videotaped grand jury testimony on
Aug. 17, 1998, at the White House. (Associated Press)

President Donald Trump has gone back and forth about the value and appropriateness of answering investigators’ questions in writing.

When special counsel Robert Mueller sought to question Trump in 2018 during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump’s lawyers not only denied a request for a face-to-face interrogation, but also limited the scope of the questions they would allow the president to address. The White House then preened about Trump’s “unprecedented cooperation," though his answers were peppered with such lawyerly evasions as “I do not recall,” “I have no independent recollection” and “I do not remember.”

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INSERT: - Clinton lied under oath. That is not "technically" perjury. It is perjury.
Trump said he couldn’t remember 36 times in response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s questions
In written responses under oath, the president said his memory of crucial questions was hazy.

PERJURY!
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-said-he-couldnt-remember-36-times-in-response-to-special-counsel-robert-muellers-questions-2019-04-18

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153733211
-----

Then earlier this month, when the anonymous whistleblower volunteered to answer questions in writing .. https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-trump-impeachment-ukraine-whistleblower-20191103-5y42jqnmtbcx3kld77m772nc2i-story.html .. from Republican congressmen who remain obsessed with the completely irrelevant matter of the whistleblower’s identity, Trump raged on Twitter ..

The Whistleblower gave false information & dealt with corrupt politician Schiff. He must be brought forward to testify. Written answers not acceptable! Where is the 2nd Whistleblower? He disappeared after I released the transcript. Does he even exist? Where is the informant? Con!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2019

, “He must be brought forward to testify. Written answers not acceptable!”

Trump seemed to reverse himself again Monday when he tweeted, “I like the idea,” to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion that he testify in writing to the House Intelligence Committee now hearing the inquiry into his impeachment. Trump wrote that he would “strongly consider it!”

You may wonder why it’s up to him.

You may recall, as I do, that President Bill Clinton testified in person, under oath, twice back in 1998 in proceedings related to the inquiry into his extramarital sexual behavior.

Clinton fought the first subpoena in court, arguing that the responsibilities of a sitting president are too important and the principle of separation of powers too vital to allow the courts to compel him to testify in the lawsuit brought by Paula Jones, who alleged he had sexually harassed her when he was governor of Arkansas. But in Jones v. Clinton .. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/520/681.html , the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Clinton, finding that a president “is subject to the same laws that apply to all citizens.”

He then sat for a deposition in January 1998.

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[ForReal, Trump is very lucky Mueller didn't subpoena him to testify before a grand jury as Starr
did with Clinton. Still we know what would have happened don't we. Trump would have refused.

Can Mueller subpoena Trump?
Legal experts say yes — but it’s tricky.
By Sean Illing @seanilling [e-mail] Updated May 2, 2018, 9:43am EDT
[...]
But what if the president defies such an order? Fortunately, we have never experienced such a constitutional crisis, but the general consensus is that impeachment is the appropriate next step. That, of course, is a political — not a judicial — remedy and thus depends on the willingness of Congress to go down that path.
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/15/16997474/mueller-subpoena-trump-russia-probe ]
-----

Six months later, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Clinton to appear before the grand jury investigating whether Clinton had had a sexual relationship with a former White House intern and then lied about that fact during his deposition in the Jones case.

At first, Clinton indicated he would fight the subpoena. Starr’s entire inquiry was an absurd and transparent effort to remove a president from office simply because he was a horn dog who lied to conceal his infidelities and allegedly grotesque seduction techniques. Clinton could and arguably should have declared the whole exercise a ridiculous sham and told Starr to go take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut.

But those were different times.

These days, Republicans are standing shoulder to shoulder with the defiant Trump, cheering him on as he derides the investigation into his alleged efforts to squeeze Ukraine into trying to dig up dirt on his Democratic political rival Joe Biden and attempts to block those with firsthand knowledge of that effort from testifying.

But in the summer of 1998, elected Democrats all across the country pressured Clinton to cooperate with Starr, lest the tawdry scandal hurt the party at the polls that November. So rather than engage in another prolonged legal fight that might have led to a constitutional crisis, Clinton agreed to testify under oath again that August. The line everyone remembers from that event: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

And of course the justification for Clinton’s subsequent impeachment offered by indignant Republicans and conservative commentators ended up being not that Clinton had sex with an intern. Oh no. It was that he’d lied under oath. Never mind the circumstances, motivation or materiality of his falsehoods. He had sworn to tell the truth! The rule of law was in shambles!

Why is it today up to Trump whether or not he testifies before the committee?

Because the once indignant Republicans and conservative guardians of law aren’t demanding he do so, despite the comparative gravity of the charges against him.

And because Democrats in Congress have shown no stomach or patience for the court fight necessary to try to force him to.

You may conclude, as I have, that Trump himself has already said it best: “He must be brought forward to testify. Written answers not acceptable!”

[e-mail]

Twitter @EricZorn

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-column-clinton-trump-testify-impeachment-zorn-20191119-zkcu72jbkfgy5agnbc7qzu2v44-story.html

Bottom line: Democrats, in general, support the rule of law. Trump, Barr, and the GOP are doing all in their power to demolish it.

Trump because he is as he has been his entire working life, a lawbreaker. Barr and the rest of them because being cuddly
with the wannabe strongman at the top is more important to them than the constitutional impeachment oath they took.

Except Romney.