Logic 101 quiz
 

Instructor: R. Mueller

If the President did not commit a crime, we would have said so.

We did not say so.

Ergo________________

To simple for some.🙄
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

what I think he said, was that if he could prove trump didn’t commit a crime, he would
have said so. he couldn’t prove trump didn’t commit a crime. that’s not nearly the same thing as saying you can prove he did commit one. your quiz is flawed and misleading. Trump doesn’t have to
prove he didn’t do it, he is presumed innocent. we have to prove he did. We haven’t proven that.

how does one prove that they didn’t commit obstruction or conspire to collide?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Keep believing, read the report, it’s clear obstruction happened.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

What Mueller said, is that he could not prove that Trump didn't commit a crime. That is nowhere near the same as saying that he committed a crime.

As to obstruction, I want him charged if he did it. But the long list of examples of liberals willing to say ANYTHING to make him look bad, makes me skeptical.

I heard for two years that there'd be an indictment on collusion with Russia, then Buzzfeed and CNN said Trump ordered his lawyer to lie to Congress under oath.

I praise him when he deserves it, I criticize him when he deserves it. I don't have an agenda to defend him at all costs, nor do I have an agenda to get rid of him at all costs. His attackers have the same amount of credibility as Sean Hannity, they are fools who are not to be taken seriously. That doesn't mean he didn't do it.

Ergo...….the title of your thread should be illogic 101 quiz.

It is illogical to compare what you imply that Mueller said to what he actually said, then proceed to "ergo" into a conclusion.

Mueller said "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.”

That is nowhere near what you imply that he said. Saying that he did not have confidence that Trump did not commit obstruction is saying that he is not sure that Trump did not obstruct.

DOJ rules did not prevent him from saying that he had "confidence" that Trump obstructed, nor did they prevent him from saying he had confidence that Trump didn't obstruct.

Your "If the President did not commit a crime" proposes a fact--that the President did not commit a crime. And your "Ergo" leads us to the fact that he did.

But Mueller's lacking confidence proposes uncertainty, unsurety, that Trump did not obstruct. So an "ergo" re that would be that Mueller is unsure that he did obstruct.

Again, DOJ rules do not prohibit the Special Counsel from saying that his thorough investigation gives him "confidence" that Trump obstructed. Mueller did not say that . . . ergo . . . . .

Are you claiming that Robert Mueller is a liberal ?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller declared.
Keep obfuscating
Mueller and Trump are opposite ends of the spectrum.
Trump is a con man, always has been and always will be.
Do you think Mueller has the ability to spin?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Of course Mueller has the ability to spin. Certainly to twist and obfuscate. His obstruction nonsense proves that.

So simple yet incredibly revealing. Thanks for exposing this crazy evidence PeteF.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Mueller could have been very clear and concise, he decided rather, to be ambiguous and confuse people like you.

Ergo_______

you are ignoring the part of the report that said there was no collusion which is the ONLY thing that matters...this was a partisan hack job from the beginning ...if he obstructed partisan hacks from destroying his presidency I'm ok with that and really don't blame him...if you were being falsely investigated by people that hate you for some really egregious trumped up phony crimes would you happily play along with them or would you do everything you could to fight them?

democrats cried wolf too long, the wolf never appeared....now they want to cry sheep....and when that doesn't work they will cry something else....dummycrats have been running around yelling TREASON!! for 2 years.....yawn

this thread is
based entirely, on something that’s demonstrably false.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

no, i’m
claiming you lied here. Mueller said he couldn’t prove that Trump
didn’t commit instruction. YOU are saying that means he did it.

Absurd.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

bingo.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

You are doing the Barr spin. As head of the investigation his ethics and interpretation of DOJ guidelines, dictated if we can’t charge we can’t accuse and he clearly left that in the hands of congress and he reiterated that in his news conference.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

What Mueller said was, they couldn’t prove trump didn’t commit obstruction. Big whoop.

how do you prove you didn’t obstruct justice, anyway? i mean, you can prove you didn’t commit murder with DNA or
by proving you were somewhere else when the murder happened. but obstruction of
justice? there’s no conceivable way to prove you didn’t do it.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

For two years we screamed under needing to wait for conclusions in the Mueller Report.

It came and it was underwhelming. I do suspect Trump did something wrong and illegal which means there is no difference than his competition or predecessors.

The Mueller Report did not deliver anything earth shattering, damning, nor apparently something to prosecute with.

I'm surprised you think it's underwhelming John, especially in light of the extent the Russians went to in order to hurt one candidate and help another get elected; that part everyone seems to be glossing right over. Did the investigation proof Trump and his campaign staff didn't actively conspire with the Russians sure, but it also pointed out they didn't turn to the FBI every time they were offered help either. Trump even went so far as to encourage hacking on national TV, there's real patriotic act by someone running for president.

So sure no collusion, but volume 2 clearly is where the rubber meets the road and that part may be his downfall. Funny you say Trump may have down "something" wrong, when volume 2 details numerous things he did wrong, but I guess if you believe he is no worse than any other president in the past you are entitled to that opinion. If this is the new norm, we are in trouble people.

His "interpretation" is incorrect. And he knows that. There is nothing in the guidelines that prohibits accusation. Accusation and indictment are not the same. The purpose of the investigation is to determine wrongdoing. Presenting "possible" instances of obstruction while also presenting alternative "possible" exculpatory explanations, is not a determination of wrongdoing. It is a determination of nothing. There is no determination. By law, ERGO, the defendant maintains the presumption of innocence.

And, anyway, trying to frame it in a certain way is a subtle method of accusation. And he knows that. He knows that if there is not enough evidence to convict, an honest, reputable prosecutor would leave it at that, case closed, and not try to leave an aura of guilt, a stench in the public eye. A stench that cannot be verified to be certainly true is a smear. Reputable prosecutors and judges don't do that.

As the video I posted above states, Mueller turned justice upside down--presuming guilt that must be investigated in order to determine innocence, rather than presuming innocence, but investigating to prove guilt. It was not Mueller's job to prove innocence, to "exonerate." By law, Trump is already presumed, at the start, to be innocent. That does not have to be proved. A prosecutor's burden is to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilt. If he can't, and if he knows he can't after investigation, he doesn't even bring it to trial. And, if he's reputable, he doesn't make divisive comments later in order to leave a cloud of suspicion.

Did you watch the video?

weren’t russians also behind the Steele dossier? who was that designed to help?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

I am not surprised that is your response, that is the response a lot of well intentioned people have.

Here are some historical notes: choose to do with them what you will, but I would highly suggest you go over Russian history for the past 300 years. Russia has been lying, "hacking", influencing, and sabotaging other countries positions and governments, and when available elections, for over 300 years. It is what they do.

From the 1200s up into the times of the Great Game they did this to their nearby neighbors.

In the Great Game they conquered or stole or influenced their expansion south and east through the Caucuses, the Stans, the steppes, and eventually to the Pacific. They have played games with all of Europe, Asia before we even fought among ourselves.

From their revolution on they have been aligning with progressives and worker's parties in the US with varying levels of success, all the way up until heavy influence in the pre WW2 times and other than a small decade when they were licking their wounds, back again with the 60s through today.

This is what they do.

Frankly, I find it somewhat insulting that all of the people that complain about it now after ignoring it forever are often the same people that rush to McCain's defense now yet pilloried him prior to Trump.

I believe that when the Media, in lockstep with the Democratic party, makes a moderate with some level of integrity like Romney into the next Hitler, that we reap what we have sown. We have lost the middle, with both sides going more extreme and more and more out of balance. This looks like there is little chance to correct this imbalance. The future is terrifying.

Trump wasn't the cause, he was the result.

Absolutely, 100% correct. Trump was the inevitable product of the media and the DNC mercilessly portraying harmless, moderate, milquetoasts like McCain and Romney, out to be the next coming of Hitler. That's exactly, and the only reason, why we have Trump. Now the same weasels who unfairly attacked McCain and Romney, are whining about reaping what they sow. Tough nuggets.

We need to drain the swamp, flush the toilet, and elect a new kind of politician, and start talking about what works and what doesn't, and stop incessantly shrieking about racism and sexism, and whatever other drummed-up hate du jour will get you another vote.

The short term future is indeed terrifying, take a gander at your neighbor to the south, the state of CT.

I don't believe the GOP has radicalized anywhere near to the extent of the democrats. Individual cases, sure, not national party leadership. The right-wing equivalent of where democrats are today (open borders, legalizing drugs, abortion until birth, use whatever bathroom tickles your fancy), is concentration camps and zero taxes and executing people for being on welfare.

You're being reasonable and logical, which is not welcomed in the midst of partisan squabbles--certainly not welcomed in arguments fueled by hate and personal animosity.

I agree with all of what you said. Except I think that I "interpret" it a bit differently.

Yes, Trump was the result not the cause. But I look at the result as being a corrective, not just a continuance of rushing to a mad end.

And I see the "middle" to be different than what I gather folks on this forum who refer to it believe it to be. I don't think there is a middle between ideological extremes. Picking portions of each extreme just results in a variation of extremes. A variation that changes as extremes change.

For me, the idea of a constant ideological "middle" is that which doesn't change, but is the point from which extremes diverge. It is an unchanging principle, a foundation, upon which a society is founded. My notion of losing our "middle" would be abandoning that founding principle. We no longer agree to even consider that middle when we discuss politics, much less act on it.

John thanks for the history lesson, but what Russia was capable of doing and the influence that may have resulted in prior to the internet, is like comparing the first gas engine driven car to what circles the track at Daytona.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

John just gave a brief overall sketch. If he had filled in the details, you would not have responded the way you did. The direct involvement and participation of Soviet agents and fellow travelers in the FDR administration was absolutely massive and persuasive. It was directly responsible for the takeover of China and other parts of Asia as well as all of Eastern Europe by Communists. The internet influence that Russia exerted in this last go-round amounts to nothing in comparison to what the Soviets accomplished with their infiltration of Roosevelt's administration.

Calling Mueller’s team “some of the worst human beings on Earth,” while saying he’s in love with Kim Jong-un, a dictator who murders people for sport, tosses thousands in gulags, and executes dissidents with anti-aircraft guns, tells me what I need to know about Trump.
What about all you want
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Some of the guys Mueller brought onto his team, like Weissman (not sure of spelling), are notorious for doing just about anything, including withholding evidence favorable to the defense, in order to get convictions. The woman being interviewed in the video I posted above, Sydney Powell, was the leading defense counsel in some high profile federal prosecutions in which Weismann and others that Mueller hired were leading investigators and lawyers for the prosecution, and she witnessed first hand how irreputable, basically evil, those men could be. Her book, LICENCED TO LIE, details the corruption in the DOJ at the time, which included some of the men Mueller hired. I know you don't watch the videos I post, but if you did, you could learn some things you don't know and disabuse yourself of some of the things you think you know. Just sayin.

So in light of what Russia has done, is doing and will do your ok with Trump encouragement of their interference in the 2016 election?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Quite a leap there--from my pointing out how you were wrong--to implying that I'm OK with what Russia is doing and will do.

I'm OK with Trump's sarcasm. I thought it was funny when he said it, and when he said the media would applaud the Russians for exposing Hillary. What's also funny is the idea that Russia needs Trump's encouragement. They been doing this way, way, before Trump. They probably laugh at and are satisfied with accusations that they need Trump's encouragement. They are going to do what they are going to do regardless of what Trump says or doesn't. I'm sure they are happy with the divisiveness that such accusations inspire. You fall right into being a willing victim of their disinformation and its sowing of seeds intended to blossom into discord.

And the Russians were encouraged to "interfere" in our affairs by Progressive leftists in the past, from Academia, NY Times and other "liberal" media, Progressive Politicians, and all sorts of anti-American left leaning groups. And the old Soviet influence in our political affairs is flourishing again now with the Communist Party annexing itself to the Democrat Party. If you don't see the Communist influence in the push of the Democrats to the left, even more openly in some of the rising stars in their party, and old ones such as Bernie Sanders, your being blinded by leftist spin and partisan intentionally driven hate, aided with even the redefinition of polarizing words such as racist and all the phobes, and the attempt to make those on the "right" an embodiment of those manufactured words.

No, I am not happy with what Russia does. And I am not happy with a Democrat Party which is more and more embracing Communist ideals.

No, it is not. It is another in a long line of tools they wield to influence. Hell, they don't even need to change your mind, just cast doubt. Or pit you against your brother.

For a moment put aside the question of whether or not Trump actively asked for assistance from Putin. The fact there is such a disarray over it is what they will exploit. They sprinkle problem seeds (Steele Dossier for example) around where they exist and where they don't exist just to see what takes root.

They have done this for decades with unions, Civil Rights leaders, and a lot of Democrats. They tried hard to flip MLK, he wouldn't. After his assassination, they tried to get remaining civil rights leadership to declare a race war (almost happened, but some prominent leaders would not bite).

You see the same thing today over the past few years with RUS spiking both sides of the Black Lives Matter. Particularly using Social Media.

They have done this countless times, on many subjects, long before the Internet. This is all documented.

Do I think Trump is dirty? Yeh, probably (I know HRC is dirty).

Now for emphasis: Do I KNOW that Trump entered active agreement with Russia to have the election pushed to DJT's benefit? No. This was the bar I needed to see reached with the Mueller Report. It did not.So when the Progressive Left politicians are all wrapped around the axle with Russia, Russia, Russia: Ehhfuk Them. Welcome to the Party Pal (insert Bruce Willis image). The consistently pro-dem party media for DECADES has eaten pro Russia spin. Ehhfuk Them Too.


The Green Parties of Western Europe in the 80s protesting US/NATO.
The college campuses of the 30s to a lesser extent and exploded in the 60s (and ever since).
World leaders. Sitting members of congress. Administration people (cough Robert Kennedy - though this one was probably beneficial)

Any pot that can be stirred.

^^^ This is all true

geeze John...it's like you dropped a MOAB on the commiecrats :rotf2:

Time will tell, much like with Russian interference history cited by others, where information has come out that was not public knowledge at the time it occurred.

Of course all of the information contained in the Mueller report is of no importance, just SOP for Russia, likely prosecutorial overreaches on Muellers part, perfectly acceptable behavior to Trumplicans and some here.

1. Trump was receptive to a Campaign national security adviser’s (George Papadopoulos) pursuit of a back channel to Putin.

2. Kremlin operatives provided the Campaign a preview of the Russian plan to distribute stolen emails.

3. The Trump Campaign chairman and deputy chairman (Paul Manafort and Rick Gates) knowingly shared internal polling data and information on battleground states with a Russian spy; and the Campaign chairman worked with the Russian spy on a pro-Russia “peace” plan for Ukraine.

4. The Trump Campaign chairman periodically shared internal polling data with the Russian spy with the expectation it would be shared with Putin-linked oligarch, Oleg Deripaska.

5. Trump Campaign chairman Manafort expected Trump’s winning the presidency would mean Deripaska would want to use Manafort to advance Deripaska’s interests in the United States and elsewhere.

6. Trump Tower meeting: (1) On receiving an email offering derogatory information on Clinton coming from a Russian government official, Donald Trump Jr. “appears to have accepted that offer;” (2) members of the Campaign discussed the Trump Tower meeting beforehand; (3) Donald Trump Jr. told the Russians during the meeting that Trump could revisit the issue of the Magnitsky Act if elected.

7. A Trump Campaign official told the Special Counsel he “felt obliged to object” to a GOP Platform change on Ukraine because it contradicted Trump’s wishes; however, the investigation did not establish that Gordon was directed by Trump.

8. Russian military hackers may have followed Trump’s July 27, 2016 public statement “Russia if you’re listening …” within hours by targeting Clinton’s personal office for the first time.

9. Trump requested campaign affiliates to get Clinton’s emails, which resulted in an individual apparently acting in coordination with the Campaign claiming to have successfully contacted Russian hackers.

10. The Trump Campaign—and Trump personally—appeared to have advanced knowledge of future WikiLeaks releases.

11. The Trump Campaign coordinated campaign-related public communications based on future WikiLeaks releases.

12. Michael Cohen, on behalf of the Trump Organization, brokered a secret deal for a Trump Tower Moscow project directly involving Putin’s inner circle, at least until June 2016.

13. During the presidential transition, Jared Kushner and Eric Prince engaged in secret back channel communications with Russian agents. (1) Kushner suggested to the Russian Ambassador that they use a secure communication line from within the Russian Embassy to speak with Russian Generals; and (2) Prince and Kushner’s friend Rick Gerson conducted secret back channel meetings with a Putin agent to develop a plan for U.S.-Russian relations.

14. During the presidential transition, in coordination with other members of the Transition Team, Michael Flynn spoke with the Russian Ambassador to prevent a tit for tat Russian response to the Obama administration’s imposition of sanctions for election interference; the Russians agreed not to retaliate saying they wanted a good relationship with the incoming administration.

great work pete...that's riveting stuff

when exactly was Papadopoulos Trump's National Security advisor?

keep digging...I'm sure you will unearth a 15th....

PeteF has a thesis going
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

that’s funny right there
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

There may be something there in Pete's list. There are a lot of Mays there. There is a big ole pot of mud.

But Mueller needed to provide smoking gun, unequivocal, high bar evidence. He didn't.

Won’t be so easy for Trump and his campaign (assuming he makes it to that point) to ask or welcome help from Russia, Facebook or Wikileaks; could be he is one and done thankfully. Voting security is still a big concern.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Lawrence Tribe has an interesting proposition for how the investigation of Trump should proceed.
From the WaPo:
Laurence H. Tribe is the University Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard and the coauthor, most recently, of “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.”

It is possible to argue that impeaching President Trump and removing him from office before the 2020 election would be unwise, even if he did cheat his way into office, and even if he is abusing the powers of that office to enrich himself, cover up his crimes and leave our national security vulnerable to repeated foreign attacks. Those who make this argument rest their case either on the proposition that impeachment would be dangerously divisive in a nation as politically broken as ours, or on the notion that it would be undemocratic to get rid of a president whose flaws were obvious before he was elected.

Rightly or wrongly — I think rightly — much of the House Democratic caucus, at least one Republican member of that chamber (Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan) and more than a third of the nation’s voters disagree. They treat the impeachment power as a vital constitutional safeguard against a potentially dangerous and fundamentally tyrannical president and view it as a power that would be all but ripped out of the Constitution if it were deemed unavailable against even this president.

That is my view, as well.

Still, there exists concern that impeachment accomplishes nothing concrete, especially if the Senate is poised to quickly kill whatever articles of impeachment the House presents. This apprehension is built on an assumption that impeachment by the House and trial in the Senate are analogous to indictment by a grand jury and trial by a petit jury: Just as a prosecutor might hesitate to ask a grand jury to indict even an obviously guilty defendant if it appeared that no jury is likely to convict, so, it is said, the House of Representatives might properly decline to impeach even an obviously guilty president — and would be wise to do so — if it appeared the Senate was dead-set against convicting him.

But to think of the House of Representatives as akin to a prosecutor or grand jury is misguided. The Constitution’s design suggests a quite different allocation of functions: The Senate, unlike any petit (or trial) jury, is legally free to engage in politics in arriving at its verdict. And the House, unlike any grand jury, can conduct an impeachment inquiry that ends with a verdict and not just a referral to the Senate for trial — an inquiry in which the target is afforded an opportunity to participate and mount a full defense.

Take, for instance, the 1974 investigation of President Richard M. Nixon when the House gave the president the opportunity to refute the charges against him either personally or through counsel and with additional fact witnesses. (Nixon chose to appear only through his attorney, James D. St. Clair.) Following its impeachment proceedings, the House Judiciary Committee drafted particularized findings less in the nature of accusations to be assessed by the Senate — which of course never weighed in, given Nixon’s resignation — than in the nature of determinations of fact and law and verdicts of guilt to be delivered by the House itself, expressly stating that the president was indeed guilty as charged.

It seems fair to surmise, then, that an impeachment inquiry conducted with ample opportunity for the accused to defend himself before a vote by the full House would be at least substantially protected, even if not entirely bullet-proofed, against a Senate whitewash.

The House, assuming an impeachment inquiry leads to a conclusion of Trump’s guilt, could choose between presenting articles of impeachment even to a Senate pre-committed to burying them and dispensing with impeachment as such while embodying its conclusions of criminality or other grave wrongdoing in a condemnatory “Sense of the House” resolution far stronger than a mere censure. The resolution, expressly and formally proclaiming the president impeachable but declining to play the Senate’s corrupt game, is one that even a president accustomed to treating everything as a victory would be hard-pressed to characterize as a vindication. (A House resolution finding the president “impeachable” but imposing no actual legal penalty would avoid the Constitution’s ban on Bills of Attainder, despite its deliberately stigmatizing character as a “Scarlet ‘I’ ” that Trump would have to take with him into his reelection campaign.)

The point would not be to take old-school House impeachment leading to possible Senate removal off the table at the outset. Instead, the idea would be to build into the very design of this particular inquiry an offramp that would make bypassing the Senate an option while also nourishing the hope that a public fully educated about what this president did would make even a Senate beholden to this president and manifestly lacking in political courage willing to bite the bullet and remove him.

By resolving now to pursue such a path, always keeping open the possibility that its inquiry would unexpectedly lead to the president’s exoneration, the House would be doing the right thing as a constitutional matter. It would be acting consistent with its overriding obligation to establish that no president is above the law, all the while keeping an eye on the balance of political considerations without setting the dangerous precedent that there are no limits to what a corrupt president can get away with as long as he has a compliant Senate to back him. And pursuing this course would preserve for all time the tale of this uniquely troubled presidency.