Palace intrigue

[John Galt]

mueller also indicted manafort during that time, philly, and manafort pleaded guilty. however, as part of the plea, he agreed to not-lie, and the mueller team now says he was lying, and so now they are pursuing more charges. charges of course went to cohen as well. and trump is preoccupied with it, and it was the reason why the man who most faithfully executed on trump's vision, jeff sessions, is out of a job

i also don't believe you philly that you managed to insulate yourself from all of that. sure, not refreshing the news to look for stuff about meuller, and not reading every article about "what mueller is gonna do next!!!" click bait, but you'd be hard pressed to not know sessions is out of a job and still like, read any news

[Winchester]

[Philly]

[JDHURF]

Special Counsel Mueller's investigation is getting legit substantial now. I thought that there was a significantly high probability that Trump would serve out his first term without bipartisan challenge, republicans getting on board being a necessity, but I now calculate the probability at moderate to low. If the investigation mounts exponentially, as it has recently been, and the majority democratic House opens a series of damning investigations in the new year, repubs are going to be forced to challenge Trump's egregiously overt crimes.

[JDHURF]

[Winchester]

[JDHURF]

[Philly]

As it does indeed appear to getting substantial now, what are everyone's predictions for what happens in the likely event that Mueller concludes his investigation by reporting strong evidence of indictable offenses committed by Trump?

I doubt that an indictment will be issued for Trump. It seems clear that the Supreme Court would rule that a sitting President cannot be indicted outside of Congress' right to pursue impeachment.

So moving to that, the House has a Democratic majority that could vote to impeach. But then it goes to the Senate. The Republicans hold a slim majority there, but keep in mind that a successful vote to convict is not a simple majority, or even the 60 vote threshold that filibuster rules often require for Senate business to proceed. A full two-thirds of the Senate - 67 of the 100 Senators - must vote to convict. That means that if every member of the Democratic caucus votes to convict, they would also need support from 19 Republicans. I can think of two Senate Republicans who have shown any inclination toward being anything but Trump loyalists since Trump took office. One of them is Jeff Flake, who probably would kitty out in the end, but that's a moot point because he is retiring at the end of the year anyway. The other is John McCain, who left the Senate earlier this year so he could spend more time burning in hell.

I don't think there's any shot. And with that in mind, does it make sense for the House Dems to even do it?

[JockandBallTorture]

[Philly]

I don't see the Trump Admin as being all that out of step with previous presidencies regarding their relationship with the Saudi government. When he said that we have a bunch of deals and whatnot going on with Saudi Arabia and that takes priority over a journalist being murdered, that's the truth. It would have been the truth if he had been murdered under Obama too, but Obama would never be f**k stupid enough to just say that in public.