Open Bribery of Trump Becomes Obvious

All presidents put their personal assets in a trust, still own all of it, can still draw from it as needed, have active contact with the managers, and take it back when they leave office. The only difference here is it’s a large privately held business.

No, with the exception of Trump, all presidents have put their assets in a blind trust, and have had no contact with trust managers.

Frankly, this is much much better than every other president in history. When some partner in Malaysia or wherever does a deal with a Chinese construction company, you know about it. As long as there’s pretty good transparency, and there has been, then it’s greater accountability than has ever existed before.

You're very naive.

It’s a revokable (after leaving office) blind trust instructed not to sell his stake in his company. It’s not held by his family. He doesn’t have visibility over any of the other assets and the trustees can/must act without his input to maximize the value of the trust.

It's not even a trust; he just stepped aside and said his son was in charge.

I know these are nuanced technicalities, but they do matter.

They're not "nuanced technicalities," they're the facts of the matter, and you have them wildly wrong.

Clinton v Jones is a civil case. Presidents can be sued while in office and can be compelled to testify in those cases subject to reasonable restrictions of the court. That has nothing to do with criminal.

Yes.  I said that.

In a criminal case, the president would have to be impeached first and then criminally charged.

Again, this is not decided law.

As a parallel, a member of the House of Lords accused of a felony would be prosecuted in the House of Lords. It’s a bit more clear with the Lords as the UK judiciary is by design less independent.

Not especially relevant to this discussion, so this is unhelpful.

If by “undecided” you mean no enterprising district attorney has ever attempted to circumvent the constitutional impeachment process to charge a sitting president, faced a sovereign immunity defense, and had lower courts side with the prosecutor so the Supreme Court could clearly restate what the constitution says... sure. No one no matter how extreme their politics has ever wasted time on such a thing that even they knew was a dead end.

No, by "undecided", I mean it is untested and, therefore, legally undecided.  In your post, you stated with some certainty that the President was immune, as a matter of law.  It is undecided.

I said inoculated in reference to the political question doctrine on which the court has ruled multiple times in multiple contexts. They simply will not allow courts to overturn the results of a properly conducted election where the people had their say.

This isn't about "overturn(ing) the results of a properly conducted election".  This is about whether or not the President can be prosecuted for prior criminal offences and/or tried for apparent violations of the emoluments clause while in office.  Your claim was that, because the electorate knew what he was like before they voted, Trump gets a pass.  This is incorrect.

Even in really clear cases - like members of congress are constitutionally prohibited from simultaneously holding a commission in the reserves - the court has held that it is up to the people in the electoral process to hold politicians accountable to those rules. If they choose not to, then the court will find the judiciary doesn’t have jurisdiction over the issue.

That situation is not germane to the present question, as that whole case centers on whether or not the individual was eligible to hold office.  We're not debating Trump's eligibility to hold office.  We're debating whether or not he is immune from criminal prosecution for acts committed prior to taking office.

If the guy is guilty of some past felony that wasn’t revealed before the election, or some felony or crime or moral turpitude since the election, then by all means impeach him and then feel free to charge him criminally.

So now you're saying it is possible to charge him for prior acts while he's in office?  I thought your argument was that the President was inoculated against it because the people voted for him even though they knew what he did or would potentially do.

But pragmatically, it is not possible to gain enough votes in the midterms to do that.

Again, this is not about pragmatism.  You stated unequivocally that the President was legally inoculated against prosecution.  I pointed out that you are incorrect.  Now you say "Sure, go ahead and do it" and also "but pragmatically, it's not possible...".  So you were wrong?  You could have just said that.

So short of him murdering kids on tv in the rose garden or something sufficient to make a critical mass of republican senators to vote for his removal, it just is not a reasonable possibility.

This I agree with.  The GOP do seem to be happy to let Trump stay in office no matter what he does.  But that doesn't mean Mueller or anybody else can't bring charges against Trump if they gather enough evidence.

Damn, Mr Texas, it isn't looking so good for your arguments.  Both of those amateurs just roasted you pretty good.

I'm not attacking you on a personal level, but I just don't get why you are willing to make excuses for Trump.  You say that you are examining both sides and aren't a cheerleader either way, but it must be obvious to you that arguing a sitting President is immune from the law is plain silly.  Even more, how do you avoid being personally insulted by Trump's open contempt for both the law and the institutions we hold so dear, especially the military.  When you hear about Trump threatening military action by Tweet does your blood not boil?  When Trump meets with the Russians in the oval office and reveals classified intelligence from our allies does that not make you go ballistic?  When that draft dodger wears some article of military insignia are you not sick in your mouth?

  My Bold

You said it yourself, and what you have just conceded would have been enough to get any other President impeached a thousand times over.

Plenty of Presidents have dealt with putting their business interests in a blind trust, there is nothing new in that.  Trump is the first President in modern times to openly profit from the Presidency and put a middle finger up to the constitution and the American People smart enough to know what is going on.  You yourself admit that this trust is a farce, why continue to argue?  I would imagine that a man educated in the law would be the least tolerant to Trump's contempt for it. 

 I've never heard the theory that since the public should have known he was a crook when they voted for him then it is okay for him to continue .  I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think the law works like that.  Does that work for *bleep* Grabbing as well?  Is he like 007 and has a license to sexually assault ? 

I think this line of reasoning is a bit much.  It's even funnier that you think these transactions are OK because they are under a lot of scrutiny.  Yes they are, and most people who hear about this and the other bribes funnelled through Cohen are Incensed!  Just because we are in the middle of working out the corruption charges doesn't mean they have been scrutinised and found to be OK, it's just that there is so much corruption coming from everywhere there's a long queue. 

I'm also very surprised that someone as intelligent as you could be so certain that Trump will see the end of his term and state that almost as a fact. Nobody has any idea, including you.  Anything is possible in this crazy news season.  Your certainty to be able to tell the future lowers your credibility significantly.

Every single president has had a trust, known the assets of that trust at least roughly, and taken actions which at times benefited their investment positions. Every single one. At least in the modern era where we’ve been doing trusts. The existence of a potential to do wrong is not doing wrong, is not unique to this president, and is not in any way disqualifying. It certainly is not impeachable.

We combat this with transparency. And expressly because everyone knows the business asset of that trust then every transaction of that business and every action of the govt that could potentially benefit the business is seen and scrutinized like no other president in history. When we were doing bailouts of auto companies and some banks but not others, no one knew and no one asked which ones the president had shared in. Yet that wasn’t a problem and this is?

Again, he has lost millions upon millions so far by becoming president. And that’s just the business, not his personal outlay to run. In no way has he profited from holding the office.

The trust is not a farce. It’s a perfectly normal trust. My wife and I have several. There’s nothing nefarious or untoward about how he’s done this one. He wants his company back after he leaves office, he wants the successor to control it in the interim, he has to be able to speak to his son, and he wants to be able to spend his own money when he wants to. No sane person would do it differently than he has.

I did not say any present behavior is excused. I said it’s essentially impossible to revoke an election result from a properly conducted election based on past conduct that was openly known to voters at the time they voted. Those were arguments you needed to make to voters before the election. Any past conduct not known at that time or anything that has happened since the election is NOT excused and is fair game. But you have to prove it. You can’t just say you think he’s a scumbag based on past conduct so you assume he’s doing something wrong now. That doesn’t work.

The Cohen thing... he never gave money to trump. If was paid by a pharma company to advise them on how Trump thinks then I hope he did work or he could be in some trouble. If advancing the payment to the pornstar and getting reimbursed later was a loan, then the 850k Clinton paid to settle with an NDA before his election was too. And the tens of thousands of similar cases at all levels from all parties. You can’t come along now and say we interpret the letter of the law on this gray area issue to be this, even though it never has been before. And we’re going to enforce it this way in this case but not every other case under the sun. That’s selective prosecution, in addition to making up new law and applying it retroactively.

I mean I think Cohen is going to surrender his license before this is over and he might have to pay a fine, &/or Trump might. But I’ve yet to see anything there that approaches a bribe.

People do pretty much pay lawyers to predict the future. And they don’t come back when you’re wrong. I don’t mean to come off as an arrogant know it all. That’s not the case. It is just not my job to tell you a version of this that you can bring yourself to believe. It’s my position to predict the ultimate outcome based on the evidence presently available. And just pragmatically, it’s almost impossible to remove presidents even with control of both houses and even if they’re openly selling appointments and all other manner of very direct crimes.


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Yes.  I said that.

Again, this is not decided law.

Not especially relevant to this discussion, so this is unhelpful.

No, by "undecided", I mean it is untested and, therefore, legally undecided.  In your post, you stated with some certainty that the President was immune, as a matter of law.  It is undecided.

This isn't about "overturn(ing) the results of a properly conducted election".  This is about whether or not the President can be prosecuted for prior criminal offences and/or tried for apparent violations of the emoluments clause while in office.  Your claim was that, because the electorate knew what he was like before they voted, Trump gets a pass.  This is incorrect.

That situation is not germane to the present question, as that whole case centers on whether or not the individual was eligible to hold office.  We're not debating Trump's eligibility to hold office.  We're debating whether or not he is immune from criminal prosecution for acts committed prior to taking office.

So now you're saying it is possible to charge him for prior acts while he's in office?  I thought your argument was that the President was inoculated against it because the people voted for him even though they knew what he did or would potentially do.

Again, this is not about pragmatism.  You stated unequivocally that the President was legally inoculated against prosecution.  I pointed out that you are incorrect.  Now you say "Sure, go ahead and do it" and also "but pragmatically, it's not possible...".  So you were wrong?  You could have just said that.

This I agree with.  The GOP do seem to be happy to let Trump stay in office no matter what he does.  But that doesn't mean Mueller or anybody else can't bring charges against Trump if they gather enough evidence.

Again, it’s not decided because almost no prosecutors and no trial court judges in history have ever allowed such a thing far enough beyond the gate that it could even be appealed in order to set a precedent. There is no precedent cause the case for jurisdiction is so weak as to not exist.

The House of Lords parallel is actually very relevant and would be persuasive authority in such a case. Not just because it is a parallel example that answers a question the Supreme Court hasn’t, but precisely because our law even well after the constitution was adopted was British Law. They drafted this procedure in our constitution to function in the same way in our system that it did in the parliamentary system. It has evolved slightly different, but the overwhelming case is for the necessity of impeachment prior to prosecution. Even the limitations in the Jones case speak to that when there are hundreds of thousands of prosecutors across the country with authority to bring charges and no way anyone could govern while facing that kind of nuisance.

No one can be tried for violation of the emoluments clause. It is not a criminal offense. It would be ground for impeachment only. The cases that have been brought to compel enforcement have been dismissed for lack of standing, even while including members of congress as plaintiffs. The only option is impeachment. The only capability to provide a more specific definition of emoluments (other than the specific meaning at the time of drafting and the common law of what has been acceptable since then) is in the hands of congress. That is a political question and the courts regardless of leaning won’t intervene.

If you thought my argument was that the president by virtue of election is pardoned for all past acts and/or that he may continue to commit such acts, then you misread my argument. What I consistently said is the president is essentially inoculated against the things that were public knowledge at the time of the election. Not things that were not known and not future conduct. Check my prior post. It hasn’t changed.

The court has ruled numerous times on political question doctrine. They’ve been consistent and across all party lines.

Mueller can do whatever the hell he wants. I would guess if he attempted to indict the president that the judge would dismiss, and that the most he can do is present his findings to congress with advice that they pursue impeachment. Which at that point comes down to the vote count, not the evidence, and it’s not possible for democrats to win enough seats to remove him with a party line vote.


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Damn, Mr Texas, it isn't looking so good for your arguments.  Both of those amateurs just roasted you pretty good.

I'm not attacking you on a personal level, but I just don't get why you are willing to make excuses for Trump.  You say that you are examining both sides and aren't a cheerleader either way, but it must be obvious to you that arguing a sitting President is immune from the law is plain silly.  Even more, how do you avoid being personally insulted by Trump's open contempt for both the law and the institutions we hold so dear, especially the military.  When you hear about Trump threatening military action by Tweet does your blood not boil?  When Trump meets with the Russians in the oval office and reveals classified intelligence from our allies does that not make you go ballistic?  When that draft dodger wears some article of military insignia are you not sick in your mouth?

I’m not so sure that’s the case. Again, it’s not my business to persuade you I’m right, it’s my business to be right. And I am right on this. Minus some insane revelation in conjunction with democrats taking away more safe republican seats than their wildest fantasies, it just is not a legitimate thing to believe he would be removed before the next election.

I’m really not making excuses for the guy. Legitimately, the case isn’t there, and it’s not possible to get a jury in congress that’d convict no matter what that case might be. Either way, he’s the president till we elect another one.

As I said, I don’t like the guy. On a personal level I despise him. On a policy level, I vehemently disagree with a number of his positions. And I think he’s an immature dumbass when it comes to the day to day doing of the job. I didn’t vote for him. I voted for Gary Johnson as a protest in a state that’d vote for any republican even if Jesus Christ were the democratic nominee. My worst nightmare was Clinton and Trump as the two nominees. I would have loved to see Webb or any number of reasonable respectable democrats vs Cruz or any number of respectable republicans. But this guy got the nomination, he legitimately won the election, and I have to accept that as much as the most progressive of democrats should.

However, when I see some of the emotionally biased rush to judgement and some of the unethical tactics used to target him, then my injustice radar starts warming up. I don’t often like to defend the guy, but when I happen on a one sided conversation, I am happy to try to provide some perspective. You don’t have to be persuaded. Just skeptical till there is proof and open minded is all I’m going for.


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Legally that makes it a political question decided by the people, that they’re perfectly able to reverse in 2020 if they choose, and basically inoculates him against all of that.

Again, it’s not decided because almost no prosecutors and no trial court judges in history have ever allowed such a thing far enough beyond the gate that it could even be appealed in order to set a precedent. There is no precedent cause the case for jurisdiction is so weak as to not exist.

So, "Legally... it's not decided"?

Every single president...

Again, it’s not decided...

I’m not so sure...

A little over 1,400 words twisting yourself up into rhetorical knots about how it's actually a positive thing that the president is a well known fraud who refuses to divest himself while also placing unqualified members of his family into advisory roles in his administration like some tinpot dictator, because it means the eyes of the world are watching his every move, thus providing unprecedented transparency, to say nothing of all that other ridiculous static proving only how little you paid attention in your constitutional law class.

All you had to write was "I'm ok with massive corruption, as long as it's a Republican in office."

Now there is this in the news today....

Trump lawyer 'paid by Ukraine' to arrange White House talks - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44215656

Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn... https://www.npr.org/2018/07/25/632300960/federal-lawsuit-against-president-trumps-business-interests-allowed-to-proceed?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180725

I hear that the latest talking points from the Republicans is that we should be thankful the Russians interfered with the election because they saved us from Hillary.  Nothing to see here, move along.

I'm really interested to hear Lvjereremylv 's take on the Finland summit. 

Things are getting good now that Trump's dodgy lawyer has turned against him. 

Rumour has it that Trump not only paid off some “girlfriends” to go away, but may have paid for an abortion as well. 

Also, the lawyer claims Trump knew in advance about the meeting with the Russian spies.  That’s new and will be hard to explain away. 

Come on lvJeremeyiv, this stuff must have your brain in knots!

Can we at least agree that if Trump paid for an abortion, you’ll end support for him?


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Appoints anti Roe V Wade judge.....