A couple of clarifications are merited adav8s28. First, as you know, Trump wasn't impeached because of the Mueller Report, but rather Ukraine. I'd argue that the Mueller Report was a dead end. The chief outcomes were that Manafort and Cohen were prosecuted. Manafort certainly deserved to be convicted and Cohen probably did. And Flynn and George Papadopoulus were convicted on trumped up charges. Correct me if you think I'm wrong, but Mueller didn't come up with anything that showed Trump or associates colluded with the Russians, although he did show the Russians interfered in the election.Tiny, I will have to get back to you on this one. Briefly, a couple of things.
The director of the IRS's Exempt Organizations Unit, Lois Lerner, was not fired. Rather, she resigned.
Furthermore President Obama made a series of speeches in 2010, effectively telegraphing the IRS to go after Tea Party 501(c)(4) organizations. Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and five other Democratic senators weren't as subtle. They wrote the Commissioner of the IRS demanding that the IRS investigate conservative 501(c)(4)'s.
Here are a couple of links. I've included Kimberley Strassel's timeline from the WSJ article, along with some remarks, in bold, that sum it all up.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001...29571309012846
https://www.scribd.com/doc/142073156...oad&from_embed
Aug. 9, 2010: In Texas, President Obama for the first time publicly names a group he is obsessed with—Americans for Prosperity (founded by the Koch Brothers)—and warns about conservative groups. Taking up a cry that had until then largely been confined to left-wing media and activists, he says: "Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads . . . And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."
Aug. 11: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sends out a fundraising email warning about "Karl Rove-inspired shadow groups."
Aug. 21: Mr. Obama devotes his weekly radio address to the threat of "attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names. We don't know who's behind these ads and we don't know who's paying for them. . . . You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation. . . . The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide."
Week of Aug. 23: The New Yorker's Jane Mayer authors a hit piece on the Koch brothers, entitled "Covert Operations," in which she accuses them of funding "political front groups." The piece repeats the White House theme, with Ms. Mayer claiming the Kochs have created "slippery organizations with generic-sounding names" that have "made it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington."
Aug. 27: White House economist Austan Goolsbee, in a background briefing with reporters, accuses Koch industries of being a pass-through entity that does "not pay corporate income tax." The Treasury inspector general investigates how it is that Mr. Goolsbee might have confidential tax information. The report has never been released.
This same week, the Democratic Party files a complaint with the IRS claiming the Americans for Prosperity Foundation is violating its tax-exempt status.
Sept. 2: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee warns on its website that the Kochs have "funneled their money into right-wing shadow groups."
Sept. 16: Mr. Obama, in Connecticut, repeats that a "foreign-controlled entity" might be funding "millions of dollars of attack ads." Four days later, in Philadelphia, he again says the problem is that "nobody knows" who is behind conservative groups.
Sept. 21: Sam Stein, in his Huffington Post article "Obama, Dems Try to Make Shadowy Conservative Groups a Problem for Conservatives," writes that a "senior administration official" had "urged a small gathering of reporters to start writing on what he deemed 'the most insidious power grab that we have seen in a very long time.' "
Sept. 22: In New York City, Mr. Obama warns that conservative groups "pose as non-for-profit, social welfare and trade groups," even though they are "guided by seasoned Republican political operatives" who might be funded by a "foreign-controlled corporation."
Sept. 26: On ABC's "This Week," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod declares outright that the "benign-sounding Americans for Prosperity, the American Crossroads Fund" are "front groups for foreign-controlled companies."
Sept. 28: The president, in Wisconsin, again warns about conservative organizations "posing as nonprofit groups." Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, writes to the IRS demanding it investigate nonprofits. The letter names conservative organizations.
On Oct. 14, Mr. Obama calls these groups "a problem for democracy." On Oct. 22, he slams those who "hide behind these front groups." On Oct. 25, he upgrades them to a "threat to our democracy." On Oct. 26, he decries groups engaged in "unsupervised spending."
These were not off-the-cuff remarks. They were repeated by the White House and echoed by its allies in campaign events, emails, social media and TV ads. The president of the United States spent months warning the country that "shadowy," conservative "front" groups—"posing" as tax-exempt entities and illegally controlled by "foreign" players—were engaged in "unsupervised" spending that posed a "threat" to democracy. Yet we are to believe that a few rogue IRS employees just happened during that time to begin systematically targeting conservative groups? A mere coincidence that among the things the IRS demanded of these groups were "copies of any contracts with and training materials provided by Americans for Prosperity"?
This newspaper reported Thursday that Cincinnati IRS employees are now telling investigators that they took their orders from Washington. For anyone with a memory of 2010 politics, that was obvious from the start. Originally Posted by Tiny
1. I think the Mueller report had like 10 examples where Trump broke the law, four of the examples were stronger than the others.
2. Even former Judge Napolitano of Fox said Trump was guilty of a couple of them.
3. Papadoupolos lied to the FBI. Lying is not a trumped of charge. Papadoupolos was doing more than just fetching coffee at meetings.
4. Don Junior did have a meeting with the Russians in Trump tower.
I need some time to look at your links. I will get back to you in a couple days. Sunday is for the NFL.
