Clyde_Style wrote:Maybe until 2020, but not necessarily. As you can see here some smart people are making good cases for why it is hard to remove him. I have also provided additional input on why he may still be ousted. I don't put odds on these things. That's a mistake IMO.
Better I think is to look at the big picture and understand how vast a criminal conspiracy this is and once that is grasped it becomes easier to understand why conventional logic about why he is shielded may not hold up.
If it were just Trump was a criminal, that would be another story. This is about a crew of criminals installed with the help of an even more powerful foreign criminal. And a whole party's leadership going along for the ride knowing what they were getting into bed with. Nobody should think for a second these GOP senators didn't have the security clearances to know Trump was in bed with Putin.
The Senators like Burr on the Senate Intelligence Committee have the highest clearances. He has control of the committee yet he is one of the only Republicans with actual power to work fairly with the Democrats on this investigation within Congress and that committee has worked with Mueller intimately. He knows more than most senators. But they all know what they signed up for.
There are few constitutional precedents for this situation, but what many fail to keep adding is there are few constitutional precedents either. And for that reason, new ground may be broken. For instance, Mueller may indict Trump and courts may rule a trial may proceed. That's new ground.
For that and other reasons the cohesion of a slight GOP Senate majority may not be enough to shield Trump from ouster.
He can also lose all or most of his assets due state prosecutions and asset seizures which the congress has no say in either way. This is a super complex and the strain for Trump and his associates must be close to unbearable already.
The NRA is going to be indicted. Key members of the GOP will be indicted. It's a storm that will reach cyclone force and the public support of the GOP has been broken down as about 40% of Republicans are totally hardcore and will back Trump all the way. But that portion represents only 18% of the vote.
As Congress is composed of political animals, the GOP's unity in the face of this storm looks likely to break off into flanks of the group that goes down with the ship and a core group of Republican Senators and Congresspeople who decide to disassociate from the Trump wing of the party and either stake themselves out as the salvation of the party or go down in opposition to it.
But I seriously doubt that after what is revealed, who is indicted and convicted this next 6-9 months that the unity of the GOP will resemble anything like the previous 18 months. Therefore, Trump will be impeachable.
Personally, I hope you're right, but honestly right now most of this seems like a best case scenario, rather than the most likely scenario.
At this point, things have become so partisan that what people believe matters almost as much as actual facts (and more so in some cases). If enough people can be convinced that the facts and evidence ultimately presented by Mueller are untrue, then Republicans in Congress will have enough cover to continue to do nothing. They don't need the truth on their side -- they only need an excuse to pretend to doubt Mueller's findings and justify their inaction. Even if the Dems take back the House and impeach Trump, a two-thirds majority is needed in the Senate to convict. Thus far, the assanine efforts to attack and tarnish the investigation have been more successful than I would have ever thought possible, and we can expect such efforts to continue in full force, including another push to impeach Rosenstein, which, even if it fails, still serves to discredit him for much of the public.
Assuming that Rosenstein remains in his role and the investigation is allowed to conclude, Mueller will ultimately produce a confidential report for the DOJ, and then it will be up to Rosenstein to share some, or all, of it to Congress and potentially to the public. From what we know of Rosenstein, and hints of the seriousness of the allegations that will end up in the report and our best guess about Mueller's recommendation, he will likely share most/all of it with Congress. We also know that Rosenstein, like Mueller, is very much "by the book" and therefore may not make the full report available to the public. So the decision to act on it may be left with Congress, and they can decide to share all, none, or only select pieces. And from what we've seen from folks like Devin Nunes, there could be different conclusions drawn from the report from different sects in Congress, each trying to present a version that best suits their needs. At that point, Rosenstein might decide to release the entire report, but inevitably some parts will still need to be redacted for security reasons, and I expect that Trump and the Nunes crowd will point to those as information being deliberately withheld, and try to claim these redactions as evidence of their bullsh*t "deep state" conspiracy theories.
Alternatively, or in combination with the report, Mueller could attempt to indict the President. Whether he can do so will then need to be decided in the courts, and if Kavanaugh is confirmed by then, along with the extension of partisanship politics to the SCOTUS, the outcome may not be in Mueller's favor.
Of course, there could be a true, undeniable, smoking-gun or something equivalent, which would change things immensely. But it remains to be seen if that will happen, and this is unfortunately a very complex, wide-ranging, and high stakes case, making the burden of proof that much more difficult. Like you, I hope for the best, but I remain skeptical.
