We now have the first impeachable offense in place....who was that candidate for federal office?

PkrBum wrote:Lol... none of that has anything to do with russian collusion or the obstruction thereof.

outbyseptember? again? Gawd you're easy when the leftists throw you a crumb.

ConservaLady wrote:This is a deep-state conspiracy to remove a fairly and democratically elected President.

Cohen plead to the fake "campaign contribution" charge as part of a deal on a bunch of unrelated-to-Trump tax charges to limit his sentencing and the prosecutors also agreed to not look into other potential tax charges.   Essentially, they used the tax charges as a metaphorical "gun to his head" to get him to plea to the fake "campaign contribution" charge.

Trump reimbursed Cohen for the amounts Cohen paid to the women for the non-disclosure agreements, and he did it with his own funds, not campaign funds.  That little fact was released last May in a routine ethics disclosure.  Further Trump not only reimbursed Cohen for the non-disclosure payment but also for a lot of other services and expenses Cohen had incurred in other legal matters for Trump to the tune of nearly half a million dollars.  Cohen was Trump's attorney so of course he incurs expenses for various legal matters and Trump reimburses him.  They've worked this way together for years.  This is no secret. These payments were fully disclosed.  They are not illegal payments and are not campaign contributions.   Further Cohen was negotiating with these women's attorneys long before the campaign.  

Consider this analogy. Supposing a person with many complicated businesses has an ongoing dispute with some vendors over how much his businesses owe them.  Or say those other businesses are claiming they are due some sort of damages due to some matter. Then the person decides to run for public office, and instructs his long time company attorney to just go ahead and pay off these people to just end the dispute so it doesn't become a matter of controversy during the campaign.   Then the person reimburses his attorney for those payments, as well as a lot of other services and payments the attorney has incurred on behalf of his client for other things.  Is that an "illegal campaign donation?"  But of course not.  It would be silly to try and characterize it as such.  This situation with Trump, Cohen, and the payments to these women is no different.

The Cohen campaign donation charge is really a fake crime.  There will be no impeachment or indictment of Trump. And he won't be resigning either. Count on it.  And he will continue draining the swamp.  Particularly at DOJ.  

zsomething wrote:You could just type "I'm sticking my fingers in my ears and yelling 'LA LA LA LA LA!'" and save yourself a lot of typing time.

You're either so delusional you should be taking meds for it, or you're a doing a parody of a Christian-conservative for comedic effect.   Either way, you are getting laughs!

When it comes to the Russia investigation, there are many reasons why the core Trump supporter is completely impervious to literally any development, no matter how explosive, that might occur. Here, in no particular order, are the ten most significant:

1. They don’t understand the investigation, partly because they don’t want to. It is complex and if you lack an interest in it because you’re afraid of what you might learn (and your preferred media outlets like to ignore these stories), then you don’t even know who the characters are. It then becomes impossible to put all the pieces together, which in this particular saga is critical to comprehending it.

2. They think that by this point there should be proof of Trump’s “collusion” with Russia (the Trump Team setting that as the only goal post which matters has been highly effective) and therefore anything that doesn’t meet that absurdly high bar is deemed irrelevant and in fact, actually evidence that Trump is the target of some sort of coup from his own justice department.

3. Trump and his State-run media (Fox News, the Drudge Report, and talk radio) have nefariously, and without a shred of real evidence or logic, used nutty conspiracy theories to discredit Mueller – a man who, in a rational world, every single Republican should easily trust more than Trump in literally every situation.

4. Because they think he is a super-rich and highly successful “businessman,” and he shocked the world by slaying the wicked witch (Hillary Clinton) when everyone said he couldn’t, they presume he is both too smart to do anything this stupid, or, he is too politically inexperienced to understand all the rules, whichever works best for them personally.

5. Because they think he is fighting for them when no one else will, they view him as far too virtuous for them to presume the worst about his actions/intentions. Understanding the real Trump is a critical component to properly interpreting the facts here (for example, if you don’t accept that Trump is an obvious scoundrel you might not even believe that he had extramarital affairs to begin with, or that he is obviously lying about knowing of the Trump Tower meeting). So lacking that perspective, the allegations can’t even get any real traction with them. The weirdest part of this phenomenon is that many strong Trump supporters will also openly admit that, as a person, he is an “asshole.”

6. They think that the economy is great and that Trump has been in office long enough now to give him full credit for it, even though invariably they have great difficulty pointing to what exactly he has done to cause this, or how things are significantly better than the last few years under President Obama. I have yet to get a specific answer on these many “regulations” Trump has supposedly/magically cut which have allegedly spurred growth. The most bizarre aspect of this “the ends justify the means” defense of Trump is that this is the exact same argument these same people rejected when it was used on behalf of Bill Clinton during his impeachment.

7. Prominent members of the “conservative” State-run media, themselves completely invested in the narrative that they didn’t sell the base a total fraud, are more than willing to keep feeding Cult 45 nonsensical rationalizations to explain/deflect any allegation that comes up. Here the “conservative” media and their customers have a symbiotic relationship that is much like that of a therapist and patient. The therapist gets paid and the patient feels better about whatever it is that they already wanted to believe in the first place.

8. The non-State-run media has lost ALL their credibility with Trump supporters, at least when it comes to Trump. After all, their thinking goes, the mainstream news media cheered on Obama for over eight years and even spent the 2016 primary season telling them how exciting Trump was. They also said that Trump couldn’t possibly win so therefore, because he won in an Electoral College fluke, in their minds nothing else they say about Trump can ever be seen as the truth, even when they are simply quoting Trump himself!

9. They are totally personally invested in the idea that their support for Trump is not a mistake. Calling them dumb, which I have been too prone to doing, only further deepens their investment. They are the embodiment of the extremely wise adage that it is far easier to dupe someone than to convince them that they have been duped.

10. Because his opponent was the “evil” Hillary Clinton, and replaced the “un-American” Barack Obama (he violated campaign finance laws too, you know!!), they have created in their minds this fantasy that it is literally impossible for ANYTHING Trump does to be worse than what would happen if she had won (an illogical concept which I, despite being an ardent Clinton critic, have long fought against). As the ultimate catch-all, this automatically absolves Trump of significant blame for anything because, in their minds, things would be SO much worse if he hadn’t, with the possibly help of God himself, beaten back the beast who threatened to end America. In short, collusion with Russia is good!

2seaoat wrote:

The origin of funds is a strawman which will lose in court,