Senator Angus King: "Impeachment is a last resort, we may get there but not now" - Polidicks

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/420449-maine-senator-calls-impeachment-last-restort-we-may-get-there-but Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said Sunday that he doesn't support opening an impeachment inquiry against President Trump at this point, warning that doing so based on publicly available evidence would be viewed as politically motivated. King said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that it's possible Trump will face criminal charges at some point over allegations he directed former attorney Michael Cohen to violate campaign finance laws during the 2016 campaign, but disputed that impeachment proceedings would be a proper response. "I don’t think that there’s evidence yet available to the public where there would be more or less a consensus that this was an appropriate path," King said. "My concern is that if impeachment is moved forward on the evidence that we have now, at least a third of the country would think it’s just political revenge and a coup against the president." "I’m a conservative when it comes to impeachment," the senator added. "I think it’s a last resort and only when the evidence is clear of a really substantial legal violation. And we may get there, but we’re not there now." Democrats have grappled with the question of impeachment for months. Dozens of Democrats previously voted to move forward with impeachment proceedings in the House, though the measure was soundly rejected. Democratic leaders have largely voiced concerns about moving forward with impeachment, but have vowed to use their newly won majority to investigate the president's finances and ties to Russia

Actually he's not wrong. He's pointing out that while it looks like Trump is guilty, the public hasn't been shown all the evidence yet. The only thing we have right now is Cohen's word. And while that may be credible considering his circumstances, you'll need more than that to convince GOP voters this isn't a coup. Some of them are so deluded that they'll never believe he's guilty no matter what evidence is presented, but they're too far gone anyway - it's the rest you want on your side.

this is another SPECIAL EDITION smurfy as we wait to launch nuclear smurfy https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/441/9227bfa9-04e8-4cd1-bfb7-3222a27d0315/impeachment2.gif

Impeachment is going to be one helluva tricky ride. At least 90% of the Republicans are going to call it "politically motivated" no matter how much damning evidence is brought out and the Democrats are going to have to do it in such a way as to not set a precedent for the GOP to just kick any Democratic president out as soon as he's elected. Imagine the thing that happened in the Carolinas and Wisconsin where the GOP legislature handicaps the Democratic executive, but on a national level...

House Dems will refuse to seat North Carolina's Mark Harris until the fraud investigation is complete. It could set a precedent to be abused by Republicans if they get a majority to refuse to seat the entire Democratic delegaton

Not necessarily. Mark Harris is a special case because he won by a tiny margin and had been under suspicion of election fraud for ages. Plus there's a lot of credible evidence that he did in fact commit election fraud.

I don't trust Republicans to not further devolve into insanity and proclaim that the only way Democrats can ever win is by fraud

If we reach a point where a sitting Republican president declares that a democratic victory is fraudulent and refuses to seat an entire congress, we will officially have ceased being a democracy. At that point I think we'll have much bigger things to worry about... like another fucking civil war.

I don't see the point in impeaching Trump until there's a decent chance he'll be convicted in the Senate, which is a moment that will very likely never come

Trump will be a noose around the Senators' necks in 2020, Trump will drag them down but if they boot him out they'll also lose reelection.

Trump getting impeached is the true redemption smurfy needs to make up for getting permbanned because of Trump being elected president.

Losing re-election and immediately being indicted would also suffice

People shouldn't be rating this disagree. Impeachment is a political move, not a legal move. Back in the 80s, Reagan SHOULD have been impeached by the democrat controlled congress and he could have been impeached because the Iran-Contra scandal was a huge fucking scandal worse than Watergate, but he was not impeached and articles for impeachment were not filed because: 1) Democrats didn't want to put the country through another impeachment right after Nixon destroyed public trust in the government 2) Democrats believed it would help Big Bush win the coming election 3) Reagan was already on his way out anyway In all likelihood, there's a huge possibility that trump will not be impeached and he'll just go on to lose re-election(assuming the democrats don't fuck up AGAIN) and it'll be a wake up call for republicans because this time they didn't lose because the democrats fucked them over, it's because they fucked over themselves by supporting trump and his disastrous presidency.

There's a difference between Watergate and Iran/Contra and what Trump's done by orders of magnitude. Trumps is the biggest criminal in the history of the United States.

Honestly, so many politicians heads deserve to roll at the moment. I'm still waiting on anyone involved with the ATF Gun Running shenangians and the CIA's connections in the cocaine trade to be arrested and tried.

I have a bad feeling that Democrats look to let Trump stay in power for awhile so that they continue to have a boogie man to point too. They see the massive electoral wins and base building that has happened since Trump's election and want to hold onto that for as long as possible. With Pence ready to take the reigns behind him I'm not entirely sure how I feel about a Trump impeachment anyways, but I wouldn't put it past the Democrat machine to be saying this purely for political calculations. (I say this knowing Sen. King is technically an independent.) Waiting until all evidence is shown, but while Trump is an absolute piece of shit, I honestly don't see how what he's done (so far) would be worse than Iran/Contra or any of the illegal coups we've been behind. I certainly don't see how they come close to the crimes of Andrew Jackson against Native Americans. I bring this up only because the United States has a history full of some pretty scummy presidents, and I'd rather we fully acknowledge them simultaneously with the seriousness of Trump's crimes. Though, he could still outdo all the others and become our biggest criminal.