DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him.

George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him.


By George T. Conway III
April 18 at 8:09 PM

George T. Conway III is a lawyer in New York.

So it turns out that, indeed, President Trump was not exonerated at all, and certainly not “totally” or “completely,” as he claimed. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III didn’t reach a conclusion about whether Trump committed crimes of obstruction of justice — in part because, while a sitting president, Trump can’t be prosecuted under long-standing Justice Department directives, and in part because of “difficult issues” raised by “the President’s actions and intent.” Those difficult issues involve, among other things, the potentially tricky interplay between the criminal obstruction laws and the president’s constitutional authority, and the difficulty in proving criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

Still, the special counsel’s report is damning. Mueller couldn’t say, with any “confidence,” that the president of the United States is not a criminal. He said, stunningly, that “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” Mueller did not so state.

That’s especially damning because the ultimate issue shouldn’t be — and isn’t — whether the president committed a criminal act. As I wrote not long ago, Americans should expect far more than merely that their president not be provably a criminal. In fact, the Constitution demands it.

[George Terwilliger: William Barr did this nation a great service. He shouldn’t be attacked. ]

The Constitution commands the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” It requires him to affirm that he will “faithfully execute the Office of President” and to promise to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” And as a result, by taking the presidential oath of office, a president assumes the duty not simply to obey the laws, civil and criminal, that all citizens must obey, but also to be subjected to higher duties — what some excellent recent legal scholarship has termed the “fiduciary obligations of the president.”

Fiduciaries are people who hold legal obligations of trust, like a trustee of a trust. A trustee must act in the beneficiary’s best interests and not his own. If the trustee fails to do that, the trustee can be removed, even if what the trustee has done is not a crime.

So too with a president. The Constitution provides for impeachment and removal from office for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” But the history and context of the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” makes clear that not every statutory crime is impeachable, and not every impeachable offense need be criminal. As Charles L. Black Jr. put it in a seminal pamphlet on impeachment in 1974, “assaults on the integrity of the processes of government” count as impeachable, even if they are not criminal.

[The Post’s View: The Mueller report is the opposite of exoneration ]

And presidential attempts to abuse power by putting personal interests above the nation’s can surely be impeachable. The president may have the raw constitutional power to, say, squelch an investigation or to pardon a close associate. But if he does so not to serve the public interest, but to serve his own, he surely could be removed from office, even if he has not committed a criminal act.

By these standards, the facts in Mueller’s report condemn Trump even more than the report’s refusal to clear him of a crime. Charged with faithfully executing the laws, the president is, in effect, the nation’s highest law enforcement officer. Yet Mueller’s investigation “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of executing undue influence over law enforcement investigations.”

Trump tried to “limit the scope of the investigation.” He tried to discourage witnesses from cooperating with the government through “suggestions of possible future pardons.” He engaged in “direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.” A fair reading of the special counsel’s narrative is that “the likely effect” of these acts was “to intimidate witnesses or to alter their testimony,” with the result that “the justice system’s integrity [was] threatened.” Page after page, act after act, Mueller’s report describes a relentless torrent of such obstructive activity by Trump.

Contrast poor Richard M. Nixon. He was almost certain to be impeached, and removed from office, after the infamous “smoking gun” tape came out. On that tape, the president is heard directing his chief of staff to get the CIA director, Richard Helms, to tell the FBI “don’t go any further into this case” — Watergate — for national security reasons. That order never went anywhere, because Helms ignored it.

[Jennifer Rubin: Five questions that still need to be answered in the Mueller report]

Other than that, Nixon was mostly passive — at least compared with Trump. For the most part, the Watergate tapes showed that Nixon had “acquiesced in the cover-up” after the fact. Nixon had no advance knowledge of the break-in. His aides were the driving force behind the obstruction.

Trump, on the other hand, was a one-man show. His aides tried to stop him, according to Mueller: “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

As for Trump’s supposed defense that there was no underlying “collusion” crime, well, as the special counsel points out, it’s not a defense, even in a criminal prosecution. But it’s actually unhelpful in the comparison to Watergate. The underlying crime in Watergate was a clumsy, third-rate burglary in an election campaign that turned out to be a landslide.

The investigation that Trump tried to interfere with here, to protect his own personal interests, was in significant part an investigation of how a hostile foreign power interfered with our democracy. If that’s not putting personal interests above a presidential duty to the nation, nothing is.

White House counsel John Dean famously told Nixon that there was a cancer within the presidency and that it was growing. What the Mueller report disturbingly shows, with crystal clarity, is that today there is a cancer in the presidency: President Donald J. Trump.

Congress now bears the solemn constitutional duty to excise that cancer without delay.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...cb60_story.html

Kellyanne & George have to live with each other after all of this... lmao

They won’t. Nobody has the nads up there to do it.

The sheep will go “baaa bye” moving on.

Insane how the truth is very plain, yet Barr lies and protects Trump, and I bet not one Trump supported is willing to admit how damming the report is. There is no exoneration. There is only a report that pays out for Congress the grounds for impeachment. It's that simple. Mueller testimony in front of Congress should be interesting.

As I'm hearing here, Trump tried to become president, and as the investigation came in, on meetings with, well Russia, Trump directed open access and cooperation with the "investigation" which showed no wrongdoing.
Sounds like the report said the opportunity for wrongdoing was there, but none was found.

But,
On a personal note, I think, the Left, is so used to engageing in wrongdoing, that they can't imagine someone not.

Either way, George Conway sounds like just a guy with a pen, badmouthing a president. Sad.


And I only read this thread, looking to see the other side, searching to see if there's something I've missed, open to being convinced of the truth, if someone would point it out,
but from the start, from way back in 2016 or before, all I really see from the left as far as proof is something along the lines of
"We hate this guy, Get Him!"

First - George Conway is a Republican married to Kellyanne Conway, top advisor to Trump.

Second - Put away your propagandized hate for the left for an hour or two and go read the Mueller Report, get the real facts and draw your own conclusions. I look forward to comparing notes.

They all should resign including congress !!!

Conway is a loon. How Kellyanne and he co-exist is beyond me.

Well one is a paid, professional liar. The other one is a Republican.

Sorry, no idea where you get your news, no idea how interested you are in truth, but your post is so very very wrong... Most specifically this comment here. And FYI the report is extremely Damning.

Democratic tears are wonderful. It must suck to lose at every turn.

Made this for you and your ilk...

So you feel Trump was exonerated? He didn't attempt to influence multiple people's testimony? He's not under on going investigations as a result of the Mueller investigation? Barr didn't twist and take fragments of text out of context in order to try to deflect damage ???

In huh. Keep listening and parroting Trump. You do it so well.

I don't usually make fun of physical appearance, but that is one ugly couple.

"Norrrrm!" from Cheers marries 'Beavis with breasts.'
What an 'aesthetically challenged' baby that union would produce.


Dawg... you've given me nightmares for a week...

Nah, just pummel him with the other lies and sneaky stuff...

Emoluments, taxes, Russian hotel, porn stars and playboy pinups.

And the trump foundation and inauguration committee is a gold mine...

The guy is a liar... always has been.

George Conway is a disgruntled former employee who happens to have a public forum for his personal problems.

OF COURSE! There is no reason at all somebody could say these things about Trump based on Facts or personal opinion of the man.

https://twitter.com/SenatorRomney/status/1119322471105216512

Another Republican with another view on the report...

Did you read the responses? Smelled a lot like this place...


smdh

1. Who is George T. Conway III?

2. What qualifies him to speak on such matters?

3. What makes his opinion worth listening to?

He is Kelly Ann Conway's husband.



In 1984, he graduated from Harvard College in Biochemistry, obtaining an A.B. degree magna [censored] laude. He then received a J.D. degree from Yale Law School.

During his time at Yale, he was the editor of the Yale Law Journal and president of the Federalist Society, an “organization of conservatives and libertarians seeking reform of the current American legal system in accordance with a textualist or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.”

Right after college, he became a law clerk to Judge Ralph K. Winter, Jr., who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then joined, and later became a partner, for Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

He’s been a lawyer on some pretty notable cases, representing Paula Jones in her case against Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. He worked closely with both Ann Coulter and Matt Drudge during the case. He also argued the 2010 case of Morrison v. National Australia Bank, which went before the U.S. Supreme Court, and won with an 8-0 vote.

He was a candidate to serve the U.S. Department of Justice posts, and was also considered to be Solicitor General of the United States. Trump also nominated him to be Assistant Attorney General and head the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, but Conway declined to take any of these positions.





See above. He's well educated, well informed and understands what conservative values used to actually mean.

I hadn't ... I have now ... I wish I hadn't !! LOL. Lot's of ignorance. Most of it from the blind followers of Trump simply saying Mueller exonerated Trump based on what Barr/Trump said.

I don't think Trump will be impeached. I don't think Congress has the backbone to proceed with the process even though it seems clear Mueller laid out the basis for such a decision.

I do think that whenever Trump is out of office he will be prosecuted. And I think for the next 2 years there will be a steady amount of discovery of more evidence of how corrupt he is.... and he will cry martyr through it all. He's a total dirtball. Hopefully he doesn't screw up the country too bad in the mean time ...

Don't worry - we realise if it doesn't come from the lips of Donald or State Run News - you won't listen to it. All good.

j/c

Been in St. Croix for 8 mths and come back to the same BS! 1st, it's not the job of Mueller to EXONERATE Trump. His job was to find him guilty of COLLUSION and he didn't! 2nd, this obstruction crap, if Mueller had ANYTHING on him, one little nugget, Trump would be INDICTED! Flynn, Manafort or Cohen treatment by Mueller showed he didn't care about anything but getting Trump....what a piece of crap!

Keep digging and you'll keep looking like fools!

He's married to Kellyanne Conway. That answers all three.

It wasn't up to Mueller to indict him. He left the translation of his report up to the congress.

Despite witness testimony that Trump tried to get underlings to derail Mueller’s probe and lie under oath, Mueller and his team determined not to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” about whether the president violated the law that criminalizes obstruction of justice. That doesn’t mean Trump can do whatever he wants, though. “Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office,” Mueller wrote. That conclusion, he said, “accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”


You may actually wish to look at the report and what Mueller actually said before making emotional, baseless statements. It looks like you'll have to take the Trump road on this and say a lot of what the report says is BS. Because if you're trying to base your opinion on the report itself, it won't look good to you.

Mueller, per DOJ rules, was NOT ALLOWED to indict Trump. He layed out the case for Congress to take up. But hey, don't let facts get in the way.

Any type of investigation over collusion or obstruction is effectively over at this point. The democrats can pretend that they have something but they don't. We've seen this from them in the past.

The best thing about this is that it paints their entire party as nutcases. Instead of trying to govern for the American people they are content with wasting time and money on investigating thin air. I love it! This will have very very grave consequences for them in 2020.

I will happily vote Trump in 2020 because I won't do anything to change the economic gains I've made. I also like having a president that has a backbone who stands up for himself and an America first policy unlike dead fish globalists such as Obama.

Vote Trump 2020!!!!!!!

LOL - spoken without any knowledge of what's in the report. Got to love it.

One last post before I leave.

Deplorable tweet.

Yeah, reading the facts in the report doesn't mean anything. It's the Trumpian way.

Ok kids, yes you can't indict a sitting president however, Mueller could have found evidence of obstruction if there was some but noooooo, all we get from him is there might be evidence....lmao

I thought this investigation was a colossal waste of taxpayers money until I got involved with FEMA....want to get really pissed over something that affects millions of people? Keep wishing upon a star man. I'd be asking Mueller to give back my money

Again - no knowledge of what is in the report ... but go ahead and all the way to the next election where you can go ahead and vote Trump safe in the knowledge that you can remain blissfully ignorant through choice.

lmao...so you know what I read or haven't read? Trump doesn't need my vote in 2020, you Dems are the reason he'll be re-elected along with the progress this country is making under his leadership.

Still waiting for Schiff to disclose the evidence of collusion he has but Trumps the liar lol....they're ALL liars!!!!

This is the statement that let me know you have no clue what the report says. But go ahead and take Trump or Barr or State Run Fox's word for it.

Hey - here's some clues. Even got a friendly source for you:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/shepard-smith-fox-news-mueller-report.html


“If I’m the president, I’m real happy with what William Barr did this morning,” said Smith. “But if I’m one seeking the truth about what’s in this report, in many cases, uh, we were deceived.” ....


“[I] was surprised that [Trump] had forgotten so many things, though,” said Smith. “Because I remember specifically him telling us that he has one of the best memories ever.” ....

After noting that the special counsel had found that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “was no hoax” and that “the [Trump] campaign expected to benefit from the stolen information that the Russians released,” Smith reiterated his initial point. “Robert Mueller’s report does not clear President Trump of obstruction of justice,” he said. “In fact, the special counsel wrote that if he could clear the president of obstruction of justice, he would, but that he could not.”

George Conway is a real piece of crap. What kind of man throws his wife under the bus by continue to insult her boss. She has to be embarrassed. I don't know why she hasn't divorced this clown already

Just an FYI, Sheppard Smith is a Trump hater. It's why I like Fox because they cover BOTH sides. Smith also said that Trump saying his tower was wiretapped was bull and no evidence...still waiting for that apology Shep.

It's not Muellers job to exonerate man, what don't you get about that? Those words should never have been spoken or written. The man stole tax payers money, destroyed peoples lives then had the audacity to write that bs report?

Some of you guys amaze me with the acceptance of piss poor work!

She's 'Miscarriage 45's' mouthpiece.
Nothing can embarrass a person who has no shame.

If you read the Mueller Report and took that away from it, I 'd suggest an adult remedial reading course asap.