How to get to The Impeachment of a President

In November of 1998 Newt Gingrich tried to impeach a president, now 19 years later, it seems he may get his wish.

And this isnt entirely a cheap shot at Gingrich either....his attempt to impeach Clinton might actually link into the future impeachment of President Trump.

So despite what was written on the articles of impeachment for Clinton, the public case was basically the guy was immoral cause he was cheated on his wife and was having all of these affairs and Gingich and rest of the GOP keep bringing up new stories and new allegations to attack Clinton with...what his wife called a "vast right wing conspiracy", and some of these allegations started prior to the actual impeachment proceedings

Well one of the "Conspirators" was a gentleman named Peter W. Smith, who back in the 1990's actually worked for Newt Gingrich's political action committee.  Smith was the one who went digging into some reports by Arkansas State Troopers and eventually led him and David Brock (at the time a conservative and working with Smith) to one Paula Jones...the first of many well known stories about Bill Clinton's affairs.

Now how does this have any bearing on Donald Trump's possible impeachment nearly two decades later?

Simple. Smith never gave up the cause. He kinda made it his lifes mission to attack the Clintons.  And not too long after then Candidate Trump suggested the Russians did hack and should turn over Clintons emails during a campaign speech, Smith decided to test that exact theory.

So he, and a group he put together to assist him with this task reached out to Russian hackers and operatives to try to acquire the emails.  Of course this wound up being futile because while its true Hillary's servers COULD have been hacked, but as the FBI itself determined there is no evidence it was.

But thats not to say his attempts were inconsequential. Far from it. In fact based on the timeline Smith gave to the Wallstreet Journal, it seems possible that it was Smith's attempts at reaching out to the Russian hackers, that were picked up by the FBI and used as the justification to start the investigation into collusion between Trump and Russia in the first place, as the intercepted communications mentioned trying to get the Hillary Emails to the Trump campaign.

However, it should be noted Smith denies working for the Trump Campaign, and they deny employing him....and that seems to be true.

But wait I hear you ask, how does this get Trump impeached? Afterall didn't I just prove it was possible the communications the FBI intercepted originated with someone outside the Trump campaign, and therefore actually clear the Trump campaign of any wrongdoing?

Nope. Because it turns out, just like in the 1990's Smith wasnt working alone...he claims he had a partner....Michael Flynn. And not just Michael Flynn either, Smith claims that the Flynn Intel Group, Flynns consulting firm was partnered with him, and that Michael Flynn Jr was actually one of the members of his investigative group.

Now for what its worth, Flynn Sr, Jr, and the firm have all refused to comment on the connection, but the Trump campaign allowed it was possible Smith was working for Flynn in his role as a private individual but not as part of the campaign.

In short, what this means (if true) is that Smith's efforts were directly connected to a member of the Trump campaign, and therefore the Trump campaign was in fact attempting to collude illegally with Russian operatives. It may be worth noting here that Smith says he is pretty sure several of the groups he got in contact with that either claimed they had or could obtain the emails were connected to the Russian government. (though even if they arnt it doesnt really matter, colluding with any foreigner to interfere in an election is a crime)

But even this would just prove that one member of the Trump campaign was engaging in illegal activity, it doesnt prove Trump did. And had Trump just let things play out he'd likely be fine right now.

But he didnt...instead he made 2 major mistakes that now make this rise to the level of an impeachment level threat to his presidency.

Mistake 1) He refused to fire Mike Flynn when first first got caught
Mistake 2) He fired James Comey and went on TV and stated it was because of "that Russian thing"

Now admittedly I already covered the details and as step by step of the Flynn firing a few blogs back so I wont waste time rehashing it here, but if you want the full version click here.

But basically of those 2 events the important facts are these:

Trump didnt fire Flynn [who he already knew was taking money from the Turks] for 18 days after the FBI alerted him to [what would be from trumps point of view, additional] possible wrongdoing by Flynn with Russia, and appears to have only fired him because the media got the story. This is in stark contrast to Paul Manafort who was canned almost immediately after Trump became aware he was working for a Ukrainian group funded by the Russian

After being fired Flynn tried to get an immunity deal.....suggesting he had something on Trump.

Then we move on the James Comey firing. Trump has already said it was because of the Russia thing, and at the time the focus of the investigation was the already fired Mike Flynn.

So, based on those 3 things, it seems Trump for whatever reason didnt want to fire Flynn and tried to prevent him from even being investigated, for an as of then unknown reason. And that Flynn at least seemed to think no matter what he got in trouble for, he had something worse on the President.

And well, this would seem fit perfectly into the "holes" of the above summery.

Consider, if Donald Trump at least knew about (if not outright asked or suggested it in the first place) Flynn working with Smith to reach out to foreign agents to hack the US government, it would be the perfect reason for him to want to keep Flynn on his staff no matter what, to make sure Flynn couldnt sell him out for what is definitely illegal and would be seen by many as an act of treason (it probably isnt but good luck convincing people of the difference).

It would also explain the reports coming out from time to time that Trump wants to and expects to bring Flynn back to his circle after the investigation concludes. He needs to keep Flynn close by.

And it would explain why even after Flynn was fired, Trump still tried to protect him from the investigation by firing James Comey, to stop the FBI from finding out about this.

And lastly it would explain what Mike Flynn though he could offer in exchange for immunity. And if I was Donald Trump i'd be up at night wondering if the reason he was turned down was because at the time this was so disconnected from everything else, the FBI didnt know about it yet and didnt realize the value of what Flynn had, or if they already knew, and therefore Flynn had nothing to offer him.

Now admittedly this entire thing has two major bits of speculation in it. The first is the assumption the Smith is telling the truth about working with Flynn, which its possible he was not.

The second is the assumption that Donald Trump knew about it. Its possible he didnt, and hes just stupid and the entire thing is a series of unfortunate coincidences.

But the problem for Donald Trump, at least from an impeachment standpoint, is only one of this bits of speculation matters.  We dont actually need conclusive proof Trump knew about any of this to impeach him, a "preponderance of evidence" that he probably did or should have is enough. After all, its been 45 years and we still cant conclusively prove Nixon knew about Watergate. (Quick show of hands by the way, anyone think he didnt do it? ANYONE?)

And thats where Trump's other problems feed into this.

First, while not claiming to directly work with them, Smith did claim he could get access to and had talked with Steve Bannon, Chief White house Strategist, and Kellyanne Conway, another of trumps advisors.  And well the more people in Trumps inner circle knew about the Smith, the higher the likelyhood Trump did do.

Second. At the moment Jared Kushner, the Presidents son in law and possibly his most trusted adviser (giving all the responsibility hes given), is being investigated for money laundering on behalf of the Russians. The investigation appears to hinge on two things, buying a building for more than its fair market value, which he then loaned to Deutsche Bank, which happens to be Donald Trump's biggest creditor, and at the time was involved in a russian backed money laundering scandal in which as part of it, Deutsche Bank would reemberse via rent people with accounts at the bank who over-payed for buildings, which is how they effectively cleaned the money (just to keep the explanation kinda simple if also imprecise). It should be noted by the way that this deal was worked out by Marc Kasowitz, who is currently severing as Donald Trump's personal lawyer defending him from the special prosecutor.

Kushner is also alleged to have had a private meeting (that he later failed to disclose on his security paperwork) with the heads of Vnesheconombank a bank run by the Russian government, that also happens to be another Trump creditor. At this meeting Kushner is alleged to have tried to set up a back channel line of communications between the Trump Campaign and Vladimir Putin, specifically to discuss Syria, and the point of contact he suggested for these conversations was Mike Flynn.

Third: (And this is new). The other day Trump and TV show Morning Joe got into a bit of a spat. Now to be honest with you, this would normally be totally irrelevant if not for the fact that both sides claim they had previously been in contact over a national enquirer story that was going to out the fact that the Morning Joe co-hosts had been carrying on an affair behind one of their spouses backs  (for the record, they deny the affair, claiming the relationship started after both were divorced).

Now Trump claims the two hosts contacted him to see if he could get the enquirer to pull the story, given that he and the owner of the enquirer are close friends and he refused, which is legal.

Morning Joe on the other hand, claims Trump's administration contacted them, and threatened them with having the enquirer run the story unless they both personally apologized to him for running negative coverage of him on their show. Furthermore Morning Joe claims to have kept copies of all the communications between them and team trump, as well as notify their employers NBCUniversial at the time of the original conversations a few months back. Lastly they are also claiming that the person who contacted them was Jared Kushner. It should be noted if Morning Joe is telling the truth Team Trump would have broken laws on extortion and coercion, in DC (where Trump lives) New York (Where morning Joe is) and the federal level.

What I'm getting at is, there are enough other things going on right now to easily paint a picture of a corrupt administration. So proving Trump's personally knowledge isnt necessary as a preponderance of evidence is starting to suggest that their is too much going on for him not to have some idea unless he's intentionally trying not to.

Nixon, again was never proven to have direct knowledge of anything, instead the "proof" stopped with the second incarnation of the "Watergate Seven" most famously H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.

Trump, its starting to seem may have his own haldeman and ehrlichman, Kushner and Flynn, who seem to be connected to .

Now I'll admit, this narrative here isnt all inclusive. For example it doesnt really explain Jeff Sessions' motivations or reasons for repeatedly committing perjury as far as his interactions with the Russian Ambassador, why he either didnt object to James Comey's firing, warn Trump it would blow up in his face (which is his job), and/or went along with the original bullshit justification, and as an result may expose himself to conspiracy charges, if shit hits the fan

It also doesnt explain Devin Nunes' motivations for his involvement, back when he was supposed to be investigating Trump and instead helped participate in a white house stunt in which he pretended to brief them on new information he'd uncovered that exonerated them, only to have it come out the information he briefed the white house on was given to him in secret the day before by the white house.

Nor does it deal with Roger Stone, a long time Trump adviser who claimed direct access to and influence over Wikileaks, who is under investigation for unknown (but believed to be related to Trump) reasons by the FBI.

However all of that suggests only that there is still more to come and that the pit around Trump is going to get deeper and deeper.

But, again assuming Smith is telling the truth, what we have now for the first time ever is an thread tying the original FBI investigation to the Trump campaign that also explains the fills the holes in that particular charges public narrative.

Which is exactly what you dont want if your trying to avoid impeachment.