Judiciary Committee approves both articles of impeachment

Then the Congress can call millions of witnesses to testify how Trump criminally violated them. Horseshit.

In fact, the very idea that a person could be thrown in jail for "obstructing Congress" proves how much Congress has abused their authority.

The Congress should never be above the law, above the courts, or above the SCOTUS.

Even the FBI can't demand these things without a writ from the courts, and even the FBI has abused that authority through the FISA court improprieties and ommissions as well.

There's definitely abuses of power, but it sure as hell aint Trump.

They cannot use foreign governments to do so. If they want to get the FBI to investigate that would be normal. Getting a foreign government to do it is a crime. 

umm what? One of the main purposes of congress is to act as a check on the executive branch. If the president can simply refuse to let them investigate then they cannot possibly act as that check. That combined with the justice department being told they can't charge him with a crime would make him completely immune from any repercussion of criminality, IE a king. 

He is preventing witnesses from testifying about his crimes. 

It's not just the president that gets these protections against an abusive Congress, ordinary people get them too.

The whole quid pro quo is a right wing talking point. The problem isn't giving something and getting something. The circumstances matter. Biden used his office to get Ukraine to fight corruption in a way that didn't benefit himself or his family at all. Trump used his office to get Ukraine to announce an investigation of his political rival, by name. Not only was there no evidence his rival had committed a crime, he stood to personally profit (via an election) from doing so. There is a massive difference. 

agreed. this is the swampy kind of corruption that exists all over the place in Washington. Sadly it isn't illegal though. And I mean that genuinely, I want that to be illegal.

I agree this kind of thing is shitty. But sadly both democrats and republicans (including trump and McConnell) do this stuff all the time. 

Biden pushed for his firing because he wasn't investigating things. That triggered a new investigation of Burisma. But since hunter did work at burisma during the time the alleged crimes had been committed, there was literally no way he could be implicated. Therefore biden had nothing to gain.

It's also worth noting, pushing to have him fired wasn't Biden's idea either. People who also had nothing to personally gain also wanted the prosecutor fired. Biden was just the guy who got sent to carry it out. So pretending like it was this corrupt plan he hatched is all bullshit. 

What was made up? The trump campaign said they had no contact with any russians. We now know they had over 100 contacts with russians including meetings in trump tower and giving the russians polling data. There was collusion with russians. There doesn't appear to be evidence of a crime related to that collusion. But investigating those contacts that trump claimed never happened was a legitimate investigation. If they hadn't obstructed it and lied about it repeatedly maybe it wouldn't have had to become such a big thing. 

And by projected, I assume you mean that legitimate concerns shouldn't be investigated. 

lol he specifically asked them to investigate Biden, by name. That is not Ukraine's jurisdiction. That is the FBI's jurisdiction. When he asked ukraine to do it, he committed a crime. 

extorting a foreign country to smear your political rivals is "bringing the truth to light"? If there were truth to the accusations he would have sent it to the FBI, as he should have. He extorted Ukraine to do it because he knew there was no evidence Biden had done anything wrong. All he cared about was that press conference and getting the president of Ukraine to suggest Biden was corrupt. He could then run an election campaign pretending Biden is corrupt. It would have been a great strategy if he hadn't gotten caught committing crimes. 

But his son was doing some corrupt stuff that initiated a huge conflict of interest. He stood to benefit from that information not going public. The man fired would have found out and made it public.

Yeah, Republicans do it too and it pisses me off. Used to think both sides did it, just that Democrats do it more. It is actually about even and rather saddening.

 Hunter was hired in 2014 because of some corruption, but Shokin was fired in 2016. Biden led Ukraine foreign policy and his son got six figures from a large Ukranian company. That is the issue here.

I looked it up and only found that no Americans were charged with any crimes regarding Russian collusion.

No, I mean don't say the president meddled in the election with the help of the Russians when you have absolutely no evidence that he did.

 As you said, there were no crimes, yet the whole time they were planning to impeach him for it.

If you think there is corruption, investigate it, but don't pretend it is a sure thing when you have no evidence.

It is a Ukrainian company, so they are looking into it on their end.

The FBI hasn't really proven to be non-partisan as of late.

Hillary didn't get convicted of anything? Really? 

 Also, all of the texts by FBI leadership members saying that Trump will never be president, etc.

If the whistle blower hadn't caused a ruckus, this wouldn't have been so widely publicized to smear Biden.

Also, again, the FBI cannot investigate a Ukrainian company because they have jurisdiction in the US. So, the Ukraine government were the correct people to go to.

Which is within his right to do so. If you think it’s an overstepping of power, you go to the courts and they’ll interpret it. There’s a reason why there are 3 branches.

There’s no such thing as obstruction of Congress.

It is within the rights of a defendant to order the witnesses to his crimes not to testify?

maybe, maybe not, the fact that supposedly he did would just require a court hearing and order to compel the witnesses to testify, that's how the court systems work.  Without an official court order it's basically a request which can be denied, they are asking not ordering.

A subpoena is already a legally binding order.

It is within the rights of a defendant to order the witnesses to his crimes not to testify? You have a very strange opinion of how this is supposed to work. If the president really did have the power to prevent witnesses testifying to his crime he would be immune from criminal prosecution, he would be immune from being investigated by congress. He would be entirely above the law as no one would have the power to investigate him. That is a king. 

There literally is.

A subpoena is already a legally binding order. The idea that once you receive a legally binding order and then you can just refuse to comply is insane. If you do that once when something seems odd, that would be one thing. When you order everyone to refuse every subpoena, that undermines the entire political system. It is an obvious stall tactic to prevent congress from doing it's constitutionally required job.    

Yes and no. As a coequal branch, he has the right to withhold information from Congress. Every President has done it. It’s called executive privilege which is not limited to documents...it encompasses people that the President has communications with. The method to overcome that is by going to the other coequal branch - the judicial branch. He’s not immune from being investigated. In fact the President has been getting investigated for 4 years.

You can refuse a subpoena by taking it to court, which is well within the right of the person being subpoenaed.

What evidence do you have that these witnesses want to be hauled in front of a partisan pep rally?

Not that it even matters since SCOTUS upheld the president's executive privilege. Congress isn't legally allowed to disrupt and obstruct the Executive branch by sabotaging the president's cabinet.

Well, it's too bad Congress abused its power and refused to go to the SCOTUS.

Basically, they are arguing that a president cannot be punished in any way by anyone. 

But now they are fighting tooth and nail against impeaching a president for abusing his power. 

The judicial branch has already issued a precedent on the usage of executive privilege in a case like this

And if the witnesses were choosing, on their own, to fight the subpoena in court you might have a point. But that isn't what is happening. Trump, the alleged criminal, is ordering the witnesses to refuse the subpoena's. That is a very different scenario.