[wavefunction]

The decision to prosecute a defendant or not (or defend a statute, or not) is at the discretion of the prosecutor, barring some sort of statutory requirement.

The President isn't a king, whose orders are to be followed regardless of the Constitution or prevailing law.

Both the President and the AG serve at the pleasure of the People of the United States, and Trump is about to find that out the hard way.

[LordKano]

Both the President and the AG serve at the pleasure of the People of the United States, and Trump is about to find that out the hard way.

Trump has the support of roughly half of the country.

Regardless of how loud the opposition is, don't confuse their passion for widespread support.

[lordlimecat]

Trump will find that that support dwindles day by day. The country has always been split roughly down the middle between conservatives and liberals, and liberals are generally united against Trump.

What happens when his conservative base starts dwindling as he institutes more and more measures which run counter to both conscience and conservative principles?

[geezerjay]

> Trump will find that that support dwindles day by day.

Irrelevant. Trump was elected, he was appointed a couple of weeks ago, and he is in charge.

No one invented "support dwindles" comments when Obana's popularity was scraping rock bottom.

Furthermore, while Trump was in fact elected in a democratic election, the Attourney General was not. The Attourney General has no standing to deny a lawful order by the president.

[dragonwriter]

> No one invented "support dwindles" comments when Obana's popularity was scraping rock bottom.

Yes, they did. I mean, just googling "Obama support dwindles" falsifies that claim (even if a lot of the early hits are about Clinton in the last election); there's quite a lot from the right doing just what you claim no one did, foing back to at least 2010 in what I get on the first two pages of results.

[mkaziz]

Slightly less than half the country _that voted_* this past election. That's not close to half the country

[LordKano]

The part of the country that votes is the only one of any consequence to any elected official.

[dragonwriter]

> Trump has the support of roughly half of the country

Per the latest Gallup daily tracking, 51% disapprove, 43% approve, and the quickest President to majority disapproval in the history of the tracking poll.

[LordKano]

The same polls that predicted Hillary's win?

I'm not buying it.

[dragonwriter]

> The same polls that predicted Hillary's win Nope; one because the Gallup daily Presidential approval tracking poll is not an election poll; two because polls don't predict anything, models that use polling data as an input do.

> I'm not buying it.

Facts remain facts regardless of whether they are convenient to your preferred team.

[brewdad]

Hilary did win. The popular vote. Which is really what most of the polls were tracking. 80,000 votes out of 130,000,000+ swung the EC. Aside from holding an actual election, no poll can get the margin of error down to that level. The polls were not wrong. They were polls.

[LordKano]

History can't be retconned this quickly.

The polls were done state by state and showed Hillary with a substantial electoral college advantage over Trump.

These poll results weren't about reporting on the feelings of the electorate, they were about trying to influence them.

[gm-conspiracy]

I thought the FBI director recommends to the AG whether to pursue charges, no?

[Avenger42]

Even in such a case, the AG should be free to ignore the recommendation and say "sure, we've got enough evidence, but we're not going to pursue it". For example, if the charge is minor enough, or if the optics of it look bad, or the person in question were already being prosecuted by a different office, they could tell the FBI Director they weren't going to bother, and then go hold a press conference to explain why (so that the FBI Director doesn't beat you to the press to say "we've got them dead to rights and they won't prosecute for [X] reasons!").