Letters

In an effort, seemingly to establish the de facto creation of a Mueller Report redux, the editor(s) of The Southampton Press have lurched into legal issues they seem ill equipped to analyze, and political issues they can’t seem to stare in the face [“A Choice To Make,” Editorial, October 3].

One cannot infer from statutes. So to state that an investigation (by another country) is a “thing of value” and that no quid pro quo is required to make the whole package an illegal act is to, conveniently enough, glide straight over the meaning of a “thing of value.” This is where inference comes in.

Besides the fact that statutory definitions promulgated by the Supreme Court avoid defining investigations as “things of value,” we have the ground-level issue of inference. How does The Southampton Press know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that Trump intended to use the product of a Ukrainian investigation into the Bidens as a campaign tool? The obvious conclusion to draw is more broad than the smarmy conclusions drawn in this editorial — hence Mueller Report redux.

What is ignored by the anti-Trumpers is the hard evidence available to the investigation by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, which, in an effort to establish why and how the Mueller investigation even began (given its indefensible origins), compels the investigation of Ukraine’s involvement in the creation of the discredited Steel Dossier, which was the animating document (since proved to be illegitimate) of the Mueller mess to begin with. To investigate the illegal origins of the Mueller report is to investigate Ukraine.

It is so tiresome to read that Joe Biden did nothing wrong — “spurious allegations”— to the contrary.

He has, according to the addled conclusions drawn by this newspaper and other like-minded entities, done nothing wrong — even if that duck walks and quacks like the duck it is. Trump would be a private citizen by now if he tried doing the same thing beginning last week. The selective, nothing to see here defense of Biden, cloaked in the faux outrage of assertions that a foreign country is once again (?) being asked by Trump for political assistance, is to provide political cover for Uncle Joe and his drug addled progeny. Neat trick, it would have been, if it wasn’t so clumsily attempted.

You cannot impeach a president by inferring from “evidence” polluted by politics, that he did something wrong, to the level of a high crime and/or misdemeanor. Y’all should wait a bit before the IG hammer drops.

Nicholas Saridakis

Hampton Bays