Obstruction of subpoenas + Retaliation against voluntary witnesses = effective unaccountability before the law.

Its funny you make a big deal out of firings that result from people going against those in charge.
You and anyone who thinks this is unbelievable, you can't have a great deal of work experience.
If I went against my higher ups I always had a backlash in which they had to prove themselves and put me down. Never a firing due to laws which protect employees but always looking for ways to give warnings to satisfy the legal requirements for firing when I did some minor thing not as specified in manual.
In this case we are talking about the President and his men and women. You dont need opposition from within. Get rid of all who arent onboard.

If you believe all that, essentially that it is no big deal to retaliate against whistleblowers — and you believe the Trump Administration’s unprecedented levels of obstruction of the pre-impeachment congressional investigation were okay — then I’m curious what if any mechanism you think remains for holding any Presidential administration accountable under the law in practical terms.

When you get to hold a position of authority over people you may then understand why you dont need nor want people around you who are not on the same page.

You call the firing retaliation, I say it's what an experienced servant should expect to happen if they go against the head.

So In future if one can prove obstruction then the accussed party will be charged and convicted. Laws have not been removed, nor replaced, nothing has changed.

You will always have whistle blowers regardless of political system or party in charge. They will appear regardless of whether they break laws to do so or not. So the next one that chooses to blow their whistle and try to stay under the employ of the one they choose to go against should also expect retaliation as firing. This is the Presidency of The United States not google. Oh wait that's right dont the whistleblowers at Google have their contracts terminated when found out, yes. Yes they do.

Did/Do the Soviets and Chinese have defectors? Yes. Well are they not also a whistleblower.

Well, the law draws a distinction between bosses and workers “not being on the same page,” and workers who participate in protected activity under whistleblower laws.

The first kind of firing is routine and even a good thing to encourage. The second kind of firing could cost a company millions in legal fees and an adverse judgment.

When it comes to impeachment, our laws have not changed, but our constitutional traditions around impeachment have over the past few weeks, perhaps irrevocably.

If impeached presidents can stonewall, block documents and officials from testifying, fire or threaten to fire whistleblowers and voluntary witnesses without consequence, and not even bother to testify, then I see virtually no way to ever present an impeachment case that would reach the 2/3 threshold to remove.

Maybe if the violation were as open, obvious, and egregious as Trump literally shooting someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight. But that’s about it.

Obama got rid of most of dubya's ambassadors.

Obama fired the ATF whistleblower that uncovered Eric Holder's gun running to Mexican cartels, called Fast and Furious which directly resulted in the death of a border patrol agent.

Awww, thanks. Forgot about that.

Was that termination problematic as well? I would say so.

Do you agree?

If so, from Obama to Trump: Whose position is more consistent here?

The term problematic is problematic. Thx 2 sjws.

When did Trump fire the whistleblower? He still hasn't been named. Trump still has Brennan having security clearance, for crying out loud.

As soon as the whistleblower gets named, I reckon!

Or maybe a month or two after the big reveal for plausible deniability, if he and Administration lawyers are thinking straight this time

Obama did not get rid of any career appointee's to ambassadorships.

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/11/did-obama-fire-all-bush-appointed-ambassadors/

Removing Yovanovitch was to further his personal agenda to get dirt on a political apponent.

There's plenty of dirt on Biden.

I see, most but not all. Gotcha.

That bitch badmouthed Trump. Damn right to toss her out on her ass.

Who gives a f**k about Biden? Has he been mentioned anywhere here?

We're America. So what if she said something negative about the President? Who gives a shit? It takes very weak people and a very weak President to be so intolerant and such a bunch of pathetic little snowflakes to fly into rage every-time someone says something negative. He's the President for Christ sake! He's never going to please more than maybe 60%. It's part of the territory and he needs to get used to it.

Yeah, ambassadors shouldn't have loyalty to their president. Sheesh, dude.

If not Biden, who was he trying to get 'dirt' on?

Ambassadors should have loyalty to their COUNTRY!

Which is run by the president. Who is the boss over ambassadors. Personal attacks on your boss shouldn't be tolerated, except in your liberal dream world.

Ambassador Sondland was appointed to represent the interests of the United States. Not the interests of Donald Trump.

All Ambassadors’ appointments need to be confirmed by the Senate in recognition of that fact. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassadors_of_the_United_States

Ambassador Sondland answered a subpoena to testify in front of Congress. Refusing would have put him in violation of the Legislative Branch.

Due to Trump’s wide ranging order to all his subordinates to flat-out not comply with any congressional subpoenas, accepting would have put him in violation of the Executive Branch.

No good options here! Which is exactly the problem!

How to resolve this? You have to look at the strength of the executive privilege claims asserted by Trump.

And in this case: The Administration’s sweeping and overboard executive privilege claims were flimsy as hell, so the fault here lies with Trump.

Now Trump’s decision to fire those who complied with valid congressional subpoenas only piles more shame upon himself and makes the case for his impeachment and removal even stronger, even though it’s dead letter at this point.

But if Trump wins again in 2020: could he be U.S. history’s first twice-impeached President? We’ll see!

That's nice. We were talking about the female ambassador bad mouthing her boss.

And I'm talking about Sondland

Lol — change-overs of ambassadors when new administrations take office are bog standard, and not retaliatory at all

Unfortunately these positions are often used as a favor to repay campaign donors

The donors get the cushy assignments like Bermuda or Fiji or whatever, while expert career diplomats take the critical assignments like China

Interesting that Sondland, a $1 million campaign donor to Trump, would have been assigned to a geopolitically significant country like Ukraine

He ended up not being so compliant!

Bet he wishes now he had kept his million dollars.

He got to be a part of history, and will be in future textbooks about this Administration, and the inevitable book deal seems likely, so I would say he got his money’s worth and then some after all

But who knows? I don’t know what kind of calculations go through the minds of people with that much money to spare.

Yes, that's a good point. Obama did it too.

Right now we're heading down the same road China has taken against those speaking out about the caronavirus. Is that really where we want to go?

A second person is now missing and it's feared he's being forcibly held under, "quarantine".

Funny how the right had a fit over Obama doing this but are now protecting their beloved President.