Politics_Observer wrote:So, if we want to get be completely fair, Trump should be charged with a crime and face trial. 450 Federal Prosecutors agree:
They purport to be former federal prosecutors. Trying to prosecute someone on obstruction of justice for an original investigation cooked up by a political party and illegally submitted to a FISA court is not likely to go anywhere in court. Even if it did, it would be overturned on appeal--something Mueller's chief prosecutor experienced with a 9-0 slapdown in the US Supreme Court. Keep in mind, the chief justice of the Supreme Court would be presiding in the Senate at an impeachment trial.
That said, Trump is president and cannot be charged for acts ex-officio. It's the same sovereign immunity that prosecutors get.
Big Steve wrote:I asked for evidence and you offered me exactly none.
We're getting a lot of this these days. Exactly what acts do they think constitutes obstruction of justice? Nobody seems to know. Some "expert" somewhere says so.
Shit, I'm not even an attorney and I can beat this stuff back.
Let's walk through Mueller's executive summary in volume II.
1.) The Campaign's response to reports about Russian support for Trump.That is not criminal. Trump is not under oath and he can say whatever the hell he wants in public.
2. Conduct involving FBI Director Comey and Michael Flynn. Flynn's conversation with Kislyak was not criminal and not charged as such. Flynn may not have been completely honest with Pence, but he was not under oath and the conversation with Kislyak was not criminal. Flynn made similar statements to the FBI, and the FBI concluded Flynn was not lying. Comey has bragged on national television about sending someone over there without going through the White House counsel's office and while telling Flynn he did not need to have an attorney, when in fact they were proceeding with the Logan Act (which is unconstitutional and nobody has ever been prosecuted for violating it in 200+ years) as a criminal predicate and did not inform Flynn of that fact.
As for this, "Referring to the FBI's investigation of Flynn, the President said, "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. T hope you can let this go.""
Trump has the power to pardon Flynn and stop any investigation he wants. That arises out of his power as president. He cannot be prosecuted for that. It's a baseless position to try to charge obstruction of justice.
3. The President's reaction to the continuing Russia investigation. Again, a completely baseless assertion. Trump has the authority to direct and control all prosecutions and investigations. The ongoing investigations were instigated on false pretenses by a political campaign and known to Comey and others at the FBI. It was also an unlawful use of campaign funds, and "money laundered" through the DNC and Perkins Coie to hide the payments from Hillary Clinton to Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele. Arguably, it was also known to Mueller when he wrote this report, since he had to fire Ohr and Strzok from his Special Counsel's office--not giving the public a clue as to why he did it until after the texts were made public.
4. The President's termination of Comey. The president had the authority to terminate Comey. Comey clearly played political games with Hillary Clinton, and was doing so with Trump. He had a history of doing that with George W. Bush too. Trump was right to fire Comey. Comey is a criminal. He lied under oath to Congress, which was also known to the special counsel. He also leaked classified FBI documents to the press, and admitted it under oath to Congress with the express intent of getting a special counsel appointed.
5. The appointment of a Special Counsel and efforts to remove him. That will not fly either. Mueller was clearly conflicted and proved it by hiring political adversaries of the president and even people actively involved in a coup against the president; namely, Ohr and Strzok.
Mueller wrote:On June 14, 2017, the media reported that the Special Counsel's Office was investigating whether the President had obstructed justice. Press reports called this "a major turning point" in the investigation: while Corney had told the President he was not under investigation , following Corney's firing, the President now was under investigation. The President reacted to this news with a series of tweets criticizing the Department of Justice and the Special Counsel's investigation.
Tweets are not a criminal offense. Criticizing the DoJ, the FBI and the Special Counsel is perfectly within his rights. There is nothing criminal about doing that at all.
6. Efforts to curtail the Special Counsel's investigation. The Special Counsel's investigation was predicated on a political hit piece paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign--and illegally, since the payments went to a foreign national. Comey knew this. He also had Steele on the FBI payroll as well, and did not disclose that to the FISA court either. Given Comey's friendship with Bob Mueller, it's very likely that Mueller knew it too. Mueller had hired at least two people who were knowingly trafficking in Hillary Clinton's Steele Dossier, knew it was false, and were using it as an insurance policy against the president.
7. Efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence. Again, this is not illegal. Investigators should not be leaking to the press during ongoing investigations in the first place.
Mueller wrote:On several occasions, the President directed aides not to publicly disclose the emails setting up the June 9 meeting, suggesting that the emails would not leak and that the number of lawyers with access to them should be limited. Before the emails became public, the President edited a press statement for Trump Jr. by deleting a line that acknowledged that the meeting was with "an individual who [Trump Jr.] was told might have information helpful to the campaign" and instead said only that the meeting was about adoptions of Russian children.
That is not "obstruction of justice". That is trying to minimize political fallout. Trump shared all of those emails with the special counsel. So there was no criminal intent to thwart the investigation. Rather, Trump was trying to limit the political damage that the DoJ/FBI and Clinton acolytes were trying to inflict on Trump. That is not illegal in any way shape or form.
8. Further efforts to have the Attorney General take control of the investigation. Again, it is not a criminal matter. It's a staffing decision, and the president has the authority to make staffing decisions.
Mueller wrote:In October 2017, the President met privately with Sessions in the Oval Office and asked him to "take [a] look" at investigating Clinton.
Again, it's not illegal or an obstruction of justice. Hillary Clinton bankrolled the phony dossier and had it disseminated to the FBI by fellow neo-liberals and neo-conservatives, including John McCain. They used this phony dossier to launch a criminal investigation of the president knowing that the allegations were false. This is an abuse of power. All it shows is that Jeff Sessions proved to be a coward in the face of an attempted coup.
9. Efforts to have McGahn deny that the President had ordered him to have the Special Counsel removed. Again. This is not criminal. It did not impede investigators in any way, and he did not direct anyone to lie under oath. He was only responding to a press report.
10. Conduct towards Flynn, Manafort, ... Again, this did not impede prosecutors or investigators in any way, nor did it involve making false statements to prosecutors or investigators whether under oath or not. It's simply not obstruction of justice. Preventing political embarrassment is not criminal in nature.
11. Conduct involving Michael Cohen.Again, these are all public statements. At no point did Trump request non-cooperation with investigators or suborn anyone to lie under oath. Cohen did lie under oath, and that is why he got into trouble. Trump's comments about Cohen's illegal activity did come to light and he is paying for that now.
12. Overarching factual issues. Mueller wrote:We did not make a traditional prosecution decision about these facts, but the evidence we obtained supports several general statements about the President's conduct.
The president's conduct isn't the basis of a criminal or counter-intelligence investigation. The reason there are no charges is because there is no crime. The president would have had to actively prevent investigators from doing their jobs or to have made false statements to prosecutors or investigators. There is zero evidence he did this. On the contrary, talking about the president's conduct in April of 2018 is baseless, because the Special Counsel already knew, but didn't state publicly, that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Mueller knew this by October of 2017. In other words, the Special Counsel engaged in the same pattern of political conduct for which Comey was fired from the FBI.
Mueller wrote:Several features of the conduct we investigated distinguish it from typical obstruction-of-justice cases. First, the investigation concerned the President , and some of his actions , such as firing the FBI director , involved facially lawful acts within his Article II authority, which raises constitutional issues discussed below. At the same time, the President's position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful mean s of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers , and potential witnesses-all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis.
He absolutely had the authority to fire Comey, and in fact he had a duty to do so, because Comey was an unelected political actor trying to control or influence a US president. The "dirty dossier" is a classic extortion scheme, except that the material was factually untrue and there was no demand for payment. The desire to control the president was clearly there, however. Comey also violated the law in leaking memos with the aim to get a special counsel appointed. Mueller also doesn't say that he was interested in and turned down for FBI Director.
Mueller wrote:Second, unlike cases in which a subject engages in obstruction of justice to cover up a crime, the evidence we obtained did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.
Like all obstruction of justice cases, at no point did the president engage in activity to prevent the special counsel from obtaining evidence. His behavior was solely to prevent public embarrassment, which is not criminal.
Mueller wrote:Third, many of the President's acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, took place in public view.
Trump did not direct anyone to lie. Criminal defendants have a right to remain silent, and suggesting someone remain silent itself is not a crime. Offers of pardons are within his article II powers as well, and clearly the entire investigation was predicated on an entirely phony political hit piece paid for by an opposition party and carried forward by people politically sympathetic to Hillary Clinton in the FBI, DoJ and the Special Counsel itself.
What also took place in public view was the staffing decisions of the Special Counsel, including hiring and firing Strzok and Ohr, and relieving them without disclosing the reasons to the public. Given
exactly the same rationale as that used against Trump, we could suggest that Mueller was obstructing justice in Trump's lawful resistance to a coup attempt by not coming clean that Mueller had dirty dealers on his staff.
Mueller wrote:The President's counsel raised statutory and constitutional defenses to a possible obstruction-of-justice analysis of the conduct we investigated. We concluded that none of those legal defenses provided a basis for declining to investigate the facts.
It's not the Special Counsel's place to analyze the president's counsel. Investigating the facts has to be based upon probable cause. However, the Special Counsel
DID NOT have probable cause, because it knew definitively in October of 2017 that there was no collusion, and by the Special Counsel's own analysis in Volume One that collusion itself is not a crime (for which there was no evidence anyway), and their effort to apply a conspiracy theory to the facts they had obtained were unable to sustain two or more persons committing acts in furtherance of a crime. As such, there was no warranted basis for additional investigation on theories of obstruction.
If anything, the Special Counsel engaged in billing fraud against the United States for over a year.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden
- By wat0n
- By Godstud