A few crimes do require criminal intent to convict. That was actually a factor in one of the accusations against Clinton. That may or may not relate to ignorantia legis neminem excusat, but dumb mistakes or innocent intentions can mean no charges in some cases.
My guess is most of those crimes are typically committed by people with alot of money. That being said, I absolutely respect what Mueller has done here in totality. I may not agree at all with how, shall we say, non-aggressive they were in some aspects, but what he presented is a overwhelming picture of corrupt intent from top to bottom, much of it at the VERY LEAST bordering on criminality. To say nothing of the convictions and guilty pleas that have already taken place, many of whom are CENTRAL players in this report (namely, Manafort and Flynn).
I simply do not understand why not knowing they were breaking the law was used as an excuse to not prosecute both Jr and Kushner.
“The government would unlikely be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the June 9 meeting participants had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful,” the report reads but:
ignorantia legis neminem excusat Is something I learnt in a high school law class and I wonder why it was used to pardon them here.
I get the $2000 threshold would be hard to prove, especially since they got nothing from that meeting but once again, IMO, it doesn’t excuse holding it in the first place.
The vast majority of crimes require criminal intent (mens rea). Those that don't are crimes of strict liability - traffic offenses are the most common ones, though another relevant example for this thread would be the illegal crossing of the US border.
The issue about ignorance of the law here relates to whether something is understood as a crime at all. Ignorance of the law is no excuse refers to a level of detail. A burglar may not know the details of the law, but is aware what he's doing is a crime - and hence gets prosecuted. Perhaps a better example would be a case I saw a few days ago where 2 friends argued in a bar and a punch was thrown - the recipient fell down, hit his head and died (that situation is actually one of the examples used in introductory law to explain that the law will prosecute the consequences of a crime, even if those are unintended). In this case the man was convicted of manslaughter and the fact that he almost certainly didn't know the law was no excuse - he knew that throwing a punch at someone was illegal and that was enough for the mens rea.
In Trump Jrs case the distinguishing feature is that he could argue that he thought this was not a crime at all. I agree with others that defense looks weak to me. A professional person, currently involved in politics, might well be expected (and in fact deemed) to have at least a general understanding of relevant law. A decision to prosecute would certainly have been possible, but I can see why Mueller chose not to do so - I could very easily imagine a jury unable to determine that a conviction was safe "beyond a reasonable doubt". As has been pointed out before this does reflect to some extent a 2-tier system of justice. A poor person, without decent legal representation, would have no chance with this sort of defense in practice - even though in principle it would be available to them.
Well one things clear - William Barr Must Resign. If he doesn't resign Democrats are going to hammer him and Republicans every.single.day.
Things like:
"Republicans are weak on national security, they've got a stooge as AG who lied to the American people to cover up Russian attacks on America."
"Barr is not America's AG, he's a personal lawyer to President Trump. Republicans are weakening our laws and reputation to cover up Trump's corruption."
Well one things clear - William Barr Must Resign. If he doesn't resign Democrats are going to hammer him and Republicans every.single.day.
Things like:
"Republicans are weak on national security, they've got a stooge as AG who lied to the American people to cover up Russian attacks on America."
"Barr is not America's AG, he's a personal lawyer to President Trump. Republicans are weakening our laws and reputation to cover up Trump's corruption."
Etc etc etc
They'll never let anyone forget what's going on.
People (like this person) have been sounding the alarm about William Barr since the moment he was nominated for this EXACT reason and it didn't do much good whatsoever. Despite his transparently obvious motives and past history. Trump is and will forever remain the easiest of targets, but the true villains of the era when the history is written will be Mitch McConnell and William Barr.
But to your other point......what is being lost in all of this is that the report EMPHATICALLY states that the attack on the election by Russia was pervasive and wide-ranging. And the President of the United States and his campaign staff not only did nothing when confronted with this information, they WELCOMED it with open arms. They thought absolutely nothing of letting a foreign power attack the most basic bedrock of our democracy because it was going to personally benefit them. The best you can say is that they were too stupid to know how they were being manipulated. What a ringing endorsement for the people in charge of the government. Any Republican anywhere who still supports this man and tries to play the "patriotism" or "national security" card for the rest of their lives should be laughed out of whatever building they are in. And those same people would literally be calling for the execution of any Democrat accused of a 1/10th as much as what is in this report.
There are clear indications in the Mueller report of 5 things that are huge caveats to all of this:
1.) It is beyond clear that the only reason Trump isn't being charged with obstruction of justice is because Mueller CAN'T charge him because of the DOJ guidelines about a sitting President. That isn't Mueller's fault, it's him following this insane, pulled from someone's ass policy that basically grants the President total immunity.
2.) There are also indications in the language that Mueller wasn't going to make concrete findings on Trump's conduct because, based on the guideline above, Trump would never have a "day in court", thus Mueller wasn't going to make a judgement Trump couldn't defend himself against in the legal sense. Again, it all goes back to this Nixonian view of Presidential power. Instead, he just presented the evidence.
3.) They make VERY clear (as many have been saying all along) that collusion is not a legal term, and never has been. They were never investigating "collusion". When Barr and Trump keep saying this, they are clearing Trump of something he was never being investigated for in the first place. The Special Counsel was tasked with investigating the Russian interference in the 2016 election. They found that it absolutely, 100% took place to a vast degree. And while they didn't find evidence they could bring in a court of law that would be provable beyond a reasonable doubt that the campaign was involved in a wide-ranging conspiracy, they ALSO go out of their way to state that that does NOT mean they found no evidence or indications of it. They did. It's all laid out. They simply decided it didn't rise to the level the believed they could prosecute criminally, especially considering most of it involves the President or his immediate family.
4.) Mueller also makes it very clear that he did NOT find the President's written answers sufficient (Trump said he "didn't recall" at least 30 times). The reason the subpoena was never issued for him to appear before them was because they didn't think they had time. Trump would have battled it to the Supreme Court and ran out the clock until the election. Mueller's team clearly wanted this to at least have a CHANCE to be taken before Congress before that time. I disagree with this tactic, but it IS understandable. (And just as an aside folks, in your life, whenever you confront someone with a tough question and they say they "don't remember", you can be 99% sure that is total bullshit. I'm also fairly sure MY memory is correct when Trump once claimed he had one of the "great memories of all-time").
5.) They also state (and this is the big one) that the combination of Trump's obstruction, the outright lies of people like Manafort and in some cases the literal destruction of evidence had a material effect on their ability to get to the bottom of the matter at hand. Which is the WHOLE POINT of obstruction.
And, for the record, as of one hour ago, Trump has apparently done a complete 180 on the report being a "complete exoneration" and is now back to attacking the investigation he has been claiming for the last FOUR WEEKS cleared him.
Congress issued a subpoena to Attorney General William Barr, for “The complete and unredacted version of the report issued on or about March 22, 2019 by Special Counsel Robert Mueller,” as well as “All documents referenced in the Report” and “All documents obtained and investigative materials created by the Special Counsel’s Office.”
House Judiciary Chairman Nadler laid out a full investigative process, starting with hearing from Attorney General William Barr, “who misled the country,” and special counsel Robert Mueller. “We have to hold hearings and hear from other people both on the question of obstruction of justice, whereas I said the special prosecutor invited Congress to look into that, not the attorney general. We have to look into all that. We need the entire report, unredacted, and the underlying documents in order to make informed decisions.”
It's kinda crazy how even something like this which destroys every core facet of the TrumpRussia conspiracy isn't enough to destroy the fantasy. There's a ton of analysis about what really amounts to very little. The conspiracy mongers were wrong, about pretty much everything. Trump Tower Don Jr. meeting, about trivial nonsense. Wikileaks communications, meaningless. Trump Tower Moscow, irrelevant. That Russian bank that was supposedly his secret connection? Nah. No members of the campaign involved in any influence operation, including the ones we were told definitely did like Manafort. No members of the campaign involved in directing or coordinating a hack. Trump's business dealings were irrelevant. Putin was not holding the strings as was so often repeatedly claimed. Turns out just because someone visited Russia one time they don't turn out to be foreign agents. Almost nothing we were told was true was based on reality, in the end. At this point you have to be filling in the gaps with imagination and presupposition to believe otherwise.
And no, Mueller was not simply unable to rise to the level of conspiracy. There simply was none to be found, made obvious by the lack of virtually any evidence of such where there otherwise would be. This wasn't a narrow, technical finding that simply didn't meet the burden. It was non existence. I can't prove with 100% factual certainty there isn't a baboon living in my basement, but after a thorough examination of every corner of the room offering no baboon sights, we can confidently state there isn't one. At a certain point, instead of wanting a negative to be proven, a total lack of evidence where evidence should be is enough to be confident.
After two years of the same conspiracy being repeated ad-nauseam I find that this being all reduced to an ultimately fruitless discussion about obstruction or no obstruction to be wildly entertaining. The goal posts have been moved out of the soccer field and into the lake. All I know is that if I was claiming treason for years and all I had to show for it was that maybe he obstructed justice during the course of an investigation in which he was cleared of its charges, i'd feel more than a little foolish. Especially since the legal analysis is enough to conclude it's not going anywhere and their case would likely fail even if they wanted it. So that's that!
Watching these mainstream media lunatics act like their nonsense has been validated is the best of all though. These folks live in a bubble of their own making wholly separate from reality. I can't believe anyone takes anything they say seriously anymore. Including myself, even I was surprised by how little of substance things like the Trump Tower meeting had when they were so constantly branded as end-all-be-all proof of conspiracy. It was all so silly.
I think it's important to list all the ways Trump attempted to obstruct justice just to get it out in the open:
1.) When Mike Flynn was found to have lied, he asked Comey for personal loyalty, asked him to drop the case against Flynn, and directed KT McFarland to draft a false memo about what Trump had actually told Flynn to do.
2.) Trump starts fuming to those close to him how he needs an Attorney General who will, quote, "protect him". He personally calls Comey twice more asking him to "lift the cloud on Russia".
3.) Trump fires Comey, telling Rosenstein to indicate false reasoning, and then goes on national television and admits it was because of the Russia investigation and Flynn.
4.) Trump hears about the appointment of the Special Counsel and declares it the end of his Presidency. He then DIRECTS Don McGahn to have the Acting Attorney General fire Mueller.
5.) Despite Session's recusal, Trump then orders Corey Lewandowski to relay a message to Session that he is to limit the scope of the investigation at his request.
6.) Trump directs aides not to discuss any aspects of the Trump Tower meeting, and is personally involved in editing the press statement that lied about the nature of the meeting.
7.) Trump AGAIN orders Sessions to unrecuse and reign in the investigation.
8.) Trump then orders McGahn to lie about him previously telling him to give the order to fire Mueller to the Acting AG, and asks him why he has notes about the event.
9.) Trump's public statements towards Flynn and Manafort convey the strong indication of possible pardons if they hold the line.
10.) Trump's behavior towards Michael Cohen changes from praise initially to calling him (like a mobster) a "rat". Cohen discusses pardons with the President's legal counsel and as led to believe he would be given a pardon if he towed the line.
Now then. This doesn't just read as all the ways Trump obstructed the investigation. It reads like a list of nearly EVERYTHING you could conceivably do to obstruct an investigation. What the hell did he miss?? If the President of the United States can fire the FBI Director for not dropping investigations into his campaign, order aides to dictate false memos, order the Special Counsel fired, order the limiting of a scope of an investigation into himself, order the White House Counsel to lie and express worry he has "notes", and float pardons to key figures caught up in probe, then, as @semiticgod astutely pointed out, can't they conceivably get away with ANYTHING?? If this isn't obstruction of justice, then what the hell is is?? Should we either bother continuing on with the concept at all if Trump isn't held accountable for it??
Mind you, ALL of these things were reported in the media at one time or another in the last two years, and ALL of them were denied by Trump as "fake news". If we let this stand, aren't we de facto saying that the Presidency is exactly what Nixon wanted it to be?? Because, more than anything, what the reaction to this strikes me as is the victory of the decades long campaign engaged in by people like Roger Ailes on the media end and people like Dick Cheney in the governmental end. To make sure that Watergate never happens again. To build a media defense force around obvious, blatant corrupt and immoral acts and to magnify the power of the Executive Branch to the point where it is basically immune from any consequences of any action. Because this is the endgame of that experiment, and, at the moment, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
That post would be on firmer rhetorical ground if it came with several examples of reported pieces by mainstream outlets that are directly contradicted by the Mueller report.
destroys every core facet of the TrumpRussia conspiracy
...
Watching these mainstream media lunatics act like their nonsense has been validated is the best of all though.
The Obama White House practically BEGGED Mitch McConnell to sign on to making a bipartisan statement warning the public about the ongoing election interference efforts. McConnell flat-out refused to do so, and the entire GOP would have immediately accused Obama himself of putting the thumb on the scale if the White House had made the declaration alone, which EVERYONE knows would have happened.
So what else is going on today?? Oh not much, just mass vigilante kidnappings at gunpoint on the southern border that are just being ALLOWED to take place with no pushback whatsoever:
Obstruction charges aren't moving the goal posts. If you want to use sports terminology, obstruction is more like delivering a crosscheck to the face resulting in the other player being injured making the team you're playing against less effective. Your team might win the game, but you're still going to be suspended for doing such a reckless act.
The fact is, we'll never know WHAT they might have found, because the report states in very plain language that the most powerful person in the world was using his leverage to influence witnesses, some of those witnesses lied, and people deleted relevant communications. It's in the report. Would it have made a difference in the findings?? Who knows?? But again, that is the ENTIRE POINT of engaging in obstruction. To make it impossible to get to the heart of the matter. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference one way or another. But the people who ENGAGED in the obstruction, lying, and destruction of evidence do not then get the benefit of the doubt. The only reasonable response to such behavior is that they were attempting to derail the investigation.
But, let's by all means go with the current conservative line of thinking in this country and do away with the concept entirely. We'll let everyone accused of a crime lie to investigators without repercussions, witness tamper, start campaigns to have judges and prosecutors removed because they are "frustrated", and hell, let's let them pay off potential jury members too. Anything goes at this point. Free for all. Let's see how it works. Because that is what is being advocated, nothing less.
I don't see the point in speculating what the Mueller investigation might have found in the absence of the "obstructing acts" the Trump administration took. I do, however, think it's very important that we find some way of preventing future presidents from committing "obstructing acts," as the Mueller report carefully calls them, and the only way to do that is to impeach Trump for obstruction of justice. If Congress won't do that because Senate Republicans are afraid of retribution, the population's only recourse is to vote him out of office--and we have plenty of excellent alternatives already lined up well in advance.
Otherwise, we have knowingly set the precedent that the President of the United States is, in fact, perfectly free to shut down, silence, block, and hide the truth from any investigation into his or her activities--whether or not those actions are legal or illegal. And I do not think anyone here will agree that the President should be able to shield himself or anyone from criminal prosecution. The President's only power to thwart the actions of the criminal justice system is to issue pardons; not to obstruct investigations.
Now that the investigation is over, the question facing us is whether the President has the power to commit obstruction of justice if he himself decides that it's okay, and I think the answer is "no."
I don't see the point in speculating what the Mueller investigation might have found in the absence of the "obstructing acts" the Trump administration took. I do, however, think it's very important that we find some way of preventing future presidents from committing "obstructing acts," as the Mueller report carefully calls them, and the only way to do that is to impeach Trump for obstruction of justice. If Congress won't do that because Senate Republicans are afraid of retribution, the population's only recourse is to vote him out of office--and we have plenty of excellent alternatives already lined up well in advance.
Otherwise, we have knowingly set the precedent that the President of the United States is, in fact, perfectly free to shut down, silence, block, and hide the truth from any investigation into his or her activities--whether or not those actions are legal or illegal. And I do not think anyone here will agree that the President should be able to shield himself or anyone from criminal prosecution. The President's only power to thwart the actions of the criminal justice system is to issue pardons; not to obstruct investigations.
Now that the investigation is over, the question facing us is whether the President has the power to commit obstruction of justice if he himself decides that it's okay, and I think the answer is "no."
The Democrats have two choices here. On the one hand, the Constitution calls upon them to hold Trump (and all future Presidents) accountable for these type of actions. Because of where we are, they are the only ones that can. At the VERY least, preliminary hearings such as the type that took place during the Watergate era now need to commence. People need to be brought before House committees to testify. This cannot just sit as is.
On the other hand......there is a better chance of me hooking up with Beyonce than the Senate Republicans voting to remove Trump from office. And the question then becomes, is it more prudent to take the first step (and it is only half) in the House, or to focus all attention on beating him in 18 months. And that is a profoundly difficult question. From a standpoint of making a stand in history, the choice is clear. There is no way to know right now if the left-wing base will be more upset if they DON'T at least refer impeachment to the Senate, or if it will so energize Trump's base that it becomes a detriment to his defeat. I think the conventional wisdom that Republicans paid a political price for impeaching Clinton is wildly overblown to the point of being flat-out wrong. Trump's poll numbers never change. They constantly fluctuate between roughly 38-44%. That is nowhere NEAR the popularity level of Clinton in the late 90s.
Elizabeth Warren, as she has been doing this entire primary season, is leading on this (I still don't think she wins the nomination, but she is the bravest Democratic candidate so far). She has called for the House to start the inquiry. I think Democrats thinking they can just run on "policy" and beat Trump is a miscalculation. They always run on policy, and are always told they don't focus enough on it despite that fact. Trump doesn't deal in policy. He is a cartoon character. And the way to defeat him is to CONSTANTLY hammer against the nearly endless corruption we have been seeing on a daily basis for the last 2 1/2 years. Bring his cabinet secretaries to the Hill to explain themselves, and they crumble within minutes. Because they are all thieves and grifters. The House Democrats need to start doing massive amounts of investigations NOW and the candidates need to hammer home the narrative of corruption at every available opportunity. Because pay raises for teachers and holding telcom companies accountable isn't going to get the job done in the face of Trump's demagoguery.
Moreover, they can't be afraid of the ramifications. If Democrats didn't win the House last November, I can guaran-damn-tee we would have NEVER seen the Mueller Report at all. It would have never been released. That alone proves how powerful holding the House can be. They cannot sit on it like an egg. Be judicious in the process, proceed with care, but do not fear this corrupt blowhard. Take him on. Not doing so only reinforces the illusion among his supporters that he is an invincible winner. Don't forfeit the ground to him. After a month of trying to set the narrative on their terms, he is now clearly on the defensive. Do not let up.
And I was just exposed to a VERY good question I hadn't even thought of. Hypothetically speaking, let's say Democrats get to the point where they vote for impeachment. Given what he did in regards to the Supreme Court, would Mitch McConnell even ALLOW a Senate trial to take place??
I'm afraid it's equally "in your own bubble" to suggest that obstruction as an approach was ever anything less than a co-equal concern of the Mueller report specifically and Democrats in general. Was it less sexy than collusion? Sure - but PLENTY of people were far more concerned over Comey's firing than they were over Flynn speaking with a Russian operative in December of 2016.
I actually think the Mueller report is really instructive in some ways. It reveals our partisanship. People who hate trump read into it that there was 100% collusion and 100% obstruction. People who love Trump read into it total exoneration on both points.
Reality is in the middle. It looks like Russia and the Trump Administration both wanted Trump to win the presidency, and both acted independently (but with an understanding that the other party was acting in this manner) to help bolster his chances. Mueller narrowly defined his idea of what conspiracy was in this report, and it required a definite agreement between the two sides. That never happened, so there was no criminal conspiracy. That doesnt mean Trump didnt benefit, or didnt know that Russia was involved.
The same is true of obstruction. Mueller mostly, basically says that Trump attempted to interfere with the investigation with corrupt intent, but was really bad at doing so, mostly because the people around him wouldnt let him. Additionally, Mueller acknowledges that the standing policy of DoJ to not indict a sitting president meant, from the outset, he wasnt going to offer any indictment on obstruction. He's very clear that this lack of an indictment is not to be taken as exoneration.
Being really bad at attempting to commit a crime is not a defense. If I attempt to steal 4 bottles of wine from a liquor store and drop them on the way out the door, it doesn't make me less guilty. If I hire someone to kill my spouse and they either don't do it or are unable to carry it out, I'm still going to be charged with attempted murder if the transaction is revealed. Trump told people to write falsified memos, he told the White House Counsel to proceed with firing Mueller to end the investigation, he fired Comey and (for the 1000th time) ADMITTED why. This was confirmed under oath by members of his own Administration when they talked to Mueller's team. The fact that they didn't carry out the acts he ORDERED them to do doesn't change the fact that he did, in fact, give those orders. Most of the stories at the time were about Trump THINKING about firing Mueller. We now know for a fact that he actively gave the order to do so. As far as I'm concerned that, even completely ignoring the other NINE detailed incidents in the report, is the ballgame.
And quite frankly, from the beginning, it's been his own fucking fault. He could have avoided ALL of this. He is the one who fired Comey (we now know for CERTAIN) to stop the investigation into Flynn. He is the one who went on national TV strutting like a peacock about what he had just done. He is the one who gave orders to both Don McGahn and Jeff Sessions to essentially derail the investigation as it was ongoing. Not once, not twice, but on at least THREE separate occasions. So, if, as many people now believe, he had nothing to worry about, then it is his own goddamn stupidity, hubris and belief in his absolute power that has brought him to the situation he is in now, and NO ONE else's.
It's kinda crazy how even something like this which destroys every core facet of the TrumpRussia conspiracy isn't enough to destroy the fantasy. There's a ton of analysis about what really amounts to very little. The conspiracy mongers were wrong, about pretty much everything. Trump Tower Don Jr. meeting, about trivial nonsense. Wikileaks communications, meaningless. Trump Tower Moscow, irrelevant. That Russian bank that was supposedly his secret connection? Nah. No members of the campaign involved in any influence operation, including the ones we were told definitely did like Manafort. No members of the campaign involved in directing or coordinating a hack. Trump's business dealings were irrelevant. Putin was not holding the strings as was so often repeatedly claimed. Turns out just because someone visited Russia one time they don't turn out to be foreign agents. Almost nothing we were told was true was based on reality, in the end. At this point you have to be filling in the gaps with imagination and presupposition to believe otherwise.
And no, Mueller was not simply unable to rise to the level of conspiracy. There simply was none to be found, made obvious by the lack of virtually any evidence of such where there otherwise would be. This wasn't a narrow, technical finding that simply didn't meet the burden. It was non existence. I can't prove with 100% factual certainty there isn't a baboon living in my basement, but after a thorough examination of every corner of the room offering no baboon sights, we can confidently state there isn't one. At a certain point, instead of wanting a negative to be proven, a total lack of evidence where evidence should be is enough to be confident.
After two years of the same conspiracy being repeated ad-nauseam I find that this being all reduced to an ultimately fruitless discussion about obstruction or no obstruction to be wildly entertaining. The goal posts have been moved out of the soccer field and into the lake. All I know is that if I was claiming treason for years and all I had to show for it was that maybe he obstructed justice during the course of an investigation in which he was cleared of its charges, i'd feel more than a little foolish. Especially since the legal analysis is enough to conclude it's not going anywhere and their case would likely fail even if they wanted it. So that's that!
Watching these mainstream media lunatics act like their nonsense has been validated is the best of all though. These folks live in a bubble of their own making wholly separate from reality. I can't believe anyone takes anything they say seriously anymore. Including myself, even I was surprised by how little of substance things like the Trump Tower meeting had when they were so constantly branded as end-all-be-all proof of conspiracy. It was all so silly.
@WarChiefZeke when Barr produced his summary, you made the same argument. At that time I suggested we should wait to see what the report said rather than accepting the report exonerated Trump. We've now seen the report and I think your argument can now clearly be seen to be misleading. It's true that the report says there was no criminal conspiracy. However, it also says definitively that the Trump Campaign were knowingly making use of information they knew to have been obtained illegally by a foreign government. That may not rise to the level of conspiracy, but that type of link seems to me pretty troubling.
That sort of link is also what virtually all of the discussion in this thread has been about - there's been almost no suggestion that Trump was an agent of Russia. I also think there's been very little of that in the mainstream media (you can of course find anything on wider social media), so it's not at all surprising to me to see people saying that their stance was vindicated. One further note of caution though - in reading through the report I saw no discussion of Trump's private meetings with Putin. I'm not sure if that's because that information was redacted, or because there was no source of information other than Trump (who would not cooperate). At a minimum though we know Putin had compromising information on Trump (that he'd lied about his business dealings), which is not a helpful basis for the US when negotiating international policy.
By the way can you point to a source for this or is it just your own view: "Especially since the legal analysis is enough to conclude it's not going anywhere and their case would likely fail even if they wanted it. So that's that!" My own view from the report is that Mueller felt there was a strong case for obstruction - and I agree with that. Mueller was clearly influenced by the existing policy that Presidents should not be charged while in office, but just as clearly wanted to leave the door open for a prosecution after Trump leaves office. In principle I think that policy is a bad one, but I can understand why someone like Mueller (who is a by-the-book type, who shuns publicity) was unwilling to fight to change that.
We might as well compare this to the only other modern instances where impeachment was on the table. First we'll take Clinton. Clinton was impeached by the House and put on trial in the Senate for far, FAR less than what is presented in the Mueller report. The fact that Ken Starr, of all people, is out there today saying impeachment would be "bad for the country" is just too much to handle.
But the far more important parallel is Nixon. Nixon did not order the Watergate break-in. But he did create the apparatus in his White House that specifically encouraged actions like the Watergate break-in to take place (to say nothing of the same crew breaking into office of Daniel Ellsburg's Dr. to try obtain damning medical records). But when he found out about it, he immediately tried to cover it up. Trump has done essentially the same thing. We seem to now know that Trump did not enter into a verbal or written agreement with the Russian government but he was the head of a campaign that put people like Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone in prominent positions. And these three men were actively involved in activities ranging from attempted quid pro quo on sanctions, sharing polling data with oligarchs close to Putin, and working with Wikileaks to disseminate stolen emails. And the moment the heat started (less than 30 days into his Administration) with Flynn, he immediately started to engage in his own cover-up.
Nixon was not driven out of office because he personally ordered the break-in. He was driven from office because every single step of the way when he was confronted with what to do about it after he found out, he choose to engage in a cover-up and abuse his power as President to do so. His media strategy was exactly the same. In recently reading "The Final Days", it stunning how little has changed. Nixon's Press Secretary, much like the vile Sarah Sanders, called the entire thing a partisan witch hunt and blamed the media for their obsession. Nixon's lawyers at no less than a dozen times thought they were in the clear and out of the woods. The ONLY difference is that Nixon eventually found someone to fire Archibald Cox and Trump couldn't actually get anyone to carry out the EXACT same order. But, once again, that doesn't change the fact that he GAVE the order. Trump ordered Mueller fired in the same way Nixon gave the order to fire Cox. And mark my words, if someone invented a time machine and transported Trump's base back to 1974, they would, to a person, defend Nixon to the bitter end.
The other thing that is absolutely mind-blowing is how quick Trump and the right have shifted their stance on Mueller. For 2 years, it was a "partisan witch hunt" (which we now know is utterly absurd as Mueller stuck STRICTLY to his mandate and did not cross Trump's "red line" of his finances"). Then for the last 4 weeks after William Barr's shameful lies, they were touting the report as vindication. Right up until yesterday at 11 am, when it became a witch hunt again. The left has not abandoned Mueller. You are finding nearly universal praise for the job he did here even taking into account specific disagreements. You cannot say one part of the report is accurate (that they weren't able to prove a criminal conspiracy case) and then TOTALLY IGNORE the other parts. Which are that the Russian interference was pervasive, the massive amount of examples of how the Trump campaign willingly accepted and used said interference to their advantage in winning the election, and (most importantly) the utterly damning Part II of the report which clearly lays out an iron-clad case against the President for obstructing justice in regards to the investigation.
Moreover, since it can't be said enough just how bad Bill Barr is......this report could have been released almost exactly as it is now a month ago. Because we know from reporting just a week ago that Mueller's team had already specifically laid all this out with almost everything that needed to be redacted already taken care. They had this ready to go to the public and Congress in essentially this form immediately. And we waited for a month for NO other reason than Barr attempting to hijack the narrative they KNEW was coming once the report became public.
While the Mueller report has been informative to a degree, I say we need another investigation because Mueller screwed up here's how:
-They only legitimate investigation is one that is at minimum bipartisan and not hobbled at every chance by corrupt Republicans like this was.
-He didn't interview Trump (accepting responses written by his lawyers doesn't count).
-Mueller was a team player and narrowly stuck to looking for "collision" before the election. What about collusion after the election? Trump's been mighty friendly with Putin after being elected and met in private a few times without any Americans. Why was that not investigated?
- He gave up too easily. He let Donald Trump jr. and Jared Kushner go. Why? Flynn was charged with being an unregistered foreign agent, why not Kushner? Kush lied numerous times on his security clearance and clearly serves other masters. Mueller accepted "gee I forgot" and erased messages way too easily as well as Trump's manipulation of the investigation and evidence and witnesses which brings me to...
-. Mueller took the coward's way out. The thing about Presidents being unable to be charged with obstruction is not properly tested in the courts, it's DOJ policy - which means little because the President is in charge of the DOJ so his underlings of course want to cover for him. When Mueller didn't charge Trump, despite the known acts and the obstruction he himself uncovered he failed us. He punted it down the line where Barr jumped in and inserted himself to cover up Trump's crimes. That's a failure. As a special counsel you are supposed to take action and not now to political appointees. He failed.
"by permitting the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president would place into the hands of a single prosecutor and grand jury the practical power to interfere with the ability of a popularly elected President to carry out his constitutional functions." (Emphasis mine)
"Well. He wasn't a 'popularly elected' president, so f- that noise, indict him."
Also I am really irritated that an argument in the 1973 memo against an indictment and trial is that 12 jurors is possibly not representative of a country of millions. Where in the @#)^ does it state anywhere that a jury MUST be 12? In the Federal Rules for Criminal Procedures. Why? Because that's how things have been done for the last 1100 years in English Common Law. Civil trials is a bit more vague, 6 to 12.
If anything, the MORE jurors you have, the smaller your chance of conviction due to the standards of a unanimous verdict (which I don't agree with, I think it is too restrictive, but I don't know how one would word "unanimous minus one, or 95% or more, whichever be a lower number of jurors" which would be my standard) combined with the level of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
Also I am really irritated that an argument in the 1973 memo against an indictment and trial is that 12 jurors is possibly not representative of a country of millions. Where in the @#)^ does it state anywhere that a jury MUST be 12? In the Federal Rules for Criminal Procedures. Why? Because that's how things have been done for the last 1100 years in English Common Law. Civil trials is a bit more vague, 6 to 12.
If anything, the MORE jurors you have, the smaller your chance of conviction due to the standards of a unanimous verdict (which I don't agree with, I think it is too restrictive, but I don't know how one would word "unanimous minus one, or 95% or more, whichever be a lower number of jurors" which would be my standard) combined with the level of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I was surprised at this as in the UK a majority of 10-2 can convict in a criminal trial. Checking the rules in the US confirms that a unanimous verdict is normally required in criminal trials - though Montana will accept a majority conviction for felonies (I imagine defense counsels there are practised at arguments to move cases out of state ).
I don't think the rules on majority convictions are particularly difficult. The numbers involved in the UK allow 10-2, but if there are fewer than 12 jurors then all but one is needed to vote guilty to secure a conviction. In exactly the same way as for a unanimous verdict all jurors are required to only vote guilty if they believe the charges to have been proved beyond reasonable doubt. I did note that in court martials for less serious offences in the US only a 2/3 majority of panel members is needed (for sentences of over 10 years 3/4 is needed and for the death penalty unanimity).
"by permitting the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president would place into the hands of a single prosecutor and grand jury the practical power to interfere with the ability of a popularly elected President to carry out his constitutional functions." (Emphasis mine)
"Well. He wasn't a 'popularly elected' president, so f- that noise, indict him."
Also I am really irritated that an argument in the 1973 memo against an indictment and trial is that 12 jurors is possibly not representative of a country of millions. Where in the @#)^ does it state anywhere that a jury MUST be 12? In the Federal Rules for Criminal Procedures. Why? Because that's how things have been done for the last 1100 years in English Common Law. Civil trials is a bit more vague, 6 to 12.
If anything, the MORE jurors you have, the smaller your chance of conviction due to the standards of a unanimous verdict (which I don't agree with, I think it is too restrictive, but I don't know how one would word "unanimous minus one, or 95% or more, whichever be a lower number of jurors" which would be my standard) combined with the level of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
Trump was 'popular' enough to be elected President so your argument is meaningless. There is no provision in the Constitution or anywhere else that you be elected by a 'popular' majority (emphasis mine). There is no little loophole that's going to make this easy. Congress and/or the SCOTUS will need to wake up to do anything about Trump.
The logic of the DOJ memo is sound, if not satisfying. There is no way to bring the President to a trial without impeachment. Who's going to arrest him for one thing? The FBI's power is derived from the Executive branch and thus, the people through their duly elected representative, the President. Federal authority exceeds State and Local authority so the police and sheriffs are out. Who delivers this justice? Also, keep in mind that technically it's treason to defy the President.
"by permitting the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president would place into the hands of a single prosecutor and grand jury the practical power to interfere with the ability of a popularly elected President to carry out his constitutional functions." (Emphasis mine)
"Well. He wasn't a 'popularly elected' president, so f- that noise, indict him."
Also I am really irritated that an argument in the 1973 memo against an indictment and trial is that 12 jurors is possibly not representative of a country of millions. Where in the @#)^ does it state anywhere that a jury MUST be 12? In the Federal Rules for Criminal Procedures. Why? Because that's how things have been done for the last 1100 years in English Common Law. Civil trials is a bit more vague, 6 to 12.
If anything, the MORE jurors you have, the smaller your chance of conviction due to the standards of a unanimous verdict (which I don't agree with, I think it is too restrictive, but I don't know how one would word "unanimous minus one, or 95% or more, whichever be a lower number of jurors" which would be my standard) combined with the level of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
Trump was 'popular' enough to be elected President so your argument is meaningless. There is no provision in the Constitution or anywhere else that you be elected by a 'popular' majority (emphasis mine). There is no little loophole that's going to make this easy. Congress and/or the SCOTUS will need to wake up to do anything about Trump.
The logic of the DOJ memo is sound, if not satisfying. There is no way to bring the President to a trial without impeachment. Who's going to arrest him for one thing? The FBI's power is derived from the Executive branch and thus, the people through their duly elected representative, the President. Federal authority exceeds State and Local authority so the police and sheriffs are out. Who delivers this justice? Also, keep in mind that technically it's treason to defy the President.
The President is not the United States. It is treason to go against the United States. It isn't treason to defy the President. He's not a king. Also, it is ok to defy unlawful orders from a President (or anyone else) because as we learned from Nazi Germany "just following orders" isn't a valid excuse.
Trump only escaped obstructing justice because Don Mcgahn defied his orders.
"by permitting the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president would place into the hands of a single prosecutor and grand jury the practical power to interfere with the ability of a popularly elected President to carry out his constitutional functions." (Emphasis mine)
"Well. He wasn't a 'popularly elected' president, so f- that noise, indict him."
Also I am really irritated that an argument in the 1973 memo against an indictment and trial is that 12 jurors is possibly not representative of a country of millions. Where in the @#)^ does it state anywhere that a jury MUST be 12? In the Federal Rules for Criminal Procedures. Why? Because that's how things have been done for the last 1100 years in English Common Law. Civil trials is a bit more vague, 6 to 12.
If anything, the MORE jurors you have, the smaller your chance of conviction due to the standards of a unanimous verdict (which I don't agree with, I think it is too restrictive, but I don't know how one would word "unanimous minus one, or 95% or more, whichever be a lower number of jurors" which would be my standard) combined with the level of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
Trump was 'popular' enough to be elected President so your argument is meaningless. There is no provision in the Constitution or anywhere else that you be elected by a 'popular' majority (emphasis mine). There is no little loophole that's going to make this easy. Congress and/or the SCOTUS will need to wake up to do anything about Trump.
The logic of the DOJ memo is sound, if not satisfying. There is no way to bring the President to a trial without impeachment. Who's going to arrest him for one thing? The FBI's power is derived from the Executive branch and thus, the people through their duly elected representative, the President. Federal authority exceeds State and Local authority so the police and sheriffs are out. Who delivers this justice? Also, keep in mind that technically it's treason to defy the President.
The President is not the United States. It is treason to go against the United States. It isn't treason to defy the President. He's not a king. Also, it is ok to defy unlawful orders from a President (or anyone else) because as we learned from Nazi Germany "just following orders" isn't a valid excuse.
Trump only escaped obstructing justice because Don Mcgahn defied his orders.
Not doing what you're told isn't necessarily treason. You may be forced to resign or be fired for it, but it's not treason. Arresting the President without the authority of Congress behind you would be. The way to deal with a rogue President is impeachment by Congress. Mueller and the FBI was never going to and will never act on their own. Nor should they.
The fact that Trump is back to absolutely RAGING about the report on Twitter this morning is a pretty big tell of how damaging HE thinks it is. And they are now going with the "Don McGahn lied to Mueller defense". Seeing as McGahn was under threat of perjury and obstruction himself if he lied, and Trump steadfastly refused to sit for an interview (and, indeed, even failed and didn't complete his take-home test), this argument is utter hogwash.
This report is Trump's emperor has no clothes moment. Everything in Section II is stuff he flatly denied at the time and called "fake news". It reveals him to be nothing more than an ineffectual wanna-be autocrat who is seen as so stupid by his own staff that they won't carry out his illegal orders. And it forever enshrines him as (by far) the biggest liar in the history of the American Presidency. Lie upon lie upon lie upon lie, then a break where he asks other people to lie for him (to cover up previous lies) then back to his own. Like I've said before, I think we can all handle SOME lies along the line from politicians. But this isn't that. This is systematic, pervasive falsehoods on a daily basis on a never-ending loop. His Press Secretary, to cover up the reason for Comey's firing at the time, just MADE UP the story that FBI agents were calling her and telling her how happy they were about it. When she was put under oath, she had to tell the truth and say that was 'based on nothing". Yesterday, she told ABC it was a slip of the tongue (a slip of the tongue that occurred on two separate days mind you) and by the evening with Hannity on FOX, she was RIGHT BACK to lying about it again. These people have absolutely no shame whatsoever. I've never seen anything like it. The contempt for the public just astounding.
Tom Nichols is one of the more prominent "never-Trump" Republicans on Twitter, and while I generally don't trust these people after the Bush years, this is a great observation:
One interesting aspect of the Mueller Report is not what's in it, but how Trump's shills have reacted to it. They have taken two positions.
1. The report says exactly the opposite of what it says
2. The media totally screwed up this story.
Both are worth a moment here. The first strategy is pure gaslighting, like Kellyanne demanding apologies. She's like the person who backs into you in the parking lot, gets out, and and demands your insurance info and says you'll be hearing from her lawyers while her BMW is lodged in the side of your Camry. This is the strategy taken by people who know only the strategy of doubling down, of reacting with aggression, and who understand just how bad the news really is. They go on offense because...well, why the hell not? Bang the table. Might work. Rube Nation loves that stuff. The other is a spate of tweets and articles about what "the media" got wrong, mostly focused on talking heads who (admittedly) went too far in believing the myth that Trump would be led across the South Lawn in handcuffs. But these stories, too, are a panic reaction. They're from conservatives who really, really wanted to invalidate the entire MSM - as conservatives, who see themselves as anti-MSM insurgents, always do - and they thought the Report was their silver bullet. It wasn't. In fact, it validated almost all of the MSM reporting. Sure, there were clinkers, like McClatchy's "trip to Prague." But when your case against "the media" is something you pulled off a panel from CNN or MSNBC (and notice "the media" is never "Fox"), then you're admitting that you'd rather talk about anything but what happened. The Russians attacked the election. The Trump campaign, right up to the top, thought that was awesome. They greeted it with "how can we work this" instead of "call the FBI." They lied, and lied, and lied some more. Amazing that the media got *any* of it right faced with that. Why are they freaking out? As Rick Wilson said: "The most striking part of the last two days is how Donald Trump and his allies are acting like losers, more aggrieved, bitchy, and petulant than ever."
It's because they know. They always knew. And now it's in the open.
And they've lost control of the narrative. They can't control it right now. They had a month to set the table, and it still wasn't enough to blunt the impact.
Too bad their all in duck and cover mode with McConnell ignoring it completing and instead tabling legislation to increase the age to buy tobacco to 21.
This is why Democrats need to start the impeachment process. It’s not about just beating Trump in 2020, it’s also about removing those who have been enabling him for the last 2 years as well.
Comments
My guess is most of those crimes are typically committed by people with alot of money. That being said, I absolutely respect what Mueller has done here in totality. I may not agree at all with how, shall we say, non-aggressive they were in some aspects, but what he presented is a overwhelming picture of corrupt intent from top to bottom, much of it at the VERY LEAST bordering on criminality. To say nothing of the convictions and guilty pleas that have already taken place, many of whom are CENTRAL players in this report (namely, Manafort and Flynn).
The vast majority of crimes require criminal intent (mens rea). Those that don't are crimes of strict liability - traffic offenses are the most common ones, though another relevant example for this thread would be the illegal crossing of the US border.
The issue about ignorance of the law here relates to whether something is understood as a crime at all. Ignorance of the law is no excuse refers to a level of detail. A burglar may not know the details of the law, but is aware what he's doing is a crime - and hence gets prosecuted. Perhaps a better example would be a case I saw a few days ago where 2 friends argued in a bar and a punch was thrown - the recipient fell down, hit his head and died (that situation is actually one of the examples used in introductory law to explain that the law will prosecute the consequences of a crime, even if those are unintended). In this case the man was convicted of manslaughter and the fact that he almost certainly didn't know the law was no excuse - he knew that throwing a punch at someone was illegal and that was enough for the mens rea.
In Trump Jrs case the distinguishing feature is that he could argue that he thought this was not a crime at all. I agree with others that defense looks weak to me. A professional person, currently involved in politics, might well be expected (and in fact deemed) to have at least a general understanding of relevant law. A decision to prosecute would certainly have been possible, but I can see why Mueller chose not to do so - I could very easily imagine a jury unable to determine that a conviction was safe "beyond a reasonable doubt". As has been pointed out before this does reflect to some extent a 2-tier system of justice. A poor person, without decent legal representation, would have no chance with this sort of defense in practice - even though in principle it would be available to them.
Things like:
"Republicans are weak on national security, they've got a stooge as AG who lied to the American people to cover up Russian attacks on America."
"Barr is not America's AG, he's a personal lawyer to President Trump. Republicans are weakening our laws and reputation to cover up Trump's corruption."
Etc etc etc
They'll never let anyone forget what's going on.
People (like this person) have been sounding the alarm about William Barr since the moment he was nominated for this EXACT reason and it didn't do much good whatsoever. Despite his transparently obvious motives and past history. Trump is and will forever remain the easiest of targets, but the true villains of the era when the history is written will be Mitch McConnell and William Barr.
But to your other point......what is being lost in all of this is that the report EMPHATICALLY states that the attack on the election by Russia was pervasive and wide-ranging. And the President of the United States and his campaign staff not only did nothing when confronted with this information, they WELCOMED it with open arms. They thought absolutely nothing of letting a foreign power attack the most basic bedrock of our democracy because it was going to personally benefit them. The best you can say is that they were too stupid to know how they were being manipulated. What a ringing endorsement for the people in charge of the government. Any Republican anywhere who still supports this man and tries to play the "patriotism" or "national security" card for the rest of their lives should be laughed out of whatever building they are in. And those same people would literally be calling for the execution of any Democrat accused of a 1/10th as much as what is in this report.
1.) It is beyond clear that the only reason Trump isn't being charged with obstruction of justice is because Mueller CAN'T charge him because of the DOJ guidelines about a sitting President. That isn't Mueller's fault, it's him following this insane, pulled from someone's ass policy that basically grants the President total immunity.
2.) There are also indications in the language that Mueller wasn't going to make concrete findings on Trump's conduct because, based on the guideline above, Trump would never have a "day in court", thus Mueller wasn't going to make a judgement Trump couldn't defend himself against in the legal sense. Again, it all goes back to this Nixonian view of Presidential power. Instead, he just presented the evidence.
3.) They make VERY clear (as many have been saying all along) that collusion is not a legal term, and never has been. They were never investigating "collusion". When Barr and Trump keep saying this, they are clearing Trump of something he was never being investigated for in the first place. The Special Counsel was tasked with investigating the Russian interference in the 2016 election. They found that it absolutely, 100% took place to a vast degree. And while they didn't find evidence they could bring in a court of law that would be provable beyond a reasonable doubt that the campaign was involved in a wide-ranging conspiracy, they ALSO go out of their way to state that that does NOT mean they found no evidence or indications of it. They did. It's all laid out. They simply decided it didn't rise to the level the believed they could prosecute criminally, especially considering most of it involves the President or his immediate family.
4.) Mueller also makes it very clear that he did NOT find the President's written answers sufficient (Trump said he "didn't recall" at least 30 times). The reason the subpoena was never issued for him to appear before them was because they didn't think they had time. Trump would have battled it to the Supreme Court and ran out the clock until the election. Mueller's team clearly wanted this to at least have a CHANCE to be taken before Congress before that time. I disagree with this tactic, but it IS understandable. (And just as an aside folks, in your life, whenever you confront someone with a tough question and they say they "don't remember", you can be 99% sure that is total bullshit. I'm also fairly sure MY memory is correct when Trump once claimed he had one of the "great memories of all-time").
5.) They also state (and this is the big one) that the combination of Trump's obstruction, the outright lies of people like Manafort and in some cases the literal destruction of evidence had a material effect on their ability to get to the bottom of the matter at hand. Which is the WHOLE POINT of obstruction.
And, for the record, as of one hour ago, Trump has apparently done a complete 180 on the report being a "complete exoneration" and is now back to attacking the investigation he has been claiming for the last FOUR WEEKS cleared him.
House Judiciary Chairman Nadler laid out a full investigative process, starting with hearing from Attorney General William Barr, “who misled the country,” and special counsel Robert Mueller. “We have to hold hearings and hear from other people both on the question of obstruction of justice, whereas I said the special prosecutor invited Congress to look into that, not the attorney general. We have to look into all that. We need the entire report, unredacted, and the underlying documents in order to make informed decisions.”
And no, Mueller was not simply unable to rise to the level of conspiracy. There simply was none to be found, made obvious by the lack of virtually any evidence of such where there otherwise would be. This wasn't a narrow, technical finding that simply didn't meet the burden. It was non existence. I can't prove with 100% factual certainty there isn't a baboon living in my basement, but after a thorough examination of every corner of the room offering no baboon sights, we can confidently state there isn't one. At a certain point, instead of wanting a negative to be proven, a total lack of evidence where evidence should be is enough to be confident.
After two years of the same conspiracy being repeated ad-nauseam I find that this being all reduced to an ultimately fruitless discussion about obstruction or no obstruction to be wildly entertaining. The goal posts have been moved out of the soccer field and into the lake. All I know is that if I was claiming treason for years and all I had to show for it was that maybe he obstructed justice during the course of an investigation in which he was cleared of its charges, i'd feel more than a little foolish. Especially since the legal analysis is enough to conclude it's not going anywhere and their case would likely fail even if they wanted it. So that's that!
Watching these mainstream media lunatics act like their nonsense has been validated is the best of all though. These folks live in a bubble of their own making wholly separate from reality. I can't believe anyone takes anything they say seriously anymore. Including myself, even I was surprised by how little of substance things like the Trump Tower meeting had when they were so constantly branded as end-all-be-all proof of conspiracy. It was all so silly.
1.) When Mike Flynn was found to have lied, he asked Comey for personal loyalty, asked him to drop the case against Flynn, and directed KT McFarland to draft a false memo about what Trump had actually told Flynn to do.
2.) Trump starts fuming to those close to him how he needs an Attorney General who will, quote, "protect him". He personally calls Comey twice more asking him to "lift the cloud on Russia".
3.) Trump fires Comey, telling Rosenstein to indicate false reasoning, and then goes on national television and admits it was because of the Russia investigation and Flynn.
4.) Trump hears about the appointment of the Special Counsel and declares it the end of his Presidency. He then DIRECTS Don McGahn to have the Acting Attorney General fire Mueller.
5.) Despite Session's recusal, Trump then orders Corey Lewandowski to relay a message to Session that he is to limit the scope of the investigation at his request.
6.) Trump directs aides not to discuss any aspects of the Trump Tower meeting, and is personally involved in editing the press statement that lied about the nature of the meeting.
7.) Trump AGAIN orders Sessions to unrecuse and reign in the investigation.
8.) Trump then orders McGahn to lie about him previously telling him to give the order to fire Mueller to the Acting AG, and asks him why he has notes about the event.
9.) Trump's public statements towards Flynn and Manafort convey the strong indication of possible pardons if they hold the line.
10.) Trump's behavior towards Michael Cohen changes from praise initially to calling him (like a mobster) a "rat". Cohen discusses pardons with the President's legal counsel and as led to believe he would be given a pardon if he towed the line.
Now then. This doesn't just read as all the ways Trump obstructed the investigation. It reads like a list of nearly EVERYTHING you could conceivably do to obstruct an investigation. What the hell did he miss?? If the President of the United States can fire the FBI Director for not dropping investigations into his campaign, order aides to dictate false memos, order the Special Counsel fired, order the limiting of a scope of an investigation into himself, order the White House Counsel to lie and express worry he has "notes", and float pardons to key figures caught up in probe, then, as @semiticgod astutely pointed out, can't they conceivably get away with ANYTHING?? If this isn't obstruction of justice, then what the hell is is?? Should we either bother continuing on with the concept at all if Trump isn't held accountable for it??
Mind you, ALL of these things were reported in the media at one time or another in the last two years, and ALL of them were denied by Trump as "fake news". If we let this stand, aren't we de facto saying that the Presidency is exactly what Nixon wanted it to be?? Because, more than anything, what the reaction to this strikes me as is the victory of the decades long campaign engaged in by people like Roger Ailes on the media end and people like Dick Cheney in the governmental end. To make sure that Watergate never happens again. To build a media defense force around obvious, blatant corrupt and immoral acts and to magnify the power of the Executive Branch to the point where it is basically immune from any consequences of any action. Because this is the endgame of that experiment, and, at the moment, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
The Obama White House practically BEGGED Mitch McConnell to sign on to making a bipartisan statement warning the public about the ongoing election interference efforts. McConnell flat-out refused to do so, and the entire GOP would have immediately accused Obama himself of putting the thumb on the scale if the White House had made the declaration alone, which EVERYONE knows would have happened.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/new-mexico-militia.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
But, let's by all means go with the current conservative line of thinking in this country and do away with the concept entirely. We'll let everyone accused of a crime lie to investigators without repercussions, witness tamper, start campaigns to have judges and prosecutors removed because they are "frustrated", and hell, let's let them pay off potential jury members too. Anything goes at this point. Free for all. Let's see how it works. Because that is what is being advocated, nothing less.
Otherwise, we have knowingly set the precedent that the President of the United States is, in fact, perfectly free to shut down, silence, block, and hide the truth from any investigation into his or her activities--whether or not those actions are legal or illegal. And I do not think anyone here will agree that the President should be able to shield himself or anyone from criminal prosecution. The President's only power to thwart the actions of the criminal justice system is to issue pardons; not to obstruct investigations.
Now that the investigation is over, the question facing us is whether the President has the power to commit obstruction of justice if he himself decides that it's okay, and I think the answer is "no."
The Democrats have two choices here. On the one hand, the Constitution calls upon them to hold Trump (and all future Presidents) accountable for these type of actions. Because of where we are, they are the only ones that can. At the VERY least, preliminary hearings such as the type that took place during the Watergate era now need to commence. People need to be brought before House committees to testify. This cannot just sit as is.
On the other hand......there is a better chance of me hooking up with Beyonce than the Senate Republicans voting to remove Trump from office. And the question then becomes, is it more prudent to take the first step (and it is only half) in the House, or to focus all attention on beating him in 18 months. And that is a profoundly difficult question. From a standpoint of making a stand in history, the choice is clear. There is no way to know right now if the left-wing base will be more upset if they DON'T at least refer impeachment to the Senate, or if it will so energize Trump's base that it becomes a detriment to his defeat. I think the conventional wisdom that Republicans paid a political price for impeaching Clinton is wildly overblown to the point of being flat-out wrong. Trump's poll numbers never change. They constantly fluctuate between roughly 38-44%. That is nowhere NEAR the popularity level of Clinton in the late 90s.
Elizabeth Warren, as she has been doing this entire primary season, is leading on this (I still don't think she wins the nomination, but she is the bravest Democratic candidate so far). She has called for the House to start the inquiry. I think Democrats thinking they can just run on "policy" and beat Trump is a miscalculation. They always run on policy, and are always told they don't focus enough on it despite that fact. Trump doesn't deal in policy. He is a cartoon character. And the way to defeat him is to CONSTANTLY hammer against the nearly endless corruption we have been seeing on a daily basis for the last 2 1/2 years. Bring his cabinet secretaries to the Hill to explain themselves, and they crumble within minutes. Because they are all thieves and grifters. The House Democrats need to start doing massive amounts of investigations NOW and the candidates need to hammer home the narrative of corruption at every available opportunity. Because pay raises for teachers and holding telcom companies accountable isn't going to get the job done in the face of Trump's demagoguery.
Moreover, they can't be afraid of the ramifications. If Democrats didn't win the House last November, I can guaran-damn-tee we would have NEVER seen the Mueller Report at all. It would have never been released. That alone proves how powerful holding the House can be. They cannot sit on it like an egg. Be judicious in the process, proceed with care, but do not fear this corrupt blowhard. Take him on. Not doing so only reinforces the illusion among his supporters that he is an invincible winner. Don't forfeit the ground to him. After a month of trying to set the narrative on their terms, he is now clearly on the defensive. Do not let up.
And I was just exposed to a VERY good question I hadn't even thought of. Hypothetically speaking, let's say Democrats get to the point where they vote for impeachment. Given what he did in regards to the Supreme Court, would Mitch McConnell even ALLOW a Senate trial to take place??
I actually think the Mueller report is really instructive in some ways. It reveals our partisanship. People who hate trump read into it that there was 100% collusion and 100% obstruction. People who love Trump read into it total exoneration on both points.
Reality is in the middle. It looks like Russia and the Trump Administration both wanted Trump to win the presidency, and both acted independently (but with an understanding that the other party was acting in this manner) to help bolster his chances. Mueller narrowly defined his idea of what conspiracy was in this report, and it required a definite agreement between the two sides. That never happened, so there was no criminal conspiracy. That doesnt mean Trump didnt benefit, or didnt know that Russia was involved.
The same is true of obstruction. Mueller mostly, basically says that Trump attempted to interfere with the investigation with corrupt intent, but was really bad at doing so, mostly because the people around him wouldnt let him. Additionally, Mueller acknowledges that the standing policy of DoJ to not indict a sitting president meant, from the outset, he wasnt going to offer any indictment on obstruction. He's very clear that this lack of an indictment is not to be taken as exoneration.
And quite frankly, from the beginning, it's been his own fucking fault. He could have avoided ALL of this. He is the one who fired Comey (we now know for CERTAIN) to stop the investigation into Flynn. He is the one who went on national TV strutting like a peacock about what he had just done. He is the one who gave orders to both Don McGahn and Jeff Sessions to essentially derail the investigation as it was ongoing. Not once, not twice, but on at least THREE separate occasions. So, if, as many people now believe, he had nothing to worry about, then it is his own goddamn stupidity, hubris and belief in his absolute power that has brought him to the situation he is in now, and NO ONE else's.
@WarChiefZeke when Barr produced his summary, you made the same argument. At that time I suggested we should wait to see what the report said rather than accepting the report exonerated Trump. We've now seen the report and I think your argument can now clearly be seen to be misleading. It's true that the report says there was no criminal conspiracy. However, it also says definitively that the Trump Campaign were knowingly making use of information they knew to have been obtained illegally by a foreign government. That may not rise to the level of conspiracy, but that type of link seems to me pretty troubling.
That sort of link is also what virtually all of the discussion in this thread has been about - there's been almost no suggestion that Trump was an agent of Russia. I also think there's been very little of that in the mainstream media (you can of course find anything on wider social media), so it's not at all surprising to me to see people saying that their stance was vindicated. One further note of caution though - in reading through the report I saw no discussion of Trump's private meetings with Putin. I'm not sure if that's because that information was redacted, or because there was no source of information other than Trump (who would not cooperate). At a minimum though we know Putin had compromising information on Trump (that he'd lied about his business dealings), which is not a helpful basis for the US when negotiating international policy.
By the way can you point to a source for this or is it just your own view: "Especially since the legal analysis is enough to conclude it's not going anywhere and their case would likely fail even if they wanted it. So that's that!" My own view from the report is that Mueller felt there was a strong case for obstruction - and I agree with that. Mueller was clearly influenced by the existing policy that Presidents should not be charged while in office, but just as clearly wanted to leave the door open for a prosecution after Trump leaves office. In principle I think that policy is a bad one, but I can understand why someone like Mueller (who is a by-the-book type, who shuns publicity) was unwilling to fight to change that.
But the far more important parallel is Nixon. Nixon did not order the Watergate break-in. But he did create the apparatus in his White House that specifically encouraged actions like the Watergate break-in to take place (to say nothing of the same crew breaking into office of Daniel Ellsburg's Dr. to try obtain damning medical records). But when he found out about it, he immediately tried to cover it up. Trump has done essentially the same thing. We seem to now know that Trump did not enter into a verbal or written agreement with the Russian government but he was the head of a campaign that put people like Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone in prominent positions. And these three men were actively involved in activities ranging from attempted quid pro quo on sanctions, sharing polling data with oligarchs close to Putin, and working with Wikileaks to disseminate stolen emails. And the moment the heat started (less than 30 days into his Administration) with Flynn, he immediately started to engage in his own cover-up.
Nixon was not driven out of office because he personally ordered the break-in. He was driven from office because every single step of the way when he was confronted with what to do about it after he found out, he choose to engage in a cover-up and abuse his power as President to do so. His media strategy was exactly the same. In recently reading "The Final Days", it stunning how little has changed. Nixon's Press Secretary, much like the vile Sarah Sanders, called the entire thing a partisan witch hunt and blamed the media for their obsession. Nixon's lawyers at no less than a dozen times thought they were in the clear and out of the woods. The ONLY difference is that Nixon eventually found someone to fire Archibald Cox and Trump couldn't actually get anyone to carry out the EXACT same order. But, once again, that doesn't change the fact that he GAVE the order. Trump ordered Mueller fired in the same way Nixon gave the order to fire Cox. And mark my words, if someone invented a time machine and transported Trump's base back to 1974, they would, to a person, defend Nixon to the bitter end.
The other thing that is absolutely mind-blowing is how quick Trump and the right have shifted their stance on Mueller. For 2 years, it was a "partisan witch hunt" (which we now know is utterly absurd as Mueller stuck STRICTLY to his mandate and did not cross Trump's "red line" of his finances"). Then for the last 4 weeks after William Barr's shameful lies, they were touting the report as vindication. Right up until yesterday at 11 am, when it became a witch hunt again. The left has not abandoned Mueller. You are finding nearly universal praise for the job he did here even taking into account specific disagreements. You cannot say one part of the report is accurate (that they weren't able to prove a criminal conspiracy case) and then TOTALLY IGNORE the other parts. Which are that the Russian interference was pervasive, the massive amount of examples of how the Trump campaign willingly accepted and used said interference to their advantage in winning the election, and (most importantly) the utterly damning Part II of the report which clearly lays out an iron-clad case against the President for obstructing justice in regards to the investigation.
Moreover, since it can't be said enough just how bad Bill Barr is......this report could have been released almost exactly as it is now a month ago. Because we know from reporting just a week ago that Mueller's team had already specifically laid all this out with almost everything that needed to be redacted already taken care. They had this ready to go to the public and Congress in essentially this form immediately. And we waited for a month for NO other reason than Barr attempting to hijack the narrative they KNEW was coming once the report became public.
Republicans in general have shown time and time again that they can't be trusted. Their party is corrupt. While there are bad guys in both parties Republicans have by far shown blatant disregard for the law just look at the number of criminals per administration going back the last 70 years to Nixon. Literally hundreds of Republican criminals in the Nixon, Reagan, Trump administrations (and a few in the Bush administrations). Very very few in Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations.
While the Mueller report has been informative to a degree, I say we need another investigation because Mueller screwed up here's how:
-They only legitimate investigation is one that is at minimum bipartisan and not hobbled at every chance by corrupt Republicans like this was.
-He didn't interview Trump (accepting responses written by his lawyers doesn't count).
-Mueller was a team player and narrowly stuck to looking for "collision" before the election. What about collusion after the election? Trump's been mighty friendly with Putin after being elected and met in private a few times without any Americans. Why was that not investigated?
- He gave up too easily. He let Donald Trump jr. and Jared Kushner go. Why? Flynn was charged with being an unregistered foreign agent, why not Kushner? Kush lied numerous times on his security clearance and clearly serves other masters. Mueller accepted "gee I forgot" and erased messages way too easily as well as Trump's manipulation of the investigation and evidence and witnesses which brings me to...
-. Mueller took the coward's way out. The thing about Presidents being unable to be charged with obstruction is not properly tested in the courts, it's DOJ policy - which means little because the President is in charge of the DOJ so his underlings of course want to cover for him. When Mueller didn't charge Trump, despite the known acts and the obstruction he himself uncovered he failed us. He punted it down the line where Barr jumped in and inserted himself to cover up Trump's crimes. That's a failure. As a special counsel you are supposed to take action and not now to political appointees. He failed.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/2000/10/31/op-olc-v024-p0222_0.pdf (the latest/current memo from 2000)
https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/olc/092473.pdf (the referenced original memo from 1973).
Combined they come in at about 80 pages.
"by permitting the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president would place into the hands of a single prosecutor and grand jury the practical power to interfere with the ability of a popularly elected President to carry out his constitutional functions." (Emphasis mine)
"Well. He wasn't a 'popularly elected' president, so f- that noise, indict him."
Also I am really irritated that an argument in the 1973 memo against an indictment and trial is that 12 jurors is possibly not representative of a country of millions. Where in the @#)^ does it state anywhere that a jury MUST be 12? In the Federal Rules for Criminal Procedures. Why? Because that's how things have been done for the last 1100 years in English Common Law. Civil trials is a bit more vague, 6 to 12.
If anything, the MORE jurors you have, the smaller your chance of conviction due to the standards of a unanimous verdict (which I don't agree with, I think it is too restrictive, but I don't know how one would word "unanimous minus one, or 95% or more, whichever be a lower number of jurors" which would be my standard) combined with the level of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I was surprised at this as in the UK a majority of 10-2 can convict in a criminal trial. Checking the rules in the US confirms that a unanimous verdict is normally required in criminal trials - though Montana will accept a majority conviction for felonies (I imagine defense counsels there are practised at arguments to move cases out of state
I don't think the rules on majority convictions are particularly difficult. The numbers involved in the UK allow 10-2, but if there are fewer than 12 jurors then all but one is needed to vote guilty to secure a conviction. In exactly the same way as for a unanimous verdict all jurors are required to only vote guilty if they believe the charges to have been proved beyond reasonable doubt. I did note that in court martials for less serious offences in the US only a 2/3 majority of panel members is needed (for sentences of over 10 years 3/4 is needed and for the death penalty unanimity).
Trump was 'popular' enough to be elected President so your argument is meaningless. There is no provision in the Constitution or anywhere else that you be elected by a 'popular' majority (emphasis mine). There is no little loophole that's going to make this easy. Congress and/or the SCOTUS will need to wake up to do anything about Trump.
The logic of the DOJ memo is sound, if not satisfying. There is no way to bring the President to a trial without impeachment. Who's going to arrest him for one thing? The FBI's power is derived from the Executive branch and thus, the people through their duly elected representative, the President. Federal authority exceeds State and Local authority so the police and sheriffs are out. Who delivers this justice? Also, keep in mind that technically it's treason to defy the President.
The President is not the United States. It is treason to go against the United States. It isn't treason to defy the President. He's not a king. Also, it is ok to defy unlawful orders from a President (or anyone else) because as we learned from Nazi Germany "just following orders" isn't a valid excuse.
Trump only escaped obstructing justice because Don Mcgahn defied his orders.
Not doing what you're told isn't necessarily treason. You may be forced to resign or be fired for it, but it's not treason. Arresting the President without the authority of Congress behind you would be. The way to deal with a rogue President is impeachment by Congress. Mueller and the FBI was never going to and will never act on their own. Nor should they.
This report is Trump's emperor has no clothes moment. Everything in Section II is stuff he flatly denied at the time and called "fake news". It reveals him to be nothing more than an ineffectual wanna-be autocrat who is seen as so stupid by his own staff that they won't carry out his illegal orders. And it forever enshrines him as (by far) the biggest liar in the history of the American Presidency. Lie upon lie upon lie upon lie, then a break where he asks other people to lie for him (to cover up previous lies) then back to his own. Like I've said before, I think we can all handle SOME lies along the line from politicians. But this isn't that. This is systematic, pervasive falsehoods on a daily basis on a never-ending loop. His Press Secretary, to cover up the reason for Comey's firing at the time, just MADE UP the story that FBI agents were calling her and telling her how happy they were about it. When she was put under oath, she had to tell the truth and say that was 'based on nothing". Yesterday, she told ABC it was a slip of the tongue (a slip of the tongue that occurred on two separate days mind you) and by the evening with Hannity on FOX, she was RIGHT BACK to lying about it again. These people have absolutely no shame whatsoever. I've never seen anything like it. The contempt for the public just astounding.
Tom Nichols is one of the more prominent "never-Trump" Republicans on Twitter, and while I generally don't trust these people after the Bush years, this is a great observation:
One interesting aspect of the Mueller Report is not what's in it, but how Trump's shills have reacted to it. They have taken two positions.
1. The report says exactly the opposite of what it says
2. The media totally screwed up this story.
Both are worth a moment here. The first strategy is pure gaslighting, like Kellyanne demanding apologies. She's like the person who backs into you in the parking lot, gets out, and and demands your insurance info and says you'll be hearing from her lawyers while her BMW is lodged in the side of your Camry. This is the strategy taken by people who know only the strategy of doubling down, of reacting with aggression, and who understand just how bad the news really is. They go on offense because...well, why the hell not? Bang the table. Might work. Rube Nation loves that stuff. The other is a spate of tweets and articles about what "the media" got wrong, mostly focused on talking heads who (admittedly) went too far in believing the myth that Trump would be led across the South Lawn in handcuffs. But these stories, too, are a panic reaction. They're from conservatives who really, really wanted to invalidate the entire MSM - as conservatives, who see themselves as anti-MSM insurgents, always do - and they thought the Report was their silver bullet. It wasn't. In fact, it validated almost all of the MSM reporting. Sure, there were clinkers, like McClatchy's "trip to Prague." But when your case against "the media" is something you pulled off a panel from CNN or MSNBC (and notice "the media" is never "Fox"), then you're admitting that you'd rather talk about anything but what happened. The Russians attacked the election. The Trump campaign, right up to the top, thought that was awesome. They greeted it with "how can we work this" instead of "call the FBI." They lied, and lied, and lied some more. Amazing that the media got *any* of it right faced with that. Why are they freaking out? As Rick Wilson said: "The most striking part of the last two days is how Donald Trump and his allies are acting like losers, more aggrieved, bitchy, and petulant than ever."
It's because they know. They always knew. And now it's in the open.
And they've lost control of the narrative. They can't control it right now. They had a month to set the table, and it still wasn't enough to blunt the impact.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/20/mueller-report-impeachment-obstruction-bill-clinton-republicans
Too bad their all in duck and cover mode with McConnell ignoring it completing and instead tabling legislation to increase the age to buy tobacco to 21.
This is why Democrats need to start the impeachment process. It’s not about just beating Trump in 2020, it’s also about removing those who have been enabling him for the last 2 years as well.