Contrary to the way the media have been framing it this morning Robert Mueller hasn’t “pushed” anything to the Congress. Special counsels are not now and never have been the constitutional remedy for wrongdoing by a sitting president. That is and always has been the responsibility of the Congress. Mueller is just suggesting that the Congress put the Jack of Clubs on the Queen of Diamonds.
What we are presently seeing is the Democrats’ establishing the relative importance in priority of their goals and values. I know here I’d put my money.
Otherwise partisan bickering does not interest me.
No, he did not “push†anything. However, he did, I would suggest knowingly, facilitate that partisan bickering, playing word games with “confidence†to put smoke in the air around the standard of of innocent until proven guilty (prosecutors never get to be prosecutor, judge, defense and jury) and hiding behind policy constraints (he could have recommended) . Having completed his political mission he turned and ran away. It was a shameful performance.
I’m hoping a body such as the Senate Judicial can subpoena him for questioning. He currently enjoys the position of feeding the kangaroo courts without having to explain himself. Personally, I’d like to know exactly when he knew there was no conspiracy to commit collusion, and why, with two years and a $40MM budget, 500 interviews, two dozen of lawyers, millions of pages of documents and a scope that took him to tax cheats and offhand interactions with Russians leading to purgery traps, he just couldn’t – by golly gosh – find a reason to understand a certain “dossier,†a certain Fusion GPS, leaking to the press, conflicting Obama era officials testimony under oath……
Pretty sure I know the answer, and I don’t think it was because it just slipped his mind. I’d just like to see this rancid man get his.
Mueller should testify to Congress in public.
If AG Barr read the report and could not find hard evidence that Mueller was not guilty of judicial misconduct, Mueller should be investigated, tax returns included. And convicted if sufficient non-evidence of innocence can be found.
I’m in agreement with all the above 3 posts. Furthermore, I see Mueller as not only a coward, dem enabler, but also as a passive aggressive human conveyer belt accommodating the delivery of injustice. His final act will serve to only further the political divide, putting most legislative action, of any importance, on hold such as addressing the border debacle or passage of any trade agreements.
It has seemed strange to me that Comey would wake up in the middle of the night and remember some memos that could start a Special Counsel Investigation.
It now makes more sense.
The problem with Mueller is that he is basically a decent person. Conservatives have no idea how to deal with that. He followed the rules he was supposed to work under. He leaked almost nothing. (Compare that with special counsels from the right like Starr.) He was not allowed to indict or determine if what he found was a crime, so he reported when he was unable to find evidence of a crime, collusion. On obstruction he found a lot of behavior that most people would call obstruction, so he made it clear that he could not exonerate Trump for that crime, and that it was up to Congress to pursue it.
He made it clear that he was not going beyond the limits of his report, and as far as I could tell he stuck to that.
Thanks for the laugh of the day. 4 years on Benghazi was wonderful but two years on your guy? A mortal sin. You want to see Mueller’s tax returns because he reported what he found but Trump keeps his secret. Who could have possibly guessed? LOL
Steve
Reminds me of the Rodney King video.
If Trump reacts to accusation or innuendo, if he takes to twitter to defend himself, if he flinches, it’s obstruction.
Where is the underlying crime?
And IMHO you can’t compare this to Benghazi.
That’s like comparing it to No Gun Ri.
” if he takes to twitter to defend himself, if he flinches, it’s obstruction.”
Didnt read the Mueller report did you? Nowhere in there does it say defending himself on twitter is obstruction of justice. He told people to fire Mueller. Trump then told McGahn to send out a press report that he had ever told McGahn to fie Mueller, IOW lie. The list is pretty long and you find it with eh help of Google, or just read the report.
“That’s like comparing it to No Gun Ri.”
The first investigation, maybe. The following 7 investigations over 3 plus years were all focused on trying to prove that Obama and Hillary had directed a conspiracy to hide stuff so that Obama would not lose the election. We had 7 sailors die on the Fitzgerald by accidentally hitting a cargo boat. That gets one investigation. Dont try to tell me you guys actually cared about someone dying.
Steve
My view is that the main reason there was no obstruction of justice is that Congress has not legislated any of the acts to be obstruction. See Jack Goldsmith, here:
“To commit a crime, Trump had to violate a provision of the U.S. Code that applied to him. There are many obstruction of justice statutes. Generalizing a bit, they make it a crime for “whoever†commits an obstructive act, with a nexus to an official proceeding, and with a corrupt intent. One might think that “whoever†includes Trump. But two high hurdles must be overcome before reaching that conclusion. First is the constitutionally based clear statement rule that determines whether the obstruction statutes, despite their broad general language, actually apply to the president. And second, if the statutes are properly read to apply the president, one must do constitutional “balancing†to determine if Congress has the power to so burden the president.”
https://www.lawfareblog.com/mueller-reports-weak-statutory-interpretation-analysis
Because the President solely possesses the power to execute the laws, the Courts will not assume that general language applies to the POTUS. The President has authority to kill investigations, decline to press charges, fire subordinates, etc. Because the Office of the President is unique, the Courts require laws to specifically address that uniqueness. Goldsmith refers to this the Clear Statement Rule, and he backs it up with long-standing judicial precedents and DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinions.
This is a distinct constraint separate from DOJ policy that it cannot indict a sitting President. Goldsmith points out that the lack of any criminal misconduct by the President does not preclude impeachment.
PD’s exposition above is precisely why I believe that the Democrats need to make a choice. Either they need to begin impeachment proceedings or they need to stop fulminating about collusion, obstruction, etc. Keeping the ball up in the air until the election will not work to their advantage. The longer they delay the more it will look like self-serving political posturing.
I think the issue with impeachment is that while its a political act, it appears that it can only be obtained by relying on the legitimacy offered by legal norms developed through the judicial process.
I’ve observed three impeachments: Clinton, Ill. S. Ct. Justice Heiple, and Ill. Gov. Blagojevich. And they all involved a lot of navel-gazing as to what are high crimes and misdemeanors. The case against Trump will be that he obstructed justice, the response will be “Where is the body?” There was no crime. Someone will probably call Goldsmith or a similar legal expert to testify that the President isn’t bound by obstruction of justice laws because Congress has failed to act (though again, Goldsmith would try to restrict his opinion to the criminal law setting).
No, he didn’t follow the rules, steve.
The special counsel regulations say that the special counsel “shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions.â€
He didn’t. They don’t say a SC shall fail to reach a prosecution or declination decision and then dangle speculation in the public domain.
And most assuredly they don’t say he should write a report for congressional and then make a public statement attempting to spur congressional action.
If that were so, then Mueller was basically conducting an impeachment inquiry from within the executive branch. You can’t be serious; as well understood, that’s Congress’ job.
And if you look at it, Mueller implied Trump’s public statements were potential obstruction. That is, any presidential objections to this bastard impeachment inquiry were evidence of wrongdoing. That’s just silly.
History will not treat Mueller well on this matter. He did anything but follow the rules. And as I have pointed out, his prior history has events in it that should make this a surprise to no one.
“The special counsel regulations say that the special counsel “shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions.—
And the OLC ruled that you cannot indict a sitting president. How convenient that you manage to forget that part. So the best he could do was clear the POTUS if it was clear there was no crime, or indicate that he was unable to exonerate, exactly what he did.
“And most assuredly they don’t say he should write a report for congressional and then make a public statement attempting to spur congressional action.”
Which he, of course, did not do. He did not say anything which was not in the report, and made it clear that he was not willing to expand upon beyond what was in the report.
“If that were so, then Mueller was basically conducting an impeachment inquiry from within the executive branch.”
Nope, he just presented what he found.
“And if you look at it, Mueller implied Trump’s public statements were potential obstruction. That is, any presidential objections to this bastard impeachment inquiry were evidence of wrongdoing. That’s just silly.”
So public discussion of pardoning Manafort was just fine with you? Oops, sorry. You like everything he does so of course you do.
PD- I think Clinton is the precedent here. Obstruction of justice was one of the things for which he was impeached, along with lying about sex, an absolutely awful crime. I dont think they should impeach because of the politics, but I if it was permissible to impeach Clinton I dont see why they couldnt impeach Trump for the same thing, other than the fact Trump is a Republican and therefore above the law.
As an aside, I think this rule about not being to indict a sitting president is BS. The president may have the authority to stop investigations, but that should not extend to investigations about the president. It shouldn’t extend to stopping investigations for his own benefit, like protecting family. I have a hard time believing that is actually in the Constitution. Sounds kind of contrived.
Steve
Mueller far from following the rules, simply changed them to meet his own purpose. There is a slew of legal opinions being written regarding his shameful performance. My only wish, at this point, is that he is not allowed to slink away, but will be called to publicly testify, answering any and all questions put before him, much like AG Barr had to do.
Furthermore, Mueller has had less than an exemplary record behind him of falsified investigations – the Anthrax investigation, the Jewell prosecution, putting innocent men in jail while he protected Whitey Bulger, collaborating on the Russian uranium deal etc. No, Mueller is not a good man.
Impeach, impeach, impeach …
“Early in William Barr’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, the attorney general dropped a whopper. President Donald Trump, Barr insisted, “fully cooperated†with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. That is false. As Barr conceded under questioning, Trump refused to agree to an interview with Mueller’s team. Moreover, the president agreed only to answer written questions related to contact between his 2016 campaign and Russians—not about his alleged efforts to obstruct Mueller’s investigation. In those answers, Trump claimed more than 30 times not to remember or recall details, including any details about his contacts with advisers who knew of clandestine Russian efforts to assist Trump’s campaign. Mueller’s report called these responses “inadequate.â€
When a Democrat is president, they have to submit to an interview. When it is a Republican, they get to answer questions in writing, by saying “I dont remember”. Yeah, let’s hope Mueller testifies just like Barr.
Steve
@steve, how did Clinton obstruct justice? As you put it, he lied about sex under oath in a deposition in a private lawsuit. I don’t see any resemblance at all.
Steve, you really do filter information, “facts†differently. I think your deep rooted hatred of anything republican distorts and shades almost every news event.
PD- I linked to it for Dave and can find it again later if you want, but obstruction of justice was one of the formal impeachment charges. As an aside, this is part of the problem here. People dont know the history of what Republicans did in the past. Try to hold a Republican to the same standards of behavior they engaged in in the past, and it gets called a coup.
jan- It is a fact that Trump refused to be interviewed. They did say some version of I dont remember 30 times. It is also a fact that Mueller is a Republican named to office by a Republican POTUS. You guys claim that Mueller didnt follow the rules, but you ignore half of the rules. Your love of all things Trump AND hatred for liberals colors everything.
“The impeachment of Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, was initiated in December 1998 by the House of Representatives and led to a trial in the Senate on two charges, one of perjury and one of obstruction of justice.[1]”
Steve
@steve, the charge, which I re-read before my previous comment, was that Clinton had obstructed justice in the Paula Jones case. The President did not have Constitutional authority over that case, as opposed to Trump having authority over personnel and investigations in his office. This distinction was raised in defense of Clinton by those arguing conduct in private litigation cannot amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors” since they arise independent from the office.
The high level of cooperation and so-called transparency given by the Trump WH was even noted in the Mueller Report. Everything asked for was given over to the Mueller team, even having unabridged time questioning who they wanted to, including the WH counsel who spent over 30 hours with them. Executive privilege was never enacted to impede the SCs progress or deny info they wanted. Because the investigation dragged out, expanded into investigations and indictments far afield from what was originally though to be their scope of inquiry, Trump’s counsel felt nothing more could be gleaned from a final sit down with Mueller except as being a perjury trap (much like they handled Flynn’s), in which they could then use against him.
Nonetheless, my dislike for the dems has been growing for almost a decade. It’s not personal, but has arisen from their bad policy decisions, naked quest to expand government, and more recently their dismissive stance on the border problems and extreme anti-Trump obsession, focusing on getting him out of office and nearly nothing else. To numerically illustrate this last point, during the same amount of time spent by the previous House, 440 bills were passed. In contrast the current House has only passed 17 bills. All you hear from the House membership these days is rancor, resistance, along with a menu of ideas that seem to counter the very beliefs that were front and center in the creation of this country – mainly, freedom of religion, speech, owning one’s fruit of their labor, and establishing an unobtrusive.government.
Finally, neither party is to my liking. In fact 9 years ago I changed my political affiliation from democrat to non-affiliated (independent). Yes my votes do lean towards the R’s. However this is mostly due to the dems going too far to the left, leaving my trust in their ability to make decent decisions in the dust.
Mueller had asked to interview Trump. Trump’s lawyers refused as they know he is a pathological liar. Good lawyering, but that is not cooperating. Note again that Clinton had to testify. If Clinton could have done what Trump did, pick what he wanted to answer (note that Trump refused to answer obstruction of justice issues) and do it only in print, there would have been no impeachment. Should we note that Flynn ran an intelligence agency and he knew he shouldn’t lie? He also knew that he should have reported taking money from foreign governments, which he did not do.
Next, the House has passed 49 bills just since January.
https://www.vox.com/2019/5/24/18637163/trump-pelosi-democrats-bills-congress
Any other facts I can correct you on?
As to your rant about Democrats just replace it with Republicans and how they treated Obama and you get to the same place. McConnell told us his number one priority.
Steve
@steve
People dont know the history of what Republicans did in the past.
Do you mean like Democrats forget that many of today’s Democrat senators did not have a problem with serving beside an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK.
Note again that Clinton had to testify.
For years, my opinion has been that President Clinton was a damn fool, and he should have stated, loud and clear, that he would have the Secret Service arrest anybody who tried to force him.
For everybody else, law enforcement is not your friend. Answering questions without a lawyer is one of the stupidest things you can do. The only reason why they do not want you to have an attorney present is because they want to entrap you. Period.
Likewise, any doctor that does not want you to get a second opinion is not interested in your health.
@jan
I think @steve is one of the few reasonable left-wingers. If you have not dipped into the OTB comments sewer, you should. Other than @FamousFictionWriter, they will swarm anybody not sufficiently progressive.
As to your rant about Democrats just replace it with Republicans and how they treated Obama and you get to the same place.
Republicans played the role of “opposition” party to policies they thought were wrong or involved too much spending on social programs. The current democrats are simply resisting anything and everything, whether it has merit, is good for the country etc. There is a big difference between the intensity and appropriateness of these two responses.
As for the negative blow-back Obama received during his presidency, it was nothing compared to what has been slung at and falsely insinuated about Trump, even before he occupied the WH. It has been a 24/7 assault on the man and his family, made all the more vicious by the MSM, who during the prior presidency. in comparison, seemed like they were all on tranquilizers when dealing with the many controversial issues surrounding the Obama presidency.
Oh yes, according to this ABC News piece, assessing the number of bills passed just before the Memorial Day Holiday, the 116th Congress had passed only 17 bills with others pending before the republican controlled Senate. My facts are straight, Steve!
Trump’s lawyers refused as they know he is a pathological liar.
There was nothing else to say to Mueller as the WH fully cooperated, in a timely manner, with all their requests for documents, information and people they wanted to question. It was deduced by Trump’s attorneys that the main reason Mueller wanted a sit-down was hoping to entrap Trump in some verbal misfire, which then could have been used in a perjury indictment. The very fact, though, that Mueller found no indictments to report, that no one on the Trump team or in the United States, conspired with the Russians, should be viewed as a positive revelation and outcome to the investigation. But, since it didn’t satisfy the democrat’s desire to impeach the sitting president, we are now onto other accusations, including pursuing obstruction, with a whiff of cover-up being put out there by Pelosi.
Ironically, it’s now seems to be the democrats who are actively colluding with intelligence agencies, advising them not to hand over documents demanded by the WH and DOJ. Isn’t that obstruction, the same as someone like HRC destroying subpoenaed emails, smashing cell phones, laptops and/or removing sim cards? Senator Warner is even saying the democrats will provide protection to anyone refusing access to these documents. Doesn’t this fall into the very definition of a government “cover-up?”Â
Tasty,
I find it too painful to be subjected to the OTB diatribes and insanely scripted commentaries.
“And the OLC ruled that you cannot indict a sitting president. How convenient that you manage to forget that part. So the best he could do was clear the POTUS if it was clear there was no crime, or indicate that he was unable to exonerate, exactly what he did.â€
Wrong. Mueller could not indict, but he could recommend it to the AG. Mueller chose not to recommend, and aftervreport review Barr, Rosenstein and Other did not see facts and law to indict. Please present contrary evidence if you have it, or come clean and call Barr and Rosenstein and Other crooks.
And unless you want to change bedrock foundations of our legal system, prosecutors are not charged with exonerating, nor are they allowed to be prosecutor, judge and jury. All they can do is present their case.
Mueller chose to engage in innuendo in the public forum, like a coward. No one should be surprised.