You may remember a brief interlude of madness in the midst of insanity: when somebody found a warehouse in Iraq full of rusted WWI munitions. I saw Hannity that night, screaming himself hoarse about how the case was closed, they found the WMD! And Democrats and other traitorous lefties must all beg forgiveness, etc.
As you may recall, the story got debunked that very night. So, morbidly curious, I tuned in to see what he would say. Not easy to walk back a cat, but walking back a stampede…
He said nothing about it. Not a word. Didn’t miss a beat, just moved on to the next lie. Poof! Gone! In fact, never happened.
I don’t think the notion that Mueller was unprepared implies that he is dumb.
At the time he issued those indictments, it was widely expected that all the defendants would simply ignore them. That one of the defendants hired a lawyer and showed up for trial seems to have taken all the legal expert commentators by surprise. If Mueller made a similar assumption, it wouldn’t make him any dumber than any other legal expert.
All it would imply is that he took what seemed to him and many other people to be a reasonable gamble, but that it backfired when his bluff was unexpectedly called.
Perhaps you can answer this. (You can call it my “next lesson”, if you prefer.)
Suppose Mueller has - possibly for reasons given above - an enormous amount of possible evidence on his hands that his team has not adequately gone through to this point. Does he or does he not have to turn this over to the defense to forestall the mere possibility that it may contain something exculpatory? What would happen if he doesn’t turn it over and it later turns out that there’s something exculpatory somewhere in that mass of material?
If in this scenario he would be required to turn it over, then your assumption that he hasn’t done exactly this would then be entirely premised on your assumption that Mueller must have gone through all the material already and know what might be exculpatory or not. But if - as above - he was simply unprepared to go to trial, having assumed this would never happen anyway, then this second point doesn’t follow.
I’ve not said any of these things so please leave that for responses to people who have.
But it absolutely does. As the prosecutor, he decides when to issue the indictment. But once he does issue the indictment, he has triggered certain rights for the people he’s indicted, he’s triggered certain obligations in his own team, and he’s given up total control over the case to the court system.
Launching an investigation is like driving a car. While it might careen wildly in unexpected ways, you still have your foot on the pedal, and you can stop when you decide.
Launching litigation is like driving one of those boxcars kids make for racing derbies. You can aim it, but you lose total control once it’s set loose. There’s no going back.
Only a very dumb person would release a case into the court system before being ready to go (note: not all lawyers are smart; some are very dumb. And the dumbest thing I see is lawyers who files lawsuits - usually civil - before they have gathered everything and are already prepared to prove their case).
As the lawyer who files an indictment, Mueller is creating a legal obligation for these people to respond. For him to be shocked and surprised when they did so would be incredibly stupid. For him not to presume that they could and would retain American counsel would be hopelessly naïve.
Why would he take that gamble? What would it gain, besides the potential for “blowback”? If this is all public machinations for political gain, the only thing that could be beneficial from the indictment is actually proving the case; otherwise, you are far better served maintaining it in the “investigative stage”, where you have total control over what you disclose and what you don’t, and you have total discretion over the timeline.
I think that Mueller has made clear that he is not seeking public approval. He doesn’t go on talk shows, so he doesn’t need to be able to say “we are actively in the courts”. This isn’t being done for public consumption. If it’s being done for private pressure, he has the same leverage by privately referencing what he knows without ever airing it in a public forum like a court.
He has to turn it over regardless of whether he has already reviewed it. The conviction would fail if he withheld something exculpatory.
I’m probably repeating myself, but here goes: Mueller has all the time in the world to review what he has uncovered, with no deadline, as long as he doesn’t issue an indictment. He has the ability to comb through every single thing so that he knows exactly what the evidence can prove and what it doesn’t prove. He can be fully apprised of the weaknesses in his case and in those things that he needs to better substantiate.
ALL of that goes out the window once he issues the indictment. Now, he has deadlines. Now, others get a crack at reviewing what he was exclusively possessing. Now, it’s no longer in his control.
So, while it is possible that he would decide to go to war before being fully aware of the ammunition he had, it would be incredibly dumb, and risky, and unnecessary (e.g. he’s not under some risk that the statute of limitations is going to expire) for him to do.
It’s an unforced error. One nobody who is an experienced, professional prosecutor (and the former head of the fucking FBI) would ever do.
I really appreciate that you’re posting here–it’s great to get an informed opinion (in the Pit of all places). In fact, I bet you could basically take this together with some of your other posts and submit it to one of the online news sources as an opinion piece.
Again, all the reporting I’ve read says that it was not expected that anyone would go to trial over this. Are you denying this? In case you are, here’s a few random cites for this - see e.g. here and here for stories at the time of the indictments, and here for a story covering the actual case once lawyers took it up. Can you come up with cites indicating that they were expected to face trial?
To call an expectation which was widely shared by experts “incredibly stupid” and “naïve” based just on hindsight is not appropriate.
I don’t know if you’re correct that Mueller is not seeking public approval. His style and approach has not been to publically comment about ongoing investigations (some comment here), but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t take the opportunity to build public support for his case in other manners.
BTW, I happened to notice in another article a comment about the 2 TB of data relevant to the investigation.
Sorry but this is very much in line with my speculation earlier in this thread. Not to say it’s all completely irrelevant, but making a big deal about “1.5 and 2 terrabytes of data related to the investigation” is a mistake.
The expectation was that these people would not show up to court. That is different than saying that the prosecutor wasn’t ready to prove the case. (Yes, it’s true that people are not tried in absentia; but the speculation you cite is whether the defendants would actually show up to defend their case, not whether the prosecutor actually ever intended to prove the case)
Lawyers can be quite egotistical, and often love publicity. Anytime a lawyer can get their name in print, they are usually happy to do so (I got in a lot of trouble when I flipped off a paparazzi who got in my face when I was leaving a court room with a noteworthy individual. My boss was apoplectic: “We want the pictures! We won!!”). So when a reporter calls up a lawyer to ask for their legal opinion, many of them are all too happy to speculate about what might be “really going on”. Your articles reflect this: speculation from other people about whether Mueller really ever expected to go to trial.
I see nothing from Mueller, Rosenstein, or anybody else involved with the prosecution suggesting, in any way, that they weren’t ready or didn’t have a solid case.
These people are “experts” because they have a law degree and some practice under their belt. By that token, I’m an expert, too (I know that you just have to take my word…). And I’m telling you that it makes no sense to file an indictment without the ability to prove it.
I do agree. I do think that he probably views this case as useful to the larger investigation. I think it provides leverage. But that leverage is utterly lost if it is not a provable case. Which begs the question, what advantage would there be to remove it from “investigation” to “active case” if you weren’t ready to prove it?
It’s clear evidence that there is a very active investigation with lots of relevant material.
I guess you are thinking, so they have 10,000 pages of Russians emailing back and forth. Maybe it’s about nesting dolls and vodka, maybe it’s about subverting American democracy…in 6 months, when they get the guy who speaks Russian on the phone, they will be so excited to find out! But first, they should hold a press conference, announce that they can prove a crime, put all of that stuff in the hands of lawyers outside their inner circle, and test it before a judge with a lifetime appointment. Because…reasons.
Of course it’s “different than saying that the prosecutor wasn’t ready to prove the case”. But your argument implicitly ties these two things together.
Your argument is that Mueller must have been ready to proceed because only a “very dumb” person would have indicted if he wasn’t ready. This only holds if he thought he needed to be ready.
You seemed to acknowledge this in your prior post when you said “As the lawyer who files an indictment, Mueller is creating a legal obligation for these people to respond. For him to be shocked and surprised when they did so would be incredibly stupid. For him not to presume that they could and would retain American counsel would be hopelessly naïve.” So you were saying that you thought it was hopelessly naïve for Mueller to not presume that they would retain counsel etc. But I’ve shown that this was the common expectation. The whole world wasn’t hopelessly naïve.
So you’re saying that these publicity-loving lawyers all decided to go with an assumption that you think is hopelessly naïve, and ignore the more reasonable assumption? Pardon my skepticism.
Question: suppose it were true that they weren’t ready or didn’t have a solid case. Is this something that you would expect “Mueller, Rosenstein or anybody else involved” to publically state? What would you expect to see from them suggesting this? (One possibility: immediately requesting delays in the case as soon as a defense lawyer showed up :))
You’re entitled to an opinion too. But you seem to be a very distinct minority of expert opinion on this issue. So - even if you’re right and everyone else is wrong - it’s not unreasonable to assume that Mueller shared the majority view.
I’ve already said. To “build public support for his case”. You don’t do that by keeping things under wraps. You do that by making public moves. As you undoubtedly noticed, those indictments got a lot of attention at the time, and engendered a lot of discussion about how much Mueller had accomplished etc.
What’s all this about?
I just provided you with a cite that the 2 TB of evidence was “social media profiles”. What’s your response to that?
You indicated earlier that the fact that Mueller had 2 TB of evidence is “perhaps the point most worth taking from this”. Are you standing by this claim? Are 2 TB of “social media profiles” that big of a deal?
I disagree that you’ve shown that it was “common expectation” that the defendants would not lawyer up.
Even assuming that your cites were the entire universe of commentary on the subject, you fail to appreciate that the reporters weren’t just faithlessly repeating what every expert said, or even that they included all of each expert’s opinion.
Here, a scenario:
Rosenstein calls a press conference to announce that Russians have been indicted. Our reporter quickly surmises that this represents an unusual circumstance, since the Russians are not being arrested, given that they are not in America and (quick google search) there is no extradition treaty between the US and Russia.
So, he calls the lawyers he has on speed dial:
Lawyer 1 is in court, so he never gets his opinion.
Lawyer 2 answers, and says “International types don’t like their name dragged through the mud. Expect these guys to lawyer up and fight this.”
Reporter: “But what if they don’t?”
Lawyer 2: “Well, then they’ll never end up in prison. You can’t convict at a trial without a defendant.”
Our reporter, ever intrepid, next calls Lawyer 3.
Reporter: “Why would a prosecutor indict somebody if he might never end up in prison?”
Lawyer 3: “Well, there’s other advantages than just winning a conviction. Even if it never goes to trial, these people can’t travel to the States or any country that extradites to the States as long as this indictment is out there. Plus, it helps later when you are trying to convict others for obstruction of justice if there’s an underlying crime already specified”
Reporter files his piece. He notes that the indictment is quirky, because Mueller can’t ever put these guys in prison unless they choose to appear, unlike about 99% of criminal cases. He cites to 1 expert for this fact, and also cites to another expert who talks about the other reasons to indict, other than a conviction.
Biased editorial writer picks up the facts to argue that Mueller isn’t motivated by a conviction; this is all smoke and mirrors.
Then, when the lawyers get hired and completely mundane motions get filed, some people feel that they have proven that the prosecution was never ready to go in the first place.
Again, I think you are misunderstanding how reporters distill conversations into stories.
First, your last sentence: If Mueller was scrambling to delay as soon as a defense lawyer showed up, why was the defense lawyer joining in the motion? Defense lawyers use the Speedy Trial deadline as a pressure point on the prosecution all the time, when they think the trial isn’t ready (this is almost always due to witness unavailability). Why would they have given Mueller what he so desperately needed?
And while I don’t think Mueller, Rosenstein, et al would publicly state that they don’t have a solid case, I also don’t think that they would hold a press conference to announce that they have a winnable case if they did not actually do so.
Again, I think you are misunderstanding how reporters distill conversations into stories.
So the theory you’ve got going is that Mueller has nothing of substance. And to cover for that, he’s going to invite legal scrutiny, press scrutiny, and lots of public discussion about what, specifically, he has. Keeping his head down and continuing to chase leads for as long as he has left would make a whole lot more sense.
Is your point that “social media profiles” are innocuous? I haven’t read the indictment, I don’t know what Mueller has to prove, and I haven’t ventured a theory of the case.
‘Social media profiles’ are usually innocuous, unless they are proof of identity theft, or fraud.
(Similarly, pictures of dollar bills are usually pretty boring, but hundreds of pictures of dollar bills could also be the smoking gun in a forgery ring. Bank statements are just numbers, but sometimes they are damning evidence of wire and bank fraud. If the social media profiles prove something, having 2 TB of that proof is a big deal.)
Yeah, for example I’ve spent a long time this week talking to a reporter about a story. Lots and lots and LOTS of detail, and it looks like I’ll be quoted twice, for two short sentences. And they are not really the things I wanted the story to focus on because they are a bit tangential. But the reporter had another good source for my major point and only had me for my minor point, so I’m being quoted for my minor point.
Sorry for using your post to respond to F-P, but this strikes me as the reason to file charges against overseas defendants in absentia. I suppose that making charges public could be construed as an attempt to build public support for a case in one sense, but to your point and your example above, there’s either an underlying criminal act that targets are covering up, or there isn’t. There is either enough evidence to indict, or there isn’t. So using an indictment as some sort of PR stunt seems like a bizarro theory.
As hobos go, you’re pretty good at spinning convincing stories. (Not that I’ve actually done an exhaustive sampling of hobo narrative skills, but I’ve heard regrettable tales about statistics about mental illness and substance abuse that would argue against randomly selected hobos being reliably erudite.)
Though seriously, even if you are a lawyer, I’m pretty confident that you’re also a supervillian on the side. Something about the way you label yourself…
Terabytes are a really lousy way of representing amount of information, here. A lot of relevant information is going to be textual, which will make up approximately 0% of that 2 TB: It’d take something like a billion pages of text to fill up that much data. A thousand hours of video is very different from 999 hours of video plus a million pages of text.
And how can you possibly expect someone to not lawyer up when they’re indicted? The only way they’d do that would be if they were giving up on the case. Not lawyering up when indicted is likely to land you in prison.
