Disclaimer: I am no Trump apologist; he is an odious person who has almost certainly done something illegal or unethical. But…
If Democrats could have squashed the stupid “email” and “Benghazi” investigations do you think they would have? (Assuming they weren’t worried about “optics”, which is obviously not something Trump cares about.) It’s a pretty natural reaction for anybody who thinks they are being unfairly targeted and believe the opposition will make stuff up.
Well, this is interesting…
Only if they think that they did something wrong that would be uncovered.
I’ve wondered from the start if we might not end up with partisan actors in this case. For the record, I’ve got no evidence that the Judge Ellis is partisan, and not being an attorney, I’m not in a position to know for sure how odd his remarks and courtroom behaviors are, but to this casual observer, Ellis does seem to be a distracting presence in this case. And one that could potentially bias jurors, especially if those jurors share similar leanings and inherent skepticism toward the federal prosecution in this political context. If he were a baseball umpire, he’d be even more Joe West than Joe West.
I think the difference is that the evidence of wrongdoing was so overwhelmingly pointing away from intentional wrongdoing on the part of Hillary Clinton, and by contrast, so overwhelmingly pointing toward intentional lawbreaking on the part of the Trump campaign.
Moreover, the investigations into Trump were initiated by our intelligence gathering apparatus, and by neutral civil servants. The investigations against Clinton were largely driving by bad politics.
For the record, my own conclusions are similar to that of Comey’s. Clinton acted stupidly, carelessly, against the advice of people who explained that what she was doing was a bad idea. She was negligent, but not criminally so.
There has been some harsh language between the prosecution and the judge, I even saw a headline the other day that said the prosecutor was expressing a great deal of frustration with the judge’s rulings.
According to the WaPost, today’s session started with
Of course. And especially when it became apparent that Benghazi/email “investigations” were being ginned up solely for the purpose of smearing Hillary Clinton politically, as evidenced by Kevin McCarthy’s comments about how badly they’d damaged her through their use. Hillary’s response was to endure 11 hours of public interview before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The investigation, which lasted for more than 2 years into exactly one tragic event, yielded no indictments.
Contrast this with Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and subsequent potential illegal activity by Trump, or rather Trump and the many, many likely unlawful events and circumstances in which TrumpCo had a grubby paw: In less than 2 years, it has resulted in in indictments or guilty pleas of 32 people and 3 Russian companies. Of these, 4 are former Trump advisors high up in his campaign and/or his administration.
Do you see Mueller out posturing, preening, publicly excoriating Trump and his corrupt cronies? No. No, you don’t. Because as was pointed out upthread by Desert Dog, Mueller is running a professional, ethical, by-the-books investigation. He doesn’t have leaks because he has earned the respect, admiration and loyalty of his underlings. He lets his pleadings speak on his behalf. Show me one single instance where Mueller has shown himself to be a bad actor.
And where is Trump? Whining and tweeting, calling for an end to the “witch hunt” while simultaneously refusing to sit for even a limited scope private interview with Mueller.
I see no similarity between these 2 situations whatsoever. The difference is obvious, and it has to do with guilt and innocence.
It’s kind of funny for practicing attorneys when there’s a case that people start paying attention to and this kind of thing gets everyone all excited. I’m not going to go so far as to say that it’s “routine” for judges to be distracting/biased/assholish during trials, but I would guess that both I and everyone I know has at least one example of a time where a judge has been harsher to us for a worse reason in a case no one heard of or would care about.
Perhaps we should be less jaded. But we often get some justice out of the system anyway.
Not only interesting, but merited. I do not have a high opinion of this judge.
A good judge does not insert him/herself into the proceedings. They call balls and strikes, rule on evidentiary matters, instruct the jury as required. They do not try lawyers’ cases for them. If they wish to admonish or instruct an attorney, they do so out of the jury’s presence – or at least out of their hearing. They work hard to preserve an atmosphere of impartiality. That’s the whole point!
I’m glad the prosecutors made their motion, and the judge was wise to heed their warning and grant it. In lower courts at the state level, judges who get a reputation for showboating or otherwise actively trying to influence proceedings are regularly kicked from hearing cases by lawyers. Good judges don’t want to be “that guy.”
By noticing this, you have become partisan, and therefore an ideologue, and therefore someone we should all ignore, in the name of taking the moral high road and acknowledging that both sides do it, “it” being every evil, underhanded, slimy piece of skulduggery that you can only prove Republicans engage in.
In short, the evidence proves Republicans do it, therefore both sides do it or I shall mock you and call you rude names.
I know. How dare I? I shall away to the loo, give myself a swirlie in the hope of scrambling the brain cells into uncritical acceptance of conspiracy theories (Pizzagate! Seth Rich! Unmasking!), and repent.
It was posted before the latest judge flare-up, but Ken White (of Popehat - former federal prosecutor) wrote a piece for NBC News titled “The Manafort trial judge keeps yelling at prosecutors. That’s not good news for the defendant.” Besides saying that some judges are just grumpy, he mentions that some judges will pick at what they see as the stronger side.
No one can tell if that’s happening here, but it’s a possibility.
You’re right – judges do tend to be more flexible with defense attorneys in general as a way of preventing issues on appeal. When that’s happening, usually everyone is in on the joke. All experienced trial attorneys understand what the judge is doing.
But in my view, there’s something different going on here. These are some of the finest prosecutors in the country. They know their way around a courtroom better than most. They know how to take a grumpy judge in stride. They know how to try a case as lean as it needs to be. But in this instance, they are so disturbed by the judge’s behavior that they took the step of filing a motion for curative instruction. That is rare.
Even after the prosecutors received their relief, the judge today went on to actively comment on evidence before the jury, as he has previously done several times. That’s completely out of bounds. According to courtroom observers, his nastiness to the attorneys seems entirely one-sided.
As one retired justice commented tonight, if the shoe were on the other foot, the defense would have already filed a motion for mistrial.
I can understand why prosecutor Greg Andres may have been so angry at the judge his eyes were watering. In twenty years of sitting in courtrooms with judges, I’ve never seen anything like this (Politico) kind of interference by a judge. Not once.
Cheers to Aspenglow and Ambrosio Spinola for your insights. Just to clarify, I’m not doubting that judges behave in the manner that Ellis does, and that’s not in and of itself what concerns me. Were it not for the hyper-politicization of the criminal justice system, I wouldn’t think much of it. But I could see some jurors entering the courtroom with bias, and then taking their psychological cues from the judge. One or two of the jurors could be Trump voters. I could see them saying “I had my suspicions about this, and hell, even the judge thinks these prosecutors are a bunch of cuckoo birds.” We don’t live in normal times.
Given that investigations into Hillary’s emails and Benghazi were conducted by the FBI under the Obama justice department, and Obama took no actions to try to get them shut down, I think its clear that the answer is no.
Now if the Dems were in charge of congress, I am sure that there wouldn’t have been 8 separate Benghazi investigations costing a total of $7million, instead there probably would have been one.
Mueller subpoenas Randy Credico, an associate of Roger Stone and Julian Assange.
Oh, Trump is guilty as fuck alright.
I have to wonder, what the fuck Ellis is up to. Something smells.
Mueller has subpoenaed the banking records of Republican operative Peter Smith, whose suspicious withdrawals of money while he was allegedly working with Russian hackers to get a hold of Hillary’s emails caused red flags to be raised by his bank. He committed suicide last year.