I’m not sure whether it’s been released, but Mueller describes it in the letter that has been.
Nevermind. Apparently the dates work alright.
I agree. Have not yet seen the movie, but I understand it offers Stanton redemption in the final scene.
Kind of spoils the proper ending.
In sum: “If someone committed a crime to whistleblow on the President, then the President’s crimes cannot be counted against him.”
Of course, it makes no particular argument that someone did commit a crime to whistleblow on the President. And nor, should we expect, did anyone who was actually part of the FBI/Mueller investigations.
But, more importantly, innocence by the guilt of others is not how it works. While it is the case that if the cops broke the law trying to prove your guilt and the case will be thrown out, that is not the same thing as “innocence”. You’re still a criminal and impeachment has lower standards than a criminal case.
IIRC, Barr was asked in the Senate hearing if he would produce that letter, and Barr’s response was: “Why should I?”
The Republican-dominated committee is unlikely to subpoena the letter, of course, and in the event that a House committee subpoenas it, the AG will almost certainly ignore that subpoena.
Thing is, Mueller HAS to have a copy of the letter (and the enclosures) in his possession. What’s to prevent him from forwarding copies to any Senator or representative who requests it?
Mueller certainly kept his own copy. They can get it from him instead.
“Guys, I can’t believe it. I printed it out but forgot to hit save.”
Mueller’s old. He probably has a carbon copy. Please don’t make me explain what that was.
I’m not a lawyer but here is my reading of it.
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Mueller wasn’t supposed to present any report other than just a yes/no statement as to whether a given person should be indicted. Since the president can’t be indicted, he shouldn’t have been investigated at all. And certainly shouldn’t have had all his dirty deeds shown to congress or the public.
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If we had known that an actual investigation was going to occur we would have done a better job of covering up and obstructing. You think we were obstructive before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
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Since I’m president I should be able to have full control over any investigation even of my self. The justice department had no business trying to be independent. I am above the law.
Reading it a little more closely, it has the further argument that Mueller was supposed to either prosecute or not prosecute (according to the law that defined the existence of his position) and that it’s unseemly and unprofessional for him to have aired Trump’s laundry when not giving Trump’s legal team a chance to debate the matter in court.
The law that defines the SCO position, however, is not written to specify that the Special Counsel is a position that exists for the purpose of prosecuting a sitting President. Flood tries to imply that it is. The SCO laws do not call out the President in any way and when they refer to “prosecution decisions” they almost certainly mean as regards non-Presidential persons. And the statutes are written to simply say that the position exists, “to investigate any matters where the DOJ might be viewed as having a conflict of interest”.
Congress is big on kicking the can down the road. If the SCO laws specified the President, then there’s the chance that they would conflict with the Constitution, get shot down, and render the first investigation under those laws completely invalid. The “kick the can down the road” strategy is to just keep it vague who is being investigated and for what purpose, and offer no particular recommendation as regards who can or can’t be prosecuted. That way, it’s up to the SCO to pick a position and fight the battle.
The SCO laws do not specify the President and do not make any attempt to expand the abilities of a Federal prosecutor to have greater authority to prosecute any one person than any other Federal prosecutor.
They could just as easily be used to investigate Barr as Trump, but the ability to prosecute would be different.
Yeah, along these lines, it is interesting that Barr was yesterday faulting Mueller for not making a prosecutorial judgement on the President. I wish one of the Senators would have asked Barr how that would work. I.e., is Barr supporting the idea of having the special counsel essentially charge the President with a crime even though he can’t be formally indicted (or does Barr believe the President can be indicted)?
I think this is a really pertinent question because I think the real answer is that Barr is just using this as an excuse to justify his making the call: “Look, Mueller wouldn’t do it, so I was forced to.” We might have seen a considerable amount of squirming and dissembling if Barr had been directly asked to explain exactly what Mueller could have done within the constraints of justice department policy and fairness to the accused.
Anybody know when Mueller stops being Special Counsel other than by resigning?
That does seem to be a pretty extreme oversight on the part of the questioners.
“So, Mr. Barr, you’re saying that you disagree with the OLC opinion that the President can be indicted? Would you be willing to formalize that in a document and we’ll call back Mr. Mueller to see if he’s still happy with where he landed or if he wants to switch it up?”
”His chance”? What the fuck is he waiting for? The hole isn’t deep enough yet or what?
Not sure, but the House judiciary are now negotiating directly with Mueller’s team regarding his testifying, whereas previously they’d been negotiating through the Department of Justice.
Yeah…A huge oversight. And, it has allowed Barr to continue the fiction that he doesn’t know why Mueller made this decision despite the fact that it is spelled out in crystal-clear language in the introduction to Volume II.
Either Barr is an ignorant dumb-ass who doesn’t deserve to have a law degree, let alone be attorney general of the U.S. OR he didn’t actually read as far as the introduction to Volume II (and noone has explained it to him) OR he is playing dumb about the reason why Mueller did not reach the prosecutorial judgement.
I am not sure why this whole angle is not getting more “play”. It really speaks to the role that Barr is playing as a willful propagandist and liar extraordinaire.
You know, that NYTimes article about Dotard suing Duetsche Bank (sp) says that the bank has Trump’s tax returns and are ready to turn them over to the House. This is buried like 20 paragraphs in, but it’s there:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/business/deutsche-bank-donald-trump.html?
Doesn’t matter dude.
Anyway, in news of the real world, Dotard had a conversation with Putin today in which he told Putin that he is not accepting the Mueller Reports conclusion that there was sweeping and systematic Russian interference. In addition, Dotard says that Putin agrees, and that is that.
But, yeah, Asahi. We should just wait for the elections. After all, so many Americans… you included… apparently need popularity contests to tell you what the right thing is, and when to do it, and those popularity contests just aren’t there yet.
We are in a situation where Trump is free to discuss the election attack with the man his campaign teamed up with to attack us, while simultaneously the Attorney General refuses to speak to the House of Representatives about that very topic.