Well no. Being removed from office isn’t the same as being convicted and sentenced in a court of law. The only possible punishment the Senate can hand out is removal from office. An actual criminal case would then be necessary for there to be any further punishment for any crimes committed.
It would be absolutely ludicrous to claim that being removed from office was the only punishment you could mete out against, for example, a POTUS who clearly and demonstrably committed Treason.
I’m baffled, but I think I’ve come to grips with Mueller’s thinking. He outlines 10 acts of obstruction, in section 2 of his findings. It just takes one tiny step forward to say these would be indictable offenses. Just say “those seem to be crimes…we could put an official stamp on it and call it an indictment”. But he absolutely refuses to connect those 2 dots, because of the OLC.
Maddening.
He expects the House to do its job and connect the dots. Also, he doesn’t believe it’s his job to connect them. It may or may not be his, but it certainly is theirs.
And as I asked earlier, would it really have made any difference if he had come right out and said it? Probably not.
Three months ago, Ruben Bolling explained things to us.
If Mueller’s intent is to communicate to Congress and the people that “Trump committed crimes, do something about it!” then he is leaving too much room for people to fail to get the message.
He seems to think his job ends at describing the criminal activity without actually labeling it criminal activity. But if he stops there, and the recipients of his message fail to act, then he has failed to communicate his intent. He needs to do more. Step up, Mueller.
Right now he’s like a crewman on the Titanic who tells the captain “there is an iceberg in our path” and then the Captain wanders off to take a nap and he shrugs and says “well I did my part”.
… yup. It’s just been posted a lot, so I wanted to try something different…
If he had openly stated the bleeding obvious, the R’s would be rolling around on the floor, tearing their hair and screaming. The D’s that are timid, cautious and/or “moderate” would not come to his aid any more than they already have. Add to that, he would have directly disobeyed explicit instruction, giving the MAGAts oodles of free ammunition. Worse, they would have had a point.
Lots of risk, damn little reward.
I live in China, where the definition of law is whatever you want to do that is most convenient at the moment regardless of the written rule and I see greater adherence to the written law here than from the current Republicans in the US.
I don’t know about that, but I am fairly confident he has committed/will commit more acts of obstruction than that, plus all the other crimes. So while it would suck that he could potentially get away with that particular bit of obstruction, he can’t be Neo in the Matrix dodging all the bullets forever, even if double jeopardy or statutes of limitation apply. Too many people are on to his grift and he’s out in 2025 at the latest.
I wonder how much the statutes of limitations will be expiring, either in 2021 or 2025. Wouldn’t you run it like a RICO case? That the original crime might have expired, but the conspiracy and obstruction that continues after the fact becomes a bigger crime and a way in?
My best guess is that Mueller has concluded that clearly explaining the role the OLC memo played, would inevitably impugn the reputation of Trump (via inference). And impugning the reputation of Trump is forbidden, since Trump has no opportunity to clear his name at trial.
But there were several responses Muellr gave on Wednesday that seemed to me to come just as close as an OLC-explanation would have done, to that danger zone. Those answers did indeed suggest doubts about the absolute integrity of Trump.
I’m thinking of responses such as those summarized by the NY Times as:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/politics/mueller-testimony.html?login=email&auth=login-email
Mueller’s relative willingness to suggest concerns about Trump’s conduct was a far cry from what some had anticipated when we learned that the DoJ had instructed* Mueller to avoid even mentioning “third parties.” Though “third parties” may not actually have included Trump (who, unindicted as he remains, is surely a principal), some did wonder whether Mueller would spend his time before the House committees pretending Trump didn’t exist. Fortunately, that turned out not to be the case.
By 2025, how many federal judges will he have appointed? How many judges of integrity will be left on the bench?
Mueller made a pretty clear statement that Trump’s credibility in any form - written, spoken, or otherwise - was pretty well nil.
In general, he was pretty will to judge Trump. He just wasn’t willing to judge him on crimes.
Fair enough.
Too few, alas. Too few.
But not entirely gone. And state courts won’t be affected.
Would a federal judge appointed by him have to recuse himself? I don’t even put it as potentially herself because I don’t believe he’s racking up female representation.
I agree with your frustration, but Mueller has spelled out his reasoning very clearly in the Introduction to Volume II:
(1) The OLC memo means that he can’t indict a sitting President.
(2) It is unfair to accuse someone with a crime without indicting them and thus starting the criminal justice process by which they can potentially clear their name; this would be true of anyone who is not indicted for some reason but is particularly true of the President since the accusation could affect his ability to govern. Ergo, he cannot even accuse the sitting President of a crime.
One can argue with (2), but this is clearly Mueller’s position and I wouldn’t expect him to deviate from it when, in his view, it is fundamental to the rights of the accused. Trump continues to get a break from people who, unlike him, have ethical standards that prevent them from doing things that might harm him.
P.S. - Of course, Mueller’s high ethical standards didn’t prevent one of the Republi-morons questioning him to launch into this tirade about how Mueller (by saying he could not exonerate Trump) had put Trump “below the law”. Trump and his sycophants don’t realize how lucky they are that they got someone like Mueller to investigate him (while Clinton got Starr, a partisan with much lower ethical standards, to investigate him).
[Beavis]Heh, heh. He said ‘rack.’[/Beavis]
I think this exchange between Chris Wallace and Stephen Colbert sums up the realities of the Mueller testimony. Nancy Pelosi and the Dems not suffering from TDS recognize on some level that the Mueller investigation didn’t find what they want, they couldn’t get Mueller to say what they want, and they are back to square one.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, I wanted Mueller to say “Trump should be impeached and prosecuted”, but I had no realistic expectation that he would say this, nor did the Democrats and progressives I know. But Mueller’s testimony went about as well as I hoped it would – he confirmed, numerous times, with quotable TV sound bites (even if all it was was a Democratic Rep reading a damning portion of the report and Mueller saying “yes, that’s accurate”) that he found significant evidence of wrongdoing by Trump and his team, and that Trump could be prosecuted after he leaves office, and that the reason he didn’t make a determination on indictment for obstruction of justice was due to the OLC memo rather than a lack of evidence.
Well since Disqus decided that I’m a spambot, I’ll post a reply I had to one person who was trying to make the claim that Trump was exonerated by Mueller:
Let’s say that you’re a member of a jury in a trial. The prosecution describes an investigation into Geraldine for murdering her husband. While attempting to investigate her, Geraldine’s best friend had a mystery envelope of $40,000 appear on her porch, the officers had found a letter in Geraldine’s handwriting near the next door neighbor’s front lawn threatening to murder their dog (the neighbors refused to talk to the investigators), and she had gone to the police commissioner and tried to take off her clothes and feel up his groin after asking for a private meeting. The envelope of money has Geraldine’s fingerprints on it and the friend testifies that she did find the envelope and confirms the story. Video is shown from the police department of Geraldine, in the Commissioner’s office, of her getting up from her chair - he’s visible surprised - and going around his desk stripping. He pushes her away and then throws her out of the office.
This is not a trial for homicide, we’ll note, it’s for Obstruction of Justice. The police were never able to establish homicide due to there being insufficient evidence.
Just after the prosecution has been able to bring out all of the evidence for this, for some legalistic reason that really doesn’t make sense a mistrial is called. A month later you hear that the police have abandoned their case, and refuse to explain why.
You meet Geraldine in a supermarket. She’s a good looking woman. You’re single. Do you ask her out?