Wouldn’t it be better to just let him make good on his waterboarding offer? On live TV.
Throughout his life, he’s gotten away with not complying…
Refuse to turn over documents, “lose” documents, destroyed documents, etc. A few “lost” papers, a few bribes, home free. He’s learned this shit works.
It’s how he never got really ruined in any of the many lawsuits filed against him.
I hope you are right, but with this traitor and his traitor party in charge of everything, who the hell knows.
There was a time, when this level of corruption and collusion would have brought down the wrath of hell on them. Not anymore, I’m afraid.
I had not listened closely to the discussion on this issue before posting, and I should have. Apparently, Trump’s team is attempting to claim attorney-client privilege, not executive privilege, with respect to these emails.
I guess my opinion about the validity of this claim is based on these thoughts: Does anyone seriously believe that Robert Mueller, FBI Director under Bush, FBI Director under Obama and the second-longest serving FBI Director in the history of the FBI, who dedicated his entire 40-year career to non-partisan ethical standards in his pursuit of justice under the rule of law, so much so that he is widely admired on both sides of the aisle for his equanimity and brilliance, somehow suddenly decided to sacrifice his reputation to illegally obtain emails? Or is too stupid to know how to do it right? It simply defies reason to think so.
I notice, too, that a lot of noise is being made about this “violation,” but nothing is being done legally to address it. One of Trump’s lawyers sent a letter to Congress. BFD.
The right (the Republican traitors) are trying to push the story that - despite years of nonpartisan service he has suddenly and magically become a sinister tool of the Obamunists and the Clintonistas… and the entire FBI with him.
The saddest thing is how many will believe it.
and they DO.
That’s all they have left at this point – they know they’re big-red-capital-Superman-“S” screwed.
The best part is that Trump’s minions put neon signs on the most incriminating emails by redacting them – all Mueller’s people have to do is compare what the Trump team handed over with what the GSA handed over and note the differences.
For the first time in the investigation*, the Special Counsel’s office released a statement via spokesperson Peter Carr in response to the question of how the team acquired the transition emails:
"When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.”
Lots to parse in 25 words, some easy ones:
… 2 uses of “criminal” as an adjective. No doubt as to what the SC considers this investigation to be.
… “ongoing”, as in, “not wrapping this one up next week!”
… “account owner’s consent”? WHO? WHO CONSENTED? ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!
*that I can remember.
They’re not just pushing that story; it’s part of a misinformation vortex. The right wing has figured out how to utilize modern media to generate information storms. Any of these narratives individually could be taken apart pretty quickly, but what happens is that there are multiple charges coming from many different directions. It’s not that the general public actually finds the Republican narrative credible - they probably don’t. But that’s not necessarily problematic for Republicans. The instability in our information channels is disruptive, disconcerting. People can’t trust what they’re reading. They are always forced to ask themselves “Is this true?” This is why if CNN makes even one mistake - just one - it harms the press who respect journalism as institution and play by its rules.
It could mean the GSA, who may be the account owners, but I suspect they’re talking about other emails that were given voluntarily. I think they’re saying ‘any emails we have were gotten voluntarily or through legal means.’
Seth Abramson has apretty good Twitter thread about this…
Conceivably, he sent a request for everything that the one group (I forget their name) could give him, they failed to run it past their lawyers, and simply sent him everything. Or, through whatever other means, things got to the Mueller team via some mixup. I don’t know how much it is expected for a legal team to vet who to ask questions of or vet whether the things that person sends them back fell within the scope of what that person had the rights to provide. It could be (for all I know) a norm for lawyers to expect everyone they interact with is working in accordance with the law, minus further evidence.
I don’t believe that that’s what happened, of course. Probably the Trump team didn’t realise that this stuff wasn’t owned by them and could be easily attained, in whole. Otherwise, Mueller would have issued an apology and stated that they were jettisoning that information and rolling back things that are dependant on it (or whatever the correct procedure is for things like this). Since he didn’t, us non-legal types can assume that the law is on their side.
Though, I do wonder what the proper procedure is when a prosecutor is sent information beyond what was intended?
From what I am reading, the GSA voluntarily turned over the transition emails. They claim they were within their rights to do so, because Trump’s transition accepted an agreement with the GSA stating that by using devices provided by the GSA, the transition team’s emails would not be held back from any law enforcement actions.
The MOU is posted online. To save you a click, I personally couldn’t find any explicit language regarding release of email to any third party, law enforcement or otherwise. So if that exists, it must be in some other document.
Although really, why would we think that any document in the .gov domain would automatically be excluded from law enforcement inquiry? And yeah… I’m skeptical of the idea that Mueller made a rookie mistake in gathering evidence, although I’m sure this idea will be added to the huge wooly ball of string that is the conservative conspiracy theory of Uranium One, Pizzagate, and Obama’s birth certificate.
This isn’t even a remotely controversial seizure of information. They’re emails pertinent to a criminal investigation, and in this case, criminal activity involving potential cases of espionage, wire fraud, money laundering committed by those with connections to the government. There’s no privilege in shielding evidence of potential crimes. What I’m less clear on is whether the emails were sent on government servers, in which case there really and truly is not privilege at all, given the circumstances.
If it’s merely “unintended” rather than “illegal” to send the information, it’s of no more legal significance that if some Nigerian prince randomly sent a lucrative offer to Mr. Mueller.
That issue can’t arise in this case, since it’s impossible for the GSA to “illegally” send the special prosecutor copies of email sent on government servers – it’s stated right on the login screen that there is no expectation of privacy, so legally speaking it’s “plain view” material.
I see several references to different versions of the Presidential Transitions Act, a mention of an individual-by-individual waiver that people will need to sign to get their electronics and equipment, and there are a few mentions of delegating authority to make decisions to the GSA. So, yeah, certainly possible that there’s something else where it’s stated.
So if someone sends Donald Trump’s medical records to Mueller, he could use that in court if he found something of criminal interest in them, despite having had no right nor reason to have requested those records?
Politico: Ex-Spy Chief: Russia’s Election Hacking Was An ‘Intelligence Failure’
Michael Morell says:
He also thinks proving intent for obstruction of justice would be difficult.
Mueller’s not an idiot; they were the idiots for logging their crimes on government email servers. They spent an entire campaign running in no small part on a theme of their opposition’s alleged computer crimes, and then they go out and create a criminal diary.
What the Trumpists are doing is creating a misinformation vortex. One never knows with Trump, but I’m guessing that they’re not going to fire Mueller and clear out the DoJ and FBI quite yet (although it will happen soon enough for sure) - they will do that when they sense that their projectiles of falsity have reached the highest arc in their trajectory. Fox News, Breitbart, and the right wing media are actually playing a critical role in a multi-step strategy.
The first step is what we’re seeing now. It’s a steady drumbeat of various allegations of corruption. Not the same drumbeat of the same allegation, but different ones every other day. Mueller’s biased. Mueller has democrats working for him. McCabe’s wife is a democrat. One agent over here doesn’t like Trump. Another agent doesn’t like Trump. They treated Clinton one way; they treated Trump another way. It’ll be something new every day. The stories themselves are mostly non-stories, easily debunked claims, but the breadth and frequency of the storm will sow confusion. Even so, it would probably be unwise to remove Mueller at this point. It would be smarter for Trump to do it a little bit later.
That brings us to the next step in the destruction of Mueller’s investigation, which is to create an alternative reality on the ground level. The idea is to create an almost holographic alternative constituency that supports Trump and feels victimized by Mueller, the elite government bureaucrat. They’ll characterize it as the silent majority, but probably in reality not really a majority or anything close to it. But it’s a key constituency that Trump and the right wing need to “save” and “protect”. And this is where Fox and Breitbart come in. They will show data (most of it fake and misleading) suggesting that there is a grassroots group of people who are being victimized by having their leader taken down. They’ll suggest the will of people in West Virginia and Arizona is being overpowered by career bureaucrats. When that happens, Trump and the right will “save” them by ending Mueller’s investigation - and that’s probably when they’ll start cleaning out the government and replacing them with loyalists.
In this day and age, this strategy is surprisingly easy and powerful. People get their information from decentralized channels but because of online feeds like Facebook and Google, millions of readers and consumers can be easily lead in direction (and to one story) one moment, and easily lead to another one in the next moment. It creates chaos, information instability. It makes people not just distracted but uncomforatble.