wolfpup reflects my feelings (outrage and disbelief) on this ruling to a T.
Does any of this have any basis in law? AIUI, its not even possible for Trump to have an executive privilege claim and yet the judge wants a special master to review the documents to see if there are materials that might be covered by it? Do I have this right?
IANAL but I think that I have fairly good reading comprehension. Reading this ruling was infuriating and difficult in that it was hard to make sense out of the gibberish. Did she and Trump have the same English professor?
But Trump isn’t running for anything. Does the unwritten rule apply to everyone?
(I know it wasn’t an indictment, but Comey re-opening the investigation into Hillary 9 days before the 2016 election should have terminated this “60 days” business forever.)
It’s not really unwritten. The DOJ has put out memoranda over the years outlining the policy.
Those three memoranda all state that Justice Department employees “may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” They also encourage prosecutors to contact the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division for further guidance regarding “the timing of charges or overt investigative steps near the time of a primary or general election.”
If indicting Trump (or even publicly investigating him) might influence the elections of those he endorses, then they should not do so until after the election. The idea is not to time these things to disrupt elections.
Even though that timing may not be with the intent of influencing an election, the government also wants to avoid bad optics, so they might delay just to avoid the appearance of doing so.
But if you read that whole blog, there is still quite a bit of ambiguity.
Maybe they’re going to wait until after he announces he’s running forcing him to drop out so he can run fund raisers to defend himself. Not that he’s beyond using campaign finance money for himself.
That’s good point. If they charge or indict him now, it’s only going to strengthen his base and he’ll make all kinds of promises to, and throw his support behind any MAGA GOP member that he thinks can be come the president (or Gov in states where he might get charged) in exchange for a pardon.
They both put together a list of candidates and the judge chooses one. They also propose the limits of the special master’s role, compensation, communications, etc.
Setting aside the question of whether it’s a bullshit policy that was effectively blown up by Jim Comey in 2016, it still exists and DoJ shows no sign of departing from it.
Let’s see if I can guess the short list of special masters proposed by Trump’s Team
Giuliana (mentioned)
Michael Flynn
Mike Lindell
Jared and/or Ivanka
Trump himself
Hannity
Alex Jones
Jim Jordan
I always read this as that they should not even consider if/when an election might take place and just let the timing fall where it may. - “for the purpose of effecting” - . I realize in practice they are doing eveything they can to remove the perception of being politically motivated, but at some point they have to just do whats needed - with Trump he’s in perpetual candidacy mode - and always claiming things are politically motivated - the DOJ in between a rock/hardspot and just needs to move forward with the case.
I thought the idea was to prevent classified information from falling into the wrong hands, and punishing people who mishandle that information to incentivize following the law. Election schmelection.
As pissed as I was (and remain) at Comey, it’s clear he put the interests of law enforcement ahead of a vague policy, and I see no reason why today’s DOJ shouldn’t do the same.
Bullshit. It was pointed out on this board that Comey caved to pressure from Republican leadership. One of our posters even pointed out that a program to compare the “new” emails on Weiner’s computer with the Clinton emails would have taken 20 minutes to write and even less time to determine that there were NO NEW EMAILS. Instead, Comey/FBI dragged it out to the election. Hilary butchered the campaign (ignored heavily union states as in the bag for democrats) and probably would have lost anyway but Comey DID NOT PUT THE INTERESTS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT FIRST. He caved to pressure from the Rebubs.
I don’t think this is so clear cut. Or more accurately, I think it is, but the conservative courts might not see it that way. Justice Kavanaugh has already said he doesn’t agree. From CNN:
In her ruling, Cannon said that the Supreme Court had not ruled out “the possibility of a former President overcoming an incumbent President on executive privilege matters.”…
Cannon quoted the Supreme Court saying in the recent case that the questions are “unprecedented and raise serious and substantial concerns” when it comes to scenarios where a former president is claiming to assert executive privilege over materials for which that privilege has been waived by the incumbent.
She also drew from a separate statement from Justice Brett Kavanaugh in that case in which Kavanaugh said it would “eviscerate the executive privilege for Presidential communications” if courts were to conclude that a former president could not “invoke the Presidential communications privilege for communications that occurred during his Presidency, even if the current President does not support the privilege claim.”
Okay, fair enough. Let me rephrase my point. If Comey could ostensibly put law enforcement interests involving a presidential candidate before some vague rule about interfering with an election just 9 days before one occurred, then there’s no good reason today’s DOJ couldn’t genuinely put law enforcement ahead of interfering with the upcoming election in which the focus of the investigation isn’t even a candidate.
