Looks like Jeffrey Clark is having a very bad, no good day.
Interesting, because he will be a major subject of today’s Committee hearings.
in two weeks
they are showing clips from the documentary footage. quite something.
Where are you viewing this?
they are showing clips on cnn’s jan 6 coverage. cnn is part of the discovery family.
You (among others) said similar things about Robert Mueller in the course of his investigation, many many times. Taking his time for strategic reasons, indictments to come etc. etc. Worth bearing in mind.
As I see it, Garland is in a tough spot. On the one hand, many people, especially those in his political camp - and possibly including him - believe that Trump is guilty of all sorts of crimes. On the other hand, indicting a former president is a huge step. And believing that Trump is guilty is not the same as being able to prove in court that Trump is guilty. The hurdle of winning in court, based on subjective interpretation of all sorts of ambiguous statements and actions, and needing to prove Trump’s mindset beyond a reasonable doubt, is a high one. And if he loses in court, it would be disastrous in terms of how his indictment was perceived (ala the Sussman verdict for Durham, though magnified).
Tough call.
Reminds me a bit of the impeachments which were also warranted IMO, but obviously failed in their ultimate purpose.
Still, I believe it’s important legal efforts to be made part of the historical record just as the impeachments were.
You’re both right. He runs on the promise to pardon Trump, without ever really intending to do so. Then if elected, he claims (and the MAGAts believe) that the evil Dems are keeping him from issuing the pardon.
“The Deep State replaced all my Pardoning Pens with invisible ink!”
“Ain’t that just like Shillary?”
What I think you and some others fail to appreciate is the difference in who is running the DOJ and the comparative levels of corruption between a Bill Barr-run DOJ and a Merrick Garland-run DOJ.
No one – and I mean no one – including Robert Mueller, was prepared for the depth of corruption in Trump’s DOJ under Barr. It blindsided Mueller, and it blindsided me. Mueller did his job. Anyone who reads his report will understand this.
Mueller did his job within the confines of traditional DOJ practices. This means 1) You can’t charge a sitting president per the DOJ OLC memo; 2) The proper means for a sitting president to be removed from office is impeachment/removal. Then you can charge him with crimes. Within those limitations, as they had been established by custom and practice for a very long time, Mueller did his work. He did it fast and he did it well. But against the corruption of Bill Barr, this turned out to be a big mistake.
Also, the fact that most people simply didn’t read the report. They should have. Did you? You never answered when I asked you before.
You know who didn’t do their jobs? Republicans in the impeachment proceedings. They ignored concrete, solid evidence that was more than sufficient to justify Trump’s removal from office. Most Republicans no longer respect or adhere to the rule of law. It’s all partisan politics, all the time.
If you don’t understand the massive differences between a Bill Barr DOJ and a Merrick Garland DOJ, or if you don’t have a basic understanding of the ways that the DOJ is expected to operate – meaning not as a political arm of any party – then I don’t think I can help you to understand why I anticipate an entirely different outcome with Garland’s DOJ.
You gave your ignorance away when you referred to this:
(Emphasis mine.)
Garland is not – and is not supposed to be – in any political camp. It is so important to have an apolitical DOJ, one that is not run as a protection racket for the guy sitting in the Oval Office. Garland is as traditional as they get. If you spent some time learning about him, you would understand this.
Do you know why Mitch McConnell wouldn’t bring Garland’s SCOTUS nomination to a vote in the Senate? It was because Garland would have won the nomination. He had enormous support between both parties. He’s a completely non-political guy, dedicated to the rule of law. That’s who you want running your DOJ, and especially at a time like this. Biden made an excellent pick.
I don’t think Mueller has claimed that Barr prevented him from indicting anyone. This seems to be your own theory. I don’t know what you might be basing this on. (Also, IIRC, part of your line at the time was that Mueller was the type of guy who couldn’t be pressured.) Whatever.
But even if were true, it’s still nothing more than an excuse on your part. Bottom line is that you were very wrong about things that you repeatedly predicted.
That’s not how the real world works. Under Republicans, Democrats, anyone.
No one in a politically-appointed position is completely immune to political influence, and pressure from the camp to which you belong and which appointed you to your job is a much bigger deal than pressure from the opposition party.
The general sense I get of the worldview expressed in your post is that you have the world divided up into good guys and bad guys, saintly heroes and blackguard scoundrels. In reality, it’s a lot more nuanced than that.
Should’ve been done a year ago.
I don’t think “Trump’s mindset” is is important as some people are making it out to be.
If Trump, really, deeply and truly believed he won, he had every right to bring his case to a court of law, and to keep trying until his appeals ran out. But he still isn’t allowed to fabricate evidence, commit fraud or send a mob to kill Mike Pence.
Suppose Trump were an ordinary criminal facing trial, let’s even suppose that he’s really innocent even though there’s overwhelming evidence that’s going to convict him. That doesn’t make it legal for him to fabricate exculpatory evidence or suborn perjury. He may feel such actions are justified, but that still doesn’t mean it’s legal.
I’m resigned to the fact that Trump’s going to skate, largely because of his intimidation strategies. Everyone involved in the prosecution of Trump, investigators, prosecutors, judges is going to have their private lives exposed and ridiculed. No one with any sort of indiscretion in their past will be safe, look at how he treated Peter Strzok.
Look the bullshit he pulled in order to pull Andrew McCabe’s pension the day before he retired, or look at how Jared Michael Corleone Kushner, in concert with MBS and the National Enquirer, attempted to destroy Jeff Bezos in retaliation for their coverage of the Khashoggi murder.
Judges, investigators and prosecutors are people, and they’d rather let Trump slide than have their lives destroyed, it’s why they’ve propagated the bullshit position that Trump can do no wrong unless he really believes he’s done something wrong. It’s unfortunate that Trump’s intimidation tactics are successful, and there were moments in the past where someone with courage in conviction could’ve nipped it in the bud, but that time has passed.
That’s why I think it’s even more important to prosecute his enablers, Eastman, Clark, Meadows, Navarro, Bannon, Stone, etc. He’ll gladly toss them away to save his own skin, and maybe the next guy will think twice. Probably not, but I can dream.
Sure, go after the enablers, but all those judges, investigators, and prosecutors took oaths, oaths that mostly talk about protecting and defending the Constitution, federal and I suppose state in the case of Georgia.
None of them have the cut-out, “unless it costs me too much.”
You have it backwards. Whether Trump did those things depends on what his mindset was.
If Trump genuinely believed that there were 100,000 valid votes for him in GA that hadn’t been counted by the corrupt system, then when he told the guy to “find 11,788 votes” (or whatever number) then he wasn’t telling him to make up votes but to find the valid ones which had been tossed out. The assumption that he meant to fabricate votes requires a judgment as to what he was really thinking at the time. And so on for other matters of that sort.
Similar as to whether Trump “sen[t] a mob to kill Mike Pence”. Trump didn’t directly instruct anyone to kill Mike Pence. Indicting him for sending a mob to kill Mike Pence requires quite a lot of subjective judgment as to what Trump “really meant” when he said things which were superficially very different than “kill Mike Pence”.
This type of thing goes over big in certain circles, but from a legal standpoint it’s very different.
Personally, I put this question under the Swan Fallacy. If you view items of evidence one by one then, sure, you might be able to discount his state of mind for any one entry. But that’s only if you go to the effort of dissociating the different acts from one another.
Let’s say that a guy claims profligate corruption on the part of Congress, promises to drain the swamp, and then first thing on getting hired, appoints a guy who was previously convicted of bribing officials, to lead fundraising.
Or he claims that the election is going to be stolen from him, but he refuses to appoint a quorum to the FEC before the election, preventing it from being able to investigate and prosecute electric crimes?
Or that he claims there’s a Deep State of actors inside the FBI, working against him, but the best of the FBI is his own appointee, he approved a budget raise for the organization, and he admits that he let someone else choose the FBI director - a pretty strong sign that he’s unconcerned with what’s going on at the agency.
Or he claimed, during his (first) impeachment hearings that this interest was in fighting corruption in Ukraine - but he was on the record as an opponent of US foreign anti-corruption laws.
Or that he ignored Congress’s election security bills and election security recommendations.
Trump regularly took direct actions (and consciously failed to take actions) contrary to his stated purposes, including on the question of election security.
If someone claims that they’re trying to protect grandma from burglars but, factually, went to her house, opened the doors and windows, put a sign outside to show photos of all the valuables inside, etc. then it’s relatively unlikely that they’re trying to keep grandma from getting robbed.
Unless that someone is also a clueless idiot with major psychological issues. In that case, all bets are off.
As a prosecutor, that’s not the argument that I would make in court. And as a likely-incompetent defense attorney, who has a narcissist as a client, it’s unlikely that I would be allowed by my client to make such an argument.
So, the guy who murdered six people because “God told me to,” gets a pass because he truly believes it?
Moderating:
Ok, and I’m guilty of it, too, we’re far afield of the topic of this thread. I understand that political threads can wander and have tried to be lenient about it, but let’s get back to the topic of this thread now that the hearings are again underway.
Thanks.