Thread: Mueller's Russian Interference investigation

Originally Posted by RPETER65

This is is not uncharted grounds,Obama’s DOJ was cited with contempt.

You just know he got that off Fox & Friends eh?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

You just know he got that off Fox & Friends eh?

Well no,but how is the source relevant ,in case you missed it,it is true.

Originally Posted by RPETER65

Well no,but how is the source relevant ,in case you missed it,it is true.

Can you direct us to some evidence?

Originally Posted by Cujo

Can you direct us to some evidence?

https://www.politico.com/story/2012/...ongress-077988

Originally Posted by RPETER65

https://www.politico.com/story/2012/...ongress-077988
Holder held in contempt
Holder blasted the contempt votes as “politically motivated” and “misguided,”

Holder stole Barr's thunder, same story different day, good for the goose good for the gander, other side of the coin,

The usual serving of US political BS - of no value what-so-ever - I know, lets have an investigation to get to the bottom of this!

The real question is: Just why didn't Mueller reach a conclusion? After all, as the special investigator that was his job.

Originally Posted by bowie

why didn't Mueller reach a conclusion?

Because of the old law that says a president can't be indicted. Mueller knew very well Barr's bias and has played Barr well; If Barr had agreed that there was no exoneration and said as much, he'd be out of a job. Barr is now in the hot seat, and likely to be forced out of his job in disgrace for lying to Congress.
Mueller wants a good AG, for the sake of his country. He's a patriot.

Originally Posted by RPETER65

The pertinent question is,did Barr really lie to Congress.

No, that's a prevaricating question. Like his prevaricating and misleading answers, and his infinitesimal hair-splitting.

Originally Posted by Maanaam

Because of the old law that says a president can't be indicted.

Wrong - old laws do not prevent Mueller from concluding that sitting President Trump did in fact commit a crime. If his investigation concluded that President Trump committed a crime he should have stated that. The fact that a President cannot be indicted doesn't mean the President cannot commit a crime.

Mueller's investigation (if it did in fact find that a crime was committed by President Trump) should have concluded that President Trump did commit a crime, and, as a sitting President cannot be indicted, the investigation would present the findings to Congress for resolution. Yup, if President Trump did commit the crime of "Obstruction of Justice" Mueller's investigation would be the vehicle for successful impeachment proceedings. However - Mueller's investigation did not come to a "conclusion", Why?

Originally Posted by Maanaam

Mueller knew very well Barr's bias and has played Barr well; If Barr had agreed that there was no exoneration and said as much, he'd be out of a job. Barr is now in the hot seat, and likely to be forced out of his job in disgrace for lying to Congress.
Mueller wants a good AG, for the sake of his country. He's a patriot.

Mueller and Barr are long time associates and friends. Barr is fine, naught more than a distraction or a deflection. Of little consequence.

Originally Posted by bowie

The real question is: Just why didn't Mueller reach a conclusion? After all, as the special investigator that was his job.

Perhaps there is truth in the rumour that Barr ordered him to wrap up the investigation prematurely.

Let's hope he is in front of Congress sooner rather than later.

Originally Posted by bowie

If his investigation concluded that President Trump committed a crime he should have stated that.

Oh really? So why didn't he put that in his report? He specifically said that he could not say that Drumpf did not commit obstruction. His intention was to leave it for others specifically congress to make that determination.

Prosecutors working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded last year that they had sufficient evidence to seek criminal charges against President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice over the president’s alleged pressuring of then FBI Director James Comey in February 2017 to shut down an FBI investigation of the president’s then national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Privately, the two prosecutors, who were then employed in the special counsel’s office, told other Justice Department officials that had it not been for the unique nature of the case—the investigation of a sitting president of the United States, and one who tried to use the powers of his office to thwart and even close down the special counsel’s investigation—they would have advocated that he face federal criminal charges. I learned of the conclusions of the two former Mueller prosecutors not by any leak, either from them personally or from the office of special counsel. Rather, the two prosecutors disclosed this information in then-confidential conversations with two other federal law enforcement officials, who subsequently recounted what they were told to me.

On March 24, without consulting with Mueller, Attorney General William Barr declared that in the absence of a final judgment by Mueller as to whether or not the president broke the law, he, the attorney general, had taken it upon himself to make that determination in a summary he sent to Congress. Barr decided that Trump wouldn’t be charged with a crime. But many career Justice Department employees, former prosecutors for the special counsel, and legal scholars have questioned the propriety and legitimacy of Barr’s making such a decision.

Given the Justice Department’s longstanding doctrine that a president cannot face criminal indictment while in office, Mueller suggested in his report that Congress could still act: the special counsel made more than twenty references in his report to Congress’s impeachment power. But the House Democratic leadership has spoken of impeachment proceedings in only the most tentative way, and some Democratic lawmakers have expressed outright disapproval.

In his report, Mueller described how his office had investigated eleven separate instances in which the president might have obstructed justice. Among these were the president’s alleged leaning-on and then firing of Comey, the president’s attempt to fire the special counsel, and various efforts to intimidate and discredit witnesses against him. Mueller wrote:

[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state… The evidence we obtained about the president’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.

For each of the eleven instances of potential obstruction that Mueller considered, the special counsel evaluated each on the three criteria required by statute for there to have been a violation of the law. In each case, Mueller also weighed both the exculpatory and the inculpatory evidence. Although Mueller declined to say which of the eleven he believed was a potential criminal violation, he did signal in his report those that his office considered to be the strongest cases: in any instance that he concluded all three legal criteria were met, where there was substantial evidence in support of the allegations, and in which his investigation found little if any exculpatory or countervailing evidence to undercut a potential case, the special counsel appeared to imply that those were instances that prosecutors or Congress should act on. A careful reading of Mueller’s report appears to suggest that, in particular, the president’s alleged effort to shut down the Flynn inquiry was one that the special counsel considered among the strongest potentially chargeable instances.

Independently of the Mueller report, confidential White House records that I have been able to review, as well as correspondence between the president’s attorneys and the special counsel already made public, demonstrate that the president and his attorneys considered Trump’s alleged attempt to shut down the Flynn inquiry to be the most direct threat to Trump’s presidency.

The Mueller investigation itself was so disciplined when it came to leaks that it seemed at times as though the special counsel’s office was hermetically sealed. In fact, Mueller was briefing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, overseeing the special counsel’s investigation, at least every two weeks, if not more often. The special counsel also made fourteen potential criminal referrals to other offices in the Justice Department regarding matters that he believed were potential serious crimes outside his investigation’s mandate. One such referral from the special counsel led the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York to prosecute the president’s lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.

In the course of such cases, prosecutors and FBI agents working for Mueller often interacted with their peers in US attorneys’ offices around the country and in the DOJ’s Criminal Division and Public Integrity Section. Some of Mueller’s prosecutors, who had been detailed from other Justice Department offices, have since returned to their previous jobs or taken new positions in the department. The special counsel’s office was thus less sequestered than is generally believed.

It was against this backdrop that prosecutors working for the special counsel spoke to their peers in the Justice Department. That is how I learned what, in particular, the two Mueller prosecutors had to say about the Flynn investigation. Two people present during one such conversation provided me with detailed and consistent accounts of what the special counsel’s two prosecutors had said to them. A third person present corroborated that the conversation took place but declined to provide details of what was said.

One person who spoke to me reported grappling with the issue of what could be considered a breach of their colleagues’ confidence. But in part because of what they regarded as Attorney General Barr’s misrepresentations of the Mueller report, they believed it was important for the public and Congress to know what Mueller’s prosecutors had themselves privately concluded: that a charge of obstruction of justice was indeed merited by Trump’s actions in the Flynn matter.

*

Central to the defense strategy devised by the president’s legal team was a constant assertion that Trump could not have obstructed justice because the president did not know that Flynn was under investigation by the FBI when Trump allegedly pressured Comey to drop the matter. This argument was at the heart of their defense against a charge of obstruction of justice for several reasons.

First, such cases need to prove that there was an “obstructive act,” that the suspect had taken an action that could impede a criminal investigation. Second, obstruction cases depend largely on whether a prosecutor can demonstrate to a jury the motivation of the person they want to charge for trying to impede a criminal investigation, that this suspect had “corrupt intent.” If, therefore, Trump understood the legal jeopardy that Flynn faced, that would demonstrate such intent on Trump’s part; if he did not, that would demonstrate Trump had no such intent. The third essential element of any obstruction charge is that there needs to be a “nexus of a proceeding,” meaning that a person must demonstrably have understood that whomever he was aiming to protect was under criminal investigation when he attempted to impede the inquiry.

To determine whether there was an “obstructive act” in the Flynn affair, Mueller had to investigate whether the president or Comey was telling the truth about the February 2017 events. Mueller concluded that “despite [the president’s] denials, substantial evidence corroborates Comey’s account.” In other words, Mueller found evidence of an obstructive act.

Regarding corrupt intent, Mueller found evidence that this existed as well. That left only the “nexus of a proceeding” in order to check all three boxes. The special counsel wrote in his final report: “To establish a nexus to a proceeding, it would be necessary to show that the President could easily foresee and actually contemplated that the investigation of Flynn was likely to lead to a grand jury investigation or prosecution.” It was hardly surprising, then, that the president’s attorneys consistently argued that President Trump did not know this, and that they made this assertion central to their defense of the president.

On July 31, 2018, however, I reported for the Daily that the special counsel had evidence—including witness statements and White House records—demonstrating that President Trump did, in fact, know that Flynn was under criminal investigation when he spoke to Comey about Flynn. The story attracted immediate attention. Lawrence O’Donnell devoted an opening eighteen-minute segment of his MSNBC show, The Last Word, to the story that same evening. Appearing on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on August 5, the host asked one of the president’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, about the report. Sekulow said only, “I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

As I reported last week, Trump’s attorneys Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani had then conducted a concerted campaign of off-the-record briefings to reporters for at least half a dozen major news organizations to deny and discredit my disclosures—an effort that could be judged largely successful in that it shut down public discussion of the issue for more than nine months. Last week, though, the Mueller report confirmed my reporting, saying this:

By the time the President spoke to Comey about Flynn, DOJ officials had informed McGahn, who informed the President, that Flynn’s statements to senior White House officials about his contacts with Kislyak were not true and that Flynn had told the same version of events to the FBI. McGahn also informed the President that Flynn’s conduct could violate 18 USC §1001. [US Code Title 18 § 1001 is the federal statute that makes it a felony to lie to the FBI or other federal investigators, a crime that Flynn did indeed later plead guilty to.]

Mueller likely assumed that nonpolitical career prosecutors in the Justice Department would examine the evidence his investigation had uncovered in order to determine whether to seek criminal charges against Donald Trump after the president’s term in office was over. But the attorney general acted peremptorily, in violation of the spirit of the special counsel statute, in declaring that President Trump did not obstruct justice. That leaves Congress as the last and only institution with the power to enforce accountability for a lawless president. As Mueller wrote:

The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the president’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/0...truct-justice/

Originally Posted by bowie

Mueller and Barr are long time associates and friends. Barr is fine, naught more than a distraction or a deflection. Of little consequence.

I don't agree. Mueller has integrity, Barr wrote (before his appointment) his forgone conclusion of the investigation (which is why he got his appointment). Barr has stuck to his pre-report stance, showing he's nothing more than a Trump flunky.

Now Barr is lying and splitting hairs to support his lies.
Barr is finished.

it's justice department policy (not a law) that a sitting president cannot be indicted--and in principle i think it makes sense to have it in place.

mueller, by all accounts, is a "by the book" kind of guy, and so of course he followed that policy. it's no small matter that mueller's boss (barr) wrote a single spaced, 19 page letter/job application stating that a sitting president can't be indicted. very soon thereafter, trump nominated barr.

let's keep in mind that mueller explicitly cleared trump of collusion...and also stated that it could not clear trump of obstruction. he left it to congress to determine trump's guilt or innocence.

barr has been a douchebag for years, but i don't think he's going anywhere soon. he's a true believer in the supreme power of the executive branch, and trump will use that for his own benefit....and they'd never get the votes in the senate to impeach. the dems can sue (and they probably will) and it will be settled quietly like it was with the harriet miers issue. this is more a game of running out the clock.

but SDNY is patient.
and so is the attorney general of NY.

Originally Posted by raycarey

he's a true believer in the supreme power of the executive branch

Except in the case of Bill Clinton and Obama. Like most of the hypocrites who hold this view, it only applies to Republican presidents.

Hundreds of former Justice officials assert Trump would be facing felony charges if he were not President


Hundreds of former federal prosecutors have signed onto a letter asserting that President Donald Trump would have been charged with obstruction of justice if he were not the president.

In the statement shared online Monday, nearly 400 former Department of Justice officials who worked in every administration dating back to former President Eisenhower declared that the evidence of obstruction, as detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller's report, would "satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge."

Mueller declined to make a decision on whether to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. Attorney General William Barr claimed that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined the special counsel's findings were "not sufficient to establish that the president had committed an obstruction of justice offense."

But the ex-federal prosecutors wrote that "the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming." They pointed to Mueller's report, which identifies ten episodes of possible obstruction by the president.

They specifically noted the report's revelation that Trump ordered then-White House counsel Don McGahn to remove Mueller and later draft statements denying that the president had made that request.

The former DOJ staffers also said Trump's attempts to limit the scope of the special counsel's investigation, as detailed in Mueller's report, are substantial enough to support an obstruction charge.

The signatories noted their beliefs are "not matters of close professional judgment. Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe here. In our system, every accused person is presumed innocent, and it is always the government's burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt."

"But," they added, "to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice  —  the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution  —  runs counter to logic and our experience."

The former Justice Department staffers argued that guidance issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which states that a sitting president cannot be indicted was the deciding factor over declining to charge Trump with obstruction of justice.

"As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical, because unchecked obstruction  —  which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished  —  puts our whole system of justice at risk," the letter states. "We believe strongly that, but for the OLC memo, the overwhelming weight of professional judgment would come down in favor of prosecution for the conduct outlined in the Mueller Report."

The letter, which has accrued nearly 400 signatures as of Monday afternoon, was organized by the non-profit Protect Democracy and is still open to signatories. Notable signatories thus far include Bill Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts who is challenging Trump for the presidency in 2020, and Paul Rosenzweig, who was the senior counsel to independent counsel Ken Starr during the investigations of former President Bill Clinton.

Democrats have criticized Barr's decision to not charge Trump with obstruction of justice, accusing him of acting as the president's personal sword and shield. Even some prosecutors who worked for Mueller claimed the attorney general did not adequately represent their findings, telling associates the report was more damning for Trump than Barr had indicated.

Barr defended his actions during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, in which he reiterated his belief that he and his deputy both agreed there was not enough evidence to establish an obstruction offense.

The attorney general also said that he was "surprised" by Mueller's decision to punt on whether Trump had obstructed justice. Barr also revealed he did not examine the underlying evidence in the special counsel's nearly two-year investigation before deciding against the obstruction charge.

https://www.salon.com/2019/05/06/hun...snt-president/

Here is the letter in full...

We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:

· The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;
· The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and
· The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.

Attempts to fire Mueller and then create false evidence

Despite being advised by then-White House Counsel Don McGahn that he could face legal jeopardy for doing so, Trump directed McGahn on multiple occasions to fire Mueller or to gin up false conflicts of interest as a pretext for getting rid of the Special Counsel. When these acts began to come into public view, Trump made “repeated efforts to have McGahn deny the story” — going so far as to tell McGahn to write a letter “for our files” falsely denying that Trump had directed Mueller’s termination.

Firing Mueller would have seriously impeded the investigation of the President and his associates — obstruction in its most literal sense. Directing the creation of false government records in order to prevent or discredit truthful testimony is similarly unlawful. The Special Counsel’s report states: “Substantial evidence indicates that in repeatedly urging McGahn to dispute that he was ordered to have the Special Counsel terminated, the President acted for the purpose of influencing McGahn’s account in order to deflect or prevent scrutiny of the President’s conduct toward the investigation.”

Attempts to limit the Mueller investigation

The report describes multiple efforts by the president to curtail the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation.

First, the President repeatedly pressured then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse his legally-mandated decision to recuse himself from the investigation. The President’s stated reason was that he wanted an attorney general who would “protect” him, including from the Special Counsel investigation. He also directed then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to fire Sessions and Priebus refused.

Second, after McGahn told the President that he could not contact Sessions himself to discuss the investigation, Trump went outside the White House, instructing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to carry a demand to Sessions to direct Mueller to confine his investigation to future elections. Lewandowski tried and failed to contact Sessions in private. After a second meeting with Trump, Lewandowski passed Trump’s message to senior White House official Rick Dearborn, who Lewandowski thought would be a better messenger because of his prior relationship with Sessions. Dearborn did not pass along Trump’s message.

As the report explains, “[s]ubstantial evidence indicates that the President’s effort to have Sessions limit the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation to future election interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct” — in other words, the President employed a private citizen to try to get the Attorney General to limit the scope of an ongoing investigation into the President and his associates.

All of this conduct — trying to control and impede the investigation against the President by leveraging his authority over others — is similar to conduct we have seen charged against other public officials and people in powerful positions.

Witness tampering and intimidation

The Special Counsel’s report establishes that the President tried to influence the decisions of both Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort with regard to cooperating with investigators. Some of this tampering and intimidation, including the dangling of pardons, was done in plain sight via tweets and public statements; other such behavior was done via private messages through private attorneys, such as Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani’s message to Cohen’s lawyer that Cohen should “[s]leep well tonight[], you have friends in high places.”

Of course, these aren’t the only acts of potential obstruction detailed by the Special Counsel. It would be well within the purview of normal prosecutorial judgment also to charge other acts detailed in the report.

We emphasize that these are not matters of close professional judgment. Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe here. In our system, every accused person is presumed innocent and it is always the government’s burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. But, to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience.

As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstruction — which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished — puts our whole system of justice at risk. We believe strongly that, but for the OLC memo, the overwhelming weight of professional judgment would come down in favor of prosecution for the conduct outlined in the Mueller Report.

If you are a former federal prosecutor and would like to add your name below, click here. Protect Democracy will update this list daily with new signatories.

https://medium.com/@dojalumni/statem...s-8ab7691c2aa1

FFS, the US judicial system has acussation charges for every normal actions an individual could have,

it's one thing to accuse someone, or charge someone, another to secure a conviction

Trump would be exonerated in a court case, and everyone knows that

Trump is so hated, if they had a solid case against him, believe me, they would go for it

How many people have actually read ALL of the Mueller Report?

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/02/p...ler/index.html

This was the big news story of the day. As soon as the article broke more prosecutors signed on as of know the total is 570 from both parties. That is damning to say the least.

Originally Posted by bsnub

This was the big news story of the day. As soon as the article broke more prosecutors signed on as of know the total is 570 from both parties. That is damning to say the least.

i agree with everything you've posted and the signatories of the letter stated.

but the problem is that it just doesn't matter on a practical level.

if trump even knows about the letter, he doesn't care...they currently have no power to do anything to him, and the upside for him is that it plays into his deep state nonsense.

what we all need to acknowledge is that the normal rules don't apply any longer....trump and his reptilian brain are only concerned with trump....he will burn it all down he determines it's in his own self-interest.

Originally Posted by raycarey

if trump even knows about the letter, he doesn't care...

Oh he cares you can take it to the bank. I am sure that he will be as desperate as ever to win reelection next year. Very desperate. If he loses you can take it to the bank there will be no pardon coming his way.

Originally Posted by bsnub

I am sure that he will be as desperate as ever to win reelection next year.

That Jerry Fallwell tweetd that Trump's next term should be 6 years because the "investigation" robbed him of 2 years.
No surprise, Trump tweeted agreement.

He's such a wanker, as are his enablers.

If he loses next year I would not be surprised to see him indicted on multiple felonies the next day. He will not leave the WH without kicking and screaming. I would love to see a capital police swat team raiding the WH and dragging his ass out and cuffing his fat ass on the front lawn.