Quote: @savannahskol said:
According to Dershowitz, the president was within his authority to fire the FBI director and would have been justified, under the unified executive theory, to shut down the investigation.
"The position I've taken from day one is for the president to obstruct justice, he has to go beyond his own permissible constitutional authority and engage in conduct that would be a crime for anyone else, like tampering with witnesses, obstructing a witness, paying witnesses, telling them to lie. None of that is charged against President Trump," Dershowitz said.
"Liberal" Professor Dershowitz? LMAO
Please. He's nothing but a mouthpiece for Team Trump as a regular on Fox News.
"Engage in conduct that would be a crime for anyone else"
BINGO ...
Mueller has made the case that Trump WOULD face charges if he were not a sitting President, but that's up to Congress and NOT the DOJ. Right there this destroys Dershowitz's argument.
"Telling a witness to lie"
Umm hello Michael Cohen on Line 1? Trump's attorney is headed to jail for LYING to protect the President. Don McGahn, White House counsel - ordered to lie by Trump. Told to change his testimony to protect Trump. Dems want to subpoena McGahn, White House wants to block the subpoena - helllo dingbat that in itself is obstruction of justice.
So once again, there's more several instances of rock solid proof of the very standards that Dershowitz sets, yet he refuses to acknowledge because he's a Fox News Muppet.
And yes while the President has the legal right to fire & hire the FBI Director, when you fire the FBI Director because he won't stop the investigation into YOU when it concerns election interference by a hostile nation, you've entered an extremely gray area that has just as strong of a case for obstruction of justice.
And for one second, stop being a partisan ass. Do you really think a President should be able to fire FBI directors because they won't stop investigating a President's role in criminal activity, and a President should be able to end ANY investigations where the President is involved? WTF kind of precedent do you want to set for the country? That's NOT what the forefathers envisioned - turning the country into a banana republic/dictatorship where the President is so above the law he can't be charged, investigated.
Sad you Trump fluffers can't face reality because you're such blatant partisan hacks you seem to think all of this lying, witness tampering, asking staff to lie on your behalf is normal and legal? So much for the party of law & order ... what Trump has done is 1000x worse than the obstruction by Nixon that led to his impeachment.
Quote: @A1Janitor said:
So I guess it’s not ok to disagree with Z about religion, adoption, or homosexuality.
Or he becomes triggered like a wilting snowflake.
Well ... there hasn’t been a whole lot of difference in gay rights under Trump vs. Obama. Name what Trump policy President that you disagree with against gays.
We can discuss blacks too. Why didn’t Obama institute prison reform to help blacks that were treated unfairly with sentences. Should Trump treat blacks as “super predators” like the Clintons?
Save the moral rantings for Pumpf. He at least earns that over you. (Not that he is right about our Dear Leader).
Glad Trump is looking into abortion. Go study Margaret Sanger and look where the planned parenthoods are located. When will the minorities wake up?
Study up on gays that support Trump. That list is growing too.
RUSSIA! CHEETO! ORANGEMAN BAD! RUSSIA!
*yaaaaaawwwwnnn"
Ok, let's recap!
So...after citing the Kennedys and a QB that's been off of our roster (and largely out of my conversations) for most of a decade as...points?...now, A1J is claiming to know some emotional state of mine.
It's like he can't choose between irrelevancy and dishonesty...!!
When did I say anything was or wasn't OK to disagree about? You and Bobbo are ranting some truly bizarre sh*t in here.
I mentioned the gays due to the references to religion, and the ways it's being manipulated, via legislation, to treat gays less fairly than others. It's not new, or specifically Trump-ish...but, wait, I mentioned Texas and the deep South specifically.
Maybe you need help with the big words.
In any case, my actual emotional state through all of this has been laughing and occasionally slapping my forehead in gaping disbelief at just how whacko you two are being in this thread.
Kennedys? TJack? Globalism? sharia law? What are you two huffing?
I posted about main party voters, and you both are bouncing between unrelated babble and trying to assign positions/behaviors to me that I haven't posted...so...again, back away from the gas can/markers/whiffits/whatever you crazy kids are indulging in....
LMAO
What a joke. Trump gave unfettered access. He didn’t obstruct anything.
He should have fired Mueller. No collusion with Russia. 35 million dollars later.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-andrew-napolitano-did-president-044333557.html
Fox News Judge Nap disagrees with you A1 ...
Also for you & Savannah:
J.W. Verrett, lifelong Republican, Professor of Law at George Mason University and member of Trump Transition team:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/gop-staffer-advocates-trumps-impeachment/587785/
The Mueller report was that tipping point for me, and it should be for Republican and independent voters, and for Republicans in Congress. In the face of a Department of Justice policy that prohibited him from indicting a sitting president, Mueller drafted what any reasonable reader would see as a referral to Congress to commence impeachment hearings.
Depending on how you count, roughly a dozen separate instances of obstruction of justice are contained in the Mueller report. The president dangled pardons in front of witnesses to encourage them to lie to the special counsel, and directly ordered people to lie to throw the special counsel off the scent.
This elaborate pattern of obstruction may have successfully impeded the Mueller investigation from uncovering a conspiracy to commit more serious crimes. At a minimum, there’s enough here to get the impeachment process started. In impeachment proceedings, the House serves as a sort of grand jury and the Senate conducts the trial. There is enough in the Mueller report to commence the Constitution’s version of a grand-jury investigation in the form of impeachment proceedings.
No collusion! Sharia law! Kennedys! TJack!
LMAO
Zanary welcome to the nut house
Joe diGenova told Mike Huckabee tonight ... Mike Rogers went to the FISA court to tell then corrupt Obama admin was illegally spying. The FISA court has ruled they are guilty - and have referred them to the DOJ.
Hoax. Indictments coming.
Quote: @SFVikeFan said:
"Liberal" Professor Dershowitz? LMAO
Please. He's nothing but a mouthpiece for Team Trump as a regular on Fox News.
Oh jeez.
Dersh is a self=proclaimed liberal. It's his disclaimer every time he does go on FoxNews, for Bercich's sake.
He can't get on CNN cuz Avenatti hogged all the air time. (How'd that work out?)
More importantly (to me)... Dersh is a respected constitutional scholar... and that's where he's 'shined' lately.
Btw, he's said Ted Cruz was far/away the best legal mind he's taught. I digress.
I've posted tit for tat responses to you, thus far. We've both gotten nowhere.
However, let me preface that by saying I appreciate the back/forth with me/us.
I do believe you mean what you say and say what you mean. I appreciate that.
Let me take a different tack.... let me let "liberals" do my talkin' to you.
Like rats from a sinking ship..........
I already posted earlier "Face it, FoxNews was right"
WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...edirect=on&utm_term=.49c6e80a8398
NY Times running away from the Steele Dossier
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/po...eport.html
RollingStone with a damning critique of MSM/Dems
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/po...ns-813171/
If you don't/didn't read any of my links, please read the RollingStone link, immediately above.
Peace out, enough on this topic (for me). It's ova.
But first... a happy late Earth Day, to you.  (AGR wondered where those posts were, earlier, lol)
BTW, if you really care about the planet... you wouldn't be reading this, or clicking play in the above link.
Just sign off, now. If'n you're serious.
The carbon footprint of the internet:
Around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to every person in the UK flying to America and back twice over.
I can't help it... allow me to grab my shoes for my victory lap. God, it's almost like I said all along Barr was a stooge covering for Trump. I shall now bow back out and leave this here...
LINK HERE
Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not capture ‘context’ of Trump probe
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III submitted his investigation to the Justice Department in March. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The letter and a subsequent phone call between the two men reveal the degree to which the two longtime colleagues and friends disagreed as they handled the legally and politically fraught task of investigating the president.
At the time Mueller’s letter was sent to Barr on March 27, Barr had days prior announced that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his memo to Congress, Barr also said Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.
Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote the previously undisclosed private letter to the Justice Department, laying out his concerns in stark terms that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.
“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
A redacted version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report was released to the public on April 18. Here's what's in it. (Brian Monroe, Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
The letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials.
A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.
Justice Department officials said Tuesday that they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter, and that it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns. Until they received the letter, they believed Mueller was in agreement with them on the process of reviewing the report and redacting certain types of information, a process that took several weeks. Barr has testified to Congress previously that Mueller declined the opportunity to review his four-page memo to lawmakers that distilled the essence of the special counsel’s findings.
What’s next for Democrats after the Mueller report? Democrats are looking for a plan of attack with the release of the redacted Mueller report and Attorney General Barr’s upcoming congressional testimonies. (Blair Guild/The Washington Post)
In his letter to Barr, Mueller wrote that the redaction process “need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation.”
Barr is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee — a much-anticipated public confrontation between the nation’s top law enforcement official and Democratic lawmakers, where he is likely to be questioned at length about his interactions with Mueller.
A day after Mueller sent his letter to Barr, the two men spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials.
In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials. Mueller did not express similar concerns about the public discussion of the investigation of Russia’s election interference, the officials said.
When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not, but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.
In their call, Barr also took issue with Mueller calling his memo a “summary,” saying he had never intended to summarize the voluminous report, but instead provide an account of its top conclusions, officials said.
Justice Department officials said that, in some ways, the phone conversation was more cordial than the letter that preceded it, but that the two men did express some differences of opinion about how to proceed.
Barr said he did not want to put out pieces of the report, but rather issue the document all at once with redactions, and that he didn’t want to change course, according to officials. Barr also gave Mueller his personal phone number and told him to call if he had future concerns, officials said.
Throughout the conversation, Mueller’s main worry was that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation, officials said.
Part 2:
“After the Attorney General received Special Counsel Mueller’s letter, he called him to discuss it,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday evening. “In a cordial and professional conversation, the Special Counsel emphasized that nothing in the Attorney General’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading. But, he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the Special Counsel’s obstruction analysis. They then discussed whether additional context from the report would be helpful and could be quickly released.
“However, the Attorney General ultimately determined that it would not be productive to release the report in piecemeal fashion,” the spokeswoman said. “The Attorney General and the Special Counsel agreed to get the full report out with necessary redactions as expeditiously as possible. The next day, the Attorney General sent a letter to Congress reiterating that his March 24 letter was not intended to be a summary of the report, but instead only stated the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions, and volunteered to testify before both Senate and House Judiciary Committees on May 1 and 2.”
Some senior Justice Department officials were frustrated by Mueller’s complaints, because they had expected that the report would reach them with proposed redactions, but it did not. Even when Mueller sent along his suggested redactions, those covered only a few areas of protected information, and the documents required further review, these people said.
The Washington Post and the New York Times had previously reported some members of Mueller’s team were frustrated with Barr’s characterization of their work, though Mueller’s own attitude was unknown before now.
In some team members’ view, the evidence they had gathered — especially on obstruction — was far more alarming and significant than how Barr had described it. That was perhaps to be expected, given that Barr had distilled a 448-page report into a terse, four-page memo to Congress.
Wednesday’s hearing will be the first time lawmakers question Barr since the Mueller report was released on April 18, and he is expected to face a raft of tough questions from Democrats.
Republicans on the committee are expected to question Barr about an assertion he made earlier this month that government officials had engaged in “spying” on the Trump campaign — a comment that was seized on by the president’s supporters as evidence the investigation into the president was biased.
Barr is also scheduled to testify Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee, but that hearing could be canceled or postponed amid a dispute about whether committee staff lawyers will question the attorney general. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the panel’s chairman, called for a copy of the Mueller letter to be delivered to his committee by Wednesday morning.
Democrats have accused Barr of downplaying the seriousness of the evidence against the president.
Mueller’s report described 10 significant episodes of possible obstruction of justice, but said that due to long-standing Justice Department policy that says a sitting president cannot be indicted, and because of Justice Department practice regarding fairness toward those under investigation, his team did not reach a conclusion about whether the president had committed a crime.
It's almost like Barr has a track record of protecting staff from obstruction of justice, since he personally pushed Bush to issue pardons on people who were already found guilty of obstruction of justice in the Iran contra affair.
Now if only there was some way to predict that Barr would do everything in his power to downplay the evidence and leap straight to the conclusion, shield the President from criticism, and pretend that Mueller's report didn't outline evidence of multiple occasions to warrant obstruction of justice charges so Congress could investigate and bring charges ... it's almost as if Barr had a track record already and sent a memo ahead of time promising to protect the President before seeing any evidence.
Oh wait ....
Don't worry KB, 6 weeks after the Mueller report was released we're waiting on all those charges and grand juries our A1Janitor turned legal expert promised! Any day now, really!! LMAO
Meanwhile they will continue to bury their heads in the sand instead of acknowledging this is EXACTLY what we said from Day 1 when Barr's ridiculous 4 page summary of fluff led to Trump and his cult taking some victory lap of TOTAL EXONERATION (despite his own AG who said the opposite), followed by a press conference pep rally that to nobody's surprise tried to minimize the shitshow of corruption within the White House.
And now, Trump has doubled down on his obstruction campaign in plain sight by refusing to allow aides to testify and trying to force Deutsche Bank and other organizations and witnesses to not submit evidence despite subpoenas. Sorry Trumpers, at some point you can't stop denying reality.
But but but Hillary!! Deep state!!! Derp derp derp!!!! LOLOLOLOL
Kingbash
Your article is from the Washington post. They are a well know for their left of center reporting. With that said what are we to do with the last paragraph of your article? Even if we take the article entirely at face value it says this right at the end:
Mueller’s report described 10 significant episodes of possible
obstruction of justice, but said that due to long-standing Justice
Department policy that says a sitting president cannot be indicted, and
because of Justice Department practice regarding fairness toward those
under investigation, his team did not reach a conclusion about whether
the president had committed a crime.
Your article also says Mueller agrees about no collusion which is what this thread was about (notice the title):
In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that media coverage of the
obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public
misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice
Department officials. Mueller did not express similar concerns about the
public discussion of the investigation of Russia’s election
interference, the officials said.
Just so we're clear, we're in agreement that there was no Trump/Russian collusion right?
Assuming we agree on collusion, go back to the first quote on obstruction. Lets say Trump is guilty as sin on all 10 potential obstruction bullet points from the Mueller report. If the DOJ policy is still to not prosecute a sitting president are we supposed to change the policy to fit your feelings? Should we impeach him so you get the even further religious right Mike Pence? Should we throw both Trump and Pence out and let Nancy be president? Or is it better to just redo the election? Whats your end game here? What would make you and the left happy?
|
