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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
xDaunt was also active at the time trumping up the findings of the WSJ story over which the IG report faults McCabe, namely that the FBI encountered resistance from the Justice Department in investigating the Clinton Foundation. But now, of course, Republicans' support for the firing of McCabe is based purely on the impropriety of leaking to the media, and has nothing to do with McCabe's name coming up in the conservative media as being pro-Hillary and anti-Trump.
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On March 17 2018 23:21 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2018 23:16 Excludos wrote:On March 17 2018 23:14 zlefin wrote:On March 17 2018 23:10 Excludos wrote:The FBI seems to me both more likely to get reforms put upon it (it's an actual threat to the government, so keeping it in some degree of check makes sense, and a rogue FBI could do untold damage) Seems to me the problem is the exact opposite. It's trying to keep the government in check but is unable to do so because of how much influence the president has over it. FBI was the first to start investigating Trump + Russia, and was hampered to the degree that a special investigation separate of FBI had to be set up. FBI isn't a threat to the government as long as the government directly controls it, as is the case right now. are you familiar (even passingly) with the history of J Edgar Hoover's long tenure in the FBI? I should probably quickly point out that 1972 != 2018 They got worse and more powerful in a lot of ways in between.
Literally the exact opposite is true. I don't deny that there were plenty of abuses under Hoover. President Kennedy intended to fire him when he assumed office, but then he soon realized that J. Edgar Hoover had way too much dirt on him to do so. The same was true for President Nixon. A lot has changed since Hoover ran the FBI like his personal secret police force.
1. The Church Committee hearings in 1975 changed the way US intelligence was run and held accountable for its actions. Those hearings are what created the permanent congressional oversight committees, HPSCI (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) and SSCI (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence), and forced the heads of the Intel Community (IC) to be held accountable by Congress. The oversight committees functioned quite well until 2017, because most congresspeople are not particularly supportive of stuff like the CIA supplying weapons and money to repressive Latin American dictatorships to stop the spread of communism. It's no accident that CIA support for dictators in Latin America came pretty much to a halt by the beginning of the 1980s. (The one notable exception was the Iran-Contra affair, which was notable precisely because the White House and CIA directly disobeyed the congressional oversight committees. The result was a huge scandal. The fact that it was a scandal at all demonstrates the effectiveness of congressional oversight on US intelligence.)
Unfortunately, Devin Nunes has likely permanently destroyed his committee's ability to perform oversight. The result is that the agencies will hide things from his committee. Likely this will be done with good intentions at first, but so are the steps on the road to hell.
2. Hoover held the directorship of the FBI for 48 years. Every FBI director after him has held the position for 10 years maximum, with the exception of Robert Mueller, who held it for 12.
3. The FISA court was established as a result of the Church Committee hearings. It's goal was to provide vital judicial oversight of things like wiretaps, instead of the FBI wiretapping whoever Hoover felt like. The very existence of the court represents a direct check on the FBI's power in 2018 as opposed to 1972.
In summary, GH's claim that the FBI is more powerful, has fewer restraints, and behaves worse in 2018 than in 1972 is absolutely false.
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On March 18 2018 04:31 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 03:47 xDaunt wrote:On March 18 2018 03:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 18 2018 03:11 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Is neither of them being honorable still an option? What? You don’t actually believe that Comey is going to ride in on a white horse and save the country from Trump?! you seem to take delight in believing that no one can save the country from your orange godemperor. Do you want America to crash and burn that much?
I wasn’t aware that the country was crashing and burning.
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Unrelated to the firings, but I'm shocked that this still isn't big news.
https://vimeo.com/176181706
Katie J’s Testimony v. Donald J. Trump: Alleging he tied, beat, raped and threatened her with murder when she was 13 years old
MATURE
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On March 18 2018 05:30 Ayaz2810 wrote:Unrelated to the firings, but I'm shocked that this still isn't big news. https://vimeo.com/176181706Katie J’s Testimony v. Donald J. Trump: Alleging he tied, beat, raped and threatened her with murder when she was 13 years old MATURE
That case was dismissed by request of the accuser back in 2016 wasn't it?
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On March 18 2018 05:33 Tachion wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 05:30 Ayaz2810 wrote:Unrelated to the firings, but I'm shocked that this still isn't big news. https://vimeo.com/176181706Katie J’s Testimony v. Donald J. Trump: Alleging he tied, beat, raped and threatened her with murder when she was 13 years old MATURE That case was dismissed by request of the accuser back in 2016 wasn't it?
I think, considering the Stormy Daniels +6 event happening right now, we might want to ask WHY it was withdrawn. She is claiming to have been threatened into dropping it.
Bloom noted that Katie Johnson's federal lawsuit, mysteriously withdrawn on 11/4/16 just before the election, contained something most rape claims do not: An alleging eyewitness, code-named "Tiffany Doe," who attests that she procured Katie and other underage girls for sexual activity with Epstein and Epstein's guests, of whom Trump was one. By October, 2016, Katie's claims also were backed by an additional witness, "Joan Doe."
If it's all true, what occurred at Manhattan's "Wexner Mansion" during the "Eyes Wide Shut" 1990s would seem to exceed, for sheer debauchery and criminality, anything Kubrick depicted in his final film. What follows is a message from the videographer Jonathann Launer (imdb.com/name/nm20683):
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jonathann Launer
Date: Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 12:22 AM
Subject: Me
To:
To whom it may concern,
My name is Jonathann Launer. I am an award winning filmmaker in Los Angeles. In February 2016, I was hired to film an interview with Katie Johnson, who apparantly had some Donald Trump story to tell. I drove to San Diego, and met Ms. Johnson. She was there with Al Taylor. She began the story, and she accused Mr. Trump of rape, and was very detailed in her allegations.
Now just to be very clear, I have no personal agenda, no beef with Mr. Trump, and no political affiliations whatsoever. I was simply there as a hired gun to do what I do. Film. As the interview went on, she gave more and more graphic detail about the alleged rape. I could tell she was very upset and genuinely disturbed. She was shaking and had to compose herself several times during the interview.
I am not an expert in psychology, and don't claim to diagnose her mental state, but I DO know acting when I see it. I do not believe she was acting. I believed she was telling the truth as she saw it. Now, I'm not accusing Mr. Trump of anything, as I was not there. But what I saw in Ms. Johnson's interview was very convincing. I have no stake in this whatsoever, and have nothing to gain. I have no ownership in the footage. Like I said, I was just hired to do a job.
###
NOTE: On July 7, 2016, the underlying, non-blurred edition of Katie J's Testimony was received by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) and Martin "Marty" Baron, Editor of The Washington Post, via couriered DVD. On July 9, the same non-blurry version was hand-delivered to the front door of House Speaker Paul Ryan's home in Janesville, WI; to Sidney "Skip" Bliss, owner of The Janesville Gazette; and sent as well to Charles G. Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, Wichita, KS.
During the Cleveland GOP Convention he chaired and going into November, Speaker Ryan's endorsement of Trump for President was constant, as were the endorsements of many others here who knew or should have known of Katie's legal claims:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign_endorsements,_2016 ].
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On March 18 2018 04:41 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2016 14:21 Danglars wrote:Excerpts from the original story: The public-integrity prosecutors weren’t impressed with the FBI presentation, people familiar with the discussion said. “The message was, ‘We’re done here,’ ” a person familiar with the matter said.
Justice Department officials became increasingly frustrated that the agents seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions.
Following the February meeting, officials at Justice Department headquarters sent a message to all the offices involved to “stand down,’’ a person familiar with the matter said. [...]
As a result of those complaints, these people said, a senior Justice Department official called the FBI deputy director, Mr. McCabe, on Aug. 12 to say the agents in New York seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions, these people said. The conversation was a tense one, they said, and at one point Mr. McCabe asked, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?’’ The senior Justice Department official replied: ”Of course not.” WSJJust to recap, it's alleged the DOJ kept persisting in demands that the FBI give up the Clinton Foundation investigation. McCabe made a good move: ask them point-blank if they're forbidding the FBI to investigate this. If yes, the scheme is revealed. If they decline to go that far, he's fine going forward with what he thinks is proper. This is Danglars quoting the article over which he now agrees McCabe should be fired, and praising McCabe for his actions. In the same post he referred to Comey as a "conflicted but stalwart" defender of the institution for his interactions with the media during the very strange and difficult 2016 election.
One very small aspect of the ongoing saga. I think McCabe should be fired over lying under oath and leaking details of an ongoing sensitive investigation to the WSJ.
You can do this without lying. If you want to know why, just ask!
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These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)
I've posted about half of it (beginning and end).
As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see.
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On March 18 2018 05:57 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)I've posted about half of it (beginning and end). As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see.
if you're talking about GH, I think he has proven himself to be more of a trumper than an anti trumper as of late.
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On March 18 2018 05:54 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 04:41 Doodsmack wrote:On November 04 2016 14:21 Danglars wrote:Excerpts from the original story: The public-integrity prosecutors weren’t impressed with the FBI presentation, people familiar with the discussion said. “The message was, ‘We’re done here,’ ” a person familiar with the matter said.
Justice Department officials became increasingly frustrated that the agents seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions.
Following the February meeting, officials at Justice Department headquarters sent a message to all the offices involved to “stand down,’’ a person familiar with the matter said. [...]
As a result of those complaints, these people said, a senior Justice Department official called the FBI deputy director, Mr. McCabe, on Aug. 12 to say the agents in New York seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions, these people said. The conversation was a tense one, they said, and at one point Mr. McCabe asked, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?’’ The senior Justice Department official replied: ”Of course not.” WSJJust to recap, it's alleged the DOJ kept persisting in demands that the FBI give up the Clinton Foundation investigation. McCabe made a good move: ask them point-blank if they're forbidding the FBI to investigate this. If yes, the scheme is revealed. If they decline to go that far, he's fine going forward with what he thinks is proper. This is Danglars quoting the article over which he now agrees McCabe should be fired, and praising McCabe for his actions. In the same post he referred to Comey as a "conflicted but stalwart" defender of the institution for his interactions with the media during the very strange and difficult 2016 election. One very small aspect of the ongoing saga. I think McCabe should be fired over lying under oath and leaking details of an ongoing sensitive investigation to the WSJ. You can do this without lying. If you want to know why, just ask!
You’ve stated very clearly, and here reaffirm, the reasons why you agree with the firing. The alleged lying under oath (although I think that’s your own characterization) stems from the WSJ story. The original offense is the WSJ story, so it can’t be a “very small” aspect. The IG report, which is the basis for mccabes firing, is about the WSJ story.
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On March 18 2018 05:57 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)I've posted about half of it (beginning and end). As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see.
Those plea deals are contingent on full cooperation to bring down people above them. While i would agree that they deserve to spend every remaining moment of their sorry lives in jail, reducing a hundred+year sentence (basically rest of life in jai) to not rest of life in jail is necessary as incentive.
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Shortly after McCabe, a lifelong Republican, is fired for leaking to the media info overtly favorable to Republicans, more public pressure is put on the Mueller investigation. But rest assured - the motive behind the firing is to stamp out Trump-favored media leaks. Republicans are merely concerned that McCabe leaked info to the media. And they definitely did not make great efforts to put attention on that leaked info at the time it was published (because it was favorable to them).
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“The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability. As the OPR proposal stated, ‘all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand,’ Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement provided by the Justice Department.
Lacking candor under oath, something Jeff Sessions is intimately familiar with.
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On March 18 2018 06:49 Amui wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 05:57 Introvert wrote:These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)I've posted about half of it (beginning and end). As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see. Those plea deals are contingent on full cooperation to bring down people above them. While i would agree that they deserve to spend every remaining moment of their sorry lives in jail, reducing a hundred+year sentence (basically rest of life in jai) to not rest of life in jail is necessary as incentive.
We won't rehash this for the 4th time, but if you wanted to bring down others by offering leniency to some people involved you would still make them admit to the crime they are all accused of committing.
McCarthy has pointed that out, and as I later learned, so has another of the anti-Trumpers favorites
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/5/16735480/michael-flynn-plea-preet-bharara
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On March 18 2018 07:27 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 06:49 Amui wrote:On March 18 2018 05:57 Introvert wrote:These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)I've posted about half of it (beginning and end). As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see. Those plea deals are contingent on full cooperation to bring down people above them. While i would agree that they deserve to spend every remaining moment of their sorry lives in jail, reducing a hundred+year sentence (basically rest of life in jai) to not rest of life in jail is necessary as incentive. We won't rehash this for the 4th time, but if you wanted to bring down others by offering leniency to some people involved you would still make them admit to the crime they are all accused of committing. McCarthy has pointed that out, and as I later learned, so has another of the anti-Trumpers favorites https://www.vox.com/2017/12/5/16735480/michael-flynn-plea-preet-bharara
Mueller is experienced and surrounded by experienced people. I have seen no reason to doubt the methods being used by his investigation. This may change when his report is finished and it turns out he gave out plea deals for nothing. But not now.
|
On March 18 2018 07:30 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 07:27 Introvert wrote:On March 18 2018 06:49 Amui wrote:On March 18 2018 05:57 Introvert wrote:These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)I've posted about half of it (beginning and end). As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see. Those plea deals are contingent on full cooperation to bring down people above them. While i would agree that they deserve to spend every remaining moment of their sorry lives in jail, reducing a hundred+year sentence (basically rest of life in jai) to not rest of life in jail is necessary as incentive. We won't rehash this for the 4th time, but if you wanted to bring down others by offering leniency to some people involved you would still make them admit to the crime they are all accused of committing. McCarthy has pointed that out, and as I later learned, so has another of the anti-Trumpers favorites https://www.vox.com/2017/12/5/16735480/michael-flynn-plea-preet-bharara Mueller is experienced and surrounded by experienced people. I have seen no reason to doubt the methods being used by his investigation. This may change when his report is finished and it turns out he gave out plea deals for nothing. But not now.
But have you considered just making stuff up and silently shifting burdens of evidence around so that your ideological opponents bear the burden of proving the expertise of others instead of you having to disprove their expertise?
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On March 18 2018 08:22 Wulfey_LA wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 07:30 Gorsameth wrote:On March 18 2018 07:27 Introvert wrote:On March 18 2018 06:49 Amui wrote:On March 18 2018 05:57 Introvert wrote:These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)I've posted about half of it (beginning and end). As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see. Those plea deals are contingent on full cooperation to bring down people above them. While i would agree that they deserve to spend every remaining moment of their sorry lives in jail, reducing a hundred+year sentence (basically rest of life in jai) to not rest of life in jail is necessary as incentive. We won't rehash this for the 4th time, but if you wanted to bring down others by offering leniency to some people involved you would still make them admit to the crime they are all accused of committing. McCarthy has pointed that out, and as I later learned, so has another of the anti-Trumpers favorites https://www.vox.com/2017/12/5/16735480/michael-flynn-plea-preet-bharara Mueller is experienced and surrounded by experienced people. I have seen no reason to doubt the methods being used by his investigation. This may change when his report is finished and it turns out he gave out plea deals for nothing. But not now. But have you considered just making stuff up and silently shifting burdens of evidence around so that your ideological opponents bear the burden of proving the expertise of others instead of you having to disprove their expertise?
I agree, no one should post anything about the Mueller investigation here or on any normal or law-based website. We should A) say nothing since don't know everything Mueller does, and B) trust him and his team completely and ignore anything that anyone says that calls into question any part of a special counsel investigation, because they always have such stellar records.
The lefties in this thread can go first.
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On March 18 2018 08:29 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 08:22 Wulfey_LA wrote:On March 18 2018 07:30 Gorsameth wrote:On March 18 2018 07:27 Introvert wrote:On March 18 2018 06:49 Amui wrote:On March 18 2018 05:57 Introvert wrote:These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)I've posted about half of it (beginning and end). As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see. Those plea deals are contingent on full cooperation to bring down people above them. While i would agree that they deserve to spend every remaining moment of their sorry lives in jail, reducing a hundred+year sentence (basically rest of life in jai) to not rest of life in jail is necessary as incentive. We won't rehash this for the 4th time, but if you wanted to bring down others by offering leniency to some people involved you would still make them admit to the crime they are all accused of committing. McCarthy has pointed that out, and as I later learned, so has another of the anti-Trumpers favorites https://www.vox.com/2017/12/5/16735480/michael-flynn-plea-preet-bharara Mueller is experienced and surrounded by experienced people. I have seen no reason to doubt the methods being used by his investigation. This may change when his report is finished and it turns out he gave out plea deals for nothing. But not now. But have you considered just making stuff up and silently shifting burdens of evidence around so that your ideological opponents bear the burden of proving the expertise of others instead of you having to disprove their expertise? I agree, no one should post anything about the Mueller investigation here or on any normal or law-based website. We should A) say nothing since don't know everything Mueller does, and B) trust him and his team completely and ignore anything that anyone says that calls into question any part of a special counsel investigation, because they always have such stellar records. The lefties in this thread can go first.
Well, we can probably find a happy medium. Considering that there has been nothing at all to tarnish this investigation, we can probably agree to stfu until something crops up. So far, so good.
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On March 18 2018 08:52 Ayaz2810 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 08:29 Introvert wrote:On March 18 2018 08:22 Wulfey_LA wrote:On March 18 2018 07:30 Gorsameth wrote:On March 18 2018 07:27 Introvert wrote:On March 18 2018 06:49 Amui wrote:On March 18 2018 05:57 Introvert wrote:These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.
Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.
That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”
Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?
Good questions.
The Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Indictments . . . and Penny-Ante Plea
On Thursday, February 22, with now-familiar fanfare, Mueller filed an indictment against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, alleging extremely serious crimes. Let’s put aside for now that the charges have absolutely nothing to do with the stated rationale for Mueller’s appointment, namely, Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump-campaign collusion therein.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud. In all, the indictment charges nine bank-fraud counts, each carrying a potential penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment (i.e., 270 years combined). Furthermore, the two defendants are formally charged with $14 million in tax fraud (the indictment’s narrative of the offense actually alleges well over twice that amount). There are five tax-fraud counts, yielding a potential 15 years’ imprisonment (up to three years for each offense), against each defendant.
According to the special counsel, Manafort and Gates conspired to commit more than $25 million in bank fraud.
Mind you, this indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, is not a stand-alone. It piles atop an earlier indictment in the District of Columbia. That one, filed back in October, accuses Manafort and Gates of an eye-popping $75 million money-laundering conspiracy, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The two indictments contain many other felony charges. But sticking with just these most serious ones, we can safely say that, on February 22, Manafort and Gates were portrayed as high-order federal felons who faced decades of prison time based on financial frauds in the nine-digit range. And while I have previously discussed potential proof problems for the money-laundering charge, proving bank fraud and tax fraud is comparatively straightforward. The indictment indicates that the evidence of these crimes is well documented and daunting.
Yet, the very next day, Friday, February 23, Mueller permitted Gates to plead guilty to two minor charges — a vaporous “conspiracy against the United States” and the process crime of misleading investigators, each carrying a sentence of zero to five years in jail. This flouted Justice Department policies designed to ensure that federal law is enforced evenhandedly across the nation.
‘The Most Serious Readily Provable Charge’
In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors are instructed to require that a defendant plead guilty to “the most serious readily provable charge consistent with the nature and extent of his/her conduct.” (See U.S. Attorney’s Manual, sec. 27.430.) In a properly functioning Justice Department, a defendant is not accused of over $100 million in financial fraud and then, within 24 hours, permitted to plead guilty in a wrist-slap deal that drops the major allegations and caps his potential sentence well beneath the penalties applicable by statute.
As outlined above, Mueller accused Gates of significant felonies totaling over 300 years of potential incarceration. Had the special counsel simply demanded a plea to a single bank-fraud count — the most serious statutory crime charged and, according to the indictment’s description, an offense that is readily provable — Gates would have faced up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
If, as all appearances suggest, Mueller’s goal is to get Gates to cooperate, such a plea, besides honoring Justice Department guidelines, would have provided plenty of incentive. Under federal law, the prosecutor does not need to sell out the case for a song to induce cooperation. The prosecutor can demand a guilty plea that reflects the gravity of the defendant’s actual offenses. Then, if the defendant cooperates fully and truthfully, the law permits the prosecutor to ask the judge to impose a sentence beneath the severe term that would otherwise be called for — a sentence of little or no jail time.
The Justice Department’s manual further admonishes prosecutors to refrain from guilty pleas that could “adversely affect the investigation or prosecution of others.” That is exactly what Mueller has done to the ongoing prosecution of Manafort. By giving Gates a pass on the bank-fraud (and tax-fraud, and money-laundering) charges, Mueller signals that these allegations are inflated. A jury could well feel justified in giving Manafort a pass on them, too.
By contrast, let’s imagine that Mueller had followed Justice Department protocols by insisting to Gates that nothing less than a guilty plea to the most serious readily provable charge — a 30-year bank-fraud count — would suffice. In his plea allocution, Gates would inevitably have implicated Manafort as his bank-fraud co-conspirator. Manafort would know that, were Gates to testify at trial, he would tell the jury that Manafort conspired with him in the bank-fraud scheme. That would markedly increase the likelihood that Manafort would be convicted of the bank-fraud charges. It would ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to plead guilty. It would help the investigation and prosecution.
Despite the prevalence of tax charges in the Virginia indictment, note that Mueller did not demand that Gates plead guilty to any of them, either. The manual (in sec. 6-4.245) requires the Justice Department’s tax division to approve a prosecutor’s decision not to proceed on tax charges. Did Mueller, after months of painstaking work by revenue agents, announce a high-profile tax case against Gates only to get the tax fivision’s okay to drop it in less than 24 hours? (Mueller’s plea agreement with Gates drops the tax counts, among other charges — see agreement, p. 2, para. 3.)
But we’re just getting warmed up.
.....
Think about how bizarre this is. For public consumption, the special counsel alleges breathtaking felony offenses — bank fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering, crimes involving over $100 million when aggregated. Yet, to obtain a guilty plea from one of the allegedly serious felons, Mueller finds it necessary to abandon the hair-raising felonies he purports to have found. If these felonies are readily provable, as Mueller has claimed in his indictments, they are supposed to form the basis of any plea under Justice Department policy. If Gates is the mega-criminal nine-digit fraudster the special counsel has portrayed, he is not supposed to get a slap on the wrist. Yet Mueller accepts a plea to minor charges, including a Section 371 conspiracy that is a prosecutorial invention — designed to shield the allegedly serious felon from penalties Congress has decreed for the misconduct involved.
These charges against Gates and Manafort have nothing to do with “collusion with Russia,” the investigation for which Rosenstein appointed Mueller. There is no reason this case could not have been prosecuted by regular Justice Department lawyers. There was no need for a special counsel for this. And regular Justice Department prosecutors, overseen by engaged Justice Department superiors ensuring adherence to well-established Justice Department policies, would not prosecute a case this way.
Rest Here (Spoiler, McCarthy at NRO)I've posted about half of it (beginning and end). As for McCabe, some anti Trumpers this thread love have called for caution, so let's just wait and see. Those plea deals are contingent on full cooperation to bring down people above them. While i would agree that they deserve to spend every remaining moment of their sorry lives in jail, reducing a hundred+year sentence (basically rest of life in jai) to not rest of life in jail is necessary as incentive. We won't rehash this for the 4th time, but if you wanted to bring down others by offering leniency to some people involved you would still make them admit to the crime they are all accused of committing. McCarthy has pointed that out, and as I later learned, so has another of the anti-Trumpers favorites https://www.vox.com/2017/12/5/16735480/michael-flynn-plea-preet-bharara Mueller is experienced and surrounded by experienced people. I have seen no reason to doubt the methods being used by his investigation. This may change when his report is finished and it turns out he gave out plea deals for nothing. But not now. But have you considered just making stuff up and silently shifting burdens of evidence around so that your ideological opponents bear the burden of proving the expertise of others instead of you having to disprove their expertise? I agree, no one should post anything about the Mueller investigation here or on any normal or law-based website. We should A) say nothing since don't know everything Mueller does, and B) trust him and his team completely and ignore anything that anyone says that calls into question any part of a special counsel investigation, because they always have such stellar records. The lefties in this thread can go first. Well, we can probably find a happy medium. Considering that there has been nothing at all to tarnish this investigation, we can probably agree to stfu until something crops up. So far, so good.
But have you forgotten about the Nunes memo and the McCabe firing? Or the Strzok-Page texts about the recused judge in which they expressed caution to each other not to say anything at all about work to the judge?
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