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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. |
Trump is one problem, but an equally big problem is the GoP protecting him despite receiving evidence that he is indeed tarnished. Trump might get taken down soon, but the system around him will not unless you go out there and change it with your vote.
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On March 18 2018 08:59 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 08:52 Ayaz2810 wrote: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?
I see what you did there. I might have fallen for it and raged but I saw "Nunes memo". Well played.
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And here we see the motive for the McCabe firing. Like clockwork, Trump called into question the FBI and DOJ.
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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.
More silent burden shifting I see. Mueller and his team deserve a presumption of expertise. When they do things, they do things for a reason. He has assembled a legal dream team. When they get a plea deal, when they put out indictments, when they get Trumpkins and Russians to turn state's evidence, we should take them seriously.Your proposal is nonsense. We can learn a lot and comment a lot on the plea deals and indictments the Mueller team is generating. And we can further trust they are doing as good a job as a legal dream team could do.
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On March 18 2018 09:42 Wulfey_LA 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. More silent burden shifting I see. Mueller and his team deserve a presumption of expertise. When they do things, they do things for a reason. He has assembled a legal dream team. When they get a plea deal, when they put out indictments, when they get Trumpkins and Russians to turn state's evidence, we should take them seriously.Your proposal is nonsense. We can learn a lot and comment a lot on the plea deals and indictments the Mueller team is generating. And we can further trust they are doing as good a job as a legal dream team could do.
It was sarcastically pointing out that apparently only praise is allowed. We can infer lots of things, but no bad things.
Meanwhile I have only quoted people with expertise who actually quote controlling instructions or their own experience, but you don't like their opinions so it doesn't matter.
I did presume that his team has expertise, but it's a presumption. Not an article of faith. And given the history of special counsel investigations skepticism is warranted.
Or maybe you are a bigger fan of Ken Starr than one would guess from a loyal Democrat.
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If you want it be like the Democrats that blindly defended Bill Clinton, knock yourself out. Just remember how far that got them.
Also Ken Star was really uncomfortable with the job is special counsel. But he still did the job.
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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
Bharara refers to his own experience supervising similar high-profile investigations and prosecutions. “When we had evidence against somebody and wanted them to flip, we made them plead guilty to every bad act that they had ever done,” Bharara said. “Especially if we were later gonna be alleging other people had engaged in that activity as well.”
Doing that, Bharara argues, makes a witness like Flynn more credible in court if he has to testify against someone else. “Otherwise, the only thing the jury will know for a fact about your witness is that he is an admitted, convicted liar,” he said.
So what does Bharara think could be going on? One possibility, he suggests, is that Mueller doesn’t have anything else on Flynn that might stand up in court: “People need to really consider the possibility that this might be it.”
But Bharara also suggests another scenario: that Mueller is “holding back on other charges to which Michael Flynn will plead guilty if and when they form the basis of charging some other folks.”
I read through the article. That's one of several possibilities. Without being somebody on the council or flynn himself, we can't really know tbh.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/975163071361683456
Trump is rather unhappy with the investigation as well it seems.
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Considering the literal majority of what Trump says is false/misleading, those tweets are reassuring.
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I find it impressive that Trump and his base continue to say these things after they've been proven false. As though continuing to cry foul about FISA and the dossier will magically make it true. Give me a break.
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I heard that political origins is precisely the same as revealing actual Clinton campaign and DNC funding, so I’m equally astounded that siccing the foreign intelligence apparatus on American citizens is so passè these days. It’s as if a long history of FBI stonewalling Congress is justified because you hate the political party running Congress at the moment. Trump delusion is on full display, but I expect a full recovery of mental faculties when he leaves.
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I really don't think Trump is going to recover his mental faculties when he leaves. They're long gone at this point, left behind when he fully immersed himself in his alternate reality where he had the biggest inauguration crowd every and everything since has been more favorable to him than it actually was.
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On March 18 2018 03:47 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +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? Why would it? Comey hasn't done anything that makes him look "dishonourable".
You know Comey didn't blink into existence just before the 2016 election right?
On March 18 2018 05:10 TheLordofAwesome wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2018 23:21 GreenHorizons wrote: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.
I'll be back for this one, much better than almost every other opposing post in the last few days .
I'll point out quickly that I already covered your second point, and I clarified in a later post that they got worse in some ways, better in others, and stayed about the same in some as well. So my argument isn't that everything is worse in every way, but that some things definitely got worse. (you may want to adjust your argument accordingly?)
I think you know you're on shaky ground with the primary corrective action you pointed to was the 1975 effort which preceded a LOT of criminal activity by the FBI But virtually no accountability (unless accountability just means getting a 'mean' talking to?) When most citizens are "held accountable" for criminal behavior they go to jail/prison and pay fines, I don't think the FBI did that for any of its many, many, many crimes. Just counting the ones we know about because they admitted it, or their records were stolen.
I have a really hard time understanding your idea of "accountability" if you can commit crimes and not go to prison? Could you explain how you believe that Mueller was "held accountable" for overseeing the illegal surveillance of US citizens or any of the other horrible shit he was overseeing after 9/11?
Also noticed the 1. is all CIA, not FBI (though there are a lot of overlap between them as I showed before), seems quite out of place.
Gotta go for now, but thanks for at least putting in some effort.
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On March 18 2018 12:43 Danglars wrote:
I heard that political origins is precisely the same as revealing actual Clinton campaign and DNC funding, so I’m equally astounded that siccing the foreign intelligence apparatus on American citizens is so passè these days. It’s as if a long history of FBI stonewalling Congress is justified because you hate the political party running Congress at the moment. Trump delusion is on full display, but I expect a full recovery of mental faculties when he leaves.
Political origins....Sounds like you’ve bought into the Nunes dossier as they intended...assuming you’re saying that the FBI’s ongoing criminal and counterintelligence investigation of Trump and his campaign had political origins.
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On March 18 2018 13:18 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2018 12:43 Danglars wrote:
I heard that political origins is precisely the same as revealing actual Clinton campaign and DNC funding, so I’m equally astounded that siccing the foreign intelligence apparatus on American citizens is so passè these days. It’s as if a long history of FBI stonewalling Congress is justified because you hate the political party running Congress at the moment. Trump delusion is on full display, but I expect a full recovery of mental faculties when he leaves. Political origins....Sounds like you’ve bought into the Nunes dossier as they intended...assuming you’re saying that the FBI’s ongoing criminal and counterintelligence investigation of Trump and his campaign had political origins.
We went through this before. Political motivations does not convey that one presidential candidate is funding state surveillance on her presidential opponent's campaign. That one raises red flags.
Unless you're a liberal. Then police-state stuff is chucked and who cares about civil liberties anyways, it's all the same.
I won't say people went in with the goal or openness to trample on civil rights, but the conclusion of their logic (if it can be truly called logic) made those considerations fade. Oh well.
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So you have in fact adopted the Nunes dossier’s assertion that Hillary funded state surveillance of trumps campaign. I assume you also believe McCabe was fired for pro Hillary bias.
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On March 18 2018 13:34 Doodsmack wrote:
So you have in fact adopted the Nunes dossier’s assertion that Hillary funded state surveillance of trumps campaign. I assume you also believe McCabe was fired for pro Hillary bias.
And to think it was also today when you got an answer on McCabe contrary to your lies.
We're also talking the part of the dossier that wasn't contradicted. You don't get it both ways. Either it was concealed and didn't matter (the 'political was enough' crowd) or the Democrats and the Republicans on that committee deliberately created a falsehood.
But this will probably get the customary ignore and move on treatment, so whatever.
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A very stupid statement to say I'm "lying." You've adopted the Nunes dossier's central claim hook line and sinker. A claim that, by the way, was deliberately misleading. The FISA judge knew there were political motivations and still found the legal standard to be met. Here's you associating the anti-law enforcement stories together, just like Nunes and Trump want you to:
FISA court abuse. Comey. Strzok/Page. McCabe. One of the latest was FBI redacting texts between Strzok/Page that mentioned the FISC judge (Contreras) who accepted Flynn's guilty plea. He recused himself immediately aftewards.
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On March 18 2018 14:44 Doodsmack wrote:A very stupid statement to say I'm "lying." You've adopted the Nunes dossier's central claim hook line and sinker. A claim that, by the way, was deliberately misleading. The FISA judge knew there were political motivations and still found the legal standard to be met. Here's you associating the anti-law enforcement stories together, just like Nunes and Trump want you to: Show nested quote +FISA court abuse. Comey. Strzok/Page. McCabe. One of the latest was FBI redacting texts between Strzok/Page that mentioned the FISC judge (Contreras) who accepted Flynn's guilty plea. He recused himself immediately aftewards.
See, you have almost a Trumpian perspective on truth. You say what I believe without asking or showing. All you got is my perspective on unchallenged parts of the FISA scandal. So, you straight up lie about what I believe about McCabe.
That's kind of a central point with you. Does it matter that I state the ways in which the FBI has gotten worse since the Hoover era? Nope, these are used simply as a "associating the anti-law enforcement stories together."
Next up: I discuss the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, and Doodsmack draws the point that I've only talked about nuclear weapons in US-Japan relations. Sometimes you just gotta laugh at this half-hearted attempts.
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Mueller gives Trump's legal team questions for potential interview: report
Special counsel Robert Mueller has presented President Trump's legal team with a list of questions as investigators seek an interview with the president.
The New York Times reported Saturday that the questions were a sort of starting point for Mueller, whose team is working to negotiate an interview with Trump as part of the investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election.
It was after his legal team received the questions that Trump launched into a series of tweets, in which he denied that his campaign coordinated with Moscow during the 2016 election and lambasted Mueller's investigation as unnecessary.
In one Saturday night tweet, Trump asserted that Mueller's investigation should never have been opened in the first place, because there was "no collusion" and "no crime."
That tweet came hours after John Dowd, one of the president's lawyers, called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation, to shutter the probe.
The statement from Dowd was unusual for an attorney who has repeatedly insisted that Trump and the White House cooperate with Mueller's investigation in hopes that it would come to a natural end.
But according to the Times, Trump's lawyers appear increasingly on edge, especially after Trump met earlier this month with attorney Emmet Flood. He reportedly discussed bringing Flood on to handle his interactions with Mueller's team. He also discussed Flood as a possible replacement for White House counsel Don McGahn, the Times reported.
Dowd and another one of Trump's lawyers, Jay Sekulow, were not aware of the meeting with Flood, and reportedly became concerned upon learning about it that they could be pushed aside.
Trump's tweets on Saturday also followed the abrupt firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just two days before he was set to retire. The president praised McCabe's ouster, tweeting that it was a "great day for Democracy."
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/378980-mueller-gives-trumps-legal-team-questions-for-potential-interview
If someone who acts this incredibly guilty actually turns out to be innocent, it's really gonna fuck with my social perceptions.
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EPT
