US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1290

On April 08 2019 05:56 Plansix wrote:
XDaunt: Obama and Loretta Lynch covered for Clinton, look at this mountain of speculative evidence and conjectures.

Also Xdaunt: Barr will follow the rules to the letter and won't abuse his power as AG to protect the Republicans, because he has never done that in the past(the Iran–Contra pardons, though Bush did the pardoning). You are all believing lie being peddled to you.

Not trusting the Justice Department or any government agency for partisan reasons is a two way street. Folks don't trust this administration not the lie just like you didn't trust that Obama administration to not cover up for Clinton. You can claim up and down to high heaven that the facts are totally different, but that is irrelevant when it comes to public trust and good faith. It doesn't' work with me, that is for sure.

I would like to trust Barr to not cover for Trump, but he is from a very party first brand of Republicans. Unlike Rosenstein, he isn't a career civil servant. His previous time in the Justice department lasted a short 5 years and he has been an active member of the Republican party since the 1980s. The reality is that Barr knows that the Republicans in the Senate have his back and he can slow roll this report. So I'm not convinced he isn't going to try and cover for the party for as long as possible.

On April 08 2019 06:11 xDaunt wrote:

The problem is that you aren't distinguishing between facts and applicable law in each case whereas I do. This is why your whataboutism arguments are so misplaced. It's hard to take you seriously when you and other make ludicrous assertions that Barr should just release the whole report rather than go through the redaction process when he is barred by law from doing so. Hell, I'm still waiting for some of you who have been riding the "Trump is a Russian agent!" conspiracy train for the past 2+ years to give your mea culpa or at least express some semblance of intellectual curiosity as to how people on your side were so wrong for so long. Instead, y'all are predictably falling right into the patently false narratives impugning Barr that the media and democrats want you to believe.

On April 08 2019 05:34 xDaunt wrote:

The security clearances that senators and congressmen have are immaterial to grand jury secrecy and do not constitute grounds for disclosure.

Edit: This idea that Barr actually has discretion to disclose grand jury materials is simply a farce and patently untrue. Look up the grand jury rules. Y’all are falling for yet another lie being peddled to you for political purposes.

On April 08 2019 06:26 semantics wrote:

It does not, grand jury material is legal to be viewed by the house of representatives because of nixon. It's already an exception.

Court Ruling Implies That Barr Must Redact Grand-Jury Info from Mueller Report

Democrats will complain, but the attorney general can’t be faulted for following the law.

In disclosing the Mueller report, Attorney General William P. Barr will have to redact grand-jury information. That is the upshot of the ruling today by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

I flagged this case, now called McKeever v. Barr (formerly McKeever v. Sessions), last week. It did not arise out of the Mueller investigation, but it obviously has significant ramifications for the Mueller report — in particular, how much of it we will get to see.

At issue was this question: Does a federal court have the authority to order disclosure of grand-jury materials if the judge decides that the interests of justice warrant doing so; or is the judge limited to the exceptions to grand-jury secrecy that are spelled out in Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure? The D.C. Circuit’s McKeever ruling holds that the text of Rule 6(e) controls. Consequently, judges have no authority to authorize disclosure outside the rule.

This is significant for the Mueller report because Rule 6(e) does not contain an exception to secrecy that would permit disclosure to Congress.

The case involves a writer, Stuart McKeever, who was researching a book on the disappearance of Columbia University professor Jesús de Galíndez Suárez in 1956. It was suspected that Galíndez, a very public critic of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, was kidnapped and flown to the D.R., where he was murdered. In the course of a federal investigation, suspicion fell on John Joseph Frank, a former FBI agent and CIA lawyer, who later worked for Trujillo. Frank was eventually prosecuted for failing to register as a foreign agent but never charged with any involvement in Galíndez’s murder.

In 2013, for purposes of his research, McKeever petitioned the court for release of records of the grand-jury proceedings that led to Frank’s 1957 indictment. There is nothing in Rule 6(e) that would permit the veil of grand-jury secrecy to be pierced for an academic or literary research project. Yet the district judge asserted that federal courts have “inherent supervisory power” to disclose grand-jury materials, including those that are “historically significant.” Ultimately, however, the judge denied the petition, reasoning that it was “overbroad.”

McKeever appealed. In opposition, the Justice Department argued not only that he should be denied the grand-jury records, but also that the lower court had been wrong to claim authority to disclose the materials outside the strictures of Rule 6(e). The three-judge panel agreed with the Justice Department, in an opinion written by Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg (now a senior judge, appointed by President Reagan) and joined by Judge Gregory Katsas (appointed by President Trump). Judge Sri Srinivasan (appointed by President Obama) dissented.

The majority explained that the Supreme Court has long recognized the vital purposes served by grand-jury secrecy, and thus that secrecy must be protected unless there is some clear contrary indication in a statute or rule. Disclosure is the exception, not the rule.

In Rule 6(e), Congress has prescribed grand-jury secrecy and its exceptions. Those who contend that a court may permit disclosure outside the rule argue that judges had such authority before the rule was enacted. The panel majority, however, emphasized the rule’s sweeping language: Officials must refrain from disclosure “unless these rules provide otherwise.” The rule also takes pains to spell out the situations in which a judge may authorize disclosure. Plainly, the intent of the rule was to limit disclosure; were an unwritten judicial power to ignore the limitations recognized, the rule would be pointless.

The exceptions enumerated in the rule permit judges to authorize disclosure, to federal and certain non-federal officials, in order to aid in the enforcement of criminal laws. Clearly, it would be easy to conjure other worthy exceptions. Nevertheless, the panel majority observed, the Supreme Court has stressed that “not every beneficial purpose, or even every valid governmental purpose, is an appropriate reason for breaching grand jury secrecy.”

The panel rejected the claim that the D.C. Circuit’s decision in a Watergate era case, Haldeman v. Sirica (1974), permits disclosure outside the rule. This is salient for purposes of the Mueller report because Haldeman involved an order by the district court (Judge John Sirica) permitting transmission of a sealed grand-jury report to the House Judiciary Committee, which was then considering possible grounds to impeach President Nixon.

In his dissent, Judge Srinivasan maintained that Haldeman should control. Judges Ginsburg and Katsas disagreed, relating that the lower and appellate courts in Haldeman failed to conduct any “meaningful analysis of Rule 6(e)’s terms”; they merely offered policy arguments in favor of disclosure — with Sirica, for example, suggesting that disclosure to the House of Representatives was analogous to disclosure to another grand jury (the rule allows the latter). Moreover, Haldeman was distinguishable, the majority reasoned, because the disclosure of the grand-jury report was technically done within the context of the criminal case against H. R. Haldeman and his co-defendant, Gordon Strachan; that is, it was not a direct transmission to the House.

(For what it’s worth, I believe Haldeman is distinguishable for an additional reason: The grand jury in that case was operating under a statute that permitted it to file a report, as distinguished from an indictment, which the grand jury itself recommended be transmitted to the House. I described such reports nearly two years ago, when we first learned that Mueller had convened a grand jury; and Kim Strassel had an excellent Twitter thread about them earlier this week, specifically addressing Haldeman. Such grand-jury reports are very different from what is at issue in the Mueller report. The latter is a prosecutor’s report based, in part, on grand-jury evidence; there are no grand-jury findings or recommendations that its proceedings be transmitted to Congress; and Democrats are asking for all the grand-jury information, with no view expressed by the grand jury or the witnesses who would be affected. The panel majority, however, did not address these differences — no doubt because the Mueller report was not under consideration in the McKeever case.)

It is foreseeable that McKeever could be further appealed, to the full D.C. Circuit (an en banc review) and to the Supreme Court. Not only was the panel divided, but there is a split in the circuits — which the panel majority acknowledges, discussing the relevant cases at the conclusion of its opinion. For now, however, McKeever is the law in the D.C. Circuit, where the Mueller investigation took place. Naturally, the Justice Department must follow it — and it is, again, an affirmation of the Justice Department’s position on the law.

This means Attorney General Barr must redact grand-jury material from the Mueller report before disclosing it to Congress. Democrats will complain long and loud about this, but I don’t see how Barr can be reasonably faulted for following the law. Congress, after all, has the power to legislate an amendment to Rule 6(e) that would permit disclosure of grand-jury materials from a special counsel investigation to appropriate congressional committees.

On April 08 2019 06:32 xDaunt wrote:

You should go read Rule 6(e). Congress does not have regular access to grand jury material.

On April 08 2019 06:20 Plansix wrote:

All whataboutism arguments are misplaced. They are arguments in bad faith. I would also needed to tell you to ignore a bad thing that the democrats did and point to how Trump and the Republicans did a bad thing. But I kinda get your point.

My argument wasn't much of an argument. It was pointing out that partisan politics means we distrust each others political operatives and administrations. That isn't speculation. It is fact. Look at this thread and the arguments that have been had over the years.

As for the Trump is a Russian agent thing, that isn't me. I've been pretty clear one. My argument was always that he and the people that worked for him were dumb enough to accept aid for a foreign government. And they were dumb enough to take meetings and not instantly report those meetings to the FBI when they were offered aid. I leaned towards possible that they accepted aid, but also possible that they are just deeply stupid.

And finally, Barr is a very good lawyer and was AG before. Although a not a complete expert on the report, I'm sure the summaries created by the investigative team would be quickly review, redacted as necessary and released to leadership in some way. He could find a way to make the congressional leadership happy and remove the concern about what will be released. He isn't.

I'm reasonably confident this investigation is largely meaningless. Democrats caved on undermining the Iran deal for some stupid Russia sanctions, and there are so many far more important issues getting no oxygen with this Russia fetish taking control of practically everyone (save progressives).

Too many people are expecting VW Mueller and you'll be getting NFL Mueller (though Trump may do his best to act like VW). I wouldn't be surprised to see the investigation work out to be a net positive for Trump. Like the election, Democrats are over-hyping what's going to be provable and as a result even "damning" realizations will be water under the bridge.

Personally I see this ending with Trump's own version of "extremely careless." and him making a gig out of how the media jobbed him in 2020 costing him the election (if Democrats can avoid screwing up so badly again), or maybe Democrats run Kamala or Corey and lose again.




Would you agree if Mueller doesn't even recommend charges, that following all the minutia of every leak and such was a colossal waste of time and attention that could have been directed elsewhere while Mueller worked?

On April 08 2019 06:11 xDaunt wrote:

The problem is that you aren't distinguishing between facts and applicable law in each case whereas I do. This is why your whataboutism arguments are so misplaced. It's hard to take you seriously when you and others make ludicrous assertions that Barr should just release the whole report rather than go through the redaction process when he is barred by law from doing so. Hell, I'm still waiting for some of you who have been riding the "Trump is a Russian agent!" conspiracy train for the past 2+ years to give your mea culpa or at least express some semblance of intellectual curiosity as to how people on your side were so wrong for so long. Instead, y'all are predictably falling right into the patently false narratives impugning Barr that the media and democrats want you to believe.

On April 08 2019 06:49 Simberto wrote:


Yeah, you are very good at always distinguishing between facts and applicable law in a way that just happens to always favor republicans, no matter the situation.

And if you want people to admit that the ""Trump is a Russian agent!" conspiracy train" (Btw, not actually a thing a lot of people claimed) was incorrect, why would you not be in favor of people actually knowing the actual report, which you surely must believe would show people that, instead of a partisan summary that the only person who in your opinion should ever view that report gives.

Surely it would help your case if people could see this report that proves that Trump is totally innocent. So why are you not fighting for that? Why is it so important to you to hide it, when you are so certain that there was really nothing it could ever show to begin with?

It seems as if the easiest way to get rid of the "Barr is giving a very biased summary" narrative would be to just give out the full report, or at least let more people than just Barr see it. But sadly you have figured out some technicality that prevents that, and surely nothing can be done about that.

On April 08 2019 07:50 xDaunt wrote:
Democrats, on the other hand, want to do nothing other than weaponize it politically.

On April 08 2019 08:16 NewSunshine wrote:

Yes, how dare Democrats want to do something rooted in political motivation. What an evil thing it is that they're doing. Why, Republicans would never spend their time in office politicizing against Democrats, and looking for every chance to spin the day's news in such a way that prominent Democrats become the focus. And they certainly have never done anything similar in the past, especially not when it was Hillary's turn to be investigated.

You're just gonna have to get used to politics being political.

On April 08 2019 08:56 Sermokala wrote:

Isn't this just equivicalism that you are so against with the "both sides" argument?

On April 08 2019 08:56 Sermokala wrote:

Isn't this just equivicalism that you are so against with the "both sides" argument?

On April 08 2019 10:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
Curious from a British perspective, obviously our legislature is tied in to the executive, and the current situation over here is an atypical clusterfuck.

But now it appears yours is a bit wilder, and in ways I originally heard would be a design improvement over American politics.