US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1367

On April 21 2019 00:51 JimmiC wrote:

I think your choosing a bad hill to die on. As like 10 people have pointed out it says he doesnt in the report. Barr did, Mueller didn't. Its not really debateable.

On April 21 2019 01:04 farvacola wrote:
The word I most closely associate with exonerate is acquit, and in the legal sense, an acquittal (or to acquit) equals a finding of "not guilty" and is an adjudication on the merits (which is inarguably not what the Mueller report is or ever could be). Exonerate is somewhere in between acquit and absolve on the spectrum of formal to informal and could be construed as more of an effective or constructive acquittal, but I find that it makes more intuitive sense to associate exonerate with something like "the jury found him not guilty" than with "the prosecutor declined to file charges, citing a lack of actionable evidence." (or 'lack of legal mandate', to put a finer point on it).

On April 21 2019 00:58 IgnE wrote:
Quite the interesting wording there guys. Fair enough. Mueller did not exonerate him regarding obstruction of justice.

On April 20 2019 15:38 IgnE wrote:


Mueller had the authority to bring charges, and did bring charges against several people, but declined to bring any charges against Trump. The power to accuse, to chase, to prosecute, is in the name: special prosecutor. “Not making a judgment” in this case is the same thing as exoneration, in the sense of freeing from accusation by the special prosecutor under the Department of Justice. The investigation is over. Trump stands formally unaccused. “Leaving it to Congress” sets in motion a different system, a political one, kind of like how OJ was exonerated of criminal charges but then lost a civil suit.

As to the ensuing conversation that followed this post I’d point out, for the record, that I don’t usually willfully ignore people when they ask me questions. People actually don’t ask questions as often as they comment or accuse.

The most remarkable thing about special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report is how blithely the prosecutor reversed the burden of proof on the issue of obstruction.

To be sure, President Trump’s conduct outlined on this score isn’t flattering, to put it mildly. For example, the special counsel’s evidence includes indications that the president attempted to induce White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire the special counsel (in June 2017), and then (in January 2018) to deny that the president had made the request.

Mueller’s report further suggests that the president dangled pardons. He made ingratiating comments about Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen when they appeared to be fighting the cases against them (and presumably fighting the prosecutor’s efforts to get them to cooperate) but then turned on Flynn and Cohen when they decided to plead guilty and provide testimony for Mueller.

On the other hand, there is evidence that cuts sharply against obstruction. The president could have shut down the investigation at any time, but he didn’t. He could have asserted executive privilege to deny the special counsel access to key White House witnesses, such as McGahn. To the contrary, numerous witnesses were made available voluntarily (there was no need to try to subpoena them to the grand jury), and well over a million documents were disclosed, including voluminous notes of meetings between the president and his White House counsel.

Most important, the special counsel found that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that the president’s frustration wasn’t over fear of guilt — the typical motivation for obstruction — but that the investigation was undermining his ability to govern the country. The existence of such a motive is a strong counter to evidence of a corrupt intent, critical because corrupt intent must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in an obstruction case.

In his report, Mueller didn’t resolve the issue. If he had been satisfied that there was no obstruction crime, he said, he would have so found. He claimed he wasn’t satisfied. Yet he was also not convinced that there was sufficient proof to charge. Therefore, he made no decision, leaving it to Attorney General William Barr to find that there was no obstruction.

This is unbecoming behavior for a prosecutor and an outrageous shifting of the burden of proof: The constitutional right of every American to force the government to prove a crime has been committed, rather than to have to prove his or her own innocence.

This is exactly why prosecutors should never speak publicly about the evidence uncovered in an investigation of someone who isn’t charged. The obligation of the prosecutor is to render a judgment about whether there is enough proof to charge a crime. If there is, the prosecutor indicts; if there is not, the prosecutor remains silent.

If special counsel Mueller believed there was an obstruction offense, he should have had the courage of his convictions and recommended charging the president. Since he wasn’t convinced there was enough evidence to charge, he should have said he wasn’t recommending charges. Period.

On April 21 2019 01:02 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Has there been any headway into the security clearance issue? I haven't read/seen any reports that things were moving along.

On April 21 2019 01:18 Danglars wrote:


He didn't have the authority to bring indictment, but he certainly did to make a recommendation. That's why prosecutors are supposed to lay out the finding that their efforts revealed obstruction of justice. What he delivered was essentially an op-ed on all the naughty stuff Trump did that didn't rise to the level of an obstruction of justice offense.

His job is not to exonerate, thought the common use of the term may apply depending on context. His job is to find or fail to find evidence of a crime. Barr's absolutely right. He didn't lay out "facts and legal theories" that established a criminal offense. No establishment of intent in a statute the requires it, no actually obstruction of an investigation that was not obstructed, and no underlying crime for which to obstruct.

More from Andrew McCarthy:

NY Post

You can see there why all the hate directed at Barr is absolutely misplaced. If the prosecutor had reached a recommendation, we'd be in a whole different ballgame.

Third, we considered whether to evaluate the conduct we investigated under the Justice
Manual standards governing prosecution and declination decisions, but we determined not to apply
an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes. The
threshold step under the Justice Manual standards is to assess whether a person's conduct
"constitutes a federal offense." U.S . Dep't of Justice, Justice Manual§ 9-27.220 (2018) (Justice
Manual) . Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges
can be brought. The ordinary means for an individual to respond to an accusation is through a
speedy and public trial , with all the procedural protections that surround a criminal case. An
individual who believes he was wrongly accused can use that process to seek to clear his name. In
contrast, a prosecutor's judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought ,
affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name -clearing before an impartial adjudicator.

Yet he was also not convinced that there was sufficient proof to charge

On April 21 2019 01:24 Gorsameth wrote:
The lack of recommendation is mentioned in the report.


What McCarty says is not something reflected in the report.
For the billionth time. Mueller explains why he makes no statement on if there was sufficient proof to charge.
Only on if there was sufficient proof to say it didn't happen.

On April 21 2019 01:37 Danglars wrote:

The special counsel can make a recommendation, and that's insufficient reasoning. He's positing a novel legal theory that he can't even reach a recommendation in his report, because of fairness and inability to clear his name. He just finished writing a report that lays out deeply embarrassing conduct that the President cannot clear his name, ALSO because it was a prosecutor's investigation and not a court of law. You don't get to publish all the laundry for a criminal case (because that's what prosecutors do) , and then decline to find that recommendation because now you're suddenly concerned about the person's name. He had one shot to reach that decision properly, and that was not to write it up, because the President cannot challenge the witness testimony or grand jury testimony since there is no cross-examination. It's poppycock and I suspect you know it.

On April 21 2019 01:46 JimmiC wrote:
Actually he was given a chance, and requests were made for over a year to hear his side and clear his name. But he declined. Likely because his lawyers thought he would be more likely to incriminate himself then he would to clear himself. No "poppy cock" here.

Edit: you also seem very confused about the difference between an investigation and a trial. Even from a few episodes of law and order you should be able to figure out why there was no cross exaiminations and so on.

On April 21 2019 01:25 JimmiC wrote:

Yes it is pretty clear. And I thank Inge for letting us move on. Whether or not he truely agrees. Im also very interested in the clearence situation this seems like something that could have huge ripples globally and something that a president maybe should not be able to override so easily.

On April 21 2019 02:24 micronesia wrote:
I don't think it's Mueller's job to worry about if the report will be released or not. He wrote the report according to his tasking, and then provided it to the AG. What he says when interviewed afterwards is a separate matter, though.

On April 21 2019 02:33 IgnE wrote:


There’s no need to cast aspersions on my beliefs. I personally find the use of the word “exoneration” in connection to the report distasteful. My original position was that the report largely confirmed what we already know about Trump and his character. I just didn’t immediately object to the use of the word “exonerate” by other people as untruthful. Of course people eventually got around to pointing out where Mueller says he is not “exonerating” Trump of obstruction of justice (with no apparent underlying crime) — something I, admittedly, was unaware of — and so I now understand why people would be entirely justified in objecting to the word “exonerate,” at least pertaining to obstruction of justice.

I now expect a lot of serious and unserious people to say that you can’t obstruct justice without there being an underlying crime.