Bill Of Impeachment: Article I, Obstruction Of Justice

[Guinevere]

Completely irrelevant and I expect the lawyer did it* because his client ordered him too. I ghostwrite official statements for my clients all the time. It doesn't matter, they are still the official statement of the client, not of me. And the WH has taken the position that the tweets are official statements of the so-called president.


* said he wrote it. I don’t for a minute believe the lawyer actually wrote it, and used “pled” instead of “pleaded”

[rubato]

That was one of the least plausible lies this week. The lawyer writes the tweets and then Trump garbles them and dumbs down the vocabulary when he posts them? Because the great ego wants you to think "me not smart me dumb like you"?


yrs,
rubato

[ex-khobar Andy]

And that same lawyer is now telling us

The "President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," Dowd claims.

https://www.axios.com/exclusive-trump-l ... 42663.html

In other words, if the President does it, it's not illegal. This is ringing a tiny bell in my head. I'll let you know if it comes to me.

[RayThom]

[Lord Jim]

I saw Alan Dershowitz (who for some reason has made himself one of Trump's leading legal suck-asses in the media) making the same type of horse shit "argument" that a President cannot be considered to commit a crime and/or impeachable offense for the exercise of a lawful power, no matter what the motive or circumstances...

Of course if this were true, we would not have a "President"....

We would have a King...

Here are some opposing legal views:

Trump’s lawyer: the president can’t obstruct justice. 13 legal experts: yes, he can.

President Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, apparently believes the president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice because he’s the president.

The “president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer [under the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case,” Dowd told Axios’s Mike Allen.

But is that true? To find out, I reached out to 13 legal experts and asked them a single question: Can the president commit obstruction of justice?

Their full responses, edited for clarity and style, are below.

Asha Rangappa, former FBI agent and senior lecturer, Yale Law School

The days of crazy King George III ended with the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. We now have a nation of laws, not men. While the president is the head of the executive branch, there are provisions in the Constitution that constrain the president's ability to interfere with investigations or shut them down (or start them) at will.

For one thing, Article II, which outlines the president's powers, requires that he "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This means that his official actions taken with regard to the administration of justice must be made in good faith. In addition, the Fifth and 14th Amendments require that he ensure that all persons enjoy "equal protection of the laws."

In short, the president is not above the law, and can indeed be guilty of obstructing justice.

Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor, 2007 to 2016

Just because the president has the power to do something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s lawful for him to do so. The president can’t fire someone in exchange for a bribe, for example. The president also can’t fire someone based on their race or religion.

In the same way, if the president fires the FBI director or anyone else for a corrupt purpose — such as trying to end an investigation into him or his friends — that’s a crime. The mere fact that he has the power to do that doesn’t make it legal.

This question is extremely important. If the president can fire anyone who investigates him, he is above the law.

The rest of the 13 views:

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/4/16733422/ ... ssia-comey

[Lord Jim]

And of course, obstruction of justice was the very first Article Of Impeachment adopted by the House Judiciary Committee against both Nixon and Clinton:

Article 1

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, in that:

http://watergate.info/impeachment/artic ... mpeachment

ARTICLE I

In his conduct while President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has willfully corrupted and manipulated the judicial process of the United States for his personal gain and exoneration, impeding the administration of justice, in that:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/histo ... ticles.htm

[BoSoxGal]

Two thoughts:

[Granted, I practiced longest out in Montana so we aren’t talking cream of the crop, but] I’ve sure heard lots of lawyers AND judges say ‘pled’ rather than pleaded in the normal course of criminal practice discussions.

However, that tweet is so dumb in the totality (because it’s blatantly incriminating) that I can’t believe even a mediocre lawyer would draft it; handlebar mustache guy is taking a fall for his client.

[ex-khobar Andy]

It's not Cobb but Dowd who (unbelievably) says he wrote the tweet. Had he in fact managed to impersonate Trump's writing style so convincingly on P45's iPhone he would be gone by now.

[Guinevere]

Yes, Dowd is his personal lawyer. Cobb is his lawyer on the Russia probe (assume in his official capacity as POTUS and/or R candidate).

[Lord Jim]

Cobb is the one member of Trump's legal menagerie who actually knows Washington and has extensive white collar crime experience:

Cobb successfully defended Hudson Foods against allegations that its executives lied to investigators after a recall of beef tainted with E. coli. The executives were acquitted on all charges.[7] He represented Democratic fundraiser John Huang against campaign finance charges. Huang pleaded guilty in 1999.[7] Other high-profile clients have included Eli Segal, Mary McCarthy, AIG, Office Depot, the House of Saud, IBM, and Medtronic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ty_Cobb_(attorney)

Of course he's also the guy who idiotically decided a couple of months ago to discuss the case and some of the other lawyers involved openly at a DC steakhouse, within earshot of a dining NYT reporter:

Washington (CNN)White House attorney Ty Cobb was overheard talking about the Russia probe and some of his colleagues at a Washington steakhouse by a New York Times reporter, the publication reported Sunday night.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/ ... index.html

There's something about working for Donald Trump that seems to make even capable people hit the stupid button...

[Econoline]

"Trump is like kryptonite. For lawyers." ( - Wonkette)

[Econoline]

Okay, okay...yes it *IS* Michael Moore. But I'll bet even Jim can chuckle at this:

[ex-khobar Andy]

There's something about working for Donald Trump that seems to make even capable people hit the stupid button...

If only there was a place you could go and people would teach you about the law, and ethics, and stuff.

Full disclosure - I stole that from a comment on Wonkette. Thank you whoever here pointed me to that site - I love it.

[Guinevere]

Heck, if only you could *hire* people to advise you about the law, and ethics, and stuff.

Sue is the original Wonkette fan. And now a bunch of us follow the site, too.

[Sue U]

Sue is the original Wonkette fan. And now a bunch of us follow the site, too.

Of course, Wonkette's biggest downside is that it doesn't allow comments. But if you like the concept of a mommyblog/recipe hub/dick joke emporium, Wonkette may be the a site for you, also too.

[Guinevere]

It’s Facebook feed allows comments tho. Some are delicious!

[Lord Jim]

Following the money...

Robert Mueller is following the money, and that may put Trump in serious danger

“Follow the money,” the source Deep Throat tells Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men” as Woodward is reporting the Watergate scandal. Tuesday we learn that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is following President Trump’s money. Reuters reports:

U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has asked Deutsche Bank for data on accounts held by President Donald Trump and his family, a person close to the matter said on Tuesday…

Germany’s largest bank received a subpoena from Mueller several weeks ago to provide information on certain money and credit transactions, the person said, without giving details, adding key documents had been handed over in the meantime.

Deutsche Bank, which has loaned the Trump organization hundreds of millions of dollars for real estate ventures, said it would not comment on any of its clients.

This may turn out to be no big deal — perhaps Mueller will find that all Trump’s transactions with Deutsche Bank were aboveboard and free of any funny business, and also that nothing he discovers there will lead to evidence of any other misconduct on Trump’s part. “(Update: Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow denies that Deutsche Bank has received any subpoenas, though Bloomberg stands by its report.) But the fact that Mueller is looking at Deutsche Bank means his probe is reaching the very heart of Trump’s financial life.

Why is Deutsche Bank so important? After a string of bankruptcies and broken promises, pretty much every other major bank stopped lending Trump money some years ago. The one exception was Deutsche Bank, to which Trump owed $364 million as of the end of last year. By sheer coincidence, Deutsche Bank recently had to pay $670 million in fines for its role in a Russian money laundering plot (though as Bloomberg reports, the bank’s internal investigation found no link between Trump and that scheme).

At this point, we don’t know exactly what Mueller is looking for in the Deutsche Bank records. Law professor Ryan Goodman suggests that Mueller could be trying to determine if Trump’s loans from the bank were guaranteed by Russian interests, which could mean he was indebted to them in ways that could compromise him.

What we do know is that the Russia investigation has led Mueller to Trump’s personal finances, which provide a target-rich environment if you suspect financial malfeasance. Trump has a long history of shady dealings — outright scams such as Trump University, refusing to pay vendors who supplied him with goods and services, bankruptcies that allowed him to skate away from huge debts while others were left holding the bag. And he also has deep financial entanglements with alleged Russian oligarchs and mobsters.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/pl ... 704e601f7a

[Burning Petard]

Alan Dershowitz? Isn't he the liberal law expert who said waterboarding is perfectly legal, not torture, if Bush 43 says so?

snailgate

[Sue U]

It’s Facebook feed allows comments tho. Some are delicious!

Pssst ... "Wonkette does not allow comments" is a long-running joke at the site, especially among the regular commenters. Some of the best jokes/snark I've ever seen are in the Wonkette comments.

[Crackpot]

Update: Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow denies that Deutsche Bank has received any subpoenas

If someone said “we breathe oxygen” and that fact somehow reflected badly on Trump he or some lapdog would deny it.