Bill Of Impeachment: Article I, Obstruction Of Justice

[RayThom]

[Lord Jim]

The reasoning was that torture is illegal. If the CinC orders it, it is legal. There for, because the president orders it, it is not torture.

SG, I really don't care to re-argue the legality of the enhanced interrogation techniques employed under the Bush Administration, but that's really not a fair characterization of the reasoning that was involved. The argument was that the techniques being used, (water boarding, sleep deprivation,etc.) were not "torture", not that torture was somehow legal simply if the President ordered it...

The idea that a President cannot be held accountable, "legally or Constitutionally" for obstruction of justice is not a "natural extension" of the "thinking" of any previous Administration... (it's the personification of Richard Nixon's "if the President does it it is not illegal" assertion, but that was something he said in an interview with David Frost after he left the Presidency; it wasn't an argument ever made by his defense lawyers while he was President.)

It's a nonsensical legal notion I first saw being advanced a few months ago by Alan Dershowitz, (calling Dershowitz a "Constitutional lawyer" has become oxy-moronic since he became a complete Trump suck-up)

Why Trump's legal team would try to throw this legal Hail Mary is certainly understandable. They realize that the evidence against Trump on obstruction is irrefutable and overwhelming on the facts, (including his own televised confession) so they're desperately trying to fashion some other way to get him off the hook...

But I really don't fancy their chances...

Two Presidents in my life time (Nixon and Clinton) have had articles of Impeachment for Obstruction Of Justice voted out by the House Judiciary Committee, and one of them (Clinton) had the article passed by the House and sent to the Senate for him to be tried on. (Nixon of course only avoided the same fate by resigning before the House voted)

I suppose Sekulow and Dowd would argue that if Clinton had been removed from office by the Senate for Obstruction of Justice, the proper thing for him to do would have been to barricade himself in the White House and refuse to leave, since he could not "Constitutionally" commit obstruction of justice...

With the argument they are making that the President can't be subpoenaed to testify or give evidence in Russiagate, they are on equally shaky ground...

In Clinton V Jones, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a sitting President could be subpoenaed to give testimony in a civil case. In United States v. Nixon the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that President had to surrender evidence (documents and tapes) subpoenaed in a criminal investigation...

It doesn't take a legal genius to figure out that given these two unanimous precedents, that the odds are overwhelming that the court would rule that a President would have to comply with a subpoena to give testimony in a criminal investigation as well....

Of course as we've discussed many times, Impeachment is a political process not a legal one...

If Mueller were to subpoena Trump to testify before the grand jury, and the Supreme Court ruled that Trump had to testify, and Trump decided to defy that ruling, I have no doubt that the current majority on the House Judiciary Committee would immediately begin Impeachment proceedings...

Against the members of the Supreme Court who voted against Trump....

Which is why it is critically important that the majority on the HJC be changed....

[Econoline]

• The Constitutional Crisis Is Already Underway
  By Jonathan Chait
  
  For most of Donald Trump’s presidency, the specter of a coming constitutional crisis has loomed over the Russia investigation. The newly leaked memo by Trump’s lawyers, obtained by the New York Times, suggests that such a crisis is not merely a likelihood, but that it has already begun.
  
  The memo proposes several tendentious interpretations of the publicly available facts of Trump’s behavior, along with some legally questionable and amateurish citations of precedent. But the most important passage is its sweeping assertion of presidential authority.
  
  “The President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction,” they write, “Put simply, the Constitution leaves no question that the President has exclusive authority over the ultimate conduct and disposition of all criminal investigations and over those executive branch officials responsible for conducting those investigations.”
  
  They did indeed put it simply. The implications of this authority are breathtaking. Trump, in their view, has unlimited control to open or close any federal investigation.
  
  Trump has been angrily tweeting demands that the investigation into him and his allies be halted, and that the Department of Justice instead open investigations into his political enemies. These tweets have been treated as the ravings of a blowhard who just happens to occupy the most powerful position in the world, yet is somehow merely blowing off steam. His lawyers are fully endorsing Trump’s right to do exactly the thing he is calling for. Trump’s lawyers are saying that he should be taken seriously and literally.
  
  Should Trump’s legal case prevail in the courts — and the legality of such broad claims remains largely untested — it would confer upon any president, but immediately Trump, the ability to open charges against anybody the president wants to charge, and prevent investigations of anybody the president wants to protect, beginning with himself. This is l’état, c’est moi rendered as a formal legal case.
  
  Indeed, the conclusion of the memo hints a even more expansive uses for the terrifying powers Trump has claimed. “Every action that the president took was taken with full constitutional authority pursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution,” they write, “As such, these actions cannot constitute obstruction, whether viewed separately or even as a totality.” Article II of the Constitution establishes the Executive Branch, which has numerous other offices, some quite powerful. The Internal Revenue Service lies within Article II. Trump’s lawyers would seem to believe the president can direct the IRS to open or close any tax audit of any figure the president wants to subject to, or protect from, scrutiny.
  
  Trump cannot obstruct justice, according to his official legal stance, because justice is whatever Trump says it is. Before this is over, either Trump’s sweeping claim will survive, or the rule of law will, but not both.

  [NY Mag]

Or as SF author and tribblemaker David Gerrold said on Facebook:

• Is the president above the law?
  
  It doesn't matter if you're liberal or conservative, the answer has to be: "Hell, no! Nobody is above the law."
  
  Because if it's all right for your guy to be above the law, then it's all right for the OTHER guy to be above the law.
  
  Either we're a nation of laws or we're a banana republic, one of those third-world countries where a strongman takes power and proceeds to loot the wealth of the nation, pushing everybody else into poverty.
  
  I intend to vote against banana republicans.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I am becoming slightly alarmed...

WASHINGTON ― Candidate Donald Trump bragged that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, and now President Donald Trump’s lawyer says Trump could shoot the FBI director in the Oval Office and still not be prosecuted for it.

“In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,” Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost Sunday, claiming a president’s constitutional powers are that broad. “I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.”

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/0 ... /23449833/

[Lord Jim]

[RayThom]

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system."
Noam Chomsky

[BoSoxGal]

[Crackpot]

Tribblemaker?!

[Econoline]

Tribblemaker?!

I was wondering if anyone would pick up on that. David Gerrold is the author of one of the best-known episodes of Star Trek/TOS, "The Trouble With Tribbles."

[Burning Petard]

I met Mr. Gerrold at a Heinlein SF convention in Kansas City many years ago. He spoke of being a middle school teacher in a west coast inner-city--where his students did their homework while sitting in a cast iron bath tub to avoid stray bullets that might come through apartment walls.

snailgate.

[Econoline]

[Econoline]

[Scooter]

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen likely to cooperate as his attorneys leave case, sources say

As attorneys for Michael Cohen rush to meet Judge Kimba Wood’s Friday deadline to complete a privilege review of over 3.7 million documents seized in the April 9 raids of Cohen’s New York properties and law office, a source representing this matter has disclosed to ABC News that the law firm handling the case for Cohen is not expected to represent him going forward.

To date, Cohen has been represented by Stephen Ryan and Todd Harrison of the Washington and New York firm, McDermott, Will & Emery LLP.

No replacement counsel has been identified as of this time.

Cohen, now with no legal representation, is likely to cooperate with federal prosecutors in New York, sources said. This development, which is believed to be imminent, will likely hit the White House, family members, staffers and counsels hard.

After the federal raids on Cohen’s properties, President Trump lashed out in a tweet, writing, “Attorney-client privilege is dead!”

He told reporters at the White House that the move against his longtime personal attorney, which he likened to a break-in, was a “disgraceful situation.”

“It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on all we stand for,” the president said during a meeting with senior military leadership at the White House. “That is really now on a whole new level of unfairness.”

Cohen then went to federal court in Manhattan arguing that his attorneys should be given a first look at the materials seized in the raids for items potentially covered by attorney-client privilege before federal prosecutors could examine the haul.

Judge Wood subsequently appointed former federal judge Barbara Jones to act as a “special master” to conduct an impartial review of the materials and to referee any disputes between Cohen and the government. Trump and the Trump Organization intervened in the case and were also granted access to review the materials for potentially privileged items.

Jones reported last week that of the first 300,000 items reviewed, she had determined that just 162 of them were covered by attorney-client privilege. She rejected three items that Cohen, Trump or the Trump organization had designated as privileged.

Judge Wood has given Cohen’s attorneys until Friday to complete the review of the remaining documents. Any remaining items to be reviewed would be turned over to a team of federal prosecutors unconnected to the case to complete the examination of the documents.

[Lord Jim]

(Definitely time to bump this thread)

The lawyers acknowledged that Mr. Trump dictated a statement to The Times about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between some of his top advisers and Russians who were said to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Though the statement is misleading — in it, the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said he met with Russians “primarily” to discuss adoption issues — the lawyers call it “short but accurate.”

Mr. Mueller is investigating whether Mr. Trump, by dictating the comment, revealed that he was trying to cover up proof of the campaign’s ties to Russia — evidence that could go to whether he had the same intention when he took other actions.

The president’s lawyers argued that the statement is a matter between the president and The Times — and the president’s White House and legal advisers have said for the past year that misleading journalists is not a crime.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/02/us/p ... poena.html

No, lying to journalists, (and by extension the public) is not a crime...

But if done in the context of an effort to obstruct justice, it can certainly be an element of an Impeachable Offense. We know this for a fact, because it has been an element of an article of impeachment for obstruction of justice...

An article (the first article) passed by the House Judiciary Committee against Richard Nixon. (Which would also most certainly have been passed by the full House and been approved by the Senate at his impeachment trial, had Mr. Nixon not ended the process by resigning.)

The Obstruction Article Of Impeachment against Nixon had nine supporting sections. Here's the one covering that very issue:

8.making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States into believing that a thorough and complete investigation had been conducted with respect to allegations of misconduct on the part of personnel of the executive branch of the United States and personnel of the Committee for the Re-election of the President, and that there was no involvement of such personnel in such misconduct

And here's another section that covers dangling or dog-whistling about the possibility of Pardons:

9.endeavouring to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favoured treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony.

There are other sections that also certainly apply. You can read the Nixon Articles of Impeachment in their entirety here:

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

The issue of lying to the public for the purpose of obstructing justice also arises with Trump's day-in-day-out attempts to smear and derail the Mueller investigation with falsehoods, and also specifically to the latest explosive revelation that Trump may well have been lying about having prior knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents to get "dirt" on Hillary Clinton...

That one's a twofer for Il Boobce; he's vulnerable both on collusion/conspiracy, and obstruction.

(Though it's going to take more than just Michael Cohen's say so to make this stick; hopefully there will also be corroborating evidence.)

[Lord Jim]

A couple of other major developments in Russiagate this week...

I've been saying for a long time that I really like Trump's tweeting, because he's building up a big body of supporting evidence for obstruction:

Mueller reviewing Trump's tweets as part of obstruction investigation: report

Special counsel Robert Mueller is reviewing President Trump’s tweets as he pursues an investigation into whether the president obstructed justice, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The Times, citing three people briefed on the matter, reported that Mueller is particularly interested in Trump’s tweets about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The president has used the social media platform to fiercely criticize each official.

Mueller’s office declined to comment to the Times.

“If you’re going to obstruct justice, you do it quietly and secretly, not in public,” argued Rudy Giuliani, [That's if you're smart, Rudy. If you're an arrogant idiot like Trump, you do it publicly. In fact you even brag about doing it on national television.]the lawyer representing Trump in the Russia probe, in a statement to the paper.

However, Trump’s lawyers told the Times that they don’t believe Mueller is focused on a particular action for obstruction of justice, but rather is looking at the tweets as part of a larger pattern of behavior.

rump has tweeted and said in interviews that he would not have nominated Sessions as attorney general if he knew Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

Trump has also given multiple explanations via Twitter for why he chose to fire Comey. Trump cited the Russia investigation in a May 2017 interview with NBC News when explaining why he ousted the FBI head.

In May of this year, however, Trump tweeted that he “never fired James Comey because of Russia!”

Trump has also sent several tweets personally attacking McCabe, who was fired in March for not being forthcoming with investigators during an inspector general review.

After McCabe was fired, Trump suggested the former FBI official should be investigated because of campaign contributions his wife received from an ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton during an unsuccessful campaign in Virginia.

The Times’s report comes three days after Giuliani told Bloomberg News that he suggested to Mueller that Trump would sit for an interview only if Mueller agreed to rule out questions about obstruction of justice and focus on the matter of whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia during the presidential race, which Trump has vehemently denied.

Trump has frequently derided the special counsel’s investigation as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.”

More than 20 Russians and four former Trump associates have been implicated in Mueller's investigation thus far.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... estigation

I really love that quote of Rudy's that I put in bold...

It's like saying that a bank robbery that's carried out in broad day light can't really be a bank robbery because smart bank robbers break into banks and rob them at night...

[Lord Jim]

And possibly the worst news of all for Trump this week...

They've got "the bookkeeper"...(Remember what happened to Al Capone when the Feds got the bookkeeper...)

The Trump Organization executive who knows all about the business has been subpoenaed

Federal prosecutors want to question Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg as part of the investigation into Michael Cohen.

Federal investigators are getting closer to the heart of the Trump Organization: the chief financial officer has been subpoenaed to testify, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization finance chief, was name-dropped on the September 2016 secretly recorded tape in which Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, discusses a payoff to former Playboy model Karen McDougal. At one hard-to-decipher point in the tape, Cohen can be heard telling Trump that he’s “spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with …”

Weisselberg’s name appearing hints at the possibility that the Trump Organization was directly involved in the discussions to pay the National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. (AMI). In August 2016, AMI paid $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007 — to get the rights to her story and prevent it from going public. (AMI’s chief, David Pecker, is a friend of Trump’s.) Cohen and Trump appear to be discussing the use of a shell company to buy the rights to the story from AMI.

Now, it turns out, federal prosecutors have some questions for Weisselberg. The Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Rebecca Ballhaus, Michael Rothfeld, and Alexandra Berzon reported Thursday that Weisselberg has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury, likely appearing as a witness in the Manhattan US attorney’s office investigation into Cohen.

“Allen knows where all the financial bodies are buried”

Weisselberg’s subpoena is potentially a big deal. He’s worked for the Trump Organization for decades, and before joining the company, he worked for Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. When Trump became president, he handed over the day-to-day control of the business to his two elder sons and to Weisselberg.

Weisselberg was also listed as the treasurer for the Trump Foundation, which was recently sued by the New York State Attorney General’s Office, which accused the group of violating state and federal laws. Weisselberg reportedly also did Trump’s personal tax returns for at least some years.

Which means if there’s something sketchy in Trump’s finances, or the finances of the Trump Organization, Weisselberg likely knows about. As Timothy L. O’Brien, author of TrumpNation, wrote in Bloomberg:

Weisselberg isn’t a bit player in Trumplandia and his emergence on the Cohen-Trump recording — as someone possibly facilitating a scheme apparently meant to disguise a payoff — should worry the president. Weisselberg has detailed information about the Trump Organization’s operations, business deals and finances. If he winds up in investigators’ crosshairs for secreting payoffs, he could potentially provide much more damaging information to prosecutors than Cohen ever could about the president’s dealmaking.

A former Trump Organization employee told NBC reporter Katy Tur that “Alan [sic] knows where all financial bodies are buried within the Trump organization. He knows Trump’s net worth. He knows any and every expenditure out of Trump Org was approved by Alan [sic].”

Weisselberg had previously been linked to the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006. According to the New York Times, he had set up the $35,000 retainer that Cohen received from Trump’s personal trust, which was a repayment for the $130,000 Cohen arranged for Daniels ahead of the November 2016 election to keep her quiet about the affair. It’s unclear if Weisselberg knew the purpose of the retainer was reimbursement for the Daniels payoff.

Now Weisselberg’s name has popped up in connection with the payoff to McDougal.

The Southern District of New York has been investigating Cohen for months, following a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office. The probe appears to include possible legal violations related to these payoffs to Daniels and McDougal. The FBI raided Cohen’s home, hotel, and office on April 9, seizing reams of documents and other materials, including the Trump-Cohen recording that aired this week.

That recording, which was provided to CNN by Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis, was seen as another sign that Cohen might be prepared to flip and spill to prosecutors about Trump. But he’s clearly not the only one who might know some of the president’s secrets.

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/26/17619388/ ... estigation

It's hard at this point to overstate how important the Stormy Daniels thing has turned out to be in all of this...

On it's face, it seemed like pretty small potatoes in the overall pantheon of Trump scandals and sleaze...

A payoff to a woman to buy silence for a consensual one night stand...

But it has turned out to be the spark that grew into the raging wildfire that delivered up Trump's long time "fixer", and now possibly also his Number One money man...

Stay tuned; this is just getting started...

[Lord Jim]

He Just Can't Help Himself, #3,427:

Trump says Sessions should end Mueller investigation 'right now'

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, should end special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference, arguing that the ongoing probe is hurting the United States.

Although the President has repeatedly criticized the investigation and Sessions' decision to recuse himself from overseeing it, Trump's tweet that his attorney general "should stop" the probe is notable and raises fresh questions about whether the President is attempting to obstruct justice.

"This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!" the President tweeted.

The Justice Department declined to comment on Trump's tweet. Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, attempted to walk back the tweet early Wednesday afternoon, telling CNN's Dana Bash that Trump was "expressing his opinion on his favored medium for asserting his First Amendment right of free speech. He said 'should' not 'must' and no Presidential order was issued or will be."

Although CNN has reported that several members of Mueller's team have donated to Democrats, Russia's interference in the 2016 election has also been the subject of several Republican-led congressional inquiries. Mueller is a Republican who was appointed as FBI director by President George W. Bush, and the man who tapped him as special counsel, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, was named by Trump and is also a registered Republican.

A central focus of Mueller's probe is whether Trump has obstructed justice in the Russia investigation, and Wednesday's tweet could be scrutinized by the special counsel's team. Citing three people briefed on the matter, The New York Times reported last month that Mueller is reviewing Trump's tweets as well as "negative statements" made by the President related to the attorney general and former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump abruptly fired last year.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, raised the question on Twitter Wednesday shortly after Trump's remark.

"The President of the United States just called on his Attorney General to put an end to an investigation in which the President, his family and campaign may be implicated," Schiff wrote. "This is an attempt to obstruct justice hiding in plain sight. America must never accept it."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called the tweet "highly inappropriate" and dismissed the possibility that Mueller is going to be fired.

"It would be far better if the President refrained from commenting and for Mr. Mueller to continue his investigation, which so far already has 30 indictments, including Russian nationalists," she said on Capitol Hill.

The President has escalated his attacks on the Mueller probe in recent days, and his tweet on Wednesday comes on the second day of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's trial, the first case Mueller's team has taken before a jury. Manafort is facing charges of bank fraud and tax evasion, though his alleged crimes occurred before he was involved with the Trump campaign.

Trump brought up Manafort by name in a second tweet on Wednesday, saying that he has worked in the past for "highly prominent and respected political leaders," and that the charges against him "have nothing to do with Collusion," which he referred to as "a Hoax!" In another tweet on Wednesday, Trump wrote, "Russian Collusion with the Trump Campaign, one of the most successful in history, [Is he saying that the "Russian Collusion with the Trump Campaign" was "one of most successful" collusions "in history"? ] is a TOTAL HOAX."

More:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/01/politics ... index.html

[Sue U]

Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, attempted to walk back the tweet early Wednesday afternoon, telling CNN's Dana Bash that Trump was "expressing his opinion on his favored medium for asserting his First Amendment right of free speech. He said 'should' not 'must' and no Presidential order was issued or will be."

Oh for fuck's sake, Rudy!!!!!!!

[Big RR]

are you surprised the bag man is serving his function?

[Lord Jim]

Rudy is more the "gasbag man"...