Bill Of Impeachment: Article I, Obstruction Of Justice

[ex-khobar Andy]

Spotted on Fox News just now (10:49 PM Central 16th April):

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/04 ... libby.html

President Trump is reportedly prepared to pardon Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Trump has already signed off on the pardon for Libby, who was convicted of lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice in 2007, according to ABC News.

Libby was ensnared in the investigation into who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, a former CIA operative.

He had his sentence commuted by President George W. Bush.

Earlier this year, Trump handed a pardon to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt after he refused a judge’s order to stop throwing suspected illegal immigrants in jail.

Yes, you heard it here first - Trump is planning to pardon Scooter Libby. (BTW I make it a rule not to trust someone who still goes by his kindergarten nickname.) I wonder if Fox are still putting this out as a gentle reminder to anyone thinking about talking to Muller that P45 still has that power to pardon.

[rubato]

The power to pardon is a two-edged sword. If someone has been pardoned they cannot invoke the 5th amendment and refuse to testify. And if they testify falsely they can go to prison for perjury.

If the grand poo-bah of the Republican party pardons someone he creates a situation where it is in their interest to testify against him and let him hang. Fun!!

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

Of course, he could pardon their perjury as well, just like he did Libby's. And, if they didn't perjure themselves, he could pull a Nixon and, like Ford, Pence would pardon him.

[Lord Jim]

Russian lawyer from infamous Trump Tower meeting admits to being an informant for the Kremlin

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump campaign officials at Trump Tower 2016 on the premise of gathering dirt on Hillary Clinton, was more deeply connected to the Kremlin than previously known, NBC News reported Friday, citing emails it had uncovered.

The emails appear to show a correspondence between Veselnitskaya and an official in Russia's state prosecutor's office coordinating a response to a case brought forward by the U.S. Department of Justice, NBC's Richard Engel said on MSNBC.

The newly discovered communications between Veselnitskaya and the Russian government indicate that the lawyer held a level of influence within the Kremlin, undercutting her long-held insistence that she was merely a private attorney.

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump campaign officials at Trump Tower 2016 on the premise of gathering dirt on Hillary Clinton, was more deeply connected to the Kremlin than previously known, NBC News reported Friday, citing emails it had uncovered.

The emails appear to show a correspondence between Veselnitskaya and an official in Russia's state prosecutor's office coordinating a response to a case brought forward by the U.S. Department of Justice, NBC's Richard Engel said on MSNBC.

The newly discovered communications between Veselnitskaya and the Russian government indicate that the lawyer held a level of influence within the Kremlin, undercutting her long-held insistence that she was merely a private attorney.

A report from the New York Times, citing NBC News' interview with Veselnitskaya to be aired Friday, identified her government contact as being Yuri Chaika, Russia's prosecutor general.

In the interview, Veselnitskaya confirmed the emails were written by her, the Times reported, saying "many things included here are from my documents, my personal documents." She also said her email accounts were hacked this year in an ironic twist.

"I am a lawyer, and I am an informant," she reportedly admitted in the NBC interview. "Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general."

This was not the first time Veselnitskaya has spoken about her relationship to Chaika. In a July 2017 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Veselnitskaya said she "personally" knows the prosecutor general.

"I shared information with" Chaika, she told the newspaper, in the course of her investigation into a hedge fund manager who was a driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. sanctions law that locked certain Russians out of their overseas funds, among other punishments.

Veselnitskaya first became widely known in the American media landscape in summer 2017, after reports surfaced that she and other Russians met with Trump campaign officials in Manhattan's Trump Tower in June 2016.

The Trump campaign members, including Donald Trump Jr. and then-campaign chief Paul Manafort, attended the meeting under the impression that the Russians could provide damaging information on candidate Donald Trump's political opponent, Hillary Clinton.

At the meeting, Veselnitskaya instead discussed what she said were unjust U.S. sanctions on Russia — a hobbyhorse of the Kremlin since the passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012.

The Trump Tower meeting, which appeared to demonstrate the willingness of Trump campaign officials to coordinate with Russia in the election, has reportedly become a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian links to the 2016 campaign.

Trump Jr. initially claimed that the meeting was about Russian adoption, but later released emails showed him responding positively to an intermediary of Veselnitskaya promising "information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."

"If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer," Trump Jr. responded.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/27/emails- ... n-nbc.html

[RayThom]

Trump-Russia investigation: House intelligence committee finds 'no evidence' of collusion in final report

The US Congress’ House intelligence committee has found “no evidence” of collusion between President Donald Trump and Russian officials in its final investigative report about whether Moscow interfered with the 2016 US election.

The approximately 250-page report is the culmination of the committee’s year-long investigation. However, the results are likely to be contested by Democrats on the committee who felt Republicans ended the investigation too early in order to help Mr Trump and the party ahead of the November 2018 mid-term elections. Ranking Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff had the same objections to the committee’s release last month of the preliminary findings and today said the conclusions are “superficial and [of a] political nature”.

Though the full report has blacked out portions deemed classified by the US intelligence community, the summary stated that the committee agreed with the intelligence community’s findings except for one crucial point: Russian President Vladimir “Putin’s supposed preference for candidate [Mr] Trump”.

Republican Congressman Mike Conaway said in a statement that the report’s release will give citizens ”the opportunity to access the information used to draw the conclusions found in last month’s findings and recommendations”. However, he said he was “extremely disappointed with the overzealous redaction” made by the intelligence community.

“When we started this investigation, we set out to give the American people the answers to the questions they’ve been asking and we promised to be as transparent as possible in our final report. I don’t believe the information we’re releasing today meets that standard,” he said.

Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell claimed in a statement that though the report concluded that there was no collusion, "Republicans never allowed the investigation to look for collusion". He said they "ran a ‘take them at their word’ investigation that showed no willingness to test witness testimony against their cell phone, bank, and travel records," adding that members have not followed through on their promise to release the transcripts so the public could "judge for itself".

Mr Trump immediately seized on the conclusions in the report summary and tweeted the campaign of opponent Hillary Clinton “paid for Opposition Research obtained from Russia- Wow! A total Witch Hunt! MUST END NOW!”.

The report also called for the end of the Logan Act, which stipulates that private citizens are not allowed to negotiate on behalf of the US unless authorised to do so. If repealed this could clear some Trump campaign members of possible violations of the act. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials while he was only a member of the Trump transition team, not a government employee as yet. Former campaign aide George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to the same type of offence.

The report indicated that since the Logan Act was passed in 1799, no one has been convicted of violating it.

Despite Mr Schiff's comment that the results in the report are "political," there was at least one conclusion that appeared to criticise equally. The report stated that both campaigns used "poor judgement" at times, particularly former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort - who was indicted as part of the probe, the president's son Donald Trump Jr, and son-in-law Jared Kushner. The reported cited the trio's Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, “who falsely purported to have damaging information on the Clinton campaign, demonstrated poor judgement".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 25761.html

Well, there you have it. Case closed. Mueller... YOU'RE FIRED!

[Burning Petard]

One can honestly report 'no evidence was found' if one very carefully looks only in the places where you already know there is no evidence.

'Deniability' is an ancient art carefully mastered by our most experienced politicians.

snailgate.

[Sue U]

Trump: "It's a witch hunt!"

Mueller: "Hey, look at all these witches we've found!"

Nunes: "We need more investigation of this Ben Ghazzi fellow."

[Econoline]

ETA:

[Bicycle Bill]

And both of these guys are/were Republicans.
Coincidence?  I think not.

-"BB"-

[RayThom]

That's a great message that "Rosemary" is holding, but... if you look closely you'll see that it's photoshopped. Except for Nixon and Trump every letter and every brush/marker stroke is exactly the same.

[BoSoxGal]

The ‘new’ photo is genuine - the ‘old’ one not so much. (No hands holding the poster.)

[Burning Petard]

DavidBrooks had an interesting comment in the NY Times Yesterday.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opin ... ctionfront

Among other things, he said the Trump campaign did not collude with the Russians, "because there never was an actual Trump campaign--at least not in any organized sense of the work. It was a bunch of relatives and hangers-on having random meetings with some vague hope of personal and professional enrichment.. . . . it is clear that Trump has flipped the Mueller investigation into the central 'me versus the swamp' soap opera of his presidency."

We are living in the logical progression from the Bush 43 administration declaration that "we make our own reality."

snailgate

[Sue U]

DavidBrooks had an interesting comment in the NY Times Yesterday.

David Brooks? The same David Brooks who, a year ago, was confident there was no Russia scandal and that Trump had been goaded into obstruction of justice? As one man says, Why the Hell Does David Brooks Still Have a Job?

What the fuck has happened to the Times?

[Burning Petard]

What the fuck has happened to the Times? Reality happened. This is the real world of 'journalism' today. Research by knowledgable experts who take months to examine an issue and then print a five part series may get a Pulitzer prize, and then they (and their editor who signed off on the expenses) are fired after the award ceremony because solid, informed factual analysis ain't what sells papers. Certainly not at WaPo or the Times. Brooks is there to be the token 'conservative' just like George Will at WaPo.

snailgate

[Big RR]

I can understand Will, but Brooks. it remind me when I stopped financially supporting the local public radio station (WNYC) when they hired Curtis Sliwa (a guy who was known as the founder of the Guardian Angels, but otherwise an ignoramus) to be their "conservative" reporter. It didn't bug me that they were presenting the conservative view, only that they hired someone who was completely clueless about pretty much everything (I recall haring a clip of him saying the civil war ended in the early 1900s). Certainly, the Times can do much better than Brooks.

[Lord Jim]

Brooks is there to be the token 'conservative'

Yeah, David Brooks is certainly not in danger of ever being mistaken for Bill Safire...

(Who served as the NYT's token conservative columnist for 3 decades prior to Brooks...and for years also wrote an excellent weekly Sunday NYT column on the English language...)

just like George Will at WaPo.

Brooks is not fit to wipe George Will's, uh, glasses...

[Econoline]

[BoSoxGal]

The first ever SuperZeroes movie!

[Lord Jim]

The Isle Of Misfit Lawyers lays out the powers of King Donald I :

Trump lawyers claim President can’t obstruct justice, be forced to testify in 20-page memo to Mueller

A pointed 20-page letter to special counsel Robert Mueller from White House lawyers warned the President’s cooperation with his Russian collusion probe won’t come easy — if at all.

The Jan. 29 missive, obtained by The New York Times, argues that President Trump’s position as commander-in-chief spares him from obstruction of justice charges while also making clear their belief that Trump cannot be forced to sit for questions as part of the ongoing Mueller digging.

“The President’s actions here, by virtue of his position as the chief law enforcement officer, could neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction because that would amount to him obstructing himself, and that he could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired,” wrote attorneys John Dowd and Jay Sekulow.

The legal argument raises the possibility of a court battle over how far Trump’s executive authority extends. [Dowd and Sekulow are arguing that it's limitless]And the memo specifically mentions Mueller’s “request for testimony on alleged obstruction of justice.”

Mueller has threatened to possibly subpoena the President to answer questions in the investigation that has sharply divided national opinion. Trump, in a Saturday afternoon tweet, ripped the leak of the letter and attacked the entire probe.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... story.html

The gist of this "legal argument" amounts to, "because a President's powers enable him to obstruct justice on such a vast scale, he can't possibly commit it" or, "The President can't be accused of breaking the law, because he is the law"...



Yeah, good luck persuading either Mueller or the courts on that one...

[Burning Petard]

Natural extension of GOP{ thinking. Remember when it was declared during the administration of Bush 43 that the American military does not do torture? 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.

Sovereign immunity. Law and justice are defined by the sovereign. If the sovereign does it it cannot be a crime. What? you say in America, it is the people that are sovereig? Foolish you to be so naive. This is the new reality. Trump was exactly right when he said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody at random and he would not loose a single vote. Because the victim would be a denizen of NYC and all real Americans (defined as supporters of Trump) know those are all just liberal elitist snobs who should all be killed anyway. President Jackson defied the ruling of the Supremes because he knew he had popular support. "John Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it!"

snailgate.