Bob Mueller Misstates Law & Resigns

[Smaulgld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HNETusW8_I

[dannno]

lol

[donnay]

Good analysis.

[Swordsmyth]

You win the best thread title of the day award.

[ATruepatriot]

Well done. Mueller as prosecutor would never "defend" the person he was prosecuting. It would be unheard of for this to happen. Misrepresentation (fraud) pure and simple.

[AngryCanadian]

Well done. Mueller as prosecutor would never "defend" the person he was prosecuting. It would be unheard of for this to happen. Misrepresentation (fraud) pure and simple.

The liberals need a reality check and a wake up. But even with a loss in 2020 or 2024 they will be still blaming Russia.

[ATruepatriot]

The liberals need a reality check and a wake up. But even with a loss in 2020 or 2024 they will be still blaming Russia.

Because they can't find anything else or anything substantial. This is not at all about Trump, this all a smoke screen to cover up and distract from their global agenda.

[Swordsmyth]

As the left piles the pressure on Speaker Pelosi to launch impeachment proceedings against President Trump following Special Counsel Mueller's apparent 'greenlight' during his brief statement this morning, a rather large question looms over an apparent disagreement between Mueller and his boss, Attorney General William Barr.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/mueller_report_barr_illo.0.jpg
During a Wednesday statement, Mueller said that his non-decision decision on whether the president obstructed justice was "informed" by "a long-standing opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Justice Department that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime...That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited."
However, as Gregg Jarrett of Fox News reports, (https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-jarrett-robert-mueller-trump-russia-investigation-report) according to Barr, that’s not what Mueller told multiple people during a meeting on March 5, 2017. Here’s what Barr told Senators during his May 1st testimony:

“We were frankly surprised that they were not going to reach a decision on obstruction and we asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this. Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting, in response to our questioning, that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC opinion he would have found obstruction.”
Barr said there were others in the meeting who heard Mueller say the same thing – that the OLC opinion played no role in the special counsel’s decision-making or lack thereof. The attorney general repeated this in his news conference the day Mueller’s report was released to the public:

“We specifically asked him about the OLC opinion and whether or not he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the OLC opinion. And he made it very clear several times that was not his position.”
Yet, today, Mueller was telling a different tale.
So did Mueller lie (to the public today or to the AG in 2017)?
Perhaps Nadler, knowing this is hanging over Mueller's head will slow roll his calls for a Mueller testimony now.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/mueller_3.jpg
As we consider the he-said, he-said above of whether Mueller did base his probe of Russian collusion (and obstruction) on whether a President could be indicted or not, we note Speaker Pelosi is still tamping down the impeachment inferno, saying (https://www.mediaite.com/trump/pelosi-many-people-want-trump-impeachment-but-we-want-to-do-whats-right-and-gets-results/), “Many constituents want to impeach the president. But we want do do what is right and what gets results what gets results.”
But while many cheered today's statement as clearing a path for Congressional Democrats to seek impeachment, one famous liberal - Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz - was infuriated by Mueller's partisan behavior today. In a furious op-ed at The Hill (https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/445983-dershowitz-shame-on-robert-mueller-for-exceeding-his-role), Dershowitz slammed Mueller:

"Until today, I have defended Mueller against the accusations that he is a partisan. I did not believe that he personally favored either the Democrats or the Republicans, or had a point of view on whether President Trump should be impeached. But I have now changed my mind. By putting his thumb, indeed his elbow, on the scale of justice in favor of impeachment based on obstruction of justice, Mueller has revealed his partisan bias. He also has distorted the critical role of a prosecutor in our justice system."
Adding that what Mueller said today “is worse than the statement made by then FBI Director James Comey regarding Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign,” regarding the recklessness with which she handled classified material, concluding defiantly:

"No prosecutor should ever say or do anything for the purpose of helping one party or the other. I cannot imagine a plausible reason why Mueller went beyond his report and gratuitously suggested that President Trump might be guilty, except to help Democrats in Congress and to encourage impeachment talk and action. Shame on Mueller for abusing his position of trust and for allowing himself to be used for such partisan advantage."
A good question that many others, even left-leaning individuals, are asking tonight. We give the last words to Fox's Greeg Jarrett (https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-jarrett-robert-mueller-trump-russia-investigation-report)as they seemed to sum things up well: "He refused to make a decision to charge the president in a court of law but was more than willing to indict him in the court of public opinion...His report was a non-indictment indictment. It was calumny masquerading as a report. "






https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-29/did-special-counsel-mueller-lie-attorney-general

[Swordsmyth]

https://twitter.com/brithume/status/1133759820165783553

1133759820165783553

[donnay]

https://grrrgraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/mueller_swamp.jpg

[timosman]

If only everybody agreed with us we wouldn't be having this discussion. M'kay? :tears:

[Smaulgld]

Thanks!

[Swordsmyth]

...


Justin Amash has become an albatross upon the liberty movement in the last week. Through his calls to impeach President Trump, Amash has burned much of the goodwill the movement had built up through the actions of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie during the Trump era. Worst of all, he did so base upon logic which is fundamentally anti libertarian.
Amash has posted several tweet threads supporting a narrative on obstruction not dissimilar from those pushed by networks such as CNN. In his latest thread, among many other things, Amash lays out (https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1131605784742256640?fbclid=IwAR02nhgNmUJUldIUchzGH eBgbD-KBbH_zB0xk46Wj4RWBMF0Q2Pj5imwwuA) an argument on obstruction which will strike any libertarian who has read the Mueller report as absurd.
For the vast majority of Americans who have not read the entire report, I have broken down below exactly why Amash is wrong below. I list Amash’s six reasons in quotes, with my response directly below each one.


“1. Trump asked the FBI director to stop investigating Michael Flynn, who had been his campaign adviser and national security adviser, and who had already committed a crime by lying to the FBI.”

First of all, there’s no evidence that this conversation took place beyond the word of James Comey. We have his claim, and a “memo” that he illegally leaked to the press. The same James Comey who submitted a FISA warrant application which claimed Christopher Steele’s dossier was verified, when he months later went on to call it unverified when testifying to Congress. Comey’s word vs Trump’s is what you would base an obstruction charge on if this were your argument. That doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Even if you can get past both of those things, they did not let the Flynn thing go and the POTUS never pushed them to do so afterwards, therefore no actions resulted from these alleged conversations between the POTUS and the FBI Director. No obstructive act can happen if no act happened.

“2. After AG Sessions recused himself from the Russian investigation on the advice of DoJ ethics lawyers, Trump directly asked Sessions to reverse his recusal so that he could retain control over the investigation and help the president.”

Asking the Attorney General to remain in charge of an investigation does not end the investigation, it does not impede the investigation, it does not deprive the investigation of any item required to complete it, and therefore it does not obstruct. Furthermore, the reasoning Amash spells out for why Trump did this is pure speculation. There are competing speculations which are just as valid as his, if not moreso. Some were even in the Mueller report.
Even if asking someone not to recuse themselves would rise to the level of obstruction in normal circumstances (it wouldn’t), the POTUS has Article II power over his inferior officers. Even if you could get past the fact that there’s no obstructive act, no attempt to end the investigation, no misconduct of any kind, the argument fails because of that. Even if you can get past both of those things, Sessions remained recused, therefore no actions resulted from these conversations between the POTUS and the Attorney General. No obstructive act can happen if no act happened. Next argument.

“3. Trump directed the White House counsel, Don McGahn, to have Special Counsel Mueller removed on the basis of pretextual conflicts of interest that Trump’s advisers had already told him were “ridiculous” and could not justify removing the special counsel.”


Like keeping on Sessions as the AG, removing Mueller as head of the special counsel does not end the special counsel. It does not end the investigation, it does not impede the investigation, it does not deprive the investigation of any item required to complete it, and therefore it does not obstruct.
This makes the reasoning for having done this irrelevant, but the implication that the reasoning matters goes to the notion of corrupt intent, so let’s briefly address that. Donald Trump had what he described as a “nasty business transaction” involving Robert Mueller. Mueller applied to be the FBI director and didn’t get the job. Mueller was a close personal friend of James Comey. For all of these reasons, Trump may very well have thought the conflicts were legitimate and disagreed with McGahn. Therefore, proving intent is also virtually impossible.
Furthermore, and most importantly, McGahn did not follow through on this alleged request. Not a single action was taken as the result of these discussions between the POTUS and his White House Counsel. Since no act was taken at all, there was no obstructive act. Next argument.

“4. When that event was publicly reported, Trump asked that McGahn make a public statement and create a false internal record stating that Trump had not asked him to fire the special counsel, and suggested that McGahn would be fired if he did not comply.”

Let’s say that this was true, and Donald Trump intentionally told Don McGahn to lie to the public about Trump asking him to fire Mueller. Lying to the media and the American people is not lying to the special counsel, and therefore cannot possibly be considered obstruction of justice. Since the special counsel never asked him this question directly, it could not have possibly been necessary to their investigation, so the idea that this statement to the press deprived them of something necessary to their investigation is refuted by the record.

Furthermore, Mueller actually laid out a fairly strong argument that Trump genuinely disputed McGahn’s characterization that he told McGahn to fire Mueller. Finally, McGahn refused the alleged request and never called Rod Rosenstein to make this case. So, even if you threw the entire above paragraph away, no action resulted from these discussions between the POTUS and his White House Counsel. That fact alone makes any obstruction argument absurd.

“5. Trump asked Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to tell AG Sessions to limit the special counsel’s investigation only to future election interference. Trump said Lewandowski should tell Sessions he was fired if he would not meet with him.”

Similarly to the above, Trump disputes this characterization, and Lewandowski says he refused the alleged order and never told Sessions to do this. The only evidence you have that it took place is the word of a former campaign manager, and even if you could prove it happened there wasn’t a single action which resulted from these alleged discussions. So, you have the problem of it being one mans word against another, and then the problem of no action having resulted from the alleged discussion. That makes the case that an obstructive act occurred untenable.

“6. Trump used his pardon power to influence his associates, including Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, not to fully cooperate with the investigation.”

That is just plainly false. Let’s break down what Amash is claiming that Mueller laid out as evidence of Trump ‘using his pardon power’ in these cases:
What Mueller claimed that Trump and Trump aides said to Cohen consisted of support lines such as “the POTUS wants to check in and see if you’re okay”, “hang in there”, “stay strong”, “the POTUS says he loves you and not to worry” and “You are loved, stay well tonight, you have friends in high places”. This was all in the aftermath of Cohen’s office being raided by the feds. None of these messages mention a pardon or hint at anything transactional. The notion that these messages amounted to dangling his pardon power over Cohen is absurd.
The only thing Mueller says in relation to pardons is that Cohen claims he discussed one with the POTUS’s personal counsel, and that he understood the counsel’s responses to these questions that “(Cohen) would be fine” to mean that he would get a pardon as long as he stayed on message. A convicted perjurer saying that he understood this as an implication. Not exactly ironclad credibility or a bombshell allegation.
The evidence in regards to Manafort is even flimsier. It consists of two pieces of evidence: Trump saying Manafort was treated unfairly in public and Guiliani suggesting in TV interviews that nonspecific people may be pardoned, but only once the investigation ends.
In the case of both, Mueller brought up the instances of Trump saying that neither Cohen nor Manafort would “flip”. At every point where Trump says this he makes clear that he believes this is a witch hunt investigation, and that “flipping” means they will tell the investigators a falsehood at his expense in exchange for a reduced sentence. These lines are no evidence of obstruction, they are evidence that Trump knew he was dealing with dirty cops.
To review, not only did Amash not manage to point out an obstructive act in his analysis of the Mueller report, his impotent attempt exposes the inherent weakness of the argument for obstruction. 5 of the 6 things he brings up involve conversations (some of which are disputed by Trump himself) between Trump and various campaign and White House officials, where in each case the White House or campaign official in question did not act upon what was supposedly discussed.
In each of these cases, since there was no act taken at all, there can be no obstructive act.
In the final case, the notion of dangling pardons for Cohen and Manafort, Amash relies on generic well wishing and Guiliani stating the President’s pardon powers as a basis for the notion that there was an implication that President Trump would pardon these people. No quid pro quo was established, no offer was ever made, and no pardon was ever granted.
Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, you should be very angry at Justin Amash for the position his anti liberty stance has put every Liberty Conservative in with the GOP base. His pro FBI crusade, if it is allowed to be seen as the libertarian position, may have severe negative repercussions upon our movement which last for a very long time.


https://libertyconservativenews.com/dismantling-justin-amashs-obstruction-argument/

[Swordsmyth]

https://assets.infowars.com/2019/05/m97cipiawi131.jpg

[timosman]

Deep state always gets their way based on bogus claims. They are not even trying. :tears: