Tag: Trump obstruction of justice

Investigating The Investigators? Don’t Forget That Manafort Meeting

Riddle me this: exactly how did the Deep State, anti-Trump conspirators in the FBI and CIA persuade Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to hand over sensitive internal polling data to a Russian spy? Not to mention, what did Konstantin Kilimnik do with it?

More to the point, how is Attorney General William Barr going to explain it away? Particularly in view of the fact that Manafort remains locked up in a federal slammer, having violated a plea agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller for lying to investigators about that very thing.

Because if Barr can’t explain, then all of his weasel-worded insinuations about FBI “spying” on the Trump campaign stand revealed for what they are: the desperate rationalizations of a cunning political operative willing to play along with an absurd conspiracy theory concocted to appease Donald J. Trump and distract his fervid supporters.

View the complete June 11 article by Gene Lyon on the National Memo website here.

Trump, Mueller and obstruction of justice

“I’ll make a few remarks about the results of our work. But beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office’s written work speak for itself. … We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself.”

— Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in a statement at the Department of Justice, May 29, 2019

“The report is my testimony.”

— Mueller

“[The report] explains that under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is prohibited. The Special Counsel’s Office is part of the Department of Justice and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.”

— Mueller

Now that Mueller is riding off into the sunset, he has some advice for anyone with lingering questions about President Trump’s campaign and Russian election interference, obstruction of justice or the prosecutorial rules the special counsel had to follow.

Read the report.

At 448 pages, the Mueller report requires commitment. It’s a legal document studded with redactions, acronyms and footnotes, with a cast of characters in the hundreds. The report offers complex answers to thorny questions and leaves some blanks.

View the complete May 31 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Accuses Mueller of a Personal Vendetta as Calls for Impeachment Grow

COLORADO SPRINGS — President Trump lashed out angrily at Robert S. Mueller III on Thursday, accusing him of pursuing a personal vendetta as Mr. Trump sought to counter increasing calls among Democrats for his impeachment.

A day after Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, spoke out for the first time and refused to exonerate the president, Mr. Trump dismissed the Mueller investigation as hopelessly tarnished and expressed aggravation that he could not shake allegations of wrongdoing that have dogged him since the early days of his administration.

“I think he is a total conflicted person,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Mueller before flying to Colorado to deliver the commencement address at the Air Force Academy. “I think Mueller is a true Never Trumper. He’s somebody that dislikes Donald Trump. He’s somebody that didn’t get a job that he requested that he wanted very badly, and then he was appointed.”

View the complete May 31 article by Peter Baker and Eileen Sullivan on The New York Times website here.

What Mueller Told The Country About Trump

Behind the straight shooting, ramrod demeanor always mentioned by his friends, Robert Mueller possesses a shrewd intelligence. He demonstrated that strategic acuity on Wednesday morning when, with a few carefully selected sentences, he wielded his own reticence to deliver a crushing blow to Donald Trump (and a hard shot to Attorney General William Barr, the White House henchman).

The more diffidence Mueller displayed in speaking publicly — after two years of principled silence as special counsel — the more powerful were the words he chose to utter. Standing before the seal of the Justice Department, he told us it is important that his 448-page report “speak for itself.” Yet with the nation listening, he briskly underlined the most salient aspects of the report, which the great majority of his fellow Americans will never read.

Mueller wants us to understand — contrary to whatever Trump, Jared Kushner, or assorted Republican patsies might claim — that the Russian plot to sway the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton was a historic assault on our democracy. This act by a hostile foreign power was a matter “of paramount importance” that “deserves the attention of every American.

View the complete May 29 article by Joe Conason on the National Memo website here.

This obscure 1973 memo kept Mueller from considering a Trump indictment

The memo itself is not law, but it is the Justice Department’s binding interpretation of law governing its own conduct

The obscure government memorandum that Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III says prevented him from pursuing criminal charges against President Donald Trump points at one avenue for dealing with a misbehaving president: impeachment.

During his first public remarks since taking over the Russia investigation two years ago, Mueller made clear that he never considered indicting Trump, regardless of the findings of his investigation, partially because a 1973 Office of Legal Counsel memorandum prevented him from doing so.

That memorandum, issued in the midst of the Watergate scandal, meant that “charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider,” Mueller said Wednesday. The memo itself is not law, but it is the Justice Department’s binding interpretation of law governing its own conduct.

View the complete May 29 article by Michael Macagnone on The Roll Call website here.

Standing Where Barr Cleared Trump on Obstruction, Mueller Makes a Different Case

The special counsel hopes an appearance will be his first and last public statement about the Russia and obstruction investigation. But he left many things unsaid.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr stood at the Justice Department lectern six weeks ago and put the best possible spin on the Mueller report for his boss, declaring that the special counsel had amassed insufficient evidence to accuse President Trump of a crime.

Robert S. Mueller III delivered a starkly different presentation on Wednesday from the same lectern, saying that charging a sitting president was never an option, no matter the evidence. Instead, his investigators asked another question: Could they clear the president?

On potential obstruction of justice, the answer was no.

View the complete May 29 article by Mark Mazzettti and Charlie Savage on The New York Times website here.

Fox News host explains why Mueller’s statement was ‘almost exactly the opposite’ of AG Barr’s: This was not ‘no collusion’

Fox News host Bret Baier on Wednesday analyzed special counsel Robert Mueller’s stunning statement on the results of the Russia investigation, explaining that the special counsel’s report did not exonerate Donald Trump — despite the president and Attorney William Barr’s claim to the contrary.

Speaking on with host Bill Hemmer and Sandra Smith, Baier said he was “struck by the tone and tenor of the remarks as he laid out his case wrapping up this report.”

“This was not as the president says time and time again no collusion, no obstruction,” Baier said. “It was much more nuanced than that.”

View the complete May 29 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here. 

Fox News legal analyst: Mueller basically said Trump would have been indicted if not president

Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano on Wednesday said special counsel Robert Mueller “basically” said in a public statement that his office would have indicted President Trump had he not been president.

“This is even stronger than the language in his report,” Napolitano said on Fox Business Network after Mueller delivered his first public comments on the 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Trump obstructed justice.

Napolitano added Mueller’s comments also seemed like a “parting shot at his soon-to-be former boss,” Attorney General William Barr.

View the complete May 29 article by Justin Wise on The Hill website here.

Amash defends call for Trump’s impeachment, says Congress ‘has a duty to keep the president in check’

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Rep. Justin Amash, the sole congressional Republican to call for President Trump’s impeachment, said Tuesday that the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III left him with no other option.

Defending his stance, Amash (Mich.) told supporters and opponents at his first town hall since his tweets angered Trump and other Republicans that Congress “has a duty to keep the president in check.”

“I’d do it whether it was a Republican president or a Democratic president. It doesn’t matter. You elected me to represent all of you,” Amash told hundreds of people crowded into an auditorium at Grand Rapids Christian High School.

View the complete May 28 article by David Weigel and John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

Senate GOP vows to quickly quash any impeachment charges

GOP senators say that if the House passes articles of impeachment against President Trump they will quickly quash them in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has broad authority to set the parameters of a trial.

While McConnell is required to act on articles of impeachment, which require 67 votes — or a two-thirds majority — to convict the president, he and his Republican colleagues have the power to set the rules and ensure the briefest of trials.

“I think it would be disposed of very quickly,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

View the complete May 27 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.