Mueller Investigation pt 6

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smartcooky said:
You have already made the fundamental error that makes the rest of your post irrelevant. You are falling for the Trump/Barr/Giuliani mantra that there has to be an underlying crime, and that the original reason for the investigation has to be valid. This is a false manta that Trump and his right wing cronies desperately want you to believe. ITS WRONG!

There is ABSOLUTELY NO requirement in US Federal Law that needs a crime to have been committed for the FBI to begin an investigation. There only needs to be a suspicion of possible wrongdoing. Furthermore, even if it is later found that the original suspicion arose from fraudulent misrepresentation, that does not invalidate the investigation; any wrongdoing found as a result of the original investigation also has to be investigated.

For example, a person goes missing. Do you really believe that the Police are precluded from investigating because a crime has not been shown to have been committed? The person could be missing for any number of reasons, e.g. they left town, they got lost in a forest, they fell down a well, they were abducted, they were murdered. Until you find the person (or the body) you have no way of knowing, so the Police will need to investigate to find out what happened to them.

Now, if it later turns out that the person who went missing was, say, part of a fraudulent attempt to fake a murder to collect an insurance payout, then THAT also has to be investigated, even though the original premise for the investigation, a missing person enquiry, was a fraud. What you are suggesting is that the missing persons case should be closed, and no further investigation of the fraud is warranted. Do you really believe that?

This false mantra being repeated by Trump/Barr/Giuliani is the same as the mantra that a person cannot commit obstruction of justice if they have not committed an underlying crime. This also is simply, and completely untrue.


18 USC§1505. Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees
Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—

Shall be fined under this title.......​

See where it says "endeavours to"? This means that attempting to obstruct justice is obstruction of justice; a crime in and of itself. This is black letter law.
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Hold your horses. That may be the case in NZ, but here in the US a warrant must be obtained before anyone starts getting their phones tapped or any surveillance goes on.

The investigating office or entity must seek and receive approval by the courts before encroaching on a citizen's rights here. Investigation goes way beyond something like probable cause during a traffic stop.

We also have something called the "clean hands doctrine". This is highly applicable in cases where the US Government VS US citizen. There can be no wrongdoing by Big Brother and everything must have been done by the book. Anything improper is a no no. If Trump was being investigated wrongly for some invalid reason, a crime was committed against him and those responsible will answer for their actions. There is no crime in objecting or obstructing injustice, it's a civic responsibility to do so.

Like it or not, that's the way it is.

Chris B.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Hold your horses. That may be the case in NZ, but here in the US a warrant must be obtained before anyone starts getting their phones tapped or any surveillance goes on.

The investigating office or entity must seek and receive approval by the courts before encroaching on a citizen's rights here. Investigation goes way beyond something like probable cause during a traffic stop.

We also have something called the "clean hands doctrine". This is highly applicable in cases where the US Government VS US citizen. There can be no wrongdoing by Big Brother and everything must have been done by the book. Anything improper is a no no. If Trump was being investigated wrongly for some invalid reason, a crime was committed against him and those responsible will answer for their actions. There is no crime in objecting or obstructing injustice, it's a civic responsibility to do so.

Like it or not, that's the way it is.

Chris B.
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Your interpretation is so incorrect it doesn't even get to reach the requirements for wrong..

The "Clean Hands Doctrine" is a "Bad Faith" doctrine which is in place to prevent law enforcement from breaking the law or the constitution themselves, or getting others to do it on their behalf, in order to get evidence. However, if they are not responsible for the breaking of the law or the constitution, or that done by others outside of their control, e.g. someone steals a document from their boss and then passes it to LE without any LE involvement, or if the information they use to start an investigation turns out to be faulty. Neither of these is a Bad Faith action that does not in any way invalidate the investigation.

If an officer hears what he thinks are screams coming from a house and breaks in to find a child prostitution ring and drug house, then just because he initially believed that an assault was occurring does not prevent him from arresting and charging for the crime found.

In the same way, if I reported you for beating your dog because you smelled funny and so I didn't like you, and when the police arrived they discovered that while you had no dogs, you were a serial murderer hiding bodies in your basement, you don't get to walk away scott-free because the initial report to the police was fraudulent.

And finally, claiming "Clean Hands" is something that is done in a court case, and is an affirmative defense, in other words, you can't just claim that LE operated outside of the Law or Constitution, you have to actually prove that it was done, which no-one claiming it in this case has actually done yet.

As to the whole "Obstructing Injustice" thing, this is called pulling pseudo-legal terms out of right-wing's rear-end.
 
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I want to go further on this loony Rightwing claim that it is acceptable to Obstruct Injustice.

Let's say that you owned a company and I also own one that is in competition with yours.

One day I decide to report you to the SEC for insider trading so as to damage you and your brand. I provide a bunch of information that looks and tests mostly as legit, enough to smell the sniff test and create probable cause.

The SEC now starts an investigation into your company.

You can't claim that the SEC's investigation is illegitimate and order your employees to refuse to testify to the SEC, lie to their agents, and delete all of their emails, even if you found out that the investigation started because I lied and created fraudulent evidence against you. Doing so is illegal, it is Obstruction of Justice, and will at best get you heavily fined, and at worse end up with you in Jail. Just ask Martha Stewart!

And to be honest, this is the biggest issue in the whole thing. People that follow this crap legal advice from Rightwing idiots across the internet who have come up with this crazy-ass pseudo-legal term, are basically telling people that it is acceptable to violate the law and that they will get away with it. What it will result in if people are stupid enough to do it, is a lot more people ending up in jail because of things that they shouldn't and clearly should not, have done, but did because of stupidly bad advice from idiots.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Hold your horses. That may be the case in NZ, but here in the US a warrant must be obtained before anyone starts getting their phones tapped or any surveillance goes on.

The investigating office or entity must seek and receive approval by the courts before encroaching on a citizen's rights here. Investigation goes way beyond something like probable cause during a traffic stop.
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True, but NONE of that is required to open an investigation.

ChrisBFRPKY said:
We also have something called the "clean hands doctrine". This is highly applicable in cases where the US Government VS US citizen. There can be no wrongdoing by Big Brother and everything must have been done by the book. Anything improper is a no no.
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The Clean Hands doctrine applies mostly to Contract Law and Civil Law.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/clean-hands_doctrine

Clean-hands Doctrine
The principle that someone who violates equitable norms cannot then seek equitable relief or claim a defense based in the law of equity. A party who has violated an equitable principle, such as good faith, is described as having "unclean hands."​

It is not applied in Criminal or Federal investigations.. its a defence, in a court of Law

The Feds have their own organisations for badly behaving prosecutors and investigators - the FBI have the OPR, prosecutors come under prosecutorial misconduct laws with punishments administered by the relevant Bar Association, unless the misconduct was criminal.

So long as warrants are obtained before surveillance takes place (and as far as we know, they were at every stage of the investigation) then the surveillance is legal.

If the investigators had every reason to believe that the original premise was a valid one, then they have acted in good faith, even if the premise later turns out to be sketchy... in other words, once the investigation has been started, and criminal acts have been found, all bets are off. Pandora's box has been opened, and it stays open.

Of course, The Right would have you believe that the whole investigation was based on the Steele Dossier, when in fact it was just ONE of the things that led to it. They also want you to believe that it is phoney document. Well, for an alleged phoney document, it sure is hard to explain how it got everything verifiable right with such stunning accuracy. The only things in the dossier that haven't been verified are those thing that are not able to be verified, because the Russian aren't telling, and Trump family and their sycophantic hangers on have lied about them.

1. Contacts between Trump's team and Russians (true)
2. Russian meddling in the 2016 election (true)
3. Trump's real estate dealings in Russia (true)
4. Potential Russian leverage on Trump, i.e. kompromat (suspected but can't be verified)
5. Michael Cohen's alleged trip to Prague (suspected but can't be verified)*
6. Michael Flynn's paid trip to Moscow (true)
7. Carter Page's meetings with Russians (true)
8. Russia wanted to help Trump win the election (true)
9. Russia has extensive program of state-sponsored offensive cyberoperations. (true)
10. Kremlin behind recent hacking of DNC e-mails (true)
11. There is a close relationship between Putin and Russia’s largest commercial bank (true)

* Cohen denies ever being there, but its known for a fact that his phone was pinged off a celltower in Prague.

If I was a betting man, I would bet that there are a whole lot more confirmations of the remaining unverfied memos in the Steel Dossier buried under those redactions in the Mueller Report.

ChrisBFRPKY said:
If Trump was being investigated wrongly for some invalid reason, a crime was committed against him and those responsible will answer for their actions. There is no crime in objecting or obstructing injustice, it's a civic responsibility to do so.
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Let me ask you this.

You are being investigated for a murder, and it absolutely was not you. You KNOW it wasn't you. You know exactly what you were doing at the time the victim was murdered, but you have no way to prove it; no witnesses to you whereabouts, you don't appear in any streetcams in some other area, you didn't receive or make any phone calls, i.e. you have no alibi for the time of the murder. This is an injustice, right? You know you didn't do it, but the Police are investigating you and you are their prime suspect!

Are you allowed to obstruct that injustice?
Are you allowed to ask people you know on the Police force to keep you informed about their investigation.
Are you allowed to get someone to lie for you to give you an alibi?
Are you allowed to try to get your uncle, the Police Commissioner, to shut the investigation down?

If you answer "YES" then we have a problem, because you will have just thrown the Rule of Llaw out the window, and everyone here will know there is no point debating with you

If you answer "NO" then you need to explain why Trump is allowed to break the law to protect himself from investigation, but you are not.
 
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All of these arguments coming from the Trumpanzees are just a distraction and excuse for the real reason they think the investigations are wrong and that Trump is innocent.

They like Trump and everything he is doing, they worship him.
They also think laws do not apply to Republicans.

That's all there is to it.
 
smartcooky said:
True, but NONE of that is required to open an investigation.



The Clean Hands doctrine applies mostly to Contract Law and Civil Law.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/clean-hands_doctrine

Clean-hands Doctrine
The principle that someone who violates equitable norms cannot then seek equitable relief or claim a defense based in the law of equity. A party who has violated an equitable principle, such as good faith, is described as having "unclean hands."​

It is not applied in Criminal or Federal investigations.. its a defence, in a court of Law

The Feds have their own organisations for badly behaving prosecutors and investigators - the FBI have the OPR, prosecutors come under prosecutorial misconduct laws with punishments administered by the relevant Bar Association, unless the misconduct was criminal.

So long as warrants are obtained before surveillance takes place (and as far as we know, they were at every stage of the investigation) then the surveillance is legal.

If the investigators had every reason to believe that the original premise was a valid one, then they have acted in good faith, even if the premise later turns out to be sketchy... in other words, once the investigation has been started, and criminal acts have been found, all bets are off. Pandora's box has been opened, and it stays open.

Of course, The Right would have you believe that the whole investigation was based on the Steele Dossier, when in fact it was just ONE of the things that led to it. They also want you to believe that it is phoney document. Well, for an alleged phoney document, it sure is hard to explain how it got everything verifiable right with such stunning accuracy. The only things in the dossier that haven't been verified are those thing that are not able to be verified, because the Russian aren't telling, and Trump family and their sycophantic hangers on have lied about them.

1. Contacts between Trump's team and Russians (true)
2. Russian meddling in the 2016 election (true)
3. Trump's real estate dealings in Russia (true)
4. Potential Russian leverage on Trump, i.e. kompromat (suspected but can't be verified)
5. Michael Cohen's alleged trip to Prague (suspected but can't be verified)*
6. Michael Flynn's paid trip to Moscow (true)
7. Carter Page's meetings with Russians (true)
8. Russia wanted to help Trump win the election (true)
9. Russia has extensive program of state-sponsored offensive cyberoperations. (true)
10. Kremlin behind recent hacking of DNC e-mails (true)
11. There is a close relationship between Putin and Russia’s largest commercial bank (true)

* Cohen denies ever being there, but its known for a fact that his phone was pinged off a celltower in Prague.

If I was a betting man, I would bet that there are a whole lot more confirmations of the remaining unverfied memos in the Steel Dossier buried under those redactions in the Mueller Report.



Let me ask you this.

You are being investigated for a murder, and it absolutely was not you. You KNOW it wasn't you. You know exactly what you were doing at the time the victim was murdered, but you have no way to prove it; no witnesses to you whereabouts, you don't appear in any streetcams in some other area, you didn't receive or make any phone calls, i.e. you have no alibi for the time of the murder. This is an injustice, right? You know you didn't do it, but the Police are investigating you and you are their prime suspect!

Are you allowed to obstruct that injustice?
Are you allowed to ask people you know on the Police force to keep you informed about their investigation.
Are you allowed to get someone to lie for you to give you an alibi?
Are you allowed to try to get your uncle, the Police Commissioner, to shut the investigation down?

If you answer "YES" then we have a problem, because you will have just thrown the Rule of Llaw out the window, and everyone here will know there is no point debating with you

If you answer "NO" then you need to explain why Trump is allowed to break the law to protect himself from investigation, but you are not.
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Rather than getting into a hypothetical debate I'd just prefer to wait and see what documents are declassified and released. We can then discuss the facts of the case rather than wasting time by swapping hyptotheticals that do not apply.

Chris B.
 
thaiboxerken said:
All of these arguments coming from the Trumpanzees are just a distraction and excuse for the real reason they think the investigations are wrong and that Trump is innocent.

They like Trump and everything he is doing, they worship him.
They also think laws do not apply to Republicans.

That's all there is to it.
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Trump supporters are simply glad we live in a Country where we cannot be jailed for voicing our opinions about our leaders.
Chris B.
 
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ChrisBFRPKY said:
Rather than getting into a hypothetical debate I'd just prefer to wait and see what documents are declassified and released. We can then discuss the facts of the case rather than wasting time by swapping hyptotheticals that do not apply.

Chris B.
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these are two very separate issues.

We have the Mueller Report on Collusion and Obstruction, and Barr'S investigation won't affect any of the findings, only the origin.
We can have an informed debate about the connections between Russia and people Trump picked to work for him NOW.

When Barr is done, maybe we can have another debate about the probe's start (after we had Nunes and the Inspector General already finishing their investigations).
 
PhantomWolf said:
Your interpretation is so incorrect it doesn't even get to reach the requirements for wrong..

The "Clean Hands Doctrine" is a "Bad Faith" doctrine which is in place to prevent law enforcement from breaking the law or the constitution themselves, or getting others to do it on their behalf, in order to get evidence. However, if they are not responsible for the breaking of the law or the constitution, or that done by others outside of their control, e.g. someone steals a document from their boss and then passes it to LE without any LE involvement, or if the information they use to start an investigation turns out to be faulty. Neither of these is a Bad Faith action that does not in any way invalidate the investigation.

If an officer hears what he thinks are screams coming from a house and breaks in to find a child prostitution ring and drug house, then just because he initially believed that an assault was occurring does not prevent him from arresting and charging for the crime found.

In the same way, if I reported you for beating your dog because you smelled funny and so I didn't like you, and when the police arrived they discovered that while you had no dogs, you were a serial murderer hiding bodies in your basement, you don't get to walk away scott-free because the initial report to the police was fraudulent.

And finally, claiming "Clean Hands" is something that is done in a court case, and is an affirmative defense, in other words, you can't just claim that LE operated outside of the Law or Constitution, you have to actually prove that it was done, which no-one claiming it in this case has actually done yet.
As to the whole "Obstructing Injustice" thing, this is called pulling pseudo-legal terms out of right-wing's rear-end.
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Hence the recent power to declassify bestowed upon Mr Barr. Nobody said anyone has proven it yet, but it's a safe bet it's coming.

Chris B.
 
tanabear said:
The entire Crossfire Hurricane counter-intelligence investigation was supposedly based on George Papadopoulos's meeting with Joseph Mifsud on April 26, 2016. So everything hinges on Joseph Mifsud being a Russian agent. If he is really an asset of western intelligence then this whole investigation was a fraud.

Background:

George Papadopoulos was working for the London Centre for International Law Practice(LCILP) when in March of 2016 he announced that he was leaving to go work on the Trump campaign. One of the directors at the LCILP, Arvinder Sambei, encouraged Papadopoulos, before he left, to visit a professor in Rome, Joseph Mifsud. He is/was a professor a Link Campus in Rome. This is apparently some type of spy school for FBI, CIA, MI-6 etc. Papadopoulos was introduced to Mifsud by Vincenzo Scotti, the former Foreign Affairs Minister of Italy. Mifsud probed Papadopoulos on his religion and other matters. Mifsud mentioned that he had connections to Russian officials. When Papadopoulos returned to London he received an e-mail from Mifsud asking for another meeting. He mentioned that he would be bringing "Putin's niece". The people at the LCILP also confirmed that this would be "Putin's niece", but actually it wasn't. But it gave Mifsud the appearance of having high level Russian contacts.

It was the meeting between Mifsud and Papadopoulos on April 26th, 2016where Mifsud told Papadopoulos that Russian had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of e-mails".

So is Mifsud a Russian agent?

- He is friends with Gianni Pittella an Italian socialist who attended a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton and called Trump a "virus".
- He worked with Claire Smith at the London Academy of Diplomacy, University of Stirling, and Link Campus University in Rome. She was on the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Committee.
- He is a member of the European Council on Foreign relations.
- He was last seem publicly in a picture taken with Boris Johnson in October 2017.

He has since seemed to have disappeared from public view. However, he did not flee to Russia. He is still living and possibly under a different identity in Italy.

So why was Papadopoulos's having a few meetings with Mifsud and exchanging some e-mails evidence of a sinister Russian collusion that needed to be investigated, while Mifsud's relations with western intelligence didn't seem to interest Mueller and his team in the least?

In short, the entire Russian collusion, Russia hacked the election, Russian influence campaign, overall Russian hysteria is nothing more than a western intelligence, western media generated PSYOPS campaign against the American people. Not a single bit of it was ever true.
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HBO might pick this up off you but it needs work.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Trump supporters are simply glad we live in a Country where we cannot be jailed for voicing our opinions about our leaders.
Chris B.
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Given that Trump must be the biggest threat to this situation being allowed to continue for at least a generation, this seems an odd comment.
 
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ChrisBFRPKY said:
Hence the recent power to declassify bestowed upon Mr Barr. Nobody said anyone has proven it yet, but it's a safe bet it's coming.
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Of course, you do realise that the only information from those documents that will be revealed to the public is stuff that is favourable to Trump. Everything unfavourable to Trump will remain classified/redacted.

In the mean time, we are also pretty sure that any declassified documents, publicly revealed or not ,will be given straight to Putin. Trump cares for no-one but himself, so I have no doubt whatsoever that he will give up the names of CIA assets in Russia. Hopefully, by now, the CIA will have told their assets in Russia to get out of town, any that don't heed the warning will disappear without a trace.

ChrisBFRPKY said:
Rather than getting into a hypothetical debate I'd just prefer to wait and see what documents are declassified and released. We can then discuss the facts of the case rather than wasting time by swapping hyptotheticals that do not apply.
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Oh, but the hypotheticals DO apply. Your problem is that you have no answer to them, so like a good bigfooter, you handwave away that which does not fit into your worldview.

But hypotheticals or not, Black Letter law says that Trump is NOT allowed to obstruct an investigation into himself. If you grant that he is, then you must grant that any American citizen may legally obstruct a Police investigation into them.
 
smartcooky said:
Of course, you do realise that the only information from those documents that will be revealed to the public is stuff that is favourable to Trump. Everything unfavourable to Trump will remain classified/redacted.

In the mean time, we are also pretty sure that any declassified documents, publicly revealed or not ,will be given straight to Putin. Trump cares for no-one but himself, so I have no doubt whatsoever that he will give up the names of CIA assets in Russia. Hopefully, by now, the CIA will have told their assets in Russia to get out of town, any that don't heed the warning will disappear without a trace.



Oh, but the hypotheticals DO apply. Your problem is that you have no answer to them, so like a good bigfooter, you handwave away that which does not fit into your worldview.

But hypotheticals or not, Black Letter law says that Trump is NOT allowed to obstruct an investigation into himself. If you grant that he is, then you must grant that any American citizen may legally obstruct a Police investigation into them.
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I'm not interested in anything from the declassified documents other than the conduct of the intelligence agencies. My main curiosity is whether or not there was illegal spying done. I already know there was no conspiracy between Trump and Russia as per the report.

You still portraying the narrative that Trump is a Russian agent? Really now.

Bigfoot again? I'm sure there are several members eager to discuss Bigfoot in the appropriate threads. It looks like the conversation has been pretty lacking there lately.

I would submit that any American who is being wrongly targeted by a wrongful investigation has the civic responsibility to report those actions to either the office of Internal Affairs of that organization or the office of Inspector General. No person or organization is above the law in the US.

Chris B.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
I'm not interested in anything from the declassified documents other than the conduct of the intelligence agencies. My main curiosity is whether or not there was illegal spying done. I already know there was no conspiracy between Trump and Russia as per the report.

You still portraying the narrative that Trump is a Russian agent? Really now.

Bigfoot again? I'm sure there are several members eager to discuss Bigfoot in the appropriate threads. It looks like the conversation has been pretty lacking there lately.

I would submit that any American who is being wrongly targeted by a wrongful investigation has the civic responsibility to report those actions to either the office of Internal Affairs of that organization or the office of Inspector General. No person or organization is above the law in the US.
evidence
Chris B.
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FTFY and it doesn't surprise anyone.
 
Chris, it's a shame that you didn't work for the US IC in early 2016 - you would have been the only one who could tell straight away that Trump had no compromising connections to Russia, no investigation needed.
 
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