Mueller Investigation pt 6

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Ziggurat said:
No, this is wrong. Mueller said if the investigation proved he was innocent, he would have said so. But having insufficient evidence of a crime is different than having proof of innocence. Mueller never said that if there was insufficient evidence to charge, he would have said so.
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Again, this is willful ignorance. The report did exactly that with the conspiracy question in Volume I.

Take a breath, Zig. Read the report yourself and stop relying on Trump supporters for your information.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Just one question:

do you consider the findings of the Mueller report more or less serious than those of the Starr report?
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Interesting question, and surprisingly difficult to answer.

After much thought, I won't give much of an answer, because I think the question isn't well phrased. The subject of the Mueller report, which was Russian interference, is extremely important. However, the focus of interest right now concerning the Mueller report is whether there's anything in it that we can use to throw Trump out of office. On that subject, the report has no "finding" at all. Ziggurat is absolutely and completely correct on that point. There are certain matters of law and certain matters of fact that might be related to future criminal prosecution and/or impeachment, but there are no "findings" on that subject in the report.

As previously stated, my opinion is that those facts will never result in a conviction, either by the Senate or in a court of law. Also as previously stated, I'm not interested in trying to convince anyone here that I am right. Time will tell, and history will give a definitive answer on the subject.



One thought that I will share is that it is in some sense unfortunate that Mueller had more integrity than Starr. Starr started with a fairly serious allegation of real estate fraud, but decided that he had power to investigate anything and everything related to any alleged impropriety brought to his attention. Can you imagine if Mueller had done the same? There's no way Trump could stand up to that kind of scrutiny.
 
Meadmaker said:
One thought that I will share is that it is in some sense unfortunate that Mueller had more integrity than Starr. Starr started with a fairly serious allegation of real estate fraud, but decided that he had power to investigate anything and everything related to any alleged impropriety brought to his attention. Can you imagine if Mueller had done the same? There's no way Trump could stand up to that kind of scrutiny.
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I agree.
I am convinced (until I get evidence to the contrary) that Rosenstein told Mueller that Trump's Red Line vis-a-vis his personal finances was real, and Mueller never truly tested this for fear of losing the entire investigation.
 
Meadmaker said:
As previously stated, my opinion is that those facts will never result in a conviction, either by the Senate or in a court of law. Also as previously stated, I'm not interested in trying to convince anyone here that I am right. Time will tell, and history will give a definitive answer on the subject.
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Yep Nixon was right and obstruction of justice is legal when the president does it.
 
Dear God.

Some people really, really think Trump should just get off on a "Well there's nothing in the rule book that says a golden retriever can't play football" level bit of semantic procedural compliance just to "even the scales" over the fact that 20 years ago the Republicans weren't allowed to put Clinton in a pillory on the Capitol steps over a blowjob.
 
It would be an entirely different matter if Trump was still just a TV-actor.
But the standards for President should be higher, not lower than that of an average person.

"Almost certainly guilty but hard to get convicted" should not be the standard we apply to the Commander-in-Chief.
 
Meadmaker said:
The subject of the Mueller report, which was Russian interference, is extremely important. However, the focus of interest right now concerning the Mueller report is whether there's anything in it that we can use to throw Trump out of office. On that subject, the report has no "finding" at all.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your horses there, buckaroo. Repeating a lie does not make it true.

The report found that Trump committed an impeachable offense and went to great lengths to support that. Without looking, I believe it is the entirety of the third section of Volume II, although that might also include charging Trump once he is out of office.

Just because Mueller could not indict a sitting president does not mean he couldn’t prepare a case for impeachment and let congress take it from there. That is exactly what Volume II of the report does.

Seriously, read the damn thing.
 
Upchurch said:
Repeating a lie does not make it true.
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Is that really true anymore? I mean that's how it should be but... reality has us pretty well established into a post-truth world now.

The Conservative tactic of planting the idea that all sources of information are "biased" so you just pick the one that agrees with you and that's the same thing as being "informed" has been pretty effective.
 
Upchurch said:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your horses there, buckaroo. Repeating a lie does not make it true.

The report found that Trump committed an impeachable offense and went to great lengths to support that.
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Strictly speaking it couldn't determine that, it determined he had committed a criminal offense and that congress should decide if the obstruction of justice is impeachable. If he wasn't president he would certainly have been charged of course.


It is just that Meadmaker does not think obstruction of justice is an impeachable offence.

Indicting him after he is no longer in office is certainly an option for federal prosecutors unless he pardons himself.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Strictly speaking it couldn't determine that, it determined he had committed a criminal offense and that congress should decide if the obstruction of justice is impeachable.
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I'll have to review that part. However it was put, it was backed with a mountain of evidence and legal argument.
 
Belz... said:
No, it really isn't.

And fact-checking is about to get even harder now that digital technology allows us to create fake videos of people from thin air.
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Hmmmm... if only there had been some movement or call for intellectual standards that had been warning us for years that "Intellectual standards are important, looking at things critically doesn't make you a meanie, being wrong has actual consequences."

But there I go living in my fantasy world again.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Hmmmm... if only there had been some movement or call for intellectual standards that had been warning us for years that "Intellectual standards are important, looking at things critically doesn't make you a meanie, being wrong has actual consequences."

But there I go living in my fantasy world again.
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Crazy talk. Stop it.
 
PhantomWolf said:
You seem to be forgetting that he actually did exactly that as far as the Trump Campaign and Conspiracy with Russia was concerned. You are claiming that he didn't do exactly what he did do.

Since he conducted both sections under the same rules, if their was insufficient evidence for Volume II, just as he stated that there was for Volume I, then it is clear that he would have, in fact he would have had to have come to the same conclusion. He didn't. He concluded that the evidence he had showed that unlike in the first Volume, he could not clear the President based on the evidence. In other words, unlike in Volume I when he says he has insufficient evidence, in Volume II he clearly has enough evidence, and it does not clear the President.
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Well, no. That hilighted part is actually wrong, as the report itself makes clear.
https://www.washingtonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/searchable-mueller-report.pdf

The standard for Volume I (page 16 and 17 of the PDF):
In reaching the charging decisions described in Volume 1 of the report, the Office determined whether the conduct it found amounted to a violation of federal criminal law chargeable under the Principles of Federal Prosecution. See Justice Manual § 9-27.000 et seq. (2018). The standard set forth in the Justice Manual is whether the conduct constitutes a crime; if so, whether admissible evidence would probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction; and whether prosecution would serve a substantial federal interest that could not be adequately served by prosecution elsewhere or through non-criminal alternatives. See Justice Manual § 9-27.220.​

The standard for Volume II (page 213 of the PDF):
We first describe the considerations that guided our obstruction-of-justice investigation, and then provide an overview of this Volume:

First, a traditional prosecution or declination decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution, but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.​

There's more detail there, of course, but it's quite clear that the standards used in Volume I and Volume II are not the same, and the standards outlined for Volume II specifically and explicitly apply only to Volume II
 
Ziggurat said:
Well, no. That hilighted part is actually wrong, as the report itself makes clear.
https://www.washingtonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/searchable-mueller-report.pdf

The standard for Volume I (page 16 and 17 of the PDF):
In reaching the charging decisions described in Volume 1 of the report, the Office determined whether the conduct it found amounted to a violation of federal criminal law chargeable under the Principles of Federal Prosecution. See Justice Manual § 9-27.000 et seq. (2018). The standard set forth in the Justice Manual is whether the conduct constitutes a crime; if so, whether admissible evidence would probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction; and whether prosecution would serve a substantial federal interest that could not be adequately served by prosecution elsewhere or through non-criminal alternatives. See Justice Manual § 9-27.220.​

The standard for Volume II (page 213 of the PDF):
We first describe the considerations that guided our obstruction-of-justice investigation, and then provide an overview of this Volume:

First, a traditional prosecution or declination decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution, but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.​

There's more detail there, of course, but it's quite clear that the standards used in Volume I and Volume II are not the same, and the standards outlined for Volume II specifically and explicitly apply only to Volume II
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*facepalm*

Okay, you're taking this out of context. Volume I was an investigation of the Trump Campaign, where indictments can be, and were, issued against anyone who isn't the sitting President. Volume II was an investigation of Trump himself, where indictments were not allowed by DOJ policy.

Both volumes were conducted under the same "can't indict the President" rules. The only difference is in who was being investigated and what actions were available to the investigators.

But, yummy cherries you picked there. Why not read the whole report to understand what it actually said?
 
Belz... said:
It is possible that Nixon was wrong AND that Trump will never face justice.
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Unfortunately, I do expect that Trump will never face justice.

After all, considering that the stupid, idiotic liar George W. Bush escaped justice after he murdered tens of thousands of Iraqis and instituted a torture program, then I expect that it is quite unlikely that Trump will escape justice as well.

After all, we are getting the government that we deserve.
 
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Upchurch said:
*facepalm*

Okay, you're taking this out of context. Volume I was an investigation of the Trump Campaign, where indictments can be, and were, issued against anyone who isn't the sitting President. Volume II was an investigation of Trump himself, where indictments were not allowed by DOJ policy.

Both volumes were conducted under the same "can't indict the President" rules. The only difference is in who was being investigated and what actions were available to the investigators.

But, yummy cherries you picked there. Why not read the whole report to understand what it actually said?
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The "can't indict the President" rule does not prohibit Mueller (or any other investigator) from concluding that the President committed an otherwise prosecutable offense. And the rule in question isn't about who can be indicted. It's about whether to use the standard of whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate a crime (Volume I) or the standard of whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate a lack of crime (Volume II). Those standards are not the same, at all. And that was a choice Mueller made, it was not imposed on him by any federal law or regulation.
 
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