Mueller Investigation pt 6

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Upchurch said:
Of all the citation methods, you pick the one specific to a file you have instead of the one they use internally to the document?

In retrospect, I probably should have expected that...
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Basically all the available PDF's have the exact same page count. Using the PDF page number is in fact the fastest way to find the relevant page, since that's the number you enter in order to jump to a specified page. It's really not hard to figure out.
 
Mueller, in trying his best to do nothing wrong, produced something that is too open to interpretation - as everyone, starting with Barr, has done.
Hundreds of federal prosecutors have chimed in with what they think Mueller said.
So have thousands of people on social media.
 
Ziggurat said:
Mueller explicitly refused to answer that question.
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Meadmaker said:
Qft
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No, like Upchurch said, he refused to indict, saying that was Congress' job.

What is it about "if he were innocent I would have said so" that is hard for you to understand?

Mueller said it would be unethical for him to say Trump was guilty because Trump would have no formal means to challenge the charges.
 
Ziggurat said:
From pages 213-214 of the report, from section 2 regarding obstruction of justice:... it also does not exonerate him....

Mueller is explicitly stating multiple times that he refused to conclude that the President committed a crime.

No, Belz, it does not. Again, explicitly so.
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You just waltzed right past that. :rolleyes:
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
No, like Upchurch said, he refused to indict
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No, you and Upchurch are both wrong. First, Mueller didn't refuse to indict, he never had the option. Second, Mueller didn't just not indict. Mueller didn't even make a judgment on criminal conduct.

What is it about "if he were innocent I would have said so" that is hard for you to understand?
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Evidently quite a lot, since that's not actually what Mueller said. So why did you put it in quotes?

Here's the actual text (again from page 214 of the PDF):
"Fourth, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment."

Since you're probably not capable of figuring out the difference on your own, it's possible for Trump to be innocent without the investigation proving that he's innocent. Your quote implies that since Mueller didn't say Trump was innocent, that means he's not innocent. But that's not what the report says. It says that since Mueller didn't say Trump was innocent, it means that Mueller didn't prove he was innocent. But since you can be innocent without being proven innocent, it's still possible that Trump is innocent, even granting Mueller's views on all the facts and interpretations of law.

Mueller said it would be unethical for him to say Trump was guilty because Trump would have no formal means to challenge the charges.
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That's the stated motivation for refusing to conclude guilt. But regardless of motivation, the fact remains, as I stated, that Mueller refused to conclude guilt.
 
Ziggurat said:
But what he could do is state that a crime occurred. And he explicitly refused to do so.
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Sure, because he chose to work within a framework that prohibited him from even stating the president committed a crime. That doesn't really work well as a defense of Trump, you know.

Of course, that never stopped you before....
 
Ziggurat said:
Some people interpret it that way, but that's not a universally shared interpretation, it's not an interpretation the report itself makes, and it's far from the only reasonable interpretation of those facts.
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While at least the first part of this may technically be true, do you think a reasonable jury, being blinded to who the suspect is, would actually reach a "not guilty"-verdict in each one of the 10 cases?

1005 and counting former and current federal prosecutors seem to think the case would be pretty clear:

https://medium.com/@dojalumni/statement-by-former-federal-prosecutors-8ab7691c2aa1
 
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Ziggurat said:
But what he could do is state that a crime occurred. And he explicitly refused to do so.
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Because he could not indict. A kind of Catch 22, if you will.

He could only explicitly say a crime was committed if also permitted to render a charge. Can't charge/indict? Then can't say he committed a crime. That would be unfair because the suspect has no recourse in the courts.

It's so simple a concept to grok.

But only if there wasn't that OLC guideline gumming up the works. If not for that, I'd bet serious money Mueller would have indicted.

Just like a *thousand* career prosecutors have stated they would if it were anyone but a temporarily immune-from-justice President.

This talking point about Mueller having not explicitly said Trump is guilty of a crime, thus rendering Trump innocent by inference, really rubs my fur the wrong way. How goddamned convenient for the apologists, by which to delude themselves and the other blinder-wearers.
 
Cabbage said:
Edited by zooterkin: 
<SNIP>
Edited for rule 0 and rule 9.
you're going to have to elaborate on how that excuses Trump from pretending the problem doesn't exist.
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Is that a change of horses, or just a goalpost-move?

I'm not going to have to do anything. Especially not anything about a problem I wasn't even talking about.
 
Tommok said:
While at least the first part of this may technically be true, do you think a reasonable jury, being blinded to who the suspect is, would actually reach a "not guilty"-verdict in each one of the 10 cases?

1005 and counting former and current federal prosecutors seem to think the case would be pretty clear:

https://medium.com/@dojalumni/statement-by-former-federal-prosecutors-8ab7691c2aa1
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From the link:

We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country....

These include:

· The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;

· The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and

· The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign. ...

Signatories have been vetted to the best of our ability.
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All 1005 are listed as is a detailed description of each of the above charges.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
The framers of the Constitution didn't put every blindingly obvious thing in the Constitution.

"The President can't use the fact that he's head of the executive branch, and therefore technically the top tier of the hierarchy of any investigation the Federal Government of the United States undergoes, to prevent this own self from being investigated" isn't in the Constitution for the same reason that "You don't get sympathy from the judge for being orphan if you're the one who killed your parents" isn't in there.

But even beyond that the Constitution was never meant to be a suicide pact. Let's not Bob ourselves into "Well even if we all agree that outcome would be disastrous, we have to do what the piece of paper says."
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I'm pretty sure it's been well established that Congress has complete investigative authority independently of the Executive branch. While they lack law enforcement powers, they can certainly commission investigators, issue subpoenas, and compel testimony under oath.

Probably the best long-term solution is for Congress to formalize their investigative role through legislation that establishes and clarifies the role of a Congressional investigator.
 
Ziggurat said:
Some people interpret it that way
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True.

Ziggurat said:
that's not a universally shared interpretation,
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True.

Ziggurat said:
it's not an interpretation the report itself makes,
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It's not an interpretation, it's a presentation of all elements necessary for the crime of obstruction, at least in 4 cases. If I show you one of my cars and then another one of my cars, you don't have to interpret my presentation of my cars to you for you to see that I have two cars. That's interpreting "interpretation" (hah!) beyond the bounds.

Ziggurat said:
and it's far from the only reasonable interpretation of those facts.
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Disagree. When there are four elements to demonstrating obstruction of justice, and each element is presented, there's only one reasonable interpretation. Unless you disagree that, for one of the four cases for which all elements are presented, not all elements were actually presented. If that's the case, go ahead and specify which one wasn't presented.
 
Trump will not be pleased. The House Judiciary Committee has just announced it will hold new hearings into the Mueller Report.
 
Mueller witness, George Nader, arrested for child porn.

George Nader was arrested as he arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. He previously pleaded guilty to a similar offense in Virginia in 1991.

Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who has ties to former aides to President Donald Trump, has served as an adviser to the ruling families of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He is mentioned repeatedly in Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including in a section discussing his work arranging a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles between Trump ally Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev, who heads the Russian sovereign wealth fund.
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The evidence includes a dozen sexually explicit videos recovered from Nader’s cell phones, prosecutors said. The charges, filed under seal on April 19, 2018, were unsealed Monday.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...eorge-nader-charged-in-child-pornography-case
 
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