More on the Michael Cohen seizure
I watched the Levin/McCarthy discussion videos I mentioned in my previous post today. Unfortunately, they can’t be embedded, and in their entirety they’re rather long.
So I’ll just suggest you watch the concluding one, which is the third in the series. I pretty much concur with what’s being said there, and I warn you: it’s very depressing.
One of the things about the lawfare against Trump is that it has four related effects that are not directly legal. The first is that anyone considering a job in the Trump administration would have to think twice about accepting it, unless that person is ready to have his or her entirely life scrutinized (and confidential communications accessed) by people determined to find a violation, however small and/or however technical.
Practically no one could endure such scrutiny. And vanishingly few would want to risk it. That handicaps Trump’s ability to govern, as one might expect. And that is one of the goals.
The second effect also would tend to handicap the president’s ability to govern, and that is just the stress and anger he is likely to feel. I certainly would feel it. Of course, presidents must function under intense stress, which is always present. But this is an added provocation. The idea is that he would crack and do something foolish, be unable to function, and/or resign.
The third effect is to gain access to all of Trump’s correspondence with his lawyer. This is the way that would work:
[Cohen’s lawyer] Ryan added that the government’s tactics were unjustified because “Mr. Cohen has cooperated completely with all government entities, including providing thousands of non-privileged documents to the Congress and sitting for depositions under oath.”
Ryan’s point that Cohen has been cooperating is a relevant one. “Searches of attorneys’ offices are ”˜last resort’ practices,” a white-collar Washington lawyer tells me, “but where there is no other way to get the suspected evidence, they are done.”
As another Washington trial attorney says, “It is unusual, absent extraordinary circumstances, to raid the office of a ”˜subject’ or ”˜target’ of an investigation especially when the government has requested and received documents from the attorney.” If such tactics were used in anything other than compelling circumstances, such as the imminent destruction of evidence, the lawyer says, “then every government investigation would start by raiding the offices” of the suspect’s attorneys.
…“When prosecutors/agents search an attorney’s office, they usually employ a clean team and dirty team,” says Wisenberg [former Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater/Lewinsky investigation]. “The dirty or taint team looks at the materials first, segregates privileged material, and does not tell the clean team about them.”
If so, one wonders where the U.S. attorneys would turn to find lawyers to staff up his “taint team.” An even bigger question will be the credibility of the clean/dirty divide…
Is there anyone on earth who would believe in the integrity of such a divide in this case? Not to mention the possibility (probability?) of leaks to the eager anti-Trump press.
The fourth effect is on the public. The constant pounding on associates of the president—where no crime by Trump has ever been shown to exist in the first place—has the effect of indicating to many people that with all this smoke there must be fire. It is compounded by the fact that most people don’t understand how the legal system works in terms of process, and are only concerned about outcome: meaning, if they hate or even dislike Trump, they would be likely to think that what Mueller et.al. are doing to him and his associates must be okay.
And there are plenty of people on both sides who hate or even dislike Trump. I’ve never been a Trump fan, but I like much of what he’s done as president so far and I think that the appointment of a special counsel was an unwarranted and dangerous dangerous move, and a politically motivated one at that. I have always been more on the Dershowitz side (that link’s from about three weeks ago) of that issue, and I would say it whether the person being investigated was Trump or Obama, Republican or Democrat:
There never should have been an appointment of special counsel and there was no probable cause that crimes were committed,” said Dershowitz. “I’ve seen no credible evidence that crimes were committed by the president.”
“The investigation should never have begun. The question is how does he deal with it. He’s playing good cop, bad cop. He has some lawyers cooperating and some attacking Mueller because he wants to be ready to attack in the event there are recommendations that are negative to the president.”
The Harvard law professor emeritus went on to describe the Mueller investigation as a “legal colonoscopy” that is looking at “every conceivable aspect” of Trump’s business life.
“Who knows how many people can survive that kind of an inquiry,” Dershowitz said. “I think on the public things being the Russia thing and obstruction of justice these are safe grounds, but on the material of his business dealings there’s no way to know.”
Such prosecutors are invitations for political witch hunts and finding what’s called “process” crimes (crimes committed in the course of an investigation, such as lying to the FBI) and/or minor crimes. And if you’re looking for those, it’s easy enough to find them.
[NOTE: Now, we don’t actually know exactly what Cohen might be charged with, and I suppose it’s possible it’s something other than the Stormy Daniels payment money and the theory that this is some form of unreported campaign contribution. Perhaps it’s something far more serious. But I highly doubt it.]
I don’t know how this will play out in the near term; although the anti-Trump forces seem to have the upper hand; i.e. the power. Those of us who are outraged have little recourse against the might of the government; and we are learning very quickly that the government has little to do with the people we voted into office.
I do know that the Left (Democrats) are sowing seeds that may ultimately bear fruit that they never contemplated. They are dividing the country in ways that we have not seen in our life time; that no one in America has experienced since the 19th century. If they persist, I expect a backlash, and I am not sure that anyone can predict its form or intensity.
I heard a quote today that resonates; “The President is neither above the law, nor below the law”. It is fair to say that if the President is in fact put “below the law”, then how can any ordinary citizen trust the law, or respect the law? At that point the situation becomes problematic.
The question that you have to ask is, will it, in the end, come to violence?
The very forces that our Founders sought to avoid, sought to chain, let loose once again.
The four effects are well described here. Very few articles attempt to address all of them at once, but most carry forward one or two of the strands in some way or another.
Oldflyer: “I heard a quote today that resonates; “The President is neither above the law, nor below the law”. It is fair to say that if the President is in fact put “below the law”, then how can any ordinary citizen trust the law, or respect the law? At that point the situation becomes problematic.”
The parties seem to be operating on a Conservation of Justice principle: having put Obama and the Clintons and the Kennedys (just to name the top level) above the law for so long, the Republicans must be put below the law for the Universe to stay balanced.
I say, let the balance be made by having both parties subject equally to the law.
Snow on Pine asks, “will it, in the end, come to violence?”
Tragically and almost certainly, yes.
When “redress of grievance” is eliminated, all that remains is enslavement or “politics by ‘other’ means”…
The prophetic words of Orwell resonate down the years; “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire, by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”
It’s getting hard to decide where to post new comments on the Topic du jour, but I’ll pick this one because it’s more general than the others put up today, and this is a generalized commentary:
Q: How is Hungary like America?
A: Everyone on the left hates the results of their Presidential election.
Q: Why does that matter?
A: Because the tactics used by the left in one country are also being used in the other.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/10/hungary-orban-democracy/
“It’s hard to say how an international body, led by unelected bureaucrats, punishing a member state for voting the wrong way will reinforce democratic principles. But the whole argument isn’t really about democracy – it’s about Hungary rejecting Eurocrat liberalism.
Many of the people presently criticizing Hungary want to spread democracy all over the globe, even if that requires western military action. But their preferred form of democracy doesn’t mean accepting the will of the people. It’s a type of government where power is invested in left-leaning elites and that promotes progressive orthodoxy.
You can still be a “real democracy” if you jail people for wrongthink Facebook posts and silence prominent dissidents with “hate speech” charges. All of Western Europe stifles free speech, yet you don’t see calls in The Washington Post for those countries to be punished.
That’s because the enemies of the elites are the ones who are punished, not the elites themselves. Orban is hated because he attacks the elites, which is why his victory must be delegitimized.
Advocates of the liberal consensus still have to maintain the illusion that their agenda is what the people really want – even when 70 percent of the people vote against it. Accusations of tainted elections, Russian meddling and voting irregularities always follow when an election doesn’t go their way.
…
Contrary to what Orban’s critics say, the real threat to democracy is left-wing elites. Time and time again, they have shown themselves unwilling to accept the results of democracy and are open to undemocratic means to reverse those defeats.
…
[the only democratic election not contested by the Left was the victory of Hamas in Gaza]
Punishing the people for having the wrong views does not make them conform to the dictates of the elite. It appears it only stiffens their resistance.
If progressives were smart, they would act on the issue that caused Brexit and Orban’s massive victory: immigration. Simply by controlling their borders and limiting the number of migrants, center-left liberals could undermine the appeal of populist-nationalists.
Instead, they insist open borders is a cardinal virtue of true liberal democracy and want to imprison anyone who dares question it. Average Europeans hear that message loud and clear.
That’s why they vote for Orban.”
Point made in the double-standards tournament:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-republicans-trump-firing-mueller-20180410-story.html
Some congressional Republicans forcefully defended the president. In doing so, one mentioned Trump’s 2016 opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“Think about the double standard,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said on Fox News Channel. “Yesterday we had the FBI raid the president’s private attorney’s residence and business. That’s privileged information. And yet when Hillary Clinton had some 60,000 emails, [her attorney] David Kendall had possession of those emails, they got to decide . . . which ones were personal.”
Taint teams and Chinese Walls are basically a kind of fraud, and I think everyone with an IQ above body temperature knows this. Incriminating or damaging material always finds its way to its most potent user. In the case at hand, you can be 100% sure that the people reviewing Cohen’s files are primarily looking for material they can send to Mueller for his case against Trump and/or leak to the NYTimes. The only stuff in the files you won’t get to read as part of a news story, a court proceeding, or an impeachment trial will be the material of Cohen’s clients who have no significant public profile.
Back to the original topic, which is Trump and collusion:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-yes-its-time-to-give-trump-some-credit-on-russia?ref=home
“First, although it’s impossible to know what might ultimately come out of the Mueller probe, Trump’s recent words and deeds could serve to quiet speculation about kompromat. As Commentary magazine’s John Podhoretz (no Trump booster) observed, “If the Russians have blackmail material on Trump that could destroy him, they should probably let it out pretty soon before his sanctions turn on everybody in Putin’s orbit.” ”
And that’s not counting him dissing Putin & bombing Russians in Syria.
There is no point in debating legal points with thugs. And that is exactly what Rosenstein and Mueller both are, thugs. They are thugs in suits who cloak thuggish actions with high-minded rhetoric about the importance of the law and their dedication to justice.
Their actions have an underlying message, and it is crystal-clear: it is a big “fuck you” to President Trump, and his associates, and his supporters. Their actions show contempt and disapproval by an inside elite toward an outsider.
But why take such an extreme step? Why do this when the “Russian interference” and “Russian collusion” investigation is essentially over? They chose to do this specific action when they were free to take a different approach.
There is something desperate about this when it was all so unnecessary. Something may come out soon that will be very embarrassing, likely for the FBI, and for the Obama administration, and for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Note also that Robert Mueller is 73, and this is all that he will be remembered for. Rod Rosenstein is 53, just a few years older than Andrew McCabe. Whatever happens next, this is the end for Rosenstein’s political career. Their actions indicate that they know something, but they are in denial about it, and so they are lashing out, hoping to provoke something.
And incidentally, both of those thugs are really kind of funny-looking.
Read the Harvey Silverglate book “Three Felonies a Day”
https://fee.org/articles/three-felonies-a-day-how-the-feds-target-the-innocent/
More than anything else, Muller’s ever-expanding “probe” –getting more akin to the famed alien “anal probe” each day, has exposed just how rigged our justice system is, and how predatory, shark-like lawyers ignore the law, and just go after whoever they want, in whatever way they want, because–shopping around–they can always find some theory of law, some “supervisor,” or judge who will justify and OK what they want to do.
It was common knowledge in the law school I attended–for one horrible year–that lawyers had a little mental list of judges, or “expert witnesses,” who could be counted on to rule in their favor, or to testify to the “truth” of whatever they might propose to be the “truth” of a matter.
Did Americans seriously think the republic wasn’t dead?
Wake up and Look Around.
“If the Russians have blackmail material on Trump that could destroy him, they should probably let it out pretty soon before his sanctions turn on everybody in Putin’s orbit.” ”
The Deep State has blackmail on HRC, Leftists, Demoncrats, and Mueller.
I am not a specialist in Russian KGB tactics, i didn’t defect from that country, so won’t make speculations on that matter. If Russia wants a double agent, they can get one in the US. Ain’t that hard given their track record with FDR.