Excellent and clear summation of the central problem with the Mueller report
Not long after the Mueller report was issued, I wrote the following:
This is what I’ve been harping on for quite some time—that the anti-Trump Russiagate conspiracy theorists are requiring him to do something impossible, which is to prove his innocence. This is a violation of our entire system of law, but they don’t care, because their eyes are on the prize, which is to destroy Trump. The Mueller Report isn’t going to stop them, and wasn’t ever going to stop them, and in fact has given them plenty to go on with its “outrageous shifting of the burden of proof.”
To me, this “outrageous shifting of the burden of proof” should actually outrage all Americans, because it really is “a violation of our entire system of law.” But it obviously has not outraged all Americans, or perhaps even most. It’s hard to know how many Democrats it has outraged, but although this should be a bipartisan reaction it clearly has not turned out that way.
And this is not the least bit surprising to anyone who has watched the decline of thought, knowledge, and discourse in this country. How many people even know how our system of justice works in the first place, or just why the system is set up so that a person does not have to prove his or her innocence, and how it is that it ultimately protects each individual, Democrats or Republican or anyone else?
And how many people who actually do understand those principles are still willing to suspend them if they can be weaponized against an enemy?
Emmet T. Flood, special counsel to President Trump, understands:
The [special counsel’s report] suffers from an extraordinary legal defect: It quite deliberately fails to comply with the requirements of governing law…
What prosecutors are supposed to do is complete an investigation and then either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case. When prosecutors decline to charge, they make that decision not because they have “conclusively determin[ed] that no criminal conduct occurred,” but rather because they do not believe that the investigated conduct constitutes a crime for which all the elements can be proven to the satisfaction of a jury beyond a reasonable doubt…
Our country would be a very different (and very dangerous) place if prosecutors applied the [special counsel’s] standard and citizens were obliged to prove “conclusively. . .that no criminal conduct occurred.” …
The [special counsel] instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity — part “truth commission” report and part law school exam paper. Far more detailed than the text of any known criminal indictment or declination memorandum, the Report is laden with factual information that has never been subjected to adversarial testing or independent analysis. That information is accompanied by a series of inexplicably inconclusive observations (inexplicable, that is, coming from a prosecutor) concerning the possible application of law to fact. This species of public report has no basis in the relevant regulations and no precedent in the history of special/independent counsel investigations.
But most of those lawyers who are Democrats (with a few exceptions such as Alan Dershowitz, who is a rara avis) conveniently ignore that. How they rationalize it in their minds is quite the act of mental gymnastics, but I’ve seen it done often enough (and not just by Democrats, either, although they are far more likely to do so and far more skilled in the art).
And then there’s this:
Not so long ago, the idea that a law enforcement official might provide the press with confidential governmental information for the proclaimed purpose of prompting a criminal investigation of an identified individual would have troubled Americans of all political persuasions. That the head of our country’s top law enforcement agency has actually done so to the President of the United States should frighten every friend of individual liberty.
It should.
It doesn’t. Or maybe, actually, it does “frighten every friend of individual liberty.” The sad thing is that such friends have become less numerous lately.
Your final sentence says it all.
The above illustrates why education is so important, and why one of the first fundamental institutions that the Left infiltrated and now have pretty much complete control over was the Educational establishment.
The last couple of generations of “educators”—each generation more leftist in orientation, and now, apparently, comprising the majority, perhaps the overwhelming majority of our educators—have succeeded in “fundamentally transforming” the traditional curriculum, in watering down, deleting, or twisting fundamental information, of narrowing down what is taught; replacing traditional and substantial content with Leftist propaganda and twaddle.
They’ve succeeded in removing all sorts of fundamental information that every citizen should know—things like “civics”—how our government is structured and functions, detailed study and exploration of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and what they mean for each citizen (my barely educated grandmother, with only a few years of grade school she was taught around 1900-1910 or so, had memorized and could recite the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights) and large swathes of American History.
Moreover, what they have left remaining they have twisted into an anti-American screed, and have eliminated a lot of western History and Philosophy, and the great ideas that informed and animated the Founders.
Founders who, by the way, many of our modern day educators have trashed in every way they can, because, don’t ya know, they were dead old white guys, slave owners—look at Jefferson and Sally Hemings—and did all sorts of other bad stuff.
Over these last couple of generations, these Leftist educators have succeeded changing the world view of a lot of young people, succeeded in tarnishing and diminishing traditional American patriotism, and national pride, succeeded in doing a good job of fracturing this nation’s absolutely essential social cohesion.
In any event, you can’t know about our American “presumption of innocence”—how it developed, and the role it plays as the keystone of our legal system—an assumption of innocence the is essentially the opposite of every other legal system on the planet—if you were never were taught that this key presumption exists in the first place, how important it is, or what it means in practical terms.
It’s pretty hard to know what key pieces of information you’re missing, if you don’t know they exist.
This letter is a hot topic, and it should be. On another blog, I was running through the comment thread and finding that the other side’s comments focused on two things: 1. That their reading of the Mueller Report indicates that the only reason Mueller didn’t recommend indictment of Trump on obstruction was solely because of the longstanding precedent that sitting presidents can’t face indictment (because it would cripple the office of the presidency), so we’ll all just have to be patient and wait for Trump to be indicted once he’s no longer president – say, January 2021. 2. That the motivation for this letter is Trump realizing that he wasn’t in fact “exonerated” by the Mueller Report and getting into a snit about it, and telling his counsel to write a nastygram.
Neither of these opinions is either important in itself or the reason for the letter. The first reason is flat-out false; Mueller told Barr repeatedly upon questioning that the OLC precedent was NOT the sole reason he didn’t recommend indictment. (Mueller’s team is “formulating” its reasons for not making a recommendation either way. In other words, they threaded the needle between coming right out and lying by saying Trump is a dirty crook, and not pleasing their audience by telling the flat truth, that there’s insufficient evidence to bring a charge – and NOW they’re trying to justify WHY they did that.)
But even if Mueller hadn’t answered Barr as he did, or at all, it wouldn’t matter; his brief – his real brief, not the “Russian conspiracy investigation” pretext under which he tied things up for two years – was to find impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors,” not run-of-the-mill criminality. He didn’t – couldn’t? – even do that. Instead, I understand Volume II presents one-sided and incomplete evidence supporting a case for obstruction… that just isn’t strong enough to be dispositive. If it had been dispositive, he would’ve presented it that way. Instead, there was plenty of room (obviously) for Barr to say, “OK, Mueller abdicated his responsibility to make a prosecutorial recommendation concerning obstruction, so I will have to read his raw materials and make a determination without any recommendation from him. And those raw materials indicate that there is insufficient evidence to pursue an obstruction case.” (Of course, that course of action also made Barr the bad guy instead of Mueller, which is certainly useful to Mueller. But how else can we read Mueller’s failure to recommend anything, except as a vestige of some legal scruples? He couldn’t quite bring himself to lie, so instead he just complained that Barr’s summary didn’t capture his feelings about the president.)
The second commenter opinion, that the letter was a way for Trump to yell at Mueller, is just blind. The reason for the letter, for this particular letter, written in the vernacular and laid out so clearly that a smart middle-schooler can understand it, is to get the word out to the American public that Mueller’s lack of prosecutorial recommendation was deliberate, purposeful, wrong under the law, and political. I don’t know that this letter is going to get the kind of press that Mueller’s self-serving “feelings” letter has, but it is very clearly aimed at US.
P.S.–Its also pretty apparent that basic skills like oh, I don’t know–“readin, writin and arithmatic,” have also been neglected, as well as the teaching of things like Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Logic–analytical tools that would arm citizens with the things they need in order to dissect and to understand the arguments, and proposals that government officials and politicians present them with, can’t have that.
P.S.S.–Teaching basic Economics to each student would also make a huge difference.
To Snow on Pine-
Thankfully there are still a few places that haven’t gone Progressive/Socialist, like Hillsdale College, where I completed a free refresher course on the Constitution and Dec. of Ind.
Can the democrats prove to us without a doubt that Obama has never raped any women in his life? The probable causes are the fact that he has functional sexual organs and he has sexual desire for women. Unless someone has the video and sound recording of their entire life everyone is guilty of any accusations if the burden to prove innocent is on the accused. even if there is a lapse of 10 minutes in the recording of your whole life the democrats can still claim those 10 minutes were used to commit the crimes they accused you.
There was once a town in Mississippi by the name of Rara Avis. The only remaining trace of it I could find is the Rara Avis General Store at 5858 Cotton Gin Road, where the town was, about a half mile west of the Alabama state line. Rare birds are a step away from extinction. In the time leading up to its extinction, the beautiful, gregarious Carolina Parakeet became a rara avis.
The near extinction of Democrats like Dershowitz makes future elections a potentially do or die proposition for American democracy as we know it. The standard of innocent until proven guilty is practically dead to the left already.
Again, indicting someone for ‘obstruction of justice’ when there is no underlying criminal activity the investigation and punishment of which has been ‘obstructed’ is rather like arresting someone for resisting arrest. Lay partisans have peddled the idea that Trump obstructed justice by firing a problem employee (it was his prerogative to fire) and (by some accounts) Andrew Weissman promoted the idea that Trump’s tweets constituted obstruction of justice. The whole exercise is grasping at straws by people who should never again hold a position of influence over anyone.
Art Deco — right on! Two more elements that would make any case a loser: one, there was no surreptitious behavior. Not part of the elements of the crime in the statute, but in any juror’s mind, clandestine activity — meeting in dark alleys to hand over envelopes stuffed with cash — is an essential part of the crime; blasting away on Twitter, to the press, and in front of the White House staff is not likely to be seen by every juror (a unanimous verdict is required in federal cases) as obstruction. Two, nothing happened. Obviously, McGahn, Lewendowski, Sessions, and others knew Trump was just blowing off steam when he “ordered” them to fire Comey, “unrecuse” themselves or whatever, and they didn’t do it.
The Justice Department gets convictions in 95%+ of their cases because they only try the cases they’re damn sure they are going to win. No way as Trump obstruction case was a sure winner and Barr (and Rosenstein) knew it.
You ask how the dems can “rationalize” their flexible view of having to prove innocence.
How about this. They don’t rationalize it. They use it one way or another, depending in utility.
As far as the Left’s mass media propaganga agents are concerned, the Mueller report means what they say it means. When consequence is absent, truth lies in the grave that deceit has prepared for it.
Art Deco,
I agree that a charge of obstruction of justice is invalid when no crime exists to obstruct. I do not agree that a charge of “resisting arrest” is invalid when an individual is told that they’re under arrest and physically resists that arrest.
If no grounds for arrest existed, the remedy is to bring a lawsuit for “false arrest under the color of authority”.
The taxpayer’s remedy is to vote out of office the elected officials who fail to hold accountable the superiors of the arresting officers.
Flood must read neo!
The law is so very different from medicine. It seems tethered to rationalization.
“the Report is laden with factual [sic] information that has never been subjected to adversarial testing or independent analysis”; would you want to take an alleged life-saving medicine based on an evaluation like that?
The Democrats’ mental acrobatics include, but are not limited to rationalizations.
Democrats lie as a matter of course, whether in courtrooms or out in the general public. They are serially amoral and unethical. They lie to their followers and to one another.
Which is why I see the coming revolution, and mass executions by the victors
Art Deco at 4:33
I don’t want to sound like Bill Clinton, but “obstruction of justice” depends upon what “justice” means. To you and me and most folks, justice means that a law has been broken or criminal activity was afoot. Enforcement of the law constitutes justice.
To Democrats, “justice” means that Hillary was supposed to be President. Donald Trump prevented her from accomplishing that, and therefore, he obstructed their “justice.”
Flood’s letter does a good job saying what a terrible job Mueller did, and in particular the failure to do his job: either recommend an indictment, or state that there is not enough evidence to indict.
Remember, Comey gave us all lots of evidence against Hillary, most publicly known by then, but then stated it was not enough to indict. He was likely lying, most prosecutors would have been able to take that evidence into a trial with confidence of getting a guilty verdict. Still, he did “do the job”, indict or not. Mueller failed. Leaving it to Barr. Who said, no indictment.
So instead, Barr is “in contempt” of Congress.
The Dem deep state is terrible, and it continues to look like it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Congress is so bad. Plus censorship against conservatives.
I keep hoping for indictments.
Neo: Or maybe, actually, it does “frighten every friend of individual liberty.” The sad thing is that such friends have become less numerous lately.
I don’t know if the friends have become less numerous lately because the media has refused to let their voices be heard.
Trump has a point when he claims the media is the enemy.
Potentially worse problems with the Mueller report: Paul Sperry reporting at RealClear Investigations: Who Were the Mueller Report’s Hired Guns?
“Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office refuses to say who they were. While it’s not unusual for special government offices to outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile “investigative reports” and other “information.”
The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special counsel’s office might have included Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the private research firm that hired Steele to produce the Russia collusion dossier for the Clinton campaign.”
Link: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/05/08/who_were_the_mueller_reports_hired_guns.html
The Democrats put their desire to destroy Trump far ahead of any sense of duty to attend to the people’s’ business. As Trump attempts to rebalance trade, deal with rivals like Russia and China, and encourage investment in our country, they engage in nothing but (yes) obstruction and character assassination. As one fantasy quest fails they embark immediately on another, even less justifiable.
We must work to ensure that 2020 deals them a stinging rebuke, because their media allies are insulating them from the growing dissatisfaction of their constituents, and of course as always, working to prevent that widespread dissatisfaction from finding a voice. In the privacy of the voting booths we must do what Congress and the media will not, and put an end to this travesty.
Richard Aubrey on May 8, 2019 at 7:07 pm at 7:07 pm said:
You ask how the dems can “rationalize” their flexible view of having to prove innocence.
How about this. They don’t rationalize it. They use it one way or another, depending in utility.
Capn Rusty on May 9, 2019 at 3:00 am at 3:00 am said:
Art Deco at 4:33
… “obstruction of justice” depends upon what “justice” means. …
* * *
Great minds etc etc.
I used to spend a lot of time commenting on how hypocritical the Left/Democrats appeared to be; they aren’t — Jonah Goldberg IIRC said that the only principle they have is what keeps them in power.
One thing I have realized lately is that, even when they have a central narrative, they are willing to put out stories arguing several different sides of a question or crisis, possibly outside of or tangential to the main narrative, which may look contradictory to each other but are always in their favor.
They do this to suck in supporters who may only agree with one of those arguments, but don’t see that the Left is arguing for ALL of them simultaneously.
When will the Committee subpoena Mueller?