May 29, 2019 By: El Jefe Category: Mueller
“If We Had Had Confidence that the President Had Not Committed a Crime, We Would Have Said So”
DOJ Policy Says It Is “Unconstitutional” to Charge the President With a Crime; “Charging the President With a Crime Was Therefore Not an Option We Could Consider”
“The report speaks for itself.”
So, the only thing that’s saved Trump’s ass so far is DOJ policy to not indict a sitting president.
Boom
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My name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston. I live in Richmond, Texas, in the heart of Tom DeLay's old district. It's nuttier than squirrel poop here.
I am honored and privileged to know Miss Juanita Jean Herownself, hairdresser extraordinary and political maven. Since she does not have time to fiddle with this internet stuff, I type her website for her and you can read it if you want to. If you don't, she truly does not give a big bear's butt.
A lot of what I post here has to do with local politics, but you probably have the same folks in your local government.
This ain't a blog. Blogs are way too trendy for me. This is a professional political organization.
Evidently, what’s obvious to you and me is not obvious to the MSM.
1Biggest takeaway, Congress needs to do its job and Congress and every American needs to READ THE REPORT!
2I think Mueller came as close as Mueller is capable of to holding up a flashing neon sign that said impeach impeach impeach.
3takeaway: nothing changes. The House can work on impeachment all they want. Congress won’t even touch it. The report can say whatever it does – his base won’t believe any of it.
4The longer they talk on CNN, the closer they get to my opinion.
5Of course the other thing is he pulled Barr back out from under the bus. He has no problem with anything Barr has done.
My other problem is that he stated he has no testimony to give other than what is in the report. Bullshit. He can testify about what evidence they encountered and chose not what to include, for example. And why.
6NO ONE, not even the President, should be above the law. If he committed an indictable offense, he should be indicted. If nothing else, it should be clear evidence that “High crimes and misdemeanors” were committed.
7A grand jury was ready to indict Nixon just before he resigned. Nixon was reasonably honest compared to Trump, and that’s saying a lot.
Biggest Takeaway. This will get it talked about on the TV . That’s what we need . And Mueller was actually very very clear.
8What Vic said. Both 3 and 8.
Mueller said it right out loud: “The Constitution requires a process OTHER THAN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”
And what El Jefe said: Boom.
9I’m not a lawyer and so I’ve never taken a course in constitutional law. I’ve also never sat down and read the Constitution all the way through. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the Constitution that makes it unconstitutional to charge a sitting president with a crime. Surely Mueller didn’t mean that in the way it sounded.
10Where many democrats have always had it wrong is that Robert Mueller was not a hero come to slay the yellow crap monster that is trump.
He was not there to save anyone.
He was not there to put trump on a spear and roast him for us. He was just a respected (formally by the gop) civil servant——who has just told the house democrats to do their damned job and impeach.
11Was just over at the local Barnes & Noble and saw a paperback purporting to be the Mueller Report. Damn thick paperback. Usually th thicker the book, the higher the price. Gotta wait for that next Social Security check to get me a copy. God bless Socialism!
12BFSMan – I thought that was weird as well.
13The Justice Department policy was created in 1973 during the Nixon debacle and reaffirmed in 2000, but it is NOT addressed directly in the Constitution. The Constitution directly prevents criminal charges against members of Congress in defined circumstances, but the Founders did NOT mention such protection against the President. It has another set of remedies against Presidential misconduct, but those are subject to political whims, not the behavior of professional law enforcement and can be considered a failure.
The Justice Department policy is a bureaucratic whim, not established law, and should not be binding. It is there to prevent chaos around all the matters that the department may be involved in concerning prosecution of a sitting President. It’s a matter of convenience, not justice.
14As the kids these days would say:
mike drop.
15@ Maggie: You can read the whole thing online for free here:
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/04/18/mueller-report-searchable.pdf
16Continuation of my previous post, and a revision: the question of indictment of a sitting president has one more caveat. Article I Section III, Clause VII states that after conviction in a Senate trial, the President must leave office and cannot hold public office again, and can then be indicted, prosecuted, and punished. It seems that the framers of the Constitution put too much faith in the willingness of the Senate to honestly do its business, especially as there were no political parties in the modern sense at the time.
17This my take on it.
BILL CLINTON was convicted of perjury and lost his Law License.
while President!
“If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,” Mueller said. “A president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional.”
This is Bullshit. It is not unconstitutional. Clinton was tried for perjury over Paula Jones investigation statements which he made before he was President. Therefore Trump plotting with Russians Arabs etc is subject to the same treatment.
18Someone take this and run with it!
Mueller just let the American people down. He also lied. He said AG Barr released his report, but this is just not true! Barr released a censored version of the report and is fighting Congress to keep from releasing the rest of it.
Mueller wont take questions because the one question he does not have the guts to answer is, “If there was no DOJ policy that prevented you from indicting a sitting president, would the evidence indicate that Trump should be indicted?”
19Mueller has been compromised. It’s obvious he has been neutered by the Russians. Collectively,all we can do is to uncontrollably sob. Again,Russian influence rears its ugly head upon us. I cannot wait until Biden becomes president. Sure,he likes little girls. He could be a pedophile–but he’s OUR pedophile! I would bet he’s willing to pardon Roman Polanski! Moreover,at least he’ll have the grace to conduct himself as a true Democratic President. Plus,he is willing to wage war against the Russian WorldWide Empire.
20Robin Frazier – I don’t believe that Clinton was tried for perjury because of a technicality – a lie under oath is only perjury if it is relevant to the matter at hand. Trivial example – I testify under oath that I am right handed even though I’m left handed. It’s only perjury if my “handedness” is relevant to the case, otherwise it’s “lying under oath”.
It was the lying under oath that temporarily cost Clinton his law license, (he wasn’t disbarred, his license was suspended for 5 years).
21And lastly, this matter arose out of a civil suit against Clinton filed in the state court in Arkansas.
There was a Federal case as well, but it was a civil suit for sexual harassment filed by Paula Jones. In it, Clinton was found to be in civil contempt of court and was fined.
Again the issue here is civil versus criminal.
Now, having said all of that, any DOJ policy regarding the criminal prosecution of a President has no effect on a State filing criminal charges against a sitting President. (GO, Letitia James!!!)
Here’s the exact words where he said unconstitutional. I don’t think he meant that it was unconstitutional, I think he meant that the ruling said it was unconstitutional. I think he should’ve left that part out or worded it better, but I think that he meant with regard to that ruling.
“We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the volume two of our report explains that decision. It explains that under long-standing Department policy, a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited. The special counsel’s office is part of the Department of Justice and by regulation it was bound by that Department policy. Charging the president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider. “
22Bob Boland: I am not a lawyer but I worked with them daily for years. Lying under oath is perjury and you don’t have be in a trial to get nailed for it. I worked in the State CJ system. I do fully remember Clinton sitting in a witness box in front of jury while President. They threw the kitchen sink at him so the details are fuzzy in my memory but he was tried as a sitting President and it was over something before he was in office. Civil or criminal doesn’t matter. It is still a trial by jury under the Law. So all of Trump’s previous many sins including his rape allegation can be brought up as far as I am concerned. Someone did bring up the ruling that let Clinton be tried as pertinent. Trump is still a party in suits but there he is protected by incorporation. He could be call to testify there too.
23Are DOJ “policies” laws???
24The policy of not indicting a thuglican president was written by a thuglican DoJ to protect their then thuglican master after nixon had fired everyone in the DoJ with any principles and staffed it with nice obedient serf’s who knew their place and acknowledged that their job was only to protect highre ups.
25This “policy” only pertains to thuglicans.
It has the same legal foundation the mcconnells not appointing a supreme court justice in an election year has, and with even mcconnell admitting it was all a sham.
No deals with these people not because I am against any negoitaiations but rather that they have proven over and over again that they are not to be trusted.
As an example – remember outrage when bogus video of demented donnie bragging about making Ivanka a woman on her 13th b-day?
No well because it hasn’t yet happened and becausee facebook would yank it in a nanosecond.
The bogus video that is offensive to Speaker Pelosi is, to the best of my knowledge, still available on Facebook and its minions.
The only “defense” they have put up is that facebook knows it is a lie and says so but feels people should be able to get all the information before they make decisions. When it was pointed out that they were offering a known lie as subject for reasonable consideration.
This is the game they played on ACORN, Planned Parenthood and others.
Hell in the case of planned Parenthood thuglicans have present doctored video as justification for draconian laws.
Point being is it not time to recognize that facebook is about as “fair and balanced” as faux news?
That being said for D’s to have web pages, comments pages, counters or anything from facebook they might as well just send a copy of all their data and plans to the RNC, Kochs, Mercers et.al.
Can that behavior even be doubted after their hosting a known false, offensive and defamatory video of Speaker Pelosi for what a week now?
And I will assume that it will stay up forever or until I hear otherwise.
Can these people (facebook) be considered to be honest contractors?
ITMFN!
26Alice Beth asked an important question – why are DOJ policies(created, I assume) by the DOJ considered as binding as laws? I know it’d be a hard sell to pass a law about indicting a sitting president. This may come under the heading of men dreaming of systems so perfect that no one has to be good! At least Nixon had enough respect for the law to resign!! Trump would never do that – he has no conscience or respect!
27Well on the network news I’ve looked at so far, they are just not getting it . I can only hope that Mueller’s statement that if they called him to testify he would just read the report will be taken up on. Yeah that’s a very awkward sentence. My current opinion is that he did say impeach him impeach him, yes ask me to talk to you, but he’s not very good at it, and our corporate media is not very good at hearing what’s actually said.
28The reason corporate media is not very good at hearing what is actually said I leave as an exercise for the student.
29Recently El Jefe had a post supporting Pelosi’s position of not impeaching, and at the time I agreed.
I’ve since had second thoughts. The logic is still as sound, but I’ve been thinking of another aspect that has bearing on the subject. How much bearing is the 64 trillion dollar question.
As hard as it probably is for most folks in this joint to fathom, there’s a helluva lotta people who are apathetic about all this.
That are just sick of hearing about it all, thanks to the douchebag-in-chief’s approach to controlling the conversation through Twitter. Constant barrage, constant coverage, constant analysis.
Many may not have voted. Many may have voted for him because more than anybody could have imagined, he took advantage of the biggest lie conservatives have pounded for decades.
They’re strong and we’re weak.
Successfully.
Doesn’t make it true. We know that. But how many people who don’t want to have an opinion on politics have started to believe we’re weak because we’re always on defense, simply because repugnantcans have established their complete ownership of offensiveness?
Somebody recently said that McConnell has brought nothing up for a vote. Don’t know how accurate that is, but it would make total sense with respects to showing Democrat’s ineffectiveness.
Leading us around by our ears.
Weakness.
TO THE PEOPLE WHO GET THEY’RE REALITY FROM FOX NEWS, FACEBOOK, BREITBART, AND INFOWARS.
And never hear our side.
I say there’s liable to be millions who aren’t married to Roger Ailes’ ghost. But don’t listen to much else if they listen at all because it’s “The Loudest Voice”
Well guess what? Impeachment makes a lotta noise.
Might actually get a lotta folks listening to us for a change.
And it also happens to be the right thing to do.
This wanna be dictator is tearing our democracy apart
Not doing it for political advantage plays into their hands.
It not only makes us look weak.
At some point it validates it. They really are leading us around by our ears.
30Sorry JJ.
Impeach the motherfucker already.
When listening to Mueller live I was disappointed because I pretty much already knew the stuff he said and was hoping for more. However, many people had never heard it and now have. One thing made abundantly clear by Mueller is that Barr lied, repeatedly, misrepresented Mueller’s positions and conclusions. Bret Baier and Judge Napolitano on FOX even disparaged Barr after Mueller’s presser. Wish Mueller had done this sooner, like right after Barr’s 4-page summary, instead of weeks after Barr’s version took hold. Mueller reiterated that while they could not exonerate trump, they could not charge him due to DOJ rule. And strongly hinted (inferred, suggested) that the solution is for Congress to impeach.
I hope Mueller testifies live on TV. Better to watch the movie than read the (400+ page) book. (I didn’t make that up, heard it on tv today.) Then the House needs to impeach Barr then trump for Obstruction of Justice. And let SDNY indict the rest of the crime family for RICO violations and lock them all up.
31Robin Frazier –
32“He could be call to testify there too.” There it is, who seriously believes that Trump would answer any call. He hates anyone telling him what to do. He could be commit any crime or misdeed and be “caught” on video in the commission, and not have to answer for it. I say we start with McConnell.