Then you did it anyway, because who cares if it’s novel and interesting if it is true.
Of course I did. It was great. I got like 20 likes.
Do Fox News types hate Loretta Lynch more because she’s an uppity woman or because she’s an uppity black woman? I mean that’s like a double word score of not knowing your fuckin’ place.
Still trying to figure that out.
I loathe to give Fox any benefit of the doubt, but I think in this case, they hate Lynch because she’s a key figure in the Clinton drama, whom they hate more than anything in the world.
Reuters even more explicit about the grand jury. Holy shit…
So I thought that going not to the grand jury was more or less the beginning of the end, a laying out of all your cards before going to trial. But I thought Mueller’s case was expected to keep building well into next year. What do they need a grand jury for at this point?
CNN reporting Carter Page has been under a FISA warrant since 2014. Also FBI has crossed Trump’s red line:
The FBI has reviewed financial records related to the Trump Organization, Trump himself, his family and associates
Nope, not at all. It’s likely just a beginning. The grand jury has subpoena powers to compel witness testimony, document handovers, etc. To that effect, they may have more power to do that than is granted to Mueller as special counsel.
One fun point made about this by Ken White from Popehat in a facebook post: it’s still too early to say what the grand jury will find out here. But the real danger is that grand juries tend to make people with poor judgment do dumb things that exacerbate their own problems in reaction. That’s the big danger for TrumpLand.
Also, empaneling a grand jury does two things for Mueller at this point:
1)With a grand jury in place, especially if there are any subpoenas or sealed indictments, it means that even if Mueller is fired, there is at least a “legal placeholder” to continue proceedings. Sealed indictments in particular are hard to make disappear, even if the investigation is shut down.
2)Firing Mueller, once a grand jury is in place, especially if the grand jury has outstanding subpoenas or indictments, looks a hell of like like abuse of power / obstruction of justice, even to people who don’t follow this too closely. And for congressional Republicans, they have to worry that ignoring a firing of Mueller with a grand jury in existence can hurt them politically, and maybe for a tiny few, it will even offend their sense of legal and constitutional propriety.
Firing Comey was bad.
Firing Mueller right now would be worse.
Firing Mueller after he has empanelled a grand jury and issued subpoenas or indictments would be… Very Bad? Very Bad at least.
I spend all goddamned day scripting our current events swarm for 4pm this afternoon with immigration bill stuff and stuff about stephen miller’s weird press briefing…
…and ten goddamned minutes before we start, this breaks.
I mean, couldn’t they have announced this at like 9am today? ;)
Also on the topic of potential suspects freaking out over the grand jury, watch for leaks about sealed indictments. If you are a potential suspect and you hear there are sealed indictments but you don’t know if your name is on one, do you stay calm and carry on, or do you freak the F’ out? Yeah, freakouts ahoy once those indictments start dribbling out.
… You act as if there’s only one case. There will be many, for different reasons against different people.
This is a grand jury. There will be others.
(The first Watergate grand jury was impaneled in June, 1972, two years before impeachment proceedings began and Nixon resigned.)
No, that was a question. You can tell by the question mark at the end. I appreciate everyone’s clarification on the matter.
Where do you work (if it’s public?). I didn’t realize you worked in politics in some fashion?
It feels like the Repubs in congress who do want DT out are defending Mueller’s work and waiting for his results as justification to take action in the future. They will only delay and posture until then, because they don’t think their own base will tolerate impeachment with the public info they have today. That means we may be in for a long process.