2649

I just love that this is a headline:

2650

Trump’s gotta get his “how to become a dictator” pointers somewhere, after all. Why not from the guy he’s apparently got the biggest man-crush on?

2651

I want to send a twitter message to trump and say,

“I’m just curious- how hard is it to suck Putin’s d!*k through the phone line?”

But I’m not on twitter.

2652

In an interview Trump said that, “Putin kind of smiled and said it went from a mountain to a mouse.”

Either they are Skyping or he made that shit up in his head. You guess.

2653

That spineless shit stain, Lindsey Graham, is going to let Mueller testify but only regarding concerns he had about the way Barr portrayed their phone call, not anything else.

2654

Doesn’t matter, he’ll testify in the house.

It would be good if graham just died though.

2655

Here’s something I was thinking about: the big picture on the Mueller report on obstruction, from a legal point of view and how poorly both our media and our politicians are presenting the legal aspects.

It gets down to a core issue in the law: the idea of legal “elements” for a law or other legal principal to apply. The elements of a legal principal are the key facts that either cause a law to apply or not apply. If the elements are all present, then the law applies. It’s fairly straightforward. And good lawyers don’t just rush to the conclusion: they analyze the elements and that leads to the legal conclusion.

In the Mueller report, Mueller carefully analyzed ten incidents and determined that all three elements for criminal obstruction of justice under the federal law were present in (IIRC) six of those ten incidents. Normally, the legal conclusion that obstruction of justice occurred would follow, as would an indictment.
However, due to DOJ rules Mueller felt he was unable to actually state a conclusion, even though he found the elements. Sadly, the press has not really made plain how severely F’ed up this is.

It’s like this: imagine you had an assignment to determine the sum of variables X and Y, but for some reason you were not allowed to state that the result was 4. During your assignment, you determine that X = 2, and also that Y = 2. However, you cannot state the result is 4 b/c of the rule. Does that mean the answer is not 4? I mean, it’s still two plus fucking two, right? From a legal perspective, that’s how basic this is. Mueller found obstruction b/c he found the elements. Due to a DOJ policy (which is legally incorrect and not supported by principles of the relevant Supreme Court cases like Jones v. Clinton) he could not SAY he found obstruction, but he still found it. Two plus two still equals four even if the word four is on the forbidden list.

It frustrates me greatly that neither the mainstream media or the Dem leadership are really making this point at the basic, foundational level that it deserves. Mueller was not allowed to say the magic words, but he found the legal elements and that means the legal conclusion is already locked in.

The one beacon of hope for me is that I don’t believe it will be that hard for Congress to ask Mueller the right questions to get clear answers when he testifies. On the other hand, Congressional questioning is often a sad joke.

But the basic concepts here are quite clear and straightforward.

2656

Yeah, this internal policy is fubar imo.

2657

Can Congress lift that law temporarily to get an opinion on it from him?

2658

It’s not a law. Just an internal policy of the Department of Justice, defined by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Congress can’t change it, since they had nothing to do with it in the first place.

2659

It’s on!

2660

The day after Rage 2 comes out though, so I’ll probably have to skip the testimony. Priorities and all that.

2661

Presumably Congress could pass a law to make their wishes clear - but it would need to pass the Senate and be signed by the President.

2662

I doubt a Republican Senate will find a spine strong enough to support such a maneuver. That is, until the next Democratic President is elected. Then we can count on them for their true vision.

2663

The only way to deal with the DOJ policy on not indicting a sitting President is for a non-DOJ jurisdiction (like a state level AG) to indict a sitting President and then for that case to go up to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court follows the constitutional principles and the legal principles as previously found in the Clinton v. Jones case, then that DOJ policy will be legally overruled. The Clinton v. Jones case held that a sitting President can be brought before the court on a civil matter - this clearly lays out the relevant legal principles but is technically not “controlling legal authority” b/c it applies to civil rather than criminal court. However, the legal analysis, legal principles and constitutional principles are substantially the same, enough so I’m 100% confident that unless Roberts goes goes full Limbaugh (which is sadly a possibility) then US Supreme Court will find against the DOJ policy.

Also, this is yet another example of the press doing a poor job of legally explaining things to the public: the Clinton v. Jones case is pretty damn clear so this whole idea that there is a “debate” about whether the DOJ policy is correct is pretty foolish. However, there is a contrary, very sad and shitty element to this, which is that although this BS DOJ policy was first written by Nixon’s DOJ, it was also reviewed and re-affirmed by Bill Clinton’s DOJ, to Clinton’s eternal shame. It’s actually kinda sickening given that the Clinton DOJ lawyers knew damn well what Clinton v. Jones meant and yet they weaseled around it. It’s also a good example of unintended consequences: the ostensible justification for the Clinton DOJ re-affirming the Nixon Presidential immunity rule was to protect Clinton from Ken Starr abusing his power to indict Clinton. In the end it’s just empowering yet more GOP abuse of power and exploitation.

2664

I’ve been off the net for the weekend, but this is great:

Trump and Putin collude to decide ‘no collusion’.

2665

I, for one, am excited to see the Marshall of the Supreme Court lock Barr in irons, pull down his pants, and penguin march him off to the drunktanks. /sarcasm

2666

What a big nothingburger. Americans need to listen to Janster and get on to the important stuff instead of continuing this Witch Hunt!

2667

It’s crazy that the GOP is acting like all of this is fine.

2668

They’ve been living in their Fox bubble so long, they’ve been conditioned to think it’s fine.