Given what a conservative wingnut he is,perhaps not the best choice for a meme…
Zylon
3212
To be fair, by normal person logic, this is fairly idiotic. It makes no sense that he’d be allowed to say a thing, but NOT be allowed to say the opposite of that thing. He’s trying to communicate something very important to Trump supporters here, yet he’s up there mincing around playing parliamentary procedure logic games. What the fuck, Mueller. It’s like he wants to be misunderstood.
Timex
3213
It’s perhaps weird because he’s adhering to strict rules. But he explains the actual legal reasons why he can’t say the opposite of that thing.
DOJ policy is that indicting a sitting president is unconstitutional.
Since he can’t indict the president, he can’t accuse the president of committing a crime, because it would be unfair since he he would not be given the normal opportunity to defend himself in court.
Normally, a prosecutor makes a binary choice. It’s either:
A) there is enough evidence that a crime has been committed to indict a suspect
-or-
B) there is not enough evidence to indict that suspect
In this case, A is not an option, because DOJ policy precludes it.
But Mueller is making it very clear that he is not choosing option B.
If there was a lack of evidence of a crime, then Mueller would have done the same thing in this case, that he would do in any other case… He would have chosen not to indict based on that lack of evidence. But he is explicitly not taking that option.
The refusal to indict was driven by DOJ policy, and not a failure to find enough evidence.
Good point. I just loved that scene in the film, having taught just a bit by then. Plus my late dad was a Prof.
Zylon
3215
Yes, I understand all that. My point is, to the typical MAGA-head, all that may as well be one of those “One guard never lies, the other guard only tells the truth” logic puzzles. So they just stroke out, reboot, and come up screaming “He didn’t say Trump was guilty! No collusion!” That’s literally as far as their brains can go. It’s handing them what they want to hear on a silver platter. For proof of this mindset, one need look no further than the comments on that Federalist article from a few days ago.
Timex
3216
That’s totally true.
But I don’t think Mueller can just abandon his notions about an ethical application of law, just because those people are dumb.
However, i think there’s a way around this.
Mueller’s said he doesn’t want to testify before Congress… But he will. He likely wouldn’t even need to be subpoenaed. Ultimately, it’s not an optional thing
And there is one question that they need to ask:
“Mr. Mueller, in the course of your investigation, did you discover evidence that President Trump committed crimes?”
And Mueller will say, “yes.”
That’s it. That’s what his answer would be. It wouldn’t be in violation of any policy. It wouldn’t be him passing a prosecutorial judgement.
It would simply be be him truthfully stating a fact about his investigation.
And i think that is the kind of simple message people need to hear.
Yeah, it just made me sad to find out later (long after that and when he had the show called “Win Ben Stein’s Money”) what kind of person he was.
I work with a lot of network engineers and they are absolutely brilliant in their areas of expertise but often they have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. Mueller strikes me as a similar personality in that he is exacting and precise in the application of his expertise, which is exactly why he was the right man for the job, but it is a little frustrating that that adherence is so strict that he is perhaps unable to adapt under unprecedented circumstances. The stakes and the context of this investigation are so far beyond what one would typically encounter in his position that it would seem to warrant a deviation from traditions and customs. Adhere to the letter of the law, by all means, but recognize also the spirit of the law and don’t allow a Democracy threatening catastrophe to occur because prosecutorial norms or DOJ traditions lean towards circumspection.
magnet
3219
You assume that Mueller agrees that this is a democracy-threatening catastrophe. But I doubt he does.
If you’re a prosecutor, then you’re used to seeing criminals with power. And if you’re a prosecutor, then you probably believe that as long as you follow the rules, criminals will eventually lose their power and see justice. Sure, it might take a long time, and they might do some damage along the way. But the true threat to justice isn’t the criminal, it’s the prosecutor who takes shortcuts.
I’m going to make a wild guess that of all the crimes that Mueller has investigated, this isn’t the worst. It isn’t even in the top ten. Now, maybe Trump is politically the worst guy we have seen. Particularly because of his disdain for political norms. But if so, then how can you expect Mueller to respond by discarding prosecutorial norms?
This is where he goes off the rails.
That’s evidence that it isn’t working. The speaker was surprised by what Mueller had to say about his report, which means that she had never before heard what was in the report, presumably because she only watches Fox News. Of course that’s a media failure, but it’s also a failure by Democrats. It’s their job to push that news into everyone’s ears. That’s the entire point of the hearing process, to bring out the facts in a way that right-wing media outlets can’t ignore.
Hahaha. While I’d love for this to be true, he’s already said he’s not going to say more than what’s in the report, so he’s not going to answer with a direct yes. It will be a long answer that will need to be parsed to understand that it’s a yes.
I hope Pelosi et al feel a sense of urgency around Barr. That public calling to account takedown needs to happen sooner than later. His dishonest manipulation of pubic opinion has already done considerable damage, and it will only get worse in the coming days.
This thread, from Jeet Heer, seems to capture the miscalculation that Pelosi (and McConnell) are making:
Heh. At first I thought referring to him as a mule was a reference to the Foundation series.
No, he’ll say something like “I can’t say whether or not the evidence is in reference to any crime or crimes because we can’t make that judgement. They’re just facts that we uncovered. You’ll need to make your own determination based on the facts.”
And the Trump team will scream “NO COLLUSION! WITCH HUNT!” some more.
