Andrew C. McCarthy on Mueller, Barr, and obstruction
The attorney general [Barr] stated that the special counsel evaluated ten incidents with an eye toward whether they amounted to an obstruction offense. Barr elaborated that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein disagreed with Mueller on whether these incidents even could have amounted to obstruction as a matter of law.
It is important to grasp what that means, and what it doesn’t, because I’ve heard some inaccurate commentary. Barr was not saying that Mueller found one or more of these incidents to constitute obstruction; Mueller was saying that the incidents involved actions that could theoretically have amounted to obstruction.
A concrete example may make this easier to grasp: the firing of FBI director James Comey. Before a prosecutor considered evidence regarding that incident, there would be a preliminary question: Could the president’s dismissal of an FBI director amount to an obstruction offense as a matter of law? If prosecutors were to decide that, even if the evidence showed corrupt intent on the part of the president, a president’s firing of the FBI director cannot constitutionally amount to an obstruction crime, then the prosecutors would not bother to investigate and make an assessment of the evidence.
What Barr is saying is that he and Mueller did not agree, with respect to all ten incidents, on whether the incident could legally amount to obstruction. What the attorney general therefore did was assume, for argument’s sake, that Mueller was correct on the law (i.e., that the incident could theoretically amount to obstruction), and then move on to the second phase of the analysis: Assuming this could be an obstruction offense as a matter of law, could we prove obstruction as a matter of fact? This requires an assessment of whether the evidence of each element of an obstruction offense – most significantly, corrupt intent – could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
I’ve noticed over time that one of the obstacles to the public’s making sense of things like the Mueller report—in addition to the press and politicians issuing tons of partisan spin on it—is that legal issues are involved that require a certain sophistication of logic and judgment. They are certainly not impossible to understand for a person without legal training. But their meaning is not immediately obvious, and therefore they very easily lend themselves to distortion.
One of the things I really really like about Andrew McCarthy is that he has a gift for writing clearly about such things in ways that should be easily understood—if people read what he writes. I doubt that even a small percentage of liberals read Andrew McCarthy, although I wish a lot of them did.
“Barr elaborated that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein disagreed with Mueller …”
So Rod R. and Barr are now simpatico on this? I imagine Rosenstein will make every effort to stay out of jail.
Truther.
Birther.
Vaxxer.
Collusioner.
Join these with believers in “chemtrails”, and you have quite a set.
Sophistication in logic and judgment have been lacking on the left for quite some time.
On the whole McCarthy can help us, yet, frequently, too frequently, the very base of experience from which his help issues proves to mislead him (hence, we who trust him) as to the characters of those he’s worked with over the years, as well as the character of the rule-set he has come to believe in over those years. He gets stuff wrong, though he’s generally apt to notice, account for his errors and apologize where needed.
Let’s say a group of zoologists are studying a group of newly discovered organisms and deciding whether they belong to a belong in a certain family. They will take the time to evaluate each organism. Several they will able to definitively say do not belong in that family right off the bat. Others have enough salient features that they require more investigation. In the end, they decide none of the organisms being studied belong to the particular family. They then publish their findings.
The absurd metaphor to the current goings-on would be if the Royal Society of London, in an attempt to discredit the publication, swept in and declared that several of the organisms described in their paper must belong to that particular family because the researchers had to investigate and think about them more than others which they dismissed out of hand.
The Left is claiming that the fact that Mueller had to consider anything as pertains this case is proof that crimes were committed.
“[S]ophistication of logic and judgment” requires critical thinking, which appears no longer to be taught in our universities, much less secondary schools.
Nunes Statement on Mueller Report: https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=936
Brit Hume:
“When you hear people criticizing Attorney General Barr, see how they reacted to Michael Avenatti. That will give you an idea how seriously to take them as judges of lawyers and the law.”
More McCarthy, in the NYPost: https://nypost.com/2019/04/18/mueller-completely-dropped-the-ball-with-obstruction-punt/
“This is unbecoming behavior for a prosecutor and an outrageous shifting of the burden of proof: The constitutional right of every American to force the government to prove a crime has been committed, rather than to have to prove his or her own innocence.”
Margot Cleveland, The Federalist: https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/18/mueller-passed-prosecutorial-buck-preferring-slime-trump-obstruction-rather-indict/
“But Trump has no process now to clear his name from the taint of obstruction of justice created by Mueller’s report. So, after two years of battling unjust and untrue charges of collusion with Russia, Mueller has destined President Trump to spend the second half of his first term combating claims of obstruction of justice—claims which, even if they had a basis in fact, have no basis in law.”
People tune out the word salad. That’s why it’s important not to back off from the language police who ostensibly want every word to be polite but who really want to obfuscate. It was spying, Barr was right to call it spying, and don’t let them talk you into calling it “covert surveillance” because it’s one step from that to “oversight.”
Let Democrats waste their time pushing the obstruction narrative.
Gee, trying to sell obstruction of justice over a crime that has been exonerated will be tough. It is like trying to prosecute a woman who shot and kill someone who tried to rape her, it is called self-defense, anything Trump did legally to defend himself from set up against him will be viewed as simple self defense.
Unlike with Hillary’s email case, intent was an element of the crime.
It all goes back to the difference between malum in se and malum prohibitum crimes. See, Legally Blonde.
hey! everyone need a laugh?
hey Joe, thats a whole lot on your shovel you got there, you sure you and your friends want to keep digging?
you have a mighty big shovel there… gonna stop diggin?
Two bad the sandhogs didnt have you working on the 2nd Ave tunnel
would have been done in a week!
you got help?
no one there realized that this is one of the oldest positions of government and that for about 289 years its been ok UNTIL Trump….
No problem when Obama picked Loretta Lynch…
No problem when Obama picked Eric Holder…
No problem when Kennedy picked his brother…
anyone want to throw him a rope?
As far as I’m concerned, Mueller is a punk. He’s not a flat, evil swamp-thing like Comey, but Mueller’s a punk.
He could have called the collusion case much earlier. Andy McCarthy asks:
“What I wonder is how long Mueller’s known that there’s no collusion,” [McCarthy] said.
He noted that when former FBI Director James Comey briefed Trump on the dossier in January 2017, Comey only gave the president a “small snapshot” of the dossier and did not mention that it alleged a massive Trump-Russia election conspiracy.
He added that Comey also did not mention that the dossier was used to obtain surveillance warrants on Trump campaign associates.
“They continued even after Trump was in office — January, April, June — to go back to the FISA court on the basis of this same information,” McCarthy said. “Why didn’t the FBI and the Justice Department try to verify it and corroborate it? And when they couldn’t verify it, why didn’t they refrain from going to the FISA court in the first place?”
https://insider.foxnews.com/2019/03/25/mccarthy-questions-about-dossier-about-mueller-findings-report-released
I pretty sure some of the Republican losses in the 2018 were due to the lingering questions about Trump’s “collusion.” Thanks, Mueller!
Likewise Mueller’s punt on obstruction. Again, McCarthy:
On obstruction, however, Mueller declined to apply the law to the facts. That was the only job he was hired to do.
“On Obstruction, Mueller Abdicates”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/on-obstruction-robert-mueller-abdicates/
At least Mueller wasn’t entirely corrupt. There’s that.
hey Joe, thats a whole lot on your shovel you got there, you sure you and your friends want to keep digging?
If Joe continues digging, he may find a dead intern.
“As far as I’m concerned, Mueller is a punk. He’s not a flat, evil swamp-thing like Comey, but Mueller’s a punk.”
Müller personifies the banality of evil
One thing to keep in mind is that Mueller has as hi chief investigator Andrew Weismann who has an amazing distinguished record. He is the only prosecutor I have ever hear? off who managed to get the US Supreme Court to render a UNANIMOUS decision to reverse his case. It was US vs Arthur Anderson, and the conviction on “Obstruction of Justice” was over turned 9-0.
the Court unanimously overturned accounting firm Arthur Andersen’s conviction of obstruction of justice in the fraudulent activities and subsequent collapse of Enron, on the basis that the jury instructions did not properly portray the law Arthur Andersen was charged with breaking. As the Arthur Andersen name had become infamous and the firm had been obligated to cease audit activities, the business was unable to recover even after the conviction was overturned in its favor.
Thye company was destroyed and all employees, about 5,000 , lost their jobs.
The prosecutor ? Andrew Weismann.
The now unsealed records expose efforts by Weissmann, and the Enron Task Force he led, to intimidate witnesses and to interfere in the attorney-client relationship of a cooperating witness. Several affidavits unsealed last week catalogued veiled threats made to witnesses the Enron defendants sought to interview. However, because many of the attorneys would speak only off the record to Enron’s attorneys, the courts refused to consider the affidavits sufficient to prove prosecutorial misconduct.
Two attorneys, however, were willing to testify. In a just-unsealed affidavit, one lawyer stated that an FBI agent working for the Enron Task Force overseen by Weissmann warned his client against talking to the Enron defense team because “those are bad guys.” The second attorney stated that an FBI agent had made veiled threats against his client in a separate Enron trial.
Keep that in mind as the Mueller report moves along,.
No edit function.
Mike K – as some people pointed out in the beginning: with the staff Mueller picked, there was no way his report could be spun as pro-Trump — although the Democrats are certainly trying.
Now, to find out who set this all in motion.
huxley,
Mueller was a punk for Whitey Bulger. He is a dirty fellow, a corrupt everyone has one where the sun don’t shine. A special consular for the special counsular is warranted. How does one spend 2 years and spend $40 million investigating a case where there is no there there? Mueller is as much a deep state reptile as Comey. Leavenworth, rocks, sledge hammers. Some assembly required. Personally, I am old fashioned and favor firing squads. Less expensive and more humane.
The lies and obstruction slowed him down.
One of the reasons prosecutors go after process crimes even when they can’t prove the underlying ones, is because the reason they can’t prove the underlying ones is because of the process crimes.
(Emphasis’ mine)
The lies and obstruction slowed him down.
There wasn’t any obstruction outside your imagination. The one person lying here is you.
I’m just waiting to learn about the 12 criminal referrals. That’s where the real meat is in this sandwich.
James Howard Kunstler lays out the roadmap of vengeance:
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/an-empire-of-bullshit/
We can patiently await many things, like declassification of: 1) the special prosecutor charging documents from DAG Rosenstein (both of them), 2) the four FISA warrant applications on Carter Page and any others thus far unrevealed if they exist (Papadopoulos, Flynn, Manafort, et al), 3) the FBI interview docs with Flynn (as well as sworn testimony of FBI agent Pietka), 4) Comey’s memos, 5) compelled testimony from Mifsud, Halper, and whoever was “running” them out of D.C.
So very much else besides. Think only inside the Obama White House for a spell. Who has what to say? Won’t it be interesting to watch these august persons twist awhile as they seek to explain their “innocence”? Oh, yes. Yes, it will be.
I hope sdferr is right and that it will be interesting. Comey and Rosenstein, both re-submitting the FISA application, using the Steele dossier.
Who decided not to verify it? When?
Lots of deep state crimes. Maybe RICO should be used?
Nothing will happen. Some scam artists in the senior ranks of the FBI and the DoJ divisions will lose their jobs and everyone else gets off scot-free. If Andrew Weissman’s career wasn’t damaged by the Enron cock-ups, it won’t be substantially injured by this. Partisan Democrats will continue to lie to themselves and others.
What we’ve learned from the last couple of years is that the Democratic Party is run by people without any scruples or sense of public service and that street-level Democrats are quite content with that. I have yet to encounter one (including members of my family) who is the least bit perturbed by this whole caper. I’ve yet to encounter one who was the least bit perturbed by Christine Blasey Fraud. I’ve yet to encounter one who is bothered by all the vote fraud. (I’ve encountered a few who get very hot-under-the-collar when you offer a bland precis of Barack Obama’s work history). What do you do when one of your major parties is a criminal organization?
I’m just waiting to learn about the 12 criminal referrals. That’s where the real meat is in this sandwich.
More Russian internet trolls.
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