@PointGuard
I did read the Weissmann report, branded for public consumption as the "Mueller report". There was no collusion/conspiracy by any American, and no basis for charging obstruction notwithstanding the DOJ OLC opinion regarding indictment of a sitting president.
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Special Counsel
Robert Mueller has peddled two different stories. Only one can be true.
In his final act before resigning his position,
Mueller told the gathered media on Wednesday that his non-decision decision on whether the president obstructed justice was “informed” by a long-standing opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Justice Department that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. But according to William Barr, that’s not what Mueller told the attorney general and others during a meeting on March 5, 2017. Here’s what Barr told Senators during his May 1st testimony:
“We were frankly surprised that they were not going to reach a decision on obstruction and we asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this. Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting, in response to our questioning, that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC opinion he would have found obstruction.”
Barr said there were others in the meeting who heard Mueller say the same thing – that the OLC opinion played no role in the special counsel’s decision-making or lack thereof. The attorney general repeated this in his news conference the day Mueller’s report was released to the public:
“We specifically asked him about the OLC opinion and whether or not he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the OLC opinion. And he made it very clear several times that was not his position.”
Yet, on Wednesday Mueller was telling a different tale. He seemed to argue that he could not have accused the president of obstruction because he was handcuffed by the OLC opinion. Why, then, did Mueller allegedly inform Barr that a special counsel can abandon the opinion if the facts merit it?
“He (Mueller) said that in the future the facts of a case against a president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion, but this is not such a case.”
Mueller did not abandon the OLC opinion in this case because he surely knew the facts and evidence did not support the law of obstruction. Instead, in his 448-page report, he
implied presidential obstruction in a remarkable achievement in creative writing.
He set forth in luxurious detail “evidence on both sides of the question.” But this is not the job of any chief prosecutor, anywhere.
Mueller was not retained to compose a masterpiece worthy of Proust. He was hired to investigate potential crimes arising from Russian interference in a presidential election and make a reasoned decision on whether charges were merited.
Mueller’s actions were not only noxious but patently unfair to Trump. The special counsel publicly besmirched the president with tales of suspicious behavior instead of stated evidence that rose to the level of criminality.
This is what prosecutors are never permitted to do. Justice Department rules forbid its lawyers from annunciating negative narratives about any person, absent an indictment.
How can that person properly defend himself without trial? This is why prosecutors like Mueller are prohibited from trying their cases in the court of public opinion.
If they have probable cause to levy charges, they should do so. If not, they must refrain from openly disparaging someone that our justice system
presumes is innocent.
In this regard, Mueller shrewdly and improperly turned the law on its head. Consider the most inflammatory statement that he leveled at the president in his report. It was guaranteed to ignite the impeachment fire:
“While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
To reinforce the point, Mueller stated it twice in his report. He then reiterated the argument on Wednesday when he said: “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
Prosecutors are not, and have never been, in the business of exonerating people. That’s not their job.
An experienced federal prosecutor, Mueller certainly knew this. It appears he had no intention of treating Trump equitably or applying the law in conformance with our criminal justice system.
In a singular sentence, Mueller managed to reverse the legal duty that prosecutors have rigidly followed in America for centuries. Their legal obligation is not to exonerate someone or prove an individual’s innocence. Nor is any accused person required to prove his or her own innocence.
Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence. It is the bedrock on which justice is built.
Prosecutors must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. To bring charges they must have, at minimum, probable cause to believe that a crime was committed.
The special counsel took this inviolate principle and cleverly inverted it. He argued that he could
not prove the president did
not commit a crime.
Think about what that rationale really means. It is a double negative. Mueller was contending that he can’t prove something didn’t happen.
What if this were the standard for all criminal investigations? Apply it to yourself.
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Gregg Jarrett: The two faces of Robert Mueller, and Trump's presumption of guilt