In Case You Missed it (v107)

Lots going on outside the pages of veritable pastiche last week; here's a recap of what happened in them.

Two posts made it out, both focused on NBC's exclusive interview with VP Kamala Harris. In your Sunday School, topics included changes to the filibuster, election deniers, Dems supporting MAGA Republicans, the 2025 election certification, and internal threats from extremists. 

Here's a bit of that part of the conversation, with What's-his-Name (WHN) in the host's chair on Meet the Press.

In response to his question, "what is a semi-fascist?" Harris spoke about it not being helpful when people deny elections or obstruct "the outcome of an election with the largest number of voters ever for a presidential candidate.

And when we look at where we are, I think that we have to admit that there are attacks from within, to your first question. And we need to take it seriously. And we need to stand up together, all of us, and think of this not through a partisan lens but as Americans.

WHN wondered if it was "hard to do both," calling out the obstruction and election denying and at the same time try to unite people, Harris pointed to Biden's long record of bipartisanship, and that he's been criticized for that during his career.

But there are moments in time when we have to also agree, all good people who care about our country, that there are those who right now are vividly not defending our democracy. And I think we want that our Commander-in-Chief, that the president of the United States will speak up and raise the alarm about what this means to our strength and our future, much less our integrity.

I don't think she wanted to talk about the specific language President Biden used to describe the extreme MAGA Republicans, and honestly I think that's the case with most of her answers.

In your Extra Credit, the Harris interview topics included the Supreme Court, abortion, 2024, and immigration. Here, too, Harris seemed to have trouble answering the question.

And moving on, "since we're here in Texas," WHN asked if Harris would call the border "secure."  

The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed.

WHN asked again if she's "confident the border's secure," given we'll see two million crossing this year. 

We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration. But there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix given the deterioration that happened over the last four years. We also have to put into place a law and a plan for a pathway for citizenship for the millions of people who are here and are prepared to do what is legally required to gain citizenship. We don't have that in place because people are playing politics in a state like this and in Congress. By the way, you want to talk about bipartisanship on an issue that at one time was a bipartisan issue both in terms of Republican senators and even presidents.

Next question? Inflation is being made worse by us not having enough low-wage workers, so a "solution on immigration reform that increased particularly lower wage job labor – lower wage labor could actually have an impact on lowering inflation. How is that not the motivating force to get something done here?"

Um, because there is literally zero motivating factor to giving Biden another win? Why do anything before the midterm election, since the Rs have visions of taking over the House and Senate, ensuring nothing gets done for another two years...  But that's my answer. 

You'll have to check the post to find out what Harris said. 

I'm going to spend some time (again, I'm telling you this) working on clearing out my drafts folder. With any luck, that'll mean posts will be posted. 

Stay tuned. 

Robert Mueller Speaks

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here. 

Two years ago, the acting attorney general asked me to serve as special counsel and he created the special counsel’s office. The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

Now, I have not spoken publicly during our investigation. I am speaking out today because our investigation is complete. The attorney general has made the report on our investigation largely public. We are formally closing the special counsel’s office, and as well, I’m resigning from the Department of Justice to return to private life. I’ll make a few remarks about the results of our work. 

But beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office’s 

written work speak for itself. 

Let me begin where the appointment order begins, and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election. As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who are part of the Russian military, launched a concerted attack on our political system. The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization WikiLeaks.

The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate. 

And at the same time, as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation, where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election. These indictments contain allegations, and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understood. And that is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office. That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. 

When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of their government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.

Let me say a word about the report. The report has two parts, addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate. The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. 

This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign’s response to this activity, as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. 

And in the second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president. The order appointing me special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation, and we kept the office of the acting attorney general apprised of the progress of our work. 

And as set forth in the report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. 

We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the Volume II of our report explains that decision. It explains that under longstanding department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is prohibited. 

A special counsel’s office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. 

Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider. 

The department’s written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report, and I will describe two of them for you. First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting president, because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could be charged now. And second, 

the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. 

And beyond department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially — it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge. So that was Justice Department policy. 

Those were the principles under which we operated. 

And from them, we concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime.

We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the attorney general, as required by department regulations. The attorney general then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our report to Congress and to the American people. At one point in time, I requested that certain portions of the report be released and the attorney general preferred to make — preferred to make the entire report public all at once and we appreciate that the attorney general made the report largely public. 

And I certainly do not question the attorney general’s good faith in that decision.

Now, I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner. I am making that decision myself. No one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter. There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress. 

Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made.  We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself.  And the report is my testimony. 

I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress. In addition, access to our underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office.

So beyond what I’ve said here today and what is contained in our written work, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress. And it’s for that reason I will not be taking questions today, as well.

Now, before I step away, I want to thank the attorneys, the F.B.I. agents, the analysts, the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. 

These individuals who spent nearly two years with the special counsel’s office were of the highest integrity. 

And I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments, that there were multiple, systemic efforts to interfere in our election. 

And that allegation deserves the attention of every American. 

Thank you. Thank you for being here today.

ICYMI: If Not for the OLC Memo...

There are now more than 700 former federal prosecutors who have signed on to the statement saying that, absent the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel's determination that a sitting president can't be indicted, president Trump surely have been indicted on multiple counts of obstruction of justice.

Their statement is excerpted below:

We are former federal prosecutors. We have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice.  The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Each of us believes that the conduct of president Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice. 

The folks who signed onto the statement include some who have served as far back as the Nixon, Ford and Carter presidencies; they have a total of over 8929 years of service, and average of over 12 years of service each.

These are not inexperienced people and they're a whole lot more qualified the vast majority of the armchair quarterbacks  - including the president himself, a boatload or three of elected officials, and countless talking heads, Trump voters and Clinton haters who have (or maybe haven't even) read the Mueller report and reached the conclusion that the president was 'totally exonerated.'

So what did these experts find when they read the report?

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming.  

The "overwhelming" evidence of corrupt intent? Yeah, that includes:

• the president's efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;
• the president's efforts to limit the scope of Mueller's investigation to exclude his conduct; and
•  the president's efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign. 

And, they provide details on each of those bullet points to make their case, going so far as to point out that

All of this conduct - trying to control and impede the investigation against the president by leveraging his authority over others - is similar to conduct we have seen charged against other public officials and people in powerful positions. 

There was more in the report that added to the obstruction case, they noted; they called out facts on the three bullet points only. And while they note that there are defenses or arguments that could be made, and that under our system the accused are presumed innocent, not guilty, they are clear that

...to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice - the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution - runs counter to logic and our experience. 

As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstruction - which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished - puts our whole system of justice at risk.  We believe strongly that, but for the OLC memo, the overwhelming weight of professional judgment would come down in favor of prosecution for the conduct outlined in the Mueller Report.  

 Another 15 people have signed on during the time it took me to complete this post.

Sunday School 4/28/19

OK, let's see how much ground we can cover today, starting with Andrea Mitchell sitting in for Chuck Todd on NBC's  Meet the Press.  On the show were presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and former Deputy AG Sally Yates, who was fired by the Trump administration. We'll start there.

Mitchell asked what Yates thought about Trump calling the FBI "scum" at his rally in Wisconsin last night. Yates said those were "words we shouldn't be throwing around" about our law enforcement and intelligence folks. Mitchell also asked about the Mueller Report and whether it exonerated the president.

... I think it paints a devastating portrait of a president and a campaign who welcomed a foreign adversary's illegal interference into our election, who then continually lied about it and then used the power of the presidency to try and thwart an investigation into his own conduct. That's not exoneration.

And whether she thought there would have been an indictment on obstruction, absent the "sitting president can't be indicted" position, and whether Trump would have been indicted on the ten obstruction charges if he was just a regular guy? Yates said she's prosecuted obstruction on less evidence, but all ten scenarios might not be prosecutable, just the ones where Mueller found no "significant factual or legal defenses."

Yates pointed out that Mueller "specifically references" the possibility of prosecution after Trump is out of office, but there's a bigger issue, she noted. It's about presidential conduct.

I mean, when the Russians came knocking at their door, you would expect that a man who likes to make a show of hugging the flag would have done the patriotic thing and notified law enforcement. 

And about Rudy Giuliani's comment that there's nothing wrong with taking help from a foreign adversary?

Yeah, that's a shocking statement. And it also just reflects how they have moved the goalpost, when the truth comes out...Surely, that's not what we've come to. 

Sen. Johnson said he personally wouldn't welcome support from the Russians, even given Giuliani's comments. And on the FBI scum comment?  Johnson spent a lot of time talking about "understanding the president's frustration" before finally saying "Probably, I would use different words."

Sen. Klobuchar was asked about obstruction; she supports Congressional subpoenas for administration officials and is looking forward to questioning AG Bill Barr this week. Mitchell wondered if, as a candidate, the senator should say whether or not the impeachment process should be started. Klobuchar noted that the House will make that decision; her interest is in holding Trump  accountable, and citing the Mueller report, noted there are many ways to do that:

One is with the process through Congress, which includes these investigations, which the president is already stonewalling. The second is other investigations that are going on right now, including in New York. And the third is pretty straightforward, Andrea. That is defeating him in 2020. And that's what I intend to do and will do.

Asked about what Joe Biden should say to Anita Hill, who apparently is not happy with her recent conversation with him, Klobuchar correctly noted that was Biden's question to answer. If enough of the candidates not named Biden give that answer, maybe the medial will stop asking them the question. 

There's always hope.