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Sessions Out? He Never Was a Wartime Consiglieri.
Jeff Sessions, has recently been referred to by the president as beleaguered. Had the president known the AG would recuse himself about all matters Russia I doubt he would have hired him. Obama got away with murder by having his AGs obstruct, deny, and contempt their way through 8 years of scandals that were never looked at thoroughly.
Sessions can’t help with Russia. Sessions not investigating Clinton or the last admin. Sessions Sessions Sessions not not not helping with Trump’s Gordian knot. Bet he’s gone.
It will matter how it looks but Mueller and the dems need to be getting the same treatment as the GOP did during the Obama administration. Abuse. More abuse. Closed doors.
For all his faults Giuliani will do what is needed, he or another wartime consiglieri will be called upon.
Published in General
That might not be a good idea. A politician must publicly argue policy preferences and bedrock principles, so we get an idea where he stands after so many years manifesting those claims in legislation and committees. A lawyer doesn’t represent himself, so it’s anybody’s guess what he values. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d guess that a lawyer is more likely to flip on you.
The surprise with Sessions is priorities. He prioritized values of which voters were unaware, rather than the acted values for which he was known.
We had Jumpin’ Janet never-met-an-armed-raid-she-didn’t-like Reno back in the 90s too.
Rule 34.
Allowing certain beach photos to happen have guaranteed that Christie will not be reelected ever. The expression “beyond stupid” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
I’ve been thinking about this and something else occurred to me. Remember the whole “Sessions is raaaacist!” schtick during his confirmation proceedings? I think a lot of us (myself included) just pleased that he so incensed the lefties into that level of unhinged slander that of course we rooted for the guy. Now that he’s in, though, and we can see what he is (or is not) doing, that reflexive willingness to defend anyone from that sort of frankly ignorant charge rather fades.
It’s kinda like defending Bush a decade ago. Yes, he really annoyed the bejeebers out of a lot of us, but the never ending outlandishness of the attacks from the other side put us always in the awkward position of having to defend a guy we normally would not have been too warm about. Never really had the time to step up and critique Bush on anything legitimate because we were so often having to take time to defend him from the sheer lunacy of the other side. So too, I think, with Sessions.
More on civil forfeiture from Glenn Reynolds:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/07/24/fire-jeff-sessions-over-civil-forfeiture-glenn-reynolds-column/500707001/
If that is the way it works, that is really harsh. Defending oneself against the government can get really expensive, and you might need to resort to turning over property by way of sales just to maintain your liberty. Before it was Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, it was Life, Liberty and Property. In fact, it reads that way in the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution:
The source of this is Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689).
Sessions’ stance on civil asset forfeiture is deplorable. But perhaps the threat of replacement could make him back down on that. If his priorities are the crux of the problem, then the President might be able to direct them.
The primary role of the nation’s Attorney General is to ensure laws are enforced and Constitutional limits are respected. If an AG’s unConstitutional interests remain latent because of political pressure, that’s good enough for me. There don’t seem to be many true believers in limited government and rule of law anymore. Like Bill Buckley, I will settle for the wrong people doing the right thing.
I agree that an AG should serve the nation and not a president’s political interests. But it was imprudent of Sessions to recuse himself from the Russian investigation, knowing full well that Democrats would claim scandal even without reasonable suspicions. Democrat and media claims are never dependent on reality, so an AG should concede nothing to them. Play law, not politics.
Not really, at least in the cases where it was originally intended to be used. It’s a jurisdictional matter where possession and ownership is not clear. If the government finds a pile of cash, what does it do? As a mater of convenience you create a system where the pile of cash is the party to a suit by the government and anyone claiming ownership can intervene to claim it.
It’s a big question when the process is used when possession is clear and the government merely disputes ownership with someone who, from the beginning claims ownership
To be fair, Giuliani was a prosecutor before he ran for mayor.
Session on Sessions supporting Southern secession was unsuccessful.
And Christie was a US Prosecutor before he was a governor.
We need someone with conservative (or rather, Lockean Enlightenment Liberal) instincts regarding the use of power, who also has the law enforcement and/or legal experience and credentials to be respected by his peers and employees, who also has enough grasp on politics to not shoot himself in the foot and provide ever more distraction for the president.
I think Diogenes had the easier task.
What you highlight seems to be a distinction without a difference. If the cash itself is party in a suit, the person claiming ownership is forced to prove a negative; namely, that they didn’t in fact commit a crime. Thus, one’s private property is seized by, and is at the disposal of, the seizing authority without criminal charges or conviction. Am I wrong? How is that not a violation of Due Process?
What evidence do you have for this assertion?
The idea that Mr. LaRoche believes Trump is never wrong — or conceives of Trump as his “Dear Leader” — is a far bigger strawman.
Constructed of straw run through a horse.
If I thought for one second that Civil Asset Forfeiture was the reason that Sessions was in trouble* I’d agree with the majority.
But we all know it’s not.
Sessions is in trouble* with Trump because he won’t make the Russia thing go away. Any other flaws Trump’s defenders bring up are a smoke screen.
*This assumes he actually is on his way out, of course. How many times have we heard that Bannon and/or Priebus are hanging on by a thread.
Blame the IRS. Unless I’m mistaken, tax laws set the precedent of flipping the “innocent until proven guilty” on its head. A citizen’s rights depend on whether or not government stands to benefit.
What evidence do I have that Trump is not guilty?
Agreed, and as good as Giuliani was as mayor of New York, I suspect he fails this test.
You said if Trump is not guilty and you believe he is not. I might be really stupid, but I understood that as saying he is guilty.
But the difference is real.
When there is no apparent possessor/owner, what does the government do? The burden pretty much has to be on the claimant, otherwise an unscrupulous person could simply file claims in all such cases in hope the real owner didn’t.
I agree that civil forfeiture isn’t the reason he is/may be in trouble with Trump. However, it’s the reason many of us don’t feel any desire to defend him.
I confess, I don’t care why he (theoretically) get’s the boot. I just hope he does.
You understood wrong.
Possibly. But the Democrats’ scandal mongering serves to distract attention from whatever Trump wants to do that doesn’t require public support. Early in his presidency, Trump proved very skilled at manipulating the media by feeding them some new aggravation every few days, so they couldn’t make much of any particular grievance.
If Trump is guilty of some serious legal violation, he should suffer politically and be prosecuted (after his term, as law demands) like anybody else. But so far the Russian stuff seems like a bunch of Democrat-generated nonsense to me.
I don’t think anyone really is worried about that situation. The problem is that forfeiture is routinely used against property with a known owner, e.g. the account looks like money laundering because of frequent cash deposits, the car looks too expensive for a law-abiding person to drive, or the suitcase smells like marijuana. If the evidence is too weak to even charge the owner with crime, confiscating the owner’s property is a violation of due process.
I’m not entirely sure why Sessions doesn’t tender his resignation now. First, Trump publicly discredits him with the NYTimes and now after doing so, characterizes him as “beleaguered”. Next he’ll be calling him a wimp or worthless.
Trump could fire Mueller anytime he wants. He could end the Russia investigation as well. Instead he takes off after the one former Senator who was the first to support him and arguably his most loyal supporter during the campaign. That’s the trouble with electing a pit bull as President. You get one to tear into the corruption in Washington. Then something snaps and they start tearing into those who mistakenly thought it was an intelligent and well-behaved animal. (And don’t harp about pit bulls to me…it’s a bloody metaphor).
Trump screwed this one up himself. Sessions is taking the heat for Mueller’s appointment because he recused himself from the Russia investigation. But..it was Trump himself that appointed Rosenstein as the acting AG. That didn’t have to happen. Trump could have appealed to Giuliani or Christie or a number of other attorneys to help him out with this and serve for a year to get the Russia crap over with. Instead he appointed a lifetime, Jewish (as a Jew I can say this without being called anti-semitic), Justice prosecutor–uh do you think he just might be a Democrat? What are the chances Rosenstein voted for Trump? This was Trump’s mistake and he got Mueller as a result. It disappoints me greatly that he is now blaming Sessions. As a result, I agree @docjay, that Sessions will probably resign. If he does we will have lost a dependable conservative in the Senate, as well as one of the core of Trump’s team. I believe this could be, unfortunately, a crack in the dike. I wish Trump would not have done this.
Your point is sustained by a legally constructed fiction that that the cash was sitting openly and mysteriously alone on the sidewalk. Seizures don’t happen like that. Property is seized from the homes, and garages, and wallets, and backpacks of real people who can be presumed to own that property.
Even when there is no apparent possessor/owner, what right does government have to dispose of that property? At worst it should need to decide the merits of the various claims. If, in your scenario, the rightful owner makes no claim and some unscrupulous person does, that loss is the fault of the owner.
The flip side to this is that Trump keeps making all the wrong moves. Trump needs to shut up and then take his victory lap after Mueller brings a spoon to Congress. If the investigation really is a “nothingburger” then Trump should ignore it and talk about policy instead of acting like he’s terrified of Mueller.