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Who’s Running This Country Anyway?
Judging from the actions (or lack thereof) of the Department of Justice and its stepchild, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they think that they are running the country. And I see no one—not the President, not the Congress, getting in their way. Forget about the three co-equal branches of government; they don’t exist in that manner today.
I am appalled at the behavior and actions of Asst. AG Rod Rosenstein at the DOJ, for one. He appears to be the one in charge, since almost everything I’ve seen from AG Jeff Sessions indicates he is feckless and unengaged. And saying that about Sessions disturbs me greatly, since I thought he could make a difference when Trump selected him.
Rod Rosenstein might as well be our chief executive. He speaks derisively about anyone who criticizes him, thinks he has the last say about which documents can be released, and how they can be released, and has chosen to slow-walk almost every document requested. When questioned about the potential impeachment draft being developed by the House Freedom Caucus, he commented on May 1:
‘As you think about the importance of separation of powers on Law Day here, any reaction to news that certain members of the House Freedom Caucus have talked about drafting Articles of Impeachment despite your best efforts to comply with their document requests?’
Rosenstein had to pause to laugh before he could move on to answering the question.
‘They can’t even resist leaking their own drafts,’ he said, then paused again as the entire audience joined his continued guffawing at Congress.’
His public disdain for members of Congress is shocking.
It also appears that in spite of Rosenstein’s denying many months ago that the Mueller investigation wasn’t a fishing expedition, critics of Mueller say that he has far exceeded the original scope. As a result, Rosenstein authorized Mueller to investigate Paul Manafort. To date, no crime regarding the Trump campaign has been identified, yet the case continues. Judge T.S. Ellis III was appointed to preside over the special counsel’s criminal case against Paul Manafort:
Ellis said that he believes the special counsel is only interested in Manafort to squeeze him for information ‘that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his impeachment.’
The judge said prosecutors wanted the former Trump campaign official to ‘sing,’ but he worried that Manafort might also ‘compose.’
Ellis then opined that the American people do not want a special counsel with unfettered power and even went so far as to ask when the investigation would conclude.
In fact, Judge Ellis, a Reagan-appointee, asked for a copy of the scope of Mueller’s investigation.
Meanwhile, Devin Nunes sent a memo to AG Jeff Sessions threatening a contempt of Congress charge. Sessions responded with the following remarks:
Congress has made inquiries concerning an issue of great importance for the country and concerns have been raised about the Department’s performance. I have great confidence in the men and women of this Department. But no Department is perfect.
Really.
So I will now take a deep breath in order to ask all my questions, in no particular order, of those of you out there who understand more about the operations of the federal government than I do:
Why doesn’t President Trump simply declassify all the relevant documents as determined by a trusted outside expert with previous experience with the FBI?
How can Sessions allow Rosenstein to take full control, essentially, of the Department of Justice?
Why doesn’t Jeff Sessions fire Rod Rosenstein?
Why doesn’t the President fire Rosenstein?
Why didn’t Judge Ellis rule that the scope of the Mueller investigation be released?
Why bother citing Sessions with contempt of Congress, since it will make no difference in his role?
Why aren’t Rosenstein and/or Sessions impeached?
Can’t anyone compel Rosenstein to respond to Congressional oversight?
The answer to almost all of these questions is that no one has the courage to stand up for what’s right or to hold people accountable. No one is really interested in serving the American people. No one is concerned that laws have been broken. No one cares that the DOJ is running roughshod over everyone else. No one is prepared to expose the duplicity, fraud, and disrespect that has been shown for anyone who isn’t in the DOJ or FBI.
So who is running this country, anyway?
Published in Politics
Think about it. Law enforcement has to do many things in secret but there isn’t ONE GUY over them, Trump or one single congressman, that they can be completely forthright to on what they are doing. This is what they are saying, right?
What am I missing?
If I wanted to live in Honduras etc., I would move there.
We can hope and pray for that wonderful outcome.
Working on it right now; transcript is available on Scribd.com and I assume other sites as well. I got the lead for the one I got from Powerlineblog.com.Jim
Well, most of my Ricochet friends call me GWW. I like it!
Either we have a British Civil Service or we don’t. We will have unless someone takes the SES and all the rest and shakes them like a terrier shakes a rat.
Found it.
For anyone who might want to study the transcript, here is the cite: file:///C:/Users/Jim/Documents/Manafort%20hearing%20May%204%2018%20Judge%20Ellis/378289370-US-v-Manafort-Full-Text-Transcript-Hearing-Motion-May-4-2018.pdf
Sorry, here is the correct cite: https://www.scribd.com/document/378289370/US-v-Manafort-Full-Text-Transcript-Hearing-Motion-May-4-2018#from_embed
Not a scribd fan. Try:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180505195158/https://file.io/0fO8Ll
It’s searchable, etc.
Gosh, I like that picture. . .
There’s (yet another) important piece at Conservative Treehouse.
The italicized sentence may help elucidate who’s running the country.
Good work Susan. Glad to see you come around.
I am hoping the good Judge Ellis will just tell Rosenstein that the Special Counsel law demands a crime be identified to prosecute of which none has been identified, therefore Rosenstein’s Special Counsel scope in unlawful and should be ended immediately.
You are absolutely right, Rosenstein and his very good friend of many years Mueller, have gone completely off the lawful rails and both need to be fired, if not prosecuted for horrendously malicious prosecution.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this Special Counsel has been the prosecution of Michael Cohen. Apparently, the Special Counsel Office leaked information gleaned from their illegal search of Cohen’s office to Stormy Daniels Attorney. It is an Oh My Gawd ! moment. Unbelievably dishonest and unlawful conduct that eviscerates any sense of Attorney/Client privilege.
But then there is that illegal search. From John Dellaportas at the Federalist:
“The FBI, on referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, raided the office, home, and hotel room of Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, and hauled off “thousands if not millions” of pages of documents. In court filings, the feds further revealed that, for weeks prior to the search, they had been secretly reading Cohen’s emails as he was sending them.
Moreover, prosecutors apparently convinced a federal magistrate to issue this warrant on the flimsiest of pretenses—the so-called “crime-fraud exception” to the attorney-client privilege. ”
“The crime-fraud exception is an exceedingly narrow exception that courts have applied in only the rarest and most extreme of circumstances. The privilege is not removed simply because the attorney has committed a crime. It is the client, not the attorney, who owns the privilege, and he or she is not to be punished for attorney misconduct of which he or she was not involved. It certainly is not removed merely because criminal acts are discussed. Indeed, that would put the entire criminal defense bar out of business, and negate the Sixth Amendment.”
“In these cases, the most important question is always Who gets to judge what falls within the exception? Here we arrive at the most extraordinary aspect of the Cohen affair. The prosecutor’s office has declared that it gets to decide, by having the materials first reviewed by a so-called “taint team” of fellow prosecutors and FBI agents supposedly uninvolved with the case. In other words, their colleagues from down the hall. The whole thing is absurd.”
“It is also illegal. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous 8-0 decision in a case called United States v. Zolin, held that the applicability of the crime-fraud exception to privileged materials is to be adjudicated through an in camera inspection by the presiding judge. ”
Yet Radical Lefty Judge Kimba Wood appointing a special master to review the materials after the fact despite the fact that there should be a ‘fruit of the poisoned tree” problem with all of this evidence . More Crimes.
@susanquinn, my notes about the transcript just went up; hope they are helpful in some small degree. Sincerely, Jim
More from John Dellaporta at the Federalist:
“What about the weeks the FBI already spent peering into Cohen’s emails before conducting its raid? As the Supreme Court explained in Maness v. Meyers, once privileged materials are disclosed, the court cannot “unring the bell.” Knowledge, once known, cannot be forgotten.”
“Unfortunately, Wood waved off such concerns. “I have faith in the Southern District U.S. Attorney’s Office,” she said. “Their integrity is unimpeachable.” That is nice of her to say, but it flies in the face of reality.
In the very weekend Wood was considering Cohen’s TRO application, a series of tabloid-worthy stories from Cohen’s files came flooding out, cited to persons with “knowledge of” the privileged materials—presumably one or more members of the supposedly unimpeachable “taint team.” Nor is this an aberration. The leaks spewing out of the special counsel’s Paul Manafort prosecution have been so extensive that Manafort’s attorneys have demanded the judge investigate.”
Now we have not just leaking but giving privileged material to the opposing counsel.
“Unless respected mainstream media sources are routinely fabricating sources and stories, Mueller’s team have committed a slew of crimes. As the Department of Justice—the agency that vested Mueller with his prosecutorial authority—explains on its own website, the unauthorized disclosure of grand jury information is illegal and punishable under a number of criminal statutes, such as 18 U.S.C. § 1503.
“The leaks are only part of the problem. The bigger issue is the underlying criminality of the investigation itself. An onscreen prostitute allegedly got paid $130,000 to stop her from spilling the beans. There is a crime there, but curiously not the one being investigated.
In New York, the crime is called “Larceny by Extortion.” It is a class B felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Under N.Y. Penal Law 155.05(2)(e)(v): “A person obtains property by extortion when he compels or induces another person to deliver such property to himself or to a third person by means of instilling in him a fear that, if the property is not so delivered, the actor or another will … [e]xpose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject some person to hatred, contempt or ridicule”
“But if the prostitute’s lawyer is to be believed, Mueller is in active collaboration with the extorter against the victim. Also, on “referral” from Mueller, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has now undertaken an egregious breach of privilege. In other words, the special counsel’s investigation has become, in itself, a criminal enterprise.”
“In his obsessive pursuit of the president, Mueller has plainly employed this and other improper means to deprive Trump of his right to the counsel of his choice. The precedents set for Trump today will apply tomorrow to all Americans. For the good of us all, any prosecution brought by …Mueller should be dismissed.”
Unofficial poll: In the next three comments, you will have 3 choices about what to do. You can Like only one. Choose wisely.
Fire Rosenstein
Fire Sessions
Fire Sessions and Rosenstein
@unsk, it’s all so difficult to comprehend. It sounds like an absurd crime novel, doesn’t it? I can’t even keep track of all the lies, crimes, fraud–I can’t even find enough adjectives to describe what’s been going on. At what point does someone finally say, Enough!! Do you think it will start with Judge Ellis? Thank you so much for laying all of this out. I had hoped (as you alluded to) that we could just let everything play out. I wonder (since I’m still a fan of Trey Gowdy) what Gowdy is saying right about now. Unbelievable.
Jim, I read the transcript–Judge Ellis is really something, isn’t he? But I’m not sure where your notes are–are they saved in a different spot? I’ll be checking in the morning–time to sign off for now. The transcript was fascinating and explains a lot! Thank you.
Et fortes fortuna iuvat (Fortune favors the brave/strong). Now tell me we are not at war; a cold, hard, mean civil war. We are witness to a slow motion soft coup d’état. I don’t know how this will end, badly for someone I’m sure (I suspect Jeff won’t be around after the mid-terms), but I’ll leave you with my final thoughts on the subject.
Direct PDF link. https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/US-v-Manafort-full-text-transcript-hearing-motion-may-4-2018.pdf
H/T Power Line Blog.
@susanquinn, maybe Trump lets the tense and unjust status quo continue, because it’s galvanizing support on the center right. Look how many Trump skeptics have been forced to admit that Mueller et al are on a witch hunt. Look how few Trump skeptics have shown up to posts like this one to defend Mueller et al. It’s indefensible, so it’s a good focal point.
http://ricochet.com/516916/here-comes-de-judge-this-ones-for-you-special-counsel-mueller/
Great work by @jimgeorge.
Remember when distrusting the FBI was a Democratic Party staple?
Bring back J. Edgar Hoover.
I don’t think he’d want it to go much longer. His twitter rants show his impatience, and I don’t think that strategy would appeal to him, although it does make sense. Interesting thought, @bloodthirstyneocon!
Fire neither Sessions nor Rosenberg. Both are doing their job.
Limbaugh is reporting that the WSJ opinion section thinks the FBI had a plant in the Trump campaign. I hope it was a Special Agent. LOL
Congress should also do its job and play hardball about its oversight responsibilities. It might be interesting if the House leadership were to twist arms and get a contempt vote or two through.