Posted on 12/18/2017 6:56:48 AM PST by Golden Eagle
J. Edgar Hoover used to say that “justice is just incidental to law and order.” It was a telling quote from someone who routinely abused his power in seeking what he viewed as enemies of law and order. Hoover is now a pariah at the FBI and the Justice Department, but his attitude toward the use of federal power lingers like a dormant virus. Too often investigators interpret uncertain legal questions as a license for action.
That seems to be the case with a new and troubling controversy over a massive seizure of emails by special counsel Robert Mueller from the General Services Administration (GSA). Mueller did an end run around Trump transition officials and counsel by seizing tens of thousands of emails from the GSA despite claims of privilege. The move was legally unprecedented and strategically reckless. In a gratuitous muscle play, Mueller may have added a potential complication to the use of evidence that could contaminate much of his investigation in any later trial.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Damn, I thought Erdogan was piping up there for a minute.
Gitmo is looking for a few guilty RATs, ya think?
Gobble-gobble....
Great article from WSJ covering this yesterday:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mueller-probe-faces-new-challenge/ar-BBGVTRL
In the Saturday letter, Mr. Langhofer said that a lawyer with the General Services Administration, a federal agency that helped set up the transition office, acknowledged in June that the Trump transition organization owned and controlled the emails, and that “GSA had no right to access or control the records.”
Mr. Langhofer’s letter cited a Justice Department document from 1988 that found that presidential transition teams “are not federal agencies” subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act as well as a 1983 case that found transition documents were “personal records” rather than “agency records.”
Oops your auto fill spell check may have done him a disservice when inputting the title of the article
Why would Turkey care?..................
Spell checker knows......................
Sorry, my iPad spell check has been killing me lately. Turning it off now. Admins, if you could please correct title, my apologies!
He did point out that with these emails Mueller's team will be able to compare what Trump transition team members said in emails to what they said when interviewed by the FBI (some ended up with jobs in the White House) so they could find them guilty of lying to the FBI, like in the case of General Flynn. Of course that could be faulty memories but the FBI can call it lying...the old "perjury trap."
Turkey may think this will Greece the way for Mueller to take down some Trump administration figures.
Yeah and the inability to see what the title will be in final preview before post doesn’t help. Oh well, hopefully will get more people to read the link!
Final paragraph:
If Mueller wants more than a coup stick prosecution, the move against the GSA was one door he should have opened rather than kicked down in his investigation. Only time will tell, of course, but this is a legal complication that was as unnecessary as it was unprecedented.
The transition lawyers insist that Richard Beckler, general counsel for the GSA, reportedly agreed with transition officials that this information belonged to the transition team and that GSA had no right to access or control the records, but GSA denies the comment. The Trump lawyers argue that, when Beckler was hospitalized, Mueller’s people moved on the seizure and acquired the thousands of messages.
Good analogy - I think it was W’s AG John Ashcroft.
It was Ashcroft in the hospital.
POTUS & Congress need to use this outrageous GSA seizure to HAMMER Rosenstein. I’m so sick of him expressing “confidence” in Mueller.
Yes, Ashcroft, thanks!
There will no doubt be even more stunning revelations of abuse of power, illegality and misconduct on the part of the Mueller Team, but Strozok’s behavior and the theft of Transition documents taints the Mueller investigation so badly that Mueller will have a hard time prosecuting anyone because his staff is so tainted with a bewildering array of ethics issues they will all be forced to recuse themselves and resign from any prosecutions
Most any evidence they have gathered is irretrievably tinted by the Fruit of the Poisoned doctrine and therefore inadmissible in a court of law.
Mueller will probably be closing up shop before the end of the year, but regardless of how long he stays - his investigation is a zombie with a rotting corpse that is rapidly disintegrating and stinking more and more each day it shuffles on.
I sure do hope that Trump has something in writing from Beckler.... in that he passed away in September
Seems like the GSA would just argue Beckler was incapacitated due to his illness, even though McCain’s just fine.
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