Posted on 05/18/2018 9:19:31 AM PDT by Meet the New Boss
Tensions escalated Wednesday between the special counsel’s office and the Reed Smith defense lawyers representing a Russian business charged with interfering in the 2016 presidential election, as the two sides disputed whether a recent phone conversation ended with an abrupt hang-up.
snip
Wednesday’s status hearing came two days after Dubelier and his co-counsel, Reed Smith partner Katherine Seikaly, filed a brief asking to review the legal instructions Mueller’s team gave to the grand jury that indicted Concord Management and Consulting.
But the request went further than that. The Reed Smith lawyers ridiculed the alleged crime as “make-believe” and derided the prosecution as having “absolutely nothing to do” with the special counsel’s core mandate of investigating coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
In the court filing, the Reed Smith lawyers said the prosecutors’ reason for bringing the case “is obvious, and is political: to justify his own existence the special counsel has to indict a Russian—any Russian.”
snip
On Wednesday, Dubelier said he was agitated by language that grouped Concord Management and Consulting in with the other defendants in the case. He said the 13 Russian individuals were affiliated with another entity, the Internet Research Agency, and noted that Concord Management and Consulting is accused of funding the alleged conspiracy.
(Excerpt) Read more at law.com ...
pettifoggery
It does seem that way. Is it true or is this another smoke screen? Why won’t anyone charge Meuller with his crimes in U!? Then he will be forced to cease as SC.
When the defendants’ attorneys get tired of laughing at the Special Counsels feeble attempts to justify their charges and allegations—and filing motions that document the absolute lack of a valid case, I think they should ask the judge to dismiss with prejudice and sanction these Special Counsels for not following the Rules of Procedure.
I think the Rules of Procedure in Federal Court require that an attorney attest that the allegations in the case brought to the Court are true and correct to the best of his knowledge. It seems that they didn’t know who they were indicting, what crime is alleged against particular defendants or what their “evidence” was when they got the indictment.
I am reminded that Mueller (FBI) was told straight up, by their own old Russian friend, that there was no “collusion” by Manafort with Russians.
(This Russian, whose name begins with a “D”, had years ago helped the FBI retrieve one of their own from IRAN, so he was trusted to some extent.)
Mueller launched anyway, against Manafort, but was led not *toward* the supposed FISA jurisdiction against the Trump campaign, but *away* from it. All the way backward from the campaign to the year 2005! LOL!
Manafort business dealings as an international lobbyist. Funny. No one at the FBI seemed to be interested in the Podesta firm doing the same thing. In fact, Podesta and Manafort together lobbyied in the Ukraine.
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Are you the site's author?
I dont think so. The same issue of the need for senate confirmation will result in the same conclusion because the judicially determined classification as an inferior officer remains the same. Whether appointed by law or regulation (which by the way has the same force as law) the fact that the official is inferior is what determines if senate confirmation is required. Or so that is what the Supreme Court has ruled. Stare decisis makes this determination irreversible case law on this isuue. Your argument that genesis of the appointing power is determinative was not what the court ruled was correct. And since the USSC decides what the Constitution requires I would suggest that their interpretation is the correct view of the law in this instance, and not yours. Just saying.
Think of it. LOL! Mueller overreaches much more— he’s so off the reservation— he’s going to wind up on Trump’s side. HA!
2 terabytes is a huge amount of text. Did they vacuum up ALL Russian internet traffic?
Good Gawd Y’all.
Apparently so. I don't think giving the defence a raw feed in another language is going to suffice, but I'm not the judge.
Puffboonery. LOL.
You’ve just invented a word that’s not only cromulent, it’s covfefe.
You can’t take a court decision interpreting the language of a statute that provided for independent prosecutors and claim that it controls the interpretation of completely different language adopted by the DOJ in its own regulation creating a different government official entirely.
“the Special Counsel shall exercise, within the scope of his or her jurisdiction, the full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions of any United States Attorney”
Here, by this language, the DOJ has unilaterally attempted to create a de facto US Attorney.
Yet 28 U.S.C.§ 541 adopted by Congress requires US Attorneys to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate.
This question simply wasn’t present in Morrison v. Olson because there was no question there that congress had authorized the legal office in question by statute.
The question here is entirely different, has the DOJ gone beyond what it can do by unilaterally creating a de facto US Attorney, which Congress did not give it the power to do?
Ok, i have explained why the courts holding in morrisson is the law on this issue.
You are certainly free to disagree with this view but please dont mistake your google search for my law degree.
I think they want to get their hands on all the documents they've demanded in the discovery process.
What other reason would they have to show up in court in the first place if they were a Russian corporation that couldn't be held accountable even if they were found guilty of every charge?
The strategy is to get all the discovery to show most is fake and then other motions to embarrass the Special Counsel. Eventually the judge or Special Counsel will see the futility in going forward and dissmissal will be on the docket.
It doesn’t sound like a case that the Special Counsel can actually pursue to a trial at this point.
So they taught you in law school the 1999 Special Counsel regulation adopted by the Department of Justice?
Well you got me there pal, since I graduated from law school long before 1999.
I bow down before your more recent law school experience.
Agree completely
My practice of law goes back 40 years
Fewer words spoken have been as truthful as these...
You retreated to your credential to try to support your argument because it was becoming clear you spouted off an opinion before really understanding the specific issue I was raising.
And that’s fine, that’s what internet chats are for - an ad hoc quick take on something.
But I think it’s a poor idea generally for lawyers to claim to be speaking as lawyers when posting on boards like this because we typically don’t go through the careful work we do for a client in terms of understanding all the facts and thoroughly researching the legal authorities before giving a legal opinion.
And I haven’t either on this point. I haven’t done the same level of thinking and research on this issue I would do for a paying client.
But I did go back and read the regulations and the statute and I was already familiar with the Morrison v Olson case.
Will my argument prevail? It’s a legitimate issue. It’s not the same issue litigated in Morrison v. Olson.
Yes, to some extent, one could characterize what I am pointing to as a drafting flaw that could have been avoided through more careful language in the regulations. A lot of judges will not be sympathetic to invalidating a criminal prosecution on what might appear to them a technicality.
On the other hand, since Morrison v. Olson a lot of opinion has swung in favor of Scalia’s dissent, and as we saw with Judge Ellis, judges may be willing to take a closer look at a situation if it appears to be the case of someone assuming unfettered power without proper authorization.
I do hope this issue is properly framed, argued and resolved in this set of cases.
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