Posted on 01/03/2018 12:30:34 PM PST by jazusamo
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is directly challenging Special Counsel Robert Mueller, charging in a law suit filed on Wednesday that the prosecutor lacked the legal authority to investigate and indict him on pre-2016 money laundering charges.
Calling the indictment “fanciful,” attorney Kevin Downing’s suit in U.S. District Court says Mr. Mueller was appointed in May with a mandate to investigate possible Russia-Trump campaign collusion in the hacking of Democrat Party computers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I don’t understand your point.
I have heard that they do not allow that. But because I have never been interrogated by the FBI, I do not know for sure. If I were, I would try my best to record it, if it were allowed.
“How can he lose?”
Partisan Democrat judge
more on this BS policy of the FBI. Now I see how Mike Flynn was a fool to talk to them. With your lawyer present at least you have a witness to what was said same as the FBI. Plus your lawyer can take notes same as the FBI does.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/05/10/beware-fbi-when-not-recording/yz55UX8WMKU080pN4aP68K/story.html
If you secretly- surreptitiously recorded the FBI interview most likely it would not allowed in court and perhaps you would be prosecuted for recording it via your smart phone, MP3 player what have you
In this case, the "special counsel" is nothing more than a surrogate for the U.S. Justice Dept. who functions in place of the highest ranking officials in the DOJ in cases where those officials believe they have a conflict of interest. AG Jeff Sessions is responsible for overseeing all of the department's investigative work, and that's it. That's perfectly legitimate under the U.S. Constitution even though the term "U.S. Justice Department" isn't seen anywhere in the constitution.
Robert Mueller isn't some character who has walked in off the street and into a role that was fabricated out of thin air. He was appointed to function as a Federal prosecutor in a matter where both the AG and the Deputy AG have indicated that they had a conflict of interest. Whether they really had a conflict of interest may be subject to debate, but that's their call to make. And up to this point, Mueller's team hasn't prosecuted a single criminal charge that is outside the purview of a Federal prosecutor working to prosecute violations of Federal laws.
You cited the exact reference to his mandate that I had in mind when I said he isn't investigating President Trump. It says he's investigating members of Trump's campaign team, right? Why is that such a problem for you? If someone in Trump's campaign (Mike Flynn, for example) had committed a Federal crime while working in the Trump campaign in 2016, should he be immune from prosecution just because his boss won the election? How is that supposed to work? Of course the Federal law enforcement apparatus should be used to enforce any violations of the law by people who are not subject to the constitutional provisions of impeachment as executive branch members.
You should know better than that, but that tells me you probably don’t understand how the Constitution is the only authority for the feds to do anything.
Then you’ve got a problem finding where the Constitution authorizes a special prosecutor appointed by the President, where the Constitution expressly states that Congress has the SOLE power to impeach.
None of this has anything to do with the matter at hand. Get back to me when Mueller indicts President Trump and tries to prosecute him.
The only problem there is that "destroying evidence" is increasingly difficult in the modern world where there are digital copies of almost everything of importance anyway.
Think of Hillary Clinton's illegal e-mail server. She could delete every file, "bleach" the server, and launch it into the sun on a space mission to ensure that everything was destroyed, but it still wouldn't do anything to deal with the problem that every e-mail has both a sender AND a recipient ... and passes through multiple mail servers between one and the other.
Thank you, Dennis.
I understand that a lot of folks get worked up over this sort of thing. I've said all along that we shouldn't be any more concerned about Mueller's investigation than President Trump is -- and he seems not to give a damn about it at all. LOL.
You and me both, we need more fighters like him.
Well said, couldn't agree more and thanks for your input on this thread. :-)
In honor of the 800,ooo aspiring DACAs...No Problemo!
Think of Hillary Clinton's illegal e-mail server. She could delete every file, "bleach" the server, and launch it into the sun on a space mission to ensure that everything was destroyed, but it still wouldn't do anything to deal with the problem that every e-mail has both a sender AND a recipient ... and passes through multiple mail servers between one and the other.
Your point is well taken . . . and yet as far as I know, the 33K e-mails that Hilary deleted have not been "recovered."
And is it outré to suggest that what Mueller's team is doing is finding as many of the recipients as they can so as to either destroy or confirm prior destruction of evidence?
You said, "The Mueller probe is illegal BECAUSE it is unconstitutional. I see nowhere in the Constitution the power to create a “special investigator”"
I told you what the Constitution doesn’t authorize - the REASON for something called a “special prosecutor”, appointed WITHOUT Congressional approval BY the President (via DOJ) to investigate the President.
Does’t fly.
You’ve got more problems with this than Carter has pills.
Where does the Constitution authorize
1) the President (via the DOJ) to appoint a special prosecutor WITHOUT Congressional approval or
2) the President (via the DOJ) to appoint a special prosecutor for the purpose of investigating the President and his affairs including his campaign, when the Constitution expressly states that Congress has the SOLE power to impeach. (cf. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-mueller-does-what-special-prosecutors-do/article/2639509 “Mueller was authorized to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”)
The sole issue in this debate is the constitutionality of federal action here. You have so far failed to show such constitutionality. Get back to me if and when you do.
If so, then please cite the provision in the U.S. Constitution where it says this confirmation is required.
If not, then what exactly is the basis of your constitutional objection to the appointment of a special counsel?
You're the one with the bigger problem here. You have taken an appointment of a Justice Department official and extended this appointment to an assumption on your part that Mueller's appointment is the equivalent of the impeachment of the President of the United States. Your logic doesn't follow, and they don't reflect the facts on the ground.
Like I said before ... your input on this thread would be applicable if Mueller actually indicted Trump, but until then it is all just wild speculation on your part about what may or may not happen in the future.
1) Depends on whether he is an "Officer" of the U.S. or an "inferior Officer". His role and power might suggests the former. If so, the appointment is under Art II, Sec 2 Cl. 2.
2) Let's assume without agreeing he is an inferior officer. The issue is his ROLE as "special prosecutor" which is to go after the President's campaign which is to go after the President. As I've previously sited, the Constitution gives Congress SOLE power to impeach (which includes going after, investigating, and charging) and try ANY officer including the President (U.S. Const., art. I, sec. 2, cl. 5; art. I, sec. 3, cl. 6
If you cannot site constitutional text accompanied with reasonable explanation that justifies this federal action that is a prima facia violation of these clauses, we're done.
You are simply a loon, or a troll. If the DOJ is Constitutional, so is the Special Counsel, which is entirely within DOJ rules. If the Special Counsel is unConsitutional, so are are all/were DOJ task forces. No court is going to agree.
The Constitution doesn't mention a U.S. Department of Justice, doesn't mention an Attorney General, and doesn't mention a Deputy Attorney General. These things were all established under U.S. law by statute ... under the provision of this very article of the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress to establish offices "by Law."
There are something like 1,200 positions in the executive branch that require confirmation by the U.S. Senate. How was it determined that these positions, among all the positions in the Federal bureaucracy, required Senate confirmation? That's simple: The confirmation requirements were written into the statutes under which these departments and agencies were originally created by Congress.
The appointment of a Special Counsel by the U.S. Attorney General is covered by Federal statute (28 CFR 600). Unless I'm missing something here, it seems that the statutory authority to establish a position like this would clearly come under the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Thanks. Ping to #119!
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