Top 10 Things The Media Got Wrong About Collusion/Obstruction

The prestige press has some explaining to do — for subjecting the nation to a long, cruel ordeal named “collusion” and “obstruction.” Almost two years and millions of column inches later, special counsel Robert Mueller has revealed the theory that President Trump and his campaign conspired with Russia has been just that.

All that remains of collusion and obstruction is the media’s shattered credibility.

The errant reporters and pundits — the ones who peddled the most outrageous falsehoods — want nothing more than to move on. But not so fast: There has to be some accountability for the biggest foul-ups.

In reading Chapter 2 of the Mueller report I was struck by how much the authors expressed hatred and disdain for the President. In reading their legal theories on obstruction of justice, then the evidence and finally the analysis on fact became clear. The Mueller report equates news stories with sworn witness testimony in trying to present “facts: to show the potential for obstruction of justice.

I want Trump to go nuclear on the Dems on the issue of obstruction of justice. I want Bar to have the FBI investigate and DOJ to prosecute the false FISA court warrants as an obstruction of justice! I want the DOJ, FBI and Intelligence agencies staff and heads to be charged by a grand jury for obstruction of justice. I want them convicted and sent to jail. Then I want them flipped to go after Obama.

I want to see Hillary charged with obstruction of justice for destroying court ordered emails. I want a grand jury to determine her criminal intent.

I want certain Democratic leaders charged with obstruction of justice as Mueller has theorized because of their public statements that would impede the lawful assumption by Trump of his Constitutional duties to head the Justice Department. Yes anything that publicly criticizes the DOJ or gets in its way of functioning is an obstruction of justice.

And clearly Bill Clinton conspiring with the Attorney General on the tarmac was an obvious case of obstruction of justice.

I want Democrats to never ever call anything an obstruction f justice, from their prison cells.

Here’s what the media is getting wrong today:

1. The Supreme Court has ruled that if there is no underlying crime, the investigated cannot be accused of obstruction for having pushed back in any way.

2. Therefore, the entire report regarding obstruction should not exist.

3. The obstruction findings amount to nothing more than innuendo and uncorroborated hearsay.......and it came from a prosecutor?

4. The only possible purpose of the obstruction loose talk is to fire up a political attack.......and it came from a prosecutor?

5. From the beginning it was known that the Dept. of Justice would not indict a sitting President. So the only point of the entire investigation had to be to entrap the President’s associates in perjury traps.

There has to be some accountability for the biggest foul-ups.

According to conventional wisdom the 1964 SCOTUS New York Times v. Sullivan decision preclues that. Sullivan held that the First Amendment requires that any “public figure” has a high bar to cross (proving “actual malice”) in order to sue for libel.
IANAL, but IMHO Sullivan - altho it was a unanimous decision - was only probably good law - and its interpretation is IMHO an overextension because of the facts not before the court in 1964.
Sullivan is idiosyncratic in that the public figure in question (Mr. Sullivan) was neither a Republican nor, by modern standards, a Democrat. He was a southern Democrat. By modern standards, IOW, he would be David Duke - awarded honorary status as a Republican by Democrats.
But the salient point is that there in no hint in the facts before the court of even the remotest connection among journalists - let alone between journalists and the Democrat Party. Understand, the connections we see now existed then - if anything, more so (in the sense that nobody who suggested the existence of such had the slightest traction in the public). The situation was akin to that described by The News We (CNN) Kept To Ourselves [must read]. That is, the fact that CNN allowed Saddam Hussein to censor its coverage of Iraq was not reported by CNN while Saddam was in power; and the fact that Saddam was censoring the press within Iraq was not reported in Iraq, either. The only way to look for documentation of the fact of such censorship is by looking for “the dog that didn’t bark.”
We know that journalists know that journalism is negative (“if it bleeds, it leads”) and yet journalists claim that journalists - all journalists - are objective. And anyone who questions that conceit is condemned by all journalists as “not a journalist, not objective.” But negativity is not objectivity to anyone but a cynic. And objectivity is a goal towards which it is laudable to strive, not a state of being. Self-serving propaganda is precisely what should be expected of journalists to continually meet (virtually) by according to Adam Smith’s remark that "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
“The freedom of the press” is not absolute freedom; “the” freedom referred to is that which already existed at the time of the ratification of the Constitution. Freedom, that is, within the constraints of pornography and libel laws. When the First Amendment was proposed, it would have been much more controversial if in fact it abolished those constraints. And thus, the fact that they are preserved by the wording of 1A establishes that the people - even, I submit, people who hold government positions - have the right to redress if their reputations are unfairly besmirched.

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