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The lawyer representing special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday asserted that the reason former President Donald Trump is the first president to face criminal charges is because his predecessors did not commit any crimes. Department of Justice counselor to Smith, Michael Dreeben, went before the Supreme Court to argue presidents should not have constitutional immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted during their presidency. Dreeben suggested that no president until Trump has ever committed crimes when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned him about no other president having faced prosecutions. “Over the not-so-distant past … certain presidents have engaged in...

Clarence Thomas Questions Presidential Immunity Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently questioned Special Counsel's Attorney Michael Dreeben about the lack of prosecutions against previous presidents for activities such as coups and operations like Operation Mongoose, which involved the CIA carrying out terrorist attacks against Cuban civilians. During a hearing on Presidential immunity, Thomas raised the issue, sparking significant interest and debate on social media. The discussion aimed to address the complexities surrounding presidential immunity and the potential implications for past and future administrations. Operation Mongoose: The Cuban Project, also known as Operation Mongoose, was an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks...

Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) argued Thursday before the Supreme Court that droning American citizens is permissible because Obama’s DOJ said so, whereas questioning election results isn’t OK because the government also says so. The Supreme Court heard arguments on the scope of presidential immunity after special counsel Jack Smith alleged that former President Donald Trump should be tossed in jail for questioning the administration of the 2020 election. Justice Brett Kavanaugh posed a series of hypotheticals to DOJ attorney Michael Dreeben about the scope of presidential authority, asking whether Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon in 1976 could have...

Eyebrows were raised last week when it was discovered that Special Counsel Jack Smith had added attorney Michael Dreeben to his legal team.“An interesting detail: Michael Dreeben somehow snuck into Jack Smith’s office. He was Mueller’s appellate guy,” enthused Marcy Wheeler, a proponent of the debunked conspiracy theory that Donald Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia.Fellow Russia-collusion hoaxer Rachel Maddow of MSNBC ran an entire segment to announce the exciting news that Dreeben is “helming this part of the case,” meaning Smith’s request to the Supreme Court to look at whether American presidents may be prosecuted for...

NEW: Transcript of previously secret proffer from Mueller's top appellate lawyer and counselor Michael Dreeben confirms Andy McCabe opened an obstruction of justice investigation into the president *before* the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel https://twitter.com/JohnWHuber/status/1131986605399576577 OR threadunroll https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1131986605399576577.html

Fridays at the DC federal courthouse are typically days of high alert for the press corps trying to discern what special counsel Robert Mueller's next legal action will be. But this Friday, court officials went to extreme measures to ensure it was as difficult as possible to figure out what Mueller's team was doing as the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held a secret and mysterious argument about a grand jury subpoena challenge. An entire floor of the courthouse was closed to the public and press for more than an hour. During that time, attorneys...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday sharply criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal case in Virginia against President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and openly questioned whether Mueller exceeded his prosecutorial powers by bringing it. “I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis in the Eastern District of Virginia said. At tense hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, the judge said Mueller should not have “unfettered power” in his Russia probe and that the charges against Manafort did not arise...

We have the names and backgrounds of 15 of the 17 attorneys working in the special counsel's office.

Full title: Gregg Jarrett: How an FBI official with a political agenda corrupted both Mueller, Comey investigationsHow is it possible that Hillary Clinton escaped criminal indictment for mishandling classified documents despite incriminating evidence that she violated the Espionage Act? Why did Donald Trump become the target of a criminal investigation for allegedly conspiring with Russia to influence the presidential election despite no evidence that he ever did so? The answer, it seems, comes down to one person who played a vital role in both cases: Peter Strzok, deputy director of counterintelligence at the FBI. Strzok was exchanging politically charged texts...

"The Worst Thing That Happened to Donald Trump this Week" — Paul Rosenzweig, on the Lawfare blog: Special counsel "Robert Mueller has hired Michael Dreeben, on a part-time basis, to help with his investigation. Dreeben, a deputy in the Office of the Solicitor General, has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court. His specialty has, for the last 20 years, been criminal matters and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of criminal law." Be smart: Mueller is amassing the talent arsenal you'd build to bring criminal charges.