George Conway is a lawyer. He also is the husband of Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior advisor.
He wrote an article with the title cited here in this morning’s Washington Post.
He writes:
”So it turns out that, indeed, President Trump was not exonerated at all, and certainly not “totally” or “completely,” as he claimed. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III didn’t reach a conclusion about whether Trump committed crimes of obstruction of justice — in part because, while a sitting president, Trump can’t be prosecuted under long-standing Justice Department directives, and in part because of “difficult issues” raised by “the President’s actions and intent.” Those difficult issues involve, among other things, the potentially tricky interplay between the criminal obstruction laws and the president’s constitutional authority, and the difficulty in proving criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
Still, the special counsel’s report is damning. Mueller couldn’t say, with any “confidence,” that the president of the United States is not a criminal. He said, stunningly, that “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” Mueller did not so state.
That’s especially damning because the ultimate issue shouldn’t be — and isn’t — whether the president committed a criminal act. As I wrote not long ago, Americans should expect far more than merely that their president not be provably a criminal. In fact, the Constitution demands it.
The Constitution commands the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” It requires him to affirm that he will “faithfully execute the Office of President” and to promise to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” And as a result, by taking the presidential oath of office, a president assumes the duty not simply to obey the laws, civil and criminal, that all citizens must obey, but also to be subjected to higher duties — what some excellent recent legal scholarship has termed the “fiduciary obligations of the president.”
Fiduciaries are people who hold legal obligations of trust, like a trustee of a trust. A trustee must act in the beneficiary’s best interests and not his own. If the trustee fails to do that, the trustee can be removed, even if what the trustee has done is not a crime.“
Conway contrasts Trump’s active efforts to interfere and stop an investigation with Nixon’s passive role in Watergate.
”Contrast poor Richard M. Nixon. He was almost certain to be impeached, and removed from office, after the infamous “smoking gun” tape came out. On that tape, the president is heard directing his chief of staff to get the CIA director, Richard Helms, to tell the FBI “don’t go any further into this case” — Watergate — for national security reasons. That order never went anywhere, because Helms ignored it.
“Other than that, Nixon was mostly passive — at least compared with Trump. For the most part, the Watergate tapes showed that Nixon had “acquiesced in the cover-up” after the fact. Nixon had no advance knowledge of the break-in. His aides were the driving force behind the obstruction.”
Nixon tried to coverup a botched burglary, even as he was coasting to a landslide re-election. Trump tried to coverup an attack on our democracy by a foreign power.
George Conway and Diane Ravitch express things much better than I can. Trump is NOT one to emulate. He is a pathological liar, a con man, a rotten business man and one who has no morals or beliefs except to promote himself.
I accidentally posted this before I was finished citing the article.
Conway compares Trump to Nixon and concludes what Nixon did was petty compared to Trump’s efforts to kill the investigation.
What’s bothersome is many are modeling 45’s reprehensible behavior, even those who claim they detest him.
I have noticed more outright bullying by both sexes young, old, and in the middle.
So, glad I get to read this blog every day. Thank you, Diane.
14 Criminal Referrals Open From Mueller Probe
Mueller mystery: What are the other 12 criminal referrals? NBC: “His report is done, but Robert Mueller’s work will live on for a while longer. Over the course of its sprawling 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the special counsel’s team referred 14 criminal cases to other offices, Mueller’s 448-page report revealed. Only two of those referrals — one involving former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the other former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig — are public at this point. ‘During the course of the investigation, the Office periodically identified evidence of potential criminal activity that was outside the scope of the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction,’ the report says. ‘After consultation with the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office referred that evidence to appropriate law enforcement authorities, principally other components of the Department of Justice and the FBI.’” Mueller had been tasked by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with investigating ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump’ and ‘any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.’”
Indict. Impeach. Imprison.
Congress not only won’t remove but they won’t even impeach.
The house may move to impeach, but the senate most likely will not support this. I see a long and involved process of investigative hearings in our future that may very well last until the end of Trump’s term. We need a political overhaul in this country.
LG: This county is heavily corrupt and nothing seems to get done. Part of the reason is the ‘facts’ put out by Rush L, Hannity, Fox and Sinclair.
My brother watches all of these people and has stated that Trump is the best president this country has ever had.
How do we fight this? Liberals want to kill babies born full term. Look at the laws passed in NY. President Trump gave the best tax cut and we are all benefitting from it. Hannity and Rush are telling the truth and I should be listening to learn. Lies are told by the liberal media such as NYT and WaPo. Nothing they say should be believed.
Good grief. This is why Trump carries 40% of the country.
The reason why the House doesn’t want to impeach (at this time) is that the Senate would not convict, and the Senate under McConnel would drag it out until right before the 2020 election so Trump could crow once again that he is innocent and is the victim of a witch hunt when the GOP controlled Senate did not vote to kick him out of the White House.
I think the House doesn’t want to create an impeachment circus that Trump and the GOP would manipulate to their advantage.
The Plays the Thing
They won’t remove
They won’t impeach
But simply feud
And make a speech
It’s just a play
And we’re the crowd
To have a say
We’re not allowed
The play’s the rout(e) wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the House — DAMlet
Well said, DAMlet!!!
There have been many presidents who have done things that bordered on breaking the law. Certainly Jackson’s public ignoring of the Marshall decision in Cherokee Nation qualifies, Nonwithstanding the probability that enforcement of it might have made the story of American Civil War completely different. Wilson’s behavior toward Germany during World War I might have crossed a line, leading to the resignation of Wm. Jennings Bryan, his Secretary of State. Then there was Roosevelt and his fight with the isolationists before Pearl Harbor, Eisenhower and several Latin American Countries, Johnson and Vietnam, Nixon and everything, Reagan and his covert opposition to the Sandinista regime, …I am getting out of breath.
None of this compares to the modern acceptance of obvious Russian meddling in the last election, whether with or without the assistance of then candidate trump, who was quite obviously willing to have Putin’s help in the election, whether he colluded or not. The breathtaking aspect of this affair is the acceptance by about 40% of the electorate of this behavior. Involvement in an American election by the Russian communists would have brought the right roaring out of the media like so many lions, defending American sovereignty with a nobility that looks mighty faux right now.
Superb, Roy. But I must say that Jackson’s scoffing at the Supreme Court decision regarding the Cherokee and his removal of these people to Oklahoma was pretty egregious.
It’s no surprise that Trump’s people brought in Barr, who provided cover fro the Iran-Contra conspirators, to deal with the Russian collusion and obstruction mess.
The interesting thing and perhaps the frightening about the Indian removal is that the system worked. John Marshall made a judgement and Jackson was supposed to support it with troops. But Jackson had no regard for anyone who was not European. Curtis laid this to Jackson’s obsession with order, and to the view Jackson took of the American Indian as a part of that disorder. I would, in all my lack of research, put blame on the belief that Europeans represented civilization. This is the frightening part. We still see the ideas of the Europeans through biased eyes.
Jackson simply disobeyed two Supreme Court rulings saying that the Cherokee were a sovereign nation and could not be forcibly removed from their land. He was a scofflaw, and if William Barr had his way, we would be back there–with an imperial Presidency that is above the law. Every time I look at Jackson’s face on the twenty dollar bill, it makes me sick. He was an uncouth, racist murderer of elderly people and children. We should show him no honor. It’s no wonder Trump had Jackson’s portrait hung in the Oval Office. Such a vile creature is, to Vlad’s Agent Orange, some sort of hero.
Paranoia, lies and fear: Trump’s presidency laid bare by Mueller report
April 18 at 8:13 PM
The political impact remains unsettled. Republicans were eager to turn the page Thursday, echoing the refrain of Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr: “No collusion.” But Democratic leaders insisted that Trump’s conduct amounted to obstruction of justice and necessitated further inquiry, including calling on Mueller to testify before Congress.
Regardless, the Mueller report revealed how a combustible president bred an atmosphere of chaos, dishonesty and malfeasance at the top echelons of government not seen since the Nixon administration.
Trump officials frequently were drawn into the president’s plans to craft false story lines. In one instance, while he was watching Fox News, Trump asked Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to hold a news conference and claim that Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director based on Rosenstein’s recommendation. Rosenstein declined and told Trump that he would tell the truth — that firing Comey was not his idea — if he were asked about it.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders attempted to buttress Trump’s cover story. She said at a news briefing that countless members of the FBI were seeking Comey’s removal, but she later admitted to Mueller’s team that her comment had been completely fabricated, calling it a “slip of the tongue” that was not founded on evidence.
In another example, Trump dictated to communications director Hope Hicks an intentionally misleading statement for the media about Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.
[Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer]
President Trump’s drumbeat to end the investigation was driven by his belief that the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusive determination of Russian interference threatened the legitimacy of his election. It was, as Hicks told Mueller’s investigators, his “Achilles heel.”..
https://wapo.st/2Gl4JHU?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.a318ca94d40b
It pains me greatly that of all the commentaries that could have been cited—much less the actual words of the report itself—that you chose to quote this charlatan. It should be obvious to anyone who has paid attention to him that his is a well-practiced, cynical act. Literally no one would pay attention to him were it not for the position of his wife. This is a well coordinated ruse to create a very lucrative traveling chat show carnival in the post-individual-1 era. Their hope is make the George-Kellyanne carnival make the Carville-Matalin one look like a long forgotten vaudeville act. Thanks to your work, we have the skills and awareness to see through the fairy tales about Bill and Melinda Gates (about whom Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC recently tweeted that critics of their education shenanigans have “lost” her because of the the good things they do around the world), Eli Broad (who supports important cancer research), Alice Walton (who has founded an art museum in NW Arkansas), Michael Milkin (who uses his profits from K12 to fund his quest for respectability by funding cancer research think tanks and organizations), and all the others who do the same.
I am saddened that this post adds to strengthening this criminal couple’s lifeline of grift. There are too many voices, including many of the commentators on this blog, who can provide insight and context. Or, as I mentioned above, passages of the report speak for themselves, as today’s front page of the NY Times makes abundantly clear.
For example, from one of the few actual journalists left:
An excellent article, Greg!
The return of the Teflon Don
Oh no, there was no collusion. There just happened to be business arrangements between Trump and Moscow, and the whole Russian intelligence establishment just happened to be dedicated to getting Trump elected and to spreading his gospels about our Confederate Heritage and secure borders and guns and isolationist American exceptionalism, and there just happened to be hundreds of meetings and trips to Russia and other contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence officials and kleptocrats in Putin’s circle, and Trump just happened to get big loans, despite his bankruptcies, from the bank that handled the accounts of those kleptocrats. All just coincidence. Ask William Barr. He’ll tell you. No way he was hired because he wrote a memo a year ago saying that the Mueller investigation was illegal and has had a long history of support of a sovereign presidency that is above the law.
And if you believe all that, I have some real estate courses I would like to sell to you offered by Bob’s Really Great Make-a-Million-a-Minute University.
I have often fantasized about what would be happening if an incredibly unscrupulous con artist who was LEFT-LEANING had had the same sort of interactions with and support from the Russians. The right-wing in the US would long since have impeached and indicted the guy. It is truly astonishing to watch the limbo party that’s occurring as Faux News, not-so-Breitbart, and almost the entire Republican party follow Don the Con lower and lower and lower. How low, how low, how low will they go?
Bear in mind that the folks in the Department of Justice who initiated and conducted this investigation were almost all, themselves, life-long Republicans and Republican appointees. So things had to be pretty bad for them to do an investigation at all. Now, here we are. Like that other crude, dumb, unscrupulous, criminal New Yorker with ties to the construction business, John Gotti, this one has successfully evaded prosecution, for now. The Teflon Don.
The House should, based on the Mueller Report, immediately vote articles of impeachment against Trump for obstruction of justice.
Bob Shepherd:”The House should, based on the Mueller Report, immediately vote articles of impeachment against Trump for obstruction of justice.”
I agree in theory that something should be done. Pelosi is against impeachment because she is afraid of the backlash against Democrats. Does this thought hold some steam?
I’ve commented on the extreme R that my brother believes. [Trump is the best president in the history of the US.] Fox and Rush L are promoting the ‘lies’ put out by the L. Too many people are either not concerned about impeachment at this time because of the difficulty of working and life OR they have bought into the R lies.
We know that the Senate would never follow through on kicking Trump out. So, Trump might once again prove to be teflon Don the Con. His little Twitter hands would be working overtime and he’d never get time to sleep.
Please comment, anybody. I’ve signed a number of impeach petitions.
I would love to see the Democrats go on record about this. Ofc, impeachment proceedings have no chance of prevailing in the Senate, barring further revelations, but the principle is important.
Bob,
As I wrote a few minutes ago, Clinton was impeached by the House for lying under oath; he was not convicted by the Senate.
Mueller laid out a case for obstruction of justice that is far more serious than lying under oath about a sexual relationship.
Well said, Diane! Exactly!
And I believe that what would come out in those proceedings would affect Trump’s chances of reelection, which are already quite slim.
Here is a wonderful corollary to your argument, Diane. Retweeted today by Mehdi Hasan:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/mueller-report-trump-impeachment-democrats-the-gop-is-broken.html
The Mueller Report: Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston on Trump-Russia Ties, Obstruction & More
STORYAPRIL 19, 2019
AMY GOODMAN: Well, David Cay Johnston, do you think the House should move to impeach President Trump?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I don’t think they’re going to, because there aren’t votes in the Senate to convict. And so it would be pointless. You need 67 votes. And the Republican senators are simply not going to vote, even though, in private, many of them have made it clear, in conversations with people, that they are deeply disturbed and think Donald Trump is unfit to serve….
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I mean, I think this whole episode has brought to light serious shortcomings. And I’m somebody who has exposed spies and foreign agents here, going back many decades. There are real serious shortcomings in our laws. We should not be having a lot of these international contacts. But Donald Trump—the reason I think the obstruction issue is in fact highly relevant here is: Why would you lie and deny, if you haven’t done anything wrong? Lying and denying is evidence of a guilty mind. And Donald Trump lied and denied, directed other people to lie. He is essentially an unindicted co-conspirator, individual one in the criminal charges that were pled to as campaign violations by Michael Cohen..
Mueller concluded that the help that was provided couldn’t be valued, and it would be a very difficult thing to do and to suss out in terms of our campaign finance laws. But that the Trump campaign provided sensitive information that helped the Russians in their efforts to make sure that Hillary Clinton didn’t get in the White House—and, remember, the Russians also tried to help the Bernie Sanders campaign for the same reason. They did not want Hillary Clinton, because she had made it clear she was going to do everything she could, short of war, to make Vladimir Putin give up Crimea and other actions. To suggest there’s nothing going on here is, I think, just wrong. There’s lots of evidence of it. And you don’t lie, deny, obstruct and cover up, unless you know you’ve done something wrong. It may not be wrong to a criminal standard, and Mueller has said it’s not—we can’t prove anything to the criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. But they show an enormous amount of conduct that is improper. If you get a call from a hostile foreign power, as Don Jr. did when he got his email, and you don’t pick up the phone and call FBI counterintelligence, I think—and I would hope that Glenn would agree with me—that that is not an act of a patriot or a loyal person or even one with a fundamental sense of decency and morality…
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/19/the_mueller_report_glenn_greenwald_vs
Bill Clinton was impeached by the House for lying about his sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, which was wrong but not nearly as serious as corroding the foundations of our democracy. The Senate did not vote too convict.
My own view is that the House should impeach Trump, as it did Clinton, and let the Senate decide whether to convict.
Then the Orange One will go down in the history books for his flagrant abuse of democratic norms.
Here’s another take on Pelosi’s statement.
………………………………..
Pelosi: I’m not in favor of impeaching Trump because ‘he’s just not worth it’
I think there are three possible meanings you can parse from this quote Pelosi gave to the Washington Post yesterday. She seemed to think she was making some news with the statement, but that’s only true if anyone believes her…
https://www.westernjournal.com/hermancain/pelosi-not-favor-impeaching-trump-just-not-worth/
Amen. Exactly, Diane. If the Democrats will not stand for this principle, for protecting the democratic process by which we elect our officials, what will they stand for? Trump is a crook. He scoffs at the law. The calls upon foreign governments to conduct illegal activity (hacking emails), he orders border patrol officers to ignore the asylum laws and promises them pardons if they do so. He blatantly obstructs justice. He lies continually. He is a disgrace to the office.
To impeach, not to; I do not have the wisdom to sort it out. I AM frightened to death that no matter what he does he still has the following he has. I do fear that he might have a chance for re-election. It does not seem possible but it did not seem possible that he would have been elected the first time around either AND if enough people divide their affections as was the case between Hillary and Bernie we could be in really deep doo doo.
This comes from the Sydney Morning Herald in Sydney, Australia. The world is watching and commenting.
………………..
“‘This is the end of my presidency’: Mueller report reveals Trump’s efforts to control probe…Sydney Morning Herald in Australia
New York: US President Donald Trump repeatedly sought to undermine, control and even shut down investigations into potential ties between his campaign team and Russia, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian election interference.
A redacted version of Mueller’s report was made public for the first time on Thursday local time, painting a more damning portrait of Trump’s behaviour than the initial four-page summary released last month by Attorney-General William Barr.
While Mueller found no evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, he appears to have come extremely close to concluding that the President committed a crime – obstruction of justice – while in office.
In his 448-page report, Mueller details Trump’s despair in May 2017 when informed that a special counsel had been appointed to investigate Russian interference…
In his report, Mueller evaluated 11 separate episodes for possible obstruction of justice, including Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, directives to subordinates to fire Mueller and efforts to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the probe.
Mueller found that Trump launched “public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation”.
“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” Mueller writes.
Mueller did not recommend that Trump be charged with obstruction of justice but emphasised that he was not clearing him of committing a crime.
“The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment,” Mueller’s report states….
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/mueller-report-examined-10-potential-obstruction-of-justice-episodes-by-trump-a-g-barr-20190419-p51fjm.html?utm_source=Fareed's+Global+Briefing
My online comment:
“I notice that in this video, Trump is much younger than his current 72 years. He was capable of speaking in complete sentences and could make sense. Now, he has forgotten those words and speaks in broken sentences and shifts thoughts all over the place. Dementia?”
Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Estate Tour
Andy Agus
Published on Apr 4, 2017
All copyrights belong to their respective owners.
As seen on © HGTV
Snopes gives the full Mueller report if you want to read it.
The 10 Instances of Possible Obstruction in Mueller Report
WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election identified 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. Mueller said in his report that he could not conclusively determine that Trump had committed a crime or that he hadn’t.
A look at the 10 instances:
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2019/04/18/the-10-instances-of-possible-obstruction-in-mueller-report/
He said in the report that it was not within his purview, according to the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, to make a determination as to whether a sitting President had committed a crime and to make a decision to indict or not to indict but, rather, to conduct an investigation and lay out the evidence, period. And he made it clear that this decision was taken at the very beginning of the investigation. So, that’s different. He also makes it quite clear that a President can be indicted once he leaves office.
The Mueller report says quite clearly that it does not exonerate Trump.
I am quoting here from the Conclusion of Volume II of Mueller’s report, page 182:
“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Mueller and his team decided at the outset that they would simply lay out the evidence and would not make a decision, pro or con, regarding whether the President committed crimes. In concluding the report, they say that if the evidence showed that he didn’t, they would say that. They don’t say that. The last clause in the report is “it also does not exonerate him.”
So, the right-wing reporting about this report, is simply misinformed. Read the report.
And, of course, predictably, Trump is claiming that the report does exonerate him when the report clearly says that it doesn’t. But Trump lies about everything. That’s to be expected.