RUTHFULLY YOURS

Can we all stipulate that no one ever wants to be the subject of an investigation? If you are innocent of wrongdoing, the fact that there is no meritorious criminal case is often beside the point.

There is a stigma attached to being an investigative subject. Many people who do not appreciate how politicized the legal system has become will conclude that if you are under investigation, you must have done something wrong. Some other people who know precisely how politicized the legal system has become, and like it that way, will exploit the fact that you are under investigation to stigmatize you. Public perception aside, being the subject of an investigation is also debilitating because of the time it takes to defend oneself, the financial burden of retaining lawyers (and, for a public official, retaining press agents who can deal with the media frenzy), and the anxiety that makes it difficult to focus on one’s job and other responsibilities.

President Trump is now in the grip of this situation. This weekend, it produced some of the more excruciating news coverage in recent memory as one of his lawyers, Jay Sekulow, was tendentiously grilled on the question of whether the president has conceded that he is under investigation.

Like many Trump problems, this one was caused by a Trump tweet. Foolishly allowing himself to be baited by a Washington Post report that special counsel Robert Mueller is now weighing whether the president committed an obstruction crime, Trump tweeted: “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt[.]”

Clearly, Trump is exasperated over what he sees as much ado about nothing. Constitutionally, the president does not need a reason to fire the FBI director, who — like every unelected subordinate official in the executive branch — serves at the president’s pleasure. Before Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, the Trump-appointed deputy attorney general, wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be dismissed. In the subsequent furor over Comey’s dismissal — largely stoked by Trump’s conflicting reasons for firing the director, which first adopted but then parted company with Rosenstein’s memo — Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel. In that role, Mueller is not independent — he answers to Rosenstein (because Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, is recused). So technically, Trump is correct: The man who wrote the memo endorsing Comey’s removal has authorized an investigation that is reportedly probing whether that removal somehow constituted a felony.

Impeachment.

See, it’s not that hard. All together now: Impeachment . . . impeachment . . . impeachment.

Don’t be fraidy-scared. It’s okay to say the “I-word.” Really.

Apparently, Team Trump doesn’t think so.

It was painful to watch Trump apologists fan out in the media to defend the president over the weekend. They have a persuasive argument to make against the obstruction probe reportedly being pursued by special counsel Robert Mueller. But it cannot be made without discussing impeachment.

It seems Team Trump has calculated that the word “impeachment” must be resisted — that utterances of it would cross a psychological barrier, normalize public consideration of it, begin to create the political conditions in which it could actually happen.

It is a bad strategic call. It is like telling your advocates: “Go explain two-plus-two. But whatever you do, don’t mention the word ‘four.’”

Here is how this works.

There is no legal obstruction case against President Trump. As we have repeatedly explained, obstruction requires prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a public official acted corruptly in endeavoring to influence or interfere with an investigation. To establish the corrupt mental state, prosecutors must prove that the official knew what he was doing was against the law.

The president’s actions here, no matter how much one might judge them ham-handed or inappropriate, were not against the law. A president has prosecutorial discretion: He may lawfully shut down an investigation, to say nothing of merely influencing it. And the intelligence services exist to serve the president: He may lawfully terminate any intelligence-collection effort he chooses to.

In point of fact, Trump did not shut down the investigation of Michael Flynn or the counterintelligence probe of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Since he had the authority to bring these investigations to a screeching halt, he cannot have acted corruptly by taking lesser lawful action. Period.

The claim that Trump may be guilty of a prosecutable obstruction crime is premised on a legal error – namely, that the FBI and the Justice Department are a separate branch of government, independent of the executive. In fact, they are subordinate to the president. The power they exercise, as inferior officers, is the president’s power. It does not matter whether an FBI director finds it troubling that a president makes suggestions to him about how a case should be handled. The president gets to do that. If the FBI director finds that intolerable, he can resign. The director’s comfort level is constitutionally irrelevant.

Prosecutorial discretion is part of a continuum of executive police powers that includes the ultimate interference in law-enforcement: the pardon power. No matter how offended we are when a president pardons (or commutes the sentences of) serious criminals, the matter is unreviewable by the courts. The president may not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice over it, even though it seems like a profound obstruction of justice, because the president has the indisputable authority to take the action.

The appointment of Robert Mueller, James Comey’s BFF, as special counsel stinks to high heaven. Forget the bipartisan encomia to Mueller’s “ethics” and “professionalism” and “integrity” and all the other usual question-begging praise the elite shower on each other to justify their power and privilege. Such mutual admiration and reciprocal puffery is just one of the ways that DC is “Hollywood for ugly people,” given that both industries are in the business of selling sows’ ears as silk purses. We heard all the same praise about Comey, who has been exposed as self-righteous, conniving, and cowardly, his ethics trimmed to his careerism. He proves that all political appointees and “public servants” should be judged guilty until proven innocent.

And right now Mueller demands particular scrutiny and suspicion. Why should we ordinary citizens, who don’t know him from Adam, believe that he can set aside his friendship with Comey and be fair and objective? Especially after Comey confessed he leaked his memo about Trump’s comments because he “thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel,” and he is likely to be a witness? And mirabile visu, that special counsel just happens to be his close friend? And a Democrat, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, just happens to be the one making the appointment of a man under whom he served from 1990-93? And what about new information that Mueller was interviewed by Trump to replace Comey? Was the topic of why Comey was fired part of the interview, which could make him a witness in his own investigation?

Worst of all, this same DOJ, along with the FBI and maybe Mueller’s team, is still springing leaks that are poisoning the integrity of the nascent investigation. It seems to me that a man of such high integrity as Mueller would have put the investigation on hold until the leakers were rooted out, in order to insure the integrity of the investigation. But then, a man of integrity wouldn’t agree to head up an investigation that involves one of his closest friends, who has an axe to grind against the target of the investigation. Nor is Mueller’s past record of substituting his will for the law reassuring. In 2006 he raided the offices of Representative William Jefferson without getting permission from the legislative branch. He seized documents not pertinent to the investigation, and refused to return them when asked by the executive. As the Wall Street Journal writes, Mueller “let his prosecutorial willfulness interfere with proper constitutional and executive-branch procedure,” a bad habit he shares with Comey.

The Department of Justice has become an advocate for the establishment of mosques in America. It is as if there were some congressional affirmative action mandate. The DOJ’s own statistics reveal a sharp escalation in intervention efforts on behalf of Islamic complainants, mostly involving mosque disputes with local zoning authorities. Alarmingly, these interventions reveal a pattern of generous settlements that benefit mosques while bypassing municipal laws and disregarding legitimate neighborhood concerns.https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/16/department-justice-privileging-mosques/

During the Obama Presidency, DOJ lawyers ran roughshod over local officials, as long as the complaining party was a mosque. Trump’s Justice Department must reverse these tendencies.

The atmosphere of DOJ intimidation cannot be overstated. Negotiated settlements between the DOJ, local zoning authorities, and mosque officials take place against a backdrop of DOJ threatening long, prohibitively costly litigation. The drive for ever more concessions, and more cash, confronts communities whose small governments cannot compete with DOJ’s $28 billion budget and legions of lawyers. Importantly, DOJ treats these settlements as if they were precedents even though, by sidestepping the courts, the settlements bypass judicial precedents that could protect legitimate community interests.

In two recent cases, mosque applicants in Sterling Heights (Michigan) and Basking Ridge (New Jersey), received cash settlements because they were denied permits according to local zoning procedures. These settlements failed to protect vital neighborhood interests in traffic safety, parking limits, and livability concerns.

Just one example of neighborhood hardships that result from deferential permit agreements, the Dar al Farooq mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota is currently holding services for the entire month of Ramadan with overflow parking and lighted lots until 1:00 and 3:00 a.m.—in a residential neighborhood.

The Sterling Heights settlement is illustrative of abusive DOJ meddling.

The atmosphere of DOJ intimidation cannot be overstated. Negotiated settlements between the DOJ, local zoning authorities, and mosque officials take place against a backdrop of DOJ threatening long, prohibitively costly litigation.

The mosque had applied to build a 28,000 square foot facility on 4.35 acres of land. The building’s dome was to be 58 feet high and the minarets 66 feet high. The surrounding neighborhood has been settled by many Chaldean Christians who fled Iraq and Islamist oppression. An imposing Islamic structure was not met with enthusiasm to put it mildly. But federal law focuses on whether the decision-makers are biased. It demands that local government officials give all sides equal consideration. It does not require that neighborhood residents greet this kind of application with enthusiasm.

The proposed mosque for Sterling Heights, Michigan.

In this case, there were many legitimate concerns that the local planning commission investigated, concerns that contributed to the unanimous conclusion that the mosque was ineligible for the indicated property. Indeed, the major disputes arose because mosque representatives provided incomplete information and they were unwilling to address zoning concerns.

In every single week of the Trump presidency, the investigators and attorneys of FBI Director James Comey or, subsequently, of special counsel Robert Mueller, have leaked information that President Donald Trump was under investigation for either colluding with the Russians or obstructing justice—allegations so far without any substantiating evidence.https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/19/trumps-way-progressive-labyrinth/

In the case of Comey, we now know that his office or sympathetic third-parties leaked to the press false stories that Trump was under FBI investigation at precisely the time that the careerist Comey was privately reassuring the president himself that he was in fact not being investigated.
The appointment of Mueller was a concession to opposition demands that Trump appoint a Lawrence Walsh-type Special Prosecutor. The Comey-Mueller investigations and leaks occur simultaneously with House Intelligence member Adam Schiff’s passive-aggressive and often pompous announcements of evidence of Russian collusion—including raising the specter of a Grand Jury investigation—that are never followed by any evidence.

Since January 2017, the Congress ceased being a legislative body. It is now a Star-chamber court determined to decapitate the presidency.

Never in the history of the republic have there been so many legislative and political simultaneous efforts to 1) sabotage the Electoral College, 2) sue to overturn the presidential vote in key swing states, 3) boycott the Inauguration, 4) systematically block presidential appointments, 5) surveille, unmask, and leak classified or privileged information about the elected president, 6) nullify federal law at the state and local level, 7) sue to remove the president by invoking the Emoluments Clause, 8) declare Trump unfit under the 25th Amendments, 9) demand recusals from his top aides, 10) cherry-pick sympathetic judges to block presidential executive orders, 11) have a prior administration’s residual appointees subvert their successor, and 12) promise impending impeachment.

And that is only the political effort to remove the president.

Simultaneously, the media, Hollywood, popular culture, street theater, and the universities hand-in-glove seek to remove Trump from office through the dissemination of fake news as well as deep state leaks—coarsening the culture to such a degree that Trump is reduced to an impotent pariah.

In terms of losing state legislatures and governorships, the Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidency, the Obama progressive project has all but ruined the Democratic Party. And with such catastrophic losses of political power, the left grows less introspective and only more venomous—as if invective can do what appeals to voters have not.

The hydra-headed Resistance issues both explicit and metaphorical threats of presidential assassination, descends to scatological and obscene smears, cheers on campus disruptions and street theater, and persists in constant harangues in the press that Trump is unfit to remain President.

Why the unhinged furor?

The Washington D.C. nomenklatura advanced forward last week with its slow-moving coup d’état against America’s constitutionally elected President.

But even after the federal bureaucracy’s further progress toward undoing the 2016 election, I confess to a faint hope that Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III — supposed embodiment of upper class, non-partisan, lawyerly virtue — might actually conduct a fair, focused and swift inquiry into the matter assigned him.

In the end, though, the sensible old lawyer’s voice in my head whispers that this hope is more pipedream than prediction of events.

Here’s the latest state of affairs, no doubt soon to be out of date:

After staffing up during the week preceding last with heavy Democrat contributing lawyers of dubious objectivity, last week Mr. Mueller appeared to abandon, or at least heavily downgrade, the alleged raison d’etre for his office — investigating the Russia collusion fantasy. Now, per the Washington Post — always eager to provide a stage for someone leaking ill about the President — Mr. Mueller will focus on whether the President “obstructed justice” and on the business dealings of the President’s close advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

So already, almost before his army of lawyers has swung into battle, the Special Counsel’s inquiry has metastasized from its original focus — sleuthing out whether President Trump or his campaign “colluded” with the Russian government during the election — into entirely new subjects.

Keep in mind the language of Mr. Mueller’s assignment, as articulated on May 17 by Rod Rosenstein: To investigate:

“any links and/or coordination between Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from that investigation.”

The new subjects of Mueller’s inquiry are not only remote from that recent but apparently forgotten assignment, but they begin to sketch the outline of a lawyer who is stocking up on matters of inquiry for a long-haul investigation.

In sum, as each week passed following Mr. Mueller’s May 17 appointment, the man has behaved less like an independent counsel and more like the designated agent for America’s Trump-despising Washington-New York would-be rulers — like someone who knows he is charged with providing a colorable legal predicate for a long-ago decision by America’s elites to destroy the President and prevent him from serving out the term he was accorded by America’s electorate and Constitution.

As of, today, Monday June 19, 2017, here is where matters stand for the President of the United States:

Though constitutionally and decisively elected to office, President Trump must carry out his duties — that include sole responsibility for protecting the American homeland in a world where North Korea fires missiles every month and Islamic fanatics commit atrocities on a near daily basis — while a former FBI Director, unrestrained by budget, personnel, duration of authority, or substantive area of inquiry, deliberately harasses, hounds, and distracts him and his appointed officials while attempting to find something — after last week, apparently anything — that could be twisted into a warrant for the President’s impeachment and removal from office.

“Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many.”

That’s a compelling verse – call it a proverb – from the New Testament. It’s a great admonition for all of us. It’s one the left will pay for not knowing.

During the early days of the Clinton impeachment, then-“journalist” George Stephanopoulos gave an insider threat to the world, clearly from the Clintons. He said that if Republicans continued their attempts against them, the earth would be scorched. If they went down, everyone else would, too.

Here is the exchange, from 1998.

Sam Donaldson: “Are you suggesting for a moment that what they’re beginning to say is that if you investigate this too much, we’ll put all your dirty linen right on the table? Every member of the Senate? Every member of the press corps?”

George Stephanopoulos: “Absolutely. The president said he would never resign, and I think some around him are willing to take everybody down with him.”

It is now safe to say the Democrats have followed that scorched earth promise, that they now fully embrace the Clinton bitterness and corruption. It’s beyond anything we have witnessed.

Take a look around. This absurd quest to dehumanize Trump, to form narrative after narrative fabricated on lies to try to destroy him, to destroy his ability to govern, to make him into a criminal, comes from the bitter wells of the Clintons. After all, he ended Hillary’s (and Bill’s) dream of regaining the Clintons’ glory. Make no mistake: the Clintons and their team are ravaging everything in a concerted effort to punish anything or anyone that took them down. Trump is the symbol, but anyone moderate, or right of center, is now the target. We, all of us on the right, are the target as well. Just like in Stephy’s quote.

Look at the poisoned fruit they have grown. Any celebrity that dared even hint to give Trump a chance was destroyed by the liberal Twitter-verse, having to grovel at the feet of the left. Multiple episodes of violence have erupted against non-leftist speakers on campus. Any attempt by any congressional Democrats to help Trump is seen as treason to the cause, provoking virtually all of their party members to ever angrier statements and over-the-top efforts to bring Trump down. Kathy Griffin feigns cutting off the head of Trump as a comedy act, and it took 24 whole hours (rather than minutes) to fire her. Violence from the left is condoned and encouraged, and no Democrat adult has come against it until today.

The New York City Council is the distilled political essence of modern progressivism, which means it can be dangerous to public health and safety. This summer tourists can see more New Yorkers relieving their bladders in public thanks to the council’s reduction in penalties for crimes against public order, and now the council wants to expose the city’s antiterror secrets.

A new bill would require the New York Police Department to disclose and describe all “surveillance technology,” which it defines as “equipment, software, or system capable of, or used or designed for, collecting, retaining, processing, or sharing audio, video, location, thermal, biometric, or similar information.” The cops would have to post this information online annually and respond to public comments.

The effort is backed by such anti-antiterror stalwarts as the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center. Manhattan Democrat Daniel Garodnick, a co-sponsor, says the measure would enhance public trust by giving citizens more knowledge about policing techniques.

We’ll see how long that trust lasts if the bill makes it easier for terrorists to thwart or evade the NYPD’s antiterror methods. That’s the legitimate worry of police who rely on technology and surveillance to prevent mass murder. A jihadist bombed Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood as recently as September and the department maintains on average three or four active terrorist investigations at any one time. John Miller, the NYPD’s counterterror chief, says police have foiled at least 25 major terror attacks since 9/11.

New York’s cops are as respectful of privacy as any in the country, and they need a court order to conduct searches or track a cellphone. They also comply with the court-ordered Handschu guidelines that impose additional due-process burdens.

An NYPD internal committee reviews these cases along with an external, civilian representative, who is currently former federal Judge Stephen Robinson. As if this weren’t enough, in 2014 the city council established an inspector general for the NYPD. The miracle is that the cops have been able to keep America safe despite all of this bureaucratic oversight and political second-guessing.

New York remains a pre-eminent terror target because of its size and importance as a symbol of American culture and commerce. The recent attacks in Britain show the jihadist threat to open societies hasn’t abated, and democracies need tools to defend themselves without offering terrorists a road map to thwart them.

The attack on congressmen last week illustrates the realities of sudden violence. There’s a saying among gun-carry permit advocates: “When seconds count, police are minutes away.”

That was not the case last week but only because Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s Capitol Police detail was on hand and courageously engaged the shooter. Had Rep. Scalise and his security team not been present, congressmen and their aides would have been easy pickings until local police arrived. That took three minutes—but that’s a long time to spend taking cover in a baseball dugout under armed assault. “It would have been a bloodbath,” said Texas Republican Joe Barton.

In largely rural states like Indiana, where I live, response times can be 30 minutes or more. Maybe that’s why nearly a million Hoosiers hold active gun permits, as per state records, out of an adult population of 4.5 million.

I’ve been one of them for decades. I’ve gone Christmas shopping armed, carried at family outings, sporting events and movie theaters. I was fired from a job with the gun tucked in an ankle holster. Aside from the indignity of being fired, the only person in danger was me, when I broke the news to my wife.

Indiana assumes—in the absence of evidence to the contrary—that people will protect themselves without reflexive, wanton violence. It works. A gun-use Venn diagram would show a mere sliver of overlap between those who lawfully carry weapons and those who use guns in the commission of crimes. You don’t find National Rifle Association stickers on getaway cars.

The inconvenient fact that laws aimed at restraining criminals are only obeyed by non-criminals was vividly demonstrated in this case. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R., Ga.) reported that his aide “back in Georgia, carries a 9mm (pistol) in his car. . . . He had a clear shot at him, but here we’re not allowed to carry any weapons.”

Bad news for New York Republican Chris Collins, who said, “I can assure you from this day forth—I have a carry permit—I will be carrying when out and about.” Well, when he’s out and about on Capitol Hill he won’t be allowed to carry. He might be permitted to have a gun in his desk—unloaded. It will make a fine paperweight.

Mr. Collins’s New York state carry permit is recognized in Virginia, under expanding reciprocity laws that have extended permit rights beyond state lines. He could also carry in Indiana; our reciprocity rules are very liberal, in the least bossy sense of the term. But relying on his New York permit in Maryland or the District of Columbia would get Mr. Collins one phone call and a court date. CONTINUE AT SITE

Remember when Obama and Hillary cozied up to Putin? And recall when the media rejoiced at surveillance leaks about Team Trump?

The American Left used to lecture the nation about its supposedly paranoid suspicions of Russia. The World War II alliance with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union had led many leftists to envision a continuing post-war friendship with Russia.

During the subsequent Cold War, American liberals felt that the Right had unnecessarily become paranoid about Soviet Russia, logically culminating in the career of the demagogic Senator Joe McCarthy. Later, in movies such as Seven Days in May, Doctor Strangelove, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Hollywood focused on American neuroses as much as Russian hostility for strained relations.

In the great chess rivalry of 1972 known as “The Match of the Century,” American liberals favored Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky over fellow countryman Bobby Fischer, who embarrassed them by winning.

In the same manner, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev was often portrayed in the media as the urbane, suave, and reasonable conciliator, while President Ronald Reagan was depicted as the uncouth disrupter of what could have been improved Russian–American relations.

Senator Ted Kennedy reportedly reached out to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1984 to gain his help in denying Reagan his reelection.

In sum, the American Left always felt that Russia was unduly demonized by the American Right and was a natural friend, if not potential ally, of the United States. That tradition no doubt influenced the decision of the incoming Obama administration to immediately reach out to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, despite is recent aggressions in Georgia and steady crackdown on internal dissent, and despite Russia’s estrangement from the prior Bush administration.

Obama’s Entreaty to the Russians

In March 2012, in a meeting with President Dimitri Medvedev of Russia, President Barack Obama thought his microphone was either off or could not pick up the eerie assurances that he gave the Russian president:

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [Vladimir Putin] to give me space.”

Medvedev answered: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you . . . ”

Obama agreed and elaborated, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Medvedev finished the hot-mic conversation with, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you.”

A fair interpretation of this stealthy conversation would run as follows:

Barack Obama naturally wanted to continue a fourth year of his reset and outreach to Vladimir Putin, the same way that he was reaching out to other former American enemies such as the Iranians and the Cubans. Yet Obama was uneasy that his opponent, Mitt Romney, might attack him during his reelection campaign as an appeaser of Putin. Thus, to preempt any such attack, Obama might be forced to appear less flexible (offer less “space”) toward Putin than he otherwise would be in a non-election year. In other words, he couldn’t publicly assure Putin that he would be “flexible” about implementing missile defense in Eastern Europe (“all these issues”) until after he was reelected.

An apprehensive Obama, in his hot-mic moment, was signaling that after his anticipated victory, he would revert to his earlier reset with Putin. And most significantly, Obama wished Putin to appreciate in advance the motives for Obama’s campaign-year behavior. Or he at least hoped that Putin would not embarrass him by making international moves that would reflect poorly on Obama’s reset policy.