Suddenly Republicans care about civil liberties -- or at least about whether Michael Cohen flips
Suddenly Republicans sound like the ACLU, when the point is to keep Mueller away from Trump’s shady business deals
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
APRIL 24, 2018 12:10PM (UTC)
What's the old saying? A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested and a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged? Well, the Donald Trump era is proving this to be more true than we knew. Liberals certainly feel mugged by the corruption, ineptitude and chaos of the Trump administration and conservatives are all becoming "card-carrying members of the ACLU" as the senior George Bush used to spit derisively at his political opponents. The former are uncomfortably counting on the rule of law to bring some sanity to an insane political environment, while the latter claim to believe that the "deep state" is involved in a massive conspiracy to remove their president from power.
Trump supporters have tried out a lot of different tactics to derail special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation. But as the months have gone by and we have seen indictments and guilty pleas in various strands of the Russia investigation, along the latest move by the U.S. attorney in New York against Michael Cohen the president's self-identified "Ray Donovan," they have adopted a new strategy. And it's really something.
Essentially, Team Trump is now claiming that the rule of law is only applicable for Donald Trump as it pertains to Russian "collusion." Any other crimes that may be uncovered from any source are to be ignored:
Link to tweet
That tweet referred to a New York Times op-ed about Trump's myriad shady overseas business deals in Russia and elsewhere. The president, who has refused to divest himself from his business, appears potentially vulnerable to blackmail for previous unsavory activity with criminal elements. These things should have been sorted out before the election, but nobody ever considered that the president of the United States might retain his domestic and international business -- still less that he would refuse to open his books and reveal his financial ties. It is still mind-boggling that Trump is getting away with that.
The special counsel referred the Cohen investigation to the New York federal prosecutor because he came across information suggesting criminal activity that fell outside his mandate. That should give all these people pause. Mueller, and presumably his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, are playing it by the book. It seems not to have occurred to these Trump defenders that federal law enforcement authorities might be pursuing these cases not because they hate Trump but because they keep finding evidence of corruption and criminality. Contrary to Trump's insistence, most of these cops are Republicans. Many of whom probably voted for him, although as they would surely agree, that's irrelevant.
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https://www.salon.com/2018/04/24/suddenly-conservatives-care-about-civil-liberties-or-at-least-about-whether-michael-cohen-flips/
= new reply since forum marked as read
would they all be saying, ok, yeah, after a quarter century of investigating her, we finally found evidence of a criminal act, but it was outside the scope of the special prosecutor, so we need to ignore it?
yeah, right, that's exactly what they would do.
if a special prosecutor finds evidence of criminal activity, and those further crimes are outside that special prosecutor's scope or jurisdiction, then that evidence needs to be referred to the appropriate authorities, exactly as mueller did.
there' no way republicans wouldn't have done the same thing. well, they also would have blanketed the airwaves and impeached her and wrapped the noose around her neck already.