The Trump team's chilling message to Mueller

[DonViejo]

By Ruth Marcus
Deputy editorial page editor, columnist
June 2 at 6:37 PM

For months we’ve heard President Trump’s TV lawyers, as he calls them, bandy about the argument that he — or any president, for that matter — couldn’t have obstructed justice because justice is what he says it is.

In other words, that because, they claim, a president possesses absolute power to cut short a criminal investigation, he cannot by definition be guilty of obstructing it. Or, in the famous Nixonian formulation, as Richard M. Nixon told David Frost, “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” But as much as the president’s legal team foreshadowed this contention, it was nonetheless breathtaking to see it spelled out, in uncaveated black and white, in a letter from Trump’s legal team to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

“A President can also order the termination of an investigation by the Justice Department or FBI at any time and for any reason,” the lawyers, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, wrote in the January letter, obtained by the New York Times. “Such an action obviously has an impact on the investigation, but that is simply an effect of the President’s lawful exercise of his constitutional power and cannot constitute obstruction of justice.”

At any time and for any reason. The precise context involved the president’s discussion with then-FBI Director James B. Comey in which, according to Comey’s testimony, Trump cleared the Oval Office of other witnesses before discussing his just-fired national security adviser, Michael Flynn. According to Comey, Trump expressed his “hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”

The letter disputes Comey’s version of events but says it wouldn’t matter if Trump had made those statements. And then, in a magnificently gaslighting move, the letter claims that Trump is actually the hero of any obstruction story, because he fired Flynn: “Far, far, from obstructing justice, the only individual in the entire Flynn story that ensured swift justice was the President.”

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-teams-chilling-message-to-mueller/2018/06/02/2d72fb3e-66b2-11e8-99d2-0d678ec08c2f_story.html

[manor321]

1. Bad

If they're making these desperate arguments, just imagine how bad the coverup must be.

[PragmaticLiberal]

2. Yeah, I was thinking the same.

They must be terrified of what Mueller has....

[BSdetect]

3. They are twisting words into fantasy arguments.

[CanonRay]

4. I cannot believe there is a judge anywhere in this country who would buy this bag of shit

at least not at a high enough level to matter. I don't think any of the right wing Federalist judges would, it totally goes against everything in the constitution.

[RandomAccess]

5. I don't know if I'd trust Gorsuch not to buy it

Seriously

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

6. "At any time and for any reason." Or no reason at all.

All it takes is Donnie Two Scoops to have a bad day. I think he's demonstrated just how whimsically he uses his pardon power.