Politics mUELLER iNDICTMENTS

Fox News? Well, then it must be right.

 

So much of Mueller's power of coercion to suborn perjury has come from his obviously UnConstitutional use of double-jeopardy by referring the same charges to the states. Not only could SCOTUS soon prevent his practice they could ultimately pretty much dismantle and reverse everything he has done using this tactic.

Supreme Court’s double-jeopardy case holds Mueller probe implications; Kavanaugh vote key
By Bill Mears | Fox News

A Supreme Court case concerning double-jeopardy rules is receiving outsized attention due to its potential implications for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

At issue in the case heard Thursday is whether and when being tried in state and federal courts for the same crimes is permissible. Under a current constitutional exception, it has been allowed for years.

A court reversal here could be far-reaching – and represent a sea change in how state, federal and tribal criminal cases are handled.

The justices raised tough questions Thursday about being tried twice for the same crime in different jurisdictions – "a double whammy," as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put it – yet a majority seemed inclined to preserve what the Trump administration calls 170 years of precedent allowing an exception to the double jeopardy provision.

Justice Elena Kagan said respect for precedent (known by the Latin phrase stare decisis) is a bedrock principle.

"Part of what stare decisis is, is a kind of doctrine of humility," she said, "where we say we are really uncomfortable throwing over 170-year-old rules that 30 justices have approved just because we think we can kind of do it better."

But Justice Neil Gorsuch warned against prosecutorial zeal:

"With the proliferation of federal crimes, I think over 4,000 statutes now and several hundred thousand regulations, the opportunity for the government to seek a successive prosecution if it's unhappy with even the most routine state prosecution is a problem."

Yet the status quo being defended by the Trump DOJ holds potential implications for the Trump-tied targets of the Russia probe.

The intriguing relevance to Mueller’s investigation would be if one of the defendants charged or convicted in the broad investigation -- such as Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort -- were to be pardoned by the president for various federal offenses. Would a state then be allowed to pursue its own separate charges, including tax evasion or corporate fraud?

The Supreme Court’s ruling could have an impact on the answer.

Trump himself has not ruled out such a pardon, and Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced separately in two federal courts next February and March.

That pardon scenario was not raised in Thursday's 80-minute Supreme Court oral argument, but lawyers from both sides raised a host of worst-case scenarios to boost their positions. The argument was delayed a day in respect for the national day of mourning and funeral for the late President George H.W. Bush.

The Constitution’s double-jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment prohibits anyone being "subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb."

But the high court has also recognized the "separate sovereignty" between state and federal prosecutions – meaning similar charges for the same conduct but in different jurisdictions.

In the current appeal, Terance Gamble was arrested, charged and convicted for gun possession by a felon in both Alabama and federal courts, with his sentences served concurrently. He is set to be released from prison in 2020, three years longer than he would have if convicted only in Alabama.

The Trump Justice Department – backed by three-dozen states, including New York and Texas – wants to preserve the long tradition of discretion for successive prosecution in state and federal courts.

In the arguments, several justices worried about the fallout from tossing this sovereign exception. Justice Stephen Breyer worried it would make it harder to prosecute sexual and domestic violence on Indian reservations, among other cases.

"Look at the door we're opening up," he said. "There are briefs that say remember the civil rights world where people were, with victims of a different race, simply killing them or worse, and the state" would never convict, and the federal government could be prevented from getting involved.

Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh said overturning the exception would also apply to foreign prosecutions, making it potentially impossible to hold accountable terrorists who kill Americans overseas.

"If prosecution is part of the national security efforts of the United States, federal prosecution, then your position would substantially hamper those national security efforts," Kavanaugh told Gamble's lawyer Louis Chaiten.

But the newest justice also raised a counter-argument. "From the perspective of negative liberty, freedom from government oppression or government regulation, your rule strikes some as an infringement of basic concepts of individual liberty," he told Justice Department lawyer Eric Feigin. "You didn't get me the first time; you're going to take another crack at it."

Kavanaugh added that overturning precedent requires showing an earlier decision was not just wrong, but “grievously wrong, egregiously wrong."

And Ginsburg questioned when it would be in the national government's interest to use its broad discretion to file subsequent charges.

"Federalism is usually invoked because it's a protection of the liberty of the individual," she said, "but here the party being strengthened is not the individual, it is the state's freedom and the federal government's freedom to prosecute the same offense, in this case the felon in possession."

Justices Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas – normally on opposite ideological sides – have both urged their colleagues to revisit this issue. Now with Kavanaugh aboard, he could be the wildcard that decides the matter.

Dual prosecutions in state-federal courts have become more common in the past two decades, particularly involving acts of racial animus or violence.

Feigin told the high court the federal prosecutions of those charged in mass shootings at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October and at a Charleston, S.C., church attended by African-Americans in 2015 were properly labeled hate crimes and violations of civil rights that had different legal elements from the state murder charges the defendants would face.

And the man accused of deliberately plowing his car into marchers protecting a white supremacy rally in Charlottesville last year -- killing one woman -- also faces federal hate crime charges. His state trial will go to the jury this week.

But the attorney for Gamble cited cases going back to Europe in the 17th century that he said supported the long-established idea of no exceptions to the double-jeopardy rule.

The case is Gamble v. U.S. (17-646). A ruling is expected by the spring next year.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/su...mueller-probe-implications-kavanaugh-vote-key

 

Can you foretell which way it's gonna go, 'cause I sure can't.
For example, what if it's a serious crime but for some unknown reason a state penalizes the culprit with a slap on the wrist. Now, suppose the state convicts the perp first. Do the feds have a right to a more realistic trial?
If the state and Federal convictions were the same, then I could see the point of a double jeopardy protection.

 

Victoria Toensing: Why has Mueller ignored Obama administration crimes?

By Victoria Toensing | Fox News
Heritage Foundation senior fellow Hans von Spakovsky weighs in on Mueller's recommendation for leniency regarding Gen. Flynn's sentencing.

The matter of Gen. Michael Flynn began with criminal conduct. But it was not committed by Flynn. The crimes were leaking the contents of classified telephone conversations between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and revealing the identity of Flynn as a party to the conversations.

The sorry saga began with a January 12, 2017 column about the Flynn/Kislyak conversations by The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who described his source as a “senior U.S. government official,” i.e., an Obama administration functionary. Whoever told Ignatius the fact of and substance of the eavesdropped conversations committed a felony by leaking classified information.

The second crime is publicly revealing a U.S. citizen’s identity as being a party to those conversations. When there is authorized intelligence collection of foreign officials, the identity of the U.S. person who is incidentally picked up during that collection is to be minimized (not disclosed), even within the U.S. government. Instead of the party’s name, the document substitutes “[U.S. Person].” There is a process for “unmasking”—obtaining the name of the undisclosed person--when the government official determines knowing the name is important to national security. A written request must be made to the collecting agency that is responsible for the document. Only a handful of officials are given that authority, e.g. NSA has only 20. Perhaps there was a valid need for an Obama official to know Flynn’s identity. That issue is irrelevant. Providing it to Ignatius was a crime.

In his column, Ignatius questioned whether Flynn violated The Logan Act, opining that Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak might have “undercut the U.S. sanctions.” Enacted in 1799 and last used over 150 years ago, The Logan Act prohibits (probably unconstitutionally) unauthorized U.S. citizens from negotiating with a foreign government. At the time, Flynn had been named President Trump’s national security advisor and was receiving checks as a member of the transition team. One hopes that in addition to talking to Kislyak he would also have been talking to officials from Canada, Israel, Mexico, and so on. Any thought that Flynn would be legally considered “unauthorized” to talk with foreign countries is risible.

Before Flynn flunked remembering every word of a conversation he was asked to recall weeks later, an Obama administration official had egregiously broken the national security and privacy laws. But only Flynn has been charged with a crime.

But that did not stop Obama holdover, acting Attorney General Sally Yates, from utilizing Ignatius’ suggestion of criminal culpability as a pretext to direct the FBI, without notice, to Flynn’s office to question him about the Russian conversations. Query whether Ignatius’ leaker also prompted him to include the Logan Act musings to lay a “legal” groundwork for the trumped up interview.

Not only was the basis for questioning Flynn a ruse, but more significantly the FBI did not have to ask him about the conversations to determine if there was a crime because it had the transcripts and recordings of every single word. If Flynn had committed any illegal act in the conversations, the Justice Department could have indicted him that day. But it did not. Nor did Mueller ever mention such an illegality in his December 2017 charges against Flynn for false statements.

Unmasking requests are documented. Should there “be a record somewhere in our system whether … an unmasking request was made” for the conversations between Flynn and the Russian ambassador, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., inquired of then former DCI James Clapper and Yates in a May 2017 hearing. Both agreed there is a record of the name of the requestor, who could then be asked whether the information was disseminated to someone else.

Mueller should have pursued these crimes as he is authorized to investigate any crime he finds in the course of the “collusion” investigation. He has had no problem charging Paul Manafort for decades-old tax crimes and looking into former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s taxi medallions. Yet the crimes against Flynn have been ignored. Why?

Victoria Toensing is a former chief counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and former deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, where among other assignments she created the anti-terrorism section.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/vic...s-mueller-ignored-obama-administration-crimes

 

The Witch Hunt just got a lot more expensive.

Corsi sues Mueller over alleged grand jury leaks, seeks $350M in damages: report

By Edmund DeMarche | Fox News
Corsi: Mueller wanted me to lie
Jerome Corsi, the conservative author accused of lying under oath to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, filed a federal lawsuit late Sunday accusing Mueller of leaking grand jury items and various constitutional violations, including illegal surveillance, reports said.

Politico reported that the newly filed suit claims that Mueller tried to get Corsi to give testimony that Corsi said is false. He is reportedly seeking $100 million in actual damages and $250 million in damages due to injury to his reputation.

The author has theorized that investigators hoped that he would admit to a connection with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. The connection would bolster their Russian collusion investigation, he said. A link between Corsi and Assange would make it easy to tie in President Trump's former adviser Roger Stone, he said.

American intelligence agencies have assessed that Russia was the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election that damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mueller’s office is trying to determine whether Stone and other associates of President Trump had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans.

Corsi, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars, rejected a deal with investigators that would have required him to plead guilty to perjury. He said he could not lie to something he knew to be false, even if it meant living out his life in prison.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to Fox News for comment.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington and named Mueller as the defendant. The suit claims that Mueller and his team “demanded” that Corsi falsely testify that he acted as a liaison between Stone and Assange. Politico reported that the suit accuses Mueller of unconstitutional surveillance through the NSA program that was exposed by Edward Snowden, PRISM.

"Defendants Mueller, DOJ, NSA, CIA, and FBI have engaged in ongoing illegal, unconstitutional surveillance on Plaintiff Corsi, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the USA FREEDOM Act as well targeted ‘PRISM’ collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Sovereignties Immunity Act at the direction of Defendant Mueller," the suit said, according to Politico.

National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss has pointed the lawsuit's apparent misciting of "the Foreign Sovereignties Immunity Act" rather than "the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."

"Larry Klayman (Corsi's lawyer) is alleging 4A violations by Mueller against Jerome Corsi in reliance upon section 702 of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act," Moss tweeted. "He meant the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He wrote FSIA."

Fox News' Bradford Betz and The Associated Press contributed to this report
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/co...grand-jury-leaks-seeks-350m-in-damages-report

 

Maris, serious question...Why do you choose to use the phrase 'witch hunt' when a number of people have already been indicted and in some cases plead guilty to various things? Is it because of how you feel about the legitimacy of the overall investigation?

 

First, use a credible source rather than the incredible Fox News.
Second, get some substantial evidence against Obama before spouting off, you know, the way Mueller did with Trump and family.
Third, did I mention using a credible source?

 

Giuliani suggests Mueller cover-up, charges Dems 'absolutely' could have prevented illegal immigrant cop killing

By Gregg Re | Fox News

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani responds to the latest news on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation
Rudi Giuliani weighs in on the future of the Mueller probe.

In a wide-ranging interview Sunday on "Fox & Friends," President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani suggested that key evidence of anti-Trump bias has been deleted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, and charged that Democrats rejected legislation that would have "absolutely prevented" the murder of California police officer Ronil Singh by an alleged illegal immigrant early Wednesday.

The suspect in the slaying, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, had known gang affiliations as well as two past DUI arrests. Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson this weekend argued that the murder "could’ve been preventable," saying that California law had prevented authorities from sharing information about Arriaga's DUI arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"This could've been prevented by just a reasonably sensible policy," Giuliani said. "Democrats ... voted against legislation that would have absolutely prevented this by focusing on gang members. He should've been taken in for being a drunk driver. ... There was special legislation to focus on gang members. Most of the Democrats voted against it. Almost every Republican voted for it. Had that legislation been in place, this murder may very well not have happened."

In September 2017, the Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act, which would have given authorities the ability to take immigration enforcement action against suspected gang members even if they have not been convicted of a crime, passed the House along party lines but did not receive further Senate consideration.

Giuliani added that "this is going to keep happening," and pointed to Democrats' previous support for enhancing border wall funding.

"This thing about a wall is totally crazy -- they all voted for it," Giuliani said. "She [House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi] was in favor of it; now she says it's immoral. So I hope she went to confession. I mean, she's a Catholic."

Separately, Giuliani openly cast doubt on Mueller's official explanation for why the phones belonging to two of his former top deputies were completely wiped just days after they were fired for their anti-Trump bias. Giuliani also reiterated his previous assertions that Trump would not sit down for a one-on-one interview with Mueller, citing what he called the "unethical or grossly negligent behavior" of special counsel prosecutors.

MUELLER RECORDS OFFICER TOTALLY WIPES ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT'S PHONE, CAN'T REMEMBER IF IT HAD TEXTS ON IT

In a comprehensive report issued earlier this month, the Department of Justice's internal watchdog blamed a technical glitch for a swath of missing text messages between anti-Trump ex-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page -- and revealed that government phones issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office to Strzok and Page had been wiped completely clean after Strzok was fired from the Russia probe.

Strzok -- who in August 2016 texted Page about an "insurance policy" in the event Trump won the election and who secretly discussed a "media leak strategy" concerning the Russia probe -- was removed from Mueller's team in late July 2017 after the FBI discovered he had been sending anti-Trump text messages. He sent many of those messages to Page, with whom he was engaged in an extramarital affair.

"All those texts from Strzok and Page -- deleted?" Giulani asked. "After they find out that Strzok is texting that he hates Trump, that he's going to get him and stop him -- and that if he can't stop him, he has an 'insurance policy' to get him out of office. I believe Mueller is the insurance policy to get him out of office. I'm not just saying that -- Strzok was his first investigator."

The DOJ's Inspector General (IG) said that, with help from the Department of Defense, it was able to uncover thousands of missing text messages written by Strzok and Page and sent using their FBI-issued Samsung phones from December 15, 2016, through May 17, 2017, "as well as hundreds of other text messages outside the gap time period that had not been produced by the FBI due to technical problems with its text message collection tool."

But when the IG went looking for the iPhones separately issued to Strzok and Page by the Mueller team, investigators were told that "[Strzok's] iPhone had been reset to factory settings and was reconfigured for the new user to whom the device was issued."

The records officer at the special counsel told the IG that "as part of the office's records retention procedure, the officer reviewed Strzok's DOJ issued iPhone" on September 6, 2017, and "determined it contained no substantive text messages" before it was wiped completely -- just weeks after Strzok was fired from Mueller's team for anti-Trump bias and sending anti-Trump text messages.

"The person who determined what to eliminate was Mueller's records officer, who says there was nothing of interest there," Giulani said. "It's hard to believe Strzok and Page suddenly decided, 'We're not going to text anymore about Donald Trump.' They seemed to be obsessively and compulsively texting about him. I don't know what kind of lovers they were if they were texting about that all the time. It's ridiculous."

Giuliani added that it was likely that Strzok, in fact, had been using his Mueller-issued phone to discuss topics like the FBI's tactics in the investigation of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Explosive court documents released earlier this month revealed that, in January 2017, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pushed Flynn not to have an attorney present during the questioning that ultimately led to his guilty plea on a single charge of lying to federal authorities.

"Just maybe, it would be very embarrassing if he was saying the same things while working for the holier-than-thou special counsel -- 'we're framing Flynn, we're not gonna tell him he has the right to counsel,'" Giuliani said.

Asked whether he expects Mueller's final investigative report to be issued in February, Giulani suggested he isn't holding his breath.

HOW THE FBI INCORRECTLY SUGGESTED TO FISA COURT IT HAD MORE EVIDENCE THAN IT REALLY DID TO SURVEIL TRUMP AIDE

"Oh gosh, almighty -- first he was coming out in March, then in May -- we're now in fourth degree of separation from the non-crime of collusion," Giulani said. "We went to the non-crime of obstrution of justice, that didn't work out for them. Then he moved on to campaign contributions, which by the way are not violative of the campaign finance law. And then they're looking at now the Russia tower. They should go to Moscow. There is no tower. It didn't get built. It didn't get beyond a nonbinding letter of intent, which is like a wish."

Giuliani maintained that Trump was "as surprised as I was" about the WikiLeaks disclosures of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 presidential campaign, and emphasized that the underlying emails were not doctored.

What hurt the Hillary Clinton campaign, Giuliani said, was that the emails revealed that her campaign had received illicit inside information from the DNC to help her secure the nomination.

"The thing that really got Hillary, is not that it was revealed, but that it was true -- she really was cheating on the debates, she really was getting the questions from Donna Brazile beforehand, she really did screw Bernie Sanders -- every bit of that was true."

He added a personal message to Mueller: “My ultimatum is ‘put up or shut up, Bob.’ I mean, what do you have? There are those who believe you don’t have anything on collusion. And, by the way, even if you did it’s not a crime – so what the heck are you doing? Do you have anything that shows the President of the United States was involved in a conspiracy to hack the DNC with Russia? Of course you don’t. If you do, put out a report, or give it to the Justice Department, let them review it, make sure it’s not classified or whatever, put out a report. We’re ready to rebut it. I’ve had the report ready for two months.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/giuliani-dems-could-have-prevented-cops

 

I'm sure all the talk about Meuller collaborating with state prosecutors to prevent a Trump pardon was just Fox News making stuff up.

 

I'm hopeful that Gamble wins. This has always bothered me. Maybe we could charge people in international courts too and then it would be Triple Jeopardy and thus constitutional.

 

Okay, I knew that you knew Mueller was dirty and working for the Democrats but how did you catch on to how dirty he really is?
Here's something I'll bet you didn't know, he's got those judges and juries and evidence rooms in his back pocket how else could a man that crooked get all those felony indictments, confessions and convictions? But don't you worry 'cause Trump will get him in the end, any day now.

 

Good. Trump should pardon everyone today.

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/30/manafort-mueller-probe-attorney-general-242191

So are there any articles with anonymous sources that you do believe?

All of this discussion about Mueller over the last couple of years has almost entirely been fueled by stories like this.

Just this one isn't true because Mueller didn't say it in public.

 

Here is something interesting to me. Hadn't even heard of the alleged kidnapping plot involving Flynn.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&sou...Mz0O&ust=1546376068764750&cshid=1546289665688