• Home
  • Mission of This Site
  • Contact

Impeachable Offenses?

~ Examining the Case for Removal of the 45th President of the United States

Impeachable Offenses?

Tag Archives: Obstruction of Justice

Preliminary thoughts on Mueller’s Judiciary Committee testimony

24 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by impeachableoffenses in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Department of Justice, donald trump, House Judiciary Committee, Mueller hearing, Obstruction of Justice, Robert Mueller

By Frank Bowman

I may have more to say later, but Robert Mueller’s testimony this morning before the House Judiciary Committee generated a couple of off-the-cuff reactions.

First reactions

An hour or so in, I’d say this is going about as I expected. Mueller is rigidly insisting on not going one inch beyond the report. The Republicans are avoiding talking about what’s in the report, focusing instead on conspiracy theories about the origins of the investigation. 

Two modest surprises for me:

1) Mueller himself is more halting and less commanding than I might have expected. Part of this, I think, is that he is so committed to sticking with the report that he’s not focusing on the substance of the questions and answering them on their merits — as would be true for ordinary witnesses or for Mueller himself in any other situation. Instead, he is measuring every question by only two metrics: first, can I answer simply by referring to the report, and second, can I decline to answer at all on the ground that the question asks about internal special counsel or DOJ deliberations. That’s an artificial and unnatural way of thinking about questions, and it makes him seem indecisive.

(I should say in passing that, on many points where Mueller refused to answer, it’s not at all clear that he had any legal right or privilege to do so. It’s hard to imagine any other witness being given this degree of deference on what questions he will or won’t answer. But neither party elected to spend the time or energy to press him. Hence, the Committee, and the rest of us, got no more or less than Mueller wanted to talk about.)

2) Although the media may not score the Democrats very well on their performance today, so far the Democratic members have displayed a pleasantly surprising degree of discipline in walking Mueller succinctly through the major factual components of the obstruction case against Trump. In another era – the era of Watergate for example – the facts they are highlighting would be devastating to a president. But because the facts are detailed and because the attitude of the committee Republicans is that there’s nothing to see here (an attitude that will be reinforced by Fox and other pro-Trump media), these crushingly incriminating facts are unlikely to perceived as such by anyone not already convinced going into the hearing.

Republicans attack Mueller’s team and with it, the Dept of Justice

Towards the end of the hearing Republican Cong. Armstrong raised questions about the apparent political affiliations of Mueller’s team — i.e., 14 of them seem to have donated to democratic political candidates — in an effort to argue that Mueller’s investigation was fatally biased.  

Although this sounds like a plausible line of inquiry, it totally distorts the basic ethos of federal prosecutors, which is that DOJ does not inquire about prosecutors’ political affiliations.  It judges them on their body of work, and it presumes, in the absence of affirmative contrary evidence, that regardless of political leaning or affiliation, prosecutors will pursue the facts and the law wherever they may lead.  DOJ has a long history of impartiality that supports this operating assumption.

The Repub line of attack here implies an absurd rule going forward — that only Republicans or unaffiliated independents can investigate Republicans, and only Democrats or unaffiliated independents can investigate Democrats. Adoption of such a rule, or operational guideline, would shake the foundation of the Department’s professional code and internal esprit.

More importantly, the Republicans are actively contributing to the public’s already-growing distrust of government and the impartiality of justice itself.  There is, in fact, no evidence that Mueller and his team shaded their efforts or their report against Trump & Co.  To the contrary, they treated him with kid gloves relative to regular defendants. And in his report, Mueller bent himself into linguistic pretzels to avoid saying what the evidence proved – namely that Trump obstructed justice.  By attacking Mueller (a lifelong Republican) and his team this way, the Republicans are actively eroding the confidence of the American public in their government — indeed in the very possibility of impartial administration of the law.  Republican members may think this is to their advantage in the short term, but it’s corrosive, and we will all live to regret their short-sighted selfishness. 

That said, I confess to thinking Mueller notably inept in his defense of his own people and of the traditions of the Justice Department.  This line of questioning was easily foreseeable, and Mueller should have had a devastating response ready.  That he didn’t suggests two things about him: First, he is still, stubbornly, living in the world he (and I) grew up in, one in which the honor, probity, and professional competence of long-serving federal law enforcement officers was accepted by both political parties.  Second, he’s gotten old. He simply can’t respond quickly, either with spontaneous argument or even with pre-prepared speeches

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Black Pardon

16 Thursday May 2019

Posted by crosbysamuel in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Arpaio, canada, Conrad Black, Constitutional, conviction, D'Souza, donald trump, fraud, impeach, Impeachment, Mikaela Colby, Obstruction of Justice, pardon, pardon power, Paul F. Eckstein, president, trump

President Trump has pardoned Conrad Black of convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice from 2007. Black is a friend of Trump’s and a vocal supporter; he published a book entitled ‘Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other’ last year. Black spent 3 years in prison as a result of his conviction and was banned from the United States for 30 years. This is the latest in a series of politically questionable pardons; readers will recall the Arpaio and D’Souza pardons. But the questions remains: when does a non-kosher pardon become an abuse of pardon power?

Paul F. Eckstein and Mikaela Colby tackle this question in their article entitled ‘Presidential Pardon Power: Are There Limits and, if Not, Should There Be?‘ published in the Arizona Law Journal. In that article the authors examine the history of the pardon power, its constitutional limits, and what remedies may exist for its abuse. They ultimately conclude that new limitations need to be introduced.

black.jpgDarren Calabrese / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Prof. Bowman in NY Times on impeachment for obstruction

23 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by impeachableoffenses in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Adam Liptak, Obstruction of Justice

Adam Liptak, the distinguished Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times, has an article out today discussing whether, as a matter of historical precedent, obstruction of legal processes can be an impeachable offense. He is kind enough to quote Professor Bowman extensively. The link is here.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Mueller Report

19 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by impeachableoffenses in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

don mcgahn, James Comey, Michael Flynn, Mueller report, Obstruction of Justice, Robert Bork, Robert Mueller, Russia investigation, Saturday Night Massacre, William Barr

By Frank Bowman

This is how it’s done. In the endless, degrading cacophony of the Trump era, in which the “tweet storm,” the “flame war,” the sneering insult, and the facile certainty of cable punditry have become the customary form of legal and political discourse, I had almost forgotten what the language of the law sounds like. But there it is in the 448 pages of the Mueller report
— logical, cautious, painstaking, measured, dry, yet inexorably compelling. One may quibble about details, but taken as a whole, Mueller’s product is an exemplar of the prosecutor’s craft and a powerful reminder of why a Justice Department imbued with norms of independence and professionalism is an essential counterweight to both presidential overreach and partisan hysteria.

The legal craftsmanship of the report is also an unanswerable refutation of the endlessly repeated canard that the Mueller investigation was a baseless partisan “witch hunt” by a hostile “deep state.”

In one sense, of course, the report is the work of the “deep state,” if by that foolish term one means the career professionals of American law and government. If some of those professionals are hostile to Trump and Trumpism, it is only because their lives are based on values — the dogged pursuit of truth, a commitment to fairness and due process, respect for the law, support of constitutional government — that Trump openly flouts.

Nonetheless, Trump should thank his lucky stars that Mueller’s team was composed of such old-fashioned folks. Had they indeed been the “thirteen angry Democrats” of Trump’s splenetic imagination, persons of the disposition and caliber of, say, Devin Nunes or Lindsey Graham, but of the opposite political valence, the resultant report would surely have been very different. As it is, the professional values and institutional norms by which good prosecutors live produced a report exonerating Trump of actual crime in relation to Russian election interference and withholding judgment on the legal question of obstruction.

Trump and his enablers are, of course, claiming vindication. But the caution and restraint of Mueller’s style cannot obscure the facts he meticulously reports. And those amount to a devastating portrait of a man by conduct, character, and temperament unfit for the office of president.

The section of the report on Russian election interference does clear Trump and his campaign of conspiring with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election. It nonetheless unequivocally affirms that the Russians did interfere. And it depicts Trump campaign operatives, including members of the Trump family, who were aware of the possibility that Russia was trying to intervene to help Trump by hacking and leaking material damaging Clinton, but saw no problem with such Russian meddling and would happily have conspired in it given the chance.

The reality of Russian intervention and the dangerous, if perhaps not quite provably illegal, proximity of Trump intimates to it frames the question of Trump’s obstruction quite differently than his defenders would like. Despite Trump’s endless denials, the Russians did meddle. As a matter of national security, that required investigation. Likewise, Trump associates and family did have troubling contacts with Russian emissaries. That, too, required investigation. Given the facts, both those long publicly known and others now laid out in Mueller’s report, investigation of neither point could, except in the mind of a willfully blind partisan, amount to a “witch hunt.”

Moreover, a truly independent inquiry into Russian electoral interference represented a political threat, or at least grave embarrassment, to Trump, because it raised the possibility that his victory was tainted by the assistance of a hostile foreign power. In addition, by no later than early 2017, Trump knew that his family and associates had, at the very least, come dangerously close to illegal entanglements with Russian representatives. Thus, Trump had powerful motives to quash the Russia investigation.

The crime of obstruction of justice depends on proof of two basic points — first, actions that obstruct or impede an investigation, and second, corrupt motive. Although a president may lawfully limit or even halt investigations for reasons genuinely related to the national interest, doing so to advance one’s partisan political prospects or to protect oneself or one’s family or friends from criminal exposure or personal embarrassment is to act corruptly.

The second volume of Mueller’s report lays out eleven different incidents or sequences of events that might amount to obstruction — from Trump’s efforts to convince FBI Director James Comey to lay off the investigation of Gen. Michael Flynn, to his repeated attempts to stop or limit the Mueller investigation, to his public and private efforts to induce witnesses Flynn, Manafort, and Cohen not to testify or to hew to Trump’s preferred view of reality.

Space precludes a blow-by-blow analysis of each of these categories, but Mueller’s conclusions — though guardedly, even opaquely, phrased — are evident and damning. He concludes that on multiple occasions Trump engaged in behavior that either did, or was intended to, obstruct or impede criminal investigations. As to some of the enumerated categories, Mueller concludes that, even if obstructive conduct occurred, there was insufficient evidence of “corrupt” motive. But as to at least five sequences of events, Mueller unmistakably believes that there is persuasive evidence of both obstructive conduct and corrupt motive. These included repeated efforts to remove special counsel Mueller; an attempt through Cory Lewandowski to induce Attorney General Sessions to limit the scope of the Mueller probe to future Russian interference in elections; a brazen attempt to convince White House Counsel Don McGahn to lie about the fact that Trump had ordered him to arrange the firing of Mueller; Trump’s efforts to influence the cooperation and testimony of Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort; and Trump’s efforts to induce Michael Cohen not to cooperate or to shade his testimony in Trump’s favor.

Mueller’s conclusions are unmistakable despite his careful refusal to go the last step and say plainly that Trump obstructed justice. If there were any doubt on the point, it is removed by the report’s inclusion of a devastatingly thorough legal rebuttal of Attorney General Barr’s apparent view that a President cannot commit obstruction by stopping or limiting a criminal investigation. The only reason to include such an argument is if Mueller concluded that, on the facts, the president violated the law. Otherwise, the legal question is moot and a legal craftsman like Mueller would never have included such surplusage.

In the end, of course, whether a president can or cannot technically commit the crime of obstruction is itself a moot point. As I have argued many times, Bob Mueller was never going to defy DOJ policy and seek indictment of a sitting president. As to the president, therefore, Mueller’s job from the beginning was to determine the facts and present them to Congress and the public in order that a political judgment about the president’s fitness for office could be made — whether through the impeachment process or at the polls.

The picture of the current president painstakingly etched in the Mueller report is of a man with three dominant characteristics.

First, his narcissism overwhelms all other considerations. Even a more balanced and self-aware person would have found the Russia inquiry politically and personally troublesome. But one cannot escape the feeling (to which Mueller obliquely alludes) that a primary factor in Trump’s desperate efforts to squash the investigation was the fragility of his ego — a manic determination that the epic achievement of his election not be tarnished by even a hint that forces other than Trump played a role.

Second, Trump believes that, having been elected, the powers of government are to be wielded for his personal and political benefit and the law exists only as a tool to serve his ends. No institution, no law, no set of traditional norms, no professional standard, certainly no moral consideration deserves any deference if it stands in the way of his immediate wishes.

Third, the thread running through the entire report is Trump’s essential falsity. Mueller confirms that Trump not only lies constantly as part of his public act, but does so privately among his advisers and intimates and he expects others to lie for him on command. Among the most revealing vignettes is Trump’s effort to convince Don McGahn to lie about the fact that Trump ordered him to secure Mueller’s firing. McGahn, to his credit refused and showed Trump his notes documenting the order. Trump exploded in astonishment that, “Lawyers don’t take notes…. I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes.” That a subordinate might have personal integrity and be unprepared to sacrifice it on Trump’s command had seemingly never occurred to him.

One other curious theme recurs throughout the report as a kind of counterpoint to Trump’s lawlessness. Even though Trump repeatedly ordered people to crush or divert or hobble the Russia investigation, over and over they refused to comply, either to his face or simply by failing to carry out his directives. Revealingly, those who resisted told Mueller that they did so because they didn’t want to be responsible for another “Saturday Night Massacre,” or they didn’t want to be another Robert Bork.

This is heartening in a sense. The example of Watergate seems to have restrained at least some Trump subordinates and helped buttress, at least for awhile, the tottering citadel of the rule of law. But the Mueller report is about yesterday’s White House. Those with historical memory, and perhaps more imbued with personal integrity and professional values, are largely gone. Quit in disillusionment. Or purged because they refused to bend to Trump’s lawless whims. In considering what to do about Donald Trump, Congress should ponder that they now confront a Trump unchanged in his essence but increasingly surrounded by aides who may prove unwilling to provide even the modest restraint on his worst impulses documented in Mueller’s report.

Whether Donald Trump violated a particular federal obstruction statute is in the end a peripheral matter. The fundamental lesson of the Mueller report is simply that he is fundamentally unfit for office and presents a persistent danger to the integrity of the American constitutional order. That is the question that Congress and the country must now address.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Barr Releases Summary of Mueller’s Report

24 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by crosbysamuel in Articles, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

attorney general, Collusion, evidence, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 6(e), House of Representatives, impeach, Impeachment, indictment, insufficient, Obstruction of Justice, release, report, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, russia, Special Counsel, Summary, William Barr

Attorney General William Barr has released a four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. In it he announced that Mueller did not find sufficient evidence to establish the President Trump’s campaign conspired with Russian groups to manipulate the results of the 2016 election. Additionally, he writes that Mueller did not make a recommendation as to whether the President should be charged with obstruction of justice, but rather presented evidence on both sides of the issue and deferred to the Attorney General. Bar and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have decided not to pursue indictment of the President on that charge. Barr notes that he intends to release as much of the report as will not violate Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), governing the release of grand jury information. After the release of Mueller’s findings, the House of Representatives will have to decide whether they believe the evidence is sufficient for impeachment.

48032044_303.jpg

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Documents Flooding the House

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by crosbysamuel in Articles, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

campaign, Collusion, documents, donald trump, House Judiciary Committee, impeach, Impeachment, investigation, nader, nancy pelosi, not worth it, Obstruction of Justice, subpoena, trump organization

A large number of the 81 individuals subject to the House Judiciary Committee’s “friendly subpoenas,” requests for documents sent to President Trump’s organization, campaign team, transition team, inaugural committee, and his personal associates for documents having to do with the committee’s probe into the allegations of Trump’s obstruction of justice, have already complied and sent documents. These documents could be used to lay the foundation for impeachment proceedings in the House; however, recent remarks by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, seem to indicate that said impeachment proceedings my never occur.

download (6).jpgMark Wilson/Getty Images

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Is Mueller Almost Finished?

21 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by crosbysamuel in Articles, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

28 CFR 600, attorney general, Bill Barr, Collusion, confidential, Congress, discretion, donald trump, impeach, impeachable, Impeachment, investigation, Obstruction of Justice, president, privelege, report, Robert Mueller, russia, Special Counsel, subpoena, trump, William Barr

CNN Reported today that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may conclude his investigation as early as next week. Their information apparently came from sources familiar with Attorney General Bill Barr’s plan to announce the completion. But! Don’t get too excited. Though Mueller’s report may be finished soon, that doesn’t mean the public or Congress will get to see it.

The regulations which govern Special Counsels are contained in part 600 of title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations. 28 CFR 600.8 says that when Mueller gets done, he needs to send his final product off to the Attorney General, Bill Barr. 28 CFR 600.9 says that Barr only has to tell Congress 1) that Mueller is done; and 2) if he disagreed with any of Mueller’s suggested actions because they were “inappropriate and unwarranted,” and an explanation of that conclusion. So what we’ll find out is, for the most part, at Barr’s discretion. However, Barr told Congress during his confirmation hearing that he intends to release his own summary of the report, and will be as transparent as possible within the confines of the law (for a thorough analysis of Barr’s statements, click here). If Barr releases less than what Congress would like, their remedy is a subpoena.

william-barr-nomination-hearing.jpgKevin Lamarque/Reuters

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Case for Impeachment of Donald Trump, Part 4 (Subversion of the justice system)

28 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by impeachableoffenses in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Brian Morris, bruce ohr, case for impeachment, Chief Justice John Roberts, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Mason, Gonzalo Curiel, hillary clinton, James Robart, Jay Bybee, John Marshall, Obstruction of Justice, Richard Nixon, Roy Cohn, subversion of constitution, subversion of justice system, Thomas Jefferson, William Orrick

By Frank Bowman

Much of the public conversation about possible impeachable conduct by Mr. Trump has centered on obstruction of justice in the narrow sense of a violation of criminal statutes defining obstruction. I have discussed the legal issues surrounding the application of those statutes to Mr. Trump at length on this blog (see this link for a list of those posts). I will do so again once the Mueller investigation is complete. Until then, I am reluctant to offer a definitive view on whether Mr. Trump’s conduct constitutes obstruction in the legal sense or on whether such legal violations are of the type that constituted so large a part of the impeachment case against Richard Nixon.

Nonetheless, if the case for technical obstruction of justice remains uncertain, the conclusion that Mr. Trump has systematically sought to corrupt and subvert the justice system as a whole is ironclad.  Inasmuch as the health of the justice system is essential to the health of constitutional order, a presidential effort to undermine it deserves consideration as impeachable conduct.

Throughout his pre-presidential career in business, Mr. Trump viewed the law from two perspectives.  As the operator of multiple businesses some aspects of which, at best, skirted the edges of legality, Mr. Trump viewed the government’s civil and criminal enforcement agencies as opponents to be thwarted or circumvented.  Conversely, he learned early to use his money to employ private civil litigation as a weapon against personal and business adversaries.  As of 2016, he and his businesses had been involved in more 3,500 lawsuits.

Mr. Trump has carried his prior attitude toward the law into the White House.  Early in his presidency, exasperated by the pertinacious refusal of James Comey to back off the Russia investigation and by Attorney General Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from that investigation, Trump famously asked, “Where is my Roy Cohn?”  The reference being to the notoriously hard-nosed and questionably ethical lawyer who acted as Trump’s legal fixer and attack dog early in his career.  More disturbing than the desire for a personal legal heavy is the fact that Mr. Trump plainly imagines the role of the Department of Justice and the rest of the federal law enforcement establishment as defending him against legal inquiries and standing ready to use the law to discredit or even imprison his critics and opponents. 

The essence of Mr. Trump’s defensive approach has been to appoint justice officials chosen for personal loyalty (e.g., Jeff Sessions and Matthew Whitaker) and simultaneously to attack any official, whether political appointee or career civil servant, who pursues matters that might implicate Trump, his family, or his supporters.  When Sessions disappointed Trump’s expectations of servility by recusing himself from the Russia investigation, Trump turned on him, calling him “weak,” “disgraceful,” and an “idiot” before finally firing him.  He has characterized the FBI as “in tatters” and the Justice Department itself as “an embarrassment to our country.”  His personal assaults have even reached down into the middle levels of the Justice Department bureaucracy, as exemplified by his baseless demonization of career DOJ official Bruce Ohr. The unifying theme of Trump’s assaults on all the men and women doing their duty by investigating matters that might implicate or inconvenience him is that they are corrupt members of the “Criminal Deep State.”

Trump’s denigration of the integrity of anyone who stands in his way is not restricted to officials and employees of the executive branch he heads, but notoriously extends to the federal judiciary.  Trump routinely attacks any judge or judicial panel that rules against him or any administration initiative.  The examples are too numerous to mention them all, but include:

During his 2016 candidacy, Trump said of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, then presiding over suits against Trump University, that he should be disqualified because, as a person of Mexican heritage, he would necessarily be biased against Trump.  When U.S. District James Robart enjoined Trump’s travel ban on persons from certain Muslim countries, Trump tweeted, “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes away law enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned.”  When U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick enjoined Trump’s executive order attempting to punish so-called “sanctuary cities,” Trump called the order “ridiculous,” and the White House put out a statement declaring, “The San Francisco judge’s erroneous ruling is a gift to the criminal gang and cartel element in our country, empowering the worst kind of human trafficking and sex trafficking, and putting thousands of innocent lives at risk. This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge.”  When U.S. District Judge Brian Morris of Montana enjoined implementation of President Trump’s order to proceed on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Trump said, “It was a political decision made by a judge.  I think it’s a disgrace.” In response to a pointed rebuke of this kind of rhetoric from Chief Justice Roberts, Trump attacked the Ninth Circuit, asserted that “Obama judges” differ from persons “charged with the safety of our country,” and claimed that judicial restrictions on law enforcement will lead to “bedlam, chaos, injury, and death.”

Of course, throughout American history presidents have disagreed with particular decisions of federal courts and sometimes said so. Both Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson disagreed heartily with important opinions of Chief Justice John Marshall, with Jefferson swallowing them graciously except in private correspondence and Jackson being more outspoken. At the outset of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln simply ignored an opinion by Chief Justice Taney purporting to void Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus near vital rail lines Maryland. When the Supreme Court persistently voided New Deal legislation, Franklin D. Roosevelt fumed and mooted the possibility of inflating the number of justices — his famous “Court Packing Plan” — but never acted on the idea.

Trump’s defenders have attempted to analogize his routine denigration of the judicial branch to prior expressions of presidential unhappiness with legal outcomes. But the effort is strained and unconvincing. No president before Trump has ever made a staple of his ordinary public statements attacks on the integrity of individual judges or the legitimacy of the judiciary as a whole as arbiter of the meaning of the law.

This persistent pattern of questioning the integrity and legitimacy of the courts is not merely distasteful, or, as Trump’s defenders are apt to say, simply a matter of his personal “style.” It is instead overtly dangerous.  Court of Appeals judge Jay Bybee (a Republican appointee of impeccable conservative credentials) wrote in his dissent from the Ninth Circuit’s order upholding the injunction against Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban”:

Even as I dissent from our decision not to vacate the panel’s flawed opinion, I have the greatest respect for my colleagues. The personal attacks on the distinguished district judge and our colleagues were out of all bounds of civic and persuasive discourse—particularly when they came from the parties. It does no credit to the arguments of the parties to impugn the motives or the competence of the members of this court; ad hominem attacks are not a substitute for effective advocacy. Such personal attacks treat the court as though it were merely a political forum in which bargaining, compromise, and even intimidation are acceptable principles. The courts of law must be more than that, or we are not governed by law at all.
— Washington v. Trump, 858 F.3d 1168, 1185 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc) (Bybee, J., dissenting).

Moreover, Mr. Trump’s abandonment of critical norms of presidential behavior in relation to the law have not been limited to questionable appointments decisions or ceaseless rhetorical denigration of legal officers, but has extended to placing pressure on the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies to open criminal investigations into his critics and opponents.  He has apparently been dissuaded from issuing direct orders for such investigations, but has made repeated calls for them in public declarations, most recently in response to the Roger Stone indictment.

Perhaps the most disturbing of Mr. Trump’s demands has been the endless harping that Hillary Clinton, his defeated 2016 rival, should be both investigated and jailed. The famous staple of his political rallies before and after the election — “Lock her up!” — can mean nothing else.

Even Republican stalwarts like former Attorney General Michael Mukasey have said that launching criminal investigations of defeated political candidates is un-American and akin to the practices of “banana republics.” He is right. The hallmark of successful democracies is the peaceful transfer of power from one elected administration to its popularly chosen successor. Such transfers reliably occur only if the electoral losers know that the sole consequence of the loss is return to private life. If a possible consequence of of losing is criminal prosecution by the winner, then losing becomes unthinkable and the contestants will be tempted to ever-more-extreme measures to prevent it. This is the all-too-common precursor to the death of democracy in the developing world. But regression is perfectly possible among mature democracies like our own.

In short, systematic public assault on the executive and judicial branch employees of the justice system is bad enough because it risks creeping corrosion of the public trust essential to the rule of law.  Far more troubling is employing, or even threatening to employ, the vast powers of the federal criminal apparatus against opponents because it places this or any country on a straight road to autocratic rule. 

The facts that the Justice Department has, so far, ignored Trump’s efforts at jawboning and forged ahead with investigation of the president and his associates; that judges have, so far, continued to rule against the administration when moved to do so by their reading of the law; and that the federal law enforcement apparatus has, so far, largely resisted Trump’s calls for retaliatory investigations of his critics does not materially diminish the seriousness of Mr. Trump’s deviation from American constitutional norms. Nor does it materially alter the impeachment calculus.  Federal agencies for the most part resisted Richard Nixon’s efforts to enlist them in efforts to obstruct justice or punish his enemies, but the House Judiciary Committee included Nixon’s unsuccessful efforts along with his more successful ones as grounds for his impeachment.

The Framers inserted the impeachment remedy into the Constitution precisely in order to deal with an executive whose conduct, in George Mason’s words, “subvert[ed] the constitution.” By “constitution,” Mason and his colleagues meant not merely the document they were drafting. They understood that their brief composition could only be the skeleton to which later generations would add the flesh and sinew of statutes, judicial decisions, customs, and behavioral norms that make up the true constitution of any mature state. A president who would subvert that constitution may be impeached.

Trump’s persistent shamelessness has dulled all our senses to the point that he has normalized behavior that would only two years ago have seemed unthinkable. Unthinkable because it strikes so deeply at the unwritten norms — here the impartial, apolitical, administration of the law — that sustain American constitutionalism. It behooves us to shake ourselves free of his narcotic influence to at least consider whether he presents a danger great enough to merit his removal.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Mueller’s Questions Exclude Obstruction

14 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by crosbysamuel in Articles, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

donald, Elie Honig, impeach, investigation, Jonathan Turley, Mueller, Obstruction of Justice, president, questions, robert, russian collusion, Special Counsel, trump, written answers

Special Counsel Robert Mueller sent President Trump and his lawyers questions this week regarding collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russian officials. This represents a breakthrough in negotiations between the parties as to the scope of questioning of the President; however it is limited. The President’s answers will only be written. Given Trump’s history of contradictions this may be a safeguard against perjury. Commentators have noted that the series of questions leave out obstruction of justice.

Jonathan Turley, in an opinion piece written for The Hill, has theorized that the absence may indicate Mueller is not pursuing an obstruction charge. His supports his opinion by pointing out that obstruction of justice is a bad fit for the President’s alleged crimes, since the charge is normally applied to the obstruction of some kind of judicial proceeding. Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor from New York, disagrees with Turley. He theorizes that if Mueller is presenting questions about collusion that must be because he is focused on specific conduct and doesn’t see “wiggle room” for the President in his answers. In his mind, the fact that Mueller isn’t giving questions about obstruction does not mean that he has given up on the charge, but rather that he is preparing for a legal battle that could go to the Supreme Court.

Regardless of Mueller’s motivation, readers would do well to remember that the crimes of obstruction and collusion are intimately involved. If it could be established that President Trump was involved in the Russian election interference, that would go a long way in establishing the mens rea required to convict the President of obstruction of justice — his corrupt influence, if you will.

trumpfirst_opi2jd.jpgKevin Lamarque/Reuters

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Rosenstein Spared

09 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by crosbysamuel in Articles, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Department of Justice, deputy attorney general, firing, florida, Impeachment, investigation, midterm, Obstruction of Justice, police chief, president, rosenstein, trump

It has been reported that President Donald Trump has no intention of firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. There was some speculation that a firing or resignation would occur after it was reported by the New York Times that Rosenstein had discussed removing the President via the 25th amendment and recorded him secretly, though Rosenstein denied both allegations. Now, after a nice flight the two shared to Florida, Trump announces that he doesn’t intend to make any changes to the Justice Department.

This is surprising, considering the menagerie of firings Trump has collected throughout his campaign and administration.  However, there was some speculation that firing Rosenstein could amount to obstruction of justice, and with midterms looming, it may be that Trump is looking to avoid another scandal. This issue very well may resurface after November.

SUM7NGGLJUI6RI7GITNKHU263Y.jpgMandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts

Blog Owner

Frank O. Bowman, III


Floyd R. Gibson Missouri Endowed Professor of Law
University of Missouri School of Law

Web Profile

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Professor Bowman on Impeachment »

Bibliographies

Explore bibliographies categorized by author and subject, and find other resources.

Posts by Topic

  • The Case for Impeachment
  • Defining Impeachable Conduct
  • Impeachment on Foreign Policy Grounds
  • Impeachment for Unfitness
  • Obstruction of Justice
  • Abuse of Criminal Investigative Authority
  • Election Law Violations
  • Foreign Emoluments
  • Conspiracy to Defraud the   United States
  • Politics of Impeachment
  • Lying as an Impeachable Offense
  • Abuse of Pardon Power
  • Electoral College
  • House Impeachment Resolutions
  • The Logan Act
  • The Mueller Investigation
  • Impeachment of Missouri Governor Greitens
  • Historical Precedent for Impeachment
  • Messages from Professor Bowman

Student Contributors »

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
%d bloggers like this: