Government agencies are supposed to use investigations to obtain verifiable facts, not bludgeon citizens into making false statements so the “G” can notch another conviction.
Apparently Special Counsel Robert Mueller never got that memo.
Finally an honest and unintimidated Senior Federal District Court Judge, Thomas Selby Ellis III, has declared in open court what most people have recognized for months: Special Counsel Robert Mueller has insufficient or, more likely, no evidence showing Russians worked cooperatively with the Trump campaign to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
Now having spent several million dollars of public money with little to show for it, Mueller appears willing to use the bludgeon of criminal prosecution to convince witnesses (e.g., Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort) to “sing” against President Trump. Or maybe Mueller will settle for an imaginative composition in lieu of admissible evidence.
In the hearing on Friday, May 4, 2018, in the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Ellis said, “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud. You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever. …”
There was a succinct summary of the Judge’s comments in The Daily Caller News Foundation article dated May 6, 2018, entitled Federal Judge Could Be A Nightmare For Special Counsel Mueller.
I really like the phraseology law professor Alan Dershowitz used in the May 7, 2018, The Hill article entitled Federal judge rightly rebukes Mueller attorney for questionable tactics. Judge Ellis said, “This vernacular is to ‘sing,’ is what prosecutors use. What you got to be careful of is, they may not only sing, they may compose.”
Two other federal district court judges are looking at the Michael Flynn guilty plea and the demand of the 13 indicted Russian boiler room operators for a speedy trial.
In Flynn’s case, recently released unredacted FBI reports indicate that during their interview with Flynn, the FBI agents detected no evidence of Flynn’s making false statements to them in violation of federal law. Yet he pled guilty to making false statements to them. Why? Apparently the Justice Department suggested that unless Flynn admitted making false statements, his son would be prosecuted, too.
Special Counsel Mueller’s highly publicized indictments of the 13 Russians is beginning to look like another Justice Department clown car act, too. Expecting the Russians to remain in Russia with which the US of A has no extradition treaty, Mueller’s thugs asked for a continuance of their arraignment. Oddly enough, the Russians’ US of A legal counsel objected, saying in fact that the Russians would plead not guilty and demand a speedy trial. More importantly, the Russians’ legal counsel made a detailed demand for discovery. Their counsel wants to see everything Uncle Sugar has on the 13 Russians. Ruh-roh!
Given the US DoJ’s extremely bad habit of not fully disclosing exculpatory evidence and its not expecting the Russians to actually want to go to trial, we may soon see a motion for dismissal from the Special Counsel.
As I’ve suggested in preceding OpenCdA posts, the US Department of Justice and its subordinate element, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, need a mercilessly critical examination by a Presidential Commission akin to the 1963 Warren Commission. There are clearly some corrupt lawyers and agents in both. And for the sake of the Constitution, fire Mueller and his thugs before they can bludgeon again!
Several members of the US House of Representatives introduced a House Resolution today calling for the appointment of a second Special Counsel to look into alleged wrongdoing by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its parent department, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) during the 2016 presidential campaign.
