Alan Dershowitz who has become one of the biggest defenders of President Trump has gotten bogged down in figuring out how best to do it. The reason Alan is doing this is because he is hoping Trump will put him on as one of his lawyers. Trump having seen his act has enough good sense to let him keep trying to join his team without ever letting it happen. This, of course, makes Alan try all the harder losing his credibility which for many he never had any in the first place. I wonder how many know Alan never tried a felony case in his life to a jury by himself. What kind of litigator is he pretending to be?
Anyway Alan’s new lie is that you cannot be charged with lying to the FBI unless your lie is material to its investigation. Here’s what he said: “All I’m saying is you need materiality, and the fact that it wasn’t a crime is at least one argument that it may not have been material. I think on balance probably it was material. That raises the question of why did Flynn lie? I think Flynn lied because he didn’t know it wasn’t material.”
It’s tough to say “it was material” and “it wasn’t material” in subsequent sentences. Trump tweeted after hearing Alan Dershowitz argument: “A must watch: Legal Scholar Alan Dershowitz was just on @foxandfriends talking of what is going on with respect to the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history. Enjoy! “
It is clear what Alan is trying to obfuscate things. Flynn has already pleaded guilty to having lied to the FBI so whether it is a crime or not in his case has gone by the board. As we know, it didn’t matter to General Flynn. He pleaded guilty because he got a good deal like Murderman, Benji, or Two Weeks on the other potential charges he and perhaps his son were facing. So to wrap it all up agreed to plea to lying to the FBI. So Alan’s sort of double talking through his hat.
As an aside Alan says of General Flynn, “A witness such as Flynn who has admitted he lied – whether or not to cover up a crime – is a tainted witness who is unlikely to be believed by jurors who know he’s made a deal to protect himself and his son.” You’d think Alan never heard of John Connolly’s conviction, Whitey Bulger’s conviction, etc. although my recollection is that he knew quite a bit about them.
As mentioned Dershowitz is on a pathetic search for a job on the Trump team. One reason he has no chance is none of Trump’s lawyers want him around. They like having him out there as a free lancer mad dog snapping and biting at Mueller and not having to feed him. Alan doesn’t understand that Trump can never bring him on because it will bring up their connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
That doesn’t mean the Trump lawyers are not pulling a lit bit of Dershowoff themselves when it comes to Mueller. John Dowd one of Trump’s lawyer, the one who said he send out the tweet where it appeared Trump admitted to obstruction of justice. I guess he realized no one would believe of the over 9,000 tweets Trump sent since announcing for president the only one incriminating him was not sent by him. So he changed his tune and tweeted that: “president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case.” Too bad that wasn’t the law when Richard Nixon was president.
The argument though will be if the president cannot obstruct justice then any investigation by Mueller into obstruction by the president is a wrongful abuse of Mueller’s power. It is a short distance from there to say no special prosecutor can investigate the president setting up Mueller for removal.
Dershowoff comes back to suggest, “Number one, the president is entitled to tell the Justice Department who to investigate, who to prosecute, and who not to investigate, and who not to prosecute. The president doesn’t even have to appoint an attorney general. The president essentially can run the Justice Department, if he chooses to do that.” That of course is the nonsense one would expect from someone never a prosecutor. Title III involving wiretaps requires an attorney general. I’m sure there’s thousand of other legislative provisions also referring to one. When you hear such transparently false information you must understand people are getting desperate.
Although it has never happened before in our history where a president is said to have the ability to tell the Justice Department who not to prosecute or investigate, if you follow Alan’s logic then if the president had that power he can immediately within that power shut Mueller’s investigation down.
What then is the recourse. Didn’t Nixon try something like that? There the recourse was a legitimate congressional investigation. But what if Congress is in the bag? What if the attitude of Congress is expressed by the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) who in questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested “It does appear to me that, at the very least, the FBI’s reputation as an impartial, nonpolitical agency has come into question. Even the appearance of impropriety will devastate the FBI’s reputation. We hope to hear from you today about an action plan for making sure this never happens again.’ (my emphasis)
Goodlate suggests the FBI is compromised. If so how can Mueller who relies upon them not be compromised. If you don’t see the groundwork being laid for Mueller’s firing then you are not paying attention.
Oh how I yearn for times past when we lived
in a simpler more honest era
ugh!
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-watergate-stephen-king-martha-mitchell-richard-nixon-john-744823
Former FBI agent and TRUMP AMBASSADOR BEAT AND ‘KIDNAPPED’ WOMAN IN WATERGATE COVER-UP: REPORTS
BY JEFF STEIN ON 12/11/17 AT 4:41 PM
In other news today
http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/364219-yes-the-fbi-is-americas-secret-police
Yes, the FBI is America’s secret police
BY JAMES BOVARD, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/11/17 08:40 AM EST
On Jan 14 2017 I posted a thread there titled
https://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=44694
“a partial list of Presidents elected by FBI Directors”
I laid out a small amount of the avaible evidence
for FBI intervention in American elections
for example
https://kennedysandking.com/articles/bremer-wallace-it-s-deja-vu-all-over-again
Bremer & Wallace: It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again
Written by Lisa Pease
view all posts in this thread
Weird doings. Dershowitz seems desperate to shill for Trump, of all people. Sad.
As I recall it, Ken Starr started by investigating an obscure Arkansas land deal. But the man never stopped. Ever. (In the very end, Starr was kicked out of Baylor for failing to control the football team. Sad.) My point is just that my conservative colleagues are going to have to be patient while Mueller sorts things out.
I see Trump is quarreling with the New York Times about the amount of TV he watches. I would have preferred a tweet on the attempted terror attack in New York. Sad.
From the Washington Post last Monday:
Ty “Cobb, a White House lawyer overseeing its handling of the Russia investigation, said Monday [12/4] that the Dershowitz-Dowd theory was not the president’s official legal strategy. ‘It’s interesting as a technical legal issue, but the president’s lawyers intend to present a fact-based defense, not a mere legal defense,’ Cobb said in an interview with The Post. ‘That should resolve things, but we all shall see.’”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-bold-new-legal-defense-for-trump-presidents-cannot-obstruct-justice/2017/12/04/b95cb262-d91c-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html
I think what Cobb is saying here is Trump’s legal team is going to go with “fact-based,” but they have no intention of going down with the “fact-based” ship. Try to imagine Donald Trump depending on facts for anything.
In other words, Dershowitz-Dowd is not their legal strategy YET. If they can wriggle out of trouble with a “mere legal defense” (a highly unlikely scenario) they will.
But Ty Cobb calling the Dershowitz-Dowd theory “a mere legal defense” is perhaps the most insidious understatement in the history of American self government.
The Dershowitz-Dowd theory essentially asserts that the United States is a Constitutional democracy solely at the convenience of the President. That we are not a government of laws but of men, or in this case a man. And even in the extreme case of a president obstructing a legally initiated government investigation into the potential illegitimacy of his own election, that that same President may suspend the limitations on his Presidential authority, written into the Constitution, if he so chooses. It’s his call.
According to the Dershowitz-Dowd theory, even if you deceitfully wrested the football out of the hands of the opposing player, after the whistle had already blown and the play was over, and then lied about it, you still not only still take possession of the football, you may then appoint yourself an additional role in the contest, that of referee, and you may then make up rules and enforce them, or not, as you see fit for the duration of game play.
Above the law is martial law.
Should read wriggle out of trouble withOUT a “mere legal defense”
In a hierarchical sense a President cannot obstruct justice; in a political sense he can. Mueller’s Mafia is a political operation. He hired nothing but proven Democrat hitmen. He has exceeded his authority which was to probe foreign influence on the American election.
He has excluded wrongfully from inquiry foreign influences, such as the EU, Israel and host of other nations and their domestic lobbies. He has further excluded from his Russian investigation all evidence of the Benji Ditch Duo’s collusion and corrupt dealings with Russians while the distaff member was Secretary of State and the ex-President functioned as her bagman.
Mueller’s own role in said dealings would cause a man of propriety to recuse himself. But Mafioso Mueller slithers on.
As for the FBI’s good reputation, what is good about it? It has reached a point where the agency should be shut down and reconstituted. Its file cabinets can be moved to another office as can its non policy employees as needed. It is a Hydra and the heavens cry out for a decapitation of all its heads. Trump is just the man to be America’s Heracles. The ham in him will glory in the role.
I got the dates a little off: John Connolly’s second trial was 2008 in Miami . . . Carr and Dershowitz fashioned their sleazy book Brothers Bulger in 2006.
Bill Bulger laughs at them, ignores them; for 20-plus years their vitriolic acid has eaten away at the insides of Carr’s and Dershowitz’s gutless guts.
I’ll say this, though. Each has done many good worthwhile things in their own lifetimes.
Matt: good post, thought provoking, right on about Dershowitz.
Khalid right to warn us to keep our eyes open about enchroaching fascists. I saw them in Massachusetts on courts crushing Veterans rights; I saw the Feds, prosecutors and FBI maliciously prosecuting folks. I saw Dershowitz and Carr team up (Dershowitz wrote the scurrilous defamatory blurb on Carr’s cover of his Brothers Bulger . . . a total lie, where he can’t name one misdemeanor or one ethics violation committed by Bill Bulger, Senate Pres, Pres. of U.Mass. Carr’s a slimey character assassin, a true verbal low life, like a Carney Barker … Carnival, that is.
In the blurb in 1994 or 1996, right before John Connolly’s travesty of a trial in Miami and deliberately intended to influence it, the book and the blurb, Dershowitz wrote that William Bulger had to be imprisoned for “extortion and bribery”. Why, because, mostly Dershowitz lost a case to Bulger’s law partner twenty years earlier. AND Bulger bested Dershowitz in a debate at the Governor’s counsel 20 years ago.
As said, Dershowitz used all his power and influence as a Harvard Law Professor Emeritus to vilify Bill Bulger and everyone associated with him, even remotely, including John Connolly. I bet if we looked hard we’d see his dirty finger somewhere in the middle of John’s Trial in Miami. Oh, look, there it is on the inside cover of the Brothers Bulger. Neither he nor Carr, the two bums, could tie the shoe of Dostoevsky.
Moroever, their poison pens continue and their forked tongues continue to harm people and devalue truth, tradition and the American Way.
Revenge, Vindictiveness, Obsessiveness . . . there he sits unrepentant, never wrong, always right, Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law, Emeritus, the Distinguished Professor of Law. And so are they all, all honorable men . . . It was the worst of times
2. Khalid’s correct: we must radically decrease the prison population by giving people good jobs and convincing man and wife to stay together for life, to raise the children, and convincing young men to avoid drugs, guns, gangs, violence, theft and to get an education, and stop blaming others.
3. Muellar’s got to fire immediately Weinstein and the rest of the biased troops he hired. Muller’s army’s wandering far afield. But, I agree, Trump gotta lay off Muller . . . everyone else with a conscience in America should be throwing stones at his crooked operation run amuck . . . biased from the get-go . . . . he picked the.
4. I agree 100% with Tadzio and NC.
“…. we must radically decrease the prison population by giving people good jobs and convincing man and wife to stay together for life, to raise the children, and convincing young men to avoid drugs, guns, gangs, violence, theft and to get an education, and stop blaming others.”
From your lips to God’s ears. If only I could flip a switch, especially for those last three words.
As the Kingston Trio sang Where have all the Russian Collusion gone? Long time passing. Long time ago. Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian connection to the Trump campaign. He apparently can’t find any so the subject is changed to Obstruction. Some gullible types fell for the manufactured fantasy of Steele’s Russian dossier. Tom Brokaw said that document was around for months and no one would use it because it was unverifiable. Bob Woodward called it garbage. Yet this obviously false opposition research document may have been used by the politicized FBI to wiretap the Trump campaign. 2. A prosecutor obtaining a search warrant must present an affidavit sworn under oath that he has information of a reliable type based on personal knowledge showing probable cause a crime is being committed. If a FISA warrant was obtained under these circumstances the DOJ and FBI committed a crime. Some Boston Cops went to jail for filing false affidavits in drug cases in West Roxbury Court. 3. The DNC and Hillary campaign paid for the Fake Dossier. They hired Steele. The entire effort was a political dirty trick. When Comey turned the Dossier into an intel report by giving it to Obama and Trump he must have known it’s source. He combined with the defeated campaign to sabotage the new administration The biggest political crime in American history was committed by the DOJ, FBI and CIA under Obama using the full apparatus of Intelligence State to spy on their political foes. The State conspired with the DNC to undermine the Republican effort. This unprecedented Constitutional wrongdoing has to be eradicated otherwise we have a totalitarian state with an unaccountable Secret Police. 4. Some people are so partisan they can’t see what is right in front of them and they may want to condone this misconduct. Gen. Flynn was not a criminal he was a victim. He properly spoke to the Russian envoy. He broke no law. When his conversation was unmasked by someone in the Obama administration, his rights were violated. The FBI was in cohoots with the Post to set him up. He fell into their trap. Flynn was in the same position as the Boston Probation Officers. They were the victims and broke no laws. The DOJ and the FBI were the criminals. A Special Counsel needs to investigate.
To members of the militant left, it is no surprise that the FBI are a secret police outfit. Socialists have always considered them akin to the GESTAPO. Welcome to the victims’ club, neo-fascist morons.
Glorious Leader, and, his Trumpsoviki, want to purge the FBI? First off, they’ll have to lower the educational requirements (college education), so, ordinary lumpen street toughs can get a badge and a gun. Everyone with a three digit IQ will have to go, as, well, as, anybody with a conscience. After that, Trump can use the Bureau to scourge his political enemies, unimpeded. Look at all the complete idiots he’s nominated for the Federal bench. He can stuff the Bureau with imbeciles of equal promise. It’s a brave new world we’ll be headed into.
All praise to the Red Neck Revolt. All power to the dialectic. Tear those prison walls down!