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[Equinox Moon]

This message was self-deleted by its author (Equinox Moon) on Thu Nov 8, 2018, 05:00 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[hlthe2b]

1. Private funding would both delegitimize and poiticize it. Congress needs to intervene.

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. First thing I thought of but assume it would be impossible to give them the money

or for them to use it.

[TygrBright]

3. You need a "Fuck, YES!!!" option. n/t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. It is not a legal option.

If it becomes privately funded it’s no longer a government investigation and it would have no subpoena power or other legal authority to prosecute or act in any official capacity. Dumb idea.

[dameatball]

5. Certainly, but I do not think it can happen.

[Demit]

6. He can't stop the funding anyway. It's already budgeted for this fiscal year.

[Midnightwalk]

7. Terrible Idea Hopefully Illegal

I don't want privately funded government investigations. I think Whittaker will push politically motivated investigations. I don't want Koch brothers directly funding investigations.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Come on, folks. A privately-funded investigation has no legal authority to do anything!

If I had enough money, I could announce I was investigating the Trump-Russia connection, too; but even if George Soros was helping me out financially I wouldn't be able to come up with any more information than I could collect from public media sources and from people who would talk to me voluntarily. I would have no access to classified documents; I couldn't subpoena anybody; I couldn't prosecute anybody; I would have no standing even to sue anybody in a civil action. And a privately-financed investigation with Bob Mueller at its head wouldn't have any more legal authority than little old me, even if it had more credibility.

I can't believe that only six DUers (so far) recognize that this is not a legal option.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. The Times, New Yorker, WaPo, and Atlantic (among others I haven't read)...

have investigated the bejesus out of him, but authorities have to act and can't use them as evidence.

[Hortensis]

11. You would have one big advantage over Mueller, though.

You wouldn't be immediately investigated and fired, with recommendation for prosecution, as a result of accepting private funding.

[Hortensis]

10. Is this just a fun joke question?

Mueller's conducting a special investigation under the authority and at the instruction of the Department of Justice. This special investigation couldn't and wouldn't commit an enormous, invalidating breach of DoJ procedures and ethics by accepting outside money.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. I don't think it was intended as a fun joke question

because it seems like an awful lot of people don't know much about how the government, and in particular the legal system, actually works. In light of this, and also in light of P.T. Barnum's famous comment, maybe I will set up my own Gofundme campaign in which I will ask for funds - maybe $10M or so - to continue the special counsel's investigation.

[Hortensis]

13. Maybe raise funds for an on-line government ethics 101.

Or an ongoing series of lessons here free?

We haven't just become shockingly truth-free in politics. Even here on DU we're ignorant as 2 bags of rocks regarding how good government operates -- and why it's done that way.

And Republicans and left-wing dissidents are far worse. They both base their entire belief systems on the lies that government always was corrupt beyond fixing and needs to be destroyed/"reformed," which in the hands of clueless people of any ideology would be much the same.

It's amazing that people can witness two years of constant attempts from the very top to corrupt our government mostly being legally stopped by a system with ethical checks built in everywhere, or at worst carefully documented and set in the DoJ's to-do file, without admiring just how strongly and ethically our systems are designed to work. And do.