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A coup is taking place in our country right now. [View all]
At this point, the Separation of Powers doctrine no longer exists. Welcome to the world of doublespeak. Orwell would be proud.
BARR: “IT’S NOT A CRIME” FOR TRUMP TO DEMAND STAFFERS LIE TO INVESTIGATORS
Isn’t that literally obstruction of justice?
...In case there was any remaining doubt that William Barr sees his job as protecting Donald Trump, his testimony before the Senate Judiciary committee on Wednesday—the first of two days of public hearings on Capitol Hill—made perfectly clear where the attorney general’s allegiance lies. Even in a case where Trump literally instructed a White House lawyer to lie on the record (obstruction) to hide the fact that he tried to fire the man investigating him (obstruction).
“You . . . have a situation where a president essentially tries to change the lawyer’s account in order to prevent further criticism of himself,” Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barr during her allotted five minutes, pointing to the fact that the president told former White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to investigators about Trump instructing him to remove Mueller. Why, she wondered, is that not obstruction of justice? To which Barr responded, “Well, that’s not a crime.”
“So you can, in this situation, instruct someone to lie?” Feinstein asked.
“We felt that in that episode the government would not be able to establish obstruction,” Barr replied. “If you look at that episode . . . the instruction said ‘Go to [Rod] Rosenstein, raise the issue of conflict of interest and Mueller has to go because of this conflict of interest.’ So there’s not question that whatever instruction was given to McGahn had to to do with conflict of interest . . . To be obstruction of justice the lie has to be tied to impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding. McGahn had already given his evidence and I think it would be plausible that the purpose of McGahn memorializing what the president was asking was to make the record that the president never directed him to fire. And there is a distinction between saying to someone, ‘go fire him, go fire Mueller’ and saying ‘have him removed based on conflict.’”
Isn’t that literally obstruction of justice?
...In case there was any remaining doubt that William Barr sees his job as protecting Donald Trump, his testimony before the Senate Judiciary committee on Wednesday—the first of two days of public hearings on Capitol Hill—made perfectly clear where the attorney general’s allegiance lies. Even in a case where Trump literally instructed a White House lawyer to lie on the record (obstruction) to hide the fact that he tried to fire the man investigating him (obstruction).
“You . . . have a situation where a president essentially tries to change the lawyer’s account in order to prevent further criticism of himself,” Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barr during her allotted five minutes, pointing to the fact that the president told former White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to investigators about Trump instructing him to remove Mueller. Why, she wondered, is that not obstruction of justice? To which Barr responded, “Well, that’s not a crime.”
“So you can, in this situation, instruct someone to lie?” Feinstein asked.
“We felt that in that episode the government would not be able to establish obstruction,” Barr replied. “If you look at that episode . . . the instruction said ‘Go to [Rod] Rosenstein, raise the issue of conflict of interest and Mueller has to go because of this conflict of interest.’ So there’s not question that whatever instruction was given to McGahn had to to do with conflict of interest . . . To be obstruction of justice the lie has to be tied to impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding. McGahn had already given his evidence and I think it would be plausible that the purpose of McGahn memorializing what the president was asking was to make the record that the president never directed him to fire. And there is a distinction between saying to someone, ‘go fire him, go fire Mueller’ and saying ‘have him removed based on conflict.’”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/barr-not-a-crime-for-trump-to-demand-staffers-lie-to-investigators
56 replies
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