{"id":177933,"date":"2019-04-28T19:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T00:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/04\/28\/you-know-the-saying-its-not-the-crime-its-the-coverup\/"},"modified":"2019-04-28T19:51:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T00:51:00","slug":"you-know-the-saying-its-not-the-crime-its-the-coverup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/04\/28\/you-know-the-saying-its-not-the-crime-its-the-coverup\/","title":{"rendered":"You Know the Saying, “It’s not the Crime, it”s the Coverup?”"},"content":{"rendered":"
Even if there was no underlying crime, interfering with the investigation is obstruction of justice, and now some of the Mueller prosecutors are saying that Trump DID <\/b>obstruct justice<\/a>, though it should be noted that the sourcing is a bit of a double play combination:<\/div>\n

Prosecutors working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded last year that they had sufficient evidence to seek criminal charges against President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice over the president\u2019s alleged pressuring of then FBI Director James Comey in February 2017 to shut down an FBI investigation of the president\u2019s then national security adviser, Michael Flynn. <\/p>\n

Privately, the two prosecutors, who were then employed in the special counsel\u2019s office, told other Justice Department officials that had it not been for the unique nature of the case\u2014the investigation of a sitting president of the United States, and one who tried to use the powers of his office to thwart and even close down the special counsel\u2019s investigation\u2014they would have advocated that he face federal criminal charges. I learned of the conclusions of the two former Mueller prosecutors not by any leak, either from them personally or from the office of special counsel. Rather, the two prosecutors disclosed this information in then-confidential conversations with two other federal law enforcement officials, who subsequently recounted what they were told to me. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Independently of the Mueller report, confidential White House records that I have been able to review, as well as correspondence between the president\u2019s attorneys and the special counsel already made public<\/a>, demonstrate that the president and his attorneys considered Trump\u2019s alleged attempt to shut down the Flynn inquiry to be the most direct threat to Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

In the course of such cases, prosecutors and FBI agents working for Mueller often interacted with their peers in US attorneys\u2019 offices around the country and in the DOJ\u2019s Criminal Division and Public Integrity Section. Some of Mueller\u2019s prosecutors, who had been detailed from other Justice Department offices, have since returned to their previous jobs or taken new positions in the department. The special counsel\u2019s office was thus less sequestered than is generally believed.<\/p>\n

It was against this backdrop that prosecutors working for the special counsel spoke to their peers in the Justice Department. That is how I learned what, in particular, the two Mueller prosecutors had to say about the Flynn investigation. Two people present during one such conversation provided me with detailed and consistent accounts of what the special counsel\u2019s two prosecutors had said to them. A third person present corroborated that the conversation took place but declined to provide details of what was said.<\/p>\n

One person who spoke to me reported grappling with the issue of what could be considered a breach of their colleagues\u2019 confidence. But in part because of what they regarded as Attorney General Barr\u2019s misrepresentations of the Mueller report, they believed it was important for the public and Congress to know what Mueller\u2019s prosecutors had themselves privately concluded: that a charge of obstruction of justice was indeed merited by Trump\u2019s actions in the Flynn matter.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not a surprise.<\/p>\n

Neither is Barr’s blatantly corrupt behavior:  He has been covering up for Republican criminals since Iran-Contra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even if there was no underlying crime, interfering with the investigation is obstruction of justice, and now some of the Mueller prosecutors are saying that Trump DID obstruct justice, though it should be noted that the sourcing is a bit of a double play combination: Prosecutors working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded last year …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,573,464,407,374],"class_list":["post-177933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-good-writing","tag-justice","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}