{"id":179519,"date":"2018-01-16T20:12:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T01:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/16\/speaking-of-obstruction-of-justice\/"},"modified":"2018-01-16T20:12:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T01:12:00","slug":"speaking-of-obstruction-of-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/16\/speaking-of-obstruction-of-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking of Obstruction of Justice \u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Bannon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/01\/16\/us\/politics\/steve-bannon-mueller-russia-subpoena.html\">has been subpoenaed by Robert Mueller<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump\u2019s former chief strategist, was subpoenaed last week by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to testify before a grand jury as part of the investigation into possible links between Mr. Trump\u2019s associates and Russia, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The move marked the first time Mr. Mueller is known to have used a grand jury subpoena to seek information from a member of Mr. Trump\u2019s inner circle. The special counsel\u2019s office has used subpoenas before to seek information on Mr. Trump\u2019s associates and their possible ties to Russia or other foreign governments.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">A second subpoena for Mr. Bannon to testify came from a House panel on Tuesday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The Mueller subpoena could be a negotiating tactic. Mr. Mueller is likely to allow Mr. Bannon to forgo the grand jury appearance if he agrees to instead be questioned by investigators in the less formal setting of the special counsel\u2019s offices about ties between Mr. Trump\u2019s associates and Russia and about the president\u2019s conduct in office, according to the person, who would not be named discussing the case. But it was not clear why Mr. Mueller treated Mr. Bannon differently from the dozen administration officials who were interviewed in the final months of last year and were never served with a subpoena.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a thought:&nbsp; When one is compelled to testify by subpoena, you are indemnified from libel and defamation lawsuits.<\/p>\n<p>If investigators were to want me to testify about someone as litigious as Donald Trump, I would insist on a subpoena to protect myself from vexatious litigation.<\/p>\n<p>One caveat here though, I am an engineer, not a lawyer dammit,<sup>*&nbsp; <\/sup>so talk to your lawyer before ever talking with cops or prosecutors.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">I <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">love<\/span><\/b> it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed by Robert Mueller: Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump\u2019s former chief strategist, was subpoenaed last week by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to testify before a grand jury as part of the investigation into possible links between Mr. Trump\u2019s associates and Russia, according to a person with direct knowledge &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[573,407,455,486],"class_list":["post-179519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-donald-trump","tag-justice","tag-russia","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179519"}],"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=179519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}