Nope. Innocent until proven guilty is a principle of criminal trial. Not being charged with a crime does not mean you are cleared as innocent. That is especially true in this case when Mueller does not have the authority to charge the president and specifically says he cannot proclaim the president innocent.
Mueller saying “we cannot proclaim the president innocent” does not mean the president was exonerated.
Did anyone here read the ■■■■■■■ Report?
When anybody has to say “in other words”, well I know its Horse Hockey from there on out!
Some of it. Not all of it. The parts pertaining to Russian infiltrations. It is available on Audio which I plan to do during my commute.
The reason it is weak is because telling someone to lie or lying yourself is not obstruction in itself. Trump, assuming McGahn’s version is true, was trying to get him to lie to the NYTs to control the media story. Lying to the NYTs or getting someone to lie to the NYTs is not perjury. It is just lying.
Mueller handles this by saying well, sometime in the future he might have gotten him to lie under oath or to investigators. But the fact is, he did not try to get McGahn to lie to investigators when McGahn talked to them, so that link is super weak.
Just remember: Getting someone to lie to the FBI is obstruction. Getting someone to lie to the NYTs is unethical but not obstruction.
So you didn’t read the report. Got it. What you said was covered and also what constitutes obstruction. Give it a read sometime.
Yes, I read every sentence and every comma about McGahn, and I just explained to you why Mueller’s nexus from the lie to the investigation was pathetically weak…as obviously Barr recognized.
Even Mueller said that the difference between Trump and McGahn may have been a misinterpretation of what Trump said.
Did you all get together in this forum and decide that whenever your arguments were weak you would say “You didn’t read the report”, because it really looks like it.
How about the opinion and findings of a special prosecutor with the second longest tenure as FBI chief outweighs that of an anonymous internet poster?
The conclusion of the head of the DOJ outweighs the Special Prosecutor, so there is that. Plus, Mueller himself said he did not make a determination as to whether or not Trump had committed obstruction…so there is that.
Mueller gave an explanation how there could be a nexus. He did not conclude that there was.
From the report.
To establish a nexus, it would be necessary to show that the President’s actions would have the natural tendency to affect such a proceeding or that they would hinder, delay, or prevent the communication of information to investigators. Because McGahn had spoken to Special Counsel investigators before January 2018, the President could not have been secking to influence his prior statements in those interviews. But because McGahn had repeatedly spoken to investigators and the obstruction inquiry was not complete, it was foreseeable that he would be interviewed again on obstruction-related topics. If the President were focused solely on a press strategy in seeking to have McGahn refute the New York Times article, a nexus to a proceeding or to further investigative interviews would not be shown. But the President’s efforts to have McGahn write a letter “for our records” approximately ten days after the stories had come out—well past the typical time to issue a correction for a news story—indicates the President was not focused solely on a press strategy, but instead likely contemplated the ongoing investigation and any proceedings arising from it.
Really not that difficult.
And that was Mueller’s speculation as to what Trump was thinking that was not borne out by any future actions of Trump. It is pure opinion…and a darn weak one. You seriously think a President would be impeached because Mueller thinks that some letter for the record is beyond the normal time for retractions by newspapers?
If you are going to feel compelled to just go with Mueller’s opinions, then you are bound to be tied to his decision that he did not decide whether or not Trump committed a crime or not, and yes…did not decide that he did not.
Opinion and speculation based on evidence, precedent and the legal code. I think that’s what’s referred to as “establishing a case.” If brought to trial it would be up to congress to decide if it was “weak.”
You’re really going back to the “Mueller didn’t charge him with a crime,” schtick when Mueller made it perfectly clear he did not have the power to do so? He made the case for or against obstruction 11 separate times in his report. If someone with the authority to charge the president with a crime (Congress) wants to use that information, it’s all there.
The evidence is in the Mueller report.
The Republicans in the Senate will never be on boards as long as Trump has the support of Republican voters.
It’s pretty doubtful that Republican voters will ever turn on Trump, especially in the age of conservative media. Many conservatives didn’t even know that there was anything negative about Trump in the Mueller report because conservative pundits keep lying to them
Now why would you say that?
This deserves repeating so the Cons know where the debate starts
So because the person that Trump handpicked to be in charge of the DOJ says Trump is not guilty, that should be the end of the story?
Do you generally think that people being investigated or accused of a crime should be able to pick their own prosecutors? Why or why not?
Actually, “Mueller didn’t decide whether Trump committed a crime or not” was Mueller’s “schtick”. If you think he is lying about that, then you shouldn’t be relying on anything else he said.
Does his opinion outweigh the Constitution?
Mueller said this "Mueller said Wednesday that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing"
The Constitution does not say a sitting president cannot be indicted and tried.
That is a DoJ policy. It is not in the Constitution.
If Mueller is wrong about that, he can be wrong about a lot of things.
I don’t think he’s lying. He says he can’t charge a sitting president with a crime. He also said based on the information he cannot say the president did not commit a crime, even though he does have the authority to say that.
Absolutely no where in his report does he say Trump is innocent or exonerated. It seems Trump supporters equate Mueller not having the authority to charge Trump and expressly saying that he can not say Trump did not commit a crime as Trump having been found innocent.
