Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the reported investigation of former FBI Director James Comey for his removal and leaking of memos related to the Russian investigation. The release of the memos already contradicts critical aspects of Comey’s explanation for his leaking of the information. What is troubling is that many have worked mightily to avoid the clearly unprofessional aspects of Comey’s conduct. Comey could well be accurate in his account of Trump and justified in his concerns over Trump’s conduct but that does not excuse the actions that he has exhibited in both the leaking of the memos and the timing of his book. Comey’s best-selling book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, could prove tragically ironic if Comey showed a higher loyalty to himself in responding to his own firing rather than the investigation that he once headed. In the very least, there remains a serious question of Comey’s priorities in these matters.
Here is the column:
One day after the disclosure that the Justice Department inspector general has recommended criminal charges against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, it has been confirmed that fired FBI director James Comey is under investigation by the same office for leaking information to the media. This disclosure followed the release of the Comey memos, which seriously undermined both Comey and his cadre of defenders. Four claims by Comey are now clearly refuted, and the memos reaffirm earlier allegations of serious misconduct.
James Comey was a leaker
For more than a year, various media experts have advanced dubious defenses for Comey, including the obvious problem that the man charged with investigating leaks became a leaker himself when as it suited him. Clearly, Comey removed the memos and did not allow for a predisclosure review of the material. Moreover, the memos were withheld by Comey’s surrogate, a Columbia University law professor, who reportedly read the information to the media.
If taking and disclosing memos were perfectly proper, why the surrogate and subterfuge? More importantly, Comey did not disclose the memos to Congress or hold copies for investigators. If Comey was not a leaker, then any fired FBI agent could do the same with nonpublic investigatory material. If the inspector general agreed with that position, then federal laws governing FBI material would become entirely discretionary and meaningless.
The memos were FBI material
Various media experts and journalists also defended Comey by portraying the memos as essentially diary entries. When I argued that the memos clearly were FBI material subject to limits on removal and disclosure, the response was disbelief. Legal expert and former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa said that these constituted “personal recollections,” and CNN legal expert and Brookings Institution fellow Susan Hennessey wrote, “It’s hard to even understand the argument for how Jim Comey’s memory about his conversation with the president qualifies as a record, even if he jotted it down while in his office.”
The plain fact, then and now, is that it’s hard to understand that it would be anything other than a record under federal rules. These were memos prepared on an FBI computer, in the course of an FBI investigation. All FBI agents sign a statement affirming that “all information acquired by me in connection with my official duties with the FBI and all official material to which I have access remain the property of the United States of America” and that an agent “will not reveal, by any means, any information or material from or related to FBI files or any other information acquired by virtue of my official employment to any unauthorized recipient without prior official written authorization by the FBI.”
The memos themselves now confirm their obvious status. These were not memos “to the file” or to Comey himself. He wrote them to the FBI as part of the investigation, specifically addressing the disclosures to McCabe, FBI general counsel James Baker and chief of staff James Rybicki. FBI director Christopher Wray has confirmed these were FBI documents. While Comey continues to maintain these were personal papers, it is demonstrably untrue on the face of the memos themselves.
There was no need to leak
In past columns, I have questioned Comey’s claim that he had to remove and leak the memos in the public interest. When Comey took the memos, he knew he was certain to be called before Congress within weeks. He simply could have told Congress about the memos, or even given copies to one of the intelligence committees. More importantly, he knew copies already were in the hands of other FBI officials and were certain to be reviewed by investigators.
Instead, Comey removed seven memos and gave four to his friend, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, to leak information to the media. If the memos already were in the hands of other FBI officials, including McCabe, then why leak them? It would not assist the investigation. To the contrary, by disclosing the information, Comey alerted President Trump to the record of their conversations, making it less likely that Trump would contradict such a record.
Why? The reason is obvious: It benefitted Comey. He was able to control the media narrative after his firing and shifted the focus to Trump’s conduct rather than his own. The inspector general recently concluded McCabe leaked information for his personal interest, not that of the public. It’s difficult to envision how the inspector general could come to any other conclusion about Comey’s leak.
The memos were classified
The memos clearly reveal that Comey was aware they likely contained classified information. Comey wrote in a Jan. 7, 2017, memo that “I am unsure of the proper classification so I have chosen secret.” He then left it to his staff to correct that classification. As director, Comey had authority to determine what was classified, although he leaked the FBI documents after he was fired. It turns out that four memos, including two given to his friend to leak to the media, were later found to be classified.
So Comey was no longer director when he removed the memos from the FBI without review. He then gave four memos, including classified ones, to an uncleared individual specifically to leak to the media. Among other people prosecuted for such conduct, former FBI agent Terry Albury is now looking at a sentence of four to five years in prison in an unrelated case.
In his new book, Comey writes, “Ethical leaders choose a higher loyalty … over their own personal gain.” Yet, he opted for personal advantage in the leaking of his memos. He also rushed his book to print, even though the investigation he once headed is ongoing and he is a key witness. Even more remarkably, he never conferred with special counsel Robert Mueller, if nothing else as a courtesy, and especially since Comey’s public references to both disclosed and undisclosed evidence is obviously not beneficial to that investigation.
Comey insists he wrote his book because he believes the country desperately needs “ethical leadership” — his, apparently — and that ethical leaders “don’t hide from uncomfortable questions.” If true, Comey will be a busy man when the inspector general comes calling.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
Comey should be prosecuted if there is probably cause he broke the law. He can have due process and a fair trail. Let justice run its course on him the way he let it run over all the people he’s imprisoned. otherwise the system gives the lie to the phony “equal protection” stuff!
re: Mr. Kurtz
Good points. Those that did serve prison time now have “Legal Standing” in a constitutional lawsuit to actually reform America’s broken system. ACLU attorneys would represent them for free.
For example: John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, Lindy England, Joseph Nacchio and others have tremendous power in court in overturn unconstitutional laws and even unconstitutional Executive Orders. Those with Legal Standing coud accomplish more than Congress in over 15 years.
Huh?
The supreme loyalty oath for all government officials and contractors – including FBI officials – is to have fidelity to the U.S. Constitution and it’s subordinate federal statutes. Maybe Comey is being loyal to that supreme oath by spotlighting the fraudulent response to 9/11 – excessive secrecy, warrantless spying, guilt-by-association, blacklisting, unconstitutional searches, Cointelpro and illegally exploiting the Espionage Act to go after non-spies!
The Oath of Office and Article VI most certainly trump any fraudulent and unconstitutional post-9/11 tactics. Nobody in the United States is above the U.S. Constitution [a wartime governing charter]. Maybe Comey really is loyal!
No one is above the law? That includes Comey who obviously thinks he, Hillary, McCabe, Lynch, Stroyk, Page, and Obama are! I am 67 years old and have NEVER lived through a more CORRUPT Presidency and Administration than Obama’s, his FBI, CIA and DOJ. Truly sad!
You have to admit Nixon gave it the old college try.
On the spectrum of criminality what Nixon did wouldn’t even qualify as the equivalent of stealing office stationery compared to the prima facie case against the vast pantheon of desperate Dems who honestly believed HRC would be elected and none of this would matter or see the light of day. Everything since the election has been back filling and fabrication to try and obscure the paper trail.
But unlike Watergate where there was an actual break in and actual break in merchants the Dems have left digital fingerprints everywhere. Nixon thought he could cover things up. The Dems are delusional if they think they can do the same. The wheel moves slow, but it grinds exceedingly fine.
This is worse than Watergate – this is what Nixon wanted to be able to use the DOJ/FBI/DNI/CIA/NSA for and was unable to.
The plumbers existed because Hoover would not allow the FBI to be used against Nixon’s political enemies.
https://grrrgraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/jeffy_pop-tina-toon-600×466.jpg
HRC lost so get over it already.
Move on to the nut in the swamp, peanut The Donald.
Blah, blah, blah. Go seek psychiatric treatment for your Trumpohobia. Bernie Sanders will ensure that your bills are paid through his proposed health care plan.
That’s an improvement but still far short of Winston Churchill who excelled at damning with faint praise.
And Churchill started the NHS which despite bad press still does a remarkable job. Unlike here where insurance companies control our pols.
At a moment when NHS is essentially executing a child over the objections of his parents – you want to sell the NHS ?
Yes, if “executing” means allowing a child to die with dignity, then you’re right. You are correct that it is being done against the wishes of his parents. At least, with the money saved (on this Terminal, no earthly way to keep the kid alive) child, 75 lives can be saved. On balance, a good decision. While also gut-wrenching for the parents, of course.
You were warned.
“Yes, if “executing” means allowing a child to die with dignity, then you’re right. ”
That is not your choice to make. You get to define what “death with dignity” is work yourself.
Otherwise you are litterally indistinguishable from past eugenicists – such as the nazi’s who murdered people for their concept of the common good. This despicable ideology has an unbeleivably sordid past.
“You are correct that it is being done against the wishes of his parents. :
No it is being done contrary to the RIGHTS of the parents – by force.
“At least, with the money saved (on this Terminal, no earthly way to keep the kid alive) child, 75 lives can be saved. On balance, a good decision. While also gut-wrenching for the parents, of course.”
Bzzt, wrong!, The NHS actually spent a great deal of money depriving the parents the ability to seek treatment using whatever resources they could come up with on their own.
Further you make the standard stupid leftist argument that not only can you spend other peoples money better than they have – but that you will and have.
No lives were saved. Nor is that your business.
You can not as an example know ahead of time whether the knowledged gained by those willing to Treat Alfie would have eventually resulted in life saving treatments for others.
In the US we frequently make super human efforts to save premature infants. At the leading edge this is incredibly expensive. But today infants that were certain to die a century or even a decade ago – survive and thrive at low cost with limited complications.
There are thousands of infants each year that would be dead following your dictates.
You do not get to make choices for other people.
John Say – if the NHS was so compassionate, why not allow the parents permission to take the child home to die or go to Italy to be treated?
“John Say – if the NHS was so compassionate, why not allow the parents permission to take the child home to die or go to Italy to be treated?”
I am absolutely totally completely NOT defending NHS in any way.
The parents did not need permission. Alfie was their child. It was their right to do anything they were able to, or anything they could persuade others to assist in.
Absent actually using force to harm the child, government has no role.
You are right John. This whole saga is disgusting. Had the parents been looking for an abortion or a way to legally kill their child, I’d be surprised the NHS doesn’t have an app for that. Treating the lives of people as a commodity to maintain or destroy based on its economic utility is what was at the heart of the slave trade.
I have dealt with “the state” at the opposite end of this.
My father had a stroke in early 2011. He rapidly lost mental capacity over the next couple of years.
Before that occured, he made me his power of attorney and my local sister his medical power of attorney.
He had put his wishes on many subjects in writing, before the stroke, and I and my local sister followed them. He had sufficient wealth to allow us to do as he wished. He wanted to live the rest of his life in his home. He had a very special connection to that home, and had seen his parents and grandparents die in nursing homes and did not want that. Like most older people he had a number of complications – which were only life threatening in combination. He had Krones disease which was controlable – but doing so substantially increased his risk of stroke. He was adamant that his medical treatment should focus on reducing the risk of further strokes and loss of mental capacity – even if that resulted in death from something else. Caring for him was expensive – but he had the resources, and the care he needed would have been expensive in a nursing home too.
In July 2013 as a result of that course of treatment he had a massive bleed that nearly killed him.
He was told that without a transfusion he would likely die (we had been told he would be lucky to live another year 9 months earlier), but that with one his stroke risk would increase. He reluctantly agreed to the transfusion – but ONLY if it could be done at home. He adamantly refused to go back to the hospital. It was not possible to accomidate that.
Next thing I know the local office of aging had gone to court, suspended his POA, and MPOA, forceibly removed him from his home – and I mean forcibly, he was a big man and fought so hard it took 3 EMT’s to get him into the ambulance. They tried to take him to the hospital for a transfusion – the Hospital which was aware of his wishes refused to accept him. He was forced into Hospice – which also continued to follow his wishes and then removed from their care to a nursing home, where pretty much everything he feared happened and he died a month later.
But this does not end. The allegations that resulted in his removal, were that I was stealing from him and the MPOA was trying to murder him by mismedicating him. These allegations came from two other siblings who lived on the other side of the country and both refused to believe he was dying and had made it clear that they knew what was best for him – which is why he did not put himself in their care.
There was a autopsy, and a criminal investigation, somehow we were fortunate and the coroner did something rare and actually proved the allegations were false. He had not received any medication that he was not prescribed in the 9 months prior to his death, and died of pneumonia as a result of being moved to a nursing home. The office of aging, the police, my west coast siblings, and the executor have scoured his finances and can not find the alleged financial misconduct – there was some serious theft, by one of the accusers siblings.
Despite all of this, I am still in court – with the same judge who removed my father from his home. Facing a Judge, Executor and Counsel, and two siblings trying to disinherit me as punishment because the evidence demonstrates I have been right and they are wrong.
My father while not extremely wealthy, was well enough off that this is unusual.
His living will was ignored, by the state.
His actual will is being ignored by the state.
His diaries journals and ledgers – he had excellent records, are being ignored by the state.
Even the law is being ignored by the state.
I even managed to settle this entire mess two years ago. I was able to get all parties to agree to a settlement – in court on the record.
Once the executor and my west cost siblings were out of town they ignored that agreement,
and again the court – though imposing those portions to my detriment, is ignoring those parts to my benefit.
I have estate council testifying that he filed motions to protect the estate – that the Docket clearly shows I filed, and an order from the court praising the estate council for filing the motion that I filed.
The “lies” of Trump, Flynn, Papadoulis, Vander Zwann – even those of McCabe and Comey are small compared to what I have experienced.
So yes, I have a giant bug up my ass with regard to the state presuming it knows what is best for people.
And for actually following the law.
Thank you John for sharing your personal example and I truly hope you are able to get a just conclusion.
Perhaps it’s with the way you wrote your comment, but I cannot help but notice how many positive law obstacles have been created contrary to the security of your father’s natural right to use his property to pursue what he defines as happiness. That’s where the law should begin. Instead we have layers of unjust laws that are rooted in the first injustice.
In medicine, advancements typically mean old methods are abandoned and the new are implemented; without changing the original ends of the medical profession. It seems that the law on the other hand is more of a cancer than a cure. Where medicine has a fairly clearly defined end, the law has not. Just government and just laws mean completely different things today depending on who you ask. I can point back to the DoI as the source document for the purpose of government, and then get challenged on it’s validity in today’s modern culture. In my opinion, this is the basis for modern lawfare.
My Dream/Plan is when this is resolved to write a book about it.
I am playing with titles like “What Fresh Hell Today” – though I think someone might have taken that.
Or “My family is crazier than yours”.
I did not address that – but one of the complications in this is that though I do not pretend to be normal,
my family is made of very strong willed, reasonably successful, and still broken people.
I am the closest to normal.
You can read my posts here. I know I am not normal.
One of my siblings is either a sociopath – or extremely close. She Scores in the upper 20’s on Hare’s assessment. About the only thing she is missing is actual negative entanglements with the law.
Kiel seems to beleive that is a requirement, Hare does not. Regardless, she has violated laws all her life. She has just not done so in a way that resulted in getting caught.
One of my siblings is likely a functional paranoid schizophrenic. He had the classic relatively abrupt personality change in his late teens early 20’s. I was once very close to him. Sociopath’s play on broken people, and my sister knows how to play my Brother.
And the last is atleast strongly narcisist. That is 2 cluster B’s out of the 4 of us. I think there is evidence that Cluster B problems have a genetic component.
I have lots of problems with our existing laws.
But in the specific situation I am dealing with – just following the law – not even the complex laws, just the simple obvious ones, would have brought this to a conclusion long ago.
I would further note, though the specifics and the extent are unusual.
There are several instances per year in my county of the local OofA yanking people from their homes suspending POA’s and taking over their lives.
In one instance an elderly woman with Alzheimers was taken from her capable and competent husband.
He eventually was able to get visiting privilideges and then the ability to take her on short outings.
She had repeatedly and publicly asserted her desire to die so on one trip, he took her home, and both of them got into the car in the garage. The nursing home actually rushed to send the police when they did not return exactly on time, and they were “rescued”. The woman thankfully died. The man spent a month in intensive care and is now being tried for murder.
I am told by a local estates attorney that there is actually an estate case that is worse than mine.
I know that there are a large number of bad ones in my county and have been for 20 years.
While our laws need alot of work.
Just having our courts, and law enforcement actually follow them would vastly improve things.
My wife is a criminal appelate attorney, and is constantly dealing with instances where the appeals courts – these are supposed to the better than ordinary judges, clearly did not read the record.
There is no hope of getting your argument heard, if you can not even get an appeals court to not create facts out of thin air.
The older I get the more libertarian I get, and at the current rate, I am less than a decade away from being an anarcho-capitalist – that is NOT where I am BTW, I just feel it coming.
There is the old joke that a conservative is a liberal that has been mugged.
A libertarian is a conservative who has been mugged by government.
The lack of definition in the law is a modern phenomena.
I do not wish to pretend the law was always right, but since FDR atleast we have unanchored the law.
The left claims the courts are idiological – and they are right. But they made them that way.
Without getting too deep into theories of statutory interpretation, it is critical that the law is interpretted as written. If you do not do that – you do not have the rule of law.
We can fix bad laws – though legislation or amendments to the constitution is necescary.
We can not fix things when the law and constitution become ideological tools of policy in the hands of judges.
As noted before, my own problems would be small if only very basic facets of the law were being followed.
Some examples:
My father was removed as a result of an ex parte hearing.
There was no basis for that. He was represented by two lawyers, he had 24×7 nursing care at the time, he was never alone with anyone, there were always 2-3 people with him.
He was in the care of multiple doctors who were checking on him on a weekly basis.
While I was responsible for his finances – I did everything through a bookkeeper who was carefully vetted.
And everything I did was reviewed by multiple lawyers and an accountant.
My sister and I would have agreed to 3rd parties replacing us – if he was allowed to remain at home.
But OofA came to court, claimed there was a life threatening emergency, claimed he had no lawyer, that he was being isolated from the community – we kept records of his visitors, and had been encouraging people to come see him, because we knew they were not getting alot more chances.
He had 10-15 visitors a week – not counting his caregivers.
So OofA lied – there is a long list of lies. But even with the lies – there was not actually enough.
OofA’s lawyer told the judge they had been provided financial records and had not found any problems.
Put simply there was no “emergency’ and therefore no need for an exparte hearing, and no way that the allegations would have held up against any criticism.
When an Ex Parte hearing of this type is held the law requires a normal hearing – with all sides represented in 4 days. The OofA got themselves appointed as MPOA and Guardian and then waived the required hearing. A full hearing was then scheduled for 45 days later.
I did not even prepare, everyone knew he would never live that long.
So the issue is the not the law is broken, but that it is not followed.
One of the “legal” fights was over “loans” from my mother’s trust to my father.
The “loans” were well documented. They were not “loans”, they were dispursements.
But the Trustees – the west coast siblings, were trying to bankrupt the estate – so that the will did nto have to be followed so they manufactured almost 300K in “loans”.
All these “loans” were instances of my father spending money from my mother’s trust on himself – as he was allowed to do – he was the primary beneficiary.
First we fought over whether they were loans – with BOTH the Trust and the Estate arguing they were.
This despite the fact that there was no “loan” documentation of any kind – my father was actually gleeful when he was able to spend money from Mom’s trust.
After they lost the “loan” argument, then they tried a “while they should be loans, because it will save taxes” argument. It didn’t – the IRS code on taxes on distributions from a trust are surprisingly clear.
Under ordinary circumstances only the income in a trust is taxed, not distributions, and there was a solid wealth management company “managing” the Trust (thank god) and they did everything right.
We also had almost a decade of trust tax returns that reflected the money was “distributed” to a beneficiary, not loaned.
I mentioned the fact that I got a settlement two years ago.
Now I am in the midst of a ludicrous debate with multiple attorney’s and the judge over contracts.
I have been in business my entire life. I am pretty expert in contracts. I have signed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts over many decades.
On rare occaisons I have been in legal disputes with real lawyers over arcane details of the law.
What I am dealing with now is fighting over basic 1L stuff. Stuff that anyone who has watched “the paper chase” should know.
Yes, an oral agreement read onto the record in a court room with a court reporter and assented to by every single person and their lawyer and the judge is a CONTRACT.
In fact it is actually a WRITTEN CONTRACT – but even if it was not oral contracts in court are valid according to the UCC and the Stature of Frauds.
But even more there are long email exchanges before and after. Actions were taken to further the contract,
I was not actually aware of this before, but according to case law – atleast in my state, an email exchange with the all the required elements is a binding written contract. ‘
Every detail need not be spelled out, the contract does not have to be in a single document.
Further even the debate is stupid – everyone, and every lawyer says – atleast in court, that they actually want there to be a contract(several are actually lying and everyone knows it).
I also have court orders that the Judge has issued that no one will follow. And the judge does not care.
The judge actually found in one opinion that their was a contract, and then 6 months later issued an order that made implimenting the contract as written impossible.
Anyway, the problem – or atleast mine, is not “the law”, it is not even the complexity and breadth of our law – though I have issues with that.
It is that we have fostered a culture of lawlessness that permeates the courts.
The remedy for bad law is to change the law. Though I am not dealing with bad law.
I am dealing with pretty basic stuff.
And as I noted – though what is occuring with me is somewhat extra-ordinary, the courts here, and particularly the orphans court is lawless. This is not just me, I just know more about my own case.
“Just government and just laws mean completely different things today depending on who you ask.”
I would suggest some of the youtube video’s critiquing post modernism.
Jordan Peterson has done a few, but there are many others.
What you are talking about is not accidental, it is deliberate.
The left has destroyed meaning – deliberately. Not just with respect to law.
They leap from there is no absolute Truth (true) to there is no truth at all, no facts, everything is just an opinion and all viewpoints and opinions are equal.
Well not quite equal, the opinions of historically oppressed groups have more merit than those of others.
You need not have the best argument, you need not have the facts, you need not be persuasive.
If you can check off the largest number of oppression boxes, you win the lottery and only your voice gets heard, only you get to make the rules.
And the left does not seem to grasp that when you destroy all meaning – you destroy the meaning of oppression too – so ultimately you have no criteria,
Worse still far too many of us while not completely buying this are sufficiently confused by it to get hornswaggled.
Most of us are not homophoic – except in the sense that we have decidedly negative reactions to watching gay male porn. I really want to tell the christian bakers that will not bake cakes for gay couples – just bake the damn cake. This is not that big a deal,
We do not quite grasp that today it is wedding cakes, tomorow ???
I beleive that polls show the majority of americans do not care if public restrooms become unisex.
But very very very few of us are ready to put 14yr olds with a penis in the shower at school with girls.
Further this intersecutional oppression scale has some serious problems.
How is it that female genitally mutilated muslims are near the bottom of the oppression status scale rather than deamn near the top ?
Or what about gay people in muslim countries ?
Frankly why aren’t jews pretty far up ? Anti-Semitism is the one form of virulent discrimination that might actually be getting worse over the past several decades.
The left certainly hates Jews.
Jews could be conservatives by 2020.
John Say – nothing brings out the best in a family like a death. I was the executor of my mother’s estate and one of my brothers threatened to sue. I reminded him that in Arizona if you sue an estate and lose, you pay the legal costs of both sides. He backed off. I do wish you the best. (:
That is true many places. It is even true here.
And it has posed a problem – as my siblings managed to get inside the estate.
They have the executor ignoring the will, and the financial records and manufacturing new ones.
But as much difficulty as I have. I do not have to be concerned about paying legal costs,
Because I am so obviously right about everything even when the judge makes things up.
The Judge and the executor need to keep things from escaping their control, because too many facts are just horribly wrong.
In my state executors and attorney’s fees are “quasi” capped at about 3%(each) of the value of the estate.
Right now they are at about 50% – and of the remainder – they have destroyer more than half.
The executor and his attorney will each “inherit” more than double, what any beneficiary will receive.
We are playing a game – they know if they push to hard – there will be an appeal – and this is
“shocks the conscience” bad.
There is a vehicle that has some value, that was actually listed in the will.
At the time I was removed as POA it was at a garage for inspection and repairs – that was 5 years ago. It is still there. The executor first claimed it was not my fathers – because he found an old registration in the name of a company my father owned and later sold. But he did not sell the vehicle with the company, and he changes the registration 4 years before he died. The estate counsel claims they went to DMV and the vehicle was not listed as my fathers. But anyone can go to th DMV online and it is still listed to my father.
It has been racking up storage fees for 5 years – the storage costs now exceed the value of the vehicle.
The executor was called by the garage a few months after my father died – I know because they also called me. The insurance renewal 6 months after Dad’s death – listed the vehicle.
My sister emailed the executor abotu the vehicle starting abotu 4 months after Dad died and ever 6 months after that asking about the vehicle.
In discovery we found emails from the executor about 18 months after dad died basically saying “oops, we screwed up on the truck – can they surcharge me for it ?”
And that is only one item – there are probably a dozen similar screwups.
The executor fired my fathers attorney of about 2 decades – the one who was responsible for all his estate planning, about 4 months after my father died, and hired the dumbest attorney’s I have ever encountered in my life from a local county with a reputation for a worse legal system than ours. Because that attorney was not letting him pull these shenanigans.
This has actually gone far past where it is terrible, and stressful, and even sad.
We are into its being a dark comedy.
I asked the executor to distribute the specicif bequests a bit over a year after my father died.
I offered to take over responsibility for all costs for some property that was given to me, if he would just let me take control of it. I could have rented it and slowly started fixing it up and it would have cost the estate nothing. Instead it has cost about 30K/year – for almost 5 years. Part of the time the executor had no insurance – and it was robbed and vandalized – and nearly 100K of damage was done. The executor did not even file a police report.
I got a court order compelling the executor to distribute the specific bequests – 3 years ago – the judge added “on the agreement of the beneficiaries”. 2 months later we had reached an agreement and were preparing a written agreement – when the executor filed a motion to sell it all. Still pending.
About 6 months later, I got everyone (including the executor and judge) to agree on the record in court – so I met the requirements of the court order. About 9 months after that the judge confirmed in another court order that the matter was settled. Nothing has been distributed, about 20K has been spent moving it to storage, and another couple of K every month to store it – we have exceeded its value.
All this and the executor is actually allowed to distribute bequests on his own without any court order – so long as they are not the subject of objections – and the only objections they are subject to are his.
The law in my state requires distribution by the excutor after 9 months if there are no objections.
There are a few small specific bequests to unrelated people. I asked the court and the executor to atleast distribute those – so that everytime something is filed in court a small forest has to be cut down to serve all the copies. Not done.
John Say – the NHS had a court order preventing the parents from taking the child from the hospital.
@santamonica811 — That is called getting schooled… by John say – read and learn.
Churchill favorite: When told that a certain political opponent was a ‘very modest man’, Churchill responded “And he as a great deal to be modest about.”
The NHS was started in 1948 by the Atlee Socialist Government that defeated Churchill at the polls in 1945 after an ungrateful and war weary nation turfed him out. Churchill was re-elected again in the 50s after the experiment with having the Unions run the country but he was an old-money conservative through and through and would never have enacted a government owned health system that used tax payer funds to cover the most inefficient, cripplingly expensive soviet style health system imaginable that relied entirely on soaking the rich so everyone else gets free health care (including illegal migrants). As Churchill’s greatest fan (Thatcher) once remarked “THe problem with socialists is they always run out of other people’s money to spend” which is what the NHS did and led directly to Churchill getting re-elected in 1951 but by then getting rid of the NHS was politically impossible and all the Conservatives could do was try and improve it. So it survives to this day but remains an unaffordable socialist fantasy and is chewing up something like 50% + of tax revenue (even more if you include aged care in that sum) and a day of reckoning is inevitable.
The actual NHS was not created By Churchill,
But something similar with the same name was proposed by Churchill as part of his post war plan in 1943.
Churchill’s NHS might not have been identical to what ultimately came to exist, but something very unconservative – atleast in the american sense, was his proposal.
The NHS is the disaster you paint it as.
But it is false to paint Churchill as an opponent.
Jefferson owned slaves. Our Hero’s have clay feet.
It is easy for the parents to want certain things to happen. They will always make those decisions when it is not their money. And if it’s not their money, they have lost the right to decide.
“It is easy for the parents to want certain things to happen.”
That is a ludicrously stupid assertion likely from someone who has never had to deal with a sick child.
“They will always make those decisions when it is not their money.”
It is called moral hazard and it is a reason government SHOULD NOT involve itself.
“And if it’s not their money, they have lost the right to decide.”
You have it backwards. Parents NEVER lose the right to decide. Rights can only be surrendered voluntarily They can only lose the privilege of having someone else pay.
In this specific instance others came forward with the resources to pursue different approaches.
This is frequently the case as hopeless cases provide the oportunity to try things with limited risk that one could not do normally, and the knowledge gained is often incredibly valuable.
Further we live in a era where a wealthy person who has repeatedly lied under other can raise half a million from the guilible through social media, I would be shocked if raising far more for a dying child was difficult.
Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page et al are singing like canaries.
The DOJ Inspector General is a brilliant conductor.
It’s a Tabernacle Choir of truth and facts.
The mellifluous tones will waft from the FBI and CIA throughout the intel structure, all the way to the previous White House.
The Sound of Music is beautiful, compelling, unless, of course, you’re Hillary or Obama.
Then it most resembles a Death Fugue.
Here is the swamp that Trump pretended he was going to drain. His supporters will go down in history as even more gullible than the Moonies.
Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives and lobbyists on Tuesday that they should increase their campaign donations to influence lawmakers, revealing that he would meet only with lobbyists who contributed to his campaign when he served in the House.
“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lobbyists at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”
Trump only hires the best people.
Heh
Perhaps Mulvaney was simply explaining the Swamp to the bankers as a warning. I don’t think he said he approved of the system, only that it was what it was. Of course, his comments at the conference have been severely edited, as usual, by the lying media, so…
The actual quote before editing was about serving constituents, not lobbyist.
And yes editing that significantly alters the meaning is called LYING
Slippers, are u aware that the alleged “quote” from Mulvaney was edited to completely change its meaning? The actual quote created a 3 part hierarchy: Lobbyists that gave no money, would not be talked to; Lobbyists that gave money MIGHT be talked to. But constituents from his district that GAVE NO MONEY would always be talked to…. The quote was about representative government. The media liars completely lied about the meaning of the quote by leaving out the important part of it. How do u feel about being played by these media outlets? Do you now recognize the meaning of “fake news”? This is a prime example.
When I saw the report, the media mentioned the entire quote, made a point of emphasizing that it was good that he placed a priority on seeing his constituents, and then also emphasized that he then would let his time be bought by lobbyists, for which he was–quite rightly!!!–criticized.
I do agree that news stories that mentioned his willingness to whore his integrity for money while also not mentioning that he would see locals with no condition of money were unfair and incomplete.
Actually he made it clear – constituency got you everything.
Money did not assure a non-constituent lobbiest anything.
No Money assued a non-constituent lobbiest nothing.
I am not aware of whores using that model.
The quote is edited and out of context.
The entire quote has a completely different meaning – that meaning being “I represent my constituents – not lobyists, if you are a constituent – you will be seen. If you are a constituent and you want something from me, you will be seen, if you are a constituent, and you did not vote for me and you did not contribute and now you want something – you will be seen, Outsiders – people I do not represent – better bring money, because otherwise I do not care about them”
You can find the exact quote easily if you search.
Regardless the edited quote is a misrepresentation – a LIE!
Comey, his FBI friend Daniel Richman, etc., demonstrate reactionary ideologies. The ends justify the means. This is total disregard of due process, checks and balances, etc. It is reminiscent of COINTELPRO and a lack of regard for other branches of government and contempt for the citizens who elected Trump. Everyone in the Justice Department should be forced to read Marbury v. Madison, because if we are no longer a nation of laws then we are the biggest threat to world stability and democracy ever.
I love how Trump’s conflicts are settled on the playground, tantrums included and Obama’s were 4 dimensional chess with his legacy at stake, not the public’s interest. Perpetuating the presidency with HRC needed to be protected and he was sold by his posse of ambitious female glass ceileing breakers jsut like HRC to protect his legacy.
Dupe.
There is no need to Dupe.
Once is enough.
Trump made it clear during the campaign that he wanted his opponents locked up. He mentioned only Clinton by name but the implication was clear that this would be a governing principle of his. That’s what dictators want.
There’s a reason politician’s aren’t required to take the oath until they are elected. It’s not the campaign rhetoric that should impeach a President; that’s the voters problem to sort out. It’s their fidelity to that oath that should be the basis for impeachment. So what has President Trump done to violate that oath?
Olly, WAAAAY too rational man.
I know Johnny, but we are wasting time arguing with these people if we have no agreed standard. So we end up with these knitwits calling for impeachment because citizen Trump lied to get in a magazine or citizen Trump was unfaithful to his wife 10 years ago. That behavior was a reflection on his character….then. His campaign style was a reflection on his character…then. His style as President is a reflection of his character…now. And yet none of that character has been reflected by unconstitutional governance.
Just to point out that Jonathan Greenberg is a political partisan, hasn’t worked at Forbes for over 30 years, has made wildly implausible claims, and has made claims contradicted by other agencies, including every succeeding team at Forbes.
Emolument clause ?
Nope Slippers – that’s what the majority of Americans wanted – Republican and Independent – to see HRC put on trial and then locked up.
Meanwhile Wikileaks is all ginned up:
@wikileaks
The Democrats are suing @WikiLeaks and @JulianAssange for revealing how the DNC rigged the Democratic primaries. Help us counter-sue. We’ve never lost a publishing case and discovery is going to be amazing fun:https://www.iamwikileaks.org/donate/
Show trials and kangaroo courts, here we come. Amazing to watch trumpets ignore the rampant corruption in the Trump administration right now as they try to gin up reasons for prosecuting Trump’s opponent from two years ago. I have never been a clinton fan, but she was right: you ARE deplorables.
slippers – you don’t have to gin up anything against Hillary, the evidence is already sitting there.
If Trump runs for reelection in 2020, I think his opponent should dust off that “basket of deplorables” characterization of Trump supporters.
It worked so well for Hillary in the 2016 election😏, so the “you’re deplorable if you don’t vote for me” slogan could be equally effective😄 if the Democratic nominee faces Trump in 2020.
The TV ads in 2020 will feature Hillary whining about “a vast right wing conspiracy of professional Clinton haters” followed by Trump whining about “a partisan, political witch hunt.” Voters will then be asked to see if they can tell the difference between the two blond whiners.
Slippers you are ignorant. Obama lost his legacy within the first 6 months after he filled his cabient with GS people and turned over the healthcare issue to the industry. People are SICK and TIRED of Liberal Demo sh!t — why do you think hundreds and thousands turned out for Bernie whereas HRC (when she deigned to campaign) had problems garnering a crowd of over a 100 people??? Cause we did not want Obama 2.
Well. Some things have happened. Citizens have forwarded to the FEC evidence of $84 million in money laundering. By Clinton’s (the female) campaign.
And this has been sent to Sessions. A criminal referral.
https://desantis.house.gov/_cache/files/8/0/8002ca75-52fc-4995-b87e-43584da268db/472EBC7D8F55C0F9E830D37CF96376A2.final-criminal-referral.pdf
I dunno. Maybe starting an investigation based on manufactured evidence is not kosher. It may not even be legal.
President Trump was asked directly after the election if he was going to go after Hillary. His response was, NO, I don’t want to do that. Trump does not control the Congressional committee’s that are investigating her. Nor is Trump in any way responsible for the crimes committed by the Obama administration or their Secretary of State Hillary. The chips are falling where they are because of THEIR behavior, not Trump’s.
Precisely how is Trump acting like a dictator ?
AS best as I can tell he has been undoing the unconstitutional over reach of his predecessor.
That is about as anti-authoritarian, anti-dictatorial as you can get.
For clarity – a dictator is someone that governs by force, not subject to law, doing as they please.
Following the law. acting in conformance with the law, doing as the law requires, is anti-dictatorial.
We grasp that the left is pissed because Trump is rolling back myriads of policies that they like that Obama imposed outside the law.
Ondoing what you accomplished improperly is not dictatorial.
If you truly beleive that the policies Trump is rolling back are good and compelling – then persuade people to enact them as law – not via the pen and phone.
I understand that it is easier to ignore the law and to pretend that because you think you are doing good that the law should not constrain you, that getting sufficient support to do what you are self righteously certain is correct, should not be a requirement for you to impose you will on others, but get over yourself you are wrong.
If what you seek to do is truly virtuous – you should be able to persuade people.
You should not even need government to get people to volunatarily go along.
Fran – Hillary was connected to the po’ people, she carried hot sauce in her purse. 😉
“Comey could well be accurate in his account of Trump and justified in his concerns over Trump’s conduct but that does not excuse the actions that he has exhibited in both the leaking of the memos and the timing of his book.”
Professor Turley, Comey cleared the book with the FBI before publication. They could have stopped it either by asking or by seeking an injunction. They didn’t.
Ultimately, the GOP demanded the notes be made public. They were.
The memos are arguably admissible as evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 803.
Given what Comey learned about Trump, he was certainly right to keep such notes. Given the public’s right to know, I believe he was right to release the memos.
Or, do you feel that Daniel Ellsberg was wrong to release the Pentagon Papers?
Or, do you feel that Daniel Ellsberg was wrong to release the Pentagon Papers?
He misappropriated secret information, then spent a long run of years dining off it. Yeah, wrong.
If Comey had NOT kept contemporaneous notes, he would have been guilty of malpractice.
slippers – Comey only kept notes on Trump, not Obama.
The issue is not whether he put his contemporaneous thoughts to paper or kept them in his head; it’s with whom, how and why he shared them that is evidence of malpractice.
So where are his “contemporaneous notes” of his meetings with President Obama or other high-level politicians? Surely he noticed the illegal gun-running of AG Eric Holder, or the illegal email activities of Hillary, or any of hundreds of violations of law that took place during Obama’s terms. So … where are Comey’s notes on that illegal behavior?
And by leaking those notes to the press he may be guilty again.
You can not rationalize misconduct after the fact.
The fact that the notes have been legitimately made public, does not excuse that they were illegitimately leaked.
Nor does their admissibility as evidence.
The Carter Page FISA warrant is evidence, and republicans want it made public, it still not public, it is still classified and anyone who leaks it will still likely be prosecuted.
There is no publics right to know ex post facto justification for pretty much any crime.
Yes, Ellsberg was wrong. Ellsburg’s prosecution failed because of prosecution misconduct, not because of innocence.
No one is arguing against Comey creating those memo’s.
Though they do not come close to the FBI’s standards for the construction of such things.
They are written in precisely that way that makes them easiest to discredit, full of subjective personal observations, and short on facts.
Pretty much all of us would like to see much more of this made public.
We would like to see FBI/DOJ quit stonewalling – particularly stonewalling congress.
That said Comey’s greatest crime is hypocracy.
He investigated and prosecuted others for leaking, He knew or should have know the law.
He claims to the the man of integrity. While he exhonerated Clinton, he concurrently excoriated her.
Essentially saying the world is not black and white and Clinton was deep into Gray
As the former FBI director and the self appointed white night Comey is obligated not to stray into the gray.
Atleast not if he wants to retain that white knight stature untarnished.
If you wish to play the avenging angel, you must remain completely clearly innocent of any wrong doing.
You can not accuse the president of lying while equivocating all over.
When you step up onto the moral soap box, your own conduct must be beyond the slightest reproach.
James Comey has failed.
You and Turley are missing the main point: Our government and its preservation. Trump and his cartel are an attack on our institutions.
In hindsight, Ellsberg was completely ethically and morally correct. He saved us. Comey tried to do an Ellsberg, but the jury is out on whether he did. Let’s see how this plays out.
Trump and the GOP can release the warrant applications anytime they want. Why do they delay? Because, I believe, they know the applications destroy all their bogus arguments. So like Nunes they will not investigate what needs to be revealed in the light of day.
“You and Turley are missing the main point: Our government and its preservation. Trump and his cartel are an attack on our institutions.”
The only threat to these is from the left.
Aparently you do not know what a cartel is. Please think about the words you use as lobbing them randomly makes understanding you difficult.
Government is far too big and we could take a machette to most of it with little harm.
Government is one of many institutions we have – and it should be a small one.
Pruning government substantially is not a threat to any critical institutions.
Trump is not going to prune government by more than a fraction of what needs done.
“In hindsight, Ellsberg was completely ethically and morally correct. He saved us.”
I am not going to judge his ethics.
He was legally wrong.
He would have been convicted but for prosecutorial misconduct.
He did not save us.
“Comey tried to do an Ellsberg, but the jury is out on whether he did. Let’s see how this plays out.”
There is zero equivalence between Comey and Ellsberg.
Comey was conducting a politically corrupt investigation, got fired, and then gamed the system into appointing a Special counsel – which never would have happened had the DOJ/FBI not kept their malfeasance secret for so long.
“Trump and the GOP can release the warrant applications anytime they want. Why do they delay? Because, I believe, they know the applications destroy all their bogus arguments.”
Thus far DOJ/FBI are most clearly NOT acting at Trump’s direction.
The house an senate are pulling teeth to get things released that are in everyone’s interest – except for the Comey Cabal.
My Guess is that Trump’s lawyers have told him to leave DOJ/FBI alone.
If Trump ordered the FISA warrant declassified – you would likely scream “obstruction of justice”
“So like Nunes they will not investigate what needs to be revealed in the light of day.”
The major impediment to things being made public is DOJ/FBI
They are covering their ass and protecting the Mueller investigation.
Personally I say get this all out in the open.
If there is any substance the remedy is going to be impeachment anyway.
Therefore the congressional investigations have priority.
Mueller needs to go away.
Most of what Schiff wants is being blocked because releasing it might interfere with Mueller.
Still as I said I am for a thorough PUBLIC investigation.
That means congress not Mueller.
Ellsberg – went to jail. Comey is auditioning.
Actually, he did not go to jail.
hollywood – I happened to see Comey on The View and while they were giving him a hand-job under the table, they asked him who should play him in the upcoming movie. I threw up in my mouth. I think he had to change his slacks, he got rather glassy-eyed.
“It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls.”
http://www.libertylawsite.org/2018/04/23/the-vices-of-a-higher-loyalty/
Pretty much the definition of the rule of man, not law.
You can whine and point the finger all day long at James Comey and Andrew McCabe, but that’s still not going to stop Trump from being impeached and possibly charged with crimes. This is the classic Kellyanne Pivot, calculated to divert attention away from the truth. Nothing Comey or McCabe did or didn’t do changes the fact that Trump is a crook and he’s going down.
Meanwhile, in real political news, it turns out Trump lied to get placement in Forbes millionaires’ list, and it turns out he DID actually spend a couple of nights in Moscow, proven by aviation records.
Natacha thinks if she just taps her Ruby Slippers….
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/23/flight-records-contradict-trump-on-2013-moscow-trip-report.html
Excerpted from the article linked above:
New details about President Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Moscow in 2013 appear to contradict the timeline he allegedly provided to former FBI Director James Comey, according to flight records obtained by Bloomberg.
The records show Trump arrived on a Bombardier jet to Moscow on Friday, Nov. 8, at 6:15 a.m. local time, and didn’t depart the country until 3:58 a.m. Sunday, Bloomberg reported. According to the arrival and departure times listed in the flight records, Trump’s total time spent in Moscow for the trip was nearly 46 hours.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/384726-miss-universe-host-says-trump-stayed-overnight-in-moscow
Excerpted from the article linked above:
The host of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant said Tuesday that President Trump stayed overnight in Moscow the night before the pageant.
Thomas Roberts, a former NBC anchor, told the Daily Beast that he met Trump in Moscow on Nov. 8, 2013, and interviewed him the following day.
“The first time I met Donald Trump it was in Moscow on Nov. 8, 2013,” Roberts said. “I taped a sit-down interview with Trump the next day on Nov. 9. That was also the date for the Miss Universe broadcast.”
There is a big time difference between here and Moscow that Bloomberg failed to take into consideration. And regardless of how long Trump was in Moscow, almost every hour of his time was planned around the pageant and interviews. Bloomberg still has not produced a shred of evidence to prove Trump ever spent even one minute in a hotel with prostitutes. Not one shred. The Dems know the dossier is false & are trying to find a way to make it’s contents look legitimate. They will fail.
WVLioness said, “There is a big time difference between here and Moscow that Bloomberg failed to take into consideration.”
In the first place, you’re wrong. Both the arrival and the departure times for Trump’s flights were reported in local Moscow time. In the second place, you’re wrong again. There cannot be a time difference between any two locales on planet Earth greater than 24 hours. Trump’s plane was in Moscow for 46 hours.
In the third place, the principal source for the hotel-prostitute allegation is a close associate of Trump who made arrangements for, and accompanied Trump on, Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow for The Miss Universe Pageant. It has been reported that Mueller interviewed Trump’s longtime body-guard, Keith Shilling, who accompanied Trump to Moscow in 2013 and who routinely made Trump’s travel arrangements.
Finally, I am already on the record as stating that the salacious hooker allegation is most likely disinformation planted in the dossier by a close associate of Trump for the sake of discrediting the remainder of the dossier.
Strike Keith Shilling and make it Keith Schiller, instead. Then read the link.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/us/politics/trump-keith-schiller-russia.html
Excerpted from the article linked above:
As Mr. Schiller sat in the back of the room, a man with a foreign accent unknown to him approached the bodyguard with the offer, he said. Mr. Schiller testified he did not treat it seriously and quickly said no thanks, according to one of the people familiar with the testimony, who requested anonymity to discuss answers that had been given behind closed doors.
Mr. Schiller said he relayed the story to Mr. Trump when they were returning to his hotel room later that night. The men shared a laugh, he said.
Mr. Schiller told investigators that he stood guard outside Mr. Trump’s door after he retired for the night, before eventually leaving to go to sleep himself, the person said.
Also excerpted from the article linked above:
President Trump’s longtime bodyguard told congressional investigators this week that someone offered to send five women to Mr. Trump’s hotel room during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the annual Miss Universe pageant.
But the bodyguard, Keith Schiller, said he quickly rejected the offer, and testified that he was not aware of Mr. Trump participating in any compromising activity on the trip, according to two people familiar with his testimony.
Mr. Schiller spoke during a closed-door session with members of the House Intelligence Committee for nearly three hours on Tuesday. The panel is one of several on Capitol Hill investigating Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.
The offer for women came at a morning business meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow to discuss the pageant, which was being produced by a company owned by Mr. Trump. Mr. Schiller told investigators that about 15 people had been present for the meeting, including Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star, and his father, Aras Agalarov, a business tycoon linked to the Kremlin.
WVLioness said, “Bloomberg still has not produced a shred of evidence to prove Trump ever spent even one minute in a hotel with prostitutes.”
If you’ll notice, Trump’s own body guard Keith Schiller testified to Congress that Trump spent the night at the Ritz Carlton Moscow in 2013. Of course, it’s also true that Mr. Schiller denied that there were any prostitutes in the hotel room with Trump. Nevertheless, Trump stayed two nights at the Ritz Carlton Moscow in 2013.
The putative fact that Trump denied to Comey that he had spent two nights at the Ritz Carlton Moscow is yet another instance of Trump engaging in non-denial denials. Trump told Comey that he flew in and flew out. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t spend two nights at the Ritz Carlton Moscow in 2013. Trump told Comey that he always assumes that hotel rooms are wired for surveillance. But that doesn’t mean that Trump didn’t spend two nights at the Ritz Carlton Moscow in 2013, either.
The time is long past due to learn how to interpret Trump’s non-denial denials.
It is easy to deny you spent two nights when you only spent one. Look carefully at the timeline.Thursday/Friday – flight to Moscow. Friday night in Moscow. Saturday party into the AM Leave Sunday 4 AM. Look at the flight records and correctly adjust for time zones.
So N, have you calculated the votes necessary for impeachment?
Also to what specific high crimes or misdemeanors?
Just asking if you have thought it through.
418 votes in The House to bring articles of impeachment.
67 votes in The Senate to convict, remove and disqualify from office.
Specific high misdemeanor: Misprision of Felony.
From the Wikipedia article on Misprision:
“Misprision of felony” is still an offense under United States federal law after being codified in 1909 under 18 U.S.C. § 4:
Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This offense, however, requires active concealment of a known felony rather than merely failing to report it.
The Oath of Office:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Let’s go to the way back machine to a a comment approved by you this morning:
You want answers, but you never answer. I asked you to show me how many grand juries and indictments HRC faces right now……And to yours, it’s called the Emoluments clause.
According to your thumbs up to FishWings, there could be no Misprision of Felony if no indictments are made. That beings said, should felony convictions be forthcoming, then there should be a lot of lawfare operators charged under this act.
If your reference to “indictments” is a valid interpretation of the phrase “cognizable by a court of the United States,” then you’re probably correct. I have no idea whether that’s what the phrase “cognizable by a court of the United States” means.
As for my approval of FishWings message about The Emoluments Clause, I fail to see any logical connection to my conjecture about Misprision of Felony. Indictments have been brought against Manafort and Gates for money laundering, bank fraud and tax fraud. If Manafort and Gates had an ongoing conspiracy to further those crimes, and if Trump both knew about, and actively concealed, those felonies while serving as the top law-enforcement officer of The United States, and if Olly’s interpretation of the phrase “cognizable by a court of the United States” is not valid, then Trump could in theory be impeached for Misprision of Felony under 18 U.S.C. § 4.
As for my approval of FishWings message about The Emoluments Clause, I fail to see any logical connection to my conjecture about Misprision of Felony.
That would be because I was referencing FishWing’s indictments comment. I even put that reference in my comment to you. If the Justice Department is going to dust off laws on the books like Misprision of Felony and apply it to those concealing felonies, then that would be potentially a very large net being cast. I say potentially because all that would be needed is for the felony activity to finally be prosecuted. I don’t really care who it nets as long as it is applied equally.
Oy gevelt. It’s another misunderstanding. My reference to Misprision of Felony was a reply to Johnny Unitas All who, in turn, had asked Natacha to specify an impeachable offense for Trump. FTR, I am not now, nor have I ever been, and obviously never will be a lawyer. If Trump knew what Manafort and Gates were up to, without actually participating in their scheme, then the Misprision of Felony charge might apply. If, however, Trump participated in the Manafort/Gates scheme, then a conspiracy charge would be the far simpler route for impeachment. IOW, my guess about Misprision of Felony was based on the presumption that Trump did not actually participate in whatever it was or might have been that Manafort and Gates were up to.
P. S. Sorry for the misunderstanding, Chief.
Late4Dinner,…
-I think you may have meant 218 House votes to impeach….it takes a simple majority of the 435 House’s Representatives for impeachment.
Nice catch, Tom. That is, in fact, what I should have typed 🙂
Nothing Comey or McCabe did or didn’t do matters as long as it results in President Trump going down.
There, fixed it for you.
If Trump weren’t so dirty and didn’t have a history of lying and cheating, the public wouldn’t have heard the names of Comey and McCabe. Anyone with the goods on Trump or attempting to investigate him and shenanigans is going to be attacked, accused of wrongdoing and generally slandered. We know this is Trump’s MO, but to have JT get involved is sad, indeed. The right keeps trying to make a case against Mueller, but it won’t stick.
Actually if HRC had won we never would have heard of all these scandals and illegal behavior. It would have been Obama 2.0 nothing to see here folks and the compliant MSM not doing their jobs.
“we wouldn’t have heard the names of Comey and McCabe..
if Trump weren’t so dirty”.
Comey’s name became well-known by July 2016, when he placed himself front and center in announcing the results of the Hillary email investigation.
And when he also made the declaration that “no reasonable prosecutor” would press criminal charges for Hillary’s ” extreme carelessness” ( originally “gross negligence” until he toned it down).
Then in late October 2016, he announces that he is reopening that investigation 12 days before the election.
So Comey was “major headline news” and the public “heard his name”; that would have still been the case had Clinton won. ( Hillary may have fired him, too, so he would have made further news had she fired him).
The public probably knew Comey’s name well in his 3 1/2 years as FBI Director.
Mueller preceded him, and Mueller was not as well known to the public in his12 years as FBI Director.
The case against Mueller from his involvement with Whitey Bulger might stick. The use of unverified intel (rumors) to get FISA warrants and Muellers investigation might be a problem.
And then there is this: https://desantis.house.gov/_cache/files/8/0/8002ca75-52fc-4995-b87e-43584da268db/472EBC7D8F55C0F9E830D37CF96376A2.final-criminal-referral.pdf
Trump lies as if it were his job description. Unless he has done it under oath, that is not an impeachable offense. Trump also is an ignorant lout, but again that’s not what is meant by “high crimes and misdemeanors”. At this point in time there is no known impeachable offenses that Trump has committed.
This could change, of course, especially when the Mueller investigation reports its findings, but until then talk of impeachment is fun, but premature.
Trump also is an ignorant lout,
When are you going to give evidence that you know something, anything at all?
wildbill99 knows that Michael D. Cohen withdrew his lawsuit against Buzzfeed after investigators hired by Buzzfeed uncovered evidence that Cohen had crossed the border from Germany into the Czech Republic in 2016. wildbill99 also knows that Cohen’s denial that he has ever been to Prague in his life is not a denial that he has never been to the Czech Republic. wildbill99 also knows that Trump lying to Comey about not having spent two nights in Moscow in 2013 is not an impeachable offense. willbill99 also knows that the statement “Trump is an ignorant lout” is an opinion that wildbill99 is entitled to express under the First Amendment. Chances are that wildbill99 knows all sorts of other stuff as well. For instance, I’m guessing that wildbill99 knows a thing or two about The Ninth Commandment.
investigators hired by Buzzfeed uncovered evidence that Cohen had crossed the border from Germany into the Czech Republic in 2016.
Unless they uncovered a second passport and security cam footage, they didn’t, except in your addled head.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/12/former-senior-fbi-official-is-leading-buzzfeeds-effort-to-verify-trump-dossier/
Excerpted from the article linked above:
Anthony Ferrante coordinated the U.S. government’s response to Russian election interference. Now he’s helping a news site defend itself from a Russian billionaire’s lawsuit.
For the last six months, a team led by a former top FBI and White House cybersecurity official has been traveling the globe on a secret mission to verify parts of the Trump dossier, according to four sources familiar with different aspects of the ongoing probe.
Their client: BuzzFeed, the news organization that first published the dossier on U.S. President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, which is now being sued over its explosive allegations.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article208870264.html
Excerpted from the article linked above:
But investigators have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently during August or early September of 2016 as the ex-spy reported, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential. He wouldn’t have needed a passport for such a trip, because both countries are in the so-called Schengen Area in which 26 nations operate with open borders. The disclosure still left a puzzle: The sources did not say whether Cohen took a commercial flight or private jet to Europe, and gave no explanation as to why no record of such a trip has surfaced.
Diane, either he had a second passport or he didn’t. Either he’s captured on security videos at a Czech border crossing or he isn’t. No amount of hand waving about some reporter’s fanciful references to anonymous sources changes that.
And yes he did need a passport. His home is in New York City, which is not part of the Schengen area.
They have found no evidence of such a trip because Michael Cohen never made it. At least, the Michael Cohen who WORKS for President Trump. The CIA and FBI traitors who presented a false application to the FISA court to continue their illegal spying on the Trump team got overly aggressive and slipped up when they queried the name Michael Cohen. There may have been someone by that name who made that trip, but they got the wrong guy. Glad to see you Libtards are still trying to prove that totally false dossier. Of course, you have to keep trying cause you ain’t got nothing else.
Cohen has publicly acknowledged making three trips to Europe that year – to Italy in July, England in early October and a third after Trump’s November election.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article208870264.html#storylink=cpy
“during August or early September of 2016”
Such precise intel. It is almost like they had evidence. /sarc
Uh. One night in Moscow. Get the flight logs and do the math. And don’t forget time zone math. And travel time. One night. Friday.
President Trump has not committed a single impeachable offense, and you know it. Comey and McCabe, along with many others, attempted to prevent Trump’s election. When that failed, they attempted a coup. That is sedition and treason, and they and their co-conspirators will be indicted for it. If Trump did spend time in Russia it was years before he became President, and is irrelevant. Trump will easily win reelection in 2020 and 2024.
If Trump wins reelection in 2020, he will be precluded from running for reelection in 2024.
Living in the bubble.
Thus far no one has specified an actual crime that Trump purportedly committed.
We now know that the entire investigation lies on a foundation of politically sourced garbage.
The finger pointing at Lynch, McCabe Comey and others comes with allegations and probable cause of specific crimes.
I am sorry but I do not have every single Trump tweet at the tip of my tongue.
But I do not recall Trump denying he went to Moscow for His Own Paegent.
We constantly get this garbage from the left.
The relevant allegations are that trump paid prostitutes to pee on a bed that Obama slept in and that there is video of that event.
I can not prove it did not happen – is not beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not probable cause.
Cohen ADMITTEDLY went to Italy at a time months before the Steele dossier claims, at a Time that it would have been impossible to do what the steele dossier claims and because one of the people he claims to have visited does not recall, suddenly Cohen is lying and the Steele Dossier is verified ?
Please let us use that standard and we can convict the entire Obama administration of Malfeasance.
One night in Moscow – Friday.