Former President Barack Obama is being quoted from a private call that the “rule of law is at risk” after the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Obama reportedly told members of the Obama Alumni Association that “There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free.” Without doubting the exhaustive search referenced by President Obama, he might have tried calling one “alum”: former Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder moved to dismiss such a case based on prosecutorial errors in front of the very same judge, Judge Emmet Sullivan. [Notably, CNN covered the statements this morning without noting the clearly false claim over the lack of any precedent for the Flynn motion]
Third, there is also case law. In Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S. 22 (1977) which addressed precedent under Petite v. United States, 361 U.S. 529 (1960) dealing with the dangers of multiple prosecutions. There are also related cases in Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U. S. 121 (1959), and Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187 (1959). The Rinaldi decision involved a petitioner convicted of state offenses arising out of a robbery, who believed that the government should have moved to dismiss a federal offense arising out of the same robbery under the Department’s Petite policy. The Court laid out the standard for such motions. The thrust of that controversy concerned double jeopardy and dual jurisdictions. However, the point was that the rule is key in protecting such constitutional principles and that courts should be deferential in such moves by the Department: “In light of the parallel purposes of the Government’s Petite policy and the fundamental constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy, the federal courts should be receptive, not circumspect, when the Government seeks leave to implement that policy.”
There are also lower court decisions on this inherent authority. For example, in the D.C. Circuit (where the Flynn case was brought), the ruling in United States v. Fokker Servs. B.V., No. 15-3016 (D.C. Cir. 2016) reaffirms the deference to prosecutors on such questions. The Court noted that this deference extends to core constitutional principles:
“The Executive’s primacy in criminal charging decisions is long settled. That authority stems from the Constitution’s delegation of “take Care” duties, U.S. Const. art. II, § 3, and the pardon power, id. § 2, to the Executive Branch. See United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 464 (1996); In re Aiken Cnty., 725 F.3d 255, 262-63 (D.C. Cir. 2013). Decisions to initiate charges, or to dismiss charges once brought, “lie[] at the core of the Executive’s duty to see to the faithful execution of the laws.” Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence v. Pierce, 786 F.2d 1199, 1201 (D.C. Cir. 1986). The Supreme Court thus has repeatedly emphasized that“[w]hether to prosecute and what charge to file or bring before a grand jury are decisions that generally rest in the prosecutor’s discretion.” United States v. Batchelder, 442 U.S. 114, 124 (1979); see Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 364 (1978).
Correspondingly, “judicial authority is . . . at its most limited” when reviewing the Executive’s exercise of discretion over charging determinations. . . . The Executive routinely undertakes those assessments and is well equipped to do so.”
Fourth, there are cases where the Department has moved to dismiss cases on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct or other grounds touching on due process, ethical requirements or other concerns. One that comes to mind is United States v. Stevens where President Obama’s own Attorney General, Eric Holder, asked the same judge in the Flynn case to dismiss that case. That was just roughly ten years ago. As with Flynn, there was an allegation of withheld evidence by prosecutors.
At the time of the motion Holder declared “The Department of Justice must always ensure that any case in which it is involved is handled fairly and consistent with its commitment to justice. Under oftentimes trying conditions, the attorneys who serve in this Department live up to those principles on a daily basis.” What is obvious is the new guidelines issued at the time were honored in the breach during the Flynn prosecution.
While people of good faith can certainly disagree on the wisdom or basis for the Flynn motion, it is simply untrue if President Obama is claiming that there is no precedent or legal authority for the motion.
The rare statement by President Obama is also interesting in light of the new evidence. As I discussed in a column this morning in the Hill newspaper, the new material shows that Obama was following the investigation of Flynn who he previously dismissed from a high-level position and personally intervened with President Donald Trump to seek to block his appointment as National Security Adviser. Obama reportedly discussed the use of the Logan Act against Flynn. For a person concerned with precedent, that was also a curious focus. The Logan Act is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used to successfully convicted a single person since the early days of the Republic. Now that is dubious precedent.
Everyone is missing the point here: Why is Obama holding secret conversations with people who are likely to be called as witnesses in a grand jury investigation? This is classic witness tampering.
A wag said the point of the conversation was to tell them that they all must hang together lest they hang separately.
I doubt Obama’s degree of responsibility for this mess will ever be properly delineated. The people who know something are Yates and Rice.
You just answered your own question.
Why hold a secret conference call and then it is “leaked”. Because I imagine the Judge in the Flynn case is the real person the phone call is addressed to.
The media is the Enemy of the people. No doubt.
Everyone is missing the point here! Why Is Obama secretly meeting with people who are likely to be called to testify in the Durham investigation? This is jury tampering!
Perhaps witness tampering would be a better fit!
I do not believe anyone has discussed the issue of personal liability for Federal Officers in the case of intentional torts and/or actual malice. Federal officers are not protected from personnel liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act if the officer was acting with malice or outside the scope of their duties. Seems to me that LTG Flynn, and Messieurs Papadapolis, et al will be able to sue not only the Federal Government, but will also be able to sue Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and the other conspirators for legal fees, actual damages and punitive damages. That would be APPROPRIATE JUSTICE! What say you legal eagles?
No, not “jury tampering” with people who will never be jurors. Subornation of perjury is what they are doing – getting everyone’s testimony aligned.
I think you mean witness tampering not jury
Behind a paywall:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/barack-obama-on-michael-flynn-11589148648
Barack Obama on Michael Flynn:
The lawyer President misstates the crime and the real threat to justice.
May 10, 2020 6:10 pm ET
Barack Obama is a lawyer, so it was stunning to read that he ventured into the Michael Flynn case in a way that misstated the supposed crime and ignored the history of his own Administration in targeting Mr. Flynn. Since the former President chose to offer his legal views when he didn’t need to, we wonder what he’s really worried about.
“There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free,” Mr. Obama said in the Friday call to about 3,000 members of the Obama Alumni Association. The comments were leaked to Yahoo News and confirmed by Mr. Obama’s spokeswoman to the Washington Post and other outlets. Mr. Obama added: “That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic—not just institutional norms—but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”
Even discounting for Mr. Obama’s partisan audience, this gets the case willfully wrong. Mr. Flynn was never charged with perjury, which is lying under oath in a legal proceeding. Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI in a meeting at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017 that he was led to believe was a friendly chat among colleagues.
As for “scot-free,” that better applies to former President Bill Clinton who lied under oath in a civil case and was impeached for perjury but was acquitted by the Senate. We understand why Mr. Obama wouldn’t bring that up.
We doubt Mr. Obama has even read Thursday’s Justice Department motion to drop the Flynn prosecution. If he does ever read it, he’ll find disconcerting facts that certainly do raise doubts about whether “our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk,” though not for the reasons he claims.
Start with prosecutorial violation of the Brady rule, which Mr. Obama knows is a legal obligation that the prosecution must turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. Yet prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller didn’t disclose that the interviewing FBI agents at the time didn’t think that Mr. Flynn had lied about a phone call with the Russian ambassador.
Worst of all, as a legal matter, is that they never told Mr. Flynn that there was no investigative evidentiary basis to justify the interview. The FBI had already concluded there was no evidence that Mr. Flynn had colluded with Russia in the 2016 election and had moved to close the case. James Comey’s FBI cronies used the news of Mr. Flynn’s phone call with the Russian ambassador as an excuse to interview the then national security adviser and perhaps trap him into a lie.
All of this was moved along politically by leaks to the media about Mr. Flynn’s phone call with the Russian. The U.S. eavesdrops on foreign officials as a routine, but names of innocent Americans on those calls are supposed to be shielded from review to protect their privacy. Yet senior Obama officials have had to acknowledge that they “unmasked” Mr. Flynn’s name and others in their last months in power. Then, what a surprise, news of Mr. Flynn’s call and its contents pop up in the Washington Post. Did someone say “institutional norms”?
All of this raises questions about the role the Obama Justice Department and White House played in targeting Mr. Flynn. We already know the FBI had opened up a counterintelligence probe into Mr. Flynn and other Trump campaign officials, yet it had come up with no evidence of collusion.
Donald Trump’s victory increased the chances that this unprecedented spying on a political opponent would be uncovered, which would have been politically embarrassing at the very least. Targeting Mr. Flynn—and flogging the discredited Steele dossier—kept the Russia collusion pot boiling and evolved into the two-year Mueller investigation that turned up no evidence of collusion.
This among other things is what U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating at the request of Attorney General William Barr. Maybe that’s why Mr. Obama is so eager to distort the truth of the Flynn prosecution
Obama was never very good woth law so missteps are to be expected.
I would loved to have been a fly on the wall at Saturday nights Joint Chiefs Meeting: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/09/president-trump-meets-with-joint-chiefs-and-national-security-team-video-and-transcript/
I’d bet Obama and his merry band of cretinous cohorts are scurrying like rats right about now….I’d also love to see Martha’s Vineyard lit up with AC 130 surgical strikes.
https://thegreggjarrett.com/obama-sends-private-letter-to-national-archives-claiming-confidentiality-to-not-release-biden-ukraine-docs/?utm_source=socialflow
“Former President Barack Obama has inserted himself into the Russia, Ukraine fiasco; arguably this was not the first time. While Democrats have been denying and protecting their guilt in creating and advancing the Russia Hoax, there is evidence that suggests President Obama likely was aware of the probe. Fox News has obtained a letter from the office of former President Barack Obama to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which manages presidential records.
Why would Obama, four years after leaving office, suddenly get involved? The letter to the National Archives was privately sent in March. Arguably they did not want Fox News to obtain a copy. Nonetheless, the letter bashes Senate Republicans and their investigation of Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukraine. Hunter, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, joined the Ukraine company during the Obama administration. Very intriguing.”
cont’d….
Jonathan: Sorry to burst your bubble but Barr’s decision to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn is not analogous to what Eric Holder did in the Ted Stevens case. Ted Stevens was the poster child for official corruption in Washington at the time That mantle is now worn by Donald Trump. As the longest serving Republican senator in US history, Senator Stevens was cozy with Alaska’s oil industry. So it was no surprise when he as indicted for receiving more than $250,000 in gifts from oil company Veco and its CEO. Stevens failed to report these gifts on Senate disclosure forms. Prosecutors also charged Stevens with using his prominent position in the Senate to steer federal funds to Veco. However, during the trial prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense which drew a sharp rebuke from Judge Sullivan. That’s why Eric Holder had to drop the case–not as a personal favor to President Obama.So the factual differences in the two cases are world’s apart. Barr acted because that is what Trump wanted. Do you recall President Obama ever publicly indicating he wanted the Stevens case to go away as Trump tweeted many times about Michael Flynn? So there is really no “precedent” for what Barr did in the Flynn case.
Thanks for the Dunning-Kruger display. Been an education.
No, Barr did not dismiss this case because it was what Trump wanted.
It was dismissed due to egregious Brady violations. Prosecutor misconduct, FBI agent misconduct.
The charge itself was invalid, there was no investigation to qualify for substantial deception in an answer.
The notes and documents hidden for the last 2 years just proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Are you brain dead about the Ted Stevens’ case? Read Sidney Powell’s book “LICENSE TO LIE”.
The FBI and DoJ and clear and compelling evidence that the Stevens’ case was a setup by a corrupt DoJ to remove him from office by tainting him. Stevens was accused of getting expensive renovations done on the cheap. Reality – the supervisor of the project indicated that the control of workers and billing for the work was such that Stevens was probably GROSSLY OVERCHARGED for the work done. SO – the DoJ and FBI sent the contractor back to Alaska and did not use him in the trial – and did not inform Stevens of the exculpatory information.
NOW – I understand that leftist everywhere decide on guilt or innocence based on whether there is a D or R beside the name….but this was a clear cut case of abuse of power by the DoJ – and it is well documented in the book I mentioned. A pity you were not smart enough to research this before you spouted off lies.
When did he say it was a favor to Obama? Do all liberals just invent stuff? Judge Sullivan admonished the govt for willfully withholding Brady material. The govt had no choice but to drop the case, and in a way that would preserve some credibility with the court.
If the FBI raided your house, flashing their laundry list and telling you it was a warrant, and found evidence of a crime, would you say, “If you did the crime, you must do the time?” No, of course not, because the search was illegal. Same here. The interviews were not properly predicated, the normal procedures were ignored, improper pressure was put on Flynn to plead guilty, and Brady material was withheld from the defense, and then the judge lied to…twice. All of that constitutes govt abuse. I don’t care if Flynn murdered Nicole Simpon, if the evidence was obtained that way, they have to let him go.
“Durham” County Revisited (Durham is ubiquitous)
The rule of law was at risk in Durham County when another governmental agency went Gestapo just like the current 7th Floor and former POTUS (yep Christopher Wray knew all about it all – Christopher Wray should have been a whistleblower – incredibly, Wray and Obama continue the coup outside of prison).
Malicious prosecution by Durham County DA Mike Nifong.
In 2006, Nifong pursued rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping charges made by Crystal Mangum, a local black woman who was working as a call girl and stripper, against Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans, three white members of the Duke University men’s lacrosse team.[7][8] The case attracted national and international media attention.[9] Former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent wrote, “It [the case] conformed too well to too many preconceived notions of too many in the press: white over black, rich over poor, athletes over non-athletes, men over women, educated over non-educated.”
On December 28, 2006, the North Carolina State Bar filed ethics charges against Nifong over his conduct in the case, accusing him of making public statements that were “prejudicial to the administration of justice” and of engaging in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”[54] The seventeen-page document accuses Nifong of violating four rules of professional conduct, listing more than fifty examples of statements he made to the media.
On June 16, 2007, the North Carolina State Bar Disciplinary Committee unanimously voted to disbar Nifong after delivering a guilty verdict to 27 of 32 charges. The committee found Nifong’s previous disciplinary record and acknowledgment of his improper pre-trial statements were substantially outweighed by (among other things) the players’ vulnerability and his failure to acknowledge the “wrongful nature of (his) conduct with respect of the handling of DNA evidence.”
George – Good post. I watched it unfold. The university and the media piled on excoriating those young men in vicious, racist language. They were a lynch mob.
The only honest reporting that survived the test of time was done by a new Megyn Kelly and, I think, Dan Abrams.
The rest made a tribe of howling savages look decent.
Nifong belonged in prison as did the fake ‘victim’.
And, of course, this is precisely the same malicious prosecution the 7th Floor and Obama perpetrated against the Heroic, Noble and Honorable Gen. Flynn and against the State, the United States of America. The 7th Floor, including Wray, and Obama must, similarly, be convicted and jailed. 17,000 people were sent to the guillotines for high treason and crimes against the state during the French Revolution, which constitutes a viable alternative as an effort to establish a “bench mark.”
I failed regarding attribution of the narrative excerpts to Wiki.
My bad.
Why should Obama bother, when he knows his supporters have no way of knowing otherwise? their media will support him, and they will not be exposed to other media/dismiss it.
Studies have shown Fox News watchers as the least informed, including those who regularly watch no news and Trump supporters the least educated compared to Hillary voters.
Similar studies have shown aliens built the pyramids and the moon landings were faked in Hollywood.
You ‘studies’ are just your usual dishonest rubbish.
Survey: NPR’s listeners best-informed, Fox viewers worst-informed
https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2012/survey-nprs-listeners-best-informed-fox-news-viewers-worst-informed/
“In the 2016 election, a wide gap in presidential preferences emerged between those with and without a college degree. College graduates backed Clinton by a 9-point margin (52%-43%), while those without a college degree backed Trump 52%-44%. This is by far the widest gap in support among college graduates and non-college graduates in exit polls dating back to 1980. For example, in 2012, there was hardly any difference between the two groups: College graduates backed Obama over Romney by 50%-48%, and those without a college degree also supported Obama 51%-47%.”
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/
There you go again with facts that they will never accept. By the way, have you noticed that trump supporters are not screaming about opening book stores and libraries.
Book– A better study would be to look at prominent people in government. Hank Johnson who thought Guam was going to tip over, Sheila Jackson Lee who wanted a copy of the picture of American astronauts saluting the flag on Mars, Blumenthal who lied about his record in Vietnam, Schiff who seems to have lied about everything, Congressman (the farter ) Swalwell who can keep nothing straight, Obama of the 57 states and Marine Corpse, and ‘you can keep your doctor and insurance ‘ and the don’t buy oceanfront property because I want it. One can go on and on. Either stupid, or dishonest or both. You don’t need a study. Just look at them.
Young. Nice try @ whataboutism. Conflating a dad joke like 57 states with lying or stupidity doesn’t help foil Book’s point that Republican supporters are poorly informed or uneducated. Rather, you’ve bolstered his claims.
how did auditions go Paint Chips?
All good at the Nail Salon?
…doesn’t help foil Book’s point that Republican supporters are poorly informed or uneducated.
LOL! Book’s point in itself is a whataboutism. It’s a deflection away from the subject, intended as a defense of Obama and Democrats, which does nothing as a counter-argument to the subject. What’s worse, is this is a legal blog with clear precedent on the subject. So instead of taking the humble approach and just admitting Obama was wrong, book and others go the ad hominem route.
Ultimately, what this period in our nation’s history will reflect is not which subset of voters is better informed on matters reported by NPR or FoxNews, or who has a better formal education. It will reflect which subset(s) of citizens are prone to accepting ideological policies/practices over constitutional principles and the rule of law. You know, US Civics. From there we will be able to derive all sorts conclusions and they will likely flip book’s survey on it’s head. For instance, those ideologues mentioned above are more likely to be college educated, NPR viewers that predominantly support the Democratic Party. Not the ringing endorsement when put in proper context of US Civics literacy.
So there’s that.
It wasn’t a joke at all when Obama claimed he had been to 57 states and had 3 more to go. Watch the video.
How about calling a Navy Corpsman a corpseman several times?
How about saying Austrians speak Austrian?
It seems you are the one who is poorly informed, very poorly informed.
Ah more of the idiotic “Obama thinks there’s 57 states” meme. Really? You really think Obama didn’t know how many states there were?
If Trump said he went to the NY Pubic Library (highly unlikely, I know) on 52nd Street, would I be an idiot if I therefore insisted he didn’t know where it was (it’s on 5th Ave at 42nd St.)? Yeah. Draw your own conclusion on what kind of idiot would repeat that multiple times in a day.
When we deal with Anon the fool I always think of a joke I posted a long time ago. If Trump says white this fool automatically says black and if Trump says black this fool automatically says white.
Here is the joke:
Donald Trump invited the Pope for lunch on his yacht. The Pope accepted and during lunch a puff of wind blew the Pontiff’s hat off – right into the water. It floated off about 50 feet; then the wind died down and it just floated in place. The crew and the Secret Service were scrambling to launch a boat to go get it, when Trump waved them off, saying, “Never mind boys, I’ll get it.” Then Donald climbed over the side of the yacht, walked on the water to the hat, picked it up, walked back on the water, climbed into the yacht, and handed the Pope his hat. The crew was speechless The security team and the Pope’s entourage were speechless. No one knew what to say, not even the Pope.
But that afternoon, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, and MSNBC reported: “TRUMP CAN’T SWIM
There’s reasons to be incredulous towards these types of studies. They can easily be constructed using questions that are expected to “fail:” a certain demographic.
How many Progressives would pass the following?
The United States is institutionally:
a) one of the least racist nations on earth b) one of the most racist nations on earth.
In the grand scheme of things, the answer is undoubtedly A. There are scientific studies to back that up. But Progressives would be duty bound to choose B.
Likewise, why are we using college degrees as the gold standard of “being informed”?
A survey based on 8 questions with subjective scoring to make the survey say what you wanted it to say.
With Fox News being number one in the ratings for more than 3 straight years running, and CNN and MSNBC constantly having to give retractions, firing lying reporters, fabricating stories, and a rating that puts them below Nickelodeon…… its obvious this is a trash survey.
You triggered the loons, the sock puppets are multiplying.
Where is your boy Seth Warner, suck puppet extraordinaire?
Did she get ensnared in Darren’s new filter and busted for using TOR IP addresses? Sure is quieter on the blog today.
Hanna, in a dozen minutes more you wouldn’t have asked the question.
Studies? Like the same kine of studying his Royal Worshipfulness Barack the Clueless gave to Con Law research before his current statement. What we have here is the difference between a real Con Law Prof and one who merely played one on TV.
And the media worshipped the phony and ignored the real thing.
Tribe earned his reputation then ruined it with plagiarism.
Sez a nobody, Obama has lost more brain cells than you ever had, so there.
If Obama lost a lot of brain cells, as you claim, probably a lot of them melted in his days using dope as a member of the Choom Gang when he was young.
The loss of those cells cost him. You could wake me at 3 in the morning and I would still know there were not 57 states and that corps was not pronounced corpse, mistakes he made while wide awake.
Citing what studies? Any leading university today would be suspect.
Bettye– Yes they would be suspect. I recall all the polls and studies that assured the world that Hillary would win easily and by a wide margin.
Then came the election.
Why is that Betty, is it because they are not in the bag for tRump? Or is it because those universities don’t accept sock puppets?
Read about the Sokal hoax and others like it that the professors swallowed whole. A lot are phonies.
Do you still have hiLIARy up by 10 points in this election too?
Of course Hillary is up 10 points. Ahead of Kamala, Cuomo, Bernie Seth, and, last of all, Biden.
Hillary even saved the expensive fireworks bought for her last victory celebration. For some reason they were never launched. Maybe Stacy Abrams could use them. She says she never loses. Maybe she could fix Guam for Hank Johnson
Hard to believe these pathetic creatures are in line for any public office.
Would you favor some sort of intelligence test for voting? Or would you just prefer to exclude people who disagree with you?
I would prefer to exclude people who didagree with me. That way I would eliminate most of the stupid ones.
I see you misspelled “agree” but the the sentiment was understood by the sane. Alan, not so much.
No, dummy, ‘agree’ was spelled correctly. The typo was in ‘dis’.
You really meant to say Fox viewers are the least brainwashed I’ve followed American politics for the last three years I find these Democrats to be despicable brainwashed vermin I’ve run across in my 63 years Treasonous dogs that hate the Americans that do not follow their dictatorial dogma!
Stop smelling the glue, use a respirator.
Boom!
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/kt-mcfarland-barr-right-to-drop-flynn-prosecution-those-who-framed-flynn-must-be-held-accountable
In fact, the unjust and baseless prosecution of Flynn has more in common with the show trials of dictatorships than it has with the American system of justice.
Lavrentiy Beria, the head of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s secret police, once famously said: “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.” This is an eerily accurate description of how the FBI treated Flynn when officials framed him, despite the fact that in reality, he had done nothing illegal.
KT McFarland
Obama is exposed
Impeach Obama!
@Anonymous:
Obama cannot be impeached, as he is no longer in office. Whatever your feelings towards Obama, you should read the Constitution: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Anon @ 12:30 is playing games and you’re playing into his (or her) hand.
As for ‘honest discussion’? You won’t see it here.
Right, but you will find “honest discussion” in the MSM. Not.
It is astounding to see that the media really are fake news propagandists and political activists and Democrat mouthpieces — they are not “journalists” just reporting “the news.” Not hardly.
Try watching CNN or BSNBC. You can’t. It is un-watchable trash. The lies and disinformation they spew is unbearable to listen to for even 60 seconds.
Upchuck Todd is trending on Twitter for his dishonest and deceptive editing and commentary. Surprise! Not.
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/doj-spox-blasts-chuck-todd-for-coverage-of-barr-interview-on-flynn-deceptive-editing-commentary/
Obama said his favorite professor was a Marxist. Perhaps he learned too much at his knee.
Obama shows no evidence of an acquaintanceship with social theory. He does show evidence of being someone who spent little time working for commercial employers, has no training in business or economics, and no real sense of how markets work.
Obama will carry the red flag but he won’t understand why.
Yes, we need another MBA like W or “king of debt” like Trump.
Nah, we need another lawyer/community organizer who knows nothing about business.
Another dishonest post. The king of debt was Obama. He DOUBLED the debt, and in fact put on more debt than any previous President…. combined.
Then you try to say its Trumps fault.
Typical liberal lie.
Well, duh!!!
If you like the Flynn Express Railroading, go ahead and look at what happened in Wisconsin’s “John Doe” investigations. That too was authored by Democrats and handful of republican accomplices.
If I am not mistaken, the prosecution power to end a case is not absolute under F.R.Cr.P. 48(a), and that a trial judge may reject a DOJ motion to dismiss in the very narrow circumstance when the judge finds that the motion has not been filed to serve the public interest.
I look at the Fifth Circuit Court decision in In re Washington, 544 F.2d 203 (1977), on an issue not reached in the US Supreme Court’s Rinaldi decision. There the author of the majority opinion recognized the presumption of executive control over whether to prosecute a case, but wrote that the presumption of executive control “is rebutted, however, when the prosecution, as here, acts in bad faith and contravenes the public interest through its motion to dismiss.”
The DOJ motion to dismiss the Flynn case has not been filed to harass the defendant, which has been one basis for rejecting a motion to dismiss under Rule 48(a). Yet the Flynn case is one in which he acted in his capacity as an official in the administration of President Trump, involving an investigation of issues relating to President Trump, and the DOJ motion to dismiss the Flynn case has been brought under the aegis of an attorney general in his capacity as an official in the administration of President Trump, who would be a political beneficiary of having the Flynn case discontinued.
We all await Judge Sullivan’s response and will hopefully challenge the DOJ’s 2nd mulligan to a presidential crony from another presidential crony.
Note, the prosecutor’s doting papa defines it as a ‘mulligan’ that the department elects to drop the case after gross misconduct on the part of the supervising prosecutor and FBI agents is discovered.
By “the department” TIA means Barr. None of the prosecutors signed the motion. That fell to the acting USA.
You mean the crooks responsible for this travesty did not wllingly sign on to their own humiliation?
Crony? After the blatant 2 years of Prosecutor and FBI misconduct?
This case is a textbook definition of Brady violations that demand dismissal.
I hope Flynn sues them and makes millions.
Good analysis. But if the judge declines to dismiss he will look even more incompetent when the government stands up and rests without presenting a scintilla of evidence. The judge can’t prosecute the case. More embarrassing, they could present nothing but evidence of government corruption and evidence that Flynn broke no law. DC judges haven’t been looking good lately, but with little effort they could look much worse.
The judge in this case is 72 years old. He’s shown some signs he may be losing it. He just might reject the motion to dismiss.
Absurd– Good point. Something seems to be unraveling in this judge’s head. A bad part of me almost hopes he rejects the motion just to see the big mess he creates.
I have begun to think the DC courts should be shut down and their functions and judges scattered. They have gained far too much power and, in any event, the entire jury pool is composed of bureaucrats and food stamp traders.
Not sure what the occupational distribution in DC is. People generally overestimate the share of federal employees in the workforce there. If you expand the boundaries of the jurisdiction to include the whole commuter belt, you’d have a jury pool of which maybe 20% of the working population would be federal employees, many of them military.
Absurd– Yeah, you are probably right. I was fixated on the terrible jury judge Amy Berman Jackson had for Roger Stone.
95% of the filth that lives within a 100 mi radius is a freak lefty democrat
I think in this case Judge Sullivan, by refusing to dismiss, can move on to the next phase of the situation, which is sentencing. Flynn did plea guilty. This whole row lately is over a request to withdraw that plea, but if the Judge refuses to honor it, there’s really nothing the DOJ can do, I think…
Guilty to a non crime. Fruit of the poisioness tree.
Pled after Govt bankrupted him and threatened his family. Classic Rosenstein duress.
Steve–Good point. If he refuses to dismiss and also refuses to allow the guilty plea to be withdrawn the issue will land in the Court of Appeals with both the government and the defense arguing the same position: withdraw and dismiss. Hopefully not everyone in DC has gone ‘Biden in the brain’.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/09/ray-mcgovern-new-house-documents-sow-further-doubt-that-russia-hacked-the-dnc/
Thanks for that news from 2017.
“The Mueller report contains new information about how the Russian government hacked documents and emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee .
At one point, the Russians used servers located in the U.S. to carry out the massive data exfiltration effort, the report confirms.
Much of the information was previously learned from the indictment of Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, the Russian officer in charge of Unit 26165. Netyksho is believed to be still at large in Russia.
But new details in the 488-page redacted report released by the Justice Department on Thursday offered new insight into how the GRU operatives hacked.
The operatives working for the Russian intelligence directorate, the GRU, sent dozens of targeted spearphishing emails in just five days to the work and personal accounts of Clinton Campaign employees and volunteers, as a way to break into the campaign’s computer systems.
The GRU hackers also gained access to the email account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, of which its contents were later published.
Using credentials they stole along the way, the hackers broke into the networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee days later. By stealing the login details of a system administrator who had “unrestricted access” to the network, the hackers broke into 29 computers in the ensuing weeks, and more than 30 computers on the DNC.
The operatives, known collectively as “Fancy Bear,” comprised several units tasked with specific operations. Mueller formally blamed Unit 26165, a division of the GRU specializing in targeting government and political organizations, for taking on the “primary responsibility for hacking the DCCC and DNC, as well as email accounts of individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign,” said the Mueller report.
The hackers used Mimikatz, a hacking tool used once an intruder is already in a target network, to collect credentials, and two other kinds of malware: X-Agent for taking screenshots and logging keystrokes, and X-Tunnel used to exfiltrate massive amounts of data from the network to servers controlled by the GRU. Mueller’s report found that Unit 26165 used several “middle servers” to act as a buffer between the hacked networks and the GRU’s main operations. Those servers, Mueller said, were hosted in Arizona — likely as a way to obfuscate where the attackers were located but also to avoid suspicion or detection.
In all, some 70 gigabytes of data were exfiltrated from Clinton’s campaign servers and some 300 gigabytes of data were obtained from the DNC’s network.
Meanwhile, another GRU hacking unit, Unit 74455, which helped disseminate and publish hacked and stolen documents, pushed the stolen data out through two fictitious personas. DCLeaks was a website that hosted the hacked material, while Guccifer 2.0 was a hacker-like figure who had a social presence and would engage with reporters.
Under pressure from the U.S. government, the two GRU-backed personas were shut down by the social media companies. Later, tens of thousands of hacked files were funneled to and distributed by WikiLeaks .
Mueller’s report also found a cause-and-effect between Trump’s remarks in July 2016 and subsequent cyberattacks.
“I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” said then-candidate Trump at a press conference, referring to emails Clinton stored on a personal email server while she headed the State Department. Mueller’s report said “within approximately five hours” of those remarks, GRU officers began targeting for the first time Clinton’s personal office.
More than a dozen staffers were targeted by Unit 26165, including a senior aide. “It is unclear how the GRU was able to identify these email accounts, which were not public,” said Mueller…..”
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-clinton-arizona-hack/
Hey NPD, you and Paint Chips are running neck and neck to absolute irrelevance? Chips has a reasonable excuse as he doesn’t have a functioning left-half of his brain. You on the other hand are willfully choosing enemy of the state status. Damn.
Clapper, Rice, Rodstein, Mueller, McCabe, et al all testified under oath to Schiff’s Star Chamber that there was no evidence of collusion with Russia by Trump or his Administration. The only collusion with Russia was done by Obama, Clinton, Schiff and the Democrat globalist cabal.
They deserve the same degree of justice.
Bythebook — then comment on why, in his testimony, Crowdstrike head Shawn Henry admitted there was NO EVIDENCE of alleged Russian hackers actually stealing the emails…
The information in the TechCrunch quote citing the Mueller Report was developed in a case brought a full year after the testimony in your article.
The Mueller Report is garbage.
Fancy Bear? Guccifer? How many times does this tale have to be debunked by cryptographers and other specialists (decidedly not Crowdstrike) before you let it go? Or is your name really Barack?
Seth Rich
“For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee has known that CrowdStrike didn’t have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too.” -Ray McGovern
The refusal of the CNN/MSNBC/WPost/CIA media to cover the devastating new evidence impugning key Russiagate pieties proves what they were doing: not journalism but propagandizing. Covid-19 is no excuse because they cover other things. Their audiences don’t know these docs exist. -@ggreenwald
Ah finally, Turley turns to conspiracies. Long overdue.
In the mean time – a disordered, inarticulate, repetitive, angry, defensive whiny, repetitive, defiant, thin-skinned, corrupt, self-centered, constantly moving off topic, never completing a sentence, generally insecure, seriously unbalanced. He’s running for reelection and would like your vote.
Hitting the kool-aid so early in the day again?
Sounds exactly like the demented democrat front runner Biden to me ~ and to everyone who has a working brain cell!
Obama says there’s “no precedent” and Turley throws it back in Obama’s face:
“The Justice Department has dismissed cases in the past including the Stevens case.That was requested by President Obama’s own Attorney General Eric Holder for the same reason: misconduct by prosecutors. It was done before the same judge, Judge Sullivan. How is that for precedent?”
Turley goes on to mock “no precedent” Obama for then trying to invoke the Logan Act:
“Obama reportedly discussed the use of the Logan Act against Flynn. For a person concerned with precedent, that was also a curious focus. The Logan Act is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used to successfully convicted a single person since the early days of the Republic. Now that is dubious precedent.”
And Turley ends by pointing out that Obama had a particular animus towards Flynn.
“the new material shows that Obama was following the investigation of Flynn who he previously dismissed from a high-level position and personally intervened with President Donald Trump to seek to block his appointment as National Security Adviser.”
———–
It feels good to see Obama exposed and to watch him squirm. We need a special prosecutor(Giuliani) to investigate him and his associates for sedition. 🙂
If I remember correctly, Holder moved to dismiss the charges against Ted Stevens only after they had served their purpose – getting him defeated for reelection as Senator from Alaska. In fairness, Holder took office a few months after Stevens lost. This was a Deep State job in the Bush DOJ.
Understand that Obammy was not a lawyer you’d want to hire for anything involving the “rule of law”, or the law, in general.
He’s the Saul Goodman of Constitutional Law.