Well, it definitely showed that he doesn't give a **** about obstructing justice. Will see how much they cooperate when it comes down to his interview.

Did he? Because you want to see him guilty? And the proof is where? Hiding where the collusion evidence resides?

He fired Comey because of the Russia investigation. If that's not an attempt at obstruction, I'm not sure what else can convince you.

How did that obstruct? Did evidence dry up? It changes what?

Admittedly, it looked bad when they changed their story as to why he fired him. But the guy made a mess. He clearly politicized the office. He needed to be shown the door.

Just because the investigation has continued doesn't mean it's not obstruction.

We will find out soon enough.

I'm still waiting for the perjury charges to come down on Sessions.

If he's guilty, we get Pence. Then the media will go into a collective coma...

Posted by The Taint on 1/27/2018 10:54:00 PM (view original):
I'm still waiting for the perjury charges to come down on Sessions.

Consensus is that it would be difficult to prove, based on Franken's questions. Not impossible but no slam dunk.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/03/did_jeff_sessions_commit_perjury_probably_not.html

Jonathan Turley's take on the matter...

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/law-perjury-allegations-jeff-sessions/story?id=45869659

Trump may fire Mueller and it would not be obstruction.

FACT

That article is from before Papadopoulos’s arrest and plea statement.

Trump may fire Mueller and it would not be obstruction.

FACT

Posted by cccp1014 on 1/27/2018 11:05:00 PM (view original):
Trump may fire Mueller and it would not be obstruction.

FACT

I think Trump's lawyers would disagree with you.

McGahn recognized the key fact—that Trump wanted to fire Mueller for the wrong reasons. Trump wanted to fire Mueller because his investigation was threatening to him. This, of course, also illuminates the reasons behind Trump’s firing of Comey, which took place just a month before the President’s confrontation with McGahn regarding Mueller. Trump and his advisers have offered various tortured rationalizations for the firing of Comey—initially, for example, on the ground that Comey had been unfair to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Trump himself came clean in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt and in a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister. In both, Trump acknowledged that he fired Comey to stall or stop the Russia investigation—that is, the investigation of Trump himself and his campaign.

This was an improper purpose, and McGahn clearly saw that the same improper purpose underlay Trump’s determination to fire Mueller. So McGahn issued the ultimatum that prompted the President to back down.

Mueller and his team surely have evidence on obstruction of justice that has not yet been made public. But even on the available evidence, Trump’s position looks perilous indeed. The portrait is of a President using every resource at his disposal to shut down an investigation—of Trump himself. And now it has become clear that Trump’s own White House counsel rebelled at the President’s rationale for his actions.

Legally the POTUS may fire FBI personnel. JESUS CHRIST.

Ask your attorney friends. LOL. Same as he fired Comey he could fire Mueller. Mueller reports to the AG who reports to the POTUS.

So LEGALLY he can but there would be repercussions. F U Jeff. Honestly. Such as wise *** you are. LOL.

Actually Mueller doesn't report to the AG. A minor thing, but it tells me you don't really have a grasp of the situation.



Trump admitted to obstruction right there, in that tweet. He knew his NSA had commited perjury, a felony, yet still tried to get Comey to drop the case and eventually did fire Comey. That's actually an impeachable offense as the Republican party established in 1998.

Again FU Jeff. Just FU and your liberal biased views.

But could he legally squash the investigation if he wanted to?

Because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation, the decision to appoint a special counsel fell to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. In his order making the appointment, Rosenstein cited federal regulations issued by the attorney general in 1999, 28 C.F.R. § 600.4-600.10. The rules were drafted in the wake of the Kenneth Starr investigation of President Bill Clinton.

According to those regulations, a special counsel “may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of the Attorney General” (or in this case, the acting attorney general). And Rosenstein can’t just do it on a whim, either. According to the regulation, special counsel can only be removed “for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause, including violation of Departmental policies.”

In a Senate hearing on June 13, Rosenstein said he alone exercises firing authority, and that he had not seen any evidence of good cause for firing Mueller.

“It’s certainly theoretically possible that the attorney general could fire him, but that’s the only person who has authority to fire him,” Rosenstein said. “And in fact, the chain of command for the special counsel is only directly to the attorney general, in this case the acting attorney general.”

If he wanted to, wrote Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and co-founder of Lawfare, Trump could then fire Rosenstein. In that case, the authority over Mueller would fall to the associate attorney general. In theory — and ignoring the political consequences of doing so — Trump could keep firing people until he got someone to follow through on an order to fire Mueller.

“That means it could go down the line until an assistant attorney general did not resign and instead carried out the President’s order,” Goldsmith wrote.

There’s yet another route the president could take, Neal Katyal, a professor of national security law at Georgetown University, wrote in a piece for the Washington Post on May 19: “Trump could order the special-counsel regulations repealed and then fire Mueller himself.”

Katyal said he would know, because back in 1999, he was tapped by then-Attorney General Janet Reno to head an internal working group on the issue of special counsel — and he helped write the regulations now being cited by Rosenstein.

“The rules provide only so much protection: Congress, Trump and the Justice Department still have the power to stymie (or even terminate) Mueller’s inquiry,” Katyal wrote.


Again, FU Jeff. HRC was dirty.