Author Topic: Meet Special Council John Durham  (Read 6335 times)

Lloyd Perna

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Meet Special Council John Durham
« on: December 01, 2020, 04:45:18 PM »
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In a scope order, Barr stated that Durham as special counsel “is authorized to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.”

This oughta be fun.

Grant

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #1 on: December 01, 2020, 04:53:37 PM »

yossarian22c

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2020, 06:13:35 PM »

Grant

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2020, 06:24:23 PM »

Didn't he get that 1 guy on the FISA application?

I think he was actually referred by the DOJ IG, so not sure if Durham was the one who actually "got him". 

But yes, the guy pled guilty and Durham was the one who filed the charges.  So I stand corrected.  They got one FBI attorney Deep State Agent. 
« Last Edit: December 01, 2020, 06:27:25 PM by Grant »

Wayward Son

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2020, 06:27:19 PM »
Lloyd, look at the calendar.  In a seven weeks and a day, Joe Biden is going to be President of the United States of America.  And there's almost nothing that can stop that.

The scandal ship has sailed, left the bay, and is fast approaching the horizon.  Just about anything John Durham has is officially too little, too late.  It would have to be something truly spectacular for the next administration to pursue.  And the Trump Administration has never been able to find something truly spectacular with substance.  ;D

Lloyd Perna

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #5 on: December 02, 2020, 05:20:36 AM »
Lloyd, look at the calendar.  In a seven weeks and a day, Joe Biden is going to be President of the United States of America.  And there's almost nothing that can stop that.

The scandal ship has sailed, left the bay, and is fast approaching the horizon.  Just about anything John Durham has is officially too little, too late.  It would have to be something truly spectacular for the next administration to pursue.  And the Trump Administration has never been able to find something truly spectacular with substance.  ;D

Thanks, that made me chuckle.

Seriati

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #6 on: December 02, 2020, 10:30:34 AM »
While a special prosecutor investigation could have made sense, I saw the other day that appointing Durham is invalid under the law in question.  Haven't looked myself, but the claim was that that the statute requires the appointment of someone from outside the government.  We don't need yet another special prosecutor investigation that doesn't comply with the law, Mueller's illegitimate appointment permanently damaged the country.

In any event, it's gross incompetence that crimes committed four years ago have not been prosecuted during an entire term of a President because of bureaucratic obstruction.  I mean Mueller wrote over 200 pages on nonsensical obstruction of justice charges that pale in comparison to the obstruction in the DOJ and FBI to investigating these crimes and we haven't even seen a report, let alone material charges. 

Of course, partly that's a difference in philosophy.  Barr's team sees the crimes and has the evidence but will only bring charges that can be proven under traditional theories in court.  Mueller and co., never had any real evidence but, notwithstanding the lack of a crime or evidence, were just as convinced of guilt as Barr's team but were more than happy to bring charges on completely novel theories or even under fraudulent or bad faith circumstances to create pressure to generate "admissions" of guilt.  That leads to a real difference, but in this case it's also leading to a denial of justice.  Charging the low hanging fruit here, like say Andrew McCabe, is something Muelller absolutely would have done, and McCabe would have flipped in a heart beat if Barr was actually threatening him with the jail time his actions warrant.  This whole House of cards would have collapsed and we'd have probably dozens of convictions if Democrats had been running it.

As it is the delay on this investigation is in reality a denial of justice as the exact same leadership that authorized the crimes is set to come back into power in the very near future.  Every single one of you that has accused Trump of being corrupt will be revealed as a hypocrite if you let Biden bury this, but moral consistency is probably too much to expect of the left.

As it is, these crimes have now directly influenced the last two elections to the benefit of the criminals.  Dems only took the House in 2018 based on Mueller covering up that there was no Russian conspiracy with the Trump campaign.  And now, the failure of Durham and Barr allowed Biden and many others from a terrible corrupt administration to pretend to be white hats in running for election rather than exposed for the dangerous abusers of power they are.

yossarian22c

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #7 on: December 02, 2020, 01:26:47 PM »
As it is the delay on this investigation is in reality a denial of justice as the exact same leadership that authorized the crimes is set to come back into power in the very near future.  Every single one of you that has accused Trump of being corrupt will be revealed as a hypocrite if you let Biden bury this, but moral consistency is probably too much to expect of the left.

What crimes? This investigation has rolled for 3 years now, starting with an IG investigation and then onto Durham. There has been exactly 1 guilty plea associated with a FISA application. Is seems like there isn't a lot of crime to be found. I could be proven wrong but Mueller was indicting and getting convictions regularly in his 18 month investigation that also faced bureaucratic obstruction by the White House.

All said I do think it would be unethical if on day 1 Biden walks in and fires Durham.

Lloyd Perna

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #8 on: December 02, 2020, 01:52:41 PM »
All said I do think it would be unethical if on day 1 Biden walks in and fires Durham.

More than unethical.  It would be Obstruction of Justice.

Seriati

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #9 on: December 02, 2020, 02:18:39 PM »
What crimes? This investigation has rolled for 3 years now, starting with an IG investigation and then onto Durham. There has been exactly 1 guilty plea associated with a FISA application.

There has been 1 guilty plea.  However, there are reams and reams of evidence of crimes committed in connection with FISA abuse.  Like I said, if the Dems were running that process we'd have dozens of convictions at this point.  Every FISA application is a sworn document and virtually every one reviewed had material "error" (which translates into knowingly made false statements if you're not trying to make it sound less bad).  I mean honestly, the evidence of Flynn's guilt for lying is a vague supposed conflict between 2 statements that doesn't show up in the interview reports and that the agents thought could have been a misremembering, and you think that's a crime, yet lying in a sworn statement by claiming information has been verified, when it was not verified nor were the legally mandated records about that verification maintained, is not.

The issue seems to be that while you can easily convince yourself that a cop is lying to protect other cops in a random trial involving race, you've got giant blinders on when thousands of "errors" all show up in the same direction and no one is held accountable at the FBI or the DOJ.  Did you listen to either McCabe or Comey testify on FISA?  You know what they did right?  They said they weren't responsible for any false information in the FISA applications - cause they'd "never" do that - and when asked to explain who was?  Oh it was a team responsibility and no one was responsible.  That's almost the definition of how you set up a corrupt system designed to violate the law and your rights.  Laws get broken, routinely and in the interests of senior officials, and "no one" is responsible.

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Is seems like there isn't a lot of crime to be found.

If you don't look for them in good faith and have next to no understanding of what the laws require you could believe that, but you'd still be wrong.

And that's before we even consider all the terrible policies that have been revealed in this process.  I mean, the FBI testimony revealed that they have no respect - at all - for the Constitutional requirement of probable cause.  They revealed that its routine to misuse various authorities to spy on people and take documents without any legitimate basis.  I mean literally, they accessed materials on Flynn - for example - without even a credible allegation of a crime.  They effectively showed that for -anyone- involved in politics or connected to -anyone- involved in politics no matter how remotely, that FBI believes it has the authority to effectively "issue warrants" without even a suspicion, let alone a reasonable suspicion.  I mean part of what the Horowitz report turned on was his conclusion that there is effectively no minimum standard at all to open a counter terrorism investigation and spy on an American citizen.  And it wasn't just FISA abuse, testimony revealed several other work arounds they use to illegally access your data.

So yes, if you empower officials to investigate a "crime" against a standard that is - nothing done can be wrong - they're going to find there was no wrong.  But nothing about that is consistent with what the Constitution requires or with the concept of having rights.

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I could be proven wrong but Mueller was indicting and getting convictions regularly in his 18 month investigation that also faced bureaucratic obstruction by the White House.

As far as I know Mueller got one conviction - Stone - on anything remotely related to the investigation. 

He cheated to put Manafort in jail by giving him a deal and then reneging on the deal (even though Manafort was still bound by the deal and not allowed to challenge "facts" included therein), and his conviction had zero to do with the investigation.  Not to mention, you'd be hard pressed to prove objectively that Gates wasn't the real guilty party but Mueller gave Gates a sweet heart deal because he wanted Manafort.  Which is exactly the point about the difference between Mueller and Barr, Mueller doesn't care if Manafort was really responsible or not, he didn't care if Gates was the guilty person and Manafort a victim, or if the opposite was true, he only cared about it as leverage to convict someone else.  Mueller didn't even care if he was suborning perjury.

And that's really it.

Cohen pled for a deal, which means you'll never know if Mueller could have convicted him.  Cohen clearly had some personal tax fraud issues, but overall he turned out to be worthless to Mueller.

The Russians he charged?  Mueller dropped the charges when they demanded discovery rather than prosecute.

Papadopoulus, not even clear what he did, but he pled guilty anyway and the court thought it was so serious that he got a 14 day sentence.

Van Der Swaan - less than a month after a plea for lying in connection with the case against Gates.  Remember how I mentioned that it could have been Gates.... hmm....

Pinedo - pled guilty to one count of identity fraud for unwittingly selling bank accounts to Russian troll farms.

So that's literally it.  Mueller won exactly 2 cases in court, one was rigged (Manafort) where he got to use Manafort's confessions and days of testimony obtained under a plea deal against Manafort, even though Mueller reneged on the deal against Manafort, and where he gave a sweetheart deal to Gates (who may actually have been the one criminally liable) to show the crimes that one of them committed in court, for tax crimes that happened years before Trump ran for office. 

And Roger Stone, who's big lie to Congress was about sources he didn't actually have at Wikileaks.  Literally Roger Stone was pretending to have inside contacts at Wikileaks in public that never existed, and when Congress asked him who his source was he tagged Credico - who actually talked to Wikileaks - but after Stone made his public comments, instead of Corsi who Stone tasked with making a contact with Wikileaks but who failed to do it.  He got four years for that, which given some of the lies we've heard in the past from others is remakably exceptional.

So why do you have this delusion that Mueller somehow was proving things left and right, when it never happened?  He effectively blackmailed a handful of people with threats of massive penalties, including in Flynn's case threats against his son, into taking deals - one of which he prominently reneged on.  When he was challenged in his case against the ONLY PEOPLE actually charged with crime he was supposedly investigating he dropped his charges rather than prove them.

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All said I do think it would be unethical if on day 1 Biden walks in and fires Durham.

He doesn't have to and he won't.  He'll let his attorney general kill it.  Remember Eric Holder?  Killed multiple investigations blatantly and the media let it go.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2020, 02:23:17 PM by Seriati »

yossarian22c

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #10 on: December 02, 2020, 02:43:29 PM »
What crimes? This investigation has rolled for 3 years now, starting with an IG investigation and then onto Durham. There has been exactly 1 guilty plea associated with a FISA application.

There has been 1 guilty plea. 
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Is seems like there isn't a lot of crime to be found.

If you don't look for them in good faith and have next to no understanding of what the laws require you could believe that, but you'd still be wrong.

I trust Durham looked for them in good faith and when he finds evidence of a crime charges someone with it. So 18 months following up on an a year long IG investigation and he's found 1 crime.

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I could be proven wrong but Mueller was indicting and getting convictions regularly in his 18 month investigation that also faced bureaucratic obstruction by the White House.

As far as I know Mueller got one conviction - Stone - on anything remotely related to the investigation. 

Guilty pleas are convictions.

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The Russians he charged?  Mueller dropped the charges when they demanded discovery rather than prosecute.

Since the Russians weren't going to show up I think he made the right call to not show what evidence we were able to attain about their cyber unit.

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Papadopoulus, not even clear what he did, but he pled guilty anyway and the court thought it was so serious that he got a 14 day sentence.

Van Der Swaan - less than a month after a plea for lying in connection with the case against Gates.  Remember how I mentioned that it could have been Gates.... hmm....

Pinedo - pled guilty to one count of identity fraud for unwittingly selling bank accounts to Russian troll farms.
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And Roger Stone, who's big lie to Congress was about sources he didn't actually have at Wikileaks.
...

If our criminal justice system is so broken that upper middle class to wealthy individuals all will routinely plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit then maybe we need to let all the poor people who took pleas with a public defender out today. Clearly all those confessions/guilty pleas were coerced and nothing was proven. And there are plenty of examples of that going around, just doesn't usually happen in the white collar division.

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All said I do think it would be unethical if on day 1 Biden walks in and fires Durham.

He doesn't have to and he won't.  He'll let his attorney general kill it.  Remember Eric Holder?  Killed multiple investigations blatantly and the media let it go.

3 years of investigating and 1 guilty plea, by your standards that's nothing, he's proved nothing in court this whole time. But if he's worried about it, file his report in early January to Barr and they can make public whatever is legal to make public. Maybe we'll get some better 4th amendment protections and some FISA revisions out of it even if we don't see a bunch of people marched off to prison.

DonaldD

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #11 on: December 02, 2020, 03:12:24 PM »
All said I do think it would be unethical if on day 1 Biden walks in and fires Durham.

More than unethical.  It would be Obstruction of Justice.
So, does that mean you think Trump obstructed justice when he fired Comey? If not, why not?

Lloyd Perna

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #12 on: December 02, 2020, 03:23:50 PM »
All said I do think it would be unethical if on day 1 Biden walks in and fires Durham.

More than unethical.  It would be Obstruction of Justice.
So, does that mean you think Trump obstructed justice when he fired Comey? If not, why not?

That was your argument back then wasn't it?  Do you suddenly disagree now?

Seriati

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #13 on: December 02, 2020, 04:21:41 PM »
I trust Durham looked for them in good faith and when he finds evidence of a crime charges someone with it. So 18 months following up on an a year long IG investigation and he's found 1 crime.

I have no idea if Durham has been operating in good faith or not.  All we could do is believe an implication based on Barr's justice philosophy which requires only charging when you're convinced that the crime you are charging occurred and is provable that this is what Durham is doing.  It could be that Durham, as a long term "professional" prosecutor, is more tied into the system than into being just.  We'd need a LOT of disclosure to be confident in a decision not to charge here.

I mean keep in mind, Andrew McCabe lied more blatantly than anything Flynn did.  No charges.

Hillary violated multiple laws with her server set up.  No charges (and we didn't find out for more than two years that Comey's statement about no prosecutor would bring a case for charges that trigger off gross negligence was based on an off the cuff decision never disclosed by the DOJ that they would only file charges if intentional conduct could be proven - and even then standard concepts on proof of intent were present and ignored to reach the conclusion).

Brennan has repeatedly lied to Congress about material things, no charges.  Roger Stone gets the book thrown on a minor matter.

Comey?  Lied about his reasons for making memos about his meeting with Trump.  Literally testified that he made that decision based on how the meeting went, when it was later revealed that not only was it planned in advance, it was coordinated with other Obama admin officials.  No charges.

Multiple crimes have been found.  They have not been charged, and no one really knows why.

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Guilty pleas are convictions.

That's the best you got?  I'm guessing then that you believe in the "Justice" systems in third world dictatorships where the guilty always confess too.  Meanwhile you may want to read any book on the topic of why pleas are abuse.

Yes, Mueller was able to blackmail people into taking deals.  You're lucky Barr and Durham don't operate that way, it's the only thing letting you keep the delusion going.

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Since the Russians weren't going to show up I think he made the right call to not show what evidence we were able to attain about their cyber unit.

Lol.  So it was okay to charge them, solely to show he was "doing something" but prosecuting them was too much of a bother?

Who gave Mueller the authority to make a policy judgement on that topic?  Literally no one.  He's not elected, he doesn't set policy, his charge was to bring charges that were warranted and that he can prove.  Under your interpretation he literally failed in that charge.

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If our criminal justice system is so broken that upper middle class to wealthy individuals all will routinely plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit then maybe we need to let all the poor people who took pleas with a public defender out today. Clearly all those confessions/guilty pleas were coerced and nothing was proven. And there are plenty of examples of that going around, just doesn't usually happen in the white collar division.

Our criminal justice system is so broken that someone can be bankrupted and threatened with years in jail even when the DOJ knows there was no crime.  On what planet is threatening to jail someone's child a legitimate approach to obtaining a plea?

The answer here really involves looking in at yourself.  You're covering for an offensive abuse of process and massive amount of corruption.  Literally endorsing abuse.

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3 years of investigating and 1 guilty plea, by your standards that's nothing, he's proved nothing in court this whole time. But if he's worried about it, file his report in early January to Barr and they can make public whatever is legal to make public. Maybe we'll get some better 4th amendment protections and some FISA revisions out of it even if we don't see a bunch of people marched off to prison.

I agree by my standards Durham has done nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  I just can't fathom why.  Is it really because he's trying to get all his ducks in a row, or is it just foreshadowing that he's going to sweep it all under the rug as soon as he gets the chance? 

it's insane to me that I even have to argue about FISA.  The abuse of that system was rampant and blatant and harms us all.  The  fact that anyone thinks there is even a potential debate reflects either complete ignorance of the situation or some kind of insanity.  But what's even more insane is that having a secret court in the US with power to authorize searches and seizures of records in violation of the express provisions of the Constitution and any chance to protect your civil rights was even allowed, and yet you seem to be disputing whether we should be concerned about failing to follow even the very limited protections offered by an unConstitutional court is a concern.

TheDrake

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #14 on: December 02, 2020, 04:47:12 PM »
FISA has been abused since 2008. Why would this be any different?

How the FBI Violated the Privacy Rights of Tens of Thousands of Americans

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In 2016, the FISA Court learned that the NSA had been violating the rules established in 2012. Because those rules were designed to remedy a Fourth Amendment violation occurring since the start of the program, the NSA’s non-compliance meant that its upstream collection activities had been operating unconstitutionally for eight years. Moreover, the government did not report this issue for several months after discovering it. Unable to bring itself into compliance, the NSA made the only decision it could: In the spring of 2017, it abandoned “abouts” collection, which was at the root of the problem.

When Section 702 came up for reauthorization in late 2017, civil liberties advocates pointed to this troubled history. They also pointed to a growing body of case law holding that searches of government databases can, in certain circumstances, constitute a separate Fourth Amendment event. They argued that government agencies should be required to obtain a warrant before searching Section 702-obtained data for the communications of Americans (a practice formally called “U.S. person queries” and informally dubbed “backdoor searches”). They also urged Congress to ban “abouts” collection, lest the government attempt to resume it.

Congress rejected these proposals. Although Congress did require the FBI to obtain the FISA Court’s permission to conduct U.S. person queries in a tiny sliver of cases, it blessed the vast majority of these searches, which previously had no foundation in the text of Section 702. It simply required the FBI to develop “querying procedures” that the FISA Court would have to approve. It also required the FBI to keep records of each U.S. person query it conducted. With respect to “abouts” collection, Congress required the government to obtain FISA Court approval and to give Congress advance notice before resuming the practice.

It seems to me it was pretty much standard procedure. Which doesn't make it right, but it does make me skeptical that this was unusual behaviour based on political motivation.

DonaldD

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #15 on: December 02, 2020, 05:07:09 PM »
More than unethical.  It would be Obstruction of Justice.
So, does that mean you think Trump obstructed justice when he fired Comey? If not, why not?

That was your argument back then wasn't it?  Do you suddenly disagree now?
It very well could be, if, as Trump did, Biden does so for corrupt or wilfully improper reasons.  For some reason, though I doubt that Biden will admit openly to a corrupt reason, as Trump did.  Regardless of whether Biden would get caught or punished, it still would be obstruction if he does remove Durham for a corrupt reason.  Biden does have other non-corrupt reasons for removing Durham, though, so he could remove Durham and it not be obstruction.

So is that a "yes" then?

Seriati

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #16 on: December 02, 2020, 05:21:32 PM »
DonaldD, Biden can remove Durham period.  Mueller's pet theory that a prosecutor can second guess whether the President really had a corrupt motive was nonsense when he wrote it.  Trump had proper grounds to remove Comey and suggested multiple proper grounds for why he could have removed Mueller, that was more than sufficient to justify those actions (and potential actions).  Trump never put out a corrupt purpose, as least not that I'm aware of.

Biden as President is free to set the policies of the DOJ.  The DOJ, notwithstanding your nonsensical comment above, is an executive agency.  The President is the sole executive authority of the United States and everything the DOJ does is derivative - directly derivative - of the President's authority.  If the President so chose they could "interfere" in every single decision of the DOJ and not be exceeding Presidential authority.  if Biden acts corruptly its an impeachable offense, and where certain laws apply to Presidential conduct (which is not all laws) it could also be a violation of law.

The fact is that while that level of interference would be contrary to our traditions and long standing policy, it's not outside of the authority of the President to do so.

DonaldD

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #17 on: December 02, 2020, 05:52:20 PM »
Being within one's authority does not preclude obstruction of justice.

yossarian22c

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #18 on: December 02, 2020, 10:25:26 PM »
I trust Durham looked for them in good faith and when he finds evidence of a crime charges someone with it. So 18 months following up on an a year long IG investigation and he's found 1 crime.

I have no idea if Durham has been operating in good faith or not.  All we could do is believe an implication based on Barr's justice philosophy which requires only charging when you're convinced that the crime you are charging occurred and is provable that this is what Durham is doing.  It could be that Durham, as a long term "professional" prosecutor, is more tied into the system than into being just.  We'd need a LOT of disclosure to be confident in a decision not to charge here.

For society to function at the level of civilization and specialization that our current society has we have to have some level of trust in institutions and expertise, until we have evidence as to why we should not. In that vain, without evidence to the contrary, I tend to trust that a respected career prosecutor, appointed by Trump's AG, will conduct an honest investigation into alleged wrongdoings by the previous administration. Failing to have any level of trust in people and institutions just leads down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not going to read all the potentially relevant federal statutes and hundreds of pages of testimony and documents to see if Durham, chosen by Trump and Barr to investigate, was actually a Democratic/insider stooge.

Seriati

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #19 on: December 03, 2020, 11:04:23 AM »
Being within one's authority does not preclude obstruction of justice.

Exercising ones authority on a proper basis does preclude that exercise of authority being obstruction of justice.

DonaldD

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #20 on: December 03, 2020, 12:02:56 PM »
Correct - not abusing one's position to obstruct justice is not obstruction of justice.

Of course, abusing one's position to obstruct justice is obstruction of justice - as when Trump admitted to doing when he got rid of Comey because of the "Russia thing".

TheDrake

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #21 on: December 03, 2020, 12:04:16 PM »
If I understand Seriati's point, if you could have a valid reason for taking that action and it also has a corrupt reason then you just ignore the corrupt part. I may have it wrong though.

Seriati

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Re: Meet Special Council John Durham
« Reply #22 on: December 03, 2020, 01:11:32 PM »
If I understand Seriati's point, if you could have a valid reason for taking that action and it also has a corrupt reason then you just ignore the corrupt part. I may have it wrong though.

As a matter of law, to convict in that circumstance you would have to prove that the corrupt reason, and only the corrupt reason, motivated the action.  Particularly for the President, who has exclusive executive authority under the Constitution, the existence of a legitimate basis for the action forecloses the exact kind of speculation that Mueller engaged in.  In fact, in many cases all you had in Mueller's report was Mueller preferring to believe that Jim Comey's personal interpretation (without evidence) of what Trump's inner motivation was was more valid than Trump's own stated reasons that appeared multiple times both in public and in private (including repeatedly where he never expected to be overheard).

Dershowitz made this kind of argument during the impeachment, though he bumbled through it enough to create misquotable moments.

Long and short, a prosecutor is not entitled to any benefit of the doubt in speculation about why someone took an action.  If the action was legal and the reasons provided were legal the idea that the "true purpose" was illegal would require both exceptional proof that such "true purpose" was in fact a motivator but also that the stated legal purposes were not.  In the case of Trump, without a direct statement from Trump or a mind reading machine you can't actually establish the first factor, and all you have is a speculative belief from those that are inclined to always believe the worst.