Mueller’s Mount Sinai Moment Leaves Media With A Crisis of Faith
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The very first and purportedly only press conference by special counsel Robert Mueller had the feeling of a Mount Sinai moment for Washington this week. Indeed, his message seemed to be the same as that of Moses, which is have faith and do not question. Mueller spoke some 1,200 words before virtually admonishing the press corps that “I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner.” After refusing to answer questions, he went back to the place from whence he came.
Last week, I wrote that it has become sacrilegious to question the motives or performance of Mueller. His press conference was the greatest test of such blind faith. Mueller announced that “the report is my testimony” and that he would not answer questions from Congress either, beyond what is already in his final report. From anyone else, such a statement would be denounced as arrogant, evasive, or both. However, many members of Congress and the media accepted it as the gospel according to Mueller.
The problem is that Mueller was uttering absolute nonsense about his inability to reach a conclusion. He likewise did not offer a principled basis for refusing to answer any questions. This includes obvious questions such as why he refused to comply with the request from his superiors to identify grand jury material, which delayed the release of his report. The disconnect in the coverage of his remarks was striking. Attorney General William Barr testified for hours on his role and has answered dozens of questions. He was promptly dismissed as evasive and even perjurious. Mueller declared he would tolerate no questions and declined to address any of the criticism of his work with very little objection from the media.
The press conference this week should be an embarrassment for the Justice Department. The agency has long maintained that the special counsel could perform the same function as an independent counsel in determining whether high ranking officials committed criminal acts. For two years, Congress and the Justice Department expressly anticipated findings of any criminal conduct. Mueller employed a massive staff and spent tens of millions of dollars. Yet, it now appears that he never intended to make any findings of possible crimes by President Trump .
Mueller insisted that, because there is a Justice Department policy not to indict a sitting president, he interpreted that to bar him from finding the basis for criminal conduct. According to Mueller, you can investigate but not reach basic conclusions on what the investigation found. One could understand why he would not be eager to answer questions about such an absurd interpretation, when his cited sources directly contradict him.
I testified on these flawed memos from the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton impeachment. Like many other academics, I view the policy as unsupported by either the Constitution or the convention debates, but that does not matter because the memos have simply nothing to do with a special counsel finding criminal conduct by a president. The memos focus entirely on the indictment and prosecution of a sitting president. They do conclude that being a defendant in a criminal case would thus prevent any president from performing his duties, but they do not challenge the need to investigate a sitting president. History shows presidents routinely accused of criminal conduct, including in impeachment proceedings.
ndeed, President Clinton was investigated and found to have committed crimes by an independent counsel. The Justice Department memos did not find that the investigation or such findings were improper. When the Independent Counsel Act subsequently expired, Congress was assured that the same investigatory function would be performed by any special counsels. The memos only addressed when a president can be indicted and said that prosecution must wait until he leaves office, since he could not function while in the docket of a criminal court or a federal prison.
Mueller has insisted that the policy “says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.” That is not actually what it says. The Justice Department concluded that its view “remains that a sitting president is constitutionally immune from indictment and criminal prosecution.” It focuses on the prosecution of sitting presidents, not the investigation of sitting presidents. In referencing a process other than the criminal justice system, it refers to the only legal way to remove a president from office.
Nothing in the memos even remotely bars a special counsel from reaching conclusions on the basis of possible criminal charges. Indeed, the memos accept that the Justice Department needs to establish such evidence to preserve a record for possible later charges. That is why Mueller was told by his superiors that there was no policy barring him from finding criminal conduct, only the policy against indicting while the president is in office. Even if you twist the memos to suggest some prohibition to reaching conclusions on criminal conduct, that debate should have ended when his two superiors, the attorney general and deputy attorney general, told him there was no such policy and asked him to reach a conclusion.
His instructions and mandate were crystal clear. His position is even more nonsensical when you look at what he has already done. Mueller declared that “we concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime.” Yet, Mueller contradicted that statement when he declared that “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so.”
So which is it? Mueller actually did reach a “determination one way or the other” on crimes related to collusion. In his special counsel report, he found that he could “not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” In effect, Mueller ultimately came across as almost coquettish in his declaration that he would not make a clear finding of a possible crime but could not rule out criminal conduct by the president.
In other words, Mueller can produce hundreds of pages of evidence of possible criminal conduct and repeatedly refer to not exonerating Trump of crimes but somehow cannot reach a conclusion on the weight of the evidence. Of course,Mueller did not address such questions because he would not tolerate questions. The media simply listened obediently as he claimed that he was only being “fair” when he repeated that he could not clear Trump of the crime. That, of course, led the media to declare that Mueller really was searching for criminal conduct with a wink and a nod.
Whatever space Mueller occupied in maintaining such a position, it was neither created nor countenanced by federal law or Justice Department policy. Instead, he accepted the job of special counsel and then radically redefined it, without telling anyone outside of his staff. In that sense, he failed as special counsel. Mueller was not appointed to be a chronicler of allegations. Mueller was appointed to perform a prosecutorial function in the investigation of a president and his associates. Moreover, he does not get to dictate what Congress can investigate, or to stonewall the media.
I agree with Mueller on his hope and expectation that this will be “the only time that I will speak to you in this manner.” Next time, I hope and expect Mueller will finally address the growing questions about his investigation.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
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“Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.”.......Robert Mueller
In contradiction with this:
“After that investigation, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”...Robert Mueller
Mueller gave himself away with that very telling "press conference", in which he refused to answer questions.
Unless your job is prosecutor. In that case, you're doing everything you can to prove your suspect is guilty of a crime. So, even though the word "exoneration" isn't exactly accurate, if a prosecutor is unwilling to say "X" was criminal behavior, it's the next best thing.
And if a prosecutor is unwilling to say "X" was criminal behavior, he really has no business telling us about look what we learned when the President lost his temper. A prosecutor either prosecutes or shuts up!
Generally, I agree. That's really the mistake Comey made on Hillary Clinton. Mueller has something of an excuse in that he was required to produce a report. For political reasons, the Attorney General made it mostly public. I think Mueller should have declined to talk publicly, though.
They are both committing the same sin for different reasons. I believe Comey was angry that he had to tarnish the reputation of the FBI to save Hillary Clinton. Any objective appraisal of the Clinton investigation would conclude that it was a thinly veiled effort to protect her from indictment and or prosecution. Thus, Comey chose not to prosecute, but issued the harsh criticism of Clinton.
Mueller on the other hand was deeply invested in taking down the President. He just couldn't find the evidence. So, he prolonged the investigation until the midterm election and the often predicted result of democrats capturing the House. Then he released that convoluted report, which was written to criticize Trump in order to enable the dems to have some basis for impeachment proceedings.
Donald Trump is a moron clown. He is now in England twittering about the mayor of London's height.
You want to know why people resist normalizing such an asshole? Because they love their country and dont like to see it endlessly embarrassed by a narcissistic idiot.
Then you better get the ass hats in the DNC to start weeding out the radicals in the bursting clown car of candidates; work on a platform that doesn't cater strictly to the hard left; and most importantly they and their sheeple need to stop alienating anyone that didn't vote for Hillary "She still doesn't understand how the election process works" Clinton!
Even if the Dems decide to go ahead with impeachment it will be a long drawn out process just to get out of the House; where it will be declared DOA by the Senate- or will take until either Trump being out office or well into his second term if they do decide to go forward.
Resist away; but right now the Democrats, their pundits, and their sheeple are becoming larger, more vocal, assholes than Trump.
Speaking of embarrassments, the left needs to take a long hard look in the mirror. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they love this country any less than you do.
1) No matter how loud you all scream- Russia did not steal the election from Hillary.
2) Trump and his campaign did not conspire with Russia.
3) Carter Page is not, and never was, a master Russian spy.
4) The Steele Dossier was a paid political hit job by the DNC; and never should have been used for any FISA warrants.
5) Hillary Clinton lost, get over it, nothing will ever change that fact.
6) This one cannot be repeated enough. "stop alienating anyone that didn't vote for Hillary "She still doesn't understand how the election process works" Clinton!
Maybe, maybe, just maybe by not turning into a bunch of Trumps the Democrats can actually win the next election.
Oh and here I thought it was because the "they" were irredeemable liberal scum, who don't deserve the time of day!
Russia both wanted Trump to win and illicitly helped him do so. While we may never be able to quantify how much their illegal hack and release of private American citizens emails damaged the Democrat party, we do know the surreptitious Russian media campaign reached over 120 million Americans. Any company or corporation knows the inherent value of reaching 120 million consumers regardless of what you're selling, to say it had no effect is to be obstinately obtuse and is just choosing to ignore reality.
They certainly tried, and then nearly all of them lied about it. While criminal conspiracy was never proven, the Mueller report lays out numerous attempts to secure Russian cooperation and support.
No, he's just another of the many morons Trump surrounded himself with who had no clue trying to get help from the Russians might be problematic or potentially illegal. Trump apparently hired either morons or criminals which makes sense, he surrounds himself with those who most reflect his own qualities.
The Steele dossier was a legitimate background inquiry into the connections between Trump and the Russian government and pro-Russian Ukrainians. Much was proven true and none has been proven false, it's just most has not yet been verified. And it's already been proven that the dossier was NOT the only piece of evidence used to secure the FISA warrants which is why all the warrants have been shown to be legitimate regardless of all the threats of an investigation thrown out by Trumps fat little lap dog Barr.
Been over that for two years. I don't give to farts about Hillary not being President and neither do most Americans who are embarrassed by Trump. It has nothing to do with her "not winning" but everything to do with the turd that did win and the stain that greasy turd is smearing on every aspect of American life.
I'm not "alienating" any sane, rational Americans regardless of who they voted for. Even if they voted for Trump, I don't really care, that was their choice, though by now any sane, rational, educated Americans who made that choice in 2016 recognize what a loser their choice was and likely regret it. I will "alienate" and will never welcome those who self-labeled as "deplorables" after it was defined as describing those who are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic". All those who stood up with pride and declared they were Trumps deplorables can go take a long walk off a short pier for all I care.
Yes, Donald Trump was a moron clown before he was elected President, everyone knew that. The Republican primary debates were televised, after all. Why would it be surprising that Trump is a moron clown now?
Stating the obvious isn't very informative and won't change anyone's mind. The bigger worry is normalizing the outrageous behavior of Democrats.
Don't like Trump then impeach him. But, but, but, but Democrats might lose the House majority is only more outrageous behavior that shouldn't be normalized.
You're not narcisstic!
I understand why some people have reached that conclusion, but logically, if it were true, Mueller wouldn't have spent a single minute investigating the president, much less 2 1/2 years.
Robert Mueller set a precedent that neuters a Special Prosecutor. If Mueller's precedent is followed then independent investigations would be pointless.