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Did President Trump’s comment on General Michael Flynn’s guilty plea get him into more hot water? Some legal types seem to think so.
Here’s the President’s Tweet on Saturday, finally breaking his silence on Michael Flynn:
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017
And Trump-hating lawyers were eager to point fingers and scream, “Obstruction of justice!”
Here’s how a hipster with awesome sleeve tattoos explains it:
Take, for example, this comment from Walter Shaub. He’s the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics under President Obama. Yeah, I know, “Government Ethics” sounds like an oxymoron. But I digress.
Anyway, in this series of tweets Shaub seems to be salivating at the prospect of Trump’s presidency ended with his comment about Flynn:
And then Matthew Miller, spokesman for Obama’s Justice Department, went really giddy. Obstruction of justice, woot!
Oh my god, he just admitted to obstruction of justice. If Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to let it go, then there is your case. https://t.co/c6Wtd0TfzW
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) December 2, 2017
Another Obama shill, senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, chimed in, too:
If Trump keeps admitting to obstructing justice, Ty Cobb might be right that the Mueller investigation may wrap up sooner than we think https://t.co/4lKCKyE3Ce
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) December 2, 2017
Finally, Rep. Ted Lieu of California (D, of course), who rips on Trump every chance he gets, was completely stoked at getting Trump on obstruction of justice charges. He tweeted this — in caps, no less:
“THIS IS OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE. @POTUS now admits he KNEW Michael Flynn lied to the FBI. Yet Trump tried to influence or stop the FBI investigation on Flynn.”
I dunno about that Ted Lieu tweet. This is the guy who hosted a town hall in April, featuring Kathy Griffin as his guest. Would you trust his word? Me neither.
However, the President didn’t write that tweet about Flynn at all. As a matter of fact, it was Trump’s personal attorney, John Dowd, who wrote it. Moreover, it’s not even clear if Trump himself read it, since the tweet hit the Twitterverse at the time the President was at fundraisers in New York.
So did Trump truly know ahead of time that Flynn lied to the FBI? Or is this tweet mere conjecture from his attorney?
As it turns out, Dowd told Mike Allen at Axios that the tweet was “my mistake. I’m out of the tweeting business. I did not mean to break news.” And that obstruction of justice allegation? Dowd said, “The tweet did not admit obstruction. That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion.”
Ah, liberals! Foiled again!
It doesn’t matter, really. They won’t let up because they think this is a Watergate redux. As Cornell law professor Walter Jacobson wrote in his blog Legal Insurrection, Robert Mueller is out to take Trump’s scalp:
Mueller wants Donald Trump to take a perp walk, or at least be impeached based on the findings of Mueller’s investigation. Mueller wants it more than Mueller has ever wanted anything before in his law enforcement and prosecutorial life. And he will stop at nothing to get The Donald.
So buckle up. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
[…] Victory Girls Blog: Liberals: Trump Tweet Proves Obstruction of Justice in Flynn Case. There’s One Problem. [VIDEO]. […]
Slade says: The guy who dressed up in the tiger suit was David Wu of Oregon, not Ted Lieu.
Kim Quade says: Thank you. I have corrected my error with something more recent AND more factual.
Rhoda R says: I though Flynn was fired for lying to Pence. When did it morph into he was fired for lying to the FBI?
richard40 says: Apparently the same thing he lied to Pence about, he had also lied to the FBI about, but nothing indicates Trump or Pence knew that.
Bruce says: Stupid people. First, they can’t understand that Trump (or his attorney) is using multiple time frames. Flynn was fired for lying to Pence. That was most of a year ago. Now we know that Flynn wasn’t doing anything illegal at the time. He just plead guilty for lying to the FBI. And looking back, it was a shame, because there was no reason to lie in the first place. Miller is suggesting that maybe Trump knew about Flynn lying to the FBI when he asked Coney to back off (which, of course, Trump never did). But there is no evidence of that, and, indeed, the lying to the FBI may have been later.
Second Comey, Mueller, et al, worked or work for Trump. He had the legal right to tell Comey what to do. He could have legally told Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn if he had wanted to. He didn’t. Anyone who thinks he did, has reading comprehension problems. Regardless, who and what to investigate and/or prosecute are executive functions reserved exclusively for the President in the first clause of Article II of our Constitution. He can, and does, delegate that to the DoJ, and, thence, the FBI. But, in the end, they are exercising his power, and they have no legal say if he decides to overrule them.
Alec Rawls says: The more important point is that it would have been perfectly fine for Trump to straight up order Comey not to prosecute Flynn for a mere process crime when there was no underlying crime. The president has plenary power to set law enforcement priorities and this is well within his purview.
He could make it a general order: don’t prosecute process crimes when there is no underlying crime, or he could just put into effect his judgment that it is not warranted in this particular case. Whatever authority the AG has to make such decisions the president also has, since the AG’s powers all descend from the president.
Further, Trump has pardon power to say that there is nothing to punish here, and there is nothing in the Constitution that prescribes in what way the pardon power be wielded, that it has to be deployed only after conviction or in any other particular way or form. Ford pardoned Nixon prior to any prosecution and in so doing mooted and hence set aside any prosecution. Trump obviously has the same power.
He could face backlash from Congress if he were to short-circuit in this way any investigation and/or prosecution of Congress demands because Congress can impeach on whatever grounds they want to declare to be a high crime or misdemeanor. THEY can always say it is THEIR interpretation of the pardon power that it not be invoked pre-emptively. That wouldn’t be seconded by an unbiased Supreme Court but neither would an unbiased Court say that Congress could not impeach over such an action if they want.
THAT is the proper check, and Trump has clearly been held in check by it, complaining that he has been told he can’t interfere in AG decision-making. That is clearly wrong as a matter of law, so this advice would have to pertain to the likely political consequences.
Yeh, we’ve got to get that handled, get the Flakes out. Then Trump’s presidency will be safe.
Martin Weiss says: comparing Flynn lying on whether he made phone calls to former Att Gen Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac during the Hillary email investigation is like comparing a grain of sand to a boulder.
SDN says: Someone really needs to ask why Flynn wasn’t afforded “equal treatment under the law” by having a Hillary interview where no notes were kept.
Frankly Reading says: No one has answered the question: What was the lie (were the lies) that Flynn told to the FBI?
When one is interviewed in three separate 3 hour sessions, all under oath, a simple misstatement could be seen as a lie.
For instance, “I spoke with Andropov on August 3rd at 7pm.” in the first interview. In the third interview: “I spoke with Andropov on August 5th at 9pm.” One of them may be a lie, an untruth. But that does not mean they are lies, as in the intentional plan to misrepresent.
Or, “I don’t recall who was in that meeting 5 months ago. Zurlitzky was not there, though” Then, “I did indeed meet with Mr. Zurlitzky in October.” Failing memory? Alternate explanations?
When a Special Counsel wants tofind something for political reasons, they will find something. Especially when they can put you or your son in jail.
Why isn’t refusing to turn illegal aliens over to ICE not obstruction of justice?
Rick Caird says: There will be no perp walk. No one, not even Mueller is going to go after Trump for Obstuction based on a tweet he did not even write. Sheesh. Shakespeare wrote a play on this “Much Ado About Nothing”. The old is new again.
Alec Rawls says: Trump’s lawyer made the same point today that I made in the comment above yesterday: that the president CANNOT be guilty of obstruction of justice. He has sole constitutional authority to make all executive branch decisions, including investigative and prosecutorial decisions. He can delegate that authority but can still always exercise it himself.
Comey last night tweeted the exact opposite and monstrously unconstitutional position, claiming that the FBI is an “independent” agency:
“I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.” Me (June 8, 2017)”
Absolutely not. The fundamental principle of republicanism is that the people can always “throw the bums out,” and our choice for president is the way we throw the bums out of the executive branch. Now here is Comey asserting that the FBI is independent of the president, beyond his control and beyond his power to throw out the bums as he sees fit.
Comey is of course one of those bums and he illegally engineered the Mueller investigation as revenge for Trump throwing him out. He not only believes that the “deep state” is immune from small “r” republican control by the electorate, he has acted aggressively and illegally upon that belief, committing the highest of high crimes, attempting to overturn the will of the people in a presidential election! The bastard should HANG!
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