Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Trial Balloons

Powerline is floating so many trial balloons right now you'd think you were at Temecula. A number of the posts seem to be suggesting that the Leader of the Free World ought to give Robert Mueller the Archibald Cox treatment. Here's Paul Mirengoff, discussing Mueller's hiring decisions:

Mueller has selected Deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben as one of his advisers. Dreeben is a premier criminal law expert. However, he’s considered a left-winger by people whose judgment I trust. And Preet Bharara — former US attorney of the Southern District of New York and current Trump adversary — says he’s over-the-moon about Dreeben’s selection.

Dreeben does not owe his selection to investigative prowess. He’s on the team to evaluate whether the fruits of the investigation give rise to a crime.

That’s fine if Dreeben has no agenda. But if he’s anti-Trump, there’s reason to fear he will bend over backwards to spin out a theory through which Trump can be prosecuted.

Mueller has also tapped Jeannie Rhee, formerly a federal prosecutor and high-level Justice Department official. Rhee provided legal services for the Clinton Foundation, a fact the Washington Post omits from its account. In addition, she donated $5,400 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign PAC “Hillary for America.”

As bitter as the Clintonistas are about losing the election (or rather having it “stolen” by the Russians), it seems unconscionable that Rhee would be on a team that will decide whether to prosecute President Trump at the end of a “Russian interference” investigation.
Meanwhile, Mirengoff's colleague John Hinderaker is making a related argument:
The idea that Jeff Sessions had something to do with a spearfishing expedition into the DNC’s email server (the Russians, if they were Russians, tried the same thing with the RNC, but the Republicans weren’t dumb enough to fall for it) is ridiculous. No one believes it, not even the most rabid Democrat. To say that there is no evidence to suggest any such thing is an understatement.

No doubt CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Times will pretend to find something “troubling” in Sessions’s testimony tomorrow, no matter what he says. But it is becoming increasingly obvious to any sane person that with regard to the “Russian investigation,” there is nothing to investigate.
Meanwhile, Le Grand Orange is tweeting again this morning:

Sad!
Do you think something's up? I do.


5 comments:

Bike Bubba said...

Sad to see what's happening with law. A great picture of how biased it's become is that James Comey objected vociferously to NSA warrantless wiretapping during the Bush administration, but when the Obama administration did far more, there was not a peep out of Comey on the subject. I would have hoped that no matter what one's political persuasion, there would be a little more consistency on the part of lawyers.

And Mueller is a good buddy of Comey, I'm told.

Gino said...

An independent prosecute exists to prosecute... Somebody, anybody... Scooter Libbey was set up when that was all who could taken. Somebody will go down... Probably for fake reasons, too.

Bike Bubba said...

Another similarity to the Plamegate case; just as we know now that there is nothing to Russian collusion for Mueller to prosecute, Patrick Fitzgerald knew within three weeks of starting his investigation that there was nothing to the Valerie Plame story. Fitzgerald is also the prosecutor whose office leaked the Rod Blagojevich evidence just before he would have learned who was bidding for Obama's Senate seat.

It's getting harder and harder to reject conspiracy theories these days. Things are just working out too conveniently too often for the ruling class.

Gino said...

Oh and... Props for Temecula reference. Lol

3john2 said...

For Gino:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4Dcd1aUcE