Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

[buttslinger]

My eighth grade teacher told me a President can shoot someone and run back in the oval office and not be charged, because the way it's set up the President is the Top Cop.
You need to impeach him first.

[broncofan]

My eighth grade teacher told me a President can shoot someone and run back in the oval office and not be charged, because the way it's set up the President is the Top Cop.
You need to impeach him first.

Your teacher is right. I'm just talking about using the crime of obstruction as a guidepost for impeachment. The question of whether he committed a felony should be a decent predicate for determining whether he should be impeached and removed from power.

[broncofan]

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/4/167334...n-russia-comey

So zero professors out of 13 polled by vox agree with Dowd and Dershowitz but one unfortunately believes the act of lawfully firing someone cannot be obstruction. This makes no sense. An otherwise legal act can't be obstruction? Disposing of a bloody shirt is not a crime. How about disposing of a bloody shirt that's evidence in a case? In fact, often the only thing that makes the act that constitutes obstruction illegal is that it's done to obstruct. Now the means has to be illegal too?

But Dershowitz should be persona non grata on every network except fox. Last post on this.....but it's a slow news day.

[Stavros]

I understand that the President's lawyer, John Dowd has claimed he wrote the tweet in the President's twitter feed-
"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," the Saturday tweet reads. "He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/03/po...eet/index.html

I am not sure if I believe a lawyer would use the term ''he has pled guilty" though a novelist like Dash Hammet might; and I don't know if this means Dowd is about to be fired, or if he agreed to wriggle under a bus for his boss.

What I don't know, and perhaps someone can tell me, is if I am right in thinking that every Tweet from the President's account including those that are deleted, is the property of the Government of the USA, that it amounts to an official document of the Presidency and will be stored in the National Archive as such -? I think it means that if in ten years time or whatever the right of access is to researchers, one can visit the Archive in Washington DC and call up the President's papers and read every Tweet since inauguration day. But on that basis, does it matter if the President's fingers did the tapping? Legally, surely it is the President who must take responsibility for documents issued in his name, and doesn't this add weight to the argument that he may have obstructed justice if he knew Flynn had lied before admitting it when questioned by the FBI?

With ref to the view of Lisa Giffin in Broncofan's link, does the President have the right to shred documents, if he doesn't own them, or what is ownership in the context of the Presidency? If Nixon had to hand over the tapes, surely a President, if he or she kept one, would also have to hand over a diary -? Nixon may provide the precedent here.

[buttslinger]

I'm not going to be satisfied if Trump's Presidency comes down to pled v. pleaded,
I remember Nixon was allowed to resign in shame,
Trump has no shame!!!!!!!!
I'm asking Santa for a pitchfork and torch, ......I can be in front of the White House in 40 minutes!!!
If Mueller comes up with compelling evidence that Trump and his team willingly offered Russia a relaxing of sanctions after the election in return for political hijinx...........
Jesus!!
Talk about new legal territory!!
With Republicans in control of everything,
Trump's pardon power,
THE LAW is going to be twisted into something totally unrecognizable.
FUBAR!!!

[broncofan]

With ref to the view of Lisa Giffin in Broncofan's link, does the President have the right to shred documents, if he doesn't own them, or what is ownership in the context of the Presidency? If Nixon had to hand over the tapes, surely a President, if he or she kept one, would also have to hand over a diary -? Nixon may provide the precedent here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act

It depends on the type of records. I recall people were arguing about this on twitter and I don't recall whether his tweets count as records that he is not permitted to destroy. This came up when he deleted a tweet.

The funny thing about pled v. pleaded is that I've seen everyone on twitter say this is a tell and sadly I can say that I've seen plenty of lawyers write pled. I've also seen lawyers write plead, thinking it was past tense and pronounced pled. Maybe Dowd is a good enough lawyer that this mistake would be very uncharacteristic for him.

On the other hand, he should look out for the rules of professional conduct. For the alibi to work, he would have had to write a tweet that was a falsehood. Dowd, writing as Trump, claimed that Trump fired Flynn because he lied to the FBI. If Trump did not know Flynn lied to the FBI, then why would Dowd ghostwrite something that's not true? To me it violates one of the two rules below. Either he lied, or he did not demonstrate competence and did his client a disservice by uttering a false, inculpatory statement.

But then I think it's been established that Trump DID know Flynn lied to the FBI, which makes Dowd's alibi after the fact a lie. Uhh, let's just say Dowd's a liar....

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/p...to_others.html

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/p...ompetence.html

[Stavros]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act
It depends on the type of records. I recall people were arguing about this on twitter and I don't recall whether his tweets count as records that he is not permitted to destroy. This came up when he deleted a tweet.
The funny thing about pled v. pleaded is that I've seen everyone on twitter say this is a tell and sadly I can say that I've seen plenty of lawyers write pled. I've also seen lawyers write plead, thinking it was past tense and pronounced pled. Maybe Dowd is a good enough lawyer that this mistake would be very uncharacteristic for him.
On the other hand, he should look out for the rules of professional conduct. For the alibi to work, he would have had to write a tweet that was a falsehood. Dowd, writing as Trump, claimed that Trump fired Flynn because he lied to the FBI. If Trump did not know Flynn lied to the FBI, then why would Dowd ghostwrite something that's not true? To me it violates one of the two rules below. Either he lied, or he did not demonstrate competence and did his client a disservice by uttering a false, inculpatory statement.
But then I think it's been established that Trump DID know Flynn lied to the FBI, which makes Dowd's alibi after the fact a lie. Uhh, let's just say Dowd's a liar....

Thanks for the above link which took me elsewhere and a Bill going through the machine which will establish that Presidential tweets are official documents, assuming it is passed -this seems to be the key:
Trump's tweets have been legally significant in the past. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated that Trump's tweets are "considered official statements by the President of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commun...Engagement_Act

I was going to make a cynical point about the President and his lawyer, but we have our own twits in the British government, and they don't even need to tweet anything, just open their mouths, and sing. I think it's called the Why? factor when it makes a commitment at 9am that is redundant by 12.

[trish]

If I understand correctly, Dowd has jumped in front of the bus with the claim that he drafted the message that Donald tweeted. But if Dowd’s claim is true, then Donald read the draft, understood what it said, deemed it correct and fit for public consumption, typed it into his phone and tweeted it. Does this not mean that Donald knew Flynn was guilty of lying to the FBI, that it was one of the primary reasons he fired him and that Donald knew this before he approached Comey on Flynn’s behalf? Isn't Donald's reading the draft, approving it and then sending the tweet tantamount to his confirming its content? How exactly does Dowd drafting the tweet exonerate Donald?

[buttslinger]

I'm very hopeful these Deutsche Bank subpoena rumors are true and the floodgates are about to open with Trump Eyeball deep in Russian Mob money laundering. That would explain a lot.

Hey Donald, if something seems to be too good to be true, it usually is.

[Stavros]

The article linked below focuses on the relentless assault that is being made on Robert Mueller by supporters of the President. The aim is not just to smear the reputation of Mueller (a Republican!) but the whole process of investigation, which by extension means the sustained ridicule and abuse of the FBI and the Justice Department, an abuse that begins at the top and works its way down through the President's allies in Congress and the Media.

I think the question now is whether this is a desperate attempt by people with something to lose to blame the system rather then themselves, or whether by tapping into a degree of public mistrust of Federal institutions the long term impact could be a more general loss of trust in those institutions and by extension the democratic system of which they are a part. It is one thing for Bannon and his associates to smash the duopoly of American party politics, but the danger is that they could be smashing everything, or at least causing it severe damage. What happens if half of America simply doesn't care that their President is a liar and a con-man who willingly accepted the help of a foreign government to win the highest office in the land? And what happens to those who do care?

We have a situation in the UK where I believe politicians are regarded by many people as being incapable, more so than ever before, but we have a head of state who is unelected so we may have a deep problem with the political system, but the state itself is not in danger, unless or until Brexit exposes more divisions that, in the case of Scotland in particular, cannot be resolved without secession or independence and, in effect, the break-up of the UK.

All political systems are vulnerable, yet in the American case I wonder if the greater danger lies in the divisions within the USA making it in effect, an ungovernable country at the Federal level. It means States will be in a strong position with the Federal government unable or unwilling to change anything -California will press ahead with its climate change policies, the southern States will continue to remove Black Americans from the electoral roll and prevent those who are on it from voting. Gerrymandering will remain a one-way ticket to permanent power. A President, this one or any succeeding one, can govern with 30% of the vote as long as he or she wins the Electoral College, but in a country where Presidential power becomes increasingly either ineffective or even meaningless.

I wonder if those baying for Mueller's blood realise what they are doing, with the chilling thought that they do, and don't care if the central institutions of government fall to pieces in rancour and despair.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...counsel-russia