Mueller investigation

[poster]

Here's what I fear could happen, and I've been told of similar examples by acquaintances of color:
Cop decides to question a person walking down the street for no apparent reason. The cop asks where the person is going? The person answers "to that house to see my mother". Cop says, "okay" and goes and knocks on the door, but mother isn't home. Instead, a male teen answers the door and tells the cop that, yes the house is the person's mother's house, though she's out food shopping. The cop becomes suspicious and aggitated, one thing leads to another, an argument ensues between the guy and the cop, and the patron is arrested, or shot. The patron and witnesses insists that he was stopped and questioned for no reason by the officer. The cop, in order to cover himself, says in his report that he was investigating a hit and run that occurred down the block a few days earlier and the patron lied to him. Why? Because he said he was going to see his mother and his mother was not at home so he could not have been going to see his mother. Shit like that does happen.

You bet it does. It used to be worse - people who were the wrong color were often summarily killed if a cop didn't like what was happening, and there were zero repercussions. For a few decades, such behavior was frowned upon, and such incidents became somewhat less common and drew more attention. But starting in 2016, things started rapidly getting worse. It's worse now than ever in recent years, since racial profiling, prejudicial treatment based on race, and justice being meted out by nominal law enforcement officers are now tacitly endorsed by our nation's Commander in Chief. There was hope for a while that body-cams would be the end of that shit, but it turns out that body cams can be counted on to malfunction whenever cops get out of control. Cellphone cameras have allowed some incidents to come to light, but the overall trend in the Trump era is a regression toward early 20th century attitudes and behavior.
The solution is to get this corrupt regime out of power as soon as possible.

I can agree with that, but not by inventing shit that's only going to backfire and elevate Trump's stature and get him re-elected. There's plenty of legitimate reasons and ways to do this.

See, we can agree!

 

[poster]

Where do you come up with the idea that I am disputing that Flynn made a plea deal?

Calm down, poster. Nobody thinks you are disputing the fact of Flynn's plea deal. What is evident in this thread though, is that you have no idea how plea deals work, why they are offered, or what is likely at stake. Nevertheless, you decline to accept the explanation of how plea deals work, and instead prefer a concoction of your own creation, which makes no sense and has no evident basis in reality.

I'm fine, infact I've been doing quite a bit of smiling.

Are you a legal expert?

 

[Elixir]

Where do you come up with the idea that I am disputing that Flynn made a plea deal?

Calm down, poster. Nobody thinks you are disputing the fact of Flynn's plea deal. What is evident in this thread though, is that you have no idea how plea deals work, why they are offered, or what is likely at stake. Nevertheless, you decline to accept the explanation of how plea deals work, and instead prefer a concoction of your own creation, which makes no sense and has no evident basis in reality.

I'm fine, infact I've been doing quite a bit of smiling.

Are you a legal expert?

Nope. Nor do I pretend to be. That doesn't mean I don't know how plea deals work. YTou don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows. It is obvious that Flynn faced a greater threat than whatever was engendered in a plea deal, or he woudn't have made that deal. Common sense, no wild-eyed lib'rul conspiracy theory needed.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Let's get something straight. I have never made the claim of being an expert on the law. I am an average US citizen trying to make hands and tales of the situation. I am not employed by any legal firm nor do I have any formal education in the law.

I don’t know how much of that I don’t believe.

 

[RavenSky]

Are any of you following the latest news? Michael Cohen's office, house and hotel room were raided by FBI this morning.

The Department of Justice had to go to extraordinary lengths in order to carry out the raid on President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

And the lengths to which the Justice Department went show just how big of a deal the raid is, and, as experts said, how it is such "bad news" for Cohen.

On Monday, the FBI raided Cohen's Manhattan office, his home, and his hotel room, as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair reported. The FBI was apparently acting on a referral from the special counsel Robert Mueller.

The agency took records related to several topics, including the $130,000 hush-money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election, The Times reported. Federal prosecutors obtained a search warrant after Mueller sent a referral, said Cohen's lawyer, Stephen Ryan.

http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-cohen-justice-department-raid-on-trump-lawyer-2018-4

 

[Copernicus]

Are any of you following the latest news? Michael Cohen's office, house and hotel room were raided by FBI this morning.

The Department of Justice had to go to extraordinary lengths in order to carry out the raid on President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

And the lengths to which the Justice Department went show just how big of a deal the raid is, and, as experts said, how it is such "bad news" for Cohen.

On Monday, the FBI raided Cohen's Manhattan office, his home, and his hotel room, as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair reported. The FBI was apparently acting on a referral from the special counsel Robert Mueller.

The agency took records related to several topics, including the $130,000 hush-money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election, The Times reported. Federal prosecutors obtained a search warrant after Mueller sent a referral, said Cohen's lawyer, Stephen Ryan.

http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-cohen-justice-department-raid-on-trump-lawyer-2018-4

It was reported by Underseer a couple of pages ago, but people found it more interesting to debate poster over the old question of whether Michael Flynn's guilty plea was warranted.

 

[RavenSky]

Are any of you following the latest news? Michael Cohen's office, house and hotel room were raided by FBI this morning.

The Department of Justice had to go to extraordinary lengths in order to carry out the raid on President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

And the lengths to which the Justice Department went show just how big of a deal the raid is, and, as experts said, how it is such "bad news" for Cohen.

On Monday, the FBI raided Cohen's Manhattan office, his home, and his hotel room, as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair reported. The FBI was apparently acting on a referral from the special counsel Robert Mueller.

The agency took records related to several topics, including the $130,000 hush-money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election, The Times reported. Federal prosecutors obtained a search warrant after Mueller sent a referral, said Cohen's lawyer, Stephen Ryan.

http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-cohen-justice-department-raid-on-trump-lawyer-2018-4

It was reported by Underseer a couple of pages ago, but people found it more interesting to debate poster over the old question of whether Michael Flynn's guilty plea was warranted.

Ahhh, I see.

Extremely significant development, I think...

I'm referring to the FBI raid on Michael Cohen (not the whinging about not being able to lie to cops)

 

[Keith&Co.]

I have never made the claim of being an expert on the law. Iam an average US citizen trying to make hands and tales

Um, heads or tails, really. It's an idiom.
And you haven't claimed legal expertise, but you HAVE started some ludicrous statements with 'I always thought' and you have no desire to learn what entrapment actually is, and you have made unsupportable conclusions from incomplete information, but insisted that your interpretation was the only possible one.
And you don't understand plea deals in the slightest. Not saying you're discounting the deal, but you ARE discounting the implications one draws from such a thing, based on knowing what they're for and how they work
And you really, really don't understand entrapment.

So, you should probably be asking more questions than telling peole what's going on...

 

[Artemus]

It was reported by Underseer a couple of pages ago, but people found it more interesting to debate poster over the old question of whether Michael Flynn's guilty plea was warranted.

Ahhh, I see.

Extremely significant development, I think...

I'm referring to the FBI raid on Michael Cohen (not the whinging about not being able to lie to cops)

I missed the postings here too and put a link in the Stormy Daniels thread. Thought it belonged there since it wasn't Mueller who got the warrant. But in other news, the NYTimes also said today that Mueller is investigating a donation that Cohen solicited. It strikes me as quite bizarre that when the POTUS and his aide's are continuously being shown to be liars, the outrage in some quarters is not about them being liars but rather about them finally being held accountable for being liars. How did we reach this point?

 

[barbos]

Flynn is charged with lying. He lied because he was stupid and believed he could get away with it. Stupid generals are pretty common - Flynn, Petraeus to name a couple.

 

[Copernicus]

It was reported by Underseer a couple of pages ago, but people found it more interesting to debate poster over the old question of whether Michael Flynn's guilty plea was warranted.

Ahhh, I see.

Extremely significant development, I think...

I'm referring to the FBI raid on Michael Cohen (not the whinging about not being able to lie to cops)

Yes, but I still have hopes that you are wrong. Trump seems barely able to restrain himself from pulling the plug on Mueller over this. Everyone is saying that that will lead to a grave Constitutional crisis that evokes memories of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre". But these are different times with a different Congress. So this raid may be a significant trigger of major changes in our system of government in the coming days. The overwhelming majority of Republicans are standing rock solid behind Trump, and they control all the major levers of power.

 

[poster]

but people found it more interesting to debate poster over the old question of whether Michael Flynn's guilty plea was warranted.

Emphasis mine. It's often a good thing to keep old questions alive.

In the Flynn case, Democratic party operatives would prefer it all get treated as "old questions".

 

[poster]

Flynn is charged with lying. He lied because he was stupid and believed he could get away with it. Stupid generals are pretty common - Flynn, Petraeus to name a couple.

I can agree with the often apparent stupitity of military people, however, why would Flynn think he could get away with lying when he most likey knew his conversations were recorded?

And all of this must have been known to Gen. Flynn, who was previously assistant director of national intelligence in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as well as the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.

Flynn had to know he was being recorded when he spoke to the Russian ambassador. He also had to know it is a crime to lie to the FBI. Why then did he lie when agents questioned him about those conversations?

Part of the explanation may be a tendency during his tenure with the DIA to tailor the truth to his purposes. The New York Times has reported that his subordinates spoke of “Flynn facts.”

And this proclivity to offer “Flynn facts” may have been a key element of his bond with the tireless purveyor of “Trump facts.”

That melding of alternate realities with the Commander in Chief may have led Flynn to feel armored against anything as niddling as being charged with lying to some lowly FBI agents.

That would be particularly so because these lies involved what is described as “a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team” in the Statement of the Offense that accompanied Flynn's guilty plea on Friday.

But none of that explains why there was any need to lie in the first place. The retired FBI supervisor could discern nothing manifestly criminal about an incoming administration exchanging messages with the Russians.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/micha...ls-with-russians-so-why-did-he-lie-about-them

 

[barbos]

Flynn is charged with lying. He lied because he was stupid and believed he could get away with it. Stupid generals are pretty common - Flynn, Petraeus to name a couple.

I can agree with the often apparent stupitity of military people, however, why would Flynn think he could get away with lying when he most likey knew his conversations were recorded?

Because he was stupid. There can't be any other explanation.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It was reported by Underseer a couple of pages ago, but people found it more interesting to debate poster over the old question of whether Michael Flynn's guilty plea was warranted.

Ahhh, I see.

Extremely significant development, I think...

I'm referring to the FBI raid on Michael Cohen (not the whinging about not being able to lie to cops)

So many interesting parts here. In Law Land, client-attorney privilege is a pretty big deal. Most lawyers know this. District Attorneys and Judges are probably aware of it too!

The District Attorney... is a Trump appointee (and Trump supporter, having given the campaign the legal limit), well a temporary one both in position and likelihood of getting shit-canned soon. This guy had to of known both that 1) attorney-client privilege is a big deal, 2) he wouldn't be long for the job if he went forward with this, 3) his $5k donation would have been a waste.

Knowing all of this, when presented with the information, he decided a search was warranted and a judge agreed, signing off on the warrant. I can only imagine the required threshold that must be passed for supporting cause to justify a search that would indeed violate attorney-client privilege and getting a Trump supporter to get on board.

This isn't exactly evidence for a conviction outright, but it has to be pretty close.

 

[Sarpedon]

I would call it general's arrogance rather than stupidity.

The military is well known to alter people psychologically. A military person is trained to always obey the superior. When they actually are that superior, and surrounded day after day by people who must agree with them, must obey them, and cannot question them, I imagine that does something to one's psychology.

And yes, I agree that it is unthinkable that a lawyer's office would be raided for anything less than ironclad reasons. Everyone who signed off on the warrant was themselves a lawyer, and lawyers are very, very protective of their professional perogatives. To do this, they must be absolutely sure that a crime was committed, and probably were also sure that evidence of it could be obtained by the raid. They wouldn't have done it if they weren't sure to find something. probably someone in Cohen's office is already talking.

 

[ElectEngr]

[edited for content]

The District Attorney... is a Trump appointee (and Trump supporter, having given the campaign the legal limit), well a temporary one both in position and likelihood of getting shit-canned soon.

[edited for content]
Knowing all of this, when presented with the information, he decided a search was warranted and a judge agreed, signing off on the warrant.

[edited for content]


This isn't exactly evidence for a conviction outright, but it has to be pretty close.

Someone on "The 11th Hour" last night was saying Geoffrey Berman had recused himself on this matter and that a career attorney was the one that signed off to go to the judge.

Berman's appointment runs out on May 5th.

Later,
ElectEngr

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

[edited for content]

The District Attorney... is a Trump appointee (and Trump supporter, having given the campaign the legal limit), well a temporary one both in position and likelihood of getting shit-canned soon.

[edited for content]
Knowing all of this, when presented with the information, he decided a search was warranted and a judge agreed, signing off on the warrant.

[edited for content]


This isn't exactly evidence for a conviction outright, but it has to be pretty close.

Someone on "The 11th Hour" last night was saying Geoffrey Berman had recused himself on this matter and that a career attorney was the one that signed off to go to the judge.

Berman's appointment runs out on May 5th.

Later,
ElectEngr

Interesting. Wasn't aware of that.

 

[ElectEngr]

Jim,

Please remember, I was laying in bed last night listening on SiriusXM (Channel 118) when I heard this. I may have been half asleep. But I thought I heard this.

Later,
ElectEng

 

[Malintent]

Let's get something straight. I have never made the claim of being an expert on the law. I am an average US citizen trying to make hands and tales of the situation. I am not employed by any legal firm nor do I have any formal education in the law.

How about the rest of you that have been participating in this discussion? Any lawyers or trained legal minds among you?

I am a trained and certified forensic investigator that works with Lawyers and other investigators frequently... The General Counsel for multi-billion dollar international companies, type of lawyers. You, poster, are completely wrong about every opinion you expressed in this thread that I have commented back to you on. Your "imagination" on how things should be in your mind is "Hollywood Law". EVERYTHING you think you know about this is just a scratch on the surface of the reality of it. I'm not saying I know everything, just what is public record. I also maintain the ability to separate wishes from observations, as well as the actual law from how I personally would like the law to be... or how it was portrayed in my favorite episode of LA Law.

And further, if I may, you are wholly inconsistent. You grant your tribe the benefit of the doubt, as our laws should provide to all (innocent until proven guilty), however you revoke this foundational premise when referring to members of a different tribe. Trump is an innocent victim no matter what, and those protecting our nation by enforcing the law are maniacal fascists no matter what.

You know how you could be an impressive person worth the attention of those you are speaking to? Learn. Have humility with what you do not know to be true. Have the competency to site the sources of your knowledge AS WELL as the ability to support the source is sound.

If I tell you that it is insecure to have less than 6 characters in a password, and you ask me why, I should be able to site NIST and SANS documentation to show you, AND tell you what NIST and SANS are and what they do, and how their information is used and by whom.

If you pass on knowledge for which you cannot do the above, you are either being intentionally dishonest for your own ends, or you are just being a fool, following another fool.