The Robert Mueller Investigation

[brown water 3761]

9 hours ago, bolverk said:

Krutov has a grand total of 99 posts from Nov 2013 until present on shaggy and has the same posting style: use of English spelling (e.g., neighbour) and lack of capitalization. Could certainly be someone's sock.

Probably Jim Levenstien's

[Homercles 10205]

Who cares. He successfully derailed this thread about an actual investigation with actual indictments. Just ignore him.

[Tuco 5076]

To Pods’ article... you have to feel sorry for people writing analysis these days. A good part of the analysis is based on probable cause for revoking bail. It was written prior to the superseding indictment, which required a higher standard. Still a good article in summarizing the evidence, but it got outdated so quickly.

[Pods 7526]

3 hours ago, Tuco said:

To Pods’ article... you have to feel sorry for people writing analysis these days. A good part of the analysis is based on probable cause for revoking bail. It was written prior to the superseding indictment, which required a higher standard. Still a good article in summarizing the evidence, but it got outdated so quickly.

Does the superseding indictment change the requirements to revoke his bail? I hadn't seen that anywhere. 

Seems like those requirements should stay the same and the superseding indictment shows there is far more than probable cause already established. 

[krutov 18]

13 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Hey Krutov, Troll Detective MaC here:

 

Just curious? Why did you choose that handle? First google hit you get is for that hockey player I linked who was a superstar in the USSR but a bust in a half-season for the Canucks 28 years ago. Seems like a weird dude to honor for someone on a Texas board. Or maybe it's something else? If so I'm all ears. 

 

hi detective mac. before we go on with the interview, am i a target or a subject?  will i be doxxed or swatted?  employer notified?  

just asking questions.

 

[krutov 18]

17 hours ago, bolverk said:

Krutov has a grand total of 99 posts from Nov 2013 until present on shaggy and has the same posting style: use of English spelling (e.g., neighbour) and lack of capitalization. Could certainly be someone's sock.

so you think i may have adopted english spelling and idiomatic grammar and punctuation for a sock for 5 years, presumably just to throw detective mac off the trail when i finally unleashed the kraken?

because i could have just started with a new account username on surly. 

[Mojo Hand 4580]

Shut the fuck up.  

[Pods 7526]

Friendly reminder that Russian internet troll activity started at a minimum in 2013, because in Sept 2013, it was exposed by a Russian journalist. The Russians set up tons of sleeper accounts that they activated later. Many of those accounts started in 2013 on Reddit among other places.  

https://medium.com/dfrlab/the-russians-who-exposed-russias-trolls-72db132e3cd1

1) Username named after a star Russian hockey player, or the Russian word for cool. 

2) Account from the same year the Internet Research Agency was created and began to interfere

3) Use of British English without indication they even noticed it until it was pointed out by other posters.

4) Zombie account from 2013 that didn't post until recently before exploding with pro-Trump talking points.  

It doesn't matter really, because he's uninformed or a troll ether way, but taken in sum, that's suspicious as fuck.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

I doubt it but hope he is a legit Kremlin troll, it would say a lot about the influence of the Shaggy/surly platform. Kinda flattering in a way.

[SKJ 1305]

On 6/8/2018 at 9:34 PM, krutov said:

he can try.  but tar and feathers and a rail is a real possibility if he does.  and i'm not being metaphoric.

 

 

 

You fucking pussies aren't gonna do a fucking thing outside of shooting up a church or a school.

Shut the fuck up

[Pods 7526]

2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I doubt it but hope he is a legit Kremlin troll, it would say a lot about the influence of the Shaggy/surly platform. Kinda flattering in a way.

I don't think he really is either, but we had some on the old board and sooner or later, they'll be over here. Most speculated it wouldn't be until football season. 

I think he's actually an American trolling, for the record. I'm just pointing out that his story would be suspicious as fuck if taken at face value as he's trying to pass it. 

Edited June 10, 2018 by Pods

[jimmyjazz 45546]

I love kru-tov's use of hy-phens.

Is it impolite to ask him to blow me?  Just asking questions.

[krutov 18]

 

3 minutes ago, Pods said:

Friendly reminder that Russian internet troll activity started at a minimum in 2013, because in Sept 2013, it was exposed by a Russian journalist. The Russians set up tons of sleeper accounts that they activated later. Many of those accounts started in 2013 on Reddit among other places.  

https://medium.com/dfrlab/the-russians-who-exposed-russias-trolls-72db132e3cd1

1) Username named after a star Russian hockey player, or the Russian word for cool. 

2) Account from the same year the Internet Research Agency was created and began to interfere

3) Use of British English without indication they even noticed it until it was pointed out by other posters.

4) Zombie account from 2013 that didn't post until recently before exploding with pro-Trump talking points.  

It doesn't matter really, because he's uninformed or a troll ether way, but taken in sum, that's suspicious as fuck.

 

 

 

quoted as exhibit a of what a bunch of credulous fools you are. 

it looks like i can't upload video here so i'll post a link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud9zBKJJQe4

 

[krutov 18]

7 minutes ago, SKJ said:

You fucking pussies aren't gonna do a fucking thing outside of shooting up a church or a school.

Shut the fuck up

not a threat.  a prediction.

[krutov 18]

4 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I love kru-tov's use of hy-phens.

Is it impolite to ask him to blow me?  Just asking questions.

i think homophobic insults might be your best hope for saving face.  maybe chant them.

[SKJ 1305]

A prediction that what? 

A bunch of right wing blowhard pussies is going to attack Mueller, an actual dangerous target?

Trump supporters are such pussies that they won't even recognize the truth because it would hurt their manginas so bad they'd need a cry.

The truth is they're pretty much all just like Trump. They call only go after soft targets in place of an actual target to take out their pubescent rage over imagined slights.

They proved it so many times over that it's obvious they have a gang mentality. That gang they serve is the "R" gang. And like West Side Story, they're willing to have a dancing knife fight with the "D" gang rather than face the actual truth that their gang leader is only in it for himself.

Bunch of fucking pussies

[krutov 18]

11 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I doubt it but hope he is a legit Kremlin troll, it would say a lot about the influence of the Shaggy/surly platform. Kinda flattering in a way.

this is a proto-typical hugo troll post

a blend of paranoid-delusion, wish-fulfillment and ego-gratification, with a slight measure of honest doubt to lend credibility to the whole performance.

it really captures who you are.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Thanks, you can save me a fortune on psychiatrists.

[jimmyjazz 45546]

34 minutes ago, krutov said:

i think homophobic insults might be your best hope for saving face.  maybe chant them.

What was homophobic about my post?  I believe you're projecting.  Do you struggle with the penis?

I will hang up and listen.

[krutov 18]

34 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

What was homophobic about my post?  I believe you're projecting.  Do you struggle with the penis?

I will hang up and listen.

cool but this is dumb on both our parts.  i've said my piece.  i'm out.

have a nice forum.

[jimmyjazz 45546]

LOL.  "piece".  You're a fucking Russian.  Good luck with that.

[Tuco 5076]

Just as wild speculation, there seems to be a correlation between leaks or statements and when Trump is out of the country.  Junior meeting with Veselnitskaya came out when Trump was in Germany.  Flynn indicating he might cooperate because he was concerned about his idiot son's legal liability came when Trump was in Asia, if I recall.  On the latter one, I speculated it might have been bait to get Trump to reach out when he was without attorneys and through more trackable Air Force One communications.  It will be interesting to see if we get a significant leak after Trump finishes his meeting with Kim. 

[triplehorn 2664]

Need to chill out from the Omaha clinch with a little Indictment thread relaxation.

 

 "maybe at a low level" = so corrupted by Russian money and influence as not to be 'free and fair.'  wait for it.

[Anastasis 23393]

22 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

LOL.  "piece".  You're a fucking Russian.  Good luck with that.

 

22 hours ago, krutov said:

cool but this is dumb on both our parts.  i've said my piece.  i'm out.

have a nice forum.

[sheeeit 129]

Heard some talking heads going on about obstruction sunday morning and it seems to be a renewed theme on here.  I just do not see how this goes anywhere. 

Lets address the flynn stuff first.   Comey testified under oath that when Trump asked him to (paraphrasing) "let it go" with Flynn, that Comy believed the only thing Trump was asking him to let go was the apparent discrepancy in Flynn's transition conversation with Kislyak and what they discussed and how he, flynn, may have misled investigators about the conversations.  Not anything at all related to the broader russian investigation.  In fact, Comey further testified that Trump asked him to continue investigating anyone on his, Trump's, staff that may have colluded with russia.  

From the transcript:

"SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Director Comey, the meeting in the oval office where he made the request about Mike Flynn, was that only time he asked you to hopefully let it go?

COMEY: Yes.

RUBIO: And in that meeting, as you understood it, he was asking not about the general Russia investigation, he was asking specifically about the jeopardy that Flynn was in himself?

COMEY: That's how I understood it. Yes, sir."

And, the fbi folks who have reviewed the transcripts of the call with Kislyak, have all said that there is no mention of anything illegal in the call, that Flynn was not acting on orders from anyone above him and that the topic of sanctions was "speaking more in general 'maybe we'll take a look at this going forward' terms."  Nothing even remotely connected to collusion or a quid pro quo or anything like that.

So we have a phone call between the incoming NSA and the ambassador from Russia that contained nothing illegal, had no relation to anyone higher up the political chain than Flynn himself and that just generally spoke about sanctions (which of course was one  of Kislyak's highest orders from his boss).  For some reason, it appears Flynn may have mislead investigators about that call and, as a result, he was fired and faced charges of lying and Trump asked comey to let that go because flynn had already been fired.  I see no possible way that mueller or anyone else is going to be able to make a case of obstruction out of that.

On the comey firing, comey, again under oath, testified that trump told him, comey, to keep investigating anyone on trump's team that may have colluded.  That really should end the issue of obstruction.  Further, after he fired mueller, he told rosenstein, according to rosenstein himself, to continue investigating anyone in trumps team that may have colluded with russia.  I suppose you could make the argument that Trump did not tell them to investigate him personally, but comey, again under oath, told trump he was not under investigation personally.  Comey ""I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren't, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative," Comey wrote.

I am also not sure that mueller is really even actively investigating the obstruction angle.  He certainly could be but he might not be.  If we take as truth that Rosenstein told Trumps lawyers recently that trump was not a target of any investigation, then what do we make of obstruction?  Only trump could be the target of obstruction right?  We have heard nothing at all about anyone else potentially trying to obstruct.  I am not sure how you can have an investigation into obstruction by trump without trump being the target of the investigation.  I also do not see how any additional information about the obstruction could be upcoming.  The scope of the obstruction is very small and it has to have already been investigated thoroughly by now.  

I do believe that one of the reasons that mueller wants to interview trump is to ask him about the comey firing and see if trump is dumb enough to admit something he shouldnt.  I cant see trump being that dumb and I certainly cant see his lawyers letting him say anything close to obstruction.  He will have his narrative down solidly and there really is not any way to prove what was in his heart.

[ScottishHorn 172]

All I know about Mueller is how incompetent he is.  See how he handled the Anthrax case and basically destroyed an innocent man.  

[Pods 7526]

sheeeitlejuice, sheeeitlejuice, sheeeitlejuice

[JimmyJames 12271]

Krutov gets banned and look who re-emerges.

[Anastasis 23393]

Why did krutov get banned?

[Mojo Hand 4580]

Probably because he couldn't stay on topic and talk about anything but himself. 

[Pods 7526]

Kellyanne's husband has some thoughts to share. 

https://lawfareblog.com/terrible-arguments-against-constitutionality-mueller-investigation

The Terrible Arguments Against the Constitutionality of the Mueller Investigation

In an early-morning tweet last week, President Trump took aim once again at Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but with a brand new argument: “The appointment of the Special Councel,” the president typed, “is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!”

The president swiftly fixed the spelling of Mueller’s title, but he stuck with his constitutional claim, in a reissued tweet:

 

 

He didn’t explain what his argument was, or where he got it, but a good guess is that it came from some recent writings by a well-respected conservative legal scholar and co-founder of the Federalist Society, professor Steven Calabresi. Unfortunately for the president, these writings are no more correct than the spelling in his original tweet. And in light of the president’s apparent embrace of Calabresi’s conclusions, it is well worth taking a close look at Calabresi’s argument in support of those conclusions.

Calabresi has made his argument in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, on a Federalist Society teleconference and in a more detailed paper he styles as a “Legal Opinion.” He contends that all of Special Counsel Mueller’s work is unconstitutionally “null and void” because, in Calabresi’s view, Mueller’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2.

The Appointments Clause distinguishes between two classes of executive-branch “officers”—principal officers and inferior officers—and specifies how each may be appointed. As a general rule, the clause says that “Officers of the United States”—principal officers—must be nominated by the president and appointed “with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” At the same time, however, the Appointments Clause allows for a more convenient selection method for “inferior officers”: It goes on to add, “but the Congress may by law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of law, or in the Heads of Departments.”

Support Lawfare

Calabresi argues that Special Counsel Mueller is acting as a principal officer and that, accordingly, Mueller’s appointment violates the Constitution because Mueller was appointed by the acting attorney general, and not by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. In support of this broad point, Calabresi makes first a specific claim and then a more general one.

His specific claim, made at the outset of his “Legal Opinion,” is that “Robert Mueller has behaved like the 96 [sic] U.S. Attorneys who are principal officers of the United States and who must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.” His more general, and overarching, claim is that under Supreme Court case law applying the Appointments Clause, Special Counsel Mueller is a principal officer because “because Mueller does not have a boss who is supervising and directing what he is doing.”

Calabresi’s first point—the illustrative comparison between Mueller and the U.S. attorneys—begins with a badly mistaken premise. Without citing anything at all, he repeatedly assumes, in both his op-ed and his “Legal Opinion” paper, that “Congress has specified that the 96 [sic] U.S. Attorneys are all principal officers who must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.”  (Emphasis mine.)

This assumption is just wrong—uncomplicatedly, flatly wrong. It is true that, typically, the 93 (not 96) U.S. attorneys are presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed. But Congress has established an alternative method of appointment. Title 28 U.S.C. § 546provides that, until the Senate confirms a presidential nominee, U.S. attorney vacancies can be filled for up to 120 days by an appointment made by the attorney general and then indefinitely by local district courts. Such non-presidential, non-Senate-confirmed appointees are, as one court of appeals has put it, “fully-empowered United States Attorneys, … not subordinates assuming the role of ‘Acting’ United States Attorney.” And such fully-empowered, non-presidentially-appointed U.S. attorneys are not all that uncommon. Today, the sitting United States attorneys in two of the most important judicial districts in the country—the Southern and EasternDistricts of New York—were appointed by the judges of those districts under Section 546(d).

And so “the Congress …  by … vest[ing] the Appointment” of U.S. attorneys “in the Courts of law” and “in the Heads of Departments,” obviously recognized that U.S. attorneys are “inferior officers.” But Congress is not the only branch of the government to have reached this conclusion. In 1978, the question was expressly put to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. OLC’s conclusion: U.S. attorneys are inferior officers, because the law “authorizes the Attorney General to direct all U.S. Attorneys in the discharge of their duties.”

Not to be left out, members of the third branch—which has made a lot of these appointments—have also agreed. The Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the point under the Appointments Clause, but in discussing presidential removal power in Myers v. United States, the Supreme Court specifically referred to “a United States attorney” as an example of “an inferior officer.” More recently, in Morrison v. Olson, the high court approvingly noted how “Congress itself has vested the power to make [U.S. attorney] interim appointments in the district courts” under 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), and observed that “[l]ower courts have also upheld [those] interim judicial appointments of United States Attorneys” under the Appointments Clause. These lower courts include two federal courts of appeals, one of which rejected an Appointments Clause challenge to a U.S. attorney who had served under a judicial appointment for more than six years.

Accordingly, there is no serious dispute: U.S. attorneys are inferior officers. So if what Robert Mueller is really doing is, as Calabresi suggests, “behav[ing] like the [93] U.S. Attorneys,” then Calabresi’s argument immediately collapses on itself. Mueller is an inferior officer, just as U.S. attorneys are.

But it is even worse than that for Calabresi’s thesis—Mueller’s Office of Special Counsel appears, on its face, to be inferior in size and authority than many, if not most, U.S. attorney’s offices throughout the nation.

As the president is wont to point out these days, Mueller’s office consists of few more than a dozen lawyers—roughly the size of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming—and the scope of his work is quite narrow. Contrast some of the larger U.S. attorney’s offices—such as that of the court-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. That office comprises roughly 220 lawyers, and the scope of its work is breathtaking—covering, just for starters, “domestic and international terrorism, white collar crime, securities and commodities fraud, public corruption, cybercrime, narcotics and arms trafficking, gang violence, organized crime, and civil rights violations.” If the U.S. attorney who runs that office is an “inferior officer,” then so too is Robert Mueller.

So much for Calabresi’s comparison of the special counsel to U.S. attorneys—but his more general, overarching contention under the Appointments Clause fares just as poorly. He argues that under the Supreme Court’s Appointments Clause precedents, Special Counsel Mueller must be considered a principal officer “because Mueller does not have a boss who is supervising and directing what he is doing.” In making this argument, he generally states the law correctly—but engages in what can only be described as a highly tendentious description of the special counsel’s mandate and work.

Calabresi rightly observes that the best explanation of the Appointment Clause’s meaning may be found in Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the Supreme Court in Edmond v. United States. There, Justice Scalia expressed an understanding of “inferior officers” that dovetails with the 1978 OLC opinion that found U.S. attorneys to be inferior officers:

Generally speaking, the term “inferior officer” connotes a relationship with some higher ranking officer or officers below the President: Whether one is an “inferior” officer depends on whether he has a superior. It is not enough that other officers may be identified who formally maintain a higher rank or possess responsibilities of a greater magnitude. If that were the intention, the Constitution might have used the phrase “lesser officer.” Rather, in the context of a Clause designed to preserve political accountability relative to important Governmental assignments, we think it evident that “inferior officers” are officers whose work is directed and supervised at some level by others who were appointed by Presidential nomination with the advice and consent of the Senate.

From this legal jumping-off point, Calabresi—citing absolutely nothing—goes on to conclude that no principal officer at the Justice Department is “‘supervising and directing’ the work of Robert Mueller.” Calabresi paints Mueller as a rogue prosecutor run amok: He bizarrely accuses Mueller of, among other things, orchestrating “controlled leaks of information to the press designed to embarrass the President and hinder him in the performance of his duties,” “wiretapp[ing] telephone calls covered by Attorney-client [sic] privilege between President Trump and his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen,” and “illegally obtain[ing] a phone log of Cohen’s phone calls.” In support of all these serious charges and other censorious claims, Calabresi cites nothing.

Against this unsupported rhetoric, moreover, there is an actual public record—an extensive one—to cite and review. A record consisting of, among other things, the regulations that govern Mueller's activities; the order under which he was appointed; the correspondence and sworn testimony of the principal officer, Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller; as well as an actual court decision discussing the special counsel’s authority. All these materials make clear that Special Counsel Mueller is an inferior officer, appropriately supervised and directed by Rosenstein. (To be clear, Rosenstein did not appoint Mueller directly pursuant to the regulations but rather incorporated the regulations by reference in his appointment letter, which he issued under his statutory authority under 28 U.S.C. §§509, 510, and 515.)

First, the regulations: They require the acting attorney general to provide “a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated” and to determine “whether to include … additional matters within the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction or assign them elsewhere.” They also provide that the acting attorney general “may request that the Special Counsel provide an explanation for any investigative or prosecutorial step” and that he may veto that action if he concludes that it is “inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices.” And the regulations mandate that Mueller, at the conclusion of his investigation, must provide Acting Attorney General Rosenstein with a report “explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” reached by his office.

If that were not enough, when the Department of Justice promulgated these regulations, it explained that, in any matter handled by a special counsel, “it is intended that ultimate responsibility for the matter and how it is handled will continue to rest with the Attorney General (or the Acting Attorney General if the Attorney General is personally recused in the matter),” and thus, the regulations “explicitly acknowledge the possibility of review of specific decisions reached by the Special Counsel.” In short, the special counsel regulations make crystal clear that Mueller is “directed and supervised” by Rosenstein—that the special counsel does, in fact, have a boss.

Consider next the order appointing Mueller, Rosenstein’s correspondence to Mueller, and Rosenstein’s testimony: The publicly issued appointment order, as well as an internal Justice Department memorandum from Rosenstein to Mueller that has been publicly filed in court in redacted form, make clear that the acting attorney general has complied with his obligation to provide the special counsel “a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated.” Beyond this, the acting attorney general has given congressional testimony about his direction and supervision of the special counsel. In that testimony, Rosenstein swore, among other things, that:

• “I know what [Mueller’s] doing. I’m properly exercising my oversight responsibilities, and so I can assure you that the special counsel is conducting himself consistently with our understanding about the scope of his investigation.”
• “[T]he consultation” with Mueller “is much more detailed than” about simply whether the investigation should be expanded beyond its original scope. “He consults with me about their investigation, both within and without the scope. So I know what they’re authorized to do.”
• Rosenstein and Mueller have “had ongoing discussion about exactly what is within the scope of his investigation. And, to the extent there was any ambiguity about it, he’s received my permission to include those matters within his investigation.”
• Mueller “understands that [he] is a special counsel … not an independent counsel.”
• “I’m accountable for what they’re doing, and I need to know what they’re doing.”
• “[W]e know what’s under investigation.”
• “[W]hatever it may be, I’m responsible for and I know what he’s investigating.”
• “As I said, Congressman, I know what he’s doing. If I felt he was doing something inappropriate, I would take action.”
• “I’m not aware of any impropriety. We do have regulations; the special counsel is subject to all the department’s rules and subject to oversight by the department, including the inspector general. I’m not aware of any violation of those rules by the special counsel employees.”

Rosenstein’s testimony thus confirms that Special Counsel Mueller does have an active principal-officer boss—indeed, it suggests that Mueller is probably being supervised and directed more closely than any of the 93 U.S attorneys from Maryland to Guam.

Beyond this, there is a recent court decision that actually discusses the special counsel’s authority—and it likewise refutes Calabresi’s claim that Mueller has somehow run amok. In United States v. Manafort, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort moved to dismiss the indictment against him, on the ground that the special counsel had exceeded the scope of his appointment order. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia squarely rejected this assertion: Contrary to Calabresi’s claim that “Mueller has without any real supervision by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein … indicted Paul Manafort … on two counts of misconduct having nothing to do with collusion with Russia,” the district judge expressly found that, given Manafort’s extensive financial ties to Russian-backed Ukrainian politicians, Mueller’s investigation and prosecution of Manafort was “an appropriate exercise of the Special Counsel’s authority” under the terms of the appointment order—and that, indeed, “the Special Counsel would have been remiss” not to investigate Manafort.

So not only does Mueller have a boss, and not only is the boss keeping tabs on Mueller, but, according to this judicial decision, Mueller is also faithfully following his boss’s orders.

That disposes of Calabresi’s Appointment Clause contentions, but Calabresi makes one additional constitutional point—and it’s a very, very, very odd one. It is based upon Morrison v. Olson, the 7-1 Supreme Court decision in 1988 that upheld the markedly different, long-expired independent-counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

To conservative lawyers of my generation, Morrison is, to say the least, a deeply unsettling decision, because it upheld the creation of a truly “independent” prosecutor—an official who was exercising purely executive power, the power to prosecute, yet was doing so not only outside the Justice Department but, effectively, outside the entire executive branch. It provoked one of Justice Scalia’s greatest dissents—to my mind, one of the greatest dissents of all time.

The majority in Morrison upheld the independent counsel mechanism against a variety of constitutional attacks—including an Appointments Clause claim and a separation-of-powers claim. It rejected the Appointments Clause claim because four factual circumstances were present: the independent counsel was ultimately removable “for cause” by the attorney general, though unsupervised by him; the independent counsel had “limited duties,” involving merely investigation and prosecution; the counsel was “limited in jurisdiction”; and she was “limited in tenure.” As for the overall separation-of-powers claim, the court held, in the last major section of its opinion, that the independent counsel scheme did not “unduly interfer[e] with the role of the Executive Branch.”

For his part, Justice Scalia dissented vigorously and brilliantly from both holdings. As for the Appointments Clause, presaging his later opinion for the court in Edmond, he concluded that the independent counsel was a principal officer, and not an inferior officer, because she was subordinate to no one in the executive branch. As for the separation-of-powers holding in Morrison, Justice Scalia decried the “ad hoc, standardless” “balancing test” applied by the court. “[H]ow much removal of Presidential power is too much?” he plaintively asked. In the stirring conclusion to his dissent, Justice Scalia declared his preference to “rely upon the judgment” of the people who “constructed our system … and approved it,” when they declared “quite plainly,” in Article II, § 1 of the Constitution, “that ‘[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”

I have already said enough about the Appointments Clause: The special counsel passes muster even under Justice Scalia’s test, which under Edmond is now the law. But on the basis of Morrison, Calabresi launches one further attack, albeit a half-hearted one, on the special counsel: He actually suggests that, in contrast to the independent counsel scheme upheld in Morrison, “[t]he Mueller appointment also violates the final part of [the] Morrison opinion”—the separation-of-powers holding—“because it interferes ‘too much’ with the President’s executive power.”

This is almost too much to bear, because what happened in Morrison was that Congresspassed a statute that took prosecutorial power—purely executive power—away from, and out of, the executive branch. Cue Justice Scalia’s dissent: “the statute before us deprives the President of exclusive control over that quintessentially executive activity” and “[t]he Court does not, and could not possibly, assert that it does not.” “[T]he independent counsel exercises executive power free from the President’s control.” “[T]he independent counsel is not an inferior officer because she is not subordinate to any officer in the Executive Branch (indeed, not even to the President).” Despite all that, the majority in Morrison did not think the old independent counsel law stripped “too much” executive power away from the executive.

Contrast that with the situation here—where not even Justice Scalia would think anypower has been removed from the executive. Here there was no statute imposed by Congress, just a regulation—a regulation promulgated by and within the executive branch. Specifically, a Justice Department regulation promulgated by the attorney general, an officer fireable at will by the president. And what does this regulation do? It simply divides work among lawyers within the Department of Justice—within the executive branch. It surely doesn’t remove any executive power from the executive branch.

And not only that, the special counsel regulations can be unilaterally revoked by the very executive branch that unilaterally created them. Indeed, according to Attorney General Janet Reno when she issued the special counsel regulations in 1999, those regulations aren’t even subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking, because they relate to “matters of agency management or personnel,” and “agency organization, procedure, or practice”—which suggests they could be dispensed with equally unceremoniously as well. In short, not only does the special counsel regulation not take power away from the executive branch, but the internal rearrangement of authority it brings about within that branch could be relatively easily undone by a presidentially removable principal officer. No matter how you cut it, to borrow Justice Scalia’s words, there has been no “removal of Presidential power”—none—let alone too much.

In short, there is no serious argument that Special Counsel Mueller’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause specifically or the separation of powers generally.

*     *     *

A final observation: It isn’t very surprising to see the president tweet a meritless legal position, because, as a non-lawyer, he wouldn’t know the difference between a good one and a bad one. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with lawyers making inventive and novel arguments on behalf of their clients, or on behalf of causes or people they support, if the arguments are well-grounded in law and fact, even if the arguments ultimately turn out to be wrong. But the “constitutional” arguments made against the special counsel do not meet that standard and had little more rigor than the tweet that promoted them. Such a lack of rigor, sadly, has been a disturbing trend in much of the politically charged public discourse about the law lately, and one that lawyers—regardless of their politics—owe a duty to abjure.

[triplehorn 2664]

Trump’s Lawyers Plot Joint Defenses With Others Caught in Mueller Probe

"The president’s personal lawyers have teamed up with attorneys for other individuals embroiled in special counsel Bob Mueller’s probe, multiple sources tell The Daily Beast. For a while, the president’s lawyers even had regular conference calls with other attorneys to discuss the Mueller investigation, according to one source familiar with the calls.

The arrangement is known as a joint defense agreement, and it allows the lawyers to share information—without violating attorney-client privilege. It’s a common strategy when multiple defendants are dealing with the same prosecutor on the same matter."

 

If this includes Manafort and his business associate, ex-Russian military intelligence operator Konstantin Kilimnik, it'll be a whole new twist on collusion.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

 

[atomheartbevo 89409]

1 hour ago, Pods said:

Kellyanne's husband has some thoughts to share. 

https://lawfareblog.com/terrible-arguments-against-constitutionality-mueller-investigation

The Terrible Arguments Against the Constitutionality of the Mueller Investigation

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

In an early-morning tweet last week, President Trump took aim once again at Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but with a brand new argument: “The appointment of the Special Councel,” the president typed, “is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!”

The president swiftly fixed the spelling of Mueller’s title, but he stuck with his constitutional claim, in a reissued tweet:

 

 

He didn’t explain what his argument was, or where he got it, but a good guess is that it came from some recent writings by a well-respected conservative legal scholar and co-founder of the Federalist Society, professor Steven Calabresi. Unfortunately for the president, these writings are no more correct than the spelling in his original tweet. And in light of the president’s apparent embrace of Calabresi’s conclusions, it is well worth taking a close look at Calabresi’s argument in support of those conclusions.

Calabresi has made his argument in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, on a Federalist Society teleconference and in a more detailed paper he styles as a “Legal Opinion.” He contends that all of Special Counsel Mueller’s work is unconstitutionally “null and void” because, in Calabresi’s view, Mueller’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2.

The Appointments Clause distinguishes between two classes of executive-branch “officers”—principal officers and inferior officers—and specifies how each may be appointed. As a general rule, the clause says that “Officers of the United States”—principal officers—must be nominated by the president and appointed “with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” At the same time, however, the Appointments Clause allows for a more convenient selection method for “inferior officers”: It goes on to add, “but the Congress may by law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of law, or in the Heads of Departments.”

Support Lawfare

Calabresi argues that Special Counsel Mueller is acting as a principal officer and that, accordingly, Mueller’s appointment violates the Constitution because Mueller was appointed by the acting attorney general, and not by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. In support of this broad point, Calabresi makes first a specific claim and then a more general one.

His specific claim, made at the outset of his “Legal Opinion,” is that “Robert Mueller has behaved like the 96 [sic] U.S. Attorneys who are principal officers of the United States and who must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.” His more general, and overarching, claim is that under Supreme Court case law applying the Appointments Clause, Special Counsel Mueller is a principal officer because “because Mueller does not have a boss who is supervising and directing what he is doing.”

Calabresi’s first point—the illustrative comparison between Mueller and the U.S. attorneys—begins with a badly mistaken premise. Without citing anything at all, he repeatedly assumes, in both his op-ed and his “Legal Opinion” paper, that “Congress has specified that the 96 [sic] U.S. Attorneys are all principal officers who must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.”  (Emphasis mine.)

This assumption is just wrong—uncomplicatedly, flatly wrong. It is true that, typically, the 93 (not 96) U.S. attorneys are presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed. But Congress has established an alternative method of appointment. Title 28 U.S.C. § 546provides that, until the Senate confirms a presidential nominee, U.S. attorney vacancies can be filled for up to 120 days by an appointment made by the attorney general and then indefinitely by local district courts. Such non-presidential, non-Senate-confirmed appointees are, as one court of appeals has put it, “fully-empowered United States Attorneys, … not subordinates assuming the role of ‘Acting’ United States Attorney.” And such fully-empowered, non-presidentially-appointed U.S. attorneys are not all that uncommon. Today, the sitting United States attorneys in two of the most important judicial districts in the country—the Southern and EasternDistricts of New York—were appointed by the judges of those districts under Section 546(d).

And so “the Congress …  by … vest[ing] the Appointment” of U.S. attorneys “in the Courts of law” and “in the Heads of Departments,” obviously recognized that U.S. attorneys are “inferior officers.” But Congress is not the only branch of the government to have reached this conclusion. In 1978, the question was expressly put to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. OLC’s conclusion: U.S. attorneys are inferior officers, because the law “authorizes the Attorney General to direct all U.S. Attorneys in the discharge of their duties.”

Not to be left out, members of the third branch—which has made a lot of these appointments—have also agreed. The Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the point under the Appointments Clause, but in discussing presidential removal power in Myers v. United States, the Supreme Court specifically referred to “a United States attorney” as an example of “an inferior officer.” More recently, in Morrison v. Olson, the high court approvingly noted how “Congress itself has vested the power to make [U.S. attorney] interim appointments in the district courts” under 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), and observed that “[l]ower courts have also upheld [those] interim judicial appointments of United States Attorneys” under the Appointments Clause. These lower courts include two federal courts of appeals, one of which rejected an Appointments Clause challenge to a U.S. attorney who had served under a judicial appointment for more than six years.

Accordingly, there is no serious dispute: U.S. attorneys are inferior officers. So if what Robert Mueller is really doing is, as Calabresi suggests, “behav[ing] like the [93] U.S. Attorneys,” then Calabresi’s argument immediately collapses on itself. Mueller is an inferior officer, just as U.S. attorneys are.

But it is even worse than that for Calabresi’s thesis—Mueller’s Office of Special Counsel appears, on its face, to be inferior in size and authority than many, if not most, U.S. attorney’s offices throughout the nation.

As the president is wont to point out these days, Mueller’s office consists of few more than a dozen lawyers—roughly the size of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming—and the scope of his work is quite narrow. Contrast some of the larger U.S. attorney’s offices—such as that of the court-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. That office comprises roughly 220 lawyers, and the scope of its work is breathtaking—covering, just for starters, “domestic and international terrorism, white collar crime, securities and commodities fraud, public corruption, cybercrime, narcotics and arms trafficking, gang violence, organized crime, and civil rights violations.” If the U.S. attorney who runs that office is an “inferior officer,” then so too is Robert Mueller.

So much for Calabresi’s comparison of the special counsel to U.S. attorneys—but his more general, overarching contention under the Appointments Clause fares just as poorly. He argues that under the Supreme Court’s Appointments Clause precedents, Special Counsel Mueller must be considered a principal officer “because Mueller does not have a boss who is supervising and directing what he is doing.” In making this argument, he generally states the law correctly—but engages in what can only be described as a highly tendentious description of the special counsel’s mandate and work.

Calabresi rightly observes that the best explanation of the Appointment Clause’s meaning may be found in Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the Supreme Court in Edmond v. United States. There, Justice Scalia expressed an understanding of “inferior officers” that dovetails with the 1978 OLC opinion that found U.S. attorneys to be inferior officers:

Generally speaking, the term “inferior officer” connotes a relationship with some higher ranking officer or officers below the President: Whether one is an “inferior” officer depends on whether he has a superior. It is not enough that other officers may be identified who formally maintain a higher rank or possess responsibilities of a greater magnitude. If that were the intention, the Constitution might have used the phrase “lesser officer.” Rather, in the context of a Clause designed to preserve political accountability relative to important Governmental assignments, we think it evident that “inferior officers” are officers whose work is directed and supervised at some level by others who were appointed by Presidential nomination with the advice and consent of the Senate.

From this legal jumping-off point, Calabresi—citing absolutely nothing—goes on to conclude that no principal officer at the Justice Department is “‘supervising and directing’ the work of Robert Mueller.” Calabresi paints Mueller as a rogue prosecutor run amok: He bizarrely accuses Mueller of, among other things, orchestrating “controlled leaks of information to the press designed to embarrass the President and hinder him in the performance of his duties,” “wiretapp[ing] telephone calls covered by Attorney-client [sic] privilege between President Trump and his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen,” and “illegally obtain[ing] a phone log of Cohen’s phone calls.” In support of all these serious charges and other censorious claims, Calabresi cites nothing.

Against this unsupported rhetoric, moreover, there is an actual public record—an extensive one—to cite and review. A record consisting of, among other things, the regulations that govern Mueller's activities; the order under which he was appointed; the correspondence and sworn testimony of the principal officer, Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller; as well as an actual court decision discussing the special counsel’s authority. All these materials make clear that Special Counsel Mueller is an inferior officer, appropriately supervised and directed by Rosenstein. (To be clear, Rosenstein did not appoint Mueller directly pursuant to the regulations but rather incorporated the regulations by reference in his appointment letter, which he issued under his statutory authority under 28 U.S.C. §§509, 510, and 515.)

First, the regulations: They require the acting attorney general to provide “a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated” and to determine “whether to include … additional matters within the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction or assign them elsewhere.” They also provide that the acting attorney general “may request that the Special Counsel provide an explanation for any investigative or prosecutorial step” and that he may veto that action if he concludes that it is “inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices.” And the regulations mandate that Mueller, at the conclusion of his investigation, must provide Acting Attorney General Rosenstein with a report “explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” reached by his office.

If that were not enough, when the Department of Justice promulgated these regulations, it explained that, in any matter handled by a special counsel, “it is intended that ultimate responsibility for the matter and how it is handled will continue to rest with the Attorney General (or the Acting Attorney General if the Attorney General is personally recused in the matter),” and thus, the regulations “explicitly acknowledge the possibility of review of specific decisions reached by the Special Counsel.” In short, the special counsel regulations make crystal clear that Mueller is “directed and supervised” by Rosenstein—that the special counsel does, in fact, have a boss.

Consider next the order appointing Mueller, Rosenstein’s correspondence to Mueller, and Rosenstein’s testimony: The publicly issued appointment order, as well as an internal Justice Department memorandum from Rosenstein to Mueller that has been publicly filed in court in redacted form, make clear that the acting attorney general has complied with his obligation to provide the special counsel “a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated.” Beyond this, the acting attorney general has given congressional testimony about his direction and supervision of the special counsel. In that testimony, Rosenstein swore, among other things, that:

• “I know what [Mueller’s] doing. I’m properly exercising my oversight responsibilities, and so I can assure you that the special counsel is conducting himself consistently with our understanding about the scope of his investigation.”
• “[T]he consultation” with Mueller “is much more detailed than” about simply whether the investigation should be expanded beyond its original scope. “He consults with me about their investigation, both within and without the scope. So I know what they’re authorized to do.”
• Rosenstein and Mueller have “had ongoing discussion about exactly what is within the scope of his investigation. And, to the extent there was any ambiguity about it, he’s received my permission to include those matters within his investigation.”
• Mueller “understands that [he] is a special counsel … not an independent counsel.”
• “I’m accountable for what they’re doing, and I need to know what they’re doing.”
• “[W]e know what’s under investigation.”
• “[W]hatever it may be, I’m responsible for and I know what he’s investigating.”
• “As I said, Congressman, I know what he’s doing. If I felt he was doing something inappropriate, I would take action.”
• “I’m not aware of any impropriety. We do have regulations; the special counsel is subject to all the department’s rules and subject to oversight by the department, including the inspector general. I’m not aware of any violation of those rules by the special counsel employees.”

Rosenstein’s testimony thus confirms that Special Counsel Mueller does have an active principal-officer boss—indeed, it suggests that Mueller is probably being supervised and directed more closely than any of the 93 U.S attorneys from Maryland to Guam.

Beyond this, there is a recent court decision that actually discusses the special counsel’s authority—and it likewise refutes Calabresi’s claim that Mueller has somehow run amok. In United States v. Manafort, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort moved to dismiss the indictment against him, on the ground that the special counsel had exceeded the scope of his appointment order. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia squarely rejected this assertion: Contrary to Calabresi’s claim that “Mueller has without any real supervision by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein … indicted Paul Manafort … on two counts of misconduct having nothing to do with collusion with Russia,” the district judge expressly found that, given Manafort’s extensive financial ties to Russian-backed Ukrainian politicians, Mueller’s investigation and prosecution of Manafort was “an appropriate exercise of the Special Counsel’s authority” under the terms of the appointment order—and that, indeed, “the Special Counsel would have been remiss” not to investigate Manafort.

So not only does Mueller have a boss, and not only is the boss keeping tabs on Mueller, but, according to this judicial decision, Mueller is also faithfully following his boss’s orders.

That disposes of Calabresi’s Appointment Clause contentions, but Calabresi makes one additional constitutional point—and it’s a very, very, very odd one. It is based upon Morrison v. Olson, the 7-1 Supreme Court decision in 1988 that upheld the markedly different, long-expired independent-counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

To conservative lawyers of my generation, Morrison is, to say the least, a deeply unsettling decision, because it upheld the creation of a truly “independent” prosecutor—an official who was exercising purely executive power, the power to prosecute, yet was doing so not only outside the Justice Department but, effectively, outside the entire executive branch. It provoked one of Justice Scalia’s greatest dissents—to my mind, one of the greatest dissents of all time.

The majority in Morrison upheld the independent counsel mechanism against a variety of constitutional attacks—including an Appointments Clause claim and a separation-of-powers claim. It rejected the Appointments Clause claim because four factual circumstances were present: the independent counsel was ultimately removable “for cause” by the attorney general, though unsupervised by him; the independent counsel had “limited duties,” involving merely investigation and prosecution; the counsel was “limited in jurisdiction”; and she was “limited in tenure.” As for the overall separation-of-powers claim, the court held, in the last major section of its opinion, that the independent counsel scheme did not “unduly interfer[e] with the role of the Executive Branch.”

For his part, Justice Scalia dissented vigorously and brilliantly from both holdings. As for the Appointments Clause, presaging his later opinion for the court in Edmond, he concluded that the independent counsel was a principal officer, and not an inferior officer, because she was subordinate to no one in the executive branch. As for the separation-of-powers holding in Morrison, Justice Scalia decried the “ad hoc, standardless” “balancing test” applied by the court. “[H]ow much removal of Presidential power is too much?” he plaintively asked. In the stirring conclusion to his dissent, Justice Scalia declared his preference to “rely upon the judgment” of the people who “constructed our system … and approved it,” when they declared “quite plainly,” in Article II, § 1 of the Constitution, “that ‘[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”

I have already said enough about the Appointments Clause: The special counsel passes muster even under Justice Scalia’s test, which under Edmond is now the law. But on the basis of Morrison, Calabresi launches one further attack, albeit a half-hearted one, on the special counsel: He actually suggests that, in contrast to the independent counsel scheme upheld in Morrison, “[t]he Mueller appointment also violates the final part of [the] Morrison opinion”—the separation-of-powers holding—“because it interferes ‘too much’ with the President’s executive power.”

This is almost too much to bear, because what happened in Morrison was that Congresspassed a statute that took prosecutorial power—purely executive power—away from, and out of, the executive branch. Cue Justice Scalia’s dissent: “the statute before us deprives the President of exclusive control over that quintessentially executive activity” and “[t]he Court does not, and could not possibly, assert that it does not.” “[T]he independent counsel exercises executive power free from the President’s control.” “[T]he independent counsel is not an inferior officer because she is not subordinate to any officer in the Executive Branch (indeed, not even to the President).” Despite all that, the majority in Morrison did not think the old independent counsel law stripped “too much” executive power away from the executive.

Contrast that with the situation here—where not even Justice Scalia would think anypower has been removed from the executive. Here there was no statute imposed by Congress, just a regulation—a regulation promulgated by and within the executive branch. Specifically, a Justice Department regulation promulgated by the attorney general, an officer fireable at will by the president. And what does this regulation do? It simply divides work among lawyers within the Department of Justice—within the executive branch. It surely doesn’t remove any executive power from the executive branch.

And not only that, the special counsel regulations can be unilaterally revoked by the very executive branch that unilaterally created them. Indeed, according to Attorney General Janet Reno when she issued the special counsel regulations in 1999, those regulations aren’t even subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking, because they relate to “matters of agency management or personnel,” and “agency organization, procedure, or practice”—which suggests they could be dispensed with equally unceremoniously as well. In short, not only does the special counsel regulation not take power away from the executive branch, but the internal rearrangement of authority it brings about within that branch could be relatively easily undone by a presidentially removable principal officer. No matter how you cut it, to borrow Justice Scalia’s words, there has been no “removal of Presidential power”—none—let alone too much.

In short, there is no serious argument that Special Counsel Mueller’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause specifically or the separation of powers generally.

*     *     *

A final observation: It isn’t very surprising to see the president tweet a meritless legal position, because, as a non-lawyer, he wouldn’t know the difference between a good one and a bad one. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with lawyers making inventive and novel arguments on behalf of their clients, or on behalf of causes or people they support, if the arguments are well-grounded in law and fact, even if the arguments ultimately turn out to be wrong. But the “constitutional” arguments made against the special counsel do not meet that standard and had little more rigor than the tweet that promoted them. Such a lack of rigor, sadly, has been a disturbing trend in much of the politically charged public discourse about the law lately, and one that lawyers—regardless of their politics—owe a duty to abjure.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I’m amazed Trump hasn’t fired her for her husband’s online posting. 

[shnsajax 3589]

I’m guessing Kelly refused to sign the non-disclosure.

[Chad Fuck 17557]

 

The poorly educated LOVE him!

[VRHorn 718]

8 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

One would think that here, of all places, this would resonate with the Trumpkins. I'm guessing not, though.

[yaqdum 182]

8 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

college grad men: 60% yes, 33% no
college grad women: 53% yes, 27% no

20% of college grad women needed to have their nails done?

[GW Hayduke 1952]

I suspect this is a reflection of critical thinking skills along with the ability to differentiate between news and opinion and the ability to gauge the differences in quality journalism. I would be interested in someone taking a look at the media consumption habits of these different groups.

[atomheartbevo 89409]

1 hour ago, Chad Fuck said:

The poorly educated LOVE him!

Reflected in the love that TexAgs and Free Republic have for him.  

[brown water 3761]

2 hours ago, yaqdum said:

college grad men: 60% yes, 33% no
college grad women: 53% yes, 27% no

20% of college grad women needed to have their nails done?

And that is a better choice than 27% of them made. 

[Dertyberd 394]

19 hours ago, triplehorn said:

 

 

 "maybe at a low level" = so corrupted by Russian money and influence as not to be 'free and fair.'  wait for it.

"Just the coffee boy and folks that were on the campaign a very short time".  Fucking hell, I can't wait for the trials to start and the evidence come out.  Sure there will be the 46 percent that will never believe the facts, but the folks who aren't paying attention are going to have their collective minds blown when we start hearing Trump campaign officials fess up.  

Edited June 12, 2018 by Dertyberd

[Pescado_Rojo 19331]

25 minutes ago, brown water said:

And that is a better choice than 27% of them made. 

I just assume 27% of them are counting nail tech school as college. 

[Antidean 200]

1 hour ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

I just assume 27% of them are counting nail tech school as college. 

Barber college

[Chad Fuck 17557]

4 minutes ago, Antidean said:

Barber college

 

[Tuco 5076]

4 hours ago, yaqdum said:

college grad men: 60% yes, 33% no
college grad women: 53% yes, 27% no

20% of college grad women needed to have their nails done?

Just to be clear, that's white men and women.

I wanted to look at the poll to see the precise wording, and it was pretty close to what the tweet implied.

http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/today/z_creative/18416NBCWSJJunePoll6718Release.pdf

The question was Q22, and it was simply which comes closest to your point of view: "It's time to end the investigation" (36%) or "The investigation should continue" (46%).

What it's interesting is that there is a more positive opinion on Mueller himself:

Q21: How much confidence...Mueller to conduct a fair and impartial investigation? "A great deal of confidence" (30%), "Some confidence" (23%), "Only a little confidence" (18%), "No confidence at all" (22%).  So, 53% of respondents have some confidence or better in it's impartiality, but only 46% or more believe it should continue.

Q6: This one really surprised me: The FBI has a 50/18 pos/neg rating.  Mueller has a 30/19 pos/neg rating.  The Trump attack has done little to hurt the FBI rating, but it seems like a lot of people don't really have an opinion on Mueller one way or the other.   It's actually become slightly more positive over last few months, but likely just converting the "don't know" into positives.

QF2: 23% of respondents were retired.  30% were "professional, manager", while only 17% "white collar worker" and 17% "blue collar worker."

 

 

 

 

 

[Biff Tannen 45491]

I'm shocked that the dumbs have been taken in by dotus' carnival barking.  Shocked I tell you.

[TwiceHorn 31263]

20 minutes ago, Tuco said:

Just to be clear, that's white men and women.

I wanted to look at the poll to see the precise wording, and it was pretty close to what the tweet implied.

http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/today/z_creative/18416NBCWSJJunePoll6718Release.pdf

The question was Q22, and it was simply which comes closest to your point of view: "It's time to end the investigation" (36%) or "The investigation should continue" (46%).

What it's interesting is that there is a more positive opinion on Mueller himself:

Q21: How much confidence...Mueller to conduct a fair and impartial investigation? "A great deal of confidence" (30%), "Some confidence" (23%), "Only a little confidence" (18%), "No confidence at all" (22%).  So, 53% of respondents have some confidence or better in it's impartiality, but only 46% or more believe it should continue.

Q6: This one really surprised me: The FBI has a 50/18 pos/neg rating.  Mueller has a 30/19 pos/neg rating.  The Trump attack has done little to hurt the FBI rating, but it seems like a lot of people don't really have an opinion on Mueller one way or the other.   It's actually become slightly more positive over last few months, but likely just converting the "don't know" into positives.

QF2: 23% of respondents were retired.  30% were "professional, manager", while only 17% "white collar worker" and 17% "blue collar worker."

 

 

 

 

 

The FBI is on afternoon TV a lot.  Mueller isn't.

[Pescado_Rojo 19331]

25 minutes ago, Tuco said:

Just to be clear, that's white men and women.

I wanted to look at the poll to see the precise wording, and it was pretty close to what the tweet implied.

http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/today/z_creative/18416NBCWSJJunePoll6718Release.pdf

The question was Q22, and it was simply which comes closest to your point of view: "It's time to end the investigation" (36%) or "The investigation should continue" (46%).

What it's interesting is that there is a more positive opinion on Mueller himself:

Q21: How much confidence...Mueller to conduct a fair and impartial investigation? "A great deal of confidence" (30%), "Some confidence" (23%), "Only a little confidence" (18%), "No confidence at all" (22%).  So, 53% of respondents have some confidence or better in it's impartiality, but only 46% or more believe it should continue.

Q6: This one really surprised me: The FBI has a 50/18 pos/neg rating.  Mueller has a 30/19 pos/neg rating.  The Trump attack has done little to hurt the FBI rating, but it seems like a lot of people don't really have an opinion on Mueller one way or the other.   It's actually become slightly more positive over last few months, but likely just converting the "don't know" into positives.

QF2: 23% of respondents were retired.  30% were "professional, manager", while only 17% "white collar worker" and 17% "blue collar worker."

 

 

 

 

 

I imagine there's a good portion of people who are still oblivious to the greater world around them (*cough* Mrs Rojo *cough*)...who only turn on the local news to catch the weather and maybe sports if at all. I'm sure what they know about the Mueller investigation would fill the back of a business card. People like that hear "Mueller Investigation" and cluck their tongue and say "oh, that's just politics". 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Special counsel Robert Mueller said Tuesday that election meddling operations like those conducted by Russia during the 2016 presidential election are still occurring.

"Uncharged individuals and entities" are still engaging in operations similar to those charged in a case involving 13 Russian nationals and three entities accused of illegally interfering in U.S. politics, Mueller said.

He made the claim in a court filing that asked a judge to grant the special counsel's request to protect evidence in that case.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/mueller-warns-that-election-politics-meddling-by-foreigners-is-still-happening.html