Sunday, March 24, 2019

The Big Obstruction Lie

Now that Mueller has cleared Trump on collusion Democrats and their stooges in the #FakeNews media are saying that Mueller didn't exonerate Trump on obstruction.

The first problem with that is that that's not how our justice system works.  Trump doesn't need to prove he's innocent; rather in America people are innocent until proven guilty.

The way an honest prosecutor works is that he investigates the evidence and if he believes that the evidence is sufficient to show beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed he will indict and then prosecute the alleged offender.

However if he doesn't find sufficient evidence he simply drops the matter. He does not impugn the person he was investigating by effectively declaring that that person was guilty but he, the prosecutor, just can't prove it.

Now Mueller has shown extreme antiTrump bias throughout this proceeding from hiring almost all Democrat partisans as his lawyers to allowing leak after leak which implied that Trump was guilty.

Hence we have no reason to believe that if Mueller thought he had anything like a viable case against Trump for obstruction he would have either charged him or said so.  But that's not what he did. Rather he basically said "I don't believe I could convince a jury but hint hint wink wink nudge nudge that doesn't mean he's innocent.".

That way he's not in danger of being charged with lying but he throws his Democrat buddies a bone.

But just what has Trump done that Democrats are saying might be obstruction?

Well the first thing they point to is that Trump fired Comey.  But if we take a stroll down memory lane we see that's absurd for a number of reasons.

First Trump had a perfectly good reason to fire Comey; Comey was attacking Trump.  Comey had told Trump that he, Trump, wasn't under investigation.  But when Trump told the world that Comey refused to confirm it. In fact in spite of lots of #FakeNews stories which basically called Trump a liar Comey remained silent.

He did so for purely partisan political reasons.  After all if Trump wasn't under investigation it would be the duty of the head of the FBI to contradict rumors that were saying he was under investigation.  When put under oath Comey admitted that Trump was telling the truth.

The point is that no president should have to tolerate a subordinate who was actively working against him for partisan reasons.  Hence Trump had a very good reason to fire Comey completely unrelated to any attempt to obstruct justice.

Also obstruction requires criminal intent.  Now that we all know that Trump didn't collude with Russia we also know that Trump would have no interest in obstructing an investigation into nonexistent collusion and hence no criminal intent.

Finally note that Hillary and other Democrats had been calling for Comey to be fired because of his handling of the investigation into her illegal use of a private email server for government business.  So if Trump was obstructing justice then so were all those Democrats.

Another example that Democrats use is Trump's threatening to fire Mueller.  But once again since Trump knew he was innocent he had nothing to fear from an honest investigation by Mueller and hence couldn't have criminal intent.  Even more importantly Trump didn't fire Mueller.  To say that a President can't speak out when he's being unfairly maligned by an illegal investigation is absurd.

We know that Bill Clinton was guilty of lying under oath and was guilty. Yet Democrats viciously attacked the special prosecutor who was investigating him. If Trump verbally expressing disdain for Mueller's ham fisted and baseless investigation is obstruction then every Democrat politician is guilty of obstructing Ken Starr.

Then there's the Flynn case. Flynn is an American hero. He was ambushed by the FBI; what he thought was a friendly meeting was in fact an interrogation.  But we now know that the FBI agents who interrogated him didn't think he'd lied.

While it's true that Flynn plead guilty that happened only after the government basically bankrupted him by using the deep pockets of the Federal government to force Flynn to spend most of his savings on lawyers.

Now Trump asked Comey if he could go easy on Flynn since the only crime that Flynn was accused of was lying to the FBI, what he supposedly lied about was not in fact a crime.

First thing to note is Trump asked; Trump didn't tell.

Second thing to note is that Comey basically said no and Trump didn't force the matter in any way.

Third thing to note is that Comey had let Hillary off the hook for committing real crimes so he had a reputation for leniency.

If an American President can't suggest leniency for a man who has served his country in the military nearly his whole life and who was a hero then we're in a sad state.

The reality is simple we have every reason to believe that if Mueller had enough evidence to convince a jury that Trump had obstructed justice he would have said so.  But he didn't

And in America people don't have to be exonerated when they haven't been accused of a crime; by not indicting Trump for obstruction Mueller was avoiding accusing him of a crime.

That Democrats want Trump to be guilty doesn't mean that Trump has to prove his innocence; that's what fascist states do.  Rather without evidence that he did commit a crime it's up to the Democrat to acknowledge that he doesn't need exoneration.

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