Month: May 2019

by digby

Trump reveals he has absolutely no clue how impeachment works, says, “I can’t imagine the courts allowing it.” (The courts have nothing to do with impeachment, which is the domain of Congress.) pic.twitter.com/EUCI688QD7

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 30, 2019

“I don’t see how they can because they’re possibly allowed, although I can’t imagine the courts allowing it. I’ve never gone into it. I never thought that would even be possible to be using that word. To me, it’s a dirty word — the word impeach. It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word.” 

Circling back to whether he thought he would be impeached, he told reporters, “I don’t think so, because there was no crime.” 

He returned to a flawed argument he and his backers have long put forth to dismiss the threat of Trump’s impeachment. 

“You know, it’s high crimes and, not with — or — it’s high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said. “There was no high crime and there was no misdemeanor. So how do you impeach based on that?”

That wasn’t the only demonstration of his very stable genius understanding of the Constitution:

TRUMP: “Some day you ought to read a thing called Article 2. Read Article 2. Which gives the president powers that you wouldn’t believe. But I don’t even have to rely on Article 2. There was no crime.” pic.twitter.com/t0xeta8R7A

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 30, 2019

He was very upset about Robert Mueller this morning. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it almost seems like he doesn’t really want to be impeached after all.

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The gravedigger of democracy is now throwing dirt on the coffin

by digby

You cannot get any more malevolently partisan than this:

The Senate will not vote on any legislation to protect US elections from foreign interference, a Republican committee chair said, despite the consensus of the intelligence community that Russia will once again seek to hack election systems and manipulate American voters in 2020.

The reason, said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Wednesday, is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has decided not to bring any election security bills to the floor for a vote. Blunt’s remark occurred during a hearing of the Rules and Administration Committee, which has oversight of election administration. When Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Blunt, the chairman, whether he was planning mark-ups of any of the several election security bills pending before the committee, Blunt responded that it would be fruitless to advance legislation that McConnell would not allow to come up for a vote.

“I don’t see any likelihood that those bills would get to the floor if we marked them up,” Blunt said. After prodding from Durbin, Blunt explained, “I think the majority leader just is of the view that this debate reaches no conclusion.”

Actually, he can top that:

Mitch McConnell, who blocked Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick in 2016, during that year’s presidential campaign, said he’d be fine helping to confirm Donald Trump’s choice if an opening were to occur on the nation’s high court in the 2020 election cycle.

“Uh, we’d fill it,” the Senate majority leader from Kentucky responded with a wry smile Tuesday when asked about such a scenario during city chamber lunch in Paducah.

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Phishing for Gynecology


by tristero

From The Guardian:

A popular women’s health and fertility app sows doubt about birth control, features claims from medical advisers who are not licensed to practice in the US, and is funded and led by anti-abortion, anti-gay Catholic campaigners, a Guardian investigation has found. 

The Femm app, which collects personal information about sex and menstruation from users, has been downloaded more than 400,000 times since its launch in 2015, according to developers. It has users in the US, the EU, Africa and Latin America, its operating company claims. 

Two of the app’s medical advisers are not licensed to practice in the US and are also closely tied to a Catholic university in Santiago, Chile, where access to abortion remains severely restricted. 

Femm receives much of its income from private donors including the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a charity backed almost exclusively by Sean Fieler, a wealthy Catholic hedge-funder based in New York. 

Fieler’s foundation has long supported organizations – and politicians such as the vice-president, Mike Pence – that oppose birth control and abortion. Fieler has criticized Republicans for failing to outlaw abortion, calling their reticence “the tyranny of moderation” in a recent editorial. 

The Chiaroscuro Foundation, with Fieler as its chairman and main backer, provided $1.79m to the developers of the Femm app over the last three years, according to IRS statements. Fieler also sits on the board of directors for the Femm Foundation, a not-for-profit which operates the app. 

The Femm app does not readily disclose the philosophy of its funders or leaders, and markets itself as a way to “avoid or achieve pregnancy”. 

Other fertility apps have been criticized for monetizing intimate data, sharing data with third parties and lack of privacy protections. Femm has not been accused of such behaviour, but appears to be the first ideologically aligned fertility app. 

The Femm app’s literature sows doubt about the safety and efficacy of hormonal birth control, asserting that it may be deleterious to a woman’s health and that a safer, “natural” way for women to avoid pregnancy is to learn their cycles.

The nausea this cynical tactic induces is mixed with serious alarm.

Femm merely got exposed. There surely are many, many more apps and online initiatives out there collecting information purely for ideological purposes. And it is only a matter of time before shaming, blackmail, extortion, or worse becomes a major problem. And not just about reproductive tactics, but about anything that thoroughly decent people would want to keep private and only share with trusted others.

What should people do about on-line death threats?
by Spocko

In this piece about the threats that AOC gets, she tweets about the “anonymous” threats that they get.

Yep. Our offices are flooded with bigoted calls too – so much so that we have to put energy into searching for actual constituents.

We forward all the threats to Capitol Police to build files. For all those who think your bigoted calls + digital threats are anonymous: Enjoy! https://t.co/Tw0LWnpmDh

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 1, 2019

So, the Capitol Police are building files. Great. What happens next? We often hear about how the Secret Service goes and has a “talk” with people who make threats to the President or other high-ranking politicians. Are AOC and IIhar Omar getting help from the Secret Service or FBI? If so, I’d like to read about people who have been arrested, tried and convicted. People need to read about those stories. These people can easily be caught they not criminal cyber masterminds. The issue is the will, the resources and the education of the public about what is threatening speech and appropriate responses.

They need to hear stories about people like Patrick W. Carlineo, 55, of Addison New York who called Omar’s D.C. office on March 21 and threatened to shoot and kill the congresswoman.

According to a criminal complaint and affidavit, Carlineo, of Addison, New York, was arrested after he made a call on March 21 to the representative’s office in Washington, D.C. During the call, he said, “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a fucking terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her fucking skull,” CNN reported. 

Upon being interviewed by the FBI, Carlineo denied he threatened Omar’s life, claiming that he actually said, “If our forefathers were still alive, they’d put a bullet in her head.” However, after FBI agents reminded Carlineo that they had tapes of the phone call and that lying to the FBI is itself a federal crime, he backtracked and said he didn’t remember what he said in the heat of the moment.

He faces a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. He was released from prison on May 3. The conditions of his release include home detention with electronic monitoring and a mental health assessment, treatment.

Law enforcement had executed a search warrant on April 5 and confiscated six weapons including a loaded shotgun. He set to be due back in court on June 7.

For a long time I’ve been thinking about how poorly we deal with on-line threats. Especially to women and especially from men with guns.

I think an organization needs to step in to help people (especially women) who get threatened online. There are groups that defend speech, but as I have pointed out again and again, threatening speech is not protected speech.

I know there are groups that take on this task. Like American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence, Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP), The Center for Survivor Agency and Justice  I’m sure some groups already help their members. But perhaps there needs to be a coalition of groups to work on this from multiple angles.
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Does there need to be a new group? If I were to put this together I would include

• Women who have gone through this entire process. I’ve learned from my friends in the Gun Violence Prevention movement, “Listen to Survivors!”
• Experts in computer tracking, surveillance and security.
• Experts on free speech
• Experts in domestic violence cases.
• Private investigators
• Law enforcement from multiple states
• Former prosecutors. 
• Personal injury lawyers for civil suits.
  Corporate HR lawyers who understand how a corporate brand can be damaged when employees are caught making death threats.
  First Amendment lawyers they know what is protected and what isn’t, and can prepare for the typical excuses
• Social media and media experts
• Rich backers for seed money (I’m thinking George Soros, since he is already accused of funding everything, and he already prepared to deal with people who hate him.)

Groups that I think could be involved include:
Planned Parenthood, since they deal with threats every day and have a smart social media team
Everytown For Gun Safety, because threats often come from men with guns, they can address the use of Extreme Risk Protection Laws in states where they exists and then the need for them where they don’t.
Southern Poverty Law Center, for their understanding of where the hate comes from. And importantly, they have a history of legal cases that defund the people and groups who have spread hate speech.

One of the reasons that I focus on civil cases is that I want cases that would be MONEY MAKERS for lawyers. Yes, that’s right. I think that if the threat comes from someone who has the assets, there should be financial consequence to that person. Then, if the case is won, the individual can donate some of the money to the organization that provided the help. This can fund cases of threats from people who don’t have assets.

PART II Goals of the Threat Group:

Identify the people who are making the threats (if they are anonymous)

Determine the threat level to see what lines it does or does not cross.

Develop methods and strategies to address the case and deal with the people making the threats in an effective way that stop the threats and changes the behavior to reduce future threats.  

The Steps For Threat Team:

Deescalate:
 As I wrote in my piece: What to do when a Trump supporter threatens you, I’m a big believer in giving the perpetrator a chance to apologize, make amends and then walk away.

 This is good for a couple of reasons. First, it gives them a second chance and an opportunity to clarify.  If they don’t, and state their intent to cause harm, this provides additional leverage if the case comes to court as a criminal case. Establishing intent is an important because of Elonis V. Facebook)

Second, if you DON’T want to go to court, but you have established intent enough for a criminal case, it strengthens a civil case and other actions.

Third, I know how the right wing loves to use processes designed to protect people from threats as a club against people. We already see this when the right wing using Facebook’s Terms and Conditions and Community standards to block comments and get people kicked off of Facebook.

Not everyone wants to pursue criminal actions, sometimes alerting the perpetrator that you know who they are and will reveal more if they don’t stop is enough. This step, showing the perpetrator that you have the resources and a plan to stand up to them might be enough.

However much I want to go into prosecutor mode,  I have to remember to put the survivor and their needs first.  It is important to listen to the the person threatened when deciding next steps. Because as I know, bullies don’t always back down so….

Prepare to take evidence of their threatening actions to their employers if necessary. (This is where the HR corporate lawyers advice comes in. Most corporations have codes of conduct that, while not rising to the level of a criminal offense, would be a violation of a corporate policy)

Patrick W. Carlineo Jr.’s home. Probably not a lot of  assets to seize there.

Look to ways to condemn these actions from a group and in a manner that they care about.
Who are the sources of societal respect they crave? Do they consider themselves a Christian? Can the head of the Church be alerted?

Are there women in their lives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, daughters etc. that would be appalled by their threats?

Are they a proud member of a school, university, professional society, sports team, community group?

If there are no moderating entities (or entities that encourage and condone this) go for the wallet on those who have money:

In the era of Trump, it is necessary to send a message to nasty rich people who threaten others. (see Gretchen Carlson vs. Roger Ailes for $20 million. Bill O’Reilly vs 6 women for $45 million)

On one hand winning sexual harassment cases puts the fear of financial ruin into people who do it, but also, it puts the dollar signs in the eyes of the people who wouldn’t take on the case if there wasn’t a financial reward at the end of the case. Some people only get serious and take action if there is a financial penalty or reward. This is something even market based libertarians can understand.

Death threats are deplorable and when they rise to the level of a criminal act that needs to be addressed as such. The people who push threats in a broader way are skirting the law with their vague speech. What they are saying is obvious to most reasonable people, but because of a lack of resources and a method to address it, the threateners keep getting away with it.

Some people have been given a chance over and over again to stop with threatening speech yet they continue. Threatening speech is not protected speech and when people cross the line, there needs to be consequences.

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The birds are not Hitchcock’s
by Tom Sullivan

The alarm sounded weeks ago when a U.N. report warned 1 million of the estimated 8 million plant and animal species on Earth risk extinction from human activities. Researchers see declines “at rates unprecedented in human history.”

Hundreds of tufted puffins washed up dead in Alaska’a Pribilof Islands in October 2016. Residents of St. Paul’s Island who found some alive reported they were “emaciated, sick, and unable to fly.” Researchers estimated between 3,150 and 8,800 puffins died in the last months of 2016. It was another of the mass-mortality events becoming more common.

The retreat of sea ice from the Bering Sea may be to blame, writes The Atlantic’s Ed Yong:

The ice sheets create a layer of super-cold water called the “cold pool,” which sits at the bottom of the Bering Sea. Pollock, cod, and other fish like to congregate in large numbers at the edges of this pool, providing excellent hunting grounds for puffins and other sea birds. When the cold pool doesn’t form, as has been in the case in recent years, the fish spread out over larger distances, and are harder to catch.

And when they are caught, they’re worth less. In the warmer waters, the plankton have shifted toward smaller and less energy-rich species, and the fish that eat those plankton have become similarly thinner in calories. Fish-eating birds, such as puffins, “are going from Clif Bars to rice cakes,” Parrish says. “They have to work much harder to get the same energy content. And this is happening over thousands of square kilometers of ocean, so it’s not like they can say, ‘Oh, there’s no Clif Bars here, so I’ll go to the next grocery store.’”

The birds typically molt between August and October. Individuals that cannot find enough food to replace their feathers will not survive.

It’s no coincidence that most of the tufted puffins that washed up during St. Paul’s mass-mortality event were in the middle of molting. At a time when they were most in need of food, and least able to get it, the dwindling sea ice forced them to travel farther afield for sparse, energy-poor scraps. “In short, climate change causes seabird starvation,” says Melanie Smith, the conservation director for Audubon Alaska. “It’s not the only factor at play, but it is the common thread among similar events.”

Gray whales are washing up dead on the west coast. A ninth washed up about the time the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released its report in early May. Of the eight others discovered since March, three had died from collisions with ships. The rest died of malnutrition.

Four dead whales have washed up dead this season in Alaska. Discovered on the Kenai Peninsula, the latest is “a small, super skinny whale,” says pathologist Kathy Burek Huntington of Alaska Veterinary Pathology Services:

NOAA says that over the past 18 years, Alaska typically sees up to three gray whale strandings from January 1 through the end of May, though in the year 2000, there were 18.

The Alaska whales bring the total dead gray whales from Mexico to Alaska to more than 60, a near-record number.

Dead whale found near Clam Gulch on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula (NOAA Photo).

John Calambokidis, founder of the Cascadia Research in Olympia, Washington, tells NPR’s “Here and Now” most of the whale deaths are from starvation:

He gives two reasons for this lack of fat reserve in some of their bodies: an increasing gray whale population — their population is now estimated at 27,000 — and an inadequate food supply.

Before migration begins, most gray whales feed on tiny, bottom-dwelling crustaceans called amphipods in Arctic waters near Alaska — but scientists believe there might not be enough prey to get them fat enough for their long journey south.

A warming arctic is altering food supplies and availability. Shifting their feeding to coastal areas puts whales at risk from boat collisions and other human activities.

Such events add up slowly, ominously, like crows gathering unseen behind Tippi Hedren. We are so busy looking in other directions, we don’t notice until the threat is in our faces.

Or we are so moronically fixated on making money, we are out rebranding sources of global warming as “molecules of U.S. freedom” and “freedom gas” as the planet slowly dies. Really, doesn’t it make you want to see climate-change deniers meet a fate like that of the corporate lawyer sent to inspect Jurassic Park?

Fox goes off message

by digby

Bret Baier on Fox after Mueller’s newser: “This was not, as the president says time and time again, no collusion, no obstruction … It was not anywhere as clear-cut as Attorney General Bill Barr— in fact, it was almost exactly the opposite: not clear-cut.” pic.twitter.com/aBMcvfuxEV

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 29, 2019

Somehow I don’t think Hannity, Tucker,Ingraham or Dobs will see it that way…

Still, it matters.

Question 

by tristero

What prevents Robert Mueller from simply saying:

“We couldn’t fully prove Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russians during the election, but we came very close. What we did prove, multiple times, was that Trump and others close to him did obstruct justice by, among other things, lying to investigators and shutting down investigations.

“Since the Justice Department won’t allow us to indict a sitting president, we recommend, strongly, that Congress initiate impeachment immediately.

“Furthermore, we recommend that the US take immediate concrete steps to ensure that no foreign power can do what Russia did in 2016 or worse.”

Barr is a big, fat liar

by digby

Mueller said today that he doesn’t doubt Barr’s good faith.

He was being nice …

In a summary of Mueller’s report that Barr released weeks before the report itself became public, Barr stated that he and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that the evidence compiled by Mueller “is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense” and that they made this determination “without regard to…the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.”

Then, at a press conference shortly before a redacted version of Mueller’s report went public, Barr said that he “specifically asked” Mueller about whether Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos arguing that it is unconstitutional to charge a sitting president drove Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump. And Barr claimed that Mueller “was not saying that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found a crime. He made it clear that he had not made the determination that there was a crime.”

However, not long after Barr made this claim before the press, the report revealed it to be misleading. Mueller’s report repeatedly references the OLC memos, and explains that his office “accepted OLC’s legal conclusion for the purpose of exercising prosecutorial jurisdiction.”

Furthermore, while Barr may have decided that there was insufficient evidence that Trump committed a crime, Mueller himself gives a very different reason for the decision not to charge Trump.

Mueller emphasized this point during his Wednesday press conference announcing his resignation. “If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” said Mueller, before explaining the central role the OLC memos played in his approach to Trump.

Under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he’s in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is prohibited. The special counsel’s office is part of that Department of Justice. And by regulation, it was bound by that policy. Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.

It’s an easy-to-miss swipe at Barr’s characterization of Mueller’s report, but an important one. Though it is true that Mueller, in his own words, “did not make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime,” the Justice Department policy against charging a sitting president played a major role in the decision not to make such a determination. Mueller’s public statements repeatedly emphasize this point, even as Barr tries to present Trump’s conduct as more innocent.

There are two important implications of Mueller’s statements. One is that, while the Justice Department may believe that it cannot charge a sitting president, the Constitution explicitly permits Congress to impeach Trump and remove him from office — although the latter is unlikely given that nearly all Senate Republicans are likely to protect Trump as zealously as Barr.

The other implication is that Trump will not be president forever. On the day Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may once again charge him with crimes.

I think Trump and his cronies have inoculated him from that with the “lock her up” bullshit getting every Democrat in the country to say at least once that it’s UnAmerican to legally attack political rivals. Republicans may not care about hypocrisy but they know Democrats do.

That’s a patented GOP tactic. Someday maybe the Democrats will see that coming.

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“I don’t see any reason why it would be”

by digby

In light of Mueller’s reiteration of what happened in 2016 today here’s a little reminder of your allegedly innocent president:

This is your president, ladies and gentlemen. Very innocent.

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by digby

My Salon column today:

A few years ago I wrote here in Salon about a phrase I call “Cokie’s Law,” referring to a comment by journalist Cokie Roberts during the Lewinsky scandal. There was a silly kerfuffle over Hillary Clinton allegedly claiming that her husband’s philandering was a result of his rough childhood. Roberts said,

“At this point it doesn’t much matter whether she said it or not because it’s become part of the culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was talking about.”

This comment says a lot about how the media sees its role as the arbiter of truth, but it’s also illustrative of how political operatives manipulate the press to their advantage. Take, for example, this passing comment about Rudy Giuliani’s latest antics in Politico:

Earlier this month, Giuliani said he was planning to travel to Ukraine to urge the country’s president-elect to investigate Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, over his involvement in a Ukrainian energy company. Giuliani also insinuated without offering any evidence that Joe Biden had somehow nefariously used his position as vice president to quash an investigation of his son.

Giuliani later backed out of the trip after Democrats accused him of openly encouraging a foreign country to meddle in an American election. The country’s lead prosecutor also told reporters he’d found no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden, and media reports have further poked holes in Giuliani’s theories.

But Trump allies said Giuliani accomplished his mission, raising suspicions about Trump’s potential 2020 opponent. “The information is now out there,” Duhaime said. “He’s about getting the job done and not about what other people may think about him.”

The job the Trump campaign wants Rudy to do now, according to Politico, is to be Trump’s top campaign character assassin, a task at which he excels and one he appears to enjoy a great deal. He went on television several times with this Ukraine story, never really offering up a story line that made sense, but as Cokie Roberts would say, “It doesn’t much matter.” It’s out there.

That Ukraine project was helped along by the New York Times, which gave Giuliani the megaphone to plant this little smear, and it probably won’t be the last time. Certainly the Times won’t be the only news organization to do it. During the 2016 campaign, the Times and the Washington Post entered into a devil’s bargain with a right-wing provocateur named Peter Schweizer, a Steve Bannon associate and current Breitbart editor, to publish a similarly distorted tale about Hillary Clinton called “Clinton Cash” that formed the basis for Donald Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” meme. As it happens, Schweizer is behind the Biden Ukraine story as well. This time the Times didn’t deal with him directly, but rather spread it through Giuliani, Trump’s top hitman.

This isn’t the first time Rudy has taken on that campaign role. During 2016 he was intimately involved with the New York FBI office that was suspected of being behind former FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation in the days before the election. According to the Department of Justice inspector general’s report on the investigation, Comey told Attorney General Loretta Lynch that senior agents in the New York FBI office had a “deep and visceral hatred for Clinton” and were prepared to leak the story that new emails had been found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

Giuliani was almost certainly involved. On Oct. 25, 2016, three days before Comey’s fateful letter to Congress, he appeared on “Fox & Friends” and said, “We got a couple of surprises left, and I think it’ll be enormously effective,” grinning almost maniacally. Two days later, Giuliani appeared on Fox again and declared that there would be “pretty big surprises,” adding, “We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.” On the day of Comey’s shocking announcement, he went on the radio and said:

The other rumor that I get is that there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the F.B.I. about the original conclusion being completely unjustified, and almost a slap in the face of the F.B.I.’s integrity. I know that from former agents. I know that even from — a few active agents who obviously don’t want to identify themselves.

The main “former agent” Giuliani was talking about was James Kallstrom — super Trump fan, Clinton hater and Giuliani BFF. Wayne Barrett reported in the Daily Beast that Kallstrom had been ginning up anger among active-duty FBI agents over the Clinton emails for months. After the Republican convention in the summer of 2016, Giuliani went on CNN to complain about Comey’s decision not to prosecute Clinton, saying, “The decision perplexes me. It perplexes Jim Kallstrom, who worked for him. It perplexes numerous FBI agents who talk to me all the time. And it embarrasses some FBI agents.”

Barrett wrote that Kallstrom himself “has been invoking unnamed FBI agents who contact him to complain about Comey’s exoneration of Clinton in one interview after another, positioning himself as an apolitical champion of FBI values” and openly threatening that “if it’s pushed under the rug,” the agents “won’t take that sitting down.” He said, “I think we’re going to see a lot more of the facts come out in the course of the next few months. That’s my prediction.”

While Comey was still FBI director, he asked the Inspector general to look into the New York office and Giuliani’s activities during that campaign. So far there has been no word on whether that investigation ever took place. It remains astonishing that this has received almost no attention while the text messages of former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page have been front-page news for months and months. After all, there were no leaks from Robert Mueller’s investigation. But it’s pretty obvious that some members of the FBI were plotting with a loyal associate of Donald Trump to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

According to Nate Silver at 538, it’s entirely possible that this one act perpetrated by Giuliani and his friends in the FBI was responsible for Trump’s win. The impact was measurable in the polling and because it happened so late in the campaign it was impossible to bounce back. Nobody has done Trump a favor as important as that one. Is it any wonder that the Trump 2020 campaign is eager to have Giuliani back, doing what he does best?

Update:  Here’s Rudy on Mueller’s statement today:

“The reality is that he gave us his opinion on collusion and obstruction,” Giuliani said on Fox News. “And his opinion is you can’t bring a case. Bob, that’s the end of it. That’s what a prosecutor does. And you don’t prove negatives.”  

“What they’ve done here is a perversion,” Giuliani continued. “A combination of him and the media. And I’m surprised at Bob because he’s a better lawyer than that. I don’t know where this notion came that you have to exonerate.” 

Mueller, in his first public comments on his two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, said that his office did notcharge Trump with a crime because it “was not an option” under Department of Justice regulations that state a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. 

“After that investigation, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,” Mueller said. 

Mueller did not clarify whether his office would have charged Trump with a crime if the DOJ guidance were not in place. 

The special counsel’s comments stirred discussion among Democrats on Capitol Hill about launching impeachment proceedings, but Giuliani hammered the special counsel for weighing in on Trump’s innocence. 

The president’s attorney suggested Mueller had “lost his notion of American fairness” because of time spent with prosecutors on his team, including Andrew Weissmann. 

“To me as a lawyer it’s astounding that he’s expounding on can we exonerate or can’t we exonerate,” Giuliani said. 

Giuliani echoed his client, who shortly after Mueller’s statement declared it was “case closed,” arguing that Mueller had no case on either collusion or obstruction. 

“That’s all that matters from the point of view of a prosecutor,” he said. “The real question is to whether it’s ethical at all for him to be discussing it or writing about it.”

Trump is the only person in the country who has been determined cannot be criminally indicted for his crimes. So, the rules are already different than they are for anyone else. Under those rules, Mueller did the only thing he could to let the Congress know that the president of the United States is a criminal and they are the only institution in the country that can hold him accountable.

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