TRUMP WOULD BE IN JAIL TODAY, IF HE WERE A PRIVATE CITIZEN

…Senate Majority leader, Mitch McConnell, falsely said that “Democrats should “move on” and “case closed”..

One former US Prosecutor said: “Barr and Giuliani saying “there’s nothing to see here is absolutely wrong.”

It’s now all out there that more than 720 former federal prosecutors, who worked in both the Democratic and Republican administrations, they all signed a letter stating that President Trump would have been charged with obstructing justice based on special counsel Robert Mueller III’s report’s findings, if Trump were not the president.

The following are some of the comments made by a group of those that signed the letter:

A number of those signatories said they had hoped to make public that the Attorney General William Barr had mischaracterized Mueller’s report.  The A.G.’s  assertion was that the report did not lay out sufficient evidence to make an obstruction case.  Wrong.

The group is in stark contrast to those of A.G. Barr’s who has offered a defense of his decision that Mueller’s report did not make a case for charging the president.  In support of the president were many Republican lawmakers including the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (Ky.)   McConnell falsely declared in a speech that Democrats should “move on” from the investigations into Trump, asserting bluntly, that the case was, “closed.”

But the case is not closed and there are over 12 additional investigations still in progress.

Attorney General Barr has repeatedly misrepresented or misstated Special Counsel, Mueller’s findings. 

The reality is that Mueller himself left the question open, saying a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion was that a sitting president cannot be indicted.  This prevented Mueller from saying, even in a confidential report, whether he believed the president committed a crime.

Among the notable names in the group of letter-signers was Elkan Abramowitz, a former federal prosecutor in New York who has gained attention recently for representing David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc. (AMI).

AMI, the publisher of the National Enquirer had already admitted to making hush-money payments on Trump’s behalf.

Trump and Pecker had been longtime friends, though their relationship collapsed as federal authorities explored AMI’s role in those hush-money payments.  Trump had arranged them to be sent to women to keep them quiet about their alleged affairs.  Pecker was involved in the effort, and AMI ultimately acknowledged its role.

Abramowitz, a Democrat, said he signed the letter because he found Barr’s statements about Mueller’s report “so unbelievably misleading that I thought a clear statement of what the report said was in order.” He said his signature had “nothing to do” with Pecker or any other client.

“The line in his testimony where he said that the president, ‘if he thought any investigation of him was not fair he could stop it,’ was really, not only destructive and wrong, it was stupid,” Abramowitz said, referring to Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Everybody I represent [always say] that an investigation of them is unfair, and they have very sincerely held beliefs that the investigation is unfair. It was just an absurd statement.”

Jeffrey Harris, a former assistant US Attorney in New York and longtime friend of Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said he first saw the letter when it was sent out to an email group for former federal prosecutors.

He said he signed the letter because if he had a case involving even one of the incidents Mueller described, “I would have clearly prosecuted that person or persons, and I can tell you, when Rudy was a prosecutor, he would’ve done the same thing.  Whether to prosecute this kind of conduct was not a close prosecutorial call,” Harris said. “This was a no brainer.”

Harris had served as Giuliani’s top deputy when Giuliani served as the No. 3 Justice Department official in the Reagan administration.  Harris said the two once socialized regularly, though they haven’t been in touch in recent years.  

Giuliani said in a text message: “I would not bring a case where there is no underlying crime and nothing actually obstructed.  Jeff was a Dem, I believe, and I doubt he voted for Trump.  Indeed, I’m not sure any of them, Rs or Ds. supported Trump.  What prosecutors would offer a gratuitous opinion on a case they didn’t investigate?”

Rudy said that, while he has “great affection” for Harris, his former colleague was ignoring critical aspects of Mueller’s report.  For example, Giuliani said, Mueller’s assertion that he could not “exonerate” Trump was “a perversion of the 2,000-year-old burden in any case.”

“Prosecutors don’t exonerate, that requires proving a negative that most often is impossible,” he said.

Harris said he is a longtime Republican but registered as a Democrat to vote in primary elections when he moved to Washington.  Democrats pick most of Washington’s officeholders in primaries because its voters are overwhelmingly Democratic.

Harris said the letter already seems to have accomplished its main mission, alerting the public “that there are a large number of former professional prosecutors and Department of Justice attorneys who think that the public statements of Barr and Giuliani and the like that there’s nothing to see here is absolutely wrong.” He said he is ambivalent about the letter’s potential impact on possible impeachment efforts, because he knows the Senate would not vote to remove Trump from office.

“I would like to see this guy leave office at the soonest opportunity by any legal means. Do I think impeachment is going to accomplish that? I don’t. Do I think this will help in the next election cycle? I hope it does,” Harris said.

Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, said he signed the letter to present a “counterpoint” to the narrative Barr had advanced that the evidence was insufficient to accuse Trump of obstructing justice.

Rosenzweig is a longtime member of the conservative Federalist Society group who said his “views on substantive issues are as far from liberal as you can imagine on most things.” He said while he supported Bill Clinton’s impeachment, he was not in as strong a position to judge whether lawmakers should pursue the same result for Trump.

Signing the letter, he said, was “more about the public, and it was more about correcting what I think was the erroneous record that was created by the attorney general.”

“I don’t have any hopes,” he said. “I think it’s important to say that Trump’s conduct violated criminal law, and that if he were another person, he’d be prosecuted.” He added he hopes people “take that into account when they cast their next ballot.”

Donald Ayer, a deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, said he saw the statement in a draft form last week, and he soon began circulating it among other former prosecutors who felt Barr’s characterization of Mueller’s report belied its content.

“We just felt a need to tell the American people from the perspective of unbiased observers who at different times in our lives have done this for a living that there really is a case here,” he said, adding later, “I sort of feel like, if you’re in a position to say something that anybody might care about you saying, and it’s important, a lot of the time you probably ought to say it.”

As to what happens next, though, Ayer said he takes no position.

“I don’t really have a specific aspiration, other than that I hope people will pay some attention and maybe themselves read the report and think about what would happen to an ordinary person who had done the things that were shown to be done here.” Ayer said.

As the headline says:  This president would be in jail if he weren’t the president.

Copyright G. Ater 2019