RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18033/president-privilege

A former spouse, a lawyer’s former client, and a penitent’s former priest can claim privilege — and so could a former member of Congress and a former judge. The relevant issue is whether the communication was privileged at the time it was made. If so, it should be an enduring privilege that encourages confidential communications during their incumbency.

According to The New York Times, this is what [the House’s lawyer] said: “The Constitution does draw a clear line between a president and an ex-president. An ex-president is somebody who rejoins the great unwashed” — by which he apparently means you and me, who never had any executive privilege.

The issue is an open one that will likely be decided by the Supreme Court. I doubt that justices who are now retired or intend someday to retire — and join the “unwashed” — would be thrilled if Congress were to subpoena their former law clerks to disclose their confidential discussions about decisions they wrote while they were still among the washed.

They [the January 6th Committee] should seek to have the courts rule first on the constitutional issue, and if Meadows then refuses to comply with a judicial order, they can seek criminal penalties. This chronology is especially required because Meadows has said that he would comply with court orders.

Seeking a court order first is also required by the constitutionally mandated separation of powers.

Finally, criminal indictments should never be used to determine what the law is. It should only be used against individuals who know that they are violating existing law that is already clear.

The Constitution provides no clear answer to whether a former president can claim executive privilege over communications that occurred while he was president. Both policy and analogy to other privileges would suggest an affirmative answer. A former spouse, a lawyer’s former client, and a penitent’s former priest can claim privilege — and so could a former member of Congress and a former judge. The relevant issue is whether the communication was privileged at the time it was made. If so, it should be an enduring privilege that encourages confidential communications during their incumbency.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/the_show_trial_taking_place_in_dc.html

Tucker Carlson was on fire Tuesday night, for he launched a scathing attack on the grotesque show trial taking place in the House of Representatives, ostensibly to expose the “truth” about the “insurrection” on January 6 but, in reality, to destroy political enemies and preempt Trump’s effort to regain the White House in 2024. To frame the attack, Tucker lit into Liz Cheney, and a more deserving target it’s hard to imagine.

The monologue opens with Tucker pointing out that, for unexplained reasons, Liz Cheney showed up in Manchester, New Hampshire, last month. Well, unexplained only if you don’t know that it’s the place people go when they’re investigating running for president.

To normal people, Liz Cheney’s constituency for a presidential run is a bit of a mystery. Trump supporters despise her and Democrats do too—although they’re perfectly happy to use her to attack Trump.

However, it seems that Cheney is raking in millions of dollars, so someone supports her. Tucker suggests that her supporters are political “dynamos” such as Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, and Jeb Bush. To Tucker, these are all neocons who live to get Americans involved in wars that kill and maim our sons and daughters without conferring any benefit on America. Looking back on the last 20 years, I must agree.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/the-latest-theories-of-criminally-prosecuting-donald-trump-remain-flimsy/

No, it is still not likely that Donald Trump can be indicted for January 6.

L ike Captain Ahab, the full-time Trump haters have fixated yet again on an idea for criminally prosecuting our 45th president. By “full-time Trump haters” I do not mean those of us who have remained consistently critical of Donald Trump, want him out of our politics, and have called for him to be held properly accountable, but rather the left-leaning Resistance and the former conservatives who have let the Never Trump slogan consume their entire political identity. Neither group can let Trump go, even for a little while, even at the cost of neglecting many of the other serious domestic and foreign issues facing the nation.

The obsessives have yet again been issuing flurries of “the walls are closing in” tweets and cable-news segments eagerly anticipating a criminal indictment of Trump. But tweets are no substitute for reading the law.

In a televised hearing on Monday, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol was reviewing a set of text messages produced by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, mainly detailing his communications on January 6 with people outside the Trump administration. The text messages underline the case for Trump’s political and moral responsibility for the January 6 Capitol riot. But where is the crime?

Liz Cheney, homing in on Trump’s failure during the critical hours to talk down the rioters or take more vigorous action to enforce the law, asked:

These texts leave no doubt: The White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Members of Congress, the press, and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was under way. . . . Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s proceedings?

If it sounds as if Cheney was quoting or paraphrasing a legal standard, it’s because she was. A number of commentators, including Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, and Daily Beast political-investigations reporter Jose Pagiery, have suggested that Cheney was making a case for prosecuting Trump under 18 U.S.C. § 1505.

If so, that’s a very difficult charge to make stick. There are two problems: It’s unclear whether that charge even applies and, if it did, it’s unclear whether Trump did anything that could violate it.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/denial-river-runs-through-left-don-feder/

What do the following have in common: tornadoes which wreaked havoc in the Midwest, the Smollett and Rittenhouse verdicts, the crime wave inundating our cities, chaos at the border and the highest inflation rate in 39 years? Each is relevant only if it serves the left’s worldview.

Biden says the twisters which devastated parts of four states are further evidence of what he calls the ‘climate crisis.” Tornadoes in the Midwest? What’s next, hurricanes in Louisiana, blizzards in North Dakota and a heat wave in July?

As her Kansas farmhouse was swept up in a dust cloud, Dorothy Gale was heard to remark: “Damn those Republicans for opposing the Green New Deal!”

Jussie Smollett concocted a hate crime story so preposterous that it strained credulity –white men in MAGA hats wandering around Chicago at 2 AM in the dead of winter looking for minorities to victimize.

But Biden, Harris and most of the left swallowed it to the last absurd detail. Last week, Smollett was convicted on five charges related to the hoax, including lying to the police.

When Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with fatally shooting two people and wounding a third in the course of a 2020 riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Biden said it was because of Trump’s alleged refusal to “disavow white supremacy.” At trial, Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges.

The difference? Rittenhouse was a white man with a gun protecting property and himself during a BLM riot, so he had to be guilty. Smollett is a gay, black actor, (and a friend of Maxine Waters), so his allegations had to be believable, no matter how fantastic.

A few days ago, Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s radical DA said there’s no crime crisis in the City of Cain and Able — no crisis of “crime,” “lawlessness” or “violence.”