RUTHFULLY YOURS

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller III, a former FBI director, to serve as special counsel overseeing the investigation of alleged ties between Russian officials and President Trump’s campaign. Mr. Rosenstein acted Wednesday evening in Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ stead, since Mr. Sessions had recused himself from any involvement in Russian investigation matters. Mr. Sessions did so because of his own contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. while he was advising the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein briefed senators in a closed meeting on Thursday. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said his take-away from the meeting was that what had started out as a counter intelligence investigation is “now being considered a criminal investigation.” As for the Trump-hating left and their lackeys in the mainstream media, they have already rendered a guilty verdict against President Trump for obstruction of justice without any credible facts to support it to date.

Mr. Mueller, a well-respected former federal prosecutor whose appointment was widely praised in Congress on both sides of the aisle, will have a broad investigatory mandate. He is authorized to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” as well as other matters that “may arise directly from the investigation.” With such authority, Mr. Mueller could explore such related issues as the circumstances behind the firing of James Comey as FBI director, conversations between Mr. Comey and President Trump, including any perceived efforts on President Trump’s part to influence the direction of any FBI investigation, and the unmasking and leaking of classified information pertaining to former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn.

Mr. Mueller will have free reign to call for a grand jury, issue subpoenas and decide whether to press criminal charges. His requests for all the resources he needs, on top of what the FBI already has in conducting its ongoing investigations, will almost certainly be honored. Moreover, Mr. Mueller, whose tenure as FBI director made him a popular figure with FBI career agents, will trust the FBI enough to piggyback on its findings rather than have to start from scratch.

President Trump’s initial reaction to the special counsel appointment was reportedly restrained. However, he complained in an early morning tweet on Thursday that he was being unfairly singled out for special counsel scrutiny. “With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special councel (sic) appointed!” he tweeted. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” Maybe so, but Mr. Mueller’s appointment, which provides the Democrats and anti-Trump media the independent special counsel they have demanded, will give the Trump administration at least some breathing room to return to its policy agenda. That’s not to say that Democrats, their leftist base and Trump haters in the mainstream media won’t continue to raise the Watergate and impeachment banners, and try to put political pressure on Mr. Mueller to come out with findings that support their pre-determined verdict of guilty. Mr. Mueller’s reputation for integrity, and dispassionate pursuit of all relevant facts upon which to render an unbiased judgment, will be sorely tested.

President Trump’s many enemies calling for his head, in the media and political world, have zeroed in on the charge of obstruction of justice. They obtained ammunition in that regard from the alleged memo that former FBI Director Comey is said to have written following a one-on-one conversation he had with the president, in which Comey claimed President Trump had asked him to let go of the FBI’s investigation of Flynn. No doubt, Mr. Mueller will explore all avenues in gathering and analyzing facts that could possibly make out a credible case of obstruction of justice against the president and/or any of his aides. However, based on what is known publicly to date, nothing President Trump has done comes anywhere close to constituting obstruction of justice.

Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, wrote that if the Comey memo is “food for obstruction of justice, it is still an awfully thin soup.” The operative statute is Section 1503 of Title 18, United States Code. It forbids, among other things, “corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication” influencing, obstructing, or impeding, or endeavoring to influence, obstruct, or impede, “the due administration of justice.”

The question is whether President Trump’s alleged request to Comey to let go of the Flynn investigation, or any other negative action or statement by the president with regard to the Russia investigation, constitutes actionable obstruction of justice. That would require proof of the president’s specific wrongful intent to “secure an unlawful benefit for oneself or another,” according to Professor Turley.

That the mayor of America’s largest city is planning to march with a convicted terrorist in next month’s Puerto Rican Day Parade illustrates a fundamental fact about the Left in America: From student activists all the way up to leading officials, not excluding the 44th president, they are willing to shrug off terrorism provided it has sufficient left-wing bona fides.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio says he will march behind Oscar López Rivera, the convicted Puerto Rican terrorist who served 35 years in prison before President Obama commuted his sentence. Organizers of the parade, to be held June 11 on Fifth Avenue, say that not only will López Rivera lead it, but he will in a sense be designated the hero of the entire history of the celebration: He’ll be granted the title of “National Freedom Hero,” a designation never before bestowed on anyone.

López Rivera, an admitted leader of the 1970s Marxist terror group FALN, which sought independence for Puerto Rico under Communist leadership, was in 1981 sentenced to 55 years in prison, later increased to 70 as punishment for an escape attempt. After being arrested with six pounds of dynamite in his Chicago apartment and declaring at trial, “I am an enemy of the United States government,” he served a bit more than half of his sentence before Obama released him. Puerto Ricans have repeatedly voted against independence in a series of referenda, so López Rivera’s terrorist career amounted to killing innocent civilians — FALN carried out more than 100 bombings, including one at Manhattan’s landmark Fraunces Tavern in 1975 that killed four — to pursue a political goal not supported even by his fellow Puerto Ricans.

De Blasio this week shrugged at López Rivera’s hideous past.

“The organization he was affiliated with did things I don’t agree with, obviously, and they were illegal,” the mayor said at a press conference this week. “I don’t agree with the way he did it. But he did serve his time,” adding that López Rivera “renounced violence.”

He did? Here is what López Rivera, quoted in yesterday’s New York Times, said upon his release from a halfway house in Puerto Rico on Wednesday: “We are a colonized people, and according to international law, that says all colonized people have a right to struggle for its independence, using all methods within reach, including force.” (Emphasis mine.)

Worried about the public perception of pushing for the impeachment of President Trump less than four months into his presidency, Democratic Party leaders are warning their more excitable members to back off calling for Trump’s ouster.

The Hill:

Democratic leaders have a message for those members of their caucus beating the drum to impeach President Trump: not so fast.

“I would suggest … there needs to be a full investigation first,” Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Wednesday. “We need to get to the facts, and let the facts lead where they may.”

In the eyes of several Democrats, however, the facts already lead to impeachment.

[…]

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) spoke out at a closed-door House Democratic Caucus meeting Wednesday morning to highlight the urgency of removing Trump, whom the Democrats increasingly see as a national security liability.

Almost simultaneously, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) took to the House floor to trumpet the impeachment call he’d sounded earlier in the week. He characterized his decision as a “position of conscience.”

It’s the first time in her long career that Rep. Waters has given a fig about “national security.” And Mr Green: Put a sock in it.

The impeachment debate is forcing Democratic leaders to walk a fine line in their approach to the ongoing Russia-Trump saga. On one hand, the Democrats want to keep the pressure on the White House and tap the energy the remarkable story is generating among members of their base, many of whom support the impeachment route. On the other, they don’t want to politicize their calls for an independent investigation.

“We have to be circumspect as we look at this tale of horrors,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “Because we should not give the impression that we are obsessed with removing Donald Trump from office — it will only harden his supporters.

“Based on what I’ve read and heard, Mr. Trump is in trouble, and he doesn’t need any help to get into deeper trouble.”

Top Democratic leaders insist they’re not putting any pressure on their troops to shy away from impeachment calls.

“Members can come to their own conclusions, and we don’t pretend to stand here and speak on behalf of every single individual member of our caucus,” Crowley said.

The “case for impeachment” doesn’t exist — yet. What members have is a tissue of half-truths, unsubstantiated rumors, anonymously sourced reporting, and lots and lots of wishful thinking.

There has not been a shred of hard evidence — video or audio recordings, documents, eyewitness, first-person testimony, or anything else that would stand up in a court of law, much less the court of public opinion. CONTINUE AT SITE

Interest in Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is peaking. Multiple amateur constitutional scholars have advocated its use to remove President Trump from office, as an alternative to impeachment. But Section 4 is a tool for a different job. Its use under today’s circumstances has the potential to tear the country apart.

Section 4 is not a suitable substitute for impeachment. To be sure, impeachment sets a high bar: a majority in the House, then two-thirds in the Senate to convict and remove an official. Section 4 sounds easier: If the vice president and a majority of the cabinet declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the vice president becomes acting president.

Section 4 is a great solution if the president is missing or comatose, but a terrible one when he is conscious and in full control of his Twitter account. The first difficulty is that the president can contest the cabinet’s action. If he does, Congress assembles, debates and votes. Unless two-thirds of both House and Senate vote within 21 days to back the cabinet, the president retakes power. Because impeachment requires only a simple House majority, it is easier for the president to defeat a Section 4 action than to avoid impeachment.

Further, if the president loses a Section 4 vote, he is displaced only temporarily; nothing stops him from trying again. All he needs is the support, one time, of more than a third of either the House or Senate.

Some argue that impeachment is limited to high crimes and misdemeanors, making it inappropriate for the case of someone who is (as Mr. Trump’s calmer critics describe him) simply in over his head. But anyone who wields as much power as the president and who is grossly incompetent surely will have done something that rises to the level of an impeachable offense.

Section 4 is also horribly hazardous. The fatal flaw emerges from this passage: “When the President transmits . . . his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of [the cabinet] transmit within four days . . . their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

After reading that, who do you think holds presidential power during the four-day waiting period between the president’s declaration and the cabinet’s counterdeclaration? The answer is the vice president. The best reading of the text and the only reading of the crystal-clear legislative history is that the president does not immediately retake power.

Several intelligent but poorly informed commentators have gotten that wrong and said that the president would retake power immediately. A besieged president would have a tremendous incentive to look at the text, interpret it favorably to himself, and rally his supporters around that interpretation. He would assert that he had retaken power immediately and—showing his ability to discharge the powers and duties of his office—he would fire his disloyal cabinet and name more-agreeable allies as acting secretaries.CONTINUE AT SITE

Professional medical organizations have a simple guideline: It’s a bad idea for doctors to treat their friends or relatives. No matter how skilled, no matter how upright, a doctor who does risks losing his objectivity. The big question is whether this applies to Washington’s new scandal doctor, Robert Mueller.

In tapping Mr. Mueller as special counsel to look into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has certainly doused the political flames. Democrats were forced to tone down their chant for instant impeachment. Republicans were able to step back from the escalating headlines.

That’s because the new guy is as skilled and upright as they come. A Robert Mueller word-association game would go something like this: integrity, honor, respect, order, discipline, honesty, fairness. He is a decorated Marine, a Princeton grad, a respected federal prosecutor and a former FBI director. Mr. Mueller has tackled strongmen and terrorists, working under Republicans and Democrats. He has little use for the press or the limelight, which—in the current hysterical environment—is a singular qualification.

In short, nobody doubts Mr. Mueller will lead as professional an investigation as he is capable of conducting. It’s the “capable” bit that provides the one note of concern.

Mr. Mueller is no doctor. But he is part of the brotherhood of prosecutors. Justice Department attorneys have their squabbles and differences, but they count themselves as a legal elite, charged with a noble purpose. They largely keep their own counsel and aren’t much for outside criticism.

The FBI’s culture is even more famous and pronounced. Tens of thousands of special agents and staff from different backgrounds come together to protect the country from criminals and terrorists. Outside the military, no other Washington body rivals the FBI’s esprit de corps. CONTINUE AT SITE