01/28/2018 / By JD Heyes
One of the reasons why Democrats continue to behave as though special counsel Robert Mueller’s “Russia collusion” investigation is real, despite the fact that there isn’t a scintilla of evidence proving President Donald Trump’s campaign worked with Moscow to “steal the election” from Hillary Clinton is because they think, at a minimum, it will result in “obstruction” charge.
That’s because when Obama exercises his constitutional authority as president it’s okay, it’s good, it’s ‘the best thing for the country,’ but when Trump does it, then it becomes a constitutional crisis and obstruction!
Of course, Democrats have never explained how a president could ‘obstruct’ an investigation based on false premises in the first place, but that’s a topic for another day.
In any event, the Democrat salivating over the ‘coming Trump obstruction charge’ and resulting ‘impeachment’ are only leading to massive disappointment (and, no doubt, more unhinged anger from the Left). That’s according to a former lawyer who worked in the Obama administration.
As reported by The Daily Caller:
Eric Columbus, former senior counsel to the deputy attorney general under Obama, explained on Twitter why we should not expect any criminal charges against Trump, despite a growing chorus of pundits and Democratic politicians predicting that Mueller is building an obstruction of justice case.
In a lengthy Twitter storm, Columbus proceeded to explain why it wasn’t at all likely Trump is going to be wearing prison stripes anytime soon or join the very small category of impeached U.S. presidents (which would include the husband of the nominee Trump vanquished).
“Mueller almost certainly won’t indict Trump – not because it would be unconstitutional, but because Mueller’s authority is very different from Ken Starr’s was,” he tweeted, alluding to the prosecutor in the Bill Clinton impeachment case. (Related: Crackpot Maxine Waters now liar-in-chief: ‘I never called for Trump’s impeachment.’)
Mueller almost certainly won't indict Trump – not because it would be unconstitutional, but because Mueller's authority is very different from Ken Starr's was. I can explain. 1/https://t.co/BoZHbz0OFm
— Eric Columbus (@EricColumbus) January 26, 2018
He went onto to note that the Justice Department’s “Office of Legal Counsel — in essence, the lawyers’ lawyers — has opined that it’s unconstitutional to indict a sitting president. OLC reached this conclusion twice — in 1973 and in 2000.”
That said, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage discovered a memo last year claiming that Starr solicited a legal opinion on the matter from Ronald Rotunda, a highly regarded law professor, who reached the opposite conclusion. Rotunda believed that under certain conditions a president could be indicted — an opinion that Starr shared, but chose instead not to test the theory.
Columbus then tweeted, “Why did Starr feel he could ignore OLC’s 1973 opinion? Because the law under which he was appointed allowed him to do just about anything. His title was ‘independent counsel, and for all intents and purposes he was the Department of Justice with regard to Clinton.”
That law expired in 1999 (Congress allowed existing independent counsels to be grandfathered in, Columbus noted) and was replaced with a statute allowing for the appointment of a “special counsel” instead who would be directly answerable to the Justice Department.
And it is under that statute Mueller is operating; he is answerable to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from all things Trump and Russia.
What’s more, whatever Mueller finds, he has to push it through Rosenstein, who has absolute veto power. “Per the DOJ special counsel regulations, Mueller must abide by all DOJ ‘rules, regulations, procedures, practices, and policies,'” Columbus wrote.
“By contrast, the independent counsel statute allowed Starr to deviate from DOJ policies where necessary to achieve the purposes of the statute, and didn’t allow the Attorney General to restrict his actions (other than firing him for good cause),” he added.
“Given these rules, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that Mueller would bring a prosecution that, in the judgment of DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, would violate the Constitution,” Columbus added.
That’s not going to please — or satisfy — the extremist Democrats, but reality has never been one of the party’s strong suits.
J.D. Heyes is editor of The National Sentinel and a senior writer for Natural News and News Target.
Sources include:
Tagged Under: Alt-Left, corruption, crackpots, democrats, DOJ, FBI, Hillary Clinton, impeachment, independent counsel, James Comey, Kenneth Starr, left cult, Obama Administration, obstruction of justice, President Trump, Robert Mueller, special counsel
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