Scott Turow is more than just a best selling author of such legal dramas as The Burden of Proof , Presumed Innocent and The Laws of Our Fathers - he also lectured at Sanford, took his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard, served as an U.S. Assistant Attorney in Chicago and per Wiki...
“From 1997 to 1998 Turow was a member of the U.S. Senate Nominations Commission for the Northern District of Illinois, which recommends federal judicial appointments. In 2011, Turow met with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig to discuss political reform including a possible Second Constitution of the United States; according to one source, Turow saw risks with having such a convention, but believed that it may be the "only alternative" given how campaign money has undermined the one-man-one-vote principle of democracy.”
And now he has authored, for Vanity Fair…
“A Crime In Public View”: How William Barr Pardoned Trump
“Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions, in the fancy language of lawyers, impeaches itself. That means that its own words and reasoning call some of Barr’s conclusions into doubt, particularly Barr’s eagerness to say that Donald Trump can’t be proven to have obstructed justice.
It is hard for any of us to know how much credence to give Barr’s précis of the Mueller investigation without knowing more about the evidence. Barr’s letter, however, acknowledges that much and pledges to work to disclose as much as he can without violating Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), which bars making public grand jury proceedings. But the attorney general’s eagerness to clear Trump of possible obstruction of justice, after having the report in hand for less than 48 hours, is unbecoming of his office and Mueller’s two-year investigation. Furthermore, some of the reasoning in his letter is clearly deeply flawed….
Turow then addresses Barr’s contention that since Mueller could not prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump himself did not “actively” conspire with the Russians to interfere with the election means that no underlying crime was committed that necessarily must exist to predicate a charge of obstruction in trying to stymie efforts to get to the facts about 2016 to be the utter nonsense it is:
“Throughout his election campaign and long after, Trump denied that Russia was responsible for the massive interference in our election that Mueller has now concluded occurred. Trump made these denials “despite,” to quote Barr, “multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.” Aside from any crimes Trump or his campaign committed by being in cahoots with the Russians, there are other clear gains to Trump in hindering the investigation. The most obvious is that the Russian interference, which both Barr and Mueller say the Trump campaign knew about, calls the legitimacy of the 2016 election into question.
...To argue that no underlying crime means no obstruction is therefore nonsense. That is fallacious reasoning and it impugns Barr’s integrity and his reputation as a lawyer. Worse, it represents a troubling effort to paper over the acknowledged evidence that Mr. Trump committed a crime in public view.”
There is much more at the link to VF. Everyone should read Mr. Turow’s entire piece.
But let me say, as a side note, that the events that have transpired in the last few days — Barr’s “get out of jail free card”, the Justice Department’s stance on not defending Obama Care, the WSJ’s call to investigate Obama’s attempts to ascertain how far Russia was embedded in drumpf’s campaign, the Pentagon’s acquiescing to a billion dollars of purloined funds to go to the Wall — were, I believe, pre-planned gambits designed to dishearten and dispirit the resistance and we must actively resist giving in to despair.
Heed Sarah Kendzior's sound advice:
Chin up for the long march!
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[cross-posted to PolitiZoom]