Posted on 01/03/2018 12:30:34 PM PST by jazusamo
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is directly challenging Special Counsel Robert Mueller, charging in a law suit filed on Wednesday that the prosecutor lacked the legal authority to investigate and indict him on pre-2016 money laundering charges.
Calling the indictment “fanciful,” attorney Kevin Downing’s suit in U.S. District Court says Mr. Mueller was appointed in May with a mandate to investigate possible Russia-Trump campaign collusion in the hacking of Democrat Party computers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
That’s a pretty good argument I think. Except the only question is whether it should be Mueller or some other prosecutor.
It would have to be a pretty creative lawsuit. It will be fascinating to see the actual argument.
The Special Counsel mandate is not in law, but comes from internal DOJ rules as decided by Rod Rosenstein. If Manafort violated the law, he can be prosecuted by the DOJ as the DOJ wishes. The DOJ frequently has task forces that operate similarly to the SC. I doubt the courts are going to jeopardize either.
Manafort is extremely wealthy. A few years of legal expenses will not be an issue to him.
Far from folding, he if fighting back!
WINNING!
Cue LAMESTREAM; “Act of a desperate man.”
It's really no different than a police chief removing himself from a criminal investigation when a crime victim or a suspect is a family member. Appointing an "acting chief" to oversee the matter doesn't violate anyone's constitutional rights.
WOW. What a day!
Politics is one hell of a ride now....there is actual fighting back!
At least, this is some good news!!!
Bravo, Mr. Manafort!
See Is the appointment of Special Counsel Mueller legal without Senate approval?
Manafort should have standing to raise this objection, since he has been indicted by a grand jury convened by the Special Counsel.
They could have appointed an already sitting US Attorney instead of Mueller as Special Counsel and avoided this legal problem. But they wanted Comey's mentor and best buddy to make sure it went down as desired.
The Manafort case may be particularly relevant to this issue in that one could argue that because a Special Counsel has a limited, defined scope he is not a full US Attorney requiring Senate confirmation; however, in this case the Special Counsel is investigating and obtaining indictments outside the defined scope of Russian collusion during the election.
Yep, it’s great to see President Trump and others fighting fighting back against the Establishment and Rats.
MAGA Winning!
Discovery will be a bitch for Mueller’s team.
If you want to know what “special prosecutor” is good for, ask Scooter Libby.
Sounds like an excellent point to me.
MSM and Dems act reflexively. Trump plays six moves down the board. He did not beat The Clinton Juggernaut, The MSM, The DNC, and Satan by accident.
This will certainly keep things interesting.... and seems like it might lead to WINNING! :)
The only thing I’d like more, is going after Mueller’s personal assets.
When you are charged with lying to the FBI, because there are no recordings or transcripts of your FBI interview, it is your word against the agent’s word. Or your word versus the word of another witness. And the FBI decides who is correct and who is lying.
Exactly! That’d be a hoot, especially if he had to pay out.
Nice going Manafort.......
And make very sure Mueller pays for that outrageous Gestapo tactic.....
......breaking down your door, guns drawn, scaring your wife out of her wits.
“Mr. Downing discloses that Mr. Manafort was interviewed by the Justice Department and FBI in 2014 as a “witness,” not as a suspect, in a federal investigation of a former Ukraine president.
The information was resurrected by Mr. Mueller three years later and used to get a grand jury indictment.”
The more that I think about it, it is the state governments who have the authority and responsibility to prevent the election of an ineligible to the presidency and/or vice presidency. Why? Because not the people but the States elect the president.The upshot is that the legislature of each state has the authority, and therefore the responsibility, to prevent selection of people who will vote for a non-citizen by each state's own definition or a violator of the Emoluments Clause (which Hillary so obviously was as Secretary of State) to be its Electors. If you are dissatisfied with your state’s behavior in allowing Barak Husein Obama on the ballot and a slate of Elector candidates who were pledged to vote for him in the Electoral College, NOW is the time - before it is a question of excluding known individuals from the 2020 ballot - for your state’s legislature to hear about your concerns.
- Article II Section 1:
- Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
You don’t have any say in what other states do, but the reality is that even one major “purple” state which typically goes for the winning candidate in most elections - Ohio is an example - could control the issue. Which party is going to spot the other party Ohio before the voting even starts? If you could throw Michigan and Pennsylvania into the same category, no party would ever, under any circumstance, nominate someone who violated their standards for access to their ballots.
If Ohio, PA, and MI were to define “natural born citizen” for themselves in a way that excluded, say, Ted Cruz, that would be that. End of discussion. Ted Cruz could not then draw flies in any Republican primary contest - not just those states - because the Republican voters would know that nominating him was not a serious option. (Disclaimer: I supported Ted Cruz in ’16).
Recall the controversy in ’16 over Hillary’s health. I put it to you that a state or consortium of states could require all presidential candidates to submit to some sort of physical exam which would exclude a neuologically impaired individual from the ballot. But you can’t wait to install that system until a particular known person’s ox is being gored, or you will have no chance of getting your law passed anywhere.
... and Mueller's team wants to suppress this information and shield it from scrutiny because they're classified materials or confidential Dept. of Justice documents ...
... and President Trump ends up staying awake all night one day, signing all kinds of waivers to de-classify the documents and override Mueller's claims of DOJ confidentiality ...
... while Tweeting feverishly all night long, too. LMAO.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.