These are hard times, when we all need to seek comfort where we can. YouTube clips from Young Sheldon are pleasant, but after a while they pall. I have just spent a restorative hour reading the text of the amicus brief filed by the retired judge recruited by the sitting federal judge in the Flynn case to advise him on the Government's astonishing filing withdrawing its case against Michael Flynn for lying to FBI agents, a charge to which Flynn has twice pled guilty under oath in open court.
In light of an ongoing pandemic, a cratering economy, and nation-wide protests of the murder of George Floyd, this is very much a matter of marginal, arcane interest at best. But as our institutions seem to buckle and threaten to give way to naked fascism, it is comforting to see the full force of legal reasoning, complete with endless footnotes and case citations, brought to bear to crush the patently corrupt efforts of Bill Barr to get Flynn off.
You can find the text here. I commend it to you.
A curious juxtaposition the last two posts:
ReplyDelete1. Comfort to be derived from a judicial memo that reinforces the point that Flynn lied about his conversation[s] with Kislyak about Trump's eagerness to lift sanctions on Russian, and ...
2. The rampant scepticism on the part of commentators on this blog about the degree of Russian interference in the 2016 election and/or about its importance.
That fact is that Rachel meadow and others were right from the very beginning about both the interference and its importance in getting Trump elected. To be sure, there were a lot of other factors, but the Russian hacking was important.
One can be a democratic socialist who very much wanted Bernie to be the nominee and still agree with Maddow and Muller, etc.
That's "Maddow," of course----- damn automatic spell checkers!
ReplyDeleteDavid Zimmerman:
ReplyDeleteI don't see much sign that commentators on this list are skeptical about Russian interference in the 2016 election. They--we--seem to be even quite open minded as regards its degree and effectiveness. Where we are skeptical--which perhaps differentiates us from the Maddowites--is (1) as to whether Trump conspired to have the election interfered with (as distinct from being not at all reluctant to benefit from it, which I think we'd all concede is very likely), and (2) as to whether focus on Russian interference (especially but not only the Maddowite conspiracy version) has not been an enormous waste of political time and energy.
I simply don't understand why the Maddowites keep on misreading and misrepresenting what those who disagree with them are saying.
Sorry... I just don't see what you are trying to say:
ReplyDeleteRe 1. The Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr and the Russians, for example, counts as an act in advance of having "the election interfered with."
Re 2. Those who focus on Russian interference [inter alia] can, as the old saying goes, "walk and chew gum at the same time." You sceptics seem to think that one cannot focus on several facts at the same time.
I thought you might not.
ReplyDeleteThere’s no inconsistency between a finding that the Russians interfered in the election to Trump’s advantage, that the Trump campaign knew about it, and that, nevertheless, there was no conspiracy. A conspiracy requires some kind of agreement between the conspirators. Mueller did not believe he could prove the existence of an agreement beyond a reasonable doubt.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I’ve read, the Russians were active long before Trump was the nominee, though they must have been delighted when he was successful. The Russian action started out as anti-Clinton. Putin detested her—she wasn’t particularly nice to him with regard to sanctions and such things, and, gee, the poor guy’s feelings were hurt. Hillary didn’t appreciate Putin’s “alluring combination of strength with gentleness” the way Tara Reade did.