Trump Admits He Would Obstruct Justice If He Only Knew How
Is Trump too stupid to have mens rea? Does that matter?
(President Donald Trump by Ali Shaker/VOA)
If you are a Trump supporter, your best defenses against charges that your savior is trying to obstruct justice are: (a) He doesn’t have the mental acuity to know what “obstruction of justice” is, even as he tries to accomplish it; and (b) he doesn’t have the command of language and basic vocabulary necessary to express his thoughts without sounding like he is trying to obstruct justice.
Trump has reduced you to defending the President of the United States with the same strategies you’d employ to defend a lemur with Tourette’s Syndrome. Good luck with that.
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If you are a Trump resister, you know that the very worst thing he’s done (so far) is empower Jeff Sessions to change the very definition of “justice” in this country. Any old Republican would have put Neil Gorsuch (or somebody who looks just like him) on the Supreme Court. But Jeff Sessions is too cartoonishly sinister for even most Republicans. Sessions has been Trump’s most dangerous and effective counselor. News that there’s a rift between Trump and Sessions should be greeted with glee.
Except that Trump is pissed at Sessions for the one thing Sessions has done right. Sessions recusing himself from the Russian investigation was the only moral and ethical move he could do, but THAT is what Trump is pissed at.
Trump v. Sessions is exactly like Floyd Mayweather v. Connor McGregor: You’d like to see the racist prick get owned, but you can’t actually support the loudmouthed misogynist tax cheat.
Trump is utterly unrepentant about his desire to mess with the Russian investigation to help himself out. From the New York Times:
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In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.
Trump clearly doesn’t understand the core concept here: Donald Trump is NOT ALLOWED to use his powers to influence an investigation into his own dealings. That is the root difference between being a “subject” of the law, versus existing “above” the law. People go TO WAR when the executive treats the judicial system as if its an extension of his will. Are we so far removed from our Republican roots that Trump (and all of his supporters) have forgotten about this basic tenet of a government of laws instead of men?
Of course, the total tonnage of what Trump doesn’t understand would stun a team of oxen. In addition to complaining that his attorney general maintained even a veneer of impartiality, Trump goes on to lightly threaten everybody involved in investigating our Dear Leader.
Here are some other quotes from the Times piece:
Mr. Trump said [Robert] Mueller was running an office rife with conflicts of interest and warned investigators against delving into matters too far afield from Russia.
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Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.”
He complained that [Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein] had in effect been on both sides when it came to Mr. Comey. The deputy attorney general recommended Mr. Comey be fired but then appointed Mr. Mueller, who may be investigating whether the dismissal was an obstruction of justice. “Well, that’s a conflict of interest,” Mr. Trump said. “Do you know how many conflicts of interests there are?”
What comes through here is, again, that Donald Trump doesn’t know what obstruction of justice is. Take the “red line” thing. If you walk him through all of the elements of obstruction of justice, he’ll say yes to all of it. Yes, he’d only hire people who promised to make Russia go away. Yes, he’d fire people who investigate him or his family. Yes, he thinks Jeff Sessions, James Comey, Robert Mueller, and Rod Rosenstein were put on this Earth to help him avoid charges stemming from his own dealings.
But if you asked him plainly, “would you obstruct an investigation,” he’d say “no.” OBSTRUCTION, he’s been told, is a “big word” that he should avoid at all costs.
Your best argument for defending Trump is that he lacks the mens rea to commit obstruction of justice. The same way my five-year-old lacks the mens rea to obstruct my investigation into who drew in crayon on the flat screen. He KNOWS he did it, he KNOWS flushing the crayons down the toilet is “wrong,” but it would make no sense to him if I punished him for flushing crayons down the toilet BUT NOT punish him for drawing on the television. “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up” is not a maxim a five-year-old can understand.
Luckily, I’m not bound to a legal procedure that only makes sense to a five-year-old. The fact that Trump doesn’t understand what “obstruction” means should be irrelevant when the man is out here ADMITTING that he is willing to perform all of the elements to obstruction.
Trump’s ignorance of, you know, EVERYTHING, is not a valid defense. His intention is to not be investigated for his contacts with Russia anymore. That’s enough mens rea for me.
Citing Recusal, Trump Says He Wouldn’t Have Hired Sessions [New York Times]
Earlier:
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.
