Politico: Mueller teams up with New York attorney general in Manafort probe

[Virginiá]

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/30/manafort-mueller-probe-attorney-general-242191

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Can't pardon his way out of state crimes

[Gass3268]

Brilliant move by Mueller!

[GeorgiaModerate]

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[GeorgiaModerate]

And in other Trump/Russia developments (I hate to start a new thread for each one):

Russian lobbyist testifies to Mueller grand jury

[Suburbia]

Oh boy.

[Gass3268]

Nuclear Elmo?

[Yank2133]

Good to hear.

[Matty]

I may be wrong, but didn't the special counsel indicate that if anyone associated with trump got indicted for something, that means trump himself has to be indicted?

I do not think it is legal for the counsel to charge an associate without also charging trump.

I may be wrong.

[Virginiá]

I do not think it is legal for the counsel to charge an associate without also charging trump.

He is allowed to pursue anything that comes up during the course of the investigation. That includes charging people like Manafort with crimes he committed to get him to flip on Trump. This is basic tactics for going after criminal organizations, like the mob.

Also there is something of an understanding that presidents must be impeached first. So Mueller would prosecute everyone involved, and send a report to Congress recommending impeachment of Trump. I suppose he could try to prosecute Trump though, but it would quite novel and probably go to SCOTUS. Either way, just think back to Watergate. Nixon was never charged officially (afaik) but scores of underlings were.

[Santander]

I may be wrong, but didn't the special counsel indicate that if anyone associated with trump got indicted for something, that means trump himself has to be indicted?

I do not think it is legal for the counsel to charge an associate without also charging trump.

I may be wrong.

He is basically free to investigate anything and charge anyone except Trump. Trump would need to be impeached. This is how Whitewater ended up with the Lewinsky scandal.

[GeorgiaModerate]

I do not think it is legal for the counsel to charge an associate without also charging trump.

He is allowed to pursue anything that comes up during the course of the investigation. That includes charging people like Manafort with crimes he committed to get him to flip on Trump. This is basic tactics for going after criminal organizations, like the mob.

Also there is something of an understanding that presidents must be impeached first. So Mueller would prosecute everyone involved, and send a report to Congress recommending impeachment of Trump. I suppose he could try to prosecute Trump though, but it would quite novel and probably go to SCOTUS. Either way, just think back to Watergate. Nixon was never charged officially (afaik) but scores of underlings were.

Although it's generally been suggested that a sitting President can't be indicted, this has never been tested legally; Ken Starr's team in the Clinton investigation thought that it was doable.  As noted in that article:

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It seems reasonable to me that if a President is subject to civil suits while in office, he should certainly be subject to criminal prosecutions as well.

[Santander]

It seems reasonable to me that if a President is subject to civil suits while in office, he should certainly be subject to criminal prosecutions as well.

It has been the opinion of the DOJ's own Office of Legal Counsel for many years that the President cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office. Bob Mueller has a unique office, but he is still a DOJ prosecutor. Presidential immunity from prosecution has never been tested in court, but if it does at some point down the road, it would almost certainly come from a state prosecutor who is not part of the federal bureaucracy.

[ProudModerate2]

Someone's going to jail ....
Someone's going to jail ....

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I do not think it is legal for the counsel to charge an associate without also charging trump.

He is allowed to pursue anything that comes up during the course of the investigation. That includes charging people like Manafort with crimes he committed to get him to flip on Trump. This is basic tactics for going after criminal organizations, like the mob.

Also there is something of an understanding that presidents must be impeached first. So Mueller would prosecute everyone involved, and send a report to Congress recommending impeachment of Trump. I suppose he could try to prosecute Trump though, but it would quite novel and probably go to SCOTUS. Either way, just think back to Watergate. Nixon was never charged officially (afaik) but scores of underlings were.

Although it's generally been suggested that a sitting President can't be indicted, this has never been tested legally; Ken Starr's team in the Clinton investigation thought that it was doable.  As noted in that article:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It seems reasonable to me that if a President is subject to civil suits while in office, he should certainly be subject to criminal prosecutions as well.

Yeah. It seems to me (not a lawyer) perfectly reasonable that the President could be charged, convicted, and sentenced while in office. If Congress chooses not to impeach at that point, I supposed he'd either run the country from jail or argue that serving his sentence needs to wait until he's out of office.

[KingSweden]

It seems reasonable to me that if a President is subject to civil suits while in office, he should certainly be subject to criminal prosecutions as well.

It has been the opinion of the DOJ's own Office of Legal Counsel for many years that the President cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office. Bob Mueller has a unique office, but he is still a DOJ prosecutor. Presidential immunity from prosecution has never been tested in court, but if it does at some point down the road, it would almost certainly come from a state prosecutor who is not part of the federal bureaucracy.

Office of Legal Counsel is generally independent from political appointees, I assume?

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

Considering the fact the President can't touch state officials, this is a brilliant move by Mueller! He's outsmarting Trump at every corner.

[Crumpets]

If only our nation's cartoonists could publish a panel of Trump coming home to find Mueller in bed with a woman labeled "power to pardon." Alas, the PC police would never allow it.

[Santander]

It seems reasonable to me that if a President is subject to civil suits while in office, he should certainly be subject to criminal prosecutions as well.

It has been the opinion of the DOJ's own Office of Legal Counsel for many years that the President cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office. Bob Mueller has a unique office, but he is still a DOJ prosecutor. Presidential immunity from prosecution has never been tested in court, but if it does at some point down the road, it would almost certainly come from a state prosecutor who is not part of the federal bureaucracy.

Office of Legal Counsel is generally independent from political appointees, I assume?

OLC is headed by an AAG appointed by the President. Historically, it was a more "independent" position, to the extent you can be independent while being an executive branch appointee, but it's become more politicized in recent years. Still, the opinion that the President cannot be prosecuted while in office has been affirmed by the OLC in both parties' administrations.

[pbrower2a]

I'm thinking that tax evasion (income or sales) is a possibility.

States usually are interested only in the money, and go for prison time only against those who become scapegoats for other scandals. So it was with Dennis Kozlowski, disgraced chief of Tyco International.