Nobody is supposed to be above the law, but that’s not the case in 2019. There is someone who is apparently above the law: Donald J. Trump. With an assist from Attorney General William Barr, Donald Trump has avoided prosecution for the clear instances of obstruction of justice outlined in the Mueller report. The evidence was so strong that nearly 800 Department of Justice alumni, all former federal prosecutors from both Republican and Democratic administrations, say that the Mueller report showed Trump’s actions to be “overwhelming” evidence of corrupt intent. That is double the number of ex-prosecutors who signed the statement yesterday.
From the statement released at Medium:
The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:
· The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;
· The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and
· The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.
In fact, the obstruction continues to this day with Donald Trump ordering nearly everyone in his administration to stop cooperating with the constitutionally mandated congressional oversight.
The Washington Post noted some of the more well-known names, including Elkan Abramowitz, a former federal prosecutor in New York.
He didn’t hold back in his comments about Attorney General Barr’s actions:
Abramowitz, a Democrat, said he signed the letter because he found Barr’s statements about Mueller’s report “so unbelievably misleading that I thought a clear statement of what the report said was in order.” He said his signature had “nothing to do” with Pecker or any other client.
“The line in his testimony where he said that the president, ‘if he thought any investigation of him was not fair he could stop it,’ was really — not only destructive and wrong — it was stupid,” Abramowitz said, referring to Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Everybody I represent says that the investigation of them is unfair, and they have very sincerely held beliefs that the investigation is unfair. It was just an absurd statement.”
In the meantime, Donald Trump has declared executive privilege over the Mueller report, further attempting to shield Congress and the American people from finding out the truth about exactly what is in that report. What is he so afraid of?