ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

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Turtledove wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

Since you deny that Martha Stewart served time in jail for Obstruction of Justice without there being an underlying crime, we have to conclude that your connection to reality has been severed completely and replaced with President Donald Trump's tweeter feed. I hope that you are still able to at least bath and feed yourself.

Try harder my dude. Martha Stewart has been found guilty of conspiracy and lying to the FBI. Is that what "no underlying crime" means to you?

Maybe then the problem is that you cannot follow the link I provided and read a little bit?

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The highest-profile example of trying a case of obstruction without an underlying crime that our experts could think of was the prosecution of Martha Stewart, the founder of a popular lifestyle and media company. Stewart was tried on charges related to her sale of 4,000 shares of ImClone, a pharmaceutical company, one day before the company’s stock price plummeted.

The charges of securities fraud were thrown out, but prosecutors persisted with charges of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. She was found guilty of four counts and in 2004 was sentenced to five months of prison, five months of house arrest, and two years of probation.

Stewart "surely feared reputational and business harm" even in the absence of a crime, said Robert Weisberg, co-director of Stanford University’s Criminal Justice Center.

Another notable example is the case of Scooter Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, said Samuel Buell, a law professor at Duke University. Libby was charged by a special prosecutor with obstruction, perjury and false statements, but not any underlying crime related to the outing of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame. (Trump pardoned Libby.)

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Boem wrote:

Thoughts on Venezuela anybody?

Should America help or watch on the side-line, thoughts on what trump will do?

Peace,

-Boem-

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Xavderion wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

Try harder my dude. Martha Stewart has been found guilty of conspiracy and lying to the FBI. Is that what "no underlying crime" means to you?

Maybe then the problem is that you cannot follow the link I provided and read a little bit?

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The highest-profile example of trying a case of obstruction without an underlying crime that our experts could think of was the prosecution of Martha Stewart, the founder of a popular lifestyle and media company. Stewart was tried on charges related to her sale of 4,000 shares of ImClone, a pharmaceutical company, one day before the company’s stock price plummeted.

The charges of securities fraud were thrown out, but prosecutors persisted with charges of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. She was found guilty of four counts and in 2004 was sentenced to five months of prison, five months of house arrest, and two years of probation.

Stewart "surely feared reputational and business harm" even in the absence of a crime, said Robert Weisberg, co-director of Stanford University’s Criminal Justice Center.

Another notable example is the case of Scooter Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, said Samuel Buell, a law professor at Duke University. Libby was charged by a special prosecutor with obstruction, perjury and false statements, but not any underlying crime related to the outing of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame. (Trump pardoned Libby.)

You mean the link which says she's guilty of perjury? And where the other example was also guilty of perjury?

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We checked with 11 legal experts to nail down answers. Essentially all of these experts agreed that obstruction can indeed be prosecuted without an underlying crime — and has been in the past, notably in the case of Martha Stewart.

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Legal experts told us that a president (or anyone) could still be prosecuted for obstructing justice if they believed they might be prosecuted — even if they ultimately never are.

"You can obstruct justice even if a prosecutor ultimately finds you were not guilty of committing the crime that was the focus of the underlying investigation," said Miriam Baer, a professor at Brooklyn Law School. "Even if a prosecutor ultimately concluded that you weren’t guilty of crime X, that says nothing as to whether you thought that you might be indicted for crime X, or, for that matter, if you thought one of your friends of family members would be indicted for crime X."

Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, agreed that an obstruction prosecution could have been argued in this case.

"Suppose Trump knew that no crime had been committed but believed that the investigation would uncover politically or personally embarrassing information, or if he believed that the investigation would embarrass or implicate an ally, aide, or family member," Posner said. "Then interfering with the investigation is a crime. The reason is that the purpose of the investigation is to find the truth, and if people obstruct an investigation, then the investigation becomes more difficult, wasting government resources."

That said, an obstruction case is naturally going to be stronger if there is an underlying crime that’s being prosecuted, said Ric Simmons, a professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

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Turtledove wrote:

snip

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Re: Venezuela

Trump will do whatever Putin tells him to do.

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Xavderion wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

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Their only example is nonsense because Martha Stewart did commit crimes. Perjury and conspiracy to commit perjury. Stop parroting Politifake lmao.

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That conclusion is questionable for reasons beyond its haste. It’s black letter law that a defendant can satisfy the corrupt intent criterion for obstruction even if the defendant himself committed no underlying crime. For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit recently ruled that a defendant could be convicted of obstruction “even if [his] primary motivation was to extricate the sister of his childhood friend from a troubled situation.” A court in Utah held in 2013 that a defendant could be liable for obstruction where his only apparent motive was to protect a friend from a criminal charge.

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Legally, however, obstruction can still occur even in the absence of an underlying crime.

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There’s also a legal debate over some of Barr’s reasoning. In his memo to Congress, Barr said that he determined that there was not enough evidence on obstruction in part because Trump was not “involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.” Marriotti disputes Barr’s reasoning, calling it a weak argument because a person could have had a corrupt intent for obstructing justice even if they had not committed an underlying crime.

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Turtledove wrote:

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Bwahaha. He needs a diversion. He needs a war to try to avoid the inevitable