A showdown has been looming between Robert Mueller and Donald Trump. There is zero doubt that Mueller is out to get Trump and Trump is wise to steer clear of an interview with Mueller. Trump has come under criticism from the left for not choosing to expose himself to legal jeopardy in the form of a perjury trap.
Perjury trap doctrine refers to a principle that a perjury indictment against a person must be dismissed if the prosecution secures it by calling that person as a grand-jury witness in an effort to obtain evidence for a perjury charge especially when the person’s testimony does not relate to issues material to the ongoing grand-jury investigation. The perjury trap is a form of entrapment defense, and so must be affirmatively proven by the defendant.
The following are examples of some case law on perjury trap:
A perjury trap is created when the government calls a witness before the grand jury for the primary purpose of obtaining testimony from him in order to prosecute him later for perjury. When testimony is elicited before a grand jury that is attempting to obtain useful information in furtherance of its investigation, or conducting a legitimate investigation into crimes which had in fact taken place within its jurisdiction, the perjury trap doctrine is, by definition, inapplicable. [United States v. Chen, 933 F.2d 793 (9th Cir. Guam 1991)]
When Giuliani said “truth isn’t truth” he was quite right. Gen. Michael Flynn told the truth and was exonerated by two FBI agents who did not thing he lied. The newt thing you know he’s indicted by Mueller and as forced to accept a plea deal because 1. he was being bankrupted and 2. Mueller was threatening his family. So when the left was arguing that there is no such thing as a perjury trap, you know damn well there is.
Successful perjury traps do not get prosecuted all that often. But that does not mean perjury traps are uncommon. They tend to be used more for leverage than to prosecute as a stand-alone charge. A prosecutor who knows a reluctant witness will lie elicits the lie and then exploits the resulting specter of prosecution — along with other leverage points — to pressure the witness into spilling the beans. Or, in a jury trial, the prosecutor who suspects a defense witness will lie, sets the trap, elicits the lie, and then blows it up — not to lay the groundwork for a future perjury charge but to destroy the witness’s credibility, which helps win the trial.
In any event, it is fatuous to claim that this stuff doesn’t happen. It happens all the time. If you want to say that President Trump’s lawyers are just making excuses for a client who is prone to lie without being trapped, that is a cogent legal argument. If you instead insist that there is no such thing as a perjury trap just because the concept is being invoked by lawyers for a president you despise, then you’re playing politics . . . or you’ve let your contempt for Donald Trump get the better of you.
If you watched any of the democrats questioning Brett Kavanaugh during the confirmation hearings this week, you saw a perjury trap in action. Led by wannabe Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Cory “Spartacus” Booker, democrats did their best to ask questions in a leading, obtuse and abstract manner to so as to be able to pounce upon the answers later and level accusations of perjury against Kavanaugh- who by any measure is a decent, honest and honorable man.
For those keeping score at home, millions of Americans have now been exposed to false and ridiculous claims that Kavanaugh is a slippery perjurer who surrounds himself with racists and a cold, dark soul who deliberately snubbed a murdered child’s father.
…
Then there are the perjury claims. Writing in the widely read online journal, Above the Law, writer Elie Mystal charged that Kavanaugh committed perjury when, during the 2004 hearing from which he was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit court of appeals, he told Ted Kennedy “that he was ‘not involved’ in Bill Pryor’s nomination to the Eleventh Circuit. In fact, Mystal said, “He was involved. In documents made public during Senator Pat Leahy’s questioning, Kavanaugh is shown to have recommended Pryor, and invited to actively discuss Pyror’s hearings.” As proof of the alleged lie, Mystal embedded this tweet:
On the left, sworn testimony in which Brett Kavanaugh tells Ted Kennedy he was "not involved in handling" Bill Pryor's nomination.
On the right, Brett Kavanaugh is invited to an "emergency umbrella meeting" at a private law firm "to discuss nominee Bill Pryor's hearing." pic.twitter.com/IDff00xEwm
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) September 6, 2018
This was torn apart by David Lat
8. Kavanaugh explicitly ADMITTED, for example, that he might have attended a moot session for Pryor, and/or read & discussed news articles about the Pryor nom (but understandably didn't want to go into detail about @WhiteHouse internal deliberations). pic.twitter.com/K9nOo4uf2X
— David Lat (@DavidLat) September 6, 2018
Back to David French:
So, in context, the meaning is plain: The Pryor nomination wasn’t his to handle, but he did assist in some ways. It’s right there, in black and white.
And then this
Writing in Slate, Lisa Graves also claimed that Kavanaugh should be “impeached, not elevated” for supposedly perjuring himself. She argued that the judge deliberately lied when he testified he did not see any information stolen from Democrats by former GOP Senate aide Manuel Miranda in the early 2000s. Here’s the relevant portion of Kavanaugh’s testimony:
“I don’t know what the universe of memos might be, but I do know that I never received any memos, was not aware of any such memos.”
Graves claimed that Kavanaugh actually did receive information she believes “plainly” came from stolen Democratic talking points. Perjury, right? Not so fast. Even a panel of experts convened by Vox threw cold water on Graves’s legal theory. There is a long distance between an inaccurate statement and the kind of willful, deliberate falsehood that constitutes a federal crime. Brooklyn law professor Miriam Baer said that “she didn’t see any lie” in Kavanaugh’s response. He simply testified that he didn’t realize the material was stolen.
Bill Jacobson has a great analysis of this too.
Clearly, the questions were designed to by ambiguous and tortured. Not satisfied with that, democrats took to deceptively editing Kavanaugh’s comments to further disparage him:
The discussion of contraceptives arose when GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas asked Kavanaugh about a dissent he wrote in a case called Priests for Life v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a First Amendment challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. Though Obamacare includes an opt-out provision for religious groups with moral objections to birth control, the plaintiffs in Priests for Life argued the fix was inadequate and still burdened their religious beliefs.
“It was a technical matter of filing out a form in that case,” Kavanaugh told Cruz. “But they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to.”
Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California tweeted a selectively edited video of the judge’s remarks, which exclude the words “they said” from his statement, creating the impression that the phrase “abortion-inducing drugs” reflected Kavanaugh’s own considered opinion, and not those of the Catholic priests challenging the contraception mandate.
These are acts of desperation and they will go exactly nowhere, but then they are meant to discredit a good man and provide campaign fodder for Presidential ambitions. They are disgraceful.
Now imagine that instead of Kamala Harris and Spatacus Booker, imagine Robert Mueller asking similar obtuse and ambiguous questions. It wouldn’t matter how honest the answer if the prosecutor wants your ass.
You become the ham sandwich.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
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Liberals believe themselves to be so sly and clever while they only fool idiots WANTING to be fooled and lied to.
No perjury trap is necessary. We have a president who is fundamentally unable to speak the truth.
@Gary Miller: @Gary Miller@Gary Miller:
Obama has an interesting relationship with the truth, he makes a
mockery of it.
All that mindless braying from the Stupid Jackass Party these Dirty Democrats want another Janet Reno in there
Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing—evasion
He knows perfectly well whether or not he has discussed the Mueller investigation with anyone from the law firm representing the President. That isn’t the sort of discussion that any judge who is bright and informed enough to be qualified for a seat on the United States Supreme Court would be likely to forget.
Asking for a truthful answer to a simple, perfectly straightforward question is not a perjury trap, unless the person being asked chooses to answer it with a lie. An evasion indicates something that the person doesn’t want to reveal—in this case, the possibility of a preexisting opinion that might well disqualify a Supreme Court Justice from hearing and ruling on a case that could affect the presidency and the future of the nation.
Any decision on Kavanaugh’s nomination must wait until after the November elections, which are less than two months away. Republicans were perfectly willing to block any hearings on Obama’s nominee for nearly a year, establishing such a precedent in connection with a far less controversial nominee.
@Greg: It wasn’t evasion at all. You simply cannot answer stupid questions aimed at grandstanding.
Say hello to the next Supreme Court Justice and thank Harry Reid for the gift.
@Greg: Then when Ruthie passes away we can see the democrats turn this process into a circus side show all over again.
@Deplorable Bill, #7:
It wasn’t a “stupid question.” It was a simple, direct question requiring a simple, direct answer, and one that is highly relevant to a legal issue of critical national importance.
The answer would reveal whether a man who might soon deliberate on matters relating to possible presidential misconduct as a Supreme Court Justice has previously discussed those same matters with anyone who was part of the president’s personal legal team.
Asking such questions is the entire point of a Senate confirmation hearing. Asking them is the duty of any U.S. Senator participating in such a hearing. A confirmation hearing is not a ceremony wherein the Senate rubber stamps APPROVED on anything a president wants to do. Were they to become so, our constitutional system of checks and balances would be dead, soon to be followed by the Constitution itself. A lot of Trump supporters don’t seem to have a clue or care a fig about how any of this is supposed to work. They just make predictable noises about the Constitution to give false weight to a host of bogus arguments.
@kitt, #8:
If our nation has any luck left, Trump will precede her out the door.
Poll: Midwest Abandons Trump, Fueling Democratic Advantage For Control Of Congress
@Greg: Thats right no need for you to vote all the dems are just going to win.
I hear that all dems are going to line the south east coast and scream NOT MY HURRICANE, hurry get a front spot
Oh, we’ll be voting alright, in record numbers for a midterm election. You can thank Donald J. Trump for that. We know what Vladimir Putin is and we know who our historical friends have been. We recognize contradictions, lies, and nonsensical rally rhetoric, resent partisan blame shifting, and dislike the promotion and exploitation of populace hatred and anger. We believe plutocracy and nepotism are fundamentally un-American, and we can’t be bought off with a fiscally irresponsible tax cut that clearly favors the wealthiest while kicking the props out from under social programs aiding those in genuine need. We don’t automatically equate shared social responsibility with socialism, because we’re not driven by avarice and not effing stupid. All of the right’s chickens will soon be coming home to roost.
November can’t come soon enough.
@Greg: Delusional is what you are you, simply parroted Obamas speech, he was laughed at you know. What you describe is shared social misery, and you all bitched about the tax cuts but now dont want to make the poor working peoples crumbs permanent. What a pile of lowlifes. Do you think middle America is going to hand back a now thriving economy back to the fools that would screw it up again? Drive recovering and returning businesses out? Put people that are pulling away from poverty back on foodstamps. NPR the most strident of liberal voices I would not believe a poll from them. Remember Obama ruled when over 1000 democrat seats of power were lost he crushed the party. Democrats currently hold fewer elected offices nationwide than at any time since the 1920s. Things are getting better faster see the correlation? The places that are dangerous and even have homeless crapping the sidewalks are still democrat strongholds, they cant afford to fill in potholes but ruling democrats enjoy high pay and great benefits.
Fewer Democrats = more prosperity
@Greg:
No, it’s stupid because the point is to trap Kavanagh saying he discussed it, then the follow up would be, “what did you say” and then when he leaves out a preposition or uses a different pronoun, the crybabies scream “PERJURY!!” (as if, after Brennan’s, Comey’s, Strzok’s, McCabe’s, and, of course, Hillary’s perjury mattered to any liberal).
Such as… WHAT? Almost three years looking with every means, legal and illegal, and they can find NOTHING. There will be no “matters” going to the Supreme Court because the object of the “investigation” is to stain the administration with all the associated implied guilt and affect the mid-terms, not to prove any crime. There never WAS any crime and they all know it. YOU know it; this is nothing but another straw you are clinging to.
Trump has lost NO support (your little witch hunt has backfired, doing nothing but giving false hopes to a bunch of whiny sore losers) and the Democrats have lost many voters due to their acceptance of violence as a political tool.
Reality will catch up with you in 54 days.
@Greg: Um… like last time?
@Deplorable me, #16:
Nope, not like last time. This time there will be no electoral college leverage points for Vladimir Putin’s operatives to manipulate. This time there will be only the American democratic process and the will of the people.
@Greg: Oh yeah… I forgot. Hillary only lost because Vlad impaled her, so to speak, right?
Sometimes I think your intellect is a notch above the run-of-the-mill whiny crybaby liberal, but then you go and crash my fantasy… like yours are about to be crashed.
But you do know what I said is true, don’t you. In the midterm elections, it’s all about the actual vote count. There’s no intervening mechanism to tinker with that awards an office to someone who has lost a popular election by 3 million votes. At this level, America truly is a democracy, and Trump has turned the whole thing into a referendum on Trump—because everything, after all, is all about him. So, we shall see what a majority of the people have to say, in each individual political race.
@Greg: Trump has also helped a LOT of people in the areas where people will be voting. Obama told them recovery was not possible and Trump did it. The approval of the “investigation” is down there around that of Congress; that coup is working against the Democrats.
But, if Republicans lose, we’ll just blame the Russians and reverse them all.
@Greg: Big deal you have mob rule, the control mechanism for federal government was destroyed by progressives, Californication and New Jerks will not choose the president for the entire country by mob rule, we will protect the electoral college. Even old Ruthie is saying this confirmation circus is disgusting.
@Greg: Oh, I forgot… how did “Putin’s operatives” manipulate the Electoral College?
@Deplorable Bill, #22:
It hardly takes Sherlock Holmes to figure this out. They did it by manipulating voter opinion within targeted geographical electoral college leverage points.
Why do you think they hacked state and county voter registration rolls? Doing so provided the necessary information to correlate voter identities in critical precincts with social media user identities. Sophisticated social media advertising algorithms then allowed them to narrowly focus their messages on those audiences.
They would only have had to swing a bit over 77 thousand voters away from Clinton to hand the electoral college victory to Trump. That’s certainly what it appears they were trying to do. The enormous disparity between the popular election outcome and the electoral college outcome has never before happened. No other election has even come close.
This has been explained before. Perhaps you should write it down somewhere.
@Greg:
No interviews, collapsing at 911 memorial, calling people deplorable, lying about a you tube video, she was sunk with her comment what difference does it make, no one wants such a frigid hearted harpy to be the President. “Don’t you want to see a woman president?” sure just not you, savior of Haiti.
The margin would have been wider had he been a little nicer to Cruz.
@Greg:
Oh. But, how did they manipulate these opinions? See, THAT’S the mystery. I have asked and asked and asked to see ads that might have possibly influenced someone’s mind and have never seen one. I’ve see pro and anti Hillary ads and I’ve seen pro and anti Trump ads. Again, it appears you are simply whining and blaming having a criminal (though the FBI, DOJ and media was actively covering the fact up) liar as a candidate was not the problem.
Why does the FBI say NO votes were changed? Why did Obama say the electoral process was impossible to hack and alter? Why did Obama do NOTHING to react to the known threat? Why did Democrats, up until the moment they lost, say claiming the election was rigged was un-American?
Maybe Hillary should have campaigned in Michigan and other important states if she wanted to win them. She was too staggeringly drunk to do anything but go to overly friendly venues where she could be guaranteed no difficult questions would come her way. Meanwhile, Trump campaigned hard EVERYWHERE, worked hard like he is now while Hillary relied on the inevitability of her victory.
Also wider had the Democrats not employed voter fraud and rolled in so many illegal immigrants to vote Democrat.
@Deplorable me:
“I have asked and asked and asked to see ads that might have possibly influenced someone’s mind and have never seen one. ”
3000 were released to the public. Here’s 50 of them:
https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-russian-ads-50-fake-posts-newsfeed-922301
@Gary Miller: So, tell me… which one of those was the most devastatingly effective in changing people’s minds?
@Greg:
So what you are saying is that you are so gullible that you think Facebook ads have a strong influence on what people do? Does that mean that you run out and purchase every product whose advertisement shows up in your newsfeed? Really, Gullible Greggie?
But it seems that those targeted ads to Hispanic voters backfired on the left leaning group that put them out. Ooooops.
@retire05, #28:
Of course such ads significantly influence their target audiences’ opinions and behavior. Why do you think corporate America spends billions of dollars purchasing them? They do so because they work.
@Deplorable me:
I’m unsure which one of these ads was the most devastating. But we’re talking about folks who voted for Trump, 57% of which as of last December still thought Obama was born in Kenya. So this is certainly not the most discerning group of Americans.
@Greg:
Does that mean that you run out and purchase every product whose advertisement shows up in your newsfeed? Really, Gullible Greggie?
Sad that the American populace is so gullible that, apparently like you, can be influenced by a simple Facebook advertisement. Most rational thinking Americans pay no attention to those ads. Guess that leaves you out, Greggie Gullible.
@Gary Miller:
And you get that 57% stat from where, again?
@retire05, #31:
Nope. But with any reasonably effective advertising campaign there will be an increase in the overall number of people who do so. There are metrics for measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. They’re used in making decisions about marketing and advertising budgets. Surely everyone knows this. One general conclusion that can be made is that advertising works. This is why there’s so much of it.
@Greg: Then why didnt the massive MSM smears against Trump work? They were in tears election night shock and awe.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/07/donald-trump-was-right-he-got-incredibly-negative-press-coverage/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.dc3fa6e1cb6b
And 89% negative after the election, it still wont work.
We didnt miss Harris’s “Trump feeds the Koi” moment with her edited tape Making Kavanaugh appear to say birth control was abortion inducing . Yes run that skank for President she can take Spazacus Booker as Vice.
@kitt, #34:
Legitimate advertising is recognizable as such. Reasonably intelligent ad viewers realize they’re being presented with a carefully packaged biased information package intended to influence their opinions, behavior, or purchases.
The Russians weren’t doing legitimate advertising. They were using social media advertising tools to run a precisely targeted false news and propaganda operation. Their precision targeting required them to illegally hack multiple state and county voter data bases to correlate voter identities with geographical locations and stolen social media user profiles. (Refer to Cambridge Analytica for an example of one known social media data breach.) Because they were targeting electoral college leverage points, their success didn’t depend upon influencing anywhere near 1 percent of voters; they only had to change the minds of a fraction of that percentage.
Some people don’t seem to want to figure this out. They prefer to conflate what Russian intelligence hackers and operatives did with normal political advertising, and then pretend that it was of no greater consequence. This is a denial of reality.
@retire05:
“And you get that 57% stat from where, again?”
“Perhaps unsurprisingly, respondents who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election were especially convinced of Obama’s African origins: Fully 57 percent said it was “definitely true” or “probably true” that the 44th president came from Kenya.”
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-birther-obama-poll-republicans-kenya-744195
@kitt: You mean lyin Ted whose father was in on JFK assassination– Ted your wife she’s sure ugly–didn’t stop a weak Cruz supporter like you Kitt–you dumped Ted for the chump er Trump train
Seems at least 57% EA’ERS believe BHO was born in Kenya
Also got many who believe he’s a Muslim
At least one here claims he’s gay and Michelle a tranny
Fun Group
@Gary Miller: And people who voted for Hillary who KNEW she was a lying criminal. Which is worse?
@Greg: “The Russians weren’t doing legitimate advertising. They were using social media advertising tools to run a precisely targeted false news and propaganda operation. ” Such as? What were the “false” news and propaganda? That she let her emails fall into foreign hands? That she lied to Congress? What was spread that was false?
Your Russian excuse is hollow and Putin favored Hillary, who was blackmail bait.
You’re getting no excuses, you’re getting clear and rational explanations. I’m not responsible for your unwillingness or inability to comprehend them.
@Gary Miller:
How about a link to the actual survey and not some (leftwing) Newsweek article?
Come on now, Miller, cowboy up.
@Greg:
Not from you, Greggie. You are totally incapable of blathering anything rational.
@Greg: Trump wants to claim an overwhelming win’
Pure bullshit—As you point out a shift of UNDER 100K Votes in Mich. Wisc and Pa and DT’S a loser.
What happened to his commission that was going to produce 3-4 Million votes for him?
Dems win The House they’ll draw up Articles Of Impeachment on grounds he’s the biggest bullshitter to ever hold the office.
@retire05:
Liberals are absolutely controlled by propaganda. So, if they suspect someone ELSE is using propaganda effectively, it scares the hell out of them. It’s why they try to shut down all other opinions; they, better than anyone, understand the malleable mind.
@Greg: Yes, the entire Russian mind meld fantasy is an excuse. To date, we’ve seen no ads which used false information to put Hillary in a bad light. Nothing. The truth worked well enough. Meanwhile, the left had to concoct lies about Russian collusion, sexual assault and golden showers to campaign on. Were it not for Democrat voter fraud, you’d not even have your “popular vote” mantra to cling to.
@Richard Wheeler:
Won’t happen. And Slick Willie claimed that award years ago. Not to mention the brilliance of David Axelrod creating a resume for Obama out of fairy wings.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/14/cnn-poll-admits-impeach-trump-short-facts/
@retire05, #41:
Did you and Deplorable by some chance attend the same troll school? Neither of you seems able to recognize rational, which post #35 most definitely is. You also seem to share a compulsive need to have the last word, even when have nothing intelligent to say.
@Greg:
Obviously, Greggie Gullible, you don’t even know the meaning of a “troll.” The true meaning, in internet terms, is applicable to YOU, not me.
You are here for no other reason that to blather your leftist propaganda, which, by the way, you really suck at although you give it your best. You are a laughing stock, mocked by all rational thinking people so it is quite clear you also have no shame.
Are you aware that the word twitter is a synonym for blather?
(You should try very hard not to respond to that observation, just to demonstrate that you have at least some small measure of self control.)
@Greg: Where are the ads with lies that cost Hillary the election? There are none. She was a bad candidate, bad campaigner, bad person, a liar, a criminal and corrupt. The only reason it was even close is because the liberal media is a propaganda outlet for the Democrats. YOU lack rationality.