Slashdot Mirror


Justice Department Appoints Former FBI Director Robert Mueller As Special Counsel For Russia Investigation (thehill.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The Justice Department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russia's involvement in the U.S. election. Mueller, a former prosecutor who served a 12-year term at the helm of the bureau, has accepted the position, according to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. "In my capacity as acting attorney general I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a special counsel to assume responsibility for the matter," Rosenstein said in a statement. "My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination. What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command." UPDATE: President Trump has released a statement: "As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know -- there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly. In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country."

22 of 606 comments (clear)

  1. Winning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So

    Much

    Winning

    1. Re: Winning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "...politically correct suppression of free speech..."

      So, who's trying to kill net neutrality again?

    2. Re: Winning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most real world issues are subtle, nuanced and lack mainstream interest. Reducing arguments to simple black and white soundbites might "win the votes" of casual spectators, but reality is still there, and doesn't care a jot about any of that.

    3. Re:Winning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or some sort of couple hundred year old piece of paper standing in the way.

    4. Re:Winning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      when mueller finds there is no crime or collusion

      My guess is it goes something like this. Trump absolutely colluded with Russia, but never in a formal way. He noticed, or more likely someone on his staff noticed that Hillary had made an enemy, and that Putin if given the opportunity might help him out. So he opportunistically developed pro Russian positions and titled towards their side, in the hope of getting some help. The one time he publicly asked for help arguably titled that to formal collusion, but that is for a jury to decide. Now there is a lot of crap going on, so it may be that they can prove formal collusion for at least one or more of his advisors. There has got to be some reason that Trump is bending himself in pretzels to defend Flyn (sp?). It is even possible that Trump himself did so, though I doubt he intentionally broke laws. He shows too great a track record of staying just inside the lines, or close enough not to get in trouble anyway. Personally, I still find him guilty of treason, since he as a leading politician welcomed and praised a foreign attack from a state enemy on the integrity of our political process. Unfortunately that is not the definition the constitution uses....

      As far as actual crimes, obstruction of justice is where it is at..
      1. Firing Comey.
      2. Suggesting that Comey should be loyal to him and not the law.
      3. Suggesting that Comey end the Flynn investigation.
      4. Trying to halt the investigation by basically calling everyone liars, and that every voice that doesn't support trump is fake news.
      5. Supporting the above by promoting actual fake news.
      6. Threatening comey over twitter

      Other disturbing actions that attack directly the separations of powers and our government at its core.
      1. Suggesting that judges that are just doing their jobs are endangering us all, and likely putting targets on them all.
      2. Threatening to primary any lawmaker that doesn't support his agenda.
      3. Just lying about everything. Seriously it weakens the office of the president and our ability as a country to get anything done.
      4. Never forget the Obama birth certificate crap. That was trying to destroy Obama, presumably to gain political advantage. As a side effect he weakened the ability of that government to get things done. Had their been truth to it, it would be fine, but the purpose was not truth. The purpose was basically A1 grade evil.
      5. Just blatant fact free appeals to emotion. It was, well very sad.
      6. Giving away Top Secret code word based intelligence to Putin as some sort of twisted ego trip. Seriously, this guy was the guy bitching about emails for ages. Can you see Hillary posing in those photos? You may not be able to prosecute _him_ for it, but anyone else, other than the vice president would be seeing 10 years jail time. He may have the power to do it, but it was stupid beyond all measures of stupidity. It's like he was put on Earth to make Sarah Palin look smart.

      .

        (as is obvious to anyone with a brain, who has looked in vain for actual verifiable evidence for any of that), at around middle of 2018, just in time for midterms, it would indeed be so much "winning".
      trump's opponents are overplaying their hand on this. they should focus on opposing him on his polices that hurt voters, on his breaking election promises, and in promoting policy alternatives that benefit voters(all of them, instead of playing identity politics).
      crying "russians!", "impeachment!" , "resistance!",etc, etc, while supporting illegal immigrants, open trade and borders, support for more wars in support of "allies", politically correct suppression of free speech, etc etc. will not help.

    5. Re:Winning by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 5, Informative

      when mueller finds there is no crime or collusion (as is obvious to anyone with a brain, who has looked in vain for actual verifiable evidence for any of that),

      Really? So Trump ADMITTING on camera that he fired the FBI director to stop the investigation into his possible collusion with Russia isn't "evidence"?

      Trump explained openly how he committed obstruction of justice. We all heard it. How is that not evidence of wrongdoing? If that was you or me we'd already be in handcuffs, and you fucking know it. Your blind partisanship is mind boggling and disgusting in the extreme.

      Trump could rape and murder a 5 year-old boy on live TV and people like you would argue that "the kid had it coming".

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    6. Re: Winning by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I support net neutrality, but I don't think it's a speech issue, rather it's more an issue of economics. At least, we haven't seen any evidence of somebody's speech being squelched as a result of a lack of net neutrality.

      Political correctness on the other hand does very often squelch somebody's speech, and in fact we see it happen at US universities often.

    7. Re: Winning by burtosis · · Score: 5, Informative

      What the hell are you talking about? Name one thing that couldn't be said or written while net neutrality is active? Companies may not be allowed to implement a business plan that amounts to "shove a large rod up our customers' rear ends" under net neutrality, but they could still write it if they wanted with or without net neutrality.

      Maybe you should try again with the 2nd or maybe the 18th amendment? I mean you're not even bothering to justify that claim never mind doing so in any sort of logical sense, so why not insist that net neutrality is inhibiting the sale of alcohol? It makes just as much sense.

      ISP could make access slashdot extremely slow to impossible to access if they didn't like its content without neutrality. Same goes for the FCC comment section on net nutrality. They could fastlane Britbart and FoxNews and basically cripple access to liberal sites. Or, perhaps more to your horror, they could do the reverse. Net neutrality stops free speech by curtailing access to a tiny rotting pipe if the ISP so chooses.

    8. Re: Winning by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Reducing arguments to simple black and white soundbites

      This is precisely why the US so desperately needs a real third party. It reduces but sadly does not eliminate, the tendency to make every binary decision into a political position, and every political issue into a binary decision.

  2. Keep in mind by burtosis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We didn't know the extent of the Nixon atrocities until more than a year after the break in. It's quite likely lots of evidence exists, but is being used in an ongoing investigation and will not be disclosed publically anytime soon. If trump asked Comey to back of Flynn, and we know he admitted to firing Comey over Russia issues, that is likely enough on its own. Not to mention the overwhelming list that grows by the day. If we see Paul Ryan buckle, it's all over.

    1. Re:Keep in mind by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who's the real crazy conspiracy nut here?

      Given the fact that Flynn and Manafort are officially named as subjects of a criminal investigation into illegal foreign influence and grand jury subpoenas have been issued for their records?

      You.

      --
      FSB hits! FSB hits! Your democracy dies. Do you want your possessions identified?
    2. Re:Keep in mind by gman003 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Also remember, Obama spied on Trump campaign

      False, based on all evidence save Trump's Twitter feed. No physical evidence has been produced - and you'd think there would be tons of evidence, since the whole purpose of spying is to gather information. The claims have been directly contradicted by members of the intelligence community. Barring a sudden release of proof, I can safely label this as a lie.

      got Comey to drop charges against Hillary

      False. She was never charged, and Obama did not influence Comey's decision to end the investigation with no charges. As proof, I point out that, once the Republicans took office, Comey would have been able to re-open the investigation and file charges with political support. He made no attempts to do so. Instead, he got fired, *supposedly* for his excessive pursuit of Clinton - in other words, Trump, the biggest Hillary-hater of them all, is claiming Comey was too tough on her.

      Bill Clinton talked to Lynch days before FBI decided to drop charges

      Non sequitur. I also ate a sandwich days before the FBI dropped the investigation.

      Seth Rich was shot in DC and he was the one that gave the emails to Wikileaks not Russia.

      Only the first six words of that are true. If you dig into that story, you find circles - Fox News claiming a private investigator uncovered evidence of a Wikileaks connection, and then when CNN calls that PI, he claims he never found evidence of it, but heard of the possibility of evidence from a Fox News report. It's literally made up - in other words, lies.

  3. Re: Not an investigation by JoeyRox · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're misinformed:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

  4. Re:All smoke and mirrors by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whatever the Democrats may be screaming, it's irrelevant to this. The Republicans control Congress. It's in their hands, and thus far every attempt they've made to support Trump has been thrown back in their face by his inability to keep his mouth shut. For chrissakes, the man is such an arrogant blowhard he was showing off to the fucking Russians in the Oval Office with a Russian journalist in the room. Whether he let slip any classified data or not, the fact is not only has he once again, within the space of a few days, made himself look like a big mouthed ass, he's now pissing off Israel, which means Israel and other allies, not to mention the State Department itself, are going to start holding crucial intelligence closer to their chests lest the Braggart-in-chief decide to show off to any other foreign powers.

    Don't you see that it is Trump himself that is going to be forcing Republican lawmakers' hands? The opposing minority party always makes frequent demands for removals and impeachments and judicial proceedings. Christ, that's been the way Washington has worked since the day after George Washington walked off into the sunset. The difference here is that this is a man who seems bound and determined to make his supporters and allies look like idiots, and seems to want to hand his opponents, both Democrat AND Republican (because he has no lack of critics in the GOP) all the ammunition they could ever need.

    At this point you even have some Democratic strategists hoping he doesn't get impeached and removed, because the longer he's in the White House, the worse the Republicans look.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  5. Re:Done, done, done by peragrin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you been watching Fox News? They have been commiting slander, libel and other things against the dnc staffer yet haven't said a peep against the fact that trump is leaking secrets to Russia. Fox and republicans don't care that trump is commiting treason. They are such hypocrites that if Hillary did half of what trump has done they would be hanging her.

    But if one of their own does it ? It isn't a big deal. Republicans. Hypocrites to the core. Do as they say not as do.

    --
    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  6. A pretty good choice by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Informative

    He was chosen as G.W.B.'s attorney general on 09/04/2001, so he has a hot week in office before the WTC fell.

    Director Mueller, along with Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, threatened to resign from office in March 2004 if the White House overruled a Department of Justice finding that domestic wiretapping without a court warrant was unconstitutional.

    Obama kept him on for two years after he was elected, and Comey was not only his assistant, but his successor.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  7. Re:Done, done, done by DogDude · · Score: 5, Informative

    it could be worse, it could be Hillary

    Really? Worse? Really? She'd have allowed the massive amounts of pollution that the Liar-in-Chief already has via executive orders? She would've embarrassed all of us with brains? You're out of your fucking mind or dumb as a brick if you really think this.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  8. Re:All smoke and mirrors by DogDude · · Score: 5, Informative

    even though there's no evidence that Russia had any influence in the way it turned out.

    That's a lie.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  9. And yet there keep being issues with Russia by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would agree it was just Democrats shouting in the dark... if there didn't keep being problems. See here's the thing: The issue isn't with the e-mail leaks. That's not what is being talked about, it is if any of Trump's associates had illegal ties to the Russians and more importantly if Trump tried to cover it up.

    Trump was told that Flynn was likely compromised and he shouldn't hire him. Had he not, well that story would end there. But he did hire him. He then pressured the FBI director to drop the investigation in to Flynn, and only fired Flynn when it leaked that he had this conflict of interest. He then implied the problem, and the reason he fired Flynn, was the leak not the compromise. Then he later fired the FBI director which his people claimed was related to the e-mails but he came out and said was because of the Russia investigation.

    Guess what? That shit starts to look a lot like obstruction of justice. That's why this thing continues to have legs.

    Oh an impeachment of a president? That's not "corrupt politicians" "overthrow[ing] of an elected President," it is constitutional, and is what is supposed to happen if the president breaks the law. Article one section 1 states that "The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment." Article two section four states "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

    So ya, if it turns out he obstructed justice, which you'd need an investigation to determine (and that is what is going on), accepted bribes, or other illegal acts then the House would be within its constitutional power to impeach him and the Senate to try him. That's not some covert scheme to subvert the Constitution, it is written right in the original text.

  10. Re:Excellent. by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At least one significant member of Trump's administration had to resign almost as soon as he was appointed because he was found to be working with the Russians, and he's being investigated. I'm not sure where you're getting it from that anyone independent at all in a position to know has suggested there's no links between the Trump campaign and Russia - if that were known, there wouldn't have been multiple FBI investigations to begin with.

    And if there weren't multiple FBI investigations into Trump's team's connections with Russia, Comey would still have a job.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  11. Say what you want by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

    That new US Prez sitcom is better than anything I've ever watched. At first I was skeptical because it looked like a cheap Spin City knockoff or a weak rehash of That's my Bush, and, well, basically it is, but they really manage to spice it up and get to new heights week after week.

    Though I have to admit, it slowly starts to get a wee bit unrealistic.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  12. Re:No one has released any evidence... by Enigma2175 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I keep reading articles how the Russians hacked this or that and then a few paragraphs down; "we have no evidence the Russians are involved.".

    If you can't discern fact from fiction, then read primary sources and quit listening to biased news. Here is a link to the report released by the intelligence agencies:

    https://www.dni.gov/files/docu...

    Here's a spoiler:

    We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

    --

    Enigma