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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (1107239)	12/31/2018 11:19:59 AM
From: RetiredNow	1 Recommendation Recommended By locogringo Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578012

You need to do research for yourself instead of just being a sheep and parroting what you hear from the other libtards in your fantasyland. ----------- Dershowitz: A defense that might have freed Flynn — and still could Ever since former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn was arrested for lying to FBI agents, I have argued that he had a strong defense to that charge: namely, that his lies were not material because the FBI questioned him for an illegitimate purpose — to give him an opportunity to lie, rather than to obtain information it did not already have. The question posed by the Flynn case is whether a lie can be material if the FBI already had indisputable evidence of the truthful answer and asked him the question for the sole purpose of giving him an opportunity to lie. As a civil libertarian, I believe the answer should be “No.” The proper function of an FBI or a grand jury interrogation is to obtain information they do not already have, and not to create a new crime by giving the suspect the opportunity to pass or fail a morality test with criminal consequences. Related to materiality is the claim that a suspect cannot be convicted if the question was not within the proper function of the law enforcement agency that asked it. My position has been attacked as lacking any basis in law. The influential legal blog, Above the Law, wrote an article titled “ Dershowitz Invents New Materiality Standard to Protect Trump Cronies—Even Fox News Host Seems to Laugh it Off.” In it, the blogger wrote: “Professor Dershowitz decided to lend his spin to whatever narrative the Trump defense team outlines in exchange for an almost daily dose of Fox News appearances ... materiality does not require investigators to rely upon the false statement. This is not only well-settled, but Dershowitz’s interpretation would also be a remarkably dumb standard.” Others have echoed these ad hominem attacks. Well, it turns out that the issue is not “well-settled.” Nor did I invent it. In fact, two influential courts — the New York Court of Appeals, in an opinion by one of the most distinguished jurists of the 20th century, and the D.C. district court that is now preparing to sentence Flynn — have sided with my interpretation. (True civil libertarians, however, should be concerned about what the law and policy should be, regardless of whether there is a precedent.) The logic of the courts is almost identical to the logic of my argument. In The People v. Tyler, the New York court’s Chief Judge Charles Breitel reversed a conviction for perjury of a former public official who had lied about his connection to a well-known gambler. The court reversed the perjury conviction, holding that: “The primary function of the Grand Jury is to uncover crimes and misconduct in public office for the purpose of prosecution ... It is not properly a principal aim of the Grand Jury, however, to ‘create’ new crimes in the course of its proceedings. Thus, where a prosecutor exhibits no palpable interest in eliciting facts material to a substantive investigation of crime or official misconduct and substantially tailors his questioning to extract a false answer, a valid perjury prosecution should not lie.” The appeals court cited a district court case in D.C., which held that to interpret “materiality” more broadly would serve no proper legislative purpose. In U.S. v. Icardi, 140 F. Supp. 383, the court held that if “the committee is not pursuing a bona fide legislative purpose when it secures the testimony of any witness, it is not acting as a ‘competent tribunal’ … [and] extracting testimony with a view to a perjury prosecution is [not] a valid legislative purpose.” To be sure, there are differences — as there always are — between these cases and the Flynn case. But the logic of the earlier rulings is applicable to the Flynn case: namely, that a lie is not a crime unless it is material and in response to a question that is within the appropriate function of the questioner — and that it is not the proper function of law enforcement to ask questions for the purposes of giving the suspect an opportunity to lie. A judge must instruct a jury that it cannot find a defendant guilty unless it concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that the lie was material. One can reasonably disagree on these issues, and I am ready to debate which is the better civil-liberty view. What is not acceptable is that whenever I criticize the FBI or special counsel Robert Mueller, my criticism is not met with considered counter-arguments but with ad hominem attacks and with false claims that I am following some narrative of the Trump team. (In fact, it was I, not the Trump legal team, that first articulated this argument.) These same people who criticize me now would call me a hero, if the 2016 election had turned out differently and this were President Hillary Clinton being investigated. They would applaud my creativity in the interest of civil liberties rather than condemning me for inventing a new argument. It is simply wrong and dangerous to equate civil-liberty criticism of the FBI and prosecutors with support for Donald Trump. My views on prosecutorial misconduct have been the same for 50 years. I am a liberal Democrat, and a defender of civil liberties. As such, I criticize — and will continue to criticize — government misconduct, regardless of whether it helps Republicans or Democrats, President Trump or his opponents. Being principled and intellectually honest means that, sometimes, your positions may conflict with your partisan preferences. For most of my critics, however, it seems that partisanship trumps their fair-weather commitment to civil liberties. Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School. He is the author of “ Trumped Up: How Criminalizing Politics is Dangerous to Democracy” and “ The Case Against Impeaching Trump.” He is on Twitter @AlanDersh and Facebook @AlanMDershowitz.

To: sylvester80 who wrote (1107239)	12/31/2018 11:23:24 AM
From: RetiredNow	1 Recommendation Recommended By locogringo Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578012

Before you continue to besmirch someone's good name, a person who has done far more for this country than you will ever do, why don't you read what he has done. I bet you don't even know a thing about Flynn and his service to this country. Flynn is one of those people who protected this country so you would continue to have the right to express your disdainful opinion of people like him, you ungrateful S.O.B. What's more is that Flynn was not a rich man. He made no money off his celebrity and these legal actions against him and his son have ruined him and destroyed his financial stability. Over what? He made one mistake and lied to an FBI that did not read him his Miranda Rights and was deliberately trying to entrap him. His communications with Russian authorities was fully within the scope of his job as acting NSA Director to the President Elect and he committed no crime in doing that. Only his lie to the FBI was a crime and a very dubious one at that. If you want to continue to criticize him and call him a traitor, then at the very least have the decency to understand how he served this country for 33 years faithfully, you a-hole. --------- usgif.org Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, USA Director, Defense Intelligence Agency Michael T. Flynn graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 1981 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in Military Intelligence. His first assignment was as a paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Since then, he has served in a variety of command and staff positions to include, Commander, 313th Military Intelligence Battalion and G2, 82nd Airborne Division; G2, 18th Airborne Corps, CJ2, CJTF-180 Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan; Commander, 111th Military Intelligence Brigade at the Army's Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Director of Intelligence, Joint Special Operations Command with duty in OEF and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF); Director of Intelligence, United States Central Command with duty in OEF and OIF; Director of Intelligence, the Joint Staff; Director of Intelligence, International Security Assistance Force-Afghanistan and US Forces- Afghanistan and Special Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff, G2. He most recently served as the Assistant Director of National Intelligence for Partner Engagement before becoming the 18th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency on 24 July 2012. Lieutenant General Flynn's other assignments include multiple tours at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he deployed with the 82nd Airborne Division as a platoon leader for Operation URGENT FURY in Grenada, and as Chief of Joint War Plans for JTF-180 UPHOLD DEMOCRACY in Haiti. He also served with the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and as the Senior Observer/Controller for Intelligence at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Lieutenant General Flynn holds an undergraduate degree in Management Science from the University of Rhode Island and holds three graduate degrees: a Master of Business Administration in Telecommunications from Golden Gate University, San Francisco; a Master of Military Arts and Sciences from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; and a Master of National Security and Strategic Studies from the United States Naval War College. He also holds an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from The Institute of World Politics, Washington, D.C. Lieutenant General Flynn is a graduate of the Army's Intelligence Officer Basic, Advanced, and Electronic Warfare Courses; the Combined Armed Services Staff Course; the United States Army Command and General Staff College and School of Advanced Military Studies; and the United States Naval War College. His awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal (with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters), Legion of Merit (with Oak Leaf Cluster), Bronze Star Medal (with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters), Meritorious Service Medal (with Silver Oak Leaf Cluster), Joint Service Commendation Medal, Army Commendation Medal (with 4 Oak Leaf Clusters), the NATO Service Medal, and several service and campaign ribbons. Lieutenant General Flynn also has earned the Ranger Tab and Master Parachutist Badge, and the Joint Staff Identification Badge. Lieutenant General Flynn is happily married and has two sons.