Of all the attorneys who've studied Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation of President Trump's relations with the Russian government, Andrew McCarthy, a former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has been the most careful, the most cautious, in his criticism of the Special Counsel. But last night on the John Batchelor Show McCarthy, in his explanation of a "novel" interpretation of the legal term "obstruction," made explicit what has only been implicit in Mueller's approach to the investigation.
What McCarthy revealed harks to the 'pre-crime' legal system in Philip K. Dick's 1956 science fiction story, "The Minority Report," in which it's routine to arrest a person who hasn't committed a crime on the suspicion that he might commit a postulated crime.
This dystopian concept of a criminal justice system goes further than Franz Kafka's horrific tale of a man found guilty of an unspecified crime. It can be argued that the whole of civilization, and certainly the whole of Western law, is to ward off humanity's descent into the darkest, most irrational, concept of justice. But here is just that irrationality, put into practice by Robert Mueller, a man who at least on cursory inspection represents the best of the American criminal justice system. Put into practice against a sitting U.S. President.
How did this happen in today's America? How did we end up back at the Salem Witch Trials? Listen to McCarthy's careful summary of the Mueller probe's findings to date. Listen as if your life depended on it. Here's the podcast.
********
No comments:
Post a Comment