Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Your Pocket Guide to Republican Constitutional Crimes

Of course Trump could get away with it. Four of the past five previous Republican administrations have engaged in fairly dire Constitutional crimes (not even discussing the 2000 Presidential election) with diminishing consequences, aided in part by Republican Congressional delegations with succeedingly smaller interests in Constitutional governance and greater ones in power at any cost.

I'll leave the current debacle off the pocket guide, but run your own checklist for: venal personal gain, motivation to get elected at any cost, political payback/vengeance, and the all-time winner, cover-ups and obstruction of justice in the interests of all of the above.


Administration:

Nixon

Constitutional Crime:

Broadly, abuse of power in furtherance of electoral manipulation.

Extensive use of government  and political party machinery and outright crime (including burglary and money laundering) to gain re-election, and then a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. 

(It later turned out Nixon also deliberately scuttled the 1968 Vietnamese peace accord in order to affect the 1968 election, but that wasn’t proven until just a few years ago.)

How it was uncovered/investigated:

Dogged reporting, followed by (ultimately bipartisan) Congressional investigation, followed by two Special Prosecutors.

Special Prosecutor(s):

Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski

Role of Congress:

The Democratic majority was aided by many Republicans of good faith in pursuing the investigation, after initially partisan reactions to the initial revelations, and it was the televised Congressional hearings that ended up uncovering much of the most damning evidence and propelled the establishment of the Special Counsel and subsequent criminal indictments.

What Happened to the Perps:

Lots of people went to jail. Nixon was forced to resign nearly three years after the major crimes which he committed or helped to cover up, but was pardoned (possibly unconstitutionally) before being criminally charged by President Ford.


Administration:

Reagan

Constitutional Crime:

Violating explicit Congressional laws, the US government, at the direction of the executive branch, including senior members of the National Security establishment (both NSA and CIA), sold military arms to our adversary Iran as ransom in exchange for the release of hostages taken in the wake of the US military intervention in Lebanon, and then used the financial proceeds to arm and train a rebel (terrorist, in some eyes) group in Nicaragua. Members of the administration then proceeded to obstruct justice and the investigation by perjury and  spoliation of evidence (notably Oliver North shredding documents and smuggling them out in in Secretary’s underwear). Money from these sales was also diverted to persons for personal expenses.

How it was uncovered/investigated:

Foreign “partners” in these crimes, in both Iran and Nicaragua, revealed details of the arrangements in late 1986 (perhaps in part to embarrass the United States) at which point Reagan admitted in a televised broadcast the gist of the arrangement. An independent commission without subpoena power or the ability to compel testimony under oath was appointed by Reagan to do initial two-month investigation (The Tower Commission), generally seen as an attempt to whitewash the affair, after which special committees of the House of Representatives and Senate were formed specifically to investigate the affair.  After public and Congressional pressure, ultimately Lawrence Walsh was appointed Special Prosecutor in late 1986, where most criminal details of the affair were exposed.

Special Prosecutor:

Lawrence Walsh

Role of Congress:

Congressional investigation uncovered many details of the arrangement, but was marred on several counts. The first was granting limited immunity in testimony to key participants, notably Oliver North, which ultimately allowed the conspirators to escape criminal prosecution (in North’s case, on appeal). The second was in having a significant split between the majority (then Democrat) report and the minority report, which differed on levels of culpability and the degree to which the senior political members of the administration were involved.

What happened to the perps:

13 members of the conspiracy were indicted from crimes ranging from perjury to defrauding the government to destruction of evidence. Two were given immunity for testimony for the prosecution, 1 was convicted of crimes and had his conviction overturned due to Congressional immunity (North), 1 was convicted of crimes and had the conviction thrown out on a technicality (Admiral John Poindexter) and the remaining nine defendants were all given probation ranging from six months to two years. President George Bush then later pardoned: Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, Assistant Secretary of State Eliot Abrams (who almost got a similar role in the Trump administration) and two CIA deputies who were in charge of the covert operations, erasing their criminal records and ending their probations.

President Reagan, forced to testify in criminal trials after his term was over, essentially pleaded he couldn’t remember anything, so his role may never be known in full.


Administration:

George W. Bush

Constitutional Crime:

Conspiracy to manufacture evidence to convince Congress to  pass an authorization of a war; subsequent cover-up and political dirty tricks, including uncovering the identity of US covert agents as retaliation, intended to mask the manipulation and manufacturing of evidence. Evidence extended to strongly implicate the Vice President, Dick Cheney, although evidence of the President’s involvement and knowledge of these conspiracies has never been made clear.

How it was uncovered/investigated:

Following the illegal exposure of the identity of its covert agent, Valerie Plame, by the planned leak to discredit Plame’s husband as a source — intended to cover-up the manufacture of evidence concerning Iraq’s alleged desire to obtain uranium from Niger —  the CIA requested the FBI and Department of Justice investigate the particular offense. John Ashcroft, then attorney general, had a conflict of interest in that he had received nearly a million dollars of consulting fees from several members of the administration (including Karl Rove) who had peripheral or direct involvement in the conspiracy, and recused himself in late 2003. A special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed (by none other than  Acting Attorney General James Comey), who conducted a remarkably discreet investigation with virtually no leaks about suspects and crimes for which insufficient evidence could be produced.

Most other aspects of the false Weapons of Mass Destruction propaganda campaign were uncovered by the press, but in some cases (Judith Miller, Robert Novak) the press were willing participants or unwitting dupes in the initial misinformation campaign. Subsequent Congressional investigations concluded there were no weapons of mass destruction, but little came of them in terms of practical consequences, and Libby was the only criminal defendant ever charged and convicted in the affair. Most of what is known about the broader WMD conspiracy came about through independent reporting by multiple parties, although the Special Prosecutor shared explicit details of the Plame affair with the public in bringing the sole indictment.

Special Prosecutor:

Patrick Fitzgerald (limited to Plame Affair)

Role of Congress:

Several Congressional Committees, including the House Select Committee on Intelligence and Armed Service committee, conducted both closed door and open hearings and investigations surrounding the WMD events, and released summary reports that there were no WMDs without assigning culpability for the misdirection. Republican members of congress frequently repeated administration talking points conflating 9/11, Sadaam Hussein, and WMDs even after the issuances of fairly definitive evidence as to the lack of such weapons or weapon programs. Congressional action was ultimately blunted by a deeply partisan divide on the war itself.

What Happened to the Perps:

Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Scooter Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined, but George W. Bush issued a commutation of his sentence, but never issued a pardon. Libby’s law license was revoked, and later restored in 2016. Other notables involved, including Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, and Cheney, never were charged. Cheney was an advocate until the end of the Bush administration for a pardon for Libby. There was no criminal investigation of the manufacture of evidence of WMDs itself, nor has the classified version of the major Congressional investigations ever been released. Use of government money to pay sources who faked evidence (“Curveball”, et alia) has never been accounted for formally.


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