Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…
[Regarding this story: House investigating whether Trump lied to Mueller]
One of the disappointments about Mueller’s report was how willing he was to accept Trump’s failure to cooperate. The conversation would likely be very different now had they subpoenaed him, which they had every right to do. Instead, Mueller let him answer a series of written questions, 27 of which (the difficult ones) Trump replied to with some version of “I do not recall.”
Anyway, the Roger Stone trial just ended (in Stone’s conviction) and that trial produced new evidence that strongly hints at what information lies beneath the redacted portions of Mueller’s report, and further strongly hints that Trump lied — that he was considerably involved with hearing from Stone, who in turn was considerably involved communicating with Wikileaks/Assange, who in turn was considerably involved with the Russian unit that hacked the DNC’s emails.
I get that the country is bored of all things Mueller and onto the shiny new abuse of power, but all the abuses matter, and they’re all loosely connected inasmuch as they reveal the same disregard and contempt for the rule of law and Office. So I hope the House pursues this.
The DC Cir. panel hearing this case is a potentially Trump-friendly one, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
Meanwhile, regarding the Supreme Court putting the tax returns case on hold: They will only until they can decide whether to take the case or not; this stay was entirely expected. Headlines will read drama into it but the real question is whether they have four votes to take the case. I don’t think they will. And if they do have four votes (to hear), they probably won’t have five votes to overturn because Roberts isn’t going along with that horseshit.
I think later on this week we’ll know whether they take the case.
