Month: June 2017

Alternative Fact: What Constitutes Privilege

Alternative Fact: James Comey “unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications” – Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, in a public statement.

Real Facts: I was a little surprised to hear that Comey himself leaked the meeting notes, but it makes sense in the broader context. And someone with vast legal knowledge and experience in law enforcement will know if something is illegal (i.e. request immunity before testifying to the fact) or not (i.e. announce it in widely broadcast Congressional testimony). He specifically wrote the memo to be unclassified, so the White House could not claim disclosure of classified information.

So they went with “privileged”. Trump does not understand that FBI lawyers are not actually his legal council (bit of a frightening proposition)? They certainly aren’t his spouse or clergy (although I believe both spouse and clergy can unilaterally waive privilege under the Federal Rules of Evidence).

Alternately, Trump wants to assert executive privilege. Equally nonsensical. Executive privilege could have prevented Comey’s testimony in the first place. Or can be used when refusing to disclose information/evidence to legal or legislative bodies. Executive privilege does not protect information from the Executive branch from being disclosed to media outlets. Or subsequently published. And even so, Executive privilege can be denied if the information is deemed critical to the case (i.e. if a Congressional investigation is meant to determine if Trump obstructed justice in pressuring the FBI director to end an investigation … testimony from the FBI Director regarding Trump’s requests to conclude the investigation are central to the investigation. Which, I assume, is why the White House did not even try to claim privilege and prevent Comey’s testimony.).

Bonus Real Facts: Oh, Marc Kasowitz’s statement following James Comey’s testimony. Where to start? Saying it would be good to find out if some peripherally related individual is found to be guilty of collusion isn’t actually support of an investigation. It could also be interpreted in the full context of the conversation as “it would be good if this whole investigation got closed up quickly. Here’s how you do it: find some stooge from my campaign and pin it all on him.”.

Not being investigated does not mean anything — the original scope of a case may be an individual. The initial investigation implicates a few more who then become part of the investigation. The new targets yield evidence that implicates new people and so on. This is the fact behind Comey saying he did not want to publicly state that Trump was not under investigation for collusion with the Russian government — if something comes up that brings into question Trump’s actions, he will be under investigation. At which point, the ‘duty to correct’ means the FBI would need to announce that Trump is under investigation … substantively meaningless as many people are investigated without being guilty.

I was investigated for bribery in negotiations with China – not because I even knew my company had negotiations with China but because I was involved in the internal corporate investigation and participated in evidence gathering (i.e. they were investigating if the evidence “gathering” was more of an evidence purging activity). I had properly collected the evidence and turned it over to inside council, end of investigation. At the outset of the investigation, though, an announcement that “Lisa is under investigation as part of our inquest into international bribery” sounds bad.

Worse, though … Nixon didn’t personally break into the Watergate hotel, but covering it up after the fact and obstructing justice was illegal. Reagan didn’t personally ring up the Ayatollah to delay the release of Iranian hostages – but having a campaign adviser speaking to a cleric representing the Ayatollah … sounds illegal to me even if the investigation got curtailed in sympathy for a man with cognitive decline. Bill Clinton’s impeachment was over testimony regarding an extramarital affair — also nothing to do with the original investigation. When someone is determining if your actions constitute obstruction of justice, proclaiming your innocence in the initial matter is a complete red herring. Normally, yeah, innocent people don’t intentionally obstruct justice. Letting the Chinese bribery investigation run its course served me well — no personal harm, no professional harm. Just a few wasted hours of paid time.

But the investigation is hampering Trump’s agenda, and getting rid of the investigation might leave him clear to pursue legislative initiatives. The investigation, regardless of guilt, is causing harm. Which makes obstruction … well, not outside the realm of possibilities.

 

Android Mail Client Malfunction On FierceXL

Both Scott and I have an odd issue with our FierceXL using the stock mail client to communicate with Exchange 2013 over the OWA interface. Randomly, one or more of the connected accounts stops receiving e-mail. We know OWA still works and is available from the phone — we can go into Chrome on the phone and log into OWA. There is absolutely no traffic coming across the reverse proxy / Exchange server from the phone IP. Switching between the cellular network and home WiFi has no impact.

I had just been rebooting my phone. Upon startup, communication is again seen on the reverse proxy server. A few seconds later, the backlog of new mail starts popping into the mail client. Scott recently discovered that you can resolve the issue by closing the mail app (bringing up the recent/running application list and swiping mail off of the screen) and re-opening it.

It appears something within the mail client is getting a thread hung — not the mail client en toto as I often cease receiving messages to one of three accounts. Ending the process and re-spawning it clears whatever is hung. Unfortunately, we have not had any updates for these phones since November of last year so there’s not a quick software fix that can be applied to resolve the issue.

Don’t drink the water and don’t breath the air

I was about eleven years old when I heard Tom Lehrer’s song “Pollution“. I wondered if the pollution in America was ever that bad — and took some time to research my own question. Pollution in the Cuyahoga River was sufficiently bad that the sludge on top of the water caught fire (not just once, either … but once that received national media attention). Decades earlier, a toxic smog cloud killed a dozen people near Pittsburgh, PA. Not the only occurrences of either air or water pollution in the United States, but some of the most stunning.

Debate climate change all you want; debate human’s impact on climate change. Just forget about climate change – I don’t get how anyone thinks dumping coal mining runoff into the river is a good thing. Or spewing industrial waste into the air. I know people want to make money now … forgetting about compassion for others, maybe they think they’ll have enough cash to a clean environment at home. Work from home, home school the kids. Grow your own food. Raise your own animals. Grow your own cotton and make your own clothes. This is getting to be a LOT of work to avoid the pollutants you want to be able to eject into the environment. And at some point, you’re going to want to leave your biodome, right? Kid might want to go sleep over at a friend’s house? Your fav band is playing a few towns over? Medical problems require a specialist? Seriously, why can we not all agree that protecting the environment from industrial pollutants … yeah, it reduces business profits. Might even reduce opportunity / slow growth. But anyone who thinks unfettered growth is worth any price … please, take a holiday over in Beijing (where, please note, environmental protection is actually becoming a bit of a ‘thing’ as the results of unfettered growth are seen).

Official Withdrawl

Well, the non-suspense is over. The US has been withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement. My concern is not environmental. Companies want to make money, and will need to keep producing more efficient and less polluting products to attract customers. Customers don’t want to ‘waste’ their money on fossil fuels, so will demand more efficiency. And, climate change aside, anyone who tried to breathe in LA or London in the 80s (or has seen Beijing today) will push for emissions regs.

My concern is the precedent we’ve established regarding military invasion when a country contravenes a treat obligation (be that just neglecting enforcement or withdrawal). An argument can be made that spewing toxic pollutants into the air endangers the lives of your civilian population. And the rest of the world population too. That’s a fairly long-standing American criterion for invading a foreign country.