On 5/19/2017 1:17 PM, PIBB wrote:
> Oh no...... "impossible proof" trolling once again.
Alan Dershowitz
By Alan Dershowitz
Published May 20, 2017
Fox News
Now Playing
Dershowitz questions Russia counsel: Where's the crime?
At a moment in history when the ACLU is quickly becoming a partisan left 
wing advocacy group that cares more about getting President Trump than 
protecting due process (see my recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal,) 
who is standing up for civil liberties?
The short answer is no one. Not the Democrats, who see an opportunity to 
reap partisan benefit from the appointment of a special counsel to 
investigate any ties between the Trump campaign / administration and 
Russia. Not Republican elected officials who view the appointment as 
giving them cover. Certainly not the media who are reveling in 24/7 
“bombshells.” Not even the White House, which is too busy denying 
everything to focus on “legal technicalities” that may sound like 
“guilty man arguments.” Legal technicalities are of course the 
difference between the rule of law and the iron fist of tyranny. Civil 
liberties protect us all. As H.L. Mencken used to say: “The trouble 
about fighting for human freedom is that you have to spend much of your 
life defending sons of bitches: for oppressive laws are always aimed at 
them originally, and oppression must be stopped in the beginning if it 
is to be stopped at all.” History demonstrates that the first casualty 
of hyper-partisan politics is often civil liberties.
Consider the appointment of the special counsel to investigate “any 
links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals 
associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” Even if there 
were such direct links that would not constitute a crime under current 
federal law. Maybe it should, but prosecutors have no right to 
investigate matters that should be criminal but are not.
This investigation will be conducted in secret behind closed doors; 
witnesses will be denied the right to have counsel present during grand 
jury questioning; they will have no right to offer exculpatory testimony 
or evidence to the grand jury; inculpatory hearsay evidence will be 
presented and considered by the grand jury; there will be no presumption 
of innocence; no requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, only 
proof sufficient to establish the minimal standard of probable cause. 
The prosecutor alone will tell the jury what the law is and why they 
should indict; and the grand jury will do his bidding. As lawyers quip: 
they will indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor tells them to. This 
sounds more like Star Chamber injustice than American justice.
And there is nothing in the constitution that mandates such a kangaroo 
proceeding. All the Fifth Amendment says is: “no person shall be held to 
answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a 
presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” The denials of due process 
come from prosecutorially advocated legislative actions. The founding 
fathers would be turning over in their graves if they saw what they 
intended as a shield to protect defendants, turned into a rusty sword 
designed to place the heavy thumb of the law on the prosecution side of 
the scale.
Advocates of the current grand jury system correctly point out that a 
grand jury indictment is not a conviction. The defendant has the right 
to a fair jury trial, with all the safeguards provided in the 
constitution. But this ignores the real impact of an indictment on the 
defendant. Based on a one sided indictment alone, the “ham sandwich” can 
be fired from his or her job or suspended from university. Consider what 
happened to the Arthur Andersen company and its thousands of employees 
when it was indicted for obstructing an official proceeding by 
destroying records relating to one of its clients. Although Andersen was 
ultimately vindicated, the indictment itself forced it into bankruptcy 
causing a loss of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in 
shareholder values. Many individual have been indicted on the basis of 
one sided grand jury prosecutions and subsequently acquitted after a 
fair trial. Many of these individuals also suffered grievously as the 
result of being unfairly indicted.
Consider the consequences of an indictment by the special counsel’s 
grand jury in this matter. Not a conviction – just an indictment handed 
down by a grand jury that heard only one side in secret. It depends, of 
course on who the indictment named. In the Nixon case, for example, the 
president was named as an unindicted coconspirator by the Watergate 
grand jury. This meant that he could not even defend himself at a trial. 
I was on the national board of the ACLU at the time. And although I 
despised Nixon and campaigned for his opponent, I wanted the ACLU to 
object to the unfairness of a one sided grand jury naming him as an 
unindicted co conspirator.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/05/20/dershowitz-muellers-special-counsel-appointment-begs-question-are-our-civil-liberties-now-at-risk.html