[EL] “All the Mistakes Mueller Made in Declining to Prosecute Donald Trump Jr.”

[Marty Lederman]

Rick:  Wasn't Mueller right, though, about this "most significant[]"
barrier to brining charges against Don Jr.?:

Even assuming that the promised "documents and information that would
incriminate Hillary" constitute a "thing of value" under campaign-finance
law, the government would encounter other challenges in seeking to obtain
and sustain a conviction. *Most significantly, the government has not
obtained admissible evidence that is likely to establish the scienter
requirement **beyond a reasonable doubt. To prove that a defendant acted
"knowingly and willfully," the government would have to show that the
defendant had general knowledge that his conduct was unlawful*.  . . .  On
the facts here, the government would unlikely be able to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that the June 9 meeting participants had general knowledge
that their conduct was unlawful.  *The investigation has not developed
evidence that the participants in the meeting were familiar with the
foreign-contribution ban or the application of federal law to the relevant
factual context. *


On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 2:07 PM Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:

> “All the Mistakes Mueller Made in Declining to Prosecute Donald Trump Jr.”
> <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=104723>
>
> Posted on April 18, 2019 10:59 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=104723>
> by *Rick Hasen* <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
>
>
> I have written this piece
> <https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/donald-trump-jr-mueller-report-campaign-finance.html> for
> Slate. It begins:
>
>
>
> *Robert Mueller let Donald Trump Jr. off the hook too easily for potential
> campaign finance violations that arose from the June 2016 meeting in Trump
> Tower with Russian operatives. Mueller’s questionable exercise of
> prosecutorial discretion is bad news for how campaigns and foreign entities
> might conduct themselves in the runup to the 2020 elections.*
>
>
> * Like many others, I am still poring over Mueller’s 448-page partially
> redacted report <https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf>. My initial
> general impression of Volume 1—the part dealing with Russian interference
> in the 2016 elections and the connections between Trump—is that Mueller and
> his team did a thorough and fair job in investigating what happened and in
> describing the facts. But on the potential campaign finance violations,
> Mueller fell short in numerous ways…..*
>
>
>
> *I’m afraid that this flagging of the issue does more harm than good.
> Mueller has now given campaigns credible reason to believe they can accept
> help from foreign governments because they may have a constitutional right
> to do so. That’s even more troubling for what it says about 2020 than what
> it says about 2016.*
>
> [image: Share]
> <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D104723&title=%E2%80%9CAll%20the%20Mistakes%20Mueller%20Made%20in%20Declining%20to%20Prosecute%20Donald%20Trump%20Jr.%E2%80%9D>
>
> Posted in Uncategorized <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Rick Hasen
>
> Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
>
> UC Irvine School of Law
>
> 401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
>
> Irvine, CA 92697-8000
>
> 949.824.3072 - office
>
> rhasen at law.uci.edu
>
> http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
>
> http://electionlawblog.org
>
> [image: signature_1852422790]
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-- 
Marty Lederman
Georgetown University Law Center
600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
202-662-9937
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