I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the case, but Jacob Sullum’s take is pretty good. At a minimum, he should have been convicted of manslaughter, I think.

[Thursday-morning update]

Fear alone is no excuse for manslaughter.

Ken White says it’s far too easy:

“Investigators and prosecutors will tell you that this is a good thing — that their power to convict targets for lying or obstruction helps catch criminals who would otherwise go free because of problems of proof. But people who hold vast power rarely think they ought not. In fact, the most petty and weak human reactions can lead to federal felony convictions during an investigation. To be a federal crime, a false statement to the federal government must be material — that is, meaningful.

But federal courts have defined materiality in a way that criminalizes trifles. Under current law, a statement is material if it is the sort of statement that could influence the federal government, whether or not it actually did. Hence, federal agents interrogating people always ask some questions as to which they already have irrefutable proof, hoping that the target will lie and hand the feds an easy conviction. That’s how FBI agents caught my client that early morning when he lied fruitlessly about being at a meeting the FBI knew with certainty he had attended.

People — good people, decent people, people who are usually honest — lie foolishly when frightened and under great stress. Is that immoral? That’s a philosophical question. Should it lead to a debilitating federal felony when it does not hinder a federal investigation in the slightest, when the federal government was fishing for a lie? No. That gives the feds far too much power to turn human frailty into crime.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds says that Mueller should resign, or we need a second special counsel:

as Otis notes, the Justice Department’s rules forbid a person from participating in an investigation if doing so “may result in a personal … conflict of interest, or the appearance thereof.” Mueller clearly has one here.

And yet, despite a clear requirement that Mueller be “disqualified” from this investigation, his dismissal by either Trump or Sessions on the heels of the president’s firing of Comey would create a political firestorm that the president — even if entirely innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever—might be unable to survive.

And Mueller can’t fix things by simply recusing himself from the “obstruction” investigation, while delegating it to a subordinate. Perhaps unwisely, he has chosen lawyers who records show have contributed substantially to Democratic campaigns. Indeed, two have given the maximum $2,700 donation to Hillary Clinton last year, while another worked for the Clinton Foundation. No one could accept them as impartial towards the man who defeated her.

So if he cares about the rules, Mueller needs to resign. But if he doesn’t, there is another way — and it may be the only way — to avoid either a tainted investigation or a political explosion.

Sessions can and should appoint a second special counsel lacking Mueller’s close relationship to any person “substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation” of the “obstruction” issue, leaving the original investigation of “collusion” in the hands of Mueller.

And I suspect that there is no collusion. Undistracted by Comey’s nonsense, he would be able to focus on finding that.

It is entirely possible to find Trump detestable (as I do) and still think that this "investigation" is an attempt at a political soft coup.

— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) June 19, 2017

While there is some violence involved, it’s largely a war of lawyers, and lawfare:

The distinguished political scientist Angelo Codevilla coined the ominous term “cold civil war” to describe America’s precarious condition, adding: “Statesmanship’s first task is to prevent it from turning hot.” The attempted massacre on June 14 of Republican congressmen and their staff by a deranged partisan of Sen. Bernie Sanders turned up the heat a notch, but it would be mistaken to attribute much importance to this dreadful outburst of left-wing rage. The augury of American fracture will not be street violence, but a constitutional crisis implicating virtually the whole of America’s governing caste. The shock troops in the cold civil war are not gunmen but lawyers.

A considerable portion of America’s permanent bureaucracy, including elements of its intelligence community, is engaged in an illegal and unconstitutional mutiny against the elected commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump. Most of the Democratic Party and a fair sampling of the Republican establishment wants to force Trump out of office, and to this end undertook an entrapment scheme to entice the president and his staff into actions which might be construed after the fact as obstruction of justice. By means yet undisclosed, the mutineers forced Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn from office and now seek to bring down the president for allegedly obstructing an investigation of Gen. Flynn that arose in the first place from the entrapment scheme.

One of the Republican Party’s most distinguished statesman recently told a closed gathering that a “cold coup” is underway against the president.

That would certainly appear to be the case.

Does he want to cause a civil war?

I agree that if he can’t get these leaks under control, it will seriously erode his credibility.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Insiders need to shut up if they want the public to accept the results.