The AG characterized the report as not providing sufficient evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice to warrant a criminal indictment of the President or those close to him. A careful reading of Barr’s summary, IMO, indicates that there was in fact evidence of criminal wrong doing, but not enough.
One good thing from Barr’s report – this should make it much, much easier for the Democrats to make the case that the entire Mueller report must be made public. It will be awfully hard for the Republicans to (logically) say that it completely exonerates him but still must be kept secret. I’m sure they’ll try, but hopefully most Americans will see this as bullshit and demand to see the full report.
Me, too, but that’s not going to happen for a while, if ever. Dealing with him at the ballot box makes the chances of a jury box go up.
As much as I’d like to focus on Trump’s legal jeopardy, it’s clear that in terms of political optics, he’s probably got the worst of it behind him as long as he’s in office. I’m wondering how he’ll pivot toward the separate investigations ongoing in the Southern District of New York, and what kind of influence he’s going to exert. This is the point at which Barr will start earning his government salary, because I think Trump is going to put pressure on the DoJ to quash this investigation just like he’s put pressure on Mueller, Rosenstein, Sessions, Comey, the FBI, and Judge Curiel. For Barr, summer camp is over.
Yeah, this is just great. Want to commit crimes and not have to answer for them kids? Run for office, you won’t be held responsible for shit and commit even bigger crimes.
Well, we can see that the Russian IRA, Russian military and Russian hackers all worked to get Trump elected. It appears Trump & Co. are not found to have cooperated with those specific groups, though they benefited from the help.
Mueller was certainly cagey about the obstruction charge- no “traditional” determination, but neither yes nor no. He punts to the Justice Dept, and Barr says, “No obstruction”. Definitely NOT no evidence of same.
I am curious about what the 100s of sources tapped to produce the Mueller report actually had to say. The Barr memo seems to me rather narrow- on one or two points, Team Trump is totally innocent! OK, and please give me the smackdown if I am overreaching, but surely there is far more to it than that? Not to mention the other 19 federal jurisdictions chewing on things arising from the investigation that Mueller farmed out because of, again correct me if I am mistaken, his narrow mandate?
I think Barr is qualified to be AG (the line in his resume that says, “I was AG once already” is pretty solid), but I feel like his 3 page memo just does not get to the bottom of it all.
If there’s actual bad stuff in the full Mueller report for Trump, then Barr’s letter may have painted Trump into a corner. “Total exoneration” appears to be the party line that they’ve settle upon. If that were really true, then they’d be scrambling to have the full report released. Let’s see if they do, or if they resist this (I suspect the latter is much more likely).
My expectation is that they’ll delude themselves into thinking that Barr will do the work, unasked. And while the Democrats will scream and hiss for a week or two while Mueller and the FBI redact stuff, painting it like Barr is hiding stuff and an immoral toady, we’ll get whatever it is that Mueller recommends and that he’ll confirm it when hauled in front of Congress.
I’ll admit that does seem strange. But then again, it’s unlikely that Rosenstein doesn’t already know everything. In a realistic sense, he’s the actual boss of the whole deal, more than Mueller was.
It does appear that the GOP party line they’re all going to have to try to sell is the report is a complete exoneration, so naturally we should make sure no one sees it!
It’s Bizarro-world logic. Real double-think stuff. The hardcore white supremacists won’t care, but some of the ‘voted for Trump because screw the Establishment’ people are going to get major headaches from trying to process the GOP message.
I’m having a hard time with all this today, even though I know that Barr is not to be trusted and it’s all a show of strength. The narrative now by terrible reporters is EXONERATION so even if the report were released or leaked or a whole bunch of people get arrested tomorrow, it’ll seem as desperation from “democrats”… instead of normal law and order process. It’s all about spin and the spin right now is very, very bad.
But I did have one cheery thought. Some day a Dem will win the White House. Maybe in 2020. Maybe in 2024. It’ll come out then, at least. They can burn all the copies, but is Mueller going to really not keep his own copy? All his deputies and coworkers? Are they going to flashy thing them from MiB so they can’t remember what they found? Puh-lease. Sure, it sucks that for right now they appear to have gotten away with it, but the truth will come out some day and it sucks in the mean time but I will enjoy that day anyway… assuming I haven’t been deported for not being loyal enough to Dear Leader.
I’m not terribly surprised but I am, a little bit.
I only ever suspected the campaign of collusion via oligarchs and other private citizens who were close to Putin and other government officials. And I think there were only a few bumbling attempts at coordination. But they were all too terminally stupid to pull it off. And,being terminally stupid, they bragged about it and exaggerated and took credit loudly for for criminal acts they didn’t even do (maybe). So even if they got off, they deserved every second of the ride. And the whole episode shows that corrupt villains flock to Trump like moths to a flame. It paints him as a malleable fool. And they are spinning this into a victory. Go figure.
I can see how it would be difficult for Mueller to make the case that association with private Russian citizens is the same as association with the Russian government. But I’m surprised he didn’t find a way to charge the Trump Tower meeting, because he seemed pretty adept at finding charges in the other branches of the case. I’m a little surprised he let it go, but charging Traitor Tot would’ve been like kicking a bear in the balls for no good reason except that a lot of people want to see that particular bear kicked in the balls. But I can understand not wanting to be the ball kicker. And the bear would just pardon his cub anyway and you’d have to deal with a lifetime of pissed off bear tweets —- OK, the analogy falls apart there, but you get my point.
I hope the one thing everyone learns from this episode is just how horribly dirty political campaigns have become. And Republicans are dirtier than Democrats, which is why they are winning elections. I hope we can really try to clean it up, because the only alternative is to fight as dirty as they do. And it keeps good people away. I pretty much hate everything Jeff Flake stands for, but he’s a worthy opponent. And he didn’t say he was quitting because he couldn’t win, he quit because he wouldn’t run the kind of campaign it would take to win.
But we should try to clean it up. And before you say Democrats are just as bad, remember, Hillary didn’t ever USE the dossier. Now I wish she would’ve found a way to drop it a week before the election.
And I’ll close with:
“Russia, if you’re listening - now would be a good time to drop that pee tape.”
Nothing in the summary surprises me - if you parse the language as carefully as its been stated - its simply saying that
Trump (and team) did not conspire with the russians in the specific activity of interfering with the election - the activity that the russians were already doing. That doesn’t mean that Trump (and team) did not hope for helpful aid from the russians - which is a different activity altogether (and not neccisarily the one Mueller was tasked at investigating.
Secondly - That they accept Barr’s conclusion on obstruction - its the conclusion he wrote a year ago and was largely (IMHO) why he got nominated for the position to begin with - DIdn’t they just talk about Comey (et al) ‘pre declaring Hillary innocent’ and how bad that was?
In any event - what I want to see is the actual report - and Mueller testifying - I don’t give a rats ass for a 3 paragraph summary of 2 years worth of work by Trumps hand picked AG.
On collusion: While there were many contacts between Russians and Trump campaign officials during the election, Mueller was not able to able to get to the required high level of proof of conspiracy to constitute a federal crime:
“[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” (Mueller, quoted by Barr)
However, there could still be corruption and conflict of interest issues contained within the report regarding Russia and the Trump orbit. There are also still other open investigations on contacts with Russia which may yet yield findings at some future time that increase the burden of proof of collusion, if it happened.
On obstruction: Mueller “determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment” (Barr), maybe because Mueller felt it was a decision that should be left for Congress to make judgement on, as had been the case with Nixon and Clinton.
However, Barr took the decision himself. As we know, Barr was probably appointed to the position of Attorney General because of the 19-page memo he wrote, in which he said he didn’t think firing Comey counted as obstruction of justice. He also argued that if there is no underlying crime of collusion, then obstruction of justice cannot have occurred.
Yet Barr is arguably himself part of the obstruction of justice, if it is occurring, by virtue of his appointment and decision.
Even if collusion and obstruction of justice don’t pan out, and they still might, I think there’s plenty more legal trouble to come for Trump in the coming months.
We’re talking about putting out a report that makes the case that the president is a criminal, that 50% of the country voted for and supports a criminal. That’s not something someone in Mueller’s case can take lightly. I think his decision not to address it says, in truth, what we really need to know. If Trump were truly innocent of obstruction, he would have made that more explicit. He just decided that he would spare us more drama.
Progressives won’t truly win until the economy and the political system effectively fail beyond repair, to the point where there is a fundamental shift in how this country identifies itself. The last time that happened was 1932.
