It’s unfair in that the report continues on to say
Mueller came pretty close by saying
I mean it seems rather clear that Mueller’s report is saying Trump was trying to obstruct and his efforts failed because not enough people followed orders. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that had this been the investigation of some mayor, Mueller would have recommended prosecution.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/19/barr-obstruction-mueller-trump-226664
Barr said that Mueller’s report didn’t make a conclusion on obstruction because of “difficult questions of law and fact.” This is very clearly false:
The above, as well as Barr’s misleading text that deliberately ignored that Mueller’s team “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations.” And a lot more.
There’s no reason to give this rhetorical assistance to Barr and Trump when their statements and the Barr letter were so obviously misleading at best. They were highly dishonest.
Yep.
I pointed years before at not expecting much against Trump since the investigation was focused on finding how foreign countries intervened in the previous election and if there were connections with the Trump campaign. That effort was very productive in reducing the corruption in the Trump administration, something that we all should approve. If the investigation actually found very unsavory things that Trump made, I thought back then that it would be nice gravy to add to the meal.
Looks then that there was also meat in the gravy, a nice add-on. 
I also did compare the Muller effort to what the boss of Michael J Fox was put under. In the old comedy Spin City the boss of Michael in congress was caught getting too close to a known mob boss, the character played by Fox took the blame to save the political career of the congress man.
Now, I point to that because in the TV show the Representative learned his lesson and repudiates and becomes more aware of the bad agents that try to influence our politics, and while some would be unhappy that the politician was spared, the point was that corruption should be put at bay while the politician will be dealt in other ways, like at the ballot box.
The big problem here in real life is that Trump as learned nothing. And going forward, and with less grownups in his cabinet, we can only expect more debacles in the near future.
The actual report says:
So the evidence (facts) present difficult issues regardless of the the fact that he’s the president (a traditional prosecutorial judgment). And “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards”… so it is indeed both reasons, spelled out right there in the conclusion. Barr’s summary, therefore seems accurate.
It’s a summary, and we all already knew that he committed multiple acts that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations because he did them out int he open. Sorry, I’m just not seeing the fabrication you’re claiming.
Yes, but he’s not DJT’s attorney, guy. He’s our attorney and all his letter should have said was “I received the report on Date X, I will review it according to (cited) law and regulation, and then release to Congress on Date Y.”
Instead, he have 2 pages+ of partial quotes and misleading commentary. Because Barr thinks his job is to represent Trump and not the People.
Sure, and if the accusation is that Barr is a partisan hack because he interjected a little too much spin here or there, I’ll get on board. But what I said, which apparently caused some disagreement, was that “Barr’s summary to congress [would be] essentially accurate.” I think people were expecting some big gotchaya from the full report but to me it reads pretty much how Barr set it up.
But it wasn’t accurate, that’s the thing. He committed lies of ommission, and the conclusions in his memo are not fully supported by the Report.
This thing is a road map to impeachment, and Barr acted and cited it as almost exculpatory. That’s a little more than “spin”, imho.
It’s absolutely not accurate. I find your analysis highly inaccurate, and providing a ridiculous amount of benefit of the doubt to Barr. Barr was clearly trying to indicate that Mueller didn’t think there was enough evidence for an indictment, and that is very clearly not the reason for the lack of an indictment.
We live in different universes of what words mean, then, because this seems blindingly clear to me (and nearly every other non-Trumpian legal analyst and lawyer that I’m reading online). Oh well. We disagree; we don’t have to go on and on about it.
That’s fine. So let’s say this, if Barr were hiding something dramatic with his 4 page summary, would the political landscape change when the full report blew his deceit wide open?
We’re 24 hours past the release of the full (redacted) report. Has the political landscape changed from 4 weeks ago?
Will the political landscape change when congress gets the unredacted report?
In terms of Trump, we all know he’s a shitbag already; the only thing we could hope to get out of the Mueller report is enough dirt for impeachment. Barr essentially let us all know that there wasn’t enough in there for impeachment. And I think he was right.
Sarah Sanders says her lie about the FBI agents wanting Comey out was a “slip of the tongue”.
https://ijr.com/sanders-slip-of-the-tongue-mueller-report/
Which itself is a lie.
Yes, the political landscape changed because of the memo, which allowed Barr/Trump to set a narrative which existed for a month. How can this even be questioned? Remember how happy Trump was with Mueller and the team, claiming exoneration? That was a “political landscape” (PL) which lasted for a week (at best).
Then the PL changed again with the walk-backs, the re-emergence of angry Trump Tweets, the worries of redaction and fears of suppression.
When the Report came out, it was judged not only by its own merits, but how it measured up against the narrative set by Barr… and it is failing at supporting Barr’s narrative. Therefore, the political landscape is shifting again. You can tell this by Trump’s tweets today, Steronz. This is not a happy man. This is not a man who acts like he is the center of the argument which you are creating here.
The unredacted memo will get released to Congress. Then the PL will shift again… as it always does.
And as for impeachment, we impeached fuckin’ Andrew Johnson. We can surely impeach Trump, or make him impotent in the face of… and embroiled within… constant investigations.
Or else we deserve to fail as a Nation. Because this is impermissible by my standards and it should be for yours.
Reminds me of this old Bloom County
She slips a lot.
Barr was doing the job he was chosen to do. He can be ignored.
I was waiting for this report like my kids wait for Christmas, and I’m enjoying it like a big Godiva box. What’s the hurry?
Yep, it was. She slipped her slimy fat pink tongue right up Trump’s asshole, as always.
Although I guess in some existential way, since you can’t count to 0, 0 would be a “countless number”.
And I recall her also saying that Comey committed atrocities. And no one ever calls her out on that one.
Realistically, there is by a gratuitous margin in any sane world. But due to the structure of the document and the filter that it passes through before reaching your average person, the contents that are impeachable aren’t going to be found by anyone not interested in reading past page 2. And unless the people care, the politicians don’t care. That’s what we’ve been selecting them for - lack of self-respect and personal responsibility. We just want people who go to Washington and do what we told them to do. If we tell them to ignore criminal behavior, then they march right past it and wave a “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!” on the way past.
China has been spending a fair amount of money and attention to anti-Democratic propaganda over the last decade. While I disagree with their alternative, that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong that Democracy is an ill-considered method of governance - a thing that the founders also considered to be the case.
People have been carefully burying that truth over the last century, in the aim of using populism to attain power. Pro-Democracy propaganda is so ingrained in society that it’s probably impossible to change. And on our current course, we’re liable to be in the same place as Italy - hiring one person after another who is sent to prison as soon as they get out of office, and deservedly so.
But, as said, any honest look at the document would make it clear that Trump would have been criminally guilty of Obstruction if the President could be indicted and, as regards Russia, that the smoke was thick in the air and any source that would cause it isn’t something you would find with someone who fulfilled the Oath of Office. Criminality is not the bar for Presidents to stay above, it’s “faithful execution of the laws, lack of foreign entanglements, and a concern for the defense of the nation and its elections.” Trump ain’t above the bar on any of that.
No, not in the least, because most of us who aren’t Trumpsters were expecting that Barr’s letter was highly misleading, at best.
I don’t know. I don’t even know if they’ll get an entirely unredacted report, even though they certainly should.
“Enough for impeachment” entirely depends on the views of Republican Senators. There’s almost nothing that would cause most Republican Senators to turn on Trump – they’ve proven this time and time again. But there’s more than just impeachment – and this report provides plenty to investigate for Congress.
The House can investigate out the wazoo, though, and it will still all come to nothing. Even if they found out that tRump calls Putin every night to get his marching orders, nothing would happen and tRump and the GOP would just cry harassment.
This is such a mess and it seems that nothing can open enough Americans’ eyes to the danger of keeping in the WH someone who made illegal or questionable orders that were refused and replaced the refusers with yes-men who will not hesitate to follow ANY order.
I don’t think throwing up our hands and saying “this is hard” is going to do it. But that’s just me.
Made my first donation of the political season, to E. Warren who is calling for impeachment:
