Does the Mueller probe boil down to a PR fight?

Politics & Elections
21

Mueller only just indicted the Russians for interfering with the election 20 days ago. You can’t charge Americans for the crime if there was no crime. Having confirmed that there was a crime committed by Russia, it can then follow that Americans could be involved.

Further, Manafort’s crimes are specific to him, and so you can move ahead with charging him for those crimes. General coordination between the Russian government and Trump’s campaign team is a larger act of conspiracy between a wide body of people.

If you try to prosecute those people one by one as evidence of their misdeeds come to light, then you have to release your evidence. That evidence will likely implicate others in the crime as well - others who have not yet been charged. This allows everyone who has not yet been charged with anything to work out a shared story that allows for the evidence to exist while not implicating themselves. It’s when people tell different stories that you can play them off against each other to force them to start telling the truth. If everyone’s telling the same story, then you have to accept that as the truth unless you can find documentary evidence to the contrary.

In end result, if you want to get everyone who was involved, you can’t prosecute the crime against any one of them until you have determined who all was involved, to what extent, and have all of the evidence that you will need against all of them.

There are certain individuals, like Manafort, whom we have no real doubt were working with Russia to coordinate something. That he hasn’t been charged with that seems like a fair indication that it’s still coming. And if Mueller has looked through everything Manafort has done so thoroughly as he obviously has, AND gotten his close confidant to turn on him, then it’s reasonable to say that either there is nothing at all, or that there are more people in on it than just Manafort and the case is still being built against them.

As I noted in my first post, there is nothing in Mueller’s mandate that would lead to him making indictments against Russians. He was specifically directed to investigate Americans in Trump’s campaign organization. So if he is charging the Russians with those crimes, then clearly that came as a direct extension of investigating those Americans, and as preparation for laying the basis of the crime that the Americans cooperated with.

So if the question is that there is nothing at all or that he’s still building a case, the safe money is on building a case.

22

How can you declare him innocent if you haven’t even seen his tax returns?

23

Please excuse my snipping your interesting and informative post down to this bit. I’d always assumed the policy wa to keep the President from getting dragged into court for civil cases, which could indeed rest on a president doing things that others don’t like, as opposed to criminal cases, where the president may have broken a law. If a president, any president, can break the law with complete impunity until leaving office, whether Congress removes him (assuming Congress isn’t dominated by the same party) or his term expires, that’s pretty troubling.

24

Sigh I was asking if the Mueller investigation will boil down to a PR war, not whether it’s a PR stunt.

25

The expectation there would be that Congress impeach the President and then criminal proceedings can be continued.

Kavanaugh is noted as saying, based on his experience looking through just these laws as part of Ken Starr’s team, that there should be laws that codify this handling, since it’s all undefined at the moment and no one really knows what is what.

26

Then maybe Trump should stop tweeting about the probe like they’re banging down his bathroom door with cuffs in hand.

“What looks like” is not what you think. The charges are much, much more serious than that, and they are not hard to prove with what is being presented. Unless Mueller has seriously screwed up (verrrrrrry unlikely at this point) Manafort’s only hope is some MAGA idiot sneaks his way into the jury.

27

And that expectation is a problem. I think the Framers counted on the a certain level of integrity in Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings when warranted. When a political party controls both the House and the White House, impeachment proceedings are less likely. Today, it’d be just about impossible to remove Trump from office if warranted
even if the Dems regain control of the House. With carte blanche to break whatever laws he wants without fear of indictment or removal from office, Trump could and probably would rack up quite a rap sheet, don’t you think?

28

We’ll see.

While I’ll grant that I’m not 100% optimistic, I was pleasantly surprised at the reaction of Congress to Comey’s firing. They went way more apeshit (to use the technical term) than the general public did.

After all, Congress is largely formed of lawyers and people who are, at the end of the day, super-patriots. Not all of them, obviously. Trump ran for office despite not being a patriot nor lawyer, but on the whole they mostly are so they’re all mostly cognizant of the greater picture of the Constitution, the Rule of Law, etc.

But at the same time, as said, a lot of them are lawyers and they expect there to be a process of establishing the truth. Factually, everyone saying that Trump is guilty of something is completely wrong.* We all suspect that he’s guilty of something, but that’s just people whining on the Internet. There is no (known) review of the law on the matter, no completed investigation of the matter, no official report on the matter, etc. It’s all just speculation and innuendo.

If Mueller comes out with a 400 page report that lists crime after crime after crime with careful, meticulous evidence to back up each one, and Congress does nothing, then we can start to call them a bunch of unpatriotic co-conspirators. But seeing them do nothing now, when there’s no evidence that has been presented to them by anyone of anything, is actually fairly reasonable.

  • I limit this statement to the Russia probe. There are, realistically, too many things to mention that should be impeachable offenses, by the standard of the Oath of Office, that Congress has ignored - e.g. imprisoning asylum seekers who followed legal protocol to report themselves after entry, approving the reduction in standards for nominating a Supreme Court Justice, making gross and stupid lies to the public, etc. “I’m polling higher than Abe Lincoln”, my ass.
29

We don’t need Mueller to tell us that there was collusion. Donald Trump, Jr. already beat him to that. He tweeted out pictures of the e-mails between him and the Russians that he was doing the colluding in.

30

Purportedly, Paps was unaware of it and neither of them thought that it was criminal.

As of yet, the person assigned to answer the question of whether it was criminal, or not, has not answered.

31

There is no crime called “collusion”. No one will be charged with collusion. That’s really too bad if you think this investigation has gone on too long. Perhaps if Trump had offered full cooperation rather than obstruction, this could have moved at a faster pace. It will take however long it takes, as long as Trump does not obstruct it further.

32

You can argue both.

33

Top politicians meet with various leaders from nations all the time. Trump meeting with the Russians by itself means nothing.

Clinton took far more money from the Russians, for example

Cyber attacks are nothing new, and the attacks that happened were the defensive responsibilities of Obama, who inexplicably told his cybersecurity chief to back down.

Personally, I’d like to see foreign money capped at a very low contribution level in all federal and state, and local elections.

To answer your question,** if **Trump is found guilty of collusion to which does not include getting political dirt AND there is proof the Russians worked with him compromise voting machines, then yes, he should be removed from office.

To define collusion - Secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.

But you must admit, Mueller has nothing after 2 years. No charge of collusion to anyone and no charges at all on Trump. So your what if question is extremely hypothetical with not a shred of proof to it. You can say What IF on lots of things.

It would be very ironic if Trump had to step down. Pence is an even stronger conservative in many areas, and with Ginsberg being 86 this month and Breyer being 80, I could see Pence if given the opportunity nominating an evangelical type of judge for the SCOTUS eager to overturn Roe v Wade. As they say be careful what you wish for.

34

I’m not a conservative but I place the interests of my country above the interests of my party. So I’d rather see Pence as President than Trump. In fact, I’d rather see Pence become President and get re-elected than see Trump complete a single term. Pence is competent; Trump is not. Plus, I don’t have doubts about Pence’s loyalty to the United States and there is good reason to doubt Trump’s loyalty.

35

Because You say so? Not near good enough, for this statement and all your other declarations of “fact”.
How much have the Russians given Trump to date…and what is your source of information?

36

None obviously, and the source is the bestest most honest president evar, Donald J Trump.

37

I’m still wondering how Muellers investigation has “lasted over 2 years”when it was started in May of 2017.

Also, should I note how long the Starr investigation went on, and how far afield it went in it’s efforts to be a political tool for the GOP?

38

2017 and 2018. It’s math Republicans do to make themselves feel better.

39

n/m

40

There’s nothing inherently illegal with getting political dirt. The crime here is that the Russians stole it, and the Trump campaign conspired with them to use it.