Here is the redacted Mueller report, all 448 pages of it.
“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
My quick summary, with comments, follows after the jump. It will probably upset you guys on both sides of the political spectrum …
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Before I get into the body of the report, let me begin with an important item that has been largely ignored by both the press and the Mueller investigation. Once you understand this, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else:
Putin and his lackeys had no special interest in or love for Donald Trump. They supported him because he was running against the much-hated Hillary Clinton. In this regard, Putin was not so different from a large bloc of the American electorate.
Putin and his minions would almost assuredly have done the same thing if the Republican candidate had been John Kasich or Jeb Bush or anyone else not named Hillary Clinton. (Possibly excluding John McCain.) In fact, the Russians DID do the same sorts of social media manipulations in support of Bernie Sanders when he ran against Hillary for the nomination, but nobody investigated ol’ Bernie for colluding with them.
Basically there were no meaningful overtures made to the Russians by any significant Trump campaign figure during the campaign. The most meaningful encounters were initiated by the Russkies, and in Mueller’s view, even they generally fell short of the standard required for a criminal prosecution of the Americans. (The Roger Stone case may be an exception, but it proceeds elsewhere.)
Given those conclusions, the investigation would have been over in relatively short time if Trump had just kept his mouth shut from the beginning and simply allowed it to proceed. Had he done that, as his first team of lawyers and advisers counseled him to do, part one of the report (which basically clears him and his campaign of any significant wrongdoing) would have been the entire report!
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With that as background:
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On the subject of whether Russia interfered with the election to defeat Hillary Clinton, the answer is a clear-cut “yes,” as supported by mountains of irrefutable evidence.
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On the subject of Americans participating in that conspiracy, Mueller concluded that there was fundamentally nothing of significance on the American side that rose to the level of criminality.
(1) There was no evidence that Trump himself talked to the Russians, other than the very public things we already knew about (“Russia, if you’re listening”).
It is possible that there is more trouble for Trump in the context of matters that Mueller handed off to other bailiwicks, specifically the prosecution of Roger Stone and his channel to Assange/Wikileaks, through which Trump may have had contact with Russia, albeit fourth-hand (Russia to Assange/Wikileaks to Stone to Trump) or third hand (Guccifer 2.0 – a Russian intelligence construct – to Stone to Trump). From what I have seen, even in the worst scenario, Trump was merely receiving informational updates rather than actively participating in schemes, but the Stone case may reveal more. It seems to me that a very large chunk of the Mueller report redactions will prove to involve Roger Stone.
(2) Some of Trump’s subordinates did communicate inappropriately with the Russians, but they were either minor wannabes like George Papadopoulos, and/or they were unaware that they were doing something illegal, like Donald Trump Jr. (Flynn did so AFTER the election, Manafort BEFORE he was involved.)
I was surprised that Mueller did not indict Trump Jr, because the evidence against him was clear-cut, but Mueller made an important legal point which had escaped me – the absence of criminal willfulness. Junior’s infamous Trump Tower meeting might have risen to the level of criminal conspiracy if the value of the alleged dirt on Hillary had exceeded a certain amount, but “The Office did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these individuals acted “willfully,” i.e., with general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct.”
People always say “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” but this seems to be an exception. It is a case where Don Jr. benefited from his own stupidity!
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On the subject of obstruction, Mueller simply laid out the case against President Trump and summarized it in the way we have all seen. “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
One thing is certain: Trump and some of his spokespeople lied and schemed constantly to impede the investigation.
On a minor matter, Sarah Sanders got caught in the middle. She is not under oath when she holds a press conference, but was when she talked to Mueller, so she basically had to admit to the investigators that her entire job consists of lying. One example: her comment that countless members of the FBI had lost faith in Comey was a complete fabrication. She did not know of a single FBI employee with this opinion! (Scoop’s interpolation: technically her statement was correct. The number zero can fairly be called “countless,” but that’s obviously not the usual sense of the word, and her intention was to deceive.)
On the main matter, Trump’s litany of lies is absolutely astounding.
One example: Do you recall the differences between Trump and Comey’s versions of their private encounters? Do you recall how Trump refers to Comey as Lyin’ Comey? Well, guess what? It was Lyin’ Don! There are many areas where the discrepancies can be resolved by the White House Diaries or the testimony of third parties, and it turns out that Comey told the truth about everything.
Of course, there’s no surprise there. I’m sure even you most ardent Trump supporters knew that all along, even if you pretended not to. When a Trump story conflicts with somebody else’s version, it’s a sure bet that Trump’s version is the lie. I don’t think there are any exceptions to that rule of thumb.
The most frightening part of the report involves Trump’s encounters with Don McGahn, the White House counsel. First, Trump told him to get Mueller fired – more than once. Second, Trump tried to get McGahn to say that Trump never did that in the first place. For a complete picture of the depth of Trump’s corruption, start reading the report on page 85.
So what do all the lies add up to?
If you read it carefully, you’ll see that Trump definitely lied and schemed again and again to obstruct the investigation. Mueller’s report lays that out in great detail. Did that reach to the level of criminal activity? Mueller left that an open-ended question.
Why? There are some nuances here:
1. If the investigation had found that his lies and schemes served to cover-up a criminal conspiracy, there would have been a strong case that his cover-up actions were also criminal. But since there was essentially nothing to cover up (per part one), then his actions seem less like criminal obstruction and more like Machiavellian political machinations and/or his normal output of pathological lies.
2. Given that Mueller was working under the aegis of the DOJ, any further action against a President in the context of established DOJ procedures would constitutionally be the responsibility of Congress and Congress alone, not the DOJ itself, so Mueller stayed in his lane.
3. Mueller detailed his specific assignments and showed how he fulfilled them. PERIOD. He avoided exceeding his charge, although he did turn some ancillary, peripheral and follow-up cases over to other auspices. He seems to be a straight-laced guy who really follows the letter of the law.
Oh dear god, William W Stanley, please inform us of the bad things that have happened to Sweden and Germany and France and the UK and so on and on as a result of Socialism there. If you mean COMMUNISM, please say so. Can’t you right-wing guys EVER construct an argument without lies and intellectual dishonesty?
And if you want to see countries that oligarchy has ruined, I would point you to the Roman Empire and Royal France, just for starters. Not to mention most of South and Central America for most of their miserable post-Spanish history.
Jeebus. “There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see.”
For us in Canada, the U.S. Electoral College doesn’t seem very democratic. Here, we have independent ridings, so we can have a province half-Conservative or half-Liberal. It’s not all-or-nothing. Regardless if Russia’s interference made a significant difference, Trump targeted the Texas powerhouse, and the states in the middle, with disproportionately more Electoral College votes per population. Clinton didn’t even bother with those states, sticking to where the voters were. Plain and simple, the Republicans played it smart, and the Democrats goofed.
That seems correct. Hillary won the popular vote because she ran a popular vote strategy. I’m not sure Trump really ran any strategy, let alone a highly targeted electoral vote strategy. Even up until the last minute he didn’t actually expect to win, and was basically using his campaign as an infomercial. But I guess the Russians did run that strategy on his behalf.
What Trump won with, did well, and continues to do well, is to bring the former blue-collar Democrats over to the GOP. That really set him up perfectly to win in the rust belt. Places like Erie, Gary, Detroit, Flint, Cleveland, Racine, and Milwaukee are filled with former union guys who have become disaffected, and have moved from the Democrat party to the Trump party. (Let’s stop calling them Republicans. The Republican party as we have known it no longer exists. It was pretty much buried with John McCain.) As it turns out, that entire region (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana) has now become the fuel for an Electoral College victory. If Trump didn’t know that intellectually, he at least intuited it, and Hillary remained clueless.
Sure it’s absolutely dumb to espouse the beauty of coal while ridiculing wind power, but that strategy strikes an emotional chord in the heartland, and Trump knows how to resonate that chord through the rolling hills of the republic. It’s the only chord he knows, but it’s the right one.
For now.
Why did the Russians meddle in the election? Just think of the risk they incurred in 2016. Putin can presumably read a poll as well as the next guy. Putin had to worry that Hillary Clinton would win despite his interventions and then exact retribution during her presidency. Putin must have expected a very big payoff. What was it?
That’s the question.
The payoff Putin expected was having an utterly incompetent, easily manipulated buffoon, ignoramus, and near-pathological liar become President of the United States, with all the damage that implies to the power, influence, and credibility of the US.
The fact that Trump apparently thinks Putin hung the moon must have been a nice bonus. Also, given how stupid and horny Trump is, it is easier to believe that Putin has blackmail dirt on him than that he does not.
“near” ?
I did not want to overstate the case. I, for one, knew that Trump was a con man in 2016, but I would not have called him a pathological liar then.
A pathological liar is distinguished from the rest of us liars in that he will compulsively lie even when he has nothing to gain, and is not concerned about being caught. (Everyone will lie when they judge the cost of truth to be too great. Everyone will lie when there is no chance of detection and what they consider a great reward for the lie.)
Trump qualifies in spades. He not only lies in self-aggrandizement, as we all do to a lesser degree, but he also lies compulsively for no purpose at all about matters that can easily be refuted, even when his best interests would be better served by the truth, i.e. saying his father was born in Germany.
The entire Mueller Investigation is an excellent example of Trump lying against his own best interests. If Trump had shut up from day one, part one of the report would have been the whole report, and that basically said “no criminal activity.” But Trump lied and schemed throughout the investigation, and tried to get his subordinates to lie as well, thus prolonging the investigation, and expanding it (creating part 2). Per Mueller, it seems that he lied even when there was nothing to hide!
The main over-arching consideration the drives Trump, is not this Presidency, nor apparently the next, but what money he can make for himself after this is over.
He has set the pieces, the friends he has put in charge of the EPA etc, that will make it easier for people who only care for themselves, the $ they can quickly make and the power and influence that contains, and not the planet or “the average man on the street” which is supposedly his constituency.
It is obvious to blind Freddy that this is a huge money grab, nothing more, nothing less… He is grabbing your country py the pussy.
Which is what the Republican party is full of if they don’t poney up to the table. Set the impeachment train in motion, if he is clean he will get his second term and legitimacy, if not, he will get what he deserves.
Mueller has corralled the bit players around him, and now, you guys need to grow some balls and see if he survives.
I said previously, Nixon was an ametuer compared to this guy.
I agree that money is a motivator for Trump, but it is not his central driving desire. He seems to crave adulation most of all, even if he has to supply much of it himself.
Now, the Republican Party – yes, its leadership in Washington has been bought, body and soul, by those who control the concentrated wealth of America. They do very little else but serve it. They will refuse to impeach Trump because, despite all his buffoonery and incompetence, he also serves it. The people who support Trump and vote Republican do not realize this because they are lied to 24/7 by propaganda machines funded by that same concentrated wealth. These are the people who can WITNESS Trump’s crimes, and still chant “Lock her up!”
And yet I would say that many of these people are misled rather hateful or racist. They have been fed a diet of lies by people like Rush Limbaugh for over 30 years now. To quote the Shadow or somebody, this weed has born bitter fruit.
I should have said central driving force instead of desire – it sounds better. And I meant to say “rather THAN hateful” in the last paragraph. I really should not write things at 3:23am (and, some would argue, at any other time.)
I agree. Trump wants praise and recognition. Money is just a means to obtain those ends.
To paraphrase Kissinger describing Nixon, how different might Trump have been if anyone had ever loved him.
If I have to make a choice between two groups of people to lead this country – 1 led by a bunch of rich guys who want to make America Great, if for no other reason than they will get richer, and another one who wants to drag America into the muck of Socialism and all the bad things that has historically shown in others nations that tried it entails, on the basis of being ‘fair’, I’ll take the rich guys.
Yeah, because Saudi Arabia has worked out so much better than Norway.
His inability to get Manafort to flip was the key. (even with the State charges coming down to prevent a commutation of his sentence)
He was the key, and his taking his secrets to his grave is why Mueller couldn’t break the cabal.
And every one of you has missed the one BIG point – that Russia tried to influence our Presidential election… that BIG point? They’ve tried to do that with EVERY election since the early 50’s, maybe before. Typical commie bullshit.
(McCarthy wasn’t completely wrong with his assertion that the government was infiltrated by communists because it was. Maybe not to the extent that McCarthy claimed and he did go a bit overboard in his witch hunt, but the fact remains that Russia (to a large extent and other countries to a lesser extent) have tried to influence American elections practically forever for their own purposes. And I was there, personally, so I know of what I write.
OK. And this time they SUCCEEDED, with the side they were trying to help being aware of and eager for that help. Isn’t that what’s different here?
Obviously that’s the key differentiator. But a good percentage of the population doesn’t get it.
No, it’s not the difference and they did not necessarily win. It just worked out that the American people wanted the same person that the Russians wanted. Believe me, if the American people had not wanted Trump, there would be literally nothing the Russians could have done.
“The Electoral College” !== “The American People”
The American people? You realize a majority voted against Trump, right? Hillary won the popular vote by a very wide margin. (Three million votes.)
Come on, Scoop. Hillary’s 3 million votes came from Los Angeles County alone. Do you really want to get rid of the Electoral College and let the crackheads in LA County determine who the President will be?
I want the American people to decide, rather than an overrepresented group in some states.
Again as always, facts have a liberal bias. Hillary won liberal LA County by 1.7 million. She also won Republican Orange County as well as Riverside and San Bernardino, and pretty much everyplace else where the people are well educated. Trump is able to win only in areas where he can bamboozle the uneducated, especially the elderly. In his own words, “I love the poorly educated.” And with good reason. Remember the chart. Uneducated whites vote 2/3 Trump. Everyone else added together: 2/3 Democrat.
But I’m not opposed to allowing the stupid to vote. What I am opposed to is giving them far more votes, and far more representation in general, than I get! (The 600,000 people in Wyoming get two senators. The 600,000 people in my media market – Green Bay to Oshkosh – get approximately one fifth of a senator!)
The whole point of America is “No taxation without representation.” Now if you want to tax the people of Wyoming 10 times higher than you tax me, then I don’t mind giving them ten times more senators!
To your point, California, Florida, Texas and New York are WAY underrepresented in the electoral college. If the EC were distributed by population, I would not be strongly opposed to retaining it, but the votes are pretty much random because of the Senate component. The four states I mentioned have approximately one electoral vote per 700,000 population. Meanwhile, deserted wastelands like Wyoming and the Dakotas have one per two or three hundred thousand. In essence, because of the EC, each voter in Wyoming gets four times as many votes as a Californian gets.
And the four million native-born American citizens in Puerto Rico get no electoral votes at all! (or popular votes for that matter). This makes no sense at all, since they are immediately eligible to vote in Presidential elections as soon as they relocate to a state, and they are free to do so at any time.
The Gerrymander is that bad in the USA? I thought we had it bad down here in Oz.
I’m not trying to be argumentative here, Scoop, but I think you are over-thinking the deal by trying to whittle it down to how many EC votes you have as an individual. In Wisconsin, you have 10 EC votes, which is based on the 8 Representatives you have plus your two Senators.
If 10 Reps/Senators is sufficient for Congress for your state, why shouldn’t 10 votes in the EC also be sufficient?
That’s the way the Founders devised the plan… not as a number for EACH citizen but as a vote that is equal for each state’s population. You said it yourself – on average, every state gets about 1 EC vote per 700,000 citizens.
So Wisconsin gets 1 EC vote per 700,000 citizens, California gets 1 vote for 700,000, Florida, Texas, Nebraska… all get an equal representation in the EC.
The Founding Fathers were a pretty smart bunch of guys and they knew if they didn’t put some sort of control in place, at some point in the future, the President would start being elected by the largest states – only.
California, Florida, Texas, New York – those four states, if they all vote in concert with one another, if the EC were to be abolished, would elect the President every time because their total votes (popular votes) will be enough to outvote the other 46 states completely. That means that you in Wisconsin, Me in Nebraska, and others would have NO SAY in who will be the President.
I don’t like that idea at all. The Electoral College may not be the perfect program to elect the President but it is the best we’ve got right now. Could it stand some re-vamping? Maybe.
But eliminating it altogether would be the worst mistake we could make.
Mostly you got the facts wrong in your post. As I pointed out below, you don’t seem to realize how the number of electoral votes is determined, so you’ve made the incorrect assumption that it is proportionate to population. The House of Representatives IS proportionate to population. The electoral college is NOT.
1. “If 10 Reps/Senators is sufficient for Congress for your state, why shouldn’t 10 votes in the EC also be sufficient?” You missed the entire point. 10 Reps/Senators may or may not be enough because of the randomness of representation per person in the Senate. The number of Reps/Senators is actually fairly accurate for Wisconsin and other medium-sized states, but it is way too small a number for the populated states and way too large for the empty states. That’s the whole point – BECAUSE of the Senate, large states are wildly underrepresented in Washington, and BECAUSE the Senate is used to calculate the EC, those states are therefore also underrepresented in the Electoral College. The two are tied together as cause and effect.
2. The Founding Fathers were smart enough, but their intelligence had nothing to do with the creation of the Senate or the Electoral College. They had the pragmatic task of creating a system that allowed the South to continue slavery, because without slavery, those dixie lads were not all-in for the country. Therefore, the founders created the Senate, where power was distributed by the number of states, rather than by the number of Americans, and they gave that body the power to block legislation crafted by the House, which is fairly distributed by population. They had to do that to get all the colonies on board, and I understand that, but we now live with their concessions to racism.
And of course, those smart men could not predict the future, when large empty tracts of land like Wyoming, Alaska and the Dakotas would have the same representation in the Senate as places where people actually live!
3. “So Wisconsin gets 1 EC vote per 700,000 citizens, California gets 1 vote for 700,000, Florida, Texas, Nebraska… all get an equal representation in the EC.” Again, facts always have a liberal bias. Your math is wrong. By a lot. You don’t seem to understand how the number of electoral votes is determined. Wyoming gets one electoral vote per 192,000 people. California gets one per 719,000. Therefore, in essence, voters in Wyoming get three votes for every one that California voters get! If what you wrote were true, my objection to the EC would be much diminished. The electoral college would be reasonably fair if it were based entirely on the number of Representatives. Then California would have 53 and Wyoming 1. It would have 53 times as many votes because it has (about) 53 times as many people. Because the Senate count is included, California has 55 and Wyoming 3, so California has only 18 times as many electoral votes, despite having about 53 times as many people. Each Wyoming voter, as mentioned, basically gets to vote three times for each single vote a California voter gets.
4. “That means that you in Wisconsin, Me in Nebraska, and others would have NO SAY in who will be the President.” Again, that is factually incorrect. I will have EXACTLY as much impact as somebody in California or Wyoming, as opposed to now, when I get a lot more impact than somebody in California (hooray) and a lot less than somebody in Wyoming (boo).
5. As I pointed out, the reason for founding this country was to fight taxation without representation. That’s why America exists. I don’t mind that people in Wyoming get ten times the number of senators per person as people in Wisconsin – as long as they pay ten times the taxes. I’ll gladly take a smaller share of representation in return for paying only a tenth of my federal taxes.
Is not the point of a federal system to limit the power the government has over the people? I thought the reason for the EC as well as for originally appointing senators by state legislatures was to check the powers of the executive and the legislative branches. Giving smaller states power disproportionate to their populations makes it harder for the government to pass laws and makes it harder still to change those laws once they’re passed.
The federal system was never intended to create equality. It was supposed to slow the accumulation of power in one of the three branches. Isn’t that why we eventually had to settle the issue of slavery with a civil war rather than by legislative debate or by judicial decree? The argument which won the day at the Constitutional Convention was that the surest way the United States was going to fail was not due to the corrosive injustice caused by slavery nor to tearing itself to pieces over the issue; it was that the government amassing too much power over citizens’ lives would eventually lead to a second revolution.
That fear brought abolitionist leaning states to the table who worried slavery would creep westward and it assured slave states that some piss-ant state like Delaware stood to lose just as much as they did if they failed ratify.
The EC problem requires no special genius to fix.
Depending on your political philosophy:
Either eliminate the EC, or
If you absolutely have to keep it for some arcane reason, make it so that it allocates electoral votes proportionate to population.
Of course, I would prefer more radical actions, but it will probably be a century before people will take them seriously. There is still, and perhaps long will be, an ongoing debate between those who want to do what the founders intended and those who want to do what is right. I am obviously in the latter camp. After centuries passed, their system, which may have made sense to unite the needs of 13 radically different colonies, ultimately allocated power to people based on the sheer coincidence of whether they were surrounded by imaginary state lines or merely imaginary county lines. That’s what caused the 600,000 people in Wyoming to be so much more important that the 600,000 culturally identical people in East-Central Wisconsin.
It doesn’t really matter what the founding fathers did or didn’t want centuries ago in a completely different world. After all, they were governing a country with only 30,000 voters. They basically wanted elections to be determined solely by white males, and many of them owned slaves. If they came back to life today as they were then, we would consider almost all of them racists and misogynists, so why let them determine our method of governance? What matters is what is best for the country in the 21st century, even if that’s the very opposite of what they wanted.
The “what is right” team will completely defeat the “what the founders intended” crowd eventually, because the moral arc of the universe does bend toward justice, as Dr. King noted, but that will not happen soon, because that arc bends only slightly.
By the way, I’m confused by your last paragraph. “It assured slave states that some piss-ant state like Delaware stood to lose just as much as they did.” Your “they” pronoun confuses me. Does it refer back to “slave states”? But Delaware was a slave state, so the intent of the sentence is kind of hard to follow.
My last paragraph was an over-hasty attempt to preempt the counterargument that southern states wouldn’t have ratified had they felt it would jeopardize their right to keep slaves. The Connecticut Compromise was the Constitutional Convention’s spin on “we must all hang together…or we shall all hang separately”; i.e., it’s in the interests of the states to join together and form a federal government even if they disagree on slavery than to remain small independent states vulnerable to economic ruin or foreign invasion.
But my main point was this. The Electoral College is not about fairness or empowering voters; it’s not about individuals at all. The EC, like most of the Constitution, is intended to limit the power of the government. Because whether it’s the eighteenth or the twenty-first century, people are people. Those with power will always try to increase their control on rest of us. You’re right, that will sometimes turn out for the best. But over the long term, it is the choices of elected officials, not the choices of voters which determines whether a nation is going to survive. Long term it is better for a NATION to have a slow, less democratic, system than a more efficient, representative one that may well lead to swift justice, but which increases the likelihood of a swifter demise.
I would say it is up to the electorate to determine the size of the central government, not up to the system to determine its own size. If the people want a bigger government, they should vote for the candidates who advocate that. If they want a smaller role for the feds, then vote for those candidates.
But in no case should they get the guy who believes in the opposite of that they voted for, which has now happened twice in the past five Presidential elections. And it doesn’t seem that those minority Presidents have been going about the business of limiting the role of Washington.
If you really think that the Electoral College serves the purpose of limiting Washington, (and it’s hard for me to imagine anyone thinking that), it would serve it no less if the electoral votes were proportionate to population instead of the current situation where there is a direct inverse proportion between the size of the state and the number of senators per person. In essence the way our current system works is this: the more insignificant the state, the more significant each of its voters. I don’t remember any of the great political philosophers recommending government by the insignificant.
The other point people seem to miss in the popular/electorate vote debate is this.
The argument always goes that state x will always decide. Well that is going off the basis that everyone in that state votes the same way.
Example, currently. If I lived in Texas and wanted to vote blue, that vote is all but meaningless. Even if 45% of the state wanted to Vote that way. Same if the reverse was true in California.
However if it was based on the popular vote, then all of a sudden those votes from the under represented faction in those states all of a sudden become much more relevant.
Granted this is based on nation going off of total sum of votes, rather than this is the winner for each state.
People try to say that every vote matters. Under the current system that is a lie when it comes to the Oval Office. The only time it does matter in the current system is on the state level, and only if the voting blocs are proportional towards each other.
McCarthy and his circus found 1 possible Commie – an Army dentist.
Nixon &Chambers disclosed Hiss, who was fairly high up at State.
McCarthy never showed anyone his famous list with the fluctuating number of supposed Commies at State and never specified even one of these supposed agents. He was as wrong as wrong could be; State was not infiltrated by Communists, neither was the Govt as a whole.
Not that the Russians weren’t trying but they didn’t succeed. And the effect of the slimy Tail Gunner Joe’s efforts was that every hard leftist from then on could always hide behind “McCarthyism” whenever the heat was on.
What the Russians had been doing in this country came to light in the early 90s – and it hadn’t been much.
About the only thing they ever succeeded at was with the A-bomb Ring.
There were accusations of pro-Commies at State – but these were the people who were correctly saying that Chiang might not prevail in China. They all got canned in the Truman Admin (I did my Seminar paper on that). We could have used those folks in the early 60s.
Succeed = ‘flip of the coin”.
Some years the Russians are on the winning side, some years, they’re not. Hmmm… that sounds like me!
The thing I find most fascinating about the whole probe is how no one seems to realize that the Russians (and the USSR before) has meddled in every election. We do it too.
EXACTLY! Congratulations! You win the prize!
Hi Scoop,
Great narrative.
The bottom line seems to be:
1. Russia would do anything to keep Hillary out of the White House, no surprise there.
2. Stupid is a defence – Don Jr.
3. Obstruction or at least the intent to obstruct, happened and that narrative continues.
4. The rule of law only applies to those who follow the law. Those that don’t care or have never cared for the law, except for ways to circumvent it, will continue to do so with impunity because better men won’t sink into the pig shit that these lesser men inhabit.
So, basically, the status quo remains, as it always has when the wealthy have the reins of power and chinless sycophants don’t do anything to stop them.
Good luck getting him out of office and then putting the genie back in the bottle.
As I understand it the report cites multiple instances of Trump team members engaging with Russians regarding the hacked email and other information but because no one from the Trump team personally did the hacking there was no charges that could be filed which is why the report leaves it up to congress to decide what to do with the info.
BTW – AG Barr might find himself on charges of obstruction for his pathetic summary memo, allowing the president and his lawyers to read the report prior to it being released, etc.
Ask yourself what would have have happened if this report came out in 2011 and was about Obama, and Eric Holder had done what Barr has done now.
The Republicans would have impeached Obama in a New York minute and be calling for the death penalty for both him and Holder.
Now that it’s Trump? It’s about time for them to drum up some shiny new distraction like gay marriage or trannies in the bathroom. They have neither shame or loyalty to their country or concern about the public.
The Republicans wouldn’t have waited for impeachment. They would have done it the way it was done back when ‘Merica was great, with a rope.
Having read most of it, Mueller makes clear that Trump lied, engaged in and tried to engage in obstruction, both public and private, both using his Article II powers and outside of his constitutional authority, to influence witnesses, suborn perjury and even end the investigation by ordering WH officials to fire Mueller, which they declined to do. Mueller’s team determined that it was outside their authority to bring charges and argue that indicting a sitting president would be problematic, then carefully lay out their reasoning (which is in line with previous DOJ guidance on the issue). On several occasions the report indicates that it is up to Congress to consider the preponderance of evidence and then determine a course of action as prescribed by the body’s constitutional authority. Overall, the case for obstruction is extremely damning while not vaguely surprising.
Agreed CNN will run this “in quotes” until at least Christmas!
WOW. Four Hundred Forty Eight page report and the leftists of the country are going to seize on that ONE paragraph,
“SEE!!! They didn’t say he DID commit obstruction BUT they DIDN’T say he DIDN’T! So he MUST HAVE!”
Ya gotta love those who have a one track mind, it makes life so much easier.
Captain Oblivious being his usual self. So sad.
Yup. Fun, ain’t it?
Considering it hasn’t been out for a few hours I’m going to assume you haven’t read it yet either. It would be extremely easy to say 448 pages and one paragraph that says that he maybe didn’t do it guess which one the right is going to latch onto. Let’s read it first and decide whether the evidence points one way or another. How about that?
Well, that paragraph is the summary of Part 2, so yeah, you’re right. That will be the focus.
If you read it carefully, you’ll see that he definitely lied and schemed again and again to obstruct the investigation. Did that reach to the level of criminal activity? They left that an open-ended question.
Why? There are some nuances here:
1. If the investigation had found that his lies and schemes served to cover-up a criminal conspiracy, there would have been a strong case that his cover-up actions were also criminal. But since there was essentially nothing to cover up (per part one), then his actions seem more like Machiavellian political machinations than criminal obstruction.
2. Mueller was working for the DOJ, and therefore followed DOJ protocols about indicting a sitting president.
3. Any further action against a President would constitutionally be the responsibility of Congress, not the DOJ, so Mueller stayed in his lane.
4. Mueller detailed his specific assignments and showed how he fulfilled them. PERIOD. He avoided exceeding his charge, although he did turn some ancillary, peripheral and follow-up cases over to other auspices. He’s a straight-laced guy who really follows the letter of the law.
Ah, Captain Obvious. Short for Captain Obvious Intellectual Dishonesty, I presume.
Jeebus, you must be trolling. You could not expect anyone but a fellow Trump true believer to think this was a good point.
BINGO!
You finally get me, Roger!
Thanks!