Mueller has his own grand jury. Barr can't bury anything that Mueller doesn't let him bury.
What?
Mueller has his own grand jury. Barr can't bury anything Mueller doesn't let him bury.
Remember all those criminal charges to people like Manafort and Cohen and Stone? They did not require Barr or anyone's approval.
If Mueller wanted anyone short of the President indicted, they'd be indicted. And if he really wanted to, he could try to indict the president and kick off that legal battle.
I'm like 100% positive we have talked in this thread about how the AG (or acting AG prior to Sessions being fired) had the final say on whether or not indictments can happen. It was one of the fears when Sessions was fired.
Mueller has his own grand jury. Barr can't bury anything that Mueller doesn't let him bury.
What?
Mueller has his own grand jury. Barr can't bury anything Mueller doesn't let him bury.
Remember all those criminal charges to people like Manafort and Cohen and Stone? They did not require Barr or anyone's approval.
If Mueller wanted anyone short of the President indicted, they'd be indicted. And if he really wanted to, he could try to indict the president and kick off that legal battle.
I'm like 100% positive we have talked in this thread about how the AG (or acting AG prior to Sessions being fired) had the final say on whether or not indictments can happen. It was one of the fears when Sessions was fired.
Yes, the AG can override Mueller if he wants, and then has to report that he did so. So, the AG does have the final say, but at this point we safely say that Mueller had the final say on all indictments he wanted to bring.
It sounds like the report is very bad for trump if you actually read it.
Barr's letter very much reads like damage control.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Mueller has his own grand jury. Barr can't bury anything that Mueller doesn't let him bury.
I thought Barr has final say on everything Mueller does?
Barr has the ability to step in and overrule Mueller on certain things, triggering a report to Congress, but that's not the same as Mueller needing him to sign off. If Mueller wanted to prosecute any more people, he would have.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
The way to see Trump in prison was always to have him lose in 2020.
The chances of that happening have also just cratered.
Nah. Not even close.
Shit, we still haven't seen the report yet and the only leaks I've seen on it are that it's bad for Trump et all. Which is exactly what you'd expect given what we know.
Is the argument here about his chances of losing or about ending up in prison if he loses?
Because I agree that this is not a guarantee of re-election. I don't think it moves the needle much at all so far, people are likely to just stick to their prior opinions. Not getting indicted is not suddenly going to make people like you.
I do think that this is a major blow to chances of Trump going to prison if he loses, though. New presidents usually don't like going after the previous guy even if there are clear reasons to. If the conclusion now means no further actions on this topic then it is unlikely that will happen after the election, even if there are still investigations into more and different crimes. Hell, afaik those aren't much different from those he faced before he was president. The guy is pretty good at avoiding prosecution.
I don’t agree, given how much of even Barr’s summary of the report is “but then again, DOJ guidelines says we can’t indict a president.” Trump would be indicted now for the Cohen payoffs thing if he weren’t in office, so if he leaves office I don’t think the DOJ guideline-informed report will continue to protect him.
Maybe we could have a summary of all the ongoing things still ongoing posted to the first post in the thread so we have something to point the doom-and-gloom brigade to so we can know the fight is not over yet? I mean, I'm trying to hold my head up and know there's still stuff ongoing, but I'm staying off social media for a few days because the asshole brigades are going to be out in full force parroting Barr and trying to "pwn the libs" as such.
Is it just me or is it kind of incredible we have no precedent for indicting a sitting president? Not even a frivolous one? You think someone would have tried that one 100 years ago and we'd have a definitive answer either way.
Mueller has his own grand jury. Barr can't bury anything that Mueller doesn't let him bury.
I thought Barr has final say on everything Mueller does?
Barr has the ability to step in and overrule Mueller on certain things, triggering a report to Congress, but that's not the same as Mueller needing him to sign off. If Mueller wanted to prosecute any more people, he would have.
Mueller is still bound by the doj guidelines on who he can prosscute. So if those get changed before he says “i want to prosecute” or if the investigation gets shut down before enough information can be attained in order to prosecute then that would not trigger a report to congress.
We can see this in the standards set forth by the letter for what constitutes continuing the investigation.
Furthermore this letter itself could be considered such a “report” given the vagueness of the statute.
Is it just me or is it kind of incredible we have no precedent for indicting a sitting president? Not even a frivolous one? You think someone would have tried that one 100 years ago and we'd have a definitive answer either way.
As I have said before, America must grapple with what to do with an openly criminal president. We have no precedent and putting our faith in a justice system that hasn't been designed to answer this specific question could be folly. There must be other routes: impeachment, protest, amendments to the constitution.
Re: you can't prosecute obstruction if you can't get a conviction for the underlying case: was manafort ever charged for the witness tampering he pulled when in custody?
Will is grasping at straws, with the bit about the Russian government.
“The Russian government.” The letter quotes a sentence from Mueller’s report. In that sentence, Mueller says his investigation didn’t prove that members of the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The sentence specifies Russia’s government. It says nothing about coordination with other Russians.
Emphasis his. Now back to the letter.
The first describes the results of the Special Counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The report outlines the Russian effort to influence the election and documents crimes committed by persons associated with the Russian government in connection with those efforts. The report further explains that a primary consideration for the Special Counsel’s investigation was whether any Americans — including individuals associated with the Trump campaign — joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a federal crime. The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Let's go back to Will.
It says nothing about coordination with other Russians. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, gave campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian associate who has been linked to Russian intelligence. Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner met secretly in Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-connected lawyer. But neither Kilimnik nor Veselnitskaya is part of the Russian government. They seem to be excluded from Barr’s analysis.
There is a possibility that the summary could be false. But Will's "close reading" concluding the report/summary is explicitly excluding anyone not officially part of the Russian government is weak, when the summary does no such thing, is a real stretch of that term.
The basis of Will's objection here is that some people might "connected" or "linked" with the Russian government, but not part of the Russian government. But I guess the word "associated with" isn't close enough? I guess the full release of the report will tell us if he's right, but boy does that look like sandcastle that he's building.
...I think I see what he's trying to do. He's splitting hairs to make his boss look good. I imagine there was communication, but as said entities and people weren't active parts of the Russian government themselves, that might be what he's saying. It says nothing of the fact that the people they reported to and passed along information to were agents of a foreign power.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
This seems interesting if true, but how does it square with how easy it is to get away with “coordinating” between a campaign and a superPAC? Is the word “tacit” in Barr’s letter doing all the heavy lifting here?
We're going to slice and dice it, but the national narrative is moving on. Without tying the president to a crime, he will be able to claim public vindication. The press push for the next few weeks will be strong on that front and it'll probably be at least a month before we get enough details to attempt a nuanced discussion, which the public won't have attention span for.
I'm just stuck trying to figure out whether he was less involved than expected, or whether the evidence they ended up with was weak.
I’m surprised how relieved I am the report (summary) worked out this way. I guess I didn’t realize that the idea our President had been colluding with Russia to get into office had weighed on me.
I’m surprised how relieved I am the report (summary) worked out this way. I guess I didn’t realize that the idea our President had been colluding with Russia to get into office had weighed on me.
It's well documented (even if Trump denies it based on "I believe Putin") that Russia worked to elect Trump. There's 3 broad categories that I think could cover the possible scenarios for Trump and his team:
They had active agreements with persons associated with the Russian government to exchange resources to assist Trump's win.
They were aware of the activities of persons associated with the Russian government and their communications were along the lines of "Won't someone [rid me of this troublesome priest/leak hacked DNC documents/target voters based on data from Cambridge Analytica]".
They were unaware of the activities and the whole thing came as a big shock to them.
Now, option 3 is definitely out - Trump Jr meeting at Trump Tower, Trump publicly asking Russia to hack Hillary etc. - but it's the narrative the White House is attempting to push with Barr's letter.
However, if Barr's weasel wording is anywhere near accurate, Mueller's report can't conclusively establish option 1 either. There's no record of any kind of agreement or similar (for a given definition of "tacit agreement").
So while the Trump's campaign may not have lifted a finger to assist the Russians helping Trump get into office, it's almost certainly the case that they knew what the Russians were doing and didn't lift a finger to stop them either. Which, for me, is just as bad - and remains to be seen if it's sufficient to bring action against a sitting president.
I think the biggest issue I have is squaring what happened in the public eye
Roger Stone et al. discuss Wikileaks leaks of Clinton emails
Trump hears about these leaks
Trump proclaims on stage "Russia if you're listening I hope you find those emails"
Emails come out
Maybe my timeline is off, but it seems like that stage proclamation -- regardless of if it was a joke or not -- seems like a desire and acceptance for the whole thing.
Essentially all the pieces were in place for collusion and all the things that collusion would have produced still got produced, but the investigation was unable to pull together the evidence to prove that the campaign ever actually talked to russia about it.
I think the biggest issue I have is squaring what happened in the public eye
Roger Stone et al. discuss Wikileaks leaks of Clinton emails
Trump hears about these leaks
Trump proclaims on stage "Russia if you're listening I hope you find those emails"
Emails come out
Maybe my timeline is off, but it seems like that stage proclamation -- regardless of if it was a joke or not -- seems like a desire and acceptance for the whole thing.
Also, internal Trump polling data being handed to Russians.
I can understand a conclusion that says "we can't prove it in court", but Trump campaign staff and surrogates reached out to people related to the Russian government (if not "official representatives"). Russia reached out to the campaign and associates. Just because there was not a formal agreement or that the lines did not provably intersect does not mean that there was not anything there, and it certainly doesn't mean that Trump isn't guilty of a dozen other things being investigated.
But none of this is going to get him out of office anyway. The Dems need to make a case for them being in charge other than "Trump is a crook".
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I think the biggest issue I have is squaring what happened in the public eye
Roger Stone et al. discuss Wikileaks leaks of Clinton emails
Trump hears about these leaks
Trump proclaims on stage "Russia if you're listening I hope you find those emails"
Emails come out
Maybe my timeline is off, but it seems like that stage proclamation -- regardless of if it was a joke or not -- seems like a desire and acceptance for the whole thing.
Also, internal Trump polling data being handed to Russians.
I can understand a conclusion that says "we can't prove it in court", but Trump campaign staff and surrogates reached out to people related to the Russian government (if not "official representatives"). Russia reached out to the campaign and associates. Just because there was not a formal agreement or that the lines did not provably intersect does not mean that there was not anything there, and it certainly doesn't mean that Trump isn't guilty of a dozen other things being investigated.
But none of this is going to get him out of office anyway. The Dems need to make a case for them being in charge other than "Trump is a crook".
Those moments of reaching out led to meetings inside the campaign headquarters / corporate office with representatives from Moscow, discussing things they felt the need to lie about repeatedly following said meeting.
This summary doesn't stand up to scrutiny because it does nothing to explain how any of what I wrote above doesn't matter. If the full report does, that would be hard to swallow, but better than what we got here which is effectively "nothing to see here, move along, its just the aurora borealis" while standing in front of an obvious kitchen on fire.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I kind of wonder now if the plan the whole time (even prior to Comey leaving) was an Iran-Contra style “investigation” where they picked out a couple of obviously guilty scapegoats (Manafort and Cohen), sent them down the river, and come to a “how dare these idiots besmirch the name of our noble president”, with a Sessions recusal and Special Counselor to add legitimacy to it and Trump was just such a fucking idiot he kept shitting all over their plans.
That letter is certainly full of a lot of weasel wording.
That they went with the direct contradiction in public even to this summary ("total exoneration") gives credence to the idea that they would just have said that same thing no matter what came out of the investigation.
The way I see, the Mueller investigation was the best chance there was ever going to be to find evidence of Trump/Russia collusion. In fact, I think many Democrats (more at the voter than the congressional level) pinned utterly fantastic hopes onto this investigation. Now that it has wrapped, unless there is a bombshell waiting in the actual report, this is a political gold mine for Trump. If I were him I would try my darndest to bait Democrats into further "collusion" accusations and investigations because I don't think those will play well for Team (D) at this point.
I think the smart play for Democrats is to put on their 2020 hats and get to building a campaign. Trump is beatable, oh so beatable. I'm still surprised that he took the prize in 2016.
I kind of wonder now if the plan the whole time (even prior to Comey leaving) was an Iran-Contra style “investigation” where they picked out a couple of obviously guilty scapegoats (Manafort and Cohen), sent them down the river, and come to a “how dare these idiots besmirch the name of our noble president”, with a Sessions recusal and Special Counselor to add legitimacy to it and Trump was just such a fucking idiot he kept shitting all over their plans.
That letter is certainly full of a lot of weasel wording.
This has always been the plan
I'm still really surprised folks thought it was gonna be much more than something like this. Whole bunch of smoke, no fire. Trump and his ilk may be a bunch of bumbling idiots but the folks they were working with were much smarter than them. Everything's still pretty blatant, but none of it can be outright proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. So it gets swept under the rug. Which is kinda how Putin's entire regime operates if I'm not mistaken.
I'm hoping folks just make the leak happen so we can just see what it says, but I doubt it's ever gonna say what most folks t want it to say. I think this because I still maintain the trumps were too dumb to play. They got played like a pawn. Putin backed em because he realized simply putting him there for 4 years was more damage to the US than he could ever hope to impose militarily. I don't think it was for lack of russians trying to tie them in and coordinate, just that everyone in that apparatus was a stone cold idiot.
The way I see, the Mueller investigation was the best chance there was ever going to be to find evidence of Trump/Russia collusion. In fact, I think many Democrats (more at the voter than the congressional level) pinned utterly fantastic hopes onto this investigation. Now that it has wrapped, unless there is a bombshell waiting in the actual report, this is a political gold mine for Trump. If I were him I would try my darndest to bait Democrats into further "collusion" accusations and investigations because I don't think those will play well for Team (D) at this point.
I think the smart play for Democrats is to put on their 2020 hats and get to building a campaign. Trump is beatable, oh so beatable. I'm still surprised that he took the prize in 2016.
How is this a political gold mine? This is basically the high point for Trump on this issue because the only solid information out there is his own hand-picked-to-cover-up-things AG's letter. The only place we go from here is more information about the report leaking out, none of which is going to be better for Trump then Barr's report and given what we know, it's basically guaranteed the details are worse then the summary.
Trump is gonna scream "No Collusion!" like he was already, but the details of the report itself as they slowly drip into the news are not gonna be kind to him.
"Too dumb to play" actually grimly tallies with Barr's summary and some of Don jr.'s comments about the Trump tower meeting. Russia wants to coordinate their efforts, but uses the language of espionage because of course they fucking do. The Trump camp doesn't understand this and walks out of the meeting frustrated that the Russians kept talking about unrelated things when they wanted dirt on the democrats.
"Too dumb to play" actually grimly tallies with Barr's summary and some of Don jr.'s comments about the Trump tower meeting. Russia wants to coordinate their efforts, but uses the language of espionage because of course they fucking do. The Trump camp doesn't understand this and walks out of the meeting frustrated that the Russians kept talking about unrelated things when they wanted dirt on the democrats.
I think the bigger issue is likely connecting the people the Trump campaign conspired with to the Russian government directly. You can see this with the internal polling data Manafort passed on to the Russians. Not unlike Trump himself, Putin operates as a mafia and so insulates himself and Russia from direct contact here, working through intermediaries like various oligarchs.
Trump had been acting like a desperately fearful person until the day the summary came out, when he suddenly became Mr. Calm and didn’t have a worry in the world
I’m sure he got a phone call from his good friend Mr. Barr who told him he would write a hack statement to help him look good
“I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Sounds really familiar
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
The way I see, the Mueller investigation was the best chance there was ever going to be to find evidence of Trump/Russia collusion. In fact, I think many Democrats (more at the voter than the congressional level) pinned utterly fantastic hopes onto this investigation. Now that it has wrapped, unless there is a bombshell waiting in the actual report, this is a political gold mine for Trump. If I were him I would try my darndest to bait Democrats into further "collusion" accusations and investigations because I don't think those will play well for Team (D) at this point.
I think the smart play for Democrats is to put on their 2020 hats and get to building a campaign. Trump is beatable, oh so beatable. I'm still surprised that he took the prize in 2016.
The fact that Russiagate has dominated the conversation because the Democratic establishment will not, can not, accept that Trump is not an outlier makes me think otherwise. When the entire message is "We'll say and do anything to get you to like us other than offer substantive, structural change", all you can ever hope for is more nothingburgers like "this Republican literal FBI agent will save us from totalitarianism". If you looked at the outpouring of energy and resistance after the 2016 election, you could scarcely imagine a more potent way to diffuse it than to direct it into an effort to empower the FBI to get Trump on a technicality, while purposefully ignoring the worst atrocities like Yemen because they enjoy bipartisan support at the highest levels.
My money is that easily half of the really invested Mueller people double down - it's essentially their QAnon at this point.
The way I see, the Mueller investigation was the best chance there was ever going to be to find evidence of Trump/Russia collusion. In fact, I think many Democrats (more at the voter than the congressional level) pinned utterly fantastic hopes onto this investigation. Now that it has wrapped, unless there is a bombshell waiting in the actual report, this is a political gold mine for Trump. If I were him I would try my darndest to bait Democrats into further "collusion" accusations and investigations because I don't think those will play well for Team (D) at this point.
I think the smart play for Democrats is to put on their 2020 hats and get to building a campaign. Trump is beatable, oh so beatable. I'm still surprised that he took the prize in 2016.
The fact that Russiagate has dominated the conversation because the Democratic establishment will not, can not, accept that Trump is not an outlier makes me think otherwise. When the entire message is "We'll say and do anything to get you to like us other than offer substantive, structural change", all you can ever hope for is more nothingburgers like "this Republican literal FBI agent will save us from totalitarianism". If you looked at the outpouring of energy and resistance after the 2016 election, you could scarcely imagine a more potent way to diffuse it than to direct it into an effort to empower the FBI to get Trump on a technicality, while purposefully ignoring the worst atrocities like Yemen because they enjoy bipartisan support at the highest levels.
My money is that easily half of the really invested Mueller people double down - it's essentially their QAnon at this point.
I think folks invested in mueller like myself will have a hard time reconciling how the trump tower meeting, roger stones efforts with wiki leaks, Cohen saying trump was in the room when stone spoke of it, the back channel meeting, Manafort sharing polling data all add up to nothing.
If the full report doesn’t come out and that isn’t explained it’s goinh to be very hard to move on. We have open collusion in plain sight. Not to mention trump literally asking for Russia to hack Clinton on live TV.
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
The biggest enemy at this point is the media narrative. NPR interviewed Senator Blumenthal, and there was a lot of "perception is reality" going on there in terms of asking if they would take impeachment off the table, if they were discounting the quotes from Mueller, and so on. They already mentioned that the media narrative is shifting in the way Barr wanted.
I've not commented on this much since Friday, but I do have to wonder... There were a lot of people involved in this report. There have been no leaks up till now. What if that changes?
The way I see, the Mueller investigation was the best chance there was ever going to be to find evidence of Trump/Russia collusion. In fact, I think many Democrats (more at the voter than the congressional level) pinned utterly fantastic hopes onto this investigation. Now that it has wrapped, unless there is a bombshell waiting in the actual report, this is a political gold mine for Trump. If I were him I would try my darndest to bait Democrats into further "collusion" accusations and investigations because I don't think those will play well for Team (D) at this point.
I think the smart play for Democrats is to put on their 2020 hats and get to building a campaign. Trump is beatable, oh so beatable. I'm still surprised that he took the prize in 2016.
The fact that Russiagate has dominated the conversation because the Democratic establishment will not, can not, accept that Trump is not an outlier makes me think otherwise. When the entire message is "We'll say and do anything to get you to like us other than offer substantive, structural change", all you can ever hope for is more nothingburgers like "this Republican literal FBI agent will save us from totalitarianism". If you looked at the outpouring of energy and resistance after the 2016 election, you could scarcely imagine a more potent way to diffuse it than to direct it into an effort to empower the FBI to get Trump on a technicality, while purposefully ignoring the worst atrocities like Yemen because they enjoy bipartisan support at the highest levels.
My money is that easily half of the really invested Mueller people double down - it's essentially their QAnon at this point.
I get where this energy comes from but I disagree it has dominated the democratic conversation. it's definitely a strong element of the cable news story over the last year+, and a certain strain of "resistance twitter" or "the liberals" or whatever term we agree upon here, but I just feel that this is a misrepresentation. and we have an election to look at, I personally would say 2018 was in part about generally keeping trump accountable but it wasn't much about russia, or impeachment, definitely was about the healthcare votes and the billionaire tax cut.
I want to stress that towards a certain crowd I do get this sentiment, and I am definitely channeling something that is better pointed towards like, social media in general, but the "far left" reaction to not just dunk on libs - which I dislike already - but worse to do so with the evidence provided by trump? and the fbi? the exact people you want to criticize in the critique of the original point... while also, trump explicitly was NOT exonerated, all that evidence is still there (the trump tower meeting, "if it's what you say I love it" from don jr, trump saying he fired comey because of russa, the campaign finance laws that are unrelated but clearly issues)
ugh it's just like
I get it but what exactly are we celebrating? I also get the comparison to q anon while thinking the difference in scale of where the fantasy begins makes it ludicrous.
anyway, I'm basically "not all democrats"ing your post but I think it's a mischaracterization of the last 2 years to say it's all they focused on, and I don't think that many people expected mueller to actually save the country directly, but then I've been surprised on that front too.
just seems like some massively big reactions from a lot of people when we do, in fact, know very little. I do know I don't ever really want to be celebrating things that team trump is celebrating, or buying into their pov for basically any reason. idk I'm sure I'm being inconsistent, I hope this makes sense, and I know you know we're largely on the same page with stuff which is why I bother to make this specific point.
The way I see, the Mueller investigation was the best chance there was ever going to be to find evidence of Trump/Russia collusion. In fact, I think many Democrats (more at the voter than the congressional level) pinned utterly fantastic hopes onto this investigation. Now that it has wrapped, unless there is a bombshell waiting in the actual report, this is a political gold mine for Trump. If I were him I would try my darndest to bait Democrats into further "collusion" accusations and investigations because I don't think those will play well for Team (D) at this point.
I think the smart play for Democrats is to put on their 2020 hats and get to building a campaign. Trump is beatable, oh so beatable. I'm still surprised that he took the prize in 2016.
The fact that Russiagate has dominated the conversation because the Democratic establishment will not, can not, accept that Trump is not an outlier makes me think otherwise. When the entire message is "We'll say and do anything to get you to like us other than offer substantive, structural change", all you can ever hope for is more nothingburgers like "this Republican literal FBI agent will save us from totalitarianism". If you looked at the outpouring of energy and resistance after the 2016 election, you could scarcely imagine a more potent way to diffuse it than to direct it into an effort to empower the FBI to get Trump on a technicality, while purposefully ignoring the worst atrocities like Yemen because they enjoy bipartisan support at the highest levels.
My money is that easily half of the really invested Mueller people double down - it's essentially their QAnon at this point.
Uh, the Democrats didn't empower the FBI to do anything dude. This literally all happened while the Democrats had zero power over any of this process. We can look at the 2018 election for where the party actually directed it's energy and it wasn't "Trump Russia Collusion!" on the campaign trail.
"Too dumb to play" actually grimly tallies with Barr's summary and some of Don jr.'s comments about the Trump tower meeting. Russia wants to coordinate their efforts, but uses the language of espionage because of course they fucking do. The Trump camp doesn't understand this and walks out of the meeting frustrated that the Russians kept talking about unrelated things when they wanted dirt on the democrats.
I think this is probably the most likely case. Russia wanted to and the Trump team wanted too but were too incompetent to actually manage it.
Essentially all the pieces were in place for collusion and all the things that collusion would have produced still got produced, but the investigation was unable to pull together the evidence to prove that the campaign ever actually talked to russia about it.
If only we knew what was said in the 3+ times Trump has talked to Putin alone since then without any translators there or notes taken... :thinking emoji:
I think the big disappointment here is that Mueller was clearly ordered to stop the investigation by Barr and just happily went along with it. We mistook competence in the pursuit of justice for passion for justice, and thought that surely he would fight to protect himself.
If he was truly corrupt, they would have taken this nonsense step before the midterms, and then held the report from leaking till after. But, I bet Barr was as surprised as anyone when he walked up to Mueller and said, "so when is this ending?" And Mueller said, "Well, there's tonnes left to do, but you're the boss. I'll wrap it up whenever you ask"
I think everyone got fooled there. Mueller was just doing a job. He didn't care one bit about the outcome either way. Now, that meant he was doing a good job like interviewing people and whatnot, but he clearly just didn't care. Which meant that he was a fatally flawed individual here. He only lasted as long as he did, because everyone on Team Trump until Barr assumed that he must be slightly corrupt in favor of getting to the truth, and would burn it down around them if they tried to force him to stop.
the biggest problem we now face is that for any reliable information, we need one of three things to happen.
1: Barr releases the unredacted report and that report is confirmed by mueller (not going to happen)
2: Mueller leaks the report (not going to happen)
3: The house, senate, and president work together to rewrite legislation that would allow the HIC/HJC to view the unredacted report (not going to happen)
so that's that unless Mueller grows a bigger spine
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I'm like 100% positive we have talked in this thread about how the AG (or acting AG prior to Sessions being fired) had the final say on whether or not indictments can happen. It was one of the fears when Sessions was fired.
Yes, the AG can override Mueller if he wants, and then has to report that he did so. So, the AG does have the final say, but at this point we safely say that Mueller had the final say on all indictments he wanted to bring.
Barr's letter very much reads like damage control.
Barr has the ability to step in and overrule Mueller on certain things, triggering a report to Congress, but that's not the same as Mueller needing him to sign off. If Mueller wanted to prosecute any more people, he would have.
I don’t agree, given how much of even Barr’s summary of the report is “but then again, DOJ guidelines says we can’t indict a president.” Trump would be indicted now for the Cohen payoffs thing if he weren’t in office, so if he leaves office I don’t think the DOJ guideline-informed report will continue to protect him.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
We can see this in the standards set forth by the letter for what constitutes continuing the investigation.
Furthermore this letter itself could be considered such a “report” given the vagueness of the statute.
Will is grasping at straws, with the bit about the Russian government.
Emphasis his. Now back to the letter.
Let's go back to Will.
There is a possibility that the summary could be false. But Will's "close reading" concluding the report/summary is explicitly excluding anyone not officially part of the Russian government is weak, when the summary does no such thing, is a real stretch of that term.
The basis of Will's objection here is that some people might "connected" or "linked" with the Russian government, but not part of the Russian government. But I guess the word "associated with" isn't close enough? I guess the full release of the report will tell us if he's right, but boy does that look like sandcastle that he's building.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
Mark Elias is a voting rights lawyer
This seems interesting if true, but how does it square with how easy it is to get away with “coordinating” between a campaign and a superPAC? Is the word “tacit” in Barr’s letter doing all the heavy lifting here?
I'm just stuck trying to figure out whether he was less involved than expected, or whether the evidence they ended up with was weak.
- They had active agreements with persons associated with the Russian government to exchange resources to assist Trump's win.
- They were aware of the activities of persons associated with the Russian government and their communications were along the lines of "Won't someone [rid me of this troublesome priest/leak hacked DNC documents/target voters based on data from Cambridge Analytica]".
- They were unaware of the activities and the whole thing came as a big shock to them.
Now, option 3 is definitely out - Trump Jr meeting at Trump Tower, Trump publicly asking Russia to hack Hillary etc. - but it's the narrative the White House is attempting to push with Barr's letter.However, if Barr's weasel wording is anywhere near accurate, Mueller's report can't conclusively establish option 1 either. There's no record of any kind of agreement or similar (for a given definition of "tacit agreement").
So while the Trump's campaign may not have lifted a finger to assist the Russians helping Trump get into office, it's almost certainly the case that they knew what the Russians were doing and didn't lift a finger to stop them either. Which, for me, is just as bad - and remains to be seen if it's sufficient to bring action against a sitting president.
Roger Stone et al. discuss Wikileaks leaks of Clinton emails
Trump hears about these leaks
Trump proclaims on stage "Russia if you're listening I hope you find those emails"
Emails come out
Maybe my timeline is off, but it seems like that stage proclamation -- regardless of if it was a joke or not -- seems like a desire and acceptance for the whole thing.
Also, internal Trump polling data being handed to Russians.
I can understand a conclusion that says "we can't prove it in court", but Trump campaign staff and surrogates reached out to people related to the Russian government (if not "official representatives"). Russia reached out to the campaign and associates. Just because there was not a formal agreement or that the lines did not provably intersect does not mean that there was not anything there, and it certainly doesn't mean that Trump isn't guilty of a dozen other things being investigated.
But none of this is going to get him out of office anyway. The Dems need to make a case for them being in charge other than "Trump is a crook".
Those moments of reaching out led to meetings inside the campaign headquarters / corporate office with representatives from Moscow, discussing things they felt the need to lie about repeatedly following said meeting.
This summary doesn't stand up to scrutiny because it does nothing to explain how any of what I wrote above doesn't matter. If the full report does, that would be hard to swallow, but better than what we got here which is effectively "nothing to see here, move along, its just the aurora borealis" while standing in front of an obvious kitchen on fire.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
That letter is certainly full of a lot of weasel wording.
I think the smart play for Democrats is to put on their 2020 hats and get to building a campaign. Trump is beatable, oh so beatable. I'm still surprised that he took the prize in 2016.
This has always been the plan
I'm still really surprised folks thought it was gonna be much more than something like this. Whole bunch of smoke, no fire. Trump and his ilk may be a bunch of bumbling idiots but the folks they were working with were much smarter than them. Everything's still pretty blatant, but none of it can be outright proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. So it gets swept under the rug. Which is kinda how Putin's entire regime operates if I'm not mistaken.
I'm hoping folks just make the leak happen so we can just see what it says, but I doubt it's ever gonna say what most folks t want it to say. I think this because I still maintain the trumps were too dumb to play. They got played like a pawn. Putin backed em because he realized simply putting him there for 4 years was more damage to the US than he could ever hope to impose militarily. I don't think it was for lack of russians trying to tie them in and coordinate, just that everyone in that apparatus was a stone cold idiot.
How is this a political gold mine? This is basically the high point for Trump on this issue because the only solid information out there is his own hand-picked-to-cover-up-things AG's letter. The only place we go from here is more information about the report leaking out, none of which is going to be better for Trump then Barr's report and given what we know, it's basically guaranteed the details are worse then the summary.
Trump is gonna scream "No Collusion!" like he was already, but the details of the report itself as they slowly drip into the news are not gonna be kind to him.
I think the bigger issue is likely connecting the people the Trump campaign conspired with to the Russian government directly. You can see this with the internal polling data Manafort passed on to the Russians. Not unlike Trump himself, Putin operates as a mafia and so insulates himself and Russia from direct contact here, working through intermediaries like various oligarchs.
I’m sure he got a phone call from his good friend Mr. Barr who told him he would write a hack statement to help him look good
“I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Sounds really familiar
The fact that Russiagate has dominated the conversation because the Democratic establishment will not, can not, accept that Trump is not an outlier makes me think otherwise. When the entire message is "We'll say and do anything to get you to like us other than offer substantive, structural change", all you can ever hope for is more nothingburgers like "this Republican literal FBI agent will save us from totalitarianism". If you looked at the outpouring of energy and resistance after the 2016 election, you could scarcely imagine a more potent way to diffuse it than to direct it into an effort to empower the FBI to get Trump on a technicality, while purposefully ignoring the worst atrocities like Yemen because they enjoy bipartisan support at the highest levels.
My money is that easily half of the really invested Mueller people double down - it's essentially their QAnon at this point.
I think folks invested in mueller like myself will have a hard time reconciling how the trump tower meeting, roger stones efforts with wiki leaks, Cohen saying trump was in the room when stone spoke of it, the back channel meeting, Manafort sharing polling data all add up to nothing.
If the full report doesn’t come out and that isn’t explained it’s goinh to be very hard to move on. We have open collusion in plain sight. Not to mention trump literally asking for Russia to hack Clinton on live TV.
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706473247/sen-blumenthal-wants-transparency-following-mueller-report
I've not commented on this much since Friday, but I do have to wonder... There were a lot of people involved in this report. There have been no leaks up till now. What if that changes?
I get where this energy comes from but I disagree it has dominated the democratic conversation. it's definitely a strong element of the cable news story over the last year+, and a certain strain of "resistance twitter" or "the liberals" or whatever term we agree upon here, but I just feel that this is a misrepresentation. and we have an election to look at, I personally would say 2018 was in part about generally keeping trump accountable but it wasn't much about russia, or impeachment, definitely was about the healthcare votes and the billionaire tax cut.
I want to stress that towards a certain crowd I do get this sentiment, and I am definitely channeling something that is better pointed towards like, social media in general, but the "far left" reaction to not just dunk on libs - which I dislike already - but worse to do so with the evidence provided by trump? and the fbi? the exact people you want to criticize in the critique of the original point... while also, trump explicitly was NOT exonerated, all that evidence is still there (the trump tower meeting, "if it's what you say I love it" from don jr, trump saying he fired comey because of russa, the campaign finance laws that are unrelated but clearly issues)
ugh it's just like
I get it but what exactly are we celebrating? I also get the comparison to q anon while thinking the difference in scale of where the fantasy begins makes it ludicrous.
anyway, I'm basically "not all democrats"ing your post but I think it's a mischaracterization of the last 2 years to say it's all they focused on, and I don't think that many people expected mueller to actually save the country directly, but then I've been surprised on that front too.
just seems like some massively big reactions from a lot of people when we do, in fact, know very little. I do know I don't ever really want to be celebrating things that team trump is celebrating, or buying into their pov for basically any reason. idk I'm sure I'm being inconsistent, I hope this makes sense, and I know you know we're largely on the same page with stuff which is why I bother to make this specific point.
Uh, the Democrats didn't empower the FBI to do anything dude. This literally all happened while the Democrats had zero power over any of this process. We can look at the 2018 election for where the party actually directed it's energy and it wasn't "Trump Russia Collusion!" on the campaign trail.
Comparing this to QAnon is just fucking silly.
I think this is probably the most likely case. Russia wanted to and the Trump team wanted too but were too incompetent to actually manage it.
-for a long time it was the only investigation worth a damn
-had it turned up anything actionable, it might have been enough to sway Republicans against Trump. Or, rather, give them enough electoral cover.
Neither of those is as relevant anymore, though.
If only we knew what was said in the 3+ times Trump has talked to Putin alone since then without any translators there or notes taken... :thinking emoji:
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/
If he was truly corrupt, they would have taken this nonsense step before the midterms, and then held the report from leaking till after. But, I bet Barr was as surprised as anyone when he walked up to Mueller and said, "so when is this ending?" And Mueller said, "Well, there's tonnes left to do, but you're the boss. I'll wrap it up whenever you ask"
I think everyone got fooled there. Mueller was just doing a job. He didn't care one bit about the outcome either way. Now, that meant he was doing a good job like interviewing people and whatnot, but he clearly just didn't care. Which meant that he was a fatally flawed individual here. He only lasted as long as he did, because everyone on Team Trump until Barr assumed that he must be slightly corrupt in favor of getting to the truth, and would burn it down around them if they tried to force him to stop.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
1: Barr releases the unredacted report and that report is confirmed by mueller (not going to happen)
2: Mueller leaks the report (not going to happen)
3: The house, senate, and president work together to rewrite legislation that would allow the HIC/HJC to view the unredacted report (not going to happen)
so that's that unless Mueller grows a bigger spine