I have not had a chance to read the report in whole and my initial reaction from the executive summaries is that it looks like a hit job.
I've finished the report, every word and footnote, and my initial reaction was correct. I find this report to be incredibly troubling, and I plan to do some detailed dives as to why but here's my "summary" of what I saw.
Part I on "collusion" (ie, conspiracy). This part of the report should have been about 5 pages long. Mueller went into extremely large and completely irrelevant detail. It appears that, notwithstanding that he conclusively could not make the case, he wanted to pretend that he had. It's 100% clear that they thought they had bad people, and couldn't find the proof. Therefore they kept at and at it. They had to know early on that they didn't have a case, hence the "pivot" to obstruction, and that means what I've said all along is true. They continued this investigation and left the collusion argument open solely for political purposes, to cast shade over the President and prevent him from legitimate exercises of his authority, and ultimately with the intent to influence the midterms.
They structured the report by detailing bad acts by Russians, then talking about how some people knew a Russian, then saying in loaded terms they couldn't establish evidence of a connection. This is classic manipulative structure. We found a big fire, we couldn't put the defendant in the vicinity but we have decisive proof that he knows how to use a book of matches.
Draw your own conclusions. Against this background, and their open and blatant attempts to construe any and everything in the worst possible light, the fact that the couldn't find conspiracy is 100% decisive. It didn't happen.
It appears that the predicate for his appoint, which is still unclear, boils down to Papadapolous. That may have been enough to do a counter-intell operation, it's not remotely clear it's enough to do a criminal investigation, or to have handled it in a manner that did not warn the campaign of the risk (which is literally what they've done in such cases in the past).
Part II - Conspiracy. This part is an absolute travesty. Meuller declined to make a judgment and I can tell you why. His theory of liability is utter nonsense. Read the last section about how he believes conspiracy law works, and read Barr's memorandum on the theory he's pursuing. If you accept Meuller's theory - and really it's one theory - you are literally accepting that the a prosecutor has the power to upend the government in pursuit of thought crimes. Meuller's asserting that a legal act that a person (including the President) takes, legally consistent with the terms and intent of their office, is subject to the judgement of a prosecutor as to whether they exercised that judgement in a permitted manner. When you read Mueller's summary ask yourself how he could differentiate say defending yourself in a criminal case, if you apply his theory consistently
every defendant - guilty or not - could be charged with obstruction of justice simply for defending themselves.
This entire section is premised entirely on believing every word Comey said (and they go to great lengths at times to defend Comey where what he said is the least likely thing that occurred), every
useful word Cohen said, construing every discussion on any topic by Trump as the worst possible version of what was said (and in fact reconstrueing statements that didn't have any effect as events that could have had an effect (even if there's no clear reason the effect would be interference) if they had been carried out). Effectively, if Trump considered firing the Special Counsel - which he's literally empowered to do and is obligated to do if say the Special Counsel was himself acting corruptly (an inescapable conclusion of Meuller's own theory) he's inherently guilt. Ergo if Trump did his job, or even discussed doing his job, then a Special Counsel is entitled to infer guilt.
Repeatedly, the Special Counsel lays out statements that establish non-corrupt intent and then discards them, even though it's clear they were in fact what was being consider.
Heck, if you accept Meuller's theory then Nadler should watch out, because his corrupt intent was established by his conversation on the train, and everything he's doing could be construed as interfering with investigations that could be filed by the Dept (and yes, Meuller's theory also claims that interfering with non-existing potential actions is criminal). As is each person requesting financial records of Trump - clearly intended to signal intimidation. As is the special prosecutors office if it can be asserted by another prosecutor that they had a corrupt intent in offering plea deals (this is an obvious application). Honestly, if you buy his theory then every state official that has adopted sanctuary city polices or enforced them is also potentially already guilty of obstruction and it's only up to the DOJ to take them out.
Other things.
The special counsel's investigation was leaking like a sieve. It's a flat lie - and collusion with the media - that made it appear not to be. Every single change or redirection of the investigation immediately and accurately appeared in the media. Want to know why the Dems were outraged by Barr's summary? Cause they already knew what Meuller said. In fact, it's quite possible that there should be charges coming out of the leaks as I doubt they did a good job with protecting grand jury testimony.
Mueller doesn't give two figs about privilge - my guess is he sees using attorneys as obstruction of justice. He deliberately used and included privileged information that he obtained from Cohen, and even put in a footnote that it may be privledged and unusable in court. So much for due process.
Meuller was remarkably uninterested in Comey's motivations. Even as he detailed acts that had one of two likely purposes: blackmailing a President or framing a President that Comey engaged in, he went out of his way to not only pretend they were for noble reasons but to try to cleanse them. Whether he was doing this because of personal friendship (which is a disqualifying fact and corrupt) or because he was hired to protect the prior acts and actors of the DOJ is unclear (in part because he refused to look at it).
Rosenstein either did not exercise any level of appropriate oversight or was part of the problem. The DOJ should have forced Mueller to present his conclusion on conspiracy and proffer his argument for obstruction at a much earlier date. It's completely clear that they kept the investigation open in the hopes that Trump would do something they could charge as obstruction - if he'd issued a pardon for example.
There was no obstruction.
The one thing I do know, is this report was not written to end the controversy. I can't imagine how you could write a report to generate more partisan discord, than to fail to make a case for obstruction (ergo, no corruption charges), yet still write out a report that shows you really wanted to bring those charges.
This is 100% true, and now I will add that its 100% clear that Meuller's intent was to cause discord. I can tell you why he didn't bring charges, he knows it too, his case was a complete loser and that's without considering any impact of executive immunity. His theory was extreme, he admits in the write up that it has not been successful asserted in court and Barr's memo utterly destroys it. Heck, Meuller even found it necessary to address the legislative history of the specific obstruction statute because on top of every thing else it completely contradicts his theory on how to interpret the section.
Then when you get into the executive powers analysis he completely misconstrues the actual state of the law. For example, it's a clear rule that Congress has to expressly include the President for a rule of general applicability to apply to the President (separation of powers). His statute doesn't have that expression, so he digs deep for an argument as to why that doesn't matter (never mind that the rule hasn't been construed as he wants in a non-Presidential context and the fact that it is literally only useful to him if you mis-construe it so broadly that it swallows every other conspiracy law).
He also bizarrely asserts that what he's done does not have significant impact on the President fulfilling his Constitutional duties - keep in mind he cites in his own evidence that the President was prevented from handling international relations - including with Russia - as he deemed fit because of this, was interfered with in the administration of justice and was prevented from focusing on policy. Literally, Mueller just lied to get over this hump.
Mueller didn't bring charges, not because of some high minded confusion, he didn't bring them because they were grossly legally flawed and he would have been destroyed in court (and possibly even sanctioned to be honest). He dumped to Congress with the intent that they would continue to ignore due process and the actual law. This was completely political from day one.
I'd like to see an investigation into the special counsels office. I want to know how they ended up with such a partisan bias where it was illegal to consider politics. I want to know why they permitted to leak information in violation of justice department policies. I want to know what the specific crime they were empaneled to pursue was. I want to know the exact date they knew there was no collusion.
