The Meuller Report

[Crunch]

You guys need to chill out.  No collusion, no obstruction.  Trump already told us.  Geez, take a note from the Dems and mellow out about the Meuller report. 

Fenring can rely on Fenring.  ooohhhhmmmm. Fenring can rely on Fenring. ooohhhhhmmmm

It kind of helps.

[rightleft22]

As a aside. Is it a reasonable position to want to leave the Mueller report for history to figure out - deal with it when Trumps two terms are over?
Or is it important to take a stand on now - assuming your truly believe Trump is guilty of something

[Crunch]

As a aside. Is it a reasonable position to want to leave the Mueller report for history to figure out - deal with it when Trumps two terms are over?
Or is it important to take a stand on now - assuming your truly believe Trump is guilty of something

I think for today's left, they don't see a tomorrow available. Trump is already remaking the judiciary at all levels and he's gonna probably get 2 more Supreme Court Justices in the next term. They gotta get him now.

[D.W.]

I still believe the DNC will pull its head out of its ass and they will nominate someone who can win, but...

It's a pragmatic position.  I think if the house believes they can nail down one or more impeachable offenses, it's their duty to do so.  Even if the senate will shoot it down.  (and they would)

So you're left with potentially alienating independents by "wasting our time when you should be governing" or even thrusting them into Trump's base vs alienating your own base by failing to provide oversight when some believe it matters most.

If as you say we're "leaving it to history to figure out" I'd rather the party I support stood for what they believed to be right and do what they believe they were elected to do.

[rightleft22]

I'm torn on this one

Sometimes a retreat in required before victory can be won. My gut says that a trying to beat Trump through the investigation works against victory

[scifibum]

It's amazing that even though Mueller certainly COULD HAVE expressed an opinion about whether Trump obstructed justice, and he was so concerned about the potential unfairness of doing so that he interpreted the OLC guidance as preventing him from even arriving at an opinion, that ya'll conspiracy nuts still think he was out to get Trump from the beginning and chose this path to hurt him worse. 

It's funny to see you guys believing ALL the spin you are getting from right wing commentators. Right down to the illegal spying on the campaign, right down to thinking Mueller chose his team because they hated Trump.

[TheDrake]

BTW, Crunch, you do know that the Mueller report confirms that Mueller's investigation was not started because of the Steele dossier?

The Mueller report confirms it was the actions of Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that triggered the investigation in July 2016.

Mueller’s report corroborates previous reporting in the New York Times about the sequence of events that set the probe in motion. Papadopoulos told a high-ranking Australian diplomat at an upscale London bar in May 2016 that Moscow had "political dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. (The Mueller report does not identify Australia, however.)

In late July — days after WikiLeaks’ dumped thousands of internal Democratic National Committee documents that proved damaging to Clinton — U.S. law enforcement became aware of Papadopoulos’ claim.

"Within a week of the (WikiLeaks) release, a foreign government informed the FBI about its May 2016 interaction with Papadopoulos and his statement that the Russian government could assist the Trump Campaign," said Mueller’s report (p. 6, volume 1). "On July 31, 2016, based on the foreign government reporting, the FBI opened an investigation into potential coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign."

The dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele was used, to some extent, to persuade a U.S. foreign intelligence court to authorize surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But that wasn’t until October 2016 — several months after Papadopoulos’ actions started the investigation.

That’s from a highly biased source and can be dismissed without another thought.


Man, that’s easy enough to do! Wow, I guess I understand why you do it nearly every post now. Really convenient.

OK, Crunch, if you want to ignore PolitiFact, how about this source:

The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016...

So there was an on-going FBI counterintelligence investigation months before the Steele dossier was mentioned in October 2016.  Or do you have some problem with this source, too?

Steele made his first contact with the FBI in July.

[Seriati]

It's funny that you think Mueller didn't express an opinion.  He violated the rules of professional conduct to get out there with his 'no exoneration' and 'we would have cleared him if we could' formulations.  His charge was to indict, not to impugn.  Yet, he did the exact same thing that Comey did with Clinton, listed out all of the faults (and some that are only imagined) of the "accused" in a manner designed to cause doubt and impugn his character, in a format and way that brooks no argument.

He didn't have to prove, for example that Trump fired Comey for a corrupt purpose, he just asserted it could have been one and listed it out as one of his grounds.  If he'd had to prove it, he would have lost badly, as there are plenty of real time statements that list out Trump's actual basis for firing him. 

It doesn't matter.  Pelosi has always intended to bring impeachment charges, and to impeach on largely a party line vote.  Her intent though, was to time it to maximize electoral impact, effectively to try and eliminate any response by the Senate to clear him, or to bring it so close in timing to the election to try and make the House's investigation the sordid story and not the Senate clearing him, which they'll paint as purely partisan.

All this does, to me, is act to force her to act too soon.

There's no real investigation required.  The banana court vote is already counted, but that won't stop the investigation from dragging for as long as possible to ensure that the House Dems and not the Senate holds the narrative.

There's no part of justice involved here at all.  The House, the Senate and the DOJ all cleared him of conspiracy/collusion.  The DOJ didn't establish facts sufficient for obstruction, and that's using a legal standard that was made up and far beyond what should be applied.  And it doesn't matter to the left that they have to burn the Constitution and all our legal protections to get their man, it doesn't matter than no crime was committed by Trump, or that the prosecutors violated the Constitution to build their "trumped" up case, so long as it gets the result they want.

In one way they were correct, Trump's election may be the end of our Democracy, only it's not be because of Trump it's because of the left.

[Seriati]

A little more food for thought.  The Mueller report is an internal DOJ document.  There is no legal standard that prevented him from stating that Trump obstructed justice.  He could have legally stated that there was sufficient evidence of obstruction but that he could not bring charges because of Departmental policy.

Why didn't he? 

It's clear that he lied when he said it would be unfair to label Trump without giving him an opportunity to respond.  He violated legal ethics to label him publicly, and specifically denied him the forum where Mueller would have to prove his case.

Gregg Jarrett said it best when he said, Mueller created a new standard that applies only to Trump, guilty until proven innocent.

[Crunch]

It's amazing that even though Mueller certainly COULD HAVE expressed an opinion about whether Trump obstructed justice, and he was so concerned about the potential unfairness of doing so that he interpreted the OLC guidance as preventing him from even arriving at an opinion, that ya'll conspiracy nuts still think he was out to get Trump from the beginning and chose this path to hurt him worse. 

It's funny to see you guys believing ALL the spin you are getting from right wing commentators. Right down to the illegal spying on the campaign, right down to thinking Mueller chose his team because they hated Trump.

To be fair, there’s a hell of a lot of evidence of this. There was admitted spying on the Trump campaign. The team mueller chose was overwhelmingly democrat and many  openly supported Hillary. Mueller said multiple times those guidelines were not part of his decision until now when he strongly implies that it was. Now, everyone involved is accusing the rest of lying.

There’s infinitly more evidence of illegal behavior by comey, clapper, et al than there ever was of Russian collusion.

[Wayward Son]

Fox News' legal analyst Andrew Napolitano spelled it out as clearly as one could.

“The evidence he [Mueller] laid out is remarkably similar to the impeachment charges against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton,” Napolitano, who previously served as a New Jersey Superior Court judge, explained on Fox Business. He then drew direct comparisons between allegations against the former presidents and those laid out by Mueller against Trump, highlighting instances where all the heads of state had allegedly worked to obstruct justice.

“These facts that he laid out are so substantially similar to the matured allegations against Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, it’s clear where he was going,” Napolitano pointed out...

“Effectively what Bob Mueller said is we had evidence that he committed a crime but we couldn’t charge him because he’s the president of the United States,” Napolitano explained. “This is even stronger than the language in his report. This is also a parting shot at his soon-to-be former boss, the attorney general, because this statement is 180 degrees from the four-page statement that Bill Barr issued at the time he first saw the report.”

Fox Business host Stuart Varney then asked: “Is it that bad?”

“I think so,” Napolitano responded. “Basically he’s saying the president can’t be indicted, otherwise we would have indicted him and we’re not going to charge him with a crime because there’s no forum in which for him to refute the charges, but we could not say that he didn’t commit a crime, fill in the blank, because we believe he did.”

Then there was Fox's chief political anchor Bret Baier:

“I was struck by the tone and tenor of those remarks, as he [Mueller] laid out his case wrapping up this report,” Baier said Wednesday on America’s Newsroom after the special counsel’s comments were aired live. “This was not, as the president says time and time again, ‘no collusion, no obstruction.’ It was much more nuanced than that,” the anchor explained.

“He [Mueller] said specifically they couldn’t find evidence sufficient to move forward with a crime on the issue of conspiracy, on the collusion part of the investigation on the Trump campaign,” Baier pointed out. “He said specifically if they had found that the president did not commit a crime on obstruction, that they would have said that,” he said...

“It was not anywhere as clear cut as Attorney General Bill Barr [characterized the report],” the political anchor said. “In fact, it was almost exactly the opposite, not clear cut.”

[Wayward Son]

Steele made his first contact with the FBI in July.

But it was clearly not the reason the FBI began investigating the Trump campaign in July.  If it were, then it should have been listed as one of the reasons for the investigation.

[TheDrake]

Steele made his first contact with the FBI in July.

But it was clearly not the reason the FBI began investigating the Trump campaign in July.  If it were, then it should have been listed as one of the reasons for the investigation.

Unless the FBI lied about why it started the investigation. I don't subscribe to that theory, but the verified timeline simply doesn't make it impossible.

[Crunch]

Well, well, well.

Mueller left key information out of his report. He deceptively edited a phone call made by Trump’s attorney to make Trump and his attorney look worse. What else did Mueller and his team lie about?

The actual transcript of a phone call between Trump’s attorney John Dowd and Michael Flynn’s was released Friday night by court order. It is not the same transcript in the Mueller report. It was selectively edited to make the Trump team look worse and potentially guilty of obstruction.

No collusion. No obstruction.

[Wayward Son]

How do the omitted parts change the thrust of the conversation?  Even with the “without having to give up any…um confidential information. so, uhm, if it’s the former, then you know,” the basic message seems to be the same to me:  tell us what they know.

[Crunch]

Ok, so selectively editing a conversation is perfectly acceptable is it?

[Wayward Son]

Didn't you read the junk they edited from the conversation?  Lots of "uh" and repeated words.  You may be used to hearing Trump speak, but most of us like clean sentences that get to the point and aren't stupid or redundant.

It if makes the text clearer, yes, edit out the useless words.  Of course, that does leave the person open to charges that he changed the meaning by doing so.  But you can always find out by reading the unredacted text.  So, again, did the edits change the meaning significantly?

[Crunch]

But we were not supposed to read the interacted texts. It was only exposed when a court order allowed it. This was, in fact, Mueller trying to deceive everyone. It did substantially change the meaning and intent of the conversation reported.

[Wayward Son]

So you say.

Let me reiterate:  how did it change the meaning and intent of the conversation?  Just saying so doesn't make it so.

[Crunch]

Who’s watching? Chris Wallace has the call:

This has been a disaster for the Democrats and a disaster for the reputation of Robert Mueller.

During his testimony, Mueller confirms his investigation was not curtailed, stopped, or hindered at any point.

No collusion. No obstruction.

[D.W.]

He (Meuller)  also said collusion was not a legal standard they looked into.

He has not said "no obstruction" only that they would not indite him.  (because of DOJ standards) 

This is why teachers can spot and grade harshly when someone only reads the cliff-notes version of a book.  (let alone plagiarizing a tweet) 

[TheDrake]

Every part of this testimony is ridiculous and a waste of time. Republicans trying to trick Mueller into saying "no collusion". Democrats trying to trick him into saying that if he weren't the President he'd be indicted.

I'm proud of Mueller for not taking the bait, I'm sorry the Democrats are putting him through this.

[D.W.]

Indeed.  The bottom line is "We don't think enough people actually READ the report, so we need a media spectacle or else nobody will care."

It is kinda sad that this is the primary motivator, and more sad still that they may be correct.

TL;DR
Trump IS above the law.
You all know what your job is here.
RTFM

[TheDrake]

And even more sad that they think the spectacle changes anything. They aren't going to get one more voter, one more donation, or one more lawn sign by doing this. So even politically it is a waste of time. Within the party, not one more representative is going to say *facepalm* now I get it! I'm supporting impeachment!

It's not like Mueller is going to lose his cool, slip up, or otherwise provide them with a gotcha. He knows a thing or two about interrogations and careful language.

[D.W.]

Within the party, not one more representative is going to say *facepalm* now I get it! I'm supporting impeachment!

IDK about that.  It IS possible...  Still uncertain if it will help or hurt, but it does set them up for a fall by their own constituents if they do NOT press forward.  It should be (more) obvious to all, that it's on them to do something or not. 

It's not like Mueller is going to lose his cool, slip up, or otherwise provide them with a gotcha. He knows a thing or two about interrogations and careful language.

I don't know if they count as slips but there were two points in the first testimony that stood out to me.

R point:  he couldn't defend what seemed a pretty clear instance of him flipping presumption of innocence on its head.

D point:  he did answer that the guideline was what prevented the incitement.

I expect these will be the most important snips to be spun/highlighted/meemed

[D.W.]

Interesting, he just backtracked in the 2nd session about my favorable Democratic point.  Or at least, more safely refined his answer.  So there goes that arrow from the quiver.   

[Crunch]

Yeah, weird that he walked that back. Mueller saying he didn’t know what Fusion GPS was seemed really strange too. It’s almost as if Mueller really wasn’t that involved in creating the report.

Whatever was left of the collusion and obstruction hoax/conspiracy theory just had the air totally suck out of it. Nadler must be fuming.

[D.W.]

Whatever was left of the collusion and obstruction hoax/conspiracy theory just had the air totally suck out of it.

Interesting take away...

I get that I'm viewing through the other end of the telescope and what seemed minimized (eliminated) to you is writ large by my perspective but...

The over all message seems to be:  Mueller CANNOT indite a sitting president.  CANNOT suggest impeachment as a course of action.  CANNOT state (or at least leave on record after having done so) that the only reason for the lack of that indictment was the guidelines. 

With all that stated, he (clearly) lays out all the reasons there should have been an indictment, were it not for those policies/directives/guidelines.

The fact that he seems to be leaving the door open on conspiracy with Russia is odd to me.  No clue what may still be outstanding that he cannot give a definitive answer. 

The obstruction seems factual, not ambiguous and in no reasonable interpretation, "a hoax".  Fortunately for Trump, that doesn't matter (as long as he's in office).

[Crunch]

Well, when even Chuck Todd, Michael Moore, and MSNBC agree on he disaster this was for Democrats, it was unbelievably bad. Social media is lit up with both sides agreeing that Mueller did more for Trump than ever thought possible

If you’re holding on to whatever is left of this meltdown, you’re a conspiracy theorist.

[scifibum]

What Chuck Todd, Michael Moore, and MSNBC have in common is that they're all in the entertainment business. They aren't serious commentators. It was an irrational fantasy that Mueller was going to go on TV and in some way deal a new, devastating blow to Trump. It's like they believed in the SNL version of Mueller.

The reality (which was well-reported) was that Mueller didn't want to appear, didn't want to say anything that he didn't put in the report, and has always been careful and reserved in testimony before Congress. Nothing about his appearance yesterday should have surprised anyone, once you take into account his walking-back of the concession Ted Lieu appeared to get in the first hearing.

It's also not surprising that Trump and his media surrogates immediately trumpeted their total victory. It's their standard M.O., and it works for people who want to believe it.

[D.W.]

I particularly liked how he wouldn't even read from the report.  And constantly made them cite which section.  Like he wanted everyone playing the home game to read along! 

[scifibum]

I think it's even harder to credit theories that Mueller had anti-Trump aims when you take into account his avoidance of providing useful sound bites. He wouldn't read from the report because he doesn't want to be on video saying damning things about Trump. I'm sure he hates SNL Mueller as much as anyone.

[Crunch]

I particularly liked how he wouldn't even read from the report.  And constantly made them cite which section.  Like he wanted everyone playing the home game to read along! 

More like he had no idea what was in report, as if he’d never read it.

[Crunch]

The conspiracy theory grows:

[Y]ou say Mueller fully understood your question. Doesn't Mueller's correction, which he later provided, prove otherwise?" Blitzer asked.

"This is what’s so odd about that exchange. Special counsel Robert Mueller agreed that the OLC opinion prevented a sitting president from being indicted, and then the Republican member after me asked him a series of questions to try to get him to walk it back, and he did not do that."

"And then it wasn't until there was a recess with the Intel committee that he started to walk some of it back," said Lieu.

"I don't know who got to him. I don't know who talked to him, but that was very odd, what he did.”

Blitzer asked Lieu, "What are you suggesting?"

Are you saying he only did that because of pressure from someone?"

I don't know," said Lieu, "but he clearly answered the way he answered to me, and then he had numerous times to walk that back by the next Republican member who asked him a series of questions on the exact same issue trying to get him to walk it back."

Mueller would have totally gotten Trump but someone got to Mueller.

Could it have been Putin?  LMAO. Jesus.

[scifibum]

What Lieu is suggesting is that someone like Barr might have asked him to clarify from A to B.

A: I would have indicted if not for OLC guidance.
B: I did not try to arrive at a decision on whether a crime was committed because OLC prevents issuing an indictment.

B is what is in the report. A was a little surprising during the hearing.

I don't think anyone necessarily pushed him to clarify. He might have simply noticed, during the recess, that people noticed version A and realized it departed from what he was saying previously.

[D.W.]

That is indeed silly.  There were obvious directives/guidelines or just plain old personal code, that meant he could not say outright certain things.  That the OLC guideline were the ONLY reason Trump was not indited was one of those things.  He miss stepped and DID say that. outright (instead of just implying the hell out of that point.)  That he later retracted it was consistent with the rest of his testimony.

If you wana get all conspiracy theory about it, the question is whether it was a mistake, or just a tactic to say what he wanted to, then "take it back", no harm no foul!