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Mueller Report 'Summary' Delivered to US Congress (cnn.com)
America's recently-appointed Attorney General William Barr has submitted to Congress his summary of the main conclusions from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, CNN reports.
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him," special counsel Robert Mueller says, as quoted in Barr's summary.
It does, however, reiterate that there was clear Russian interference in America's 2016 election: The Special Counsel's investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency, to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election.... The second element involved the Russian government's efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks.
Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election.
Barr also writes that the report leaves it to him to determine whether president Trump is guilty of obstructing justice, then adds "I have concluded that the evidence...is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense."
CNN has the complete text of the four-page summary. Barr's letter concludes by saying he's still "determining what can be released."
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him," special counsel Robert Mueller says, as quoted in Barr's summary.
It does, however, reiterate that there was clear Russian interference in America's 2016 election: The Special Counsel's investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency, to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election.... The second element involved the Russian government's efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks.
Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election.
Barr also writes that the report leaves it to him to determine whether president Trump is guilty of obstructing justice, then adds "I have concluded that the evidence...is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense."
CNN has the complete text of the four-page summary. Barr's letter concludes by saying he's still "determining what can be released."
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him
"While the ball did not go through the goal posts, it clearly would have if the goal posts had been somewhere else instead."
I'm disappointed but not surprised. In order for anything to be pinned on Trump he'd actually have to have done something. I don't mean something criminal, I mean anything at all.
He doesn't seem to be involved at all in day to day governing let alone campaigning. He's a figurehead. It becomes obvious when he has to interact with world leaders. In that case he can't just hand it off to folks really in charge since it's expected to be him. The most telling example was that phone call with Turkey where he got talked into pulling out of Syria. He backed down on the pledge as soon as his handlers got ahold of him again.
He's still openly flaunting the emoluments clause. And that bit with Deutsche bank where they loaned him $2 billion but there's an email chain showing he likely couldn't pay it back stinks to high heaven. That said it looks like nobody cares enough to bother with those. A few attorney generals will sue but I don't think anything'll come of it. Ultimately, we here don't spill the blood of kings.
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Actually, Manafort and Cohen both been convicted of cheating on their taxes in cases unconnected to Trump and his campaign.
As for the rest, here, directly from the report:
and
and this
Wow! That's the exact opposite of what you said! There was no underlying crime of "collusion" or "conspiracy", AND there was no evidence that Trump attempted to obstruct any investigation even if there had been one.
The real question is why did our president just have a Twitter fight with a dead man?
Because it's only now that they're intellectual equals?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The Trump officials were convicted of lying to the FBI. That is something separate from collusion, which sadly for you Mueller says there wasn't any evidence of. The lies were related to non-collusion stuff, much of it pre-election stuff, personal business and contacts stuff.
Actually Trump jokingly encouraged hackers to release truthful information about Hillary, her emails. Yeah, the truth revealed by authentic emails, how dare Americans allow such things to come to the public light.
Sadly for you, Mueller says there is no evidence of obstructions.
Please seek help, as your fantasy further evaporates into smoke you will likely experience even more emotion stress.
Because the media uses said dead man as a cudgel against the president.
The evidence might still indicate that they've committed a crime, but there might not be enough of it.
This is not a "shades of grey" issue. Either a crime was committed or not. If there is sufficient evidence to support a criminal conviction then a crime was committed. Anything short of that constitutes "not a crime."
You're getting into a very dangerous area when you want to classify people as "criminal but without sufficient evidence to support the claim." This is a nation of laws, not a mob. How would you respond if someone called you a criminal in a public forum with intent of destroying your character or livelihood but lacked evidence to support it? I doubt you'd like anyone entertaining the idea that you were a criminal despite there being insufficient evidence.
The lesson here is never allow fudging just because it takes down someone you don't like The gun can easily point the other way, and it's inevitable that sooner or later someone who does not share your views will do exactly that. If you don't want it done to you, don't do it to someone else.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
From Barr's summary: "The Special Counsel states that 'while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him'"
Now picture Homer Simpson watching that soccer game: "A tie? Everyone's a loser".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
They simply determine whether the evidence indicates a person committed a crime or not.
Not quite. They determine whether there's enough evidence to punish someone for having committed a crime. The evidence might still indicate that they've committed a crime, but there might not be enough of it.
Technically there is a difference if a person gets paid for killing people or does it for fun, but the result is still dead people.
Trump may not actually be a paid Russian asset, but really, that doesn't change the fact that the money Vladimir spent to help get him elected was probably the best money he has ever caused to be spent.
As far as obstruction of justice goes, I disagree with the conclusion that Trump's appointees made about whether Trump obstructed justice. There is no requirement of an underlying crime. If this was the real standard everyone could obstruct justice as much as they wanted, and the cost to find anyone guilty would explode. I suppose, once again, the little people get different standards.
Finally nothing changes the fact that Donald J Trump is truly a horrible person not worthy of any position of authority or trust.
It does, however, reiterate that there was clear Russian interference in America's 2016 election:
Just like America's CIA and various other [3] letter agencies have done to legitimately elected governments over the decades.
Nothing to see here...move on.
There are plenty of other places people can go to argue about this kind of stuff.
the report didn't conclude anything, positive or negative, in regards to collusion. For any other president that would be the end of it.
Trump's supporters seem willing to excuse anything in exchange for what he gives them. I don't think it's going to turn out to be worth it, but to be blunt a lot of the folks voting for him are older and, well, they'll be dead before the problems he's causing come home to roost. Doesn't help that the right wing of the Democratic party has pretty much abandoned working class America.
Long run I'm hoping this turns out to be a good thing. The right wing Dems were counting on this to shut Trump down so they could put Biden or Beto in office. The effect would have been the same as Trump without the pointless trade wars. It'll be harder to do that now. Hopefully that means we get a populist like Bernie or Warren who will make actual, positive changes.
It's going to be interesting if we get another 4 years of Trump. He'll invade Venezuela once he's not worried about reelection. Also he'll overturn Roe v. Wade for the same reason. Both of those are things the extreme right want but 70% of Americans don't (could be 90% for invading Venezuela, the Trumpers I know want to spend that money securing the borders here). Still, they got away with it with Iraq. Bush jr has a positive approval rating...
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> Trump encouraged Russian attacks on America on TV.
Hillary's famous email server that was run out of the bathroom of someone's private residence. I remember Trump joking that since those emails were seemingly lost. That the entire US government had lost access to the records of Hillary's stint as Secretary of State, and only had what she voluntarily turned over before illegally wiping the server, then perhaps the Russians should release them, since they likely had full copies of everything that had been on that server which our own government did not.
See, its not just a joke about the insanity of the whole situation, it's a reminder that you don't allow important internal government communication to be run out of the bathroom of someone's home as a way of avoiding internal oversight, because then you throw security out the window and end up in the situation where your enemies have more knowledge about the internal going-ons of your government than you yourselves do.
How this got turned into a massive conspiracy and fantasy about Trump conspiring with Putin says a lot about the effectiveness of brainwashing by propaganda. Unplug yourself.
Actually, Manafort and Cohen both been convicted of cheating on their taxes in cases unconnected to Trump and his campaign.
Cohen was convicted of making an excessive contribution to the Trump campaign, "for the principle purpose of influencing the election," at the request of Individual 1.
No, Cohen ADMITTED to this, he was not tried in court. He entered into a Plea bargain deal, he wasn't convicted in court so nobody had to prove he violated campaign finance law. I know there is little practical difference for Cohen, but there IS a difference here.
Further, the "Russian Collusion" angel has nothing at all to do with Cohen and the campaign finance charges taken up by the Southern District of NY.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Also, Trump's campaign manager, son, and son-in-law met with an agent of the Russian government for the purpose of coordinating campaign assistance. I can believe that there isn't enough evidence of a specific crime to charge them with anything, but it's still collusion and it should still be an enormous scandal.
So.. That's the point here. Mueller clearly investigated this "evidence" and found nothing that showed that there was any behind the scenes coordination between Trump's campaign and Russians. This was Bob Mueller's focus, his mandate, the whole purpose of his efforts. So He didn't find that this meeting was what many have claimed for the last 2 years.
In short, Mueller doesn't agree. Mueller is saying this meeting wasn't Trump and the Russians coordinating their campaign efforts. The Trump Tower meeting is apparently not evidence of what you've been told.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Probably you are mixing up evidence with proof here.
Evidence can be (if the case was a murder trial.) you were angry at the person murdered, you made a call to the person in the week before they were murdered and there was an argument that was witnessed between you and them.
Evidence is far from proof and it does not mean he committed a crime.
I wondered if I will get modded down for such a factual unbiased post.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
All of it. Seriously, what business do governments have, keeping secrets from the citizens who create them? With very few exceptions, no secrets should be allowed. They are our employees.
Obviously, there is a problem with most governments...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I could rob a bank, and say that I did it because Crooked Hillary told me to do so. Would you then go ahead and arrest Crooked Hillary for masterminding a bank robbery?
Bullshit! Buying ads and posting on social media is not "interference". You gotta prove they hacked the machines and fudged the count.
If you want to see interference, look at what the DNC did to Sanders
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Muller had two years and achieved a come FAIL!!!
37 indictments, 6 guilty please, and one conviction. That doesn't sound like a fail to me.
If you want to talk about failure, look at the R's obsessive investigations of Hillary before the 2016 election. E-mails? zero indictments. Benghazi? zero indictments. But of course, indictments really weren't the objective. They just wanted to tarnish her because she was the presumptive 2016 nominee for the Ds.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
> it's more like there's a couple hundred different posts.
> There's campaign finance. There's tax evasion (lots and lots of that).
Yeah there are thousands of different crimes defined by law, thousands of laws. Hundreds that Mueller's team and other investigators looked for. Over two years of investigations found clear evidence that Trump commited how many of the hundreds of different things Dems wish they could charge him with? Zero.
I don't think the conclusion which your post indicates is the one you wanted it to.
You've pointed out that after years of investigations, they've not found evidence of Trump commiting tax evasion, no campaign finance crimes like AOC and Bernie, there's not even evidence of him obstructing justice - you almost ALWAYS get obstructing justice if you investigate someone long enough. So many things they were looking for and they found none of it.
Is that what you wanted to point out? Having accidentally pointed it out, are you intellectually capable of reading your own writing and seeing the point that you made (accidentally), or are you a mindless fanboi for team D?
Trump is very clearly a jackass, though.
You mentioned "hundreds of crimes" they looked for.
Here are some more numbers.
Nineteen attorneys and 50 FBI agents "issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses".
All that and they found nothing he hasn't posted to Twitter. Why? I have a theory.
Let's compare some other investigations.
Investigating Bill Clinton turned up Gennifer Flowers, Jaunita Broderick, Leslie Millwee, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, etc. In short, it revealed he's a serial sexual predator and that was the bombshell.
Investigating Gary Hart turned up Donna Rice. Bombshell, Gary Hart was a womanizer.
With enough investigation might we find that Trump, too, likes to "grab em by the pussy"? We knew that before the election. He doesn't make any effort to paint himself as the all American boy, a good boy. His jackass is on full display for everyone to see and he likes it that way. Perhaps, investigating Trump reveals that he's exactly the asshole he portrays on Twitter.
There is evidence, but someone decided it wasn't enough to convict the president.
You keep consoling yourself with that delusion sweetheart
I'd like to take this moment to point out that the president has not in fact been convicted of anything. Reality may not agree with your feelings, but it's still reality.
McCain wasn't a great main. He was the son and grandson of Admirals. That was the only reason he even got his wings. He was a silver spoon pilot, and became a silver spoon POW.
It's important to avoid selection bias. The best example I've seen was a city wondering if subway funding needed to be increased or decreased. They thought measuing how much the subway was used would be good information for making this decision, so they hired someone to poll the city's residents to see how often they rode the subway. The person initially asked people at random in public spaces how often they rode the subway. He grew frustrated that very few people rode the subway, meaning he was collecting very little data for the number of people he was asking. That's when he got the brilliant idea of going onto the subway and asking people there.
The problem is, asking people riding the subway how often they use the subway introduces two selection biases. (1) It eliminates everyone who doesn't use the subway from your sample. And (2) people who ride the subway more often are more likely to be encountered in your polling (you're 10x as likely to randomly encounter someone who rides 10 hours a week as you are someone who rides 1 hour a week), skewing your polling data high. To properly measure subway ridership, you have to do a random sample orthogonal to subway use, which means asking random people in public places was the proper way to do it. A random telephone poll would probably have been best.
Similarly when you target one specific country for investigation, you're introducing a sampling bias. If you accuse a restaurant of being infested with roaches, and that prompts an investigation that finds roaches in the restaurant, that doesn't prove your accusation. All that proves is that the restaurant has roaches, not that it is "infested." Other restaurants may have roaches too. In fact, for all you know, the restaurant you accused may actually be the cleanest building in the city, and even your own house has more roaches than that restaurant. But by limiting the investigation to just that one restaurant, you can misleadingly create the impression that your accusation that the restaurant is infested with roaches is true.
Over and over, I saw this sampling bias being abused by those wishing to push the Russian interference story. e.g. Google and Facebook reported they searched their 2016 records for ads purchased by Russian agents, and found some. But in order for that to mean anything, they should have also searched for ads purchased by anyone else, and compared. I suspect if they had, they would've found attempted interference by China, by the EU, by Mexico, by Canada, by Anonymous, etc. The magnitude of the "Russian interference" (a few dozen to a few hundred people, and around six dollar figures in magnitude ) makes me suspect all these investigations found was the random noise that just happens everywhere all the time.
I didn't vote for Trump and I think is Presidency has been a travesty. But I think the abuse of statistics and manipulation of facts through selection bias by the media and those pushing this story is an even bigger travesty. If you really, truly believe that those few Russians managed to affect the outcome of the election using that little money, then every politician would be tripping over themselves to hire those guys. The amount of money spent in that election was staggering - tens to hundreds of dollars per vote. Trump actually spent close to the lowest at $5 per vote. Yet these people pushing this Russian interference angle somehow believe that these Russians were able to affect the election for pennies per vote.
If this report had found that the Russians had spent tens or hundreds of dollars per vote to interfere with the election, then I'd agree there was something worrying going on. But the amount of interference I've seen reported seems more like just the normal noise that comes from normal people from the sketchy side of the population's bell curve doing their normal sketchy things.
All campaigns gather information about their opponents, and they pay for the research. There's nothing wrong with that, even if the person hired to collect the information is a foreigner. That's not collusion or conspiracy.
On the other hand, if a campaign co-ordinates with foreigners to engage in activities aimed at influencing an election (such as, oh say, hacking your opponent's email servers) then that is collusion. And if a foreign government handed a campaign unsolicited information about its opponent, then that would be an illegal campaign contribution.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
His businesses have been performing less since he has been in office
It's not since he's been in office. His businesses have always not performed. Back in the 80s, he floated his company on the public market (i.e stock exchange). For the ten years he personally ran that company, it never turned a profit even though at the exact same time, everyone around him was making money hand over fist. However, while this was happening, he bled his casinos dry and was proud of it.
In fact, a careful investigation of his businesses show they either fail outright (over one dozen and counting), or simply never turn a profit. Look at his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland. To date, none of them has earned money for him. The have lost money year after year. Even more interesting is he is pouring tens of millions more into his Scotland courses using cash, but no one knows where that cash if coming from since he is already so highly in debt.
Here's something else to consider. Several court cases have held the purpose of a business it to make a profit. Yet, none of the con artist's businesses turn a profit. One has to wonder if the investigations (yes, plural) by the Southern District of New York will find anything about his interesting note.
You're claiming Muller didn't investigate Cohen and dig evidence related to the crimes for which he was charged, and hand that evidence over to prosecutors like any investigator does? Muller would be very surprised to hear that! Muller would also be guilty of perjury if that were so, since he submitted sentencing recommendation for Cohe to the court, and in it made statements to the court about him investigating the crimes Cohen was charged with.
Here's the government's sentencing recommendation for Cohen. Notice who signed it as the author:
https://www.documentcloud.org/...
But we have the AG's summary.
Which is inadequate. We need to see the full report. And congress agreed unanimously.
It's pretty clear from the summary, nobody in Trump's campaign was colluding with the Russians. This clearly includes the Trump Tower meeting.
Then why did Trump and his associates keep lying about it? That certainly didn't help him look innocent.
I'll accept what Mueller found out. But we need to see the full report.
I suppose you could invent a wild conspiracy theory to explain Mueller's report... After all it seems this whole thing was based on a conspiracy theory, so why not go whole hog?
Trump has himself to blame for the conspiracy theories. See above.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
yes, it's a crime despite
Given that Mueller spent two years and tens of millions of dollars checking on things like that with no resulting charges against anyone, the entire U.S. government (including a bevy of Democratic lawyers who fervently hate Trump) very obviously agrees it's not a crime.
You've going to have to come up with something better than a "townhall.com" link yourself, since the evidence YOU posted was (A) Jack and (B) Squat, hey emphasis on the "Jack" since you obviously spent the last two years jerking off to the thought of Trump wearing Prison Orange. Sad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Except that they should recoup the cost of the whole investigation in the fines and unpaid taxes they uncovered.
37 indictments, 6 guilty please, and one conviction. That doesn't sound like a fail to me.
"please"?
So a detective, driving to a murder scene, stops and writes someone a speeding ticket. The Detective never closes the murder case - that's a fail. Mueller was investigating collusion and obstruction of justice, he found none of either - so yes, fail.
If you want to talk about failure, look at the R's obsessive investigations of Hillary before the 2016 election. E-mails? zero indictments.
Take a look at the folks that got immunity in the email case, that explains no convictions.
Benghazi? zero indictments.
Congratulations, incompetence isn't a crime.
Ken
The Clinton campaign did the same thing. The difference is, we've had 2 years of investigation into the Trump campaign and it was found to not be collusion. Shall we now do the same with the Clinton campaign and the DNC, who financed the dossier which was written by a foreigner, with Russian influences, to damage their opponent? Or is that not collusion?
Eh, no, It was the Republicans who commissioned the 'dossier', the Democrats just picked up where the Republican left off after they decoded Trump was their new god emperor.