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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 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"?
The report actually goes beyond a lack of collusion. it did not find that Trump's campaign or affiliates conspired or coordinated with the Russian government "despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign." Implication is that Russia offered but was turned away.
Also specifically states that the decision not to seek indictments was done "without regard to" the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting President.
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.
> 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.
Trump (not the Republicans) win because the Democrats ignored the "little people" on their quest for "progression". You know, the "little people" that work and pay taxes and wonder what the hell is it in for them? The Democrats don't even pay them lip service anymore. And no, I'm not a Republican or a Trump fan. But Hillary was a "progressive" idiot. And her husband was a shyster who should be selling used cars somewhere.
The report was delivered as a PDF.
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.
Yes. Political nerds are a kind of nerd too. The story has been up for only a short time and it has over 100 posts so it's clearly the thing a large portion of this site is interested in.
If this is unexpected for you maybe you should find another site to suit your more particular tastes.
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.
Let's remember why the special counsel was appointed by Rosenstein: Rosenstein signed off on a memo justifying to Trump why Comey should have been fired for his threatrics re: Hillary in the run-up to the 2016 election. This was the stated reason to fire him.
What came out after Comey was fired was that:
1. Comey had called up Preibus out of the blue, told him that the Russia-gate stuff being reported in the press about the FBI was nonsense. Preibus then asks if Comey can make a clarifying statement to the press to that effect. Comey says no, AND leaks to the press that he was being pressured by Preibus. Despite having been the one to initiate the conversation and bait Preibus into the ask. Classy.
2. Comey starts leaking his "memos" to the press via his law professor friend with the explicit and expressed purpose of getting a special counsel appointed to probe his firing. Despite some of those memos technically being classified by virtue of the fact that they described a conversation between Trump and Comey acting in their capacities as POTUS and FBI head, respectively and talking over classified matters (because counter-intelligence?). Classy.
3. Turns out that a number of people plead guilty and went to jail for far less than what Hillary was being accused of, but Comey pretty much says he quashed it because of political considerations. Classy.
So now we have the report of the special counsel, who was appointed to probe whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey...coming up completely empty on the question of whether a crime even occurred for Trump to have been covering up and absolutely declining to make a decision on whether obstruction occurred. Read that again: the thing he was mandated to investigate...he makes no determination of. Despite failing to find evidence that a crime even occurred.
But it gets better. Since Mueller declined to make a determination to either incriminate or exonerate Trump...it fell to Attorney General Barr to evaluate the evidence and make the call. Except Barr says he consulted with Rosenstein. The same exact Rosenstein who signed off on the memo to justify firing Comey to begin with. So Rosenstein's coming out of this smelling like a rose too: he appoints the special counsel to investigate whether the justification he wrote for firing Comey was actually part of an act of obstruction of justice...and now at the end he gets to make the decision on whether or not the thing he had his name all over constituted a crime.
Yeesh.
Never mind the Pee Dossier, never mind the trickle of less than flattering information about Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe and Evelyn Farkas and Brennan and Clapper the rest of them trying to tip the scales and leak shit to the press and out-and-out try to bait Trump officials into perjuring themselves. The basic fact is that the assistant AG wrote a memo justifying the firing an FBI head who clearly had it coming to him...then appointing a special counsel to investigate himself...and then declaring himself to have not taken part of a crime. Lovely.
Kids...if you're reading...this is not what accountable government looks like. In fact, this is what an out-of-control Deep State looks like: all court intrigue and a colossal circle-jerk for the purpose of...what for all the world looks like...generating a smoke screen in the press to divert attention away from wrong-doing by the very people claiming the mantle of Protectors of the Republic(TM).
If you purjor yourself while having a conversation about your alleged collusion, chances pretty good you were colluling. At the very least you did something worse than purjor yourself.
The cognitive dissonance you get to see over this is fascinating.
Actually, Manafort and Cohen both been convicted of cheating on their taxes in cases unconnected to Trump and his campaign.
Cohen was ALSO convicted of campaign finance violations. And lying to congress (about the campaign).
Though to my knowledge you are correct that Manafort's convictions were unrelated to Trump's campaign.
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.
Actually, except for the Manafort bit, the AC was fairly on-base your counter is either irrelevant or overblown.
The AC didn't claim collusion, he claimed that Trump encouraged Russian attacks on TV, which is true.
As for the obstruction charge, there's definitely evidence. What Mueller basically said is that he didn't find evidence of collusion in the campaign, and if you don't have proof of the crime that was being investigated it's harder to prove that efforts to kill that investigation were obstruction of justice.
But he explicitly says that it doesn't exonerate Trump, and the AG could decide otherwise (though he naturally won't of course).
And while we're at it, since the Trumpists are so fond of playing this game, lets point out another few things.
1) Mueller established that Manafort lied after agreeing to cooperate, but didn't seem to try for additional info. Manafort had some very fishy ties to Russian oligarchs connected to Putin and very easily could have had more info.
2) Mueller doesn't seem to have tried questioning Trump Jr and Kushner about the Trump tower meeting.
3) Despite the fact there's judicial precedent to subpoena a sitting President for questioning Mueller never tried. Instead he negotiated a list of questions and let Trump and his lawyers craft answers.
4) Papadopoulos was bragging about the emails that Russia stole to the Greek Foreign Minister, do you really think he didn't blab about it to other members of the campaign? Who did he tell? How did they use that information?
5) You had a Republican investigator, reporting to a Republican supervisor, reporting to a Republican AG, investigating a Republican President. I'm not saying that Mueller was trying to cover anything up, but he certainly seems to have treated Trump with kid gloves.
I stole this Sig
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.
They wouldn't turn on him if he fucked Ronald Reagan's corpse with an American flag while wearing a black lives matter t-shirt.
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?
Listen, he spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it: he will never be a great man [...] My father was his kryptonite in life, he was his kryptonite in death. On a personal level, I agree with you, all of us have love and families, and when my father was alive, up until adulthood, we would spend our time together cooking, hiking, fishing, really celebrating life, and I think it's because he almost died [...] And I just thought, 'your life is spent on the weekend not with your family, not with your friends, but you're obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to.' That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now. -- Meghan McCain
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.
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?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
After two and a half years of liberal russophobia and accusations of treason, we arrived to this? Did anyone actually with at least half a brain believe this was going to end somewhat different? Anyways, it's hard to believe that Congress and the corporate news media will leave the President alone after this. So watch the news echo chamber closely over the next few days as Russia investigation now morphs into "obstruction of justice" and "campaign finance" investigation.
Well, Steve Bannon did say at the beginning that Trump was too stupid to collude with his own campaign so him colluding with Russia was a ridiculous idea since that would exceed his extremely limited mental capabilities.
Trump is very clearly a jackass, though.
That's the other party. Trump is a pachyderm.
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.
Please look at Lisa Page testimony released last week.
DOJ told the FBI was not to criminally charge Hillary. They were denied access to laptops with deleted emails. They were told to stonewall the investigation, by Loretta Lynch.
Might be a reason nothing was done there. DOJ was corrupt. Its been found out by Congress and they chose to do nothing about it.
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.
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.
It's like those people who say Hillary committed a crime (email server) yet all those lawyers and agents at the FBI said otherwise.
It's almost as if those people know what they're doing and do it without regard for who is being investigated.
Welcome to Fantasy Island. I hope you enjoy your stay.
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/...
You asked rhetorically whether hiring a foreigner to do research was collusion. It is not. And the FEC link you provided is silent on this matter. There is a mention of volunteer work by foreigners, but the context pertains to unsolicited volunteer work by a foreigner that might otherwise be considered a contribution. When a foreigner's activities cross the threshold of participating in the decision-making of the campaign, then it's a violation.
As for your original comment on both campaigns meeting with a foreign diplomat, there's nothing wrong with that either, unless of course you are engaging them in the strategizing or decision-making of the campaign.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Sigh, I'm so sick of whataboutism and fake controversies from the trumpkins. At least they've stopped saying nuclear material was physically transported from Canada/US to Russia. That's progress I guess. Like, a 'getting your kid to stop eating the boogers but not the public nose picking itself" level of progress.
Someone had to do it.
So it's like the current case where there is evidence of obstruction of justice, but not enough for a prosecution.
Got it. Same thing. Evidence of a crime but the prosecutors chose not to prosecute.
That true, Flowers came forward on her own.
My point was that Clinton tried to deny it. Even after the tapes were played on national television. Over and over, for decades, various women accused him of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other similar behavior, and Bill always put on that smile and tried to play completely innocent.
Trump doesn't hide that he's - what the word? A bit of a perv? He and Bill Clinton would get along together well, especially in the company of some Colombian prostitutes. Clinton got busted for lying about it, Trump got some heat for bragging about it.
There was a more specific classified order that outlined what in particular Muller was supposed to investigate that was released in partially redacted form during Manafort's trial, here: The Scope of Investigation and Definition of Authority
Mueller was ordered to handle particular investigations in that classified memo, including the Manafort business, and could ask to expand his probe in request to the acting AG Rosenstein.
Barr's report said that there was never a case where the DoJ overruled the special counsel on prosecutorial orders, so presumably Mueller and Rosenstein (and perhaps subsequently Whitaker and Barr as well) agreed to the scope of the investigation and investigations and prosecutions on unrelated matters were handed off to other authorities.
Which is the point I'm trying to make that you seem to have trouble with: Mueller was only investigating a limited set of matters, and if he expanded his scope at all it was also in a limited manner made in consultation with DoJ. The other stuff, like Cohen's financial chicanery and the campaign finance crimes and whatever else were handed off to other authorities.
Despite the picture that Trump was painting as this being an open ended witch hunt looking at anything and everything to bring him down, it very much was not. Which is both good and bad for him, good since he has nothing more to worry about from Mueller prosecuting him or more of his associates and only has to worry about what he has already collected and put in his report, bad in that any other issues that were outside Mueller's scope are distinctly unresolved by the closure of the special counsel's investigation as well as any potential political fallout that occurs when more details are released.
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
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.
Cohen also plead guilty to tax evasion charges. And a plea bargain is technically a conviction. Yes they didn't have to prove it in court, the evidence was so overwhelming that Cohen would have been a fool to go to trial.
And the tax charges were ALSO brought by the SDNY.
See the AC was trying to claim "Cohen's crimes had nothing to do with the campaign", which people called BS because Cohen was convicted of a campaign finance violation.
So you tried moving the goal posts by claiming that this is a discussion of the Mueller investigation. But then the AC's statement makes no sense because they're referring to tax crimes which happened the SDNY. The only charges that Cohen was convicted from Mueller's office was lying to congress... about the campaign.
This is just some rhetorical game to make people think that when they hear of "Cohen's crimes" they somehow think it has nothing to do with the campaign. Unfortunately for you the meaningless distinctions that would usually help to confuse people don't actually apply here.
I stole this Sig
Then why didn't they leak that dossier before the election? You know, when it would have actually been useful.
Used for what? To make news? Because the story would read like this:
"Someone you never heard of has just given us a file containing a bunch of innuendo and amazing claims with no supporting facts. It's about one of the Presidential candidates. That candidate has denied the allegations in the file."
Soo.... you claim that the dossier, that has generated massive news coverage, wasn't leaked because the press would find it uninteresting???
To which I repeat the question... why write a fake dossier to win an election if you're not going to leak it?
Funny how none of the Trumpists can never answer that iceberg sized plot hole.
Funny how you guys make up stories and decide to believe they're true, and then when they are proven false, you just make up new stories. The real world and what really occurs never seem to matter.
In other words your "fake dossier" narrative is so weak you didn't even bothering to make a story.
Now here's my story. The dossier was a legitimate and entirely normal attempt at opposition research, performed by a former intelligence official. The campaigns who funded the research, both Republicans and Democrats, hoped to learn how to campaign against Trump, and to find provable dirt they could use against him.
The dossier didn't have any provable dirt, at least not anything juicer than was already publicly known about Trump. But it was very unusual in that it had evidence (but not proof) that he was compromised and coordinating with the Russian government. Republicans and Democrats both found this concerning enough that they forwarded it to the FBI, who was already investigating the Trump campaign for collusion.
No one, Republican, Democrat, or FBI, leaked it to the press during the campaign because that wasn't its purpose, and since it could be traced back to the campaign who paid for it and could backfire.
So that's my story, one that makes sense and is consistent with the evidence.
I stole this Sig
Except that they should recoup the cost of the whole investigation in the fines and unpaid taxes they uncovered.
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.
Yeah, but Mueller stated, and Barr reported, that they found NO evidence (zip, nada, zilch) evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign ever coordinated anything with the Russians, despite the Russian's repeated explicit attempts to do just that.
And if a foreign government handed a campaign unsolicited information about its opponent, then that would be an illegal campaign contribution
But if you pay for the information from the same foreign government it's OK?
Ken
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
Deferred to the AG on the subject of obstruction, not collusion. The collusion angle is stated flat out - there was none.
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.
(Note: IRA = "Internet Research Agency")
To that end the hysterical reaction to Trump did more for them than Trump himself could have ever done. Also most damaging are identity politics and its polarizing effects. Some of the IRAs (still can't get over that acronym) trolling explicitly took extreme positions in identity politics or used misleading/false information to incite identity subgroups, a good example of this is the expert trolling by "LGBT United":
https://medium.com/@sue.donym1...
Note that these actions are not partisan to the "left" or the "right", the intent is to weaken the USA as a whole, to make them less effective in the international arena, to weaken their president and to bog him (or her) down with whatever serves that purpose.
They needn't have bothered though, because others did their work for them. It is highly questionable that this "Troll factory" with its lean funds really made any change to the bigger picture. Most of the hysterical reaction to Trump, the campaigning for his impeachment by whatever means as well as the extremist identity politics were genuine and didn't need any outside "nudging".
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
RIght,
Cohen took a plea. Cohen is a guy with his hands in many of cookie jar by all appearances and its likely he was threatened with being charged with much much worse. The same way a boarder line DUI offender might plea to equipment failure to account for their weaving. That sort of thing happens literally every day.
The John Edwards case casts a WHOLE HECK OF A LOT OF DOUBT on if payments to Clifford's would ultimately be determined by a court to constitute a campaign contribution or not. If Trump were to be charged you can bet his lawyers would argue; quite correctly that a man might have all kinds of reasons to want to a mistress to not talk about the affair he had with her while his wife was pregnant. Reasons not related to the campaign at all. A lot of people for example might ask if that is how he treats his wife; can he be a reliable partner in business? As an example. That isnt a question a real-estate tycoon would want potential investors asking.
Its only a campaign contribution if can convince a jury "but for his presidential campaign, the hush money would not have been paid." If anything Cohen's repeated self contributions do a lot to impeach the best argument that likely exists: Trump's fixer said that is why he did it.
So although yes Cohen was "convicted of campaign finance violations" there exists no finding of fact that said violation occurred. That is important legally speaking if you are Trump.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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.
No, that is not correct. It was started by the Free Beacon, but then dropped. It was not funded by the GOP. However, we do have the Clinton campaign and the DNC paying Fusion GPS. So no - you're wrong. The GOP did NOT commission the dossier. That's a lie. The Democrats own that one - and like most things, they want to get rid of their connection - so they lie about it.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The yank trolls are out in full force tonight...