It would seem that the Mango Menace finally found an AG who would âprotectâ him at all cost.
This is exactly what is going onâŚ
My guess is the actual report makes clear the direction Mueller felt the evidence points, and I seriously doubt that he says it like Barr is suggesting.
What is interesting is - if as Barr claims - the report is good for trump, then trump and him should want it to be released, right? It they donât fully release it and the underlying materials, it tells us all we need to know.
There is no way that the office of legal counsel weighed in in less than 24 hours as Barr claimed, and his reasoning that there was âno collusionâ (actually I am sure what the report actually says is âinsufficient evidence to support a charge of conspiracyâ) charge, and as such no obstruction is just legally wrong. First, you donât need an convicted or charged crime for obstruction, and second, there is politically damaging actions that trump seeks/sought to prevent coming out, the revelation of which he sought to obstruct.
We donât actually know what Mueller intended, unless we see the underlying report. Did Mueller do a section on âundue influenceâ as a national security issue? (I.e. did trumpâs actions create a fear that what the Russians knew, if revealed would hurt trump)? What did he actually say about the evident willingness to accept Russian help? Trump tower, meeting, etc? And on âobstructionâ did mueller find insufficient evidence to indict, or did he feel that given the guidance on not indicting a sitting president, that it was not his job to recommend anything, and then Barr filled in the missing piece.
My strong guess is that mueller elected to lay out the evidence and let the political branches address it, in light of doj guidance. That is the âconservativeâ thing to do⌠barrâs Letter reads to me like an effort to hide the full scope of what mueller found evidence wise.
No one should/can trust Barr at this point, and his claims and assertions have the stink of an attempted fix to them.
Meh. DOJ deals with prosecutions. It is not their job to worry about impeachmentâthat is Congressâs job. It seems like this criticism amounts to a complaint that DOJ declined to generate the kind of headlines that would put pressure on Republicans in the Senate to go along with removal. But thatâs not DOJâs job at all. Congress has all the tools that it needs to obtain evidence of impeachable offenses and initiate impeachment proceedings on its own regardless of what DOJ says.Thus, the real problem here is with Congressâin particular Senate Republicansâand not DOJ.
Welcome to the law: where being poor makes you more guilty than being rich, white and elected.
âThereâs one thing we know for sure from Attorney General William Barrâs Sunday letter to Congress outlining the Mueller reportâŚâ
Nope.
Unless youâve actually read the Mueller report, then thereâs nothing you âknow for sureâ.
Not you, not me, not any cable bobblehead paid to fill dead airtime between commercials.
As if
Entire Campaign goes to jail
Trump and the spawn skate
The new America
The Rule of Law is for Chumps
One guy got it right
Presidential Historian: Barrâs Four-Page Letter Is A 'Press Releaseâ
âMaybe it accurately reflects whatâs in the Mueller report. Maybe itâs something that is a gloss thatâs intended to make it took more pro Trump than it is,â presidential historian Michael Beschloss said.
The minute Barr was appointed, the fix was in.
The whole idea is to confuse the rubes, drag out, obfuscate, etc, long enough for people lose interest.
Will this change any minds m in the middle?
No. This gives too much credit to Mueller.
He did it precisely to give Barr the opportunity to declare Trump innocent. After all Mueller is Barrâs friend, and a Republican.
Why do we make things so complicated?
If Barr has misconstrued Muellerâs report as most of us suspect, will Mueller just remain silent about that? Inquiring minds want to know . . . .
This idea that St Bob punted this for Congress to handle is one of the more stupid fantasies out there. There was nothing, nada, to prevent St Bob from concluding: âThe elements of the crime of obstruction of justice have been satisfied in this case. However, bearing in mind DOJ policy not to indict a sitting president, and for that reason only, I have declined to prosecute in this case.â That would be how you punt it up to Congress.
Depending on what the Mueller report actually says, Barrâs letter and refusal to release the real report could be the next stage in the Obstruction case. Thatâs how theyâre blowing this with their attacks on Democrats and the media: If Muellerâs report is an obvious exoneration, release it and let us see how innocent Trump was.
The media got suckered by treating Barrâs book report as an honest summary, but if itâs such a slamdunk against Trumpâs enemies; letâs see the whole thing. And if it turns out Barrâs misleading us about all this, then weâll know that heâs part of Trumpâs obstruction gang; as if that wasnât how he got the job.
Good Lord it is part of his argument to get the full report.
Would like a thousand times if the button was a repeating function.
Letâs imagine a different scenario. After a clamor when Trump suspiciously fires the head of the FBI, a special counsel is appointed. After two years, Mueller issues a report that goes to the DOJ and then directly to Congress, announcing 37 criminal indictments and lays out a description of the abundant evidence of conspiracy by Trump and his family members but similar to Comey, says that while troubling and horrible and etc, none of this was prosecutable. It then also lays out even more evidence of obstruction of justice, and concludes that despite all this because of âcomplex legal issuesâ it couldnât recommend prosecution âbut is not an exoneration of Donald Trumpâ.
Now some of these details are guesses for thought experiment purposes, but really only the part about conspiracy. And itâs entirely plausible.
Just think about the different impact it would have, while being the same report that weâll possibly eventually see. Think about Comeyâs summer press conference doing something similar to that but doing it personally, himself, bizarrely, and the impact that had.
Weâve been played. And an astonishing percentage are just going along. Through clever manipulation, no matter what the report actually says, Barrâs PR spin will be a large part of what gets set in cement, partly because so many are just repeating it as if itâs fact rather than spin.
Simply put: No.
- This was a criminal investigation into the sitting President (Keep in mind that as recently as 12 months ago, this was not clear per WAPO).
- The DOJâs policy is the OLC memo (sitting POTUS canât be indicted).
- Therefore, the only place to address issues of liability relating to a criminal inquiry of a sitting POTUS is Congress. Itâs in the Constitution. Itâs called the impeachment clause.
Therefore, once you concede that this was a criminal investigation into the President and also expanded into a counterintelligence inquiry as to whether his and his teamâs contacts with Russia jeopardize national security, then youâre talking high crimes and misdemeanors. Only the Congress can address that issue while the POTUS is in office.
The appointed AG of the person who is the subject of the investigation has no say, no role in this matter. His opinion is irrelevant. Writing a 4 page letter as a substitute for releasing the whole report to Congress is obstruction of justice. The AG is preventing the House of Representatives from doing its job. It is withholding the evidence needed to evaluate whether the President committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
This isnât complicated. The DOJ, by relying on the OLC memo, took itself out of the process. Even if it rejected the OLC memo, Congress still has the power of impeachment. Constitutional powers outweigh the policies of the DOJ. Congress has demanded the report. The DOJ must turn it over.
âBarr wrote that he had consulted with the Office of Legal Counsel and Rosenstein in making the decision.â
This should be abundantly clear to anyone not suffering brain damage or mid-stroke: Rosenstein should have recused as well. He was not only a witness to, but a PARTICIPANT IN, the conduct that raises a question of obstruction.
Nope. Only the lazy and the deluded believe that.