“The sequence of those events raises an inference that after seeking to terminate the Special Counsel, the President sought to exclude his and his campaign’s conduct from the investigation’s scope,” Mueller said.
BOOM!
The Mueller Report is great news. For John McCain!
The only two quotes you need to understand the Mueller Report:
“…we determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes.” **
“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” ***
**pages 1 and 2 of Volume II, Mueller Report
***page 8 of Volume II, Mueller Report
Congress must Impeach.
Ah, those were the days.
Impeachment would not get rid of Trump. Let the voters decide in 2020 whether or not they want to keep this deluded, confused old gas bag.
McCain hated Colusers…
“Trump, in his attempts to meddle with the Russia probe, was at least partially motivated by the fear that investigators might uncover conduct that Trump himself believed could be perceived as criminal…”
Must but won’t. I am sure Biden will announce his anointed run with a policy of reaching across the aisle and letting bygones be bygones.
I think it would be beneficial for Congress to go through the process of Impeachment regardless of the outcome.
I suspect they will. I thought Kerry was sure to crush Bush so I’ve stopped hoping for the best in politics. Oddly, its the one place I am pessimistic in life.
Too bad about Barr’s slip of the tongue.
I will reiterate my plan for Pelosi/Dems:
- Pelosi gets a private commitment from 218+ members to support impeachment if she wills it.
- Pelosi goes to the WH. She meets w/Trump, Rudy and someone not dumb like Flood.
- She tells Trump that she has 218 to impeach. She will also recommend as part of the impeachment resolution that Trump face prosecution post-departure from office for all identified crimes as outlined by Mueller in the Mueller Report. [Note: Just to clarify, Mueller outlined how a sitting POTUS can be prosecuted post-departure. The potential crimes that Trump could be prosecuted for extend well beyond Mueller’s scope (e.g., SDNY).
- She offers for Trump to cut a deal with DOJ/SDNY et al to leave office immediately in exchange for no prosecution, and no additional criminal referrals from the House.
- She drops the mic and leaves.
If Trump takes the offer, great. If he doesn’t, we continue to hold hearings, make multiple criminal referrals, impeach and vote him out in '20.
Win, win. We put the burden of Trump’s criminality on Trump/GOP. We energize our base. We stand up for the Republic. We do our duty. We win.
Whether I agree with this 100% or not, I certainly hope Pelosi and the Dems are at least considering these kinds of strategies.
And even without formal impeachment proceedings, just following up on all the threads of the Report (versions redacted and not) ought to keep it in the news.
Totally BUSTED!
I wouldn’t consider President Pence much of a win.
For all the excellent investigative work Mueller and his team put together, what all this information demonstrates, unfortunately, is that at the end of the day, Mueller was a coward to hand this back to Barr with the open-ended nature of the conclusions and without holding Trump’s feet to the fire for actual responses to Mueller’s inquiries, knowing full well who Barr was and why he was appointed as AG. In a vacuum, one might be able to explain Mueller’s rationale – in the real world of ongoing WH/DOJ/GOP obstruction, however, Mueller had no business punting, because he knew exactly what would happen. To call it “unusual” that a prosecutor would let the key player in the entire investigation lie and evade and “not recall” without taking any further action, and then leaving any resulting determinations up to someone he knows is a political hack, is the understatement of the century.
I’m surprised but I can’t bring myself to read the report. I expected to, but the the excerpts I’ve seen are such tortuous language, I don’t want to punish myself.
Disappointed in Mueller. He hid behind DoJ regulations. Given the governance crisis and the assault on democracy we face he had an obligation to do more. His actions encouraged Barr, a legal shill, to let Trump and his enablers off the hook. In the Twitter Age, Mueller should have issued a crystal clear one-page summary of three paragraphs and directed readers to details in the body of the report:
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The Russians meddled in the election, influenced it, and Trump and his campaign encouraged it.
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To hide their tracks, Trump and his campaign engaged in a conspiracy to lie about their actions while engaging in a pattern of behavior that can only be understood as obstruction of justice.
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DoJ policy prohibits indicting a sitting president, but under these circumstances, I recommend DoJ make an exception in this case and send a report to Congress citing the President as an un-indicted co-conspirator.
Wishful thinking I know. But Mueller turned judgments on the most consequential constitutional crisis in a generation over to political hacks beholden to Donald Trump.
Pence is a slug in the garden of politics. He will be eaten, stepped on or fall into a cup of beer. Trump on the other hand is a super hero to the white supremacists and would be serial murderers riding around in 25 year old Daewoos, and there are a lot of those out there.