Wouldn’t, not couldn’t.
Then why did it take him 48 hours to write his ‘summary’. He could have just appended it to his memo and released it. He already KNEW what he was going to say. This is the same crap that happened with Iran Contra…I wonder if now they are going to pardon everyone because they couldn’t find TRUMP guilty…it doesn’t matter about the rest of the grifters.
But there’s so much obstruction that’s been admitted or took place in public. Like firing Comey after he would not go easy on Flynn, or drop the Russia investigation.
I’ve seen it suggested that Barr thinks there cannot be obstruction if there’s no underlying crime. That’s clearly wrong. Suppose a man disappears under circumstances that suggest he’s been murdered and the body disposed of. If I’m a suspect and I get someone to lie and say that he was with me at a relevant time, that’s obstruction, even if the supposed victim reappears unharmed, and it turns out that he just went away for a vacation.
Yep, been reading that all over the internet. Well coordinated effort.
Right now, I really need the ‘king’s man’ (Rosenstein) to throw the new ‘high sheriff’ (Barr) under the wagons and this will be the best week evaaa.
Old man yells at clouds–
HOW CAN YOU PROVE CONSPIRACY IN THE PRESENCE OF OBSTRUCTION?
I don’t think that Manafort will get a pardon – because I think Trump wants him out of sight & mind. (Dead in prison would close that loop.)
Several days ago Trump casually said he was OK with releasing the report. Immediately before that, by just a few days, he came out and said he wanted it kept secret, in so many words. So what happened that in just a few days he flipped?
You know damned well Barr briefed Trump.
If the person lying in your scenario is Donald Trump, then no, it’s not obstruction.
That tRump has been and continues to be one giant orange roadblock to learning how Russia interfered with the 2016 election is so obvious, it is laughable. Yet, he manages to escape justice yet again, seemingly on a reading of the law that without an underlying crime, there can be no obstruction. Maybe the campaign didn’t conspire, maybe the evidence was not sufficient, but the tRump crime family is clearly hiding something, some involvement in some unsavory scheme to enrich themselves illegally. When will they be finally held to account?
Not in our lifetime.
Barr noted in his four-page letter that Mueller laid out the evidence on both sides of the obstruction question, stating that, “‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”
"And so, as the President’s hand-picked AG, chosen to replace the AG with whom he was greatly disturbed and irritated for his recusal from the Trump-Russia investigation, and who wrote an unsolicited 19 page memo describing how I would view and decide on the obstruction issue, i have taken it upon myself to, in fact, decide that very issue.
“You get three guesses as to my decision and the first two do not count.”
A prejudiced party (Barr) and a witness and accessory to the crime (Rosenstein) should never have been in the position to decide this case. They should have been recused.
Living on the past dream that Mueller was actually competent and wouldn’t throw the country under the bus, perhaps he did this in order to lay a trap for the AG and Deputy AG to violate department policies on recusal in this case and thus get the entire investigation opened up to the public.
To say that the Democrats and us got played by Rosenstein, Mueller, et al is understanding it.
It’s pretty clear this was a setup all along, including the Tweets with Trump pretending to be scared of and criticizing Mueller.
This is frustrating. The reason “obstruction” is a crime in the first place, is because lying and destroying evidence makes it impossible to determine what happened.
So, the very strong likelihood that obstruction occurred (repeatedly) means that everyone involved lied and destroyed evidence making Mueller’s job impossible.
And, as TPM has already posited, why did people like Flynn and Gates get off with no penalties. What was so valuable? Why wasn’t Trump interviewed? He would have stepped all over himself trying to obstruct real-time. He’s an idiot.
The only conclusion from what we’ve seen so far is that Mueller is incompetent, narrowed the scope of his own investigation, and let these conmen walk roughshod over everything they’ve sworn to uphold.
I can only hope he doesn’t like the sound of that and shows up to testify to congress about the actual substance of the investigation, and that our representatives do a good job of prying the facts out.
Good question. Why are Manafort, Cohen and Stone going to jail?
Barr gave Trump a show-lived PR victory yesterday, with an edited assist from Mueller due to the restrictions placed on his investigation. Since Mueller either couldn’t or didn’t investigate Trump’s long-standing financial ties to Russians and potential money-laundering, and Barr didn’t even go into that, on the narrow question of a “tacit” agreement for Russian assistance for relaxing sanctions, Barr’s summary of Mueller’s findings might be technically correct.
But collusion is like pornography in that we know it when we see it. Trump and Putin were hot for each other and had the same interests for a long time, so they didn’t need an explicit agreement. They both just knew the score. I suspect the context of Mueller’s finding is that Trump and his minions knew what they were doing and stayed just inside the law while lying to the American people. That, to me, make obstruction have the necessary intent. You don’t need to have a crime to obstruct justice. Political motives to hide lying to the public is more than sufficient, and I suspect that a vast majority of Americans, and even Republican politicians, agree with that assessment. The difference is that Republican politicians will look the other way when it’s one of their own, while holding Democrat or their opponents to that principle.
Gates and Flynn are awaiting sentencing. Where did you read they’re walking away from all this free of sanctions or consequences?