The WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
I can see why they could try to make it look like it wasn’t anyone in the Justice Dept who made the call. After all, the Justice Department is Trump’s, so therefore, saying his attorneys made the call would not be stretching things too far. Better that way than admitting that someone in Justice Department made the call. I’m sure they’re still concerned about appearances of being impartial at the Justice Department.
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This story looks like pushback on the Washington Post story which made it appear that the decision to make the statement was done without pressure. That narrative – in which Mueller’s team decided to respond without any Trump Team intervention – never made much sense.
And the “pressure” narrative is completely consistent with the vague and obtuse nit-oicking nature of Carr’s statement. As someone else noted, “not accurate” is not “wrong”. If you say that pi =3.1417, you’re “not accurate” – but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
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Seeing that a Forum ‘regular’ is on vacation, I really hope that he/she missed this news.
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By coming out with this statement, when never having felt it necessary before, Mueller and Co have shook my confidence in them. Whatever the reason, whatever the motivation that simple fact remains. You could argue my confidence was over blown and even misplaced, you could say Mueller is just doing his job. All of that is true but there is now a big question mark where my support and respect for them once was. Suspicion has raised it ugly head. Damn it all.
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‘threading the needle’
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That’s what I’m reading.
important part
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You are correct, but there is little question as to how they will try to spin it. Let’s all calm down and wait until Mueller is finished. This story is far from over.
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It doesn’t work like that.
Yes, there will be a final report, but that document won’t be placating anyone.
My strong guess is that the Buzzfeed report came via leaks from the SD of NY. Its impact was to (a) make it seem like Mueller’s office as leaking - which undercut its reputation, and also possible hurt it with the key republicans who are giving Mueller cover, such as Rosenstein, and (b) to put the Democrats into an impeachment frenzy.
Neither of these are good for Bob Mueller, and it also created issues with using Cohen in trials (most likely of Don, Jr.) as it appeared at Cohen’s allocation was not directly lined up with this report.
What most likely happened here is that the SD of NY, who did not get cooperation from Cohen (likely as they demanded information on his father-in-law’s shaddy deals) leaked details they did not totally understand or have in context as slap back against him.
Three options. (1) Its all wrong, Trump was not involved. (2) Some details are wrong but the thrust is right (for example perhaps updates were not provided to Ivanka, or they did not discuss “more than ten times” or (3) is is almost all right, but there was enough wrong that Mueller wanted to keep the House Democrats/Trump from going wild. He wants space to finish his investigation before Trump is pushed into a corner.
The statement itself is vague:
“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate,”
Mueller knows how to put out a clear statement if he wants. Saying “the claims in the BuzzFeed article are wrong” or “the assertions made about statements to the special counsel by Mr. Cohen are wrong” is very different that what Mueller said: the “description” of those statements and the “characterization” of “documents and testimony” (note he says documents, Buzzfeed’s report listed other stuff, see bolded below). To try to guess what Mueller is up to it helps to review the money quotes from the Buzzfeed article:
“The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.”
And
“Attorneys close to the administration helped Cohen prepare his testimony and draft his statement to the Senate panel, the sources said. The sources did not say who the attorneys were or whether they were part of the White House counsel’s staff, and did not present evidence that the lawyers knew the statements would be false.”
And
“Cohen also declined comment — but the law enforcement sources familiar with his testimony to the special counsel said he had confirmed that Trump directed him to lie to Congress, and also that he had provided details of his conversations about the project with the president and Ivanka and Donald Jr.”
And
"Those three members of the Trump family have distanced themselves from the Moscow project, saying that they had little knowledge of the negotiations. But a picture of their deep involvement is now emerging, as FBI agents and prosecutors pore over witness interviews and internal documents from Cohen and other Trump Organization officials and executives.
Trump was even made aware that Cohen was speaking to Russian government officials about the deal"
If I had to guess, I would say that it is highly unlikely that people inside the Trump Organization testified that they knew about a directive from Trump to lie, or that “lawyers close to the white house” helped Cohen draft his statement. I also doubt that there is a “cache of other [Trump Organization] documents” documenting instructions by Trump to lie. As a result I am leaning to the theory that there were details wrong that fit within the literal statement Mueller made in that the other all story is in part true, but not totally accurate in the fine details, and Mueller wanted to brush back the calls for impeachment to try to keep Trump from provoking a constitutional crisis.
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If Rudy said the sun would rise tomorrow, I’d buy sunlamps and a parka, and ditch my stock in BananaBoat sunscreen.
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This is probably the main reason Donald wants to keep the government shutdown. To screw Mueller’s investigation.
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You must be new here.
My first cynical thought, from out here in the peanut gallery, is that Mueller was baiting Rudy into running his mouth some more.
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“Really wish that Josh would set up a betting portal for us… I could retire.”
cool. of course, it would have to be offshore, numbered accounts, and fake names for sure. no rubles allowed.
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interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization
this might have been a serious problem for Mueller, given that the only Trump Org people Mueller has officially interviewed are Hope Hicks, Cohen and the CFO. Of course, it defies belief that Team Mueller hasn’t talked to everyone they could from Trump Org all the way down to the cleaning people in the building. But Mueller doesn’t want to tip his hand regarding who else has testified to the grand jury…
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So then.
We can safely assume that all other accusatory articles about Trump are true?
I mean, since Trump’s team didn’t object to those.
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they demanded a retraction ande only got a highley edited ‘not accurate’ pretty weak.
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Yes, I can actually… if it was a message from one lawyer to another in the form of a inquiry or a suggestion then it would not have needed to go through the chain of command. It could have been just a friendly email or phone conversation between peers. However, if it was a ‘dominance play’ it would have (probably) gone through the white house counsel’s office to the DOJ in the form of a demand or strong suggestion that the SCO do something about what the white house perceived as a piece of bad reporting. The news that Rosenstein was in the loop suggests the latter. This would suggest there may be more to the back story. Did they try the peer-to-peer first and only escalate it through the DOJ chain of command when that was not successful or did they just just go straight for the big guns first?
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The plot thickens. Does this tie in to the ‘rebuke’ being exceedingly mild. Mueller’s office objected to two minor points; one, they weren’t the source of information in the story, two, the Cohen disclosure wasn’t obtained BY Mueller’s office. Nary a word about the authenticity of Cohen being directed to lie under oath.