The fact is, absent something very unusual, Barr will be confirmed. It only takes 51 votes, or otherwise a majority. So at this point the committee Democrats need to get as much on the record as they can. We will have to hope that Rosenstein will assert his power to see the investigation continue unabated. I personally do not like the idea of hoping and trusting Republicans of any stripe.
How soon before one of these from the IC for Mr. Barr?
William Barr came out of retirement just in time to cover up treason. Grandchildren will be proud of him.
Either Barr gave Putin’s’ Puppet one of the greatest head-fakes in the history of head-fakes with his unsolicited memo … OR … he’s faking now. I’d prefer the former but his Iran-Contra history seems more consistent with the latter.
As with Nixon, it all comes down to what counts as “executive privilege,” and what Barr thinks the president can “lawfully” refuse to release, and what the courts tell him he can’t. Fun times!
I hope Mueller has mapped out avenues for release of his findings, independent of the soon to be “Barr” to public disclosure
Does Mueller have to power to indict DoJ officials?
Barr will undoubtedly be confirmed by 51 Republicans. The only remaining question is whether or not he’s telling the truth about Mueller. In any case, I suspect the fact that various U.S. Attorney’s offices are also involved means that this case is not going to just go away. Of course, come to think of it, as AG, Barr will have the power to shut them down too. I guess we are all fcked.
Given Josh’s recent post, and the revelation that Mueller was deeply embedded in the Bush 41 “Administration” involvement in the genesis of what came to be known as The Whitewater Investigation, I still don’t understand why Liberals put so much faith in Robert Mueller. Trump may not be politically-savvy (and that may actually be a net positive for him, as it allows him to get away with murder, precisely because he is so politically naive), but he is surrounded by enough people who are, who are equally malevolent and who have vested personal and monetary interests in seeing the Trump “Administration” remain in office for at least the next two years, if not six, and given the Democratic Party’s track record at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (1984,1988, 2004) against scandal-mired Republican’t presidents, and the fact that The Most Qualified Candidate to Run for President in the History of Forever lost to the guy who was supposed to be a joke in 2016, that’s not an unreasonable thing to predict. (Seriously whom among the current assumed crop of 2020 contenders is more qualified than Hillary Clinton? Anyone?)
Now I’m all for walking and chewing gum. If Mueller’s investigation leads to anything (and I have no faith it will) and evidence exists that people committed crimes, they should be prosecuted. Obviously. (Unlike what the last administration did vis a vis Wall Street, which is busy engineering the next crash, emboldened by the lack of accountability for the last one.) But Democrats need to be laser focused on promoting an agenda that addresses the real needs of real people, and the existential threat to human civilization that is climate change; it has to be an agenda that can’t simply be portrayed as political revenge, a witch hunt, or attempting to use the courts to make up for their electoral shortcomings. But I’m afraid my Party is putting all of its eggs in Mueller’s basket precisely so they don’t have to talk about anything that might upset their billionaire, corporate and Wall Street masters…
With his unsolicited memo on the probe any reasonable person would find him to be unfit for the job.
But as the last two years have convinced us, reasonableness is a bridge too far for our body politic.
We will just drag on till the next Trump becomes our President and completely destroys our democracy.
Yes, but only with permission of his supervisor - Rosenstein, for now.
At least, that’s my understanding, but I am not a lawyer - which probably makes my response worth about as much as I’m charging for it.
For some reason I just don’t believe Barr’s assurances about Mueller and the investigation and I doubt we ordinary folk will get to see much of the report. The really nasty juicy bits will be redacted.
“I am going to make as much information available as I can consistent with the rules and regulations that are part of the special counsel regulations,”
Would those be rules and regulations that he, as AG, would be free to interpret, kind of like those noisome ethics rules and regulations that he "certainly would consult with [the career ethics personnel] and at the end of the day, I would make a decision in good faith based on the laws and the facts that are evident at that time.”?
Barr is a conservative ideologue and will come up with any flimsy excuse to change his entire stance on the Mueller probe. He’ll disingenuously claim that “new information” has come to light and NOW it’s totally reasonable to hinder or terminate Mueller’s investigation. It’s ludicrous to trust anyone in the GOP, especially a career bureaucrat who wants to punch up his resume and gain further cred within the conservative clique. (Barr rhymes with Starr).
I agree with most of your analysis (I’m skeptical that Mueller can be trusted too, though he’s admittedly been reliably thorough and uncorrupted so far).
That said, I don’t think Democrats are putting all of our eggs in Mueller’s basket. We haven’t had much else to rely on for the past two years - while we essentially had very little power in DC - but now that Dems control the House, I see us developing backup baskets in the form of Congressional investigations from Schiff, Cummings, Nadler, and so on. Mueller is no longer our only hope for holding Trump accountable.
… and leaked.
Eventually.
I don’t really think any adverse findings in the Mueller report will remain secret for long. Trump’s crimes are simply too serious and treasonous for any of the investigators, and/or the intelligence community, to let him successfully cover them up.
I’m much more confident that we will see the report after reading and hearing Neal Katyal on the subject:
Nothing’s a 100% certainty, especially given the contemporary right’s power-uber-alles ethos, but this seems pretty solid. And honestly, assuming the results are as damning as seems increasingly likely, the odds that they can squelch the findings and that every member of Mueller’s team will just silently acquiesce is IMHO just about zero. Knock wood, of course…
All I gotta say is this guy is a weasel. He’s really big on himself and is another power-hungry tRumpster from all appearances so far. He defers to himself and his own judgement when he has difficulty answering any question in which he is required to submit to any ethics officers about his role. Always giving himself an out. Piss on him.
Geez, the guy is having difficulty answering a question from Sasse of all people with whether or not he sees his job as “protecting the President”. Barr says he should be sympathetic to the President and then doesn’t at all answer the question.