So the redacted Mueller Report has been out for a while...

[edwardmurphy]

Thoughts?

Mine are that 1) AG Barr did not summarize the report at all accurately, 2) there's rock solid evidence that Trump obstructed justice, and 3) the no collusion narrative doesn't hold water.

Perhaps nobody from the Trump campaign sat down with Putin's secretary and planned everything out, but it's clear that Trump knew that the Russians had illegally stolen emails from the DNC and he used their information to bolster his campaign while simultaneously denying that it had happened. If that's not colluding then I don't know that is.

My final thought is that there's still no way that the Senate would convict. Compelling evidence of criminal conduct just isn't enough these days.

What does the rest of the panel think?

[Kurieuo]

my thoughts really don't matter, but I find the whole thing amusing.

[edwardmurphy]

None of our thoughts really matter. Go for it.

[Fliegender]

Thoughts?

Mine are that 1) AG Barr did not summarize the report at all accurately, 2) there's rock solid evidence that Trump obstructed justice, and 3) the no collusion narrative doesn't hold water.

Perhaps nobody from the Trump campaign sat down with Putin's secretary and planned everything out, but it's clear that Trump knew that the Russians had illegally stolen emails from the DNC and he used their information to bolster his campaign while simultaneously denying that it had happened. If that's not colluding then I don't know that is.

My final thought is that there's still no way that the Senate would convict. Compelling evidence of criminal conduct just isn't enough these days.

What does the rest of the panel think?

Just like Joseph Bonanno, President Trump is a fine man who has been hounded by those who hate him for no reason.

[Philip]

I so wish there was a good and conservative alternative to Trump - someone willing to work across the aisle with whatever mature, sincere Democrats. Trump, like Hillary, is a very polarizing figure. Such people's venom and hatefulness is poisoning U.S. politics! As for Congress, I can't tell you how much I wish term limits existed!

[PaulSacramento]

My view:
People see what they want to see and interpret it how they want.
Objective facts either don't exist or are ignored.
What a world we live in...

[abelcainsbrother]

Thoughts?

Mine are that 1) AG Barr did not summarize the report at all accurately, 2) there's rock solid evidence that Trump obstructed justice, and 3) the no collusion narrative doesn't hold water.

Perhaps nobody from the Trump campaign sat down with Putin's secretary and planned everything out, but it's clear that Trump knew that the Russians had illegally stolen emails from the DNC and he used their information to bolster his campaign while simultaneously denying that it had happened. If that's not colluding then I don't know that is.

My final thought is that there's still no way that the Senate would convict. Compelling evidence of criminal conduct just isn't enough these days.

What does the rest of the panel think?

Please explain how Trump can be guilty of obstruction of justice when there was no colluding with Russia.It was Seth Rich who downloaded the e-mails on to a disk or bar and gave them to Wikileaks and he was murdered for doing so,Russia did not hack in and download the emails because they cannot be downloaded over the internet fast enough to do it..
It is not just Russia that interferes in our elections but other countries too but in the Russia case Obama knew and did nothing about it.

I told you that there is a firewall now that the Republicans won and kept the Senate,now you are just realizing it.

You gonna keep denying what I tell you even when I'm continually correct?

[DBowling]

Please explain how Trump can be guilty of obstruction of justice when there was no colluding with Russia.

Andrew Napolitano from the Trump News Network (Fox News) explains it here
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge- ... of-justice

I told you that there is a firewall now that the Republicans won and kept the Senate

And that is why Pelosi is not going to pursue impeachment against Trump.

[DBowling]

Another good overview from Andrew Napolitano of Fox News


https://insider.foxnews.com/2019/05/02/ ... on-justice

[Philip]

Per DB's link: "According to the Mueller report, Trump had once asked his former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland to draft an internal memo saying that he did not instruct former national security adviser Michael Flynn to discuss sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. McFarland was reportedly uncomfortable with the request and was eventually told by the former chief of staff Reince Priebus to “forget he even mentioned it.”

“If the president actually said to our former colleague K.T. MacFarland, ‘put an untruthful piece of paper in an official government file which we know is going to be subpoenaed by Mueller,’ that is attempted interference,” Napolitano said.

First of all, apparently, cooler heads told the president this was a really bad idea that was withdrawn. Contemplating putting such a memo into the record isn't the same as actually doing it.

[Philip]

Trump felt he was surrounded by baying wolves intent upon proving he colluded to swing an election his way. And his early months of his cabinet and inner circle were chaotic, leakers everywhere. That Trump turned NY street fighter to defend himself is understandably instinctive, but wrong. But as for the original investigation of collusion with the Russians - that was THE foaming-at-the-mouth impetus that originally drove things. And I don't believe he did - not only because Muller didn't find it, but because there are a huge number of people out there who wanted to take Trump down. And if such proof existed, you can bet someone or some group who had any supposed dirt on him would have quickly forwarded all they knew to the Mueller team. Now, were Trump's team meeting with people they shouldn't have been - sure. They probably merely wanted to know if there was any usable dirt on Hilary or the Democratic Party. Just like Hillary's team paid to find helpful research (for DIRT!) on Trump.

[edwardmurphy]

Abe, the information is easy to find if you sincerely want to find it.

As well, [Barr's] argument goes, so long as presidential interference in an investigation is grounded in the Constitution and is not "corrupt" -- the word in the federal obstruction of justice statute -- it is not prosecutable.

The nearly universal view of law enforcement, however, rejects Barr's narrow view of obstruction and interprets the plain meaning of the federal statute as it was written. Thus, under this view, all corrupt interference or attempted interference with an investigation or judicial proceeding constitutes obstruction. A corrupt purpose is one that seeks personal gain for the obstructer, such as shielding him from the revelation of unpleasant truths.

So, if Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because Trump wanted to be the tallest person in the room or because he had a better director candidate in mind, there is no corrupt purpose. But if he fired Comey to delay or stop the FBI's acquisition of painful truths about Russia, as he told NBC's Lester Holt was his purpose, then whether the truths he wants to hide are about unlawful behavior or not, Trump's purpose is corrupt and his behavior is prosecutable.

As well, if the pre-presidential Trump instructed retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to tell the Russian ambassador that Trump would relax sanctions on Russian banks and oligarchs once in office -- as Flynn told Mueller was the case -- Trump's efforts to hide that truth from FBI investigators constitute obstruction. And, if Trump lied to the public about the communications between his campaign and the Trump Organization and the Russians -- he said there were none -- and he tried to prevent the FBI from learning about the 127 communications, Trump's purpose is corrupt.

Asking Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to put an untruthful document about Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador into a government file that is likely to be subpoenaed and asking White House Counsel Don McGahn to lie to FBI agents are acts of obstruction. They constituted ordering subordinates to commit crimes for a corrupt purpose -- shielding Trump from the revelation of unpleasant truths about his behavior.

We know that Attorney General Barr's own DOJ rejects its boss' narrow view of obstruction because of an indictment it announced just last week. A federal grand jury in Boston indicted a sitting judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts for obstruction of justice. Her crime? She allegedly told the ICE agents in her courtroom to arrest a defendant appearing in front of her that the defendant would be released from her custody in the courthouse lobby.

When sheriff's officers instead released him to the courthouse parking lot, and the defendant escaped, the judge was accused of obstructing justice even though it is legally impossible for her to have committed the underlying crime that ICE was prosecuting -- illegal reentry into the U.S. by a once-deported and undocumented immigrant.

The U.S. is planted thick with laws intended to preserve human freedom by keeping the government honest. When the government breaks its own laws and gets away with it, it undermines the personal liberty of us all.

~ Conservative Republican and longtime FOX News Contributor Judge Andrew Napolitano (who Trump fans now, hilariously, insist is a Democrat)

There's solid evidence of obstruction of justice. Mueller didn't attempt to prosecute because the DOJ rules prevented him from doing so. DOJ policy is that criminal wrongdoing by a sitting President should be dealt with via a political process (impeachment) rather than in the courts.Trump was not exonerated of obstruction. In fact, it's the complete opposite - Mueller reported a ton of evidence that Trump absolutely, definitely, 100% obstructed justice. He did it. Period.

Trump's not likely to be impeached because, as we all know, the Senate Republicans won't convict him. Impeachment would most likely be a political gift, because he'd be able to spin a Senate acquittal as exoneration. I hope that we can all agree that being acquitted because all of your buddies are on the jury isn't the same as being acquitted because you're innocent.

Regarding collusion, here are some direct quotes from the Mueller Report:

RUSSIAN CONTACTS WITH THE CAMPAIGN

The social media campaign and the GRU hacking operations coincided with a series of contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government. The Office investigated whether those contacts reflected or resulted in the Campaign conspiring or coordinating with Russia in its election-interference activities. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

We understood coordination to require an agreement — tacit or express — between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

In other words, the Russians favored Trump as a candidate and Trump happily used information that he knew had been stolen by the Russians to benefit his campaign, while simultaneously insisting that there was no evidence of any Russian hacking - a position he maintained for most of the first half of his presidency, despite the entire American intelligence community saying the exact opposite the whole time.

Mueller can't prove that Trump and the Russians ever managed to actually sit down and hammer out a quid pro quo agreement, only that they repeatedly tried, but were unable to do so. Therefore the Trump Campaign's actions do not reach the level of a conspiracy. So Trump and the Russians simultaneously worked toward a common purpose and played off of each others' actions to achieve that purpose without ever technically working together.

Trump and the Russians had basically the same relationship that political candidates have with friendly super PACS - they're not allowed to coordinate, but there's nothing stopping a candidate from going on television to muse aloud about the kind of assistance he'd like to recieve if anyone was inclined to help out. Kind of like this:



Russia was listening. They attacked Clinton's email that very day, just like Trump hoped they would.

So it's not technically coordination, but it sure seems coordinated...

Who's okay with that?

[PaulSacramento]

Democrats still putting their eggs in that basket eh?

[edwardmurphy]

Democrats still putting their eggs in that basket eh?

I'm not a Democrat but I can tell you that, no, it's not their only basket.

So are you saying that if you were American the contents of the Mueller Report wouldn't be a problem for you?

Or the fact that Mueller reports that there's extremely strong evidence that Trump committed felony obstruction of justice on 10+ occasions?

Or the fact that Barr's summary strongly favored the President's narrative, even though the actual report did not? Is it okay for the US AG to mislead the public for political reasons?

Do you feel that the President is/should be above the law?

[Kurieuo]

People should stop fussing about Mueller's report, and start worrying about Russia helping Trump win the next election.