Mueller investigation

[Jimmy Higgins]

Barr says that there was no coordination between Trump and the Russian govt's hacking or disinformation campaign.

To be clearer, Barr qualified the statement based on Mueller's definition for conspiracy and collusion. This nuanced statement is important as it implies, without saying as much, that yes... the Trump campaign did some shady... if not technically illegal shit.

There are other instances of questionable Russian/Trump interactions. Did Mueller investigate these and exonerate Trump, or not?

Mueller identified and indicted the Russians who hacked email and meddled with the election. Mueller specifically notes, according to Barr, that the investigation was to determine if Trump's Campaign coordinated with those specific people, or those in charge overseeing the actual hacking / meddling.

This kind of reads like Sideshow Bob upset over being charged with Attempt of Murder with Bart Simpson, complaining, 'Do they offer Oscars for Best Attempt at Acting?' We know the Trump Campaign tried to make contacts with Russians... in fact, even having a meeting in Trump Tower. But it appears, especially when investigating the President, the standard of establishing a crime is pretty damn high... so conspiring to collude with people who didn't help doesn't count. So unethical as hell... but not illegal enough to charge a President.

Then Barr used that narrow focus as a basis for not considering obstruction.

You can't obstruct a crime investigation if the person knows there is no crime to investigate. The logic doesn't seem entirely absurd. What seems absurd is people like Flynn, Manafort, Cohen are or have gone to jail... over nothing?!

Which then leads us to another problem. A lot of this hung around Michael Flynn... of which the Acting AG was fired and then FBI director Comey was fired. Flynn is going to prison for crimes committed. Crimes that would not have come to light had Mueller not been appointed. How can that indicate there was no crime covered up? Nixon was considered for obstruction charges for covering up crimes he had no involvement in.

And finally... how in the hell did Michael Flynn help out so much to the Special Prosecutor if there was nothing to hold over Trump?

 

[Elixir]

I expect that this exoneration of Trump by the FBI will boost him enough to get him a second term...

WHAT "exoneration"? The one he is crowing about even as his own toady tells us he is NOT exonerated? Lol!
Nothing has changed - Cheato is still Cheato, still a criminal ("INDIVIDUAL-1"), still cheating, still lying - and those facts are still apparent to anyone paying attention.
Keep this image handy:

View attachment 20677

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I don't care about obstruction nearly as much if there was no collusion and I think it's a bit discretionary for the DOJ as well. However, I find it hard to believe that Roger Stone did not engage in collusion.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't care about obstruction nearly as much if there was no collusion and I think it's a bit discretionary for the DOJ as well. However, I find it hard to believe that Roger Stone did not engage in collusion.

It is possible Stone arrived late to the game. The emails were possibly already hacked and ready for release and the best Stone could get was foreknowledge of the release.

Regarding the other stuff, the campaign could still be guilty of unethical behavior that technically isn't illegal, which would still be in the realm of impeachable if Trump was involved directly, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I want to read this report.

 

[Angry Floof]

Also keep in mind that the Mueller investigation and its scope of Russian interference is only a sliver of the picture. No one I know of on the left has focused only on that one investigation. It's been highly visible and highly agitative to President Crazypants, as well as massively interesting (how much have we all learned about the law and government these past two years?) but that one investigation isn't the extent of it except in right wing minds. There's a whole long list of other shit Trump has done that is still being investigated. It's mainly right wingers who are focused on Russian collusion without regard to anything else.

And as right wing morons demonstrate every single day, including on this board, whatever the limits of their own focus and attention, they think is also the limit of focus and attention by the rest of us. And no matter how much of the rest of the picture we talk about, the right wing mentality will not see it, at least until something rears its head in threat to Trump that can no longer be lumped under Russian collusion in their minds. Everything else we've been looking at and talking about in addition to the Russia investigation will now be triggering the right wing in big ways. While they celebrate what they think is the end of something, a lot of shit is still going on to bite them in the ass later. The shit has not actually made contact with the fan blades just yet.

Frankly, I'm more interested in the shady dealings with Deutsche Bank and a bunch of other stuff involving the whole Trump grifter family. I'm also more interested in exposing the behind the scenes activities of white supremacists around the world. I'm very interested in all the investigations by congress from here on out.

I'm also still very interested in the full Mueller report because there's much more there than the obvious hand waving "victory" message from Barr, but again, it's mainly just the right wing crazysphere that thinks that's the most important thing going on. I'm not feeling at all upset. We knew before the report came out that we are in a very long fight regardless of Mueller's conclusions. Nothing ended this weekend for anyone except right wing gullibots. In fact, I'm glad they're so distracted with feeling victorious right now.

 

[Angry Floof]

Can anyone tell me why Mueller asked for Gates' sentencing to be delayed until May if he was finished? Was that for other investigations? If so, why did Mueller rather than those investigators ask for the delay? What am I missing here?

 

[PyramidHead]

I expect that this exoneration of Trump by the FBI will boost him enough to get him a second term...

WHAT "exoneration"? The one he is crowing about even as his own toady tells us he is NOT exonerated? Lol!
Nothing has changed - Cheato is still Cheato, still a criminal ("INDIVIDUAL-1"), still cheating, still lying - and those facts are still apparent to anyone paying attention.

No: to the public, which has been enduring the incessant calls for Trump's indictment/arrest/execution by Russia-obsessed liberals, anything less than that is exoneration. The legal definition doesn't matter. If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached, then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

 

[Angry Floof]

I expect that this exoneration of Trump by the FBI will boost him enough to get him a second term...

WHAT "exoneration"? The one he is crowing about even as his own toady tells us he is NOT exonerated? Lol!
Nothing has changed - Cheato is still Cheato, still a criminal ("INDIVIDUAL-1"), still cheating, still lying - and those facts are still apparent to anyone paying attention.

No: to the public, which has been enduring the incessant calls for Trump's indictment/arrest/execution by Russia-obsessed liberals, anything less than that is exoneration. The legal definition doesn't matter. If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached, then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

The mandate was to investigate Russian interference, and it found Russian interference. That is not a giant waste of time, and much related to that is ongoing.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I expect that this exoneration of Trump by the FBI will boost him enough to get him a second term...

WHAT "exoneration"? The one he is crowing about even as his own toady tells us he is NOT exonerated? Lol!
Nothing has changed - Cheato is still Cheato, still a criminal ("INDIVIDUAL-1"), still cheating, still lying - and those facts are still apparent to anyone paying attention.

No: to the public, which has been enduring the incessant calls for Trump's indictment/arrest/execution by Russia-obsessed liberals, anything less than that is exoneration.

They met with Russians in Trump Tower, just not the right ones!

The legal definition doesn't matter.

True... until it does. This is kind of like the 2018 mid-terms where at 9 or 10 PM it looked like Trump and the GOP had a good night... until the following morning, turns out they didn't.

If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached, then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

One minor thing... and some people keep needing to be reminded this... Trump's Justice Department ordered the investigation. It wasn't the Democrat Party, it wasn't even a Democrat who ordered or ran the investigation.

 

[PyramidHead]

No: to the public, which has been enduring the incessant calls for Trump's indictment/arrest/execution by Russia-obsessed liberals, anything less than that is exoneration. The legal definition doesn't matter. If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached, then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

The mandate was to investigate Russian interference, and it found Russian interference. That is not a giant waste of time, and much related to that is ongoing.

Didn't the entire intelligence community conclude that there was Russian interference like 2 years ago, why is this newsworthy

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No: to the public, which has been enduring the incessant calls for Trump's indictment/arrest/execution by Russia-obsessed liberals, anything less than that is exoneration. The legal definition doesn't matter. If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached, then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

The mandate was to investigate Russian interference, and it found Russian interference. That is not a giant waste of time, and much related to that is ongoing.

Didn't the entire intelligence community conclude that there was Russian interference like 2 years ago, why is this newsworthy

You mean other than the indictments on the specific people considered guilty of the hacking?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Although I have never been a supporter, Trump repeatedly makes me laugh as he exposes United States politics for what it is. Whether he does so deliberately or accidentally (and I think he has done both) he makes us see what an ugly sewer our government it just by not playing according to the accepted rules.

And this make me laugh. Seeing Rachel Maddow hold back tears was pretty priceless.

But seriously folks, there is something about this that is serious. It took Hillary 24 hours to come up with this conspiracy theory. It took about two years of investigation and obsesing over Russia to end it. There are still die-hards holding on to this conspiracy theory, just as there are still die-hards obsessing over Obama's Birth Certificate. That this was pushed forward so hard for so long means someone is going to have to pay the price for it. And I think that it will be Hillary. The biggest problem the elite have with Trump is that he isn't the comforable safe bloody-handed murderous war-hawk we were supposed to choose. He actually talks to opponents. He bumbles it, but he does talk to them.

This investigation was supposed to accomplish the following against Trump:
1. Undermine his legitimacy before he even takes office.
2. Accuse him of what Hillary actually did: collude with Russians and Ukrainians to effect the outcome of the election
3. Paralyze Trump on his foreign policy desires to scale back the Empire
4. Give aid and comfort to hurting progressives and radicalize them further undermining our political system
5. Polarize the electorate over the false choice of Trump’s guilt.
6. Paralyze the Dept. of Justice and Congress so that they would not uncover the massive corruption in the intelligence agencies in the U.S. and the U.K.
7. Isolate Trump and take away every ally or potential ally he could have by turning them against him through prosecutor overreach.

Hillary should have been thrown to the wolves after she failed. When you fail the people she failed and cost them the money she cost them, you lose more than just your funding. What this tells you is that she has so much dirt on everyone involved, once this thing started everyone went along with it lest she burn them down as well. RussiaGate was never a sustainable narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there.

It’s clear that RussiaGate is a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall on their sword at this point? Comey? No. McCabe? No. There is only one answer, and Obama’s people are still in place to protect him. If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb. Because the bigger project, the erection of a transnational superstate, is bigger than any one person. Hillary is expendable. Lies are expensive to maintain. The truth is cheap to defend. Think of the billions in opportunity costs associated with this. Once the costs rise above the benefits, change happens fast. If there is any hope of salvaging the center of this country for the Democrats, the ones that voted against Hillary in 2016, then there is no reason anymore not to indict Hillary as the architect of RussiaGate. We all know it’s the truth. So, the cheapest way out of this mess for them is to give the MAGApedes what they want, Hillary.

 

[PyramidHead]

No: to the public, which has been enduring the incessant calls for Trump's indictment/arrest/execution by Russia-obsessed liberals, anything less than that is exoneration.

They met with Russians in Trump Tower, just not the right ones!

The legal definition doesn't matter.

True... until it does. This is kind of like the 2018 mid-terms where at 9 or 10 PM it looked like Trump and the GOP had a good night... until the following morning, turns out they didn't.

If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached, then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

One minor thing... and some people keep needing to be reminded this... Trump's Justice Department ordered the investigation. It wasn't the Democrat Party, it wasn't even a Democrat who ordered or ran the investigation.

:huh: Either way, it's been the focus of a large contingent of Dem voters, to the point where Mueller has been held up as some kind of patriotic hero. My point is that settling for this investigation as the primary arm of the "resistance" against Trump has been a giant pacifier for the Democratic base, and has prevented many of them from learning anything from Clinton's loss in 2016. I mean, it's not like voters have much power anyway and I'm only really exposed to the forum warrior bloc that's posting all the time like me, so maybe there's still hope. I just see this time and time again.

I saw it with George W. Bush, when I joined the chorus of dissenters who were appalled that he would have the gall to go to war with Iraq... without UN approval! And Iraq didn't even do the 9/11! Looking back on those days, I see how ridiculous both of those qualifiers were; UN approval wouldn't have made it right to invade them, and the hijackers being from there wouldn't have either. Bush shouldn't have invaded Iraq or anywhere else, because it was a bloodthirsty thing to do, not because he broke with protocol or took revenge on Arabs from country A instead of B. But to get a pass for killing lots of innocent Arabs, you apparently just have to do it by the book and go after the correct Arabs, which is why a lot of liberals are highly deferential of John McCain's memory even as they "respectfully disagreed" with some of his positions: he followed the rules. This same segment of legalist Democrats joined conservatives in calling for everyone related to WikiLeaks to be drawn and quartered, and they'll no doubt be distracted by the next shiny object that gets assigned a special counsel. /derail

 

[PyramidHead]

Hillary should have been thrown to the wolves after she failed. When you fail the people she failed and cost them the money she cost them, you lose more than just your funding. What this tells you is that she has so much dirt on everyone involved, once this thing started everyone went along with it lest she burn them down as well. RussiaGate was never a sustainable narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there.

Preach it, brotha!

It’s clear that RussiaGate is a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall on their sword at this point? Comey? No. McCabe? No. There is only one answer, and Obama’s people are still in place to protect him. If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb. Because the bigger project, the erection of a transnational superstate

*record scratch*

 

[J842P]

They met with Russians in Trump Tower, just not the right ones!
True... until it does. This is kind of like the 2018 mid-terms where at 9 or 10 PM it looked like Trump and the GOP had a good night... until the following morning, turns out they didn't.

If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached, then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

One minor thing... and some people keep needing to be reminded this... Trump's Justice Department ordered the investigation. It wasn't the Democrat Party, it wasn't even a Democrat who ordered or ran the investigation.

:huh: Either way, it's been the focus of a large contingent of Dem voters, to the point where Mueller has been held up as some kind of patriotic hero. My point is that settling for this investigation as the primary arm of the "resistance" against Trump has been a giant pacifier for the Democratic base, and has prevented many of them from learning anything from Clinton's loss in 2016. I mean, it's not like voters have much power anyway and I'm only really exposed to the forum warrior bloc that's posting all the time like me, so maybe there's still hope. I just see this time and time again.

I saw it with George W. Bush, when I joined the chorus of dissenters who were appalled that he would have the gall to go to war with Iraq... without UN approval! And Iraq didn't even do the 9/11! Looking back on those days, I see how ridiculous both of those qualifiers were; UN approval wouldn't have made it right to invade them, and the hijackers being from there wouldn't have either. Bush shouldn't have invaded Iraq or anywhere else, because it was a bloodthirsty thing to do, not because he broke with protocol or took revenge on Arabs from country A instead of B. But to get a pass for killing lots of innocent Arabs, you apparently just have to do it by the book and go after the correct Arabs, which is why a lot of liberals are highly deferential of John McCain's memory even as they "respectfully disagreed" with some of his positions: he followed the rules. This same segment of legalist Democrats joined conservatives in calling for everyone related to WikiLeaks to be drawn and quartered, and they'll no doubt be distracted by the next shiny object that gets assigned a special counsel. /derail

Yeah. The funny thing is Trump actually verbalizes things like "we should invade them and take their oil!". And the pearl-clutchers all clutch their pearls, as if the things Trump talks about (like torturing) haven't been things that they've either supported via their own candidate, or failed to criticize when it was actually done.

To this day, I believe Trump is the only person I remember who said, on national TV, right to Jeb Bush: "Your brother lied to get us to go to war in Iraq."

And now, the establishment props up scum like Ari Fliescher as if they have something to contribute to the public discussion.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

So you don't agree with that point? That's okay. This isn't a thread about Brexit, so we shouldn't talk about the international elites, only the national elites.

 

[Angry Floof]

No: to the public, which has been enduring the incessant calls for Trump's indictment/arrest/execution by Russia-obsessed liberals, anything less than that is exoneration. The legal definition doesn't matter. If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached, then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

The mandate was to investigate Russian interference, and it found Russian interference. That is not a giant waste of time, and much related to that is ongoing.

Didn't the entire intelligence community conclude that there was Russian interference like 2 years ago, why is this newsworthy

It's newsworthy because the President of the United States exhibited, publicly, numerous times that he supported Russian interests over our own, and that he attempted several times to obstruct the process of investigating that.

On another note, I'm still wondering why Mueller asked for a delay in Gates' sentencing until May if he was done investigating. Does anyone know more about that?

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

No: to the public, which has been enduring the incessant calls for Trump's indictment/arrest/execution by Russia-obsessed liberals, anything less than that is exoneration. The legal definition doesn't matter.

I'm sure that helps idiot deplorables, but of course has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world.

If, at the end of the day, Trump gets to continue being President while not being in jail or impeached

You evidently don't understand what any of that entails. I think what you meant to assert is if Trump isn't removed from office...

...then the whole thing was a giant waste of time and misplaced political fervor.

Which is false. While we certainly want him removed from office for his crimes, that is a different matter than whether or not he ever would be forcibly removed. Unlike the right, we on the left are capable of multi-tasking and thinking beyond binary propositions. It is both a strength and a curse.

 

[PyramidHead]

So you don't agree with that point? That's okay. This isn't a thread about Brexit, so we shouldn't talk about the international elites, only the national elites.

I don't see the relevance to the Russia thing. I'm against the EU because I'm a socialist, not because the EU is socialist, so we probably would have different takes on Brexit anyway.

Unlike the right, we on the left are capable of multi-tasking and thinking beyond binary propositions. It is both a strength and a curse.

lol we on the left. I guess in American terms that's accurate, but at best liberal Democrats are the left wing of the right wing of international politics. The actual (anticapitalist) left remains uninterested in removing Trump from office, because we know it wouldn't solve anything.

 

[PyramidHead]

Didn't the entire intelligence community conclude that there was Russian interference like 2 years ago, why is this newsworthy

It's newsworthy because the President of the United States exhibited, publicly, numerous times that he supported Russian interests over our own, and that he attempted several times to obstruct the process of investigating that.

Every president does that every term with Israel anyway, but that's another story. Trump doesn't have any real policy commitments, he just likes powerful men who stoke his ego. He has favorable business dealings with Russia and wants to continue doing so, and that's probably all there is to why he likes them so much.