Mueller investigation

[PyramidHead]

Obama was a bad president.

Compared to WHAT?
Zero scandals, pulled the country out of the worst recession since 1929, got the CA passed despite a rethuglican congress headed up by Myrtle who vowed to oppose the President even if he offered up rethuglicans' own ideas...
Are you complaining about him because he failed to build The Wall, or because he is black, or ... what? Even his worst policies were carry-overs from eight disastrous years of Bushism.

Mostly that part

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Obama was a bad president.

Compared to WHAT?
Zero scandals, pulled the country out of the worst recession since 1929, got the CA passed despite a rethuglican congress headed up by Myrtle who vowed to oppose the President even if he offered up rethuglicans' own ideas...
Are you complaining about him because he failed to build The Wall, or because he is black, or ... what? Even his worst policies were carry-overs from eight disastrous years of Bushism.

Mostly that part

Your statement is ridiculous as it is like a college Physics test designed for almost everyone to fail... and then you conclude, the student who did the best is a failure.

Obama has serious issues, such as the expansion of using drones to target "terrorist" enemies. I use quotes because the State says they are a terrorist, therefore we have to believe them, and there is no way to contradict the claim. Obama continued the national meta-data surveillance of Americans. Unbelievably unconstitutional. Obama didn't hold the W Admin accountable for Iraq, nor did Obama hang any of the bankers or credit ratings agency people.

Obama, did however, help to swerve America's economy back onto the road. He helped to reestablish our ties with our allies which were weakened twice under W. He attempted to improve America's attitude on foreign policy, both by asking more from America, but also more from others. He also expanded access of health care to millions as well as finally trying to make a breakthrough to help deal with the population of illegals in the US. And he did a lot of this amongst the worst partisan obstructionist Congress since before the Civil War.

Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression and was the victim of unbridled partisan hate. He did a pretty darn good job.

 

[PyramidHead]

Mostly that part

Your statement is ridiculous as it is like a college Physics test designed for almost everyone to fail... and then you conclude, the student who did the best is a failure.

Obama has serious issues, such as the expansion of using drones to target "terrorist" enemies. I use quotes because the State says they are a terrorist, therefore we have to believe them, and there is no way to contradict the claim. Obama continued the national meta-data surveillance of Americans. Unbelievably unconstitutional. Obama didn't hold the W Admin accountable for Iraq, nor did Obama hang any of the bankers or credit ratings agency people.

Obama, did however, help to swerve America's economy back onto the road. He helped to reestablish our ties with our allies which were weakened twice under W. He attempted to improve America's attitude on foreign policy, both by asking more from America, but also more from others. He also expanded access of health care to millions as well as finally trying to make a breakthrough to help deal with the population of illegals in the US. And he did a lot of this amongst the worst partisan obstructionist Congress since before the Civil War.

Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression and was the victim of unbridled partisan hate. He did a pretty darn good job.

At best he was a mixed bag, but I still think that his accomplishments are exaggerated in their importance. At a time when a clear and bold progressive vision was called for in response to both the financial crisis and the health care situation, he implemented watered-down reforms that were overly friendly to the rich and excluded from discussion things that were favored by the majority, and this was with a highly supportive Congress before the midterms ushered in the age of obstruction (which I don't deny is something unprecedented and unique--but it doesn't change the fact that Obama was a weak president who didn't make any lasting impact on the social or political environment, despite campaigning on sweeping populist change).

I mean, your analogy of the physics test isn't too far off the mark, except the stakes are higher than getting a passing grade because you know a lot about physics. There is a dimension of what is accepted as standard fare for American policy and how that compares to what I am morally okay with, and that's not something I can be convinced to score on a curve.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Mostly that part

Your statement is ridiculous as it is like a college Physics test designed for almost everyone to fail... and then you conclude, the student who did the best is a failure.

Obama has serious issues, such as the expansion of using drones to target "terrorist" enemies. I use quotes because the State says they are a terrorist, therefore we have to believe them, and there is no way to contradict the claim. Obama continued the national meta-data surveillance of Americans. Unbelievably unconstitutional. Obama didn't hold the W Admin accountable for Iraq, nor did Obama hang any of the bankers or credit ratings agency people.

Obama, did however, help to swerve America's economy back onto the road. He helped to reestablish our ties with our allies which were weakened twice under W. He attempted to improve America's attitude on foreign policy, both by asking more from America, but also more from others. He also expanded access of health care to millions as well as finally trying to make a breakthrough to help deal with the population of illegals in the US. And he did a lot of this amongst the worst partisan obstructionist Congress since before the Civil War.

Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression and was the victim of unbridled partisan hate. He did a pretty darn good job.

At best he was a mixed bag, but I still think that his accomplishments are exaggerated in their importance. At a time when a clear and bold progressive vision was called for in response to both the financial crisis and the health care situation....

A "clear and bold progressive vision" was never called for by the people.

 

[PyramidHead]

At best he was a mixed bag, but I still think that his accomplishments are exaggerated in their importance. At a time when a clear and bold progressive vision was called for in response to both the financial crisis and the health care situation....

A "clear and bold progressive vision" was never called for by the people.

A public option was. A bailout for homeowners and not just banks was.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

At best he was a mixed bag, but I still think that his accomplishments are exaggerated in their importance. At a time when a clear and bold progressive vision was called for in response to both the financial crisis and the health care situation....

A "clear and bold progressive vision" was never called for by the people.

A public option was. A bailout for homeowners and not just banks was.

The 2010 election would say otherwise. Also, I thought this was the derail thread... but I realize this is the Mueller thread, so I'm going to stop this derail.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Obama was a bad president.

Compared to WHAT?
Zero scandals, pulled the country out of the worst recession since 1929, got the CA passed despite a rethuglican congress headed up by Myrtle who vowed to oppose the President even if he offered up rethuglicans' own ideas...
Are you complaining about him because he failed to build The Wall, or because he is black, or ... what? Even his worst policies were carry-overs from eight disastrous years of Bushism.

Obama didn't have zero scandals. While you could say his 8 years of continuous war were a carry-over from Bush, he could have stopped it but didn't.

 

[Gun Nut]

Trump is the least popular, most corrupt, and worst performing president ever... but Obama was not perfect.. therefore.. what, now?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Worse than Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

This thread isn't about Obama. Please take the Dems-are-just-as-bad partisan opinions to a different thread. Thank you.

As far as the actual topic, let's not forget that Roger Stone was recently indicted.

Let's put this into perspective. Aside from being a Nixon associate, Roger Stone has been a leading lobbyist for corporations and foreign governments for decades. He's a dirty, dirty person. Most recently he was a major player in the Trump campaign. [I thought I recalled] charges and claims against him by the Mueller investigation, including indictments, say he was contacting Russian agents and heavily involved as a conduit between Russia and the campaign. Maybe my recollection was wrong? Now it's being claimed by Republicans including the top brass at the DOJ that the Mueller report contains no instances of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. How could that be, given what we know about indictments of Roger Stone? How exactly is that logical?

Yes, please, let's talk about this instead of some derail.

Here's wikipedia on Roger Stone's alleged criminal behaviors:

On March 13, 2018, two sources close to Stone, former Trump aide Sam Nunberg and a person speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged to The Washington Post that Stone had established contact with WikiLeaks owner Julian Assange and that the two had a telephone conversation discussing emails related to the Clinton campaign which had been leaked to WikiLeaks.[28] According to Nunberg, who claimed he spoke to the paper after being asked to do so by Special Counsel Robert Mueller,[28] Stone joked to him that he had taken a trip to London to personally meet with Assange, but declined to do so, had only wanted to have telephone conversations to remain undetected and did not have advance notice of the leaked emails.[28] The other source, who spoke on anonymity, stated that the conversation occurred before it was publicly known that hackers had obtained the emails of Podesta and of the Democratic National Committee, documents that WikiLeaks released in July and October 2016.[28] Stone afterwards denied that he had contacted Assange or had known in advance about the leaked emails.[122]

In May 2018, Stone's social media consultant, Jason Sullivan, was issued grand jury subpoenas from the Mueller investigation.[123][124]

On July 3, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle dismissed a lawsuit brought by political activist group Protect Democracy, alleging that Donald Trump's campaign and Stone conspired with Russia and WikiLeaks to publish hacked Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 presidential election race. The judge found that the suit was brought in the wrong jurisdiction.[125][126] The next week, Stone was identified by two government officials as the anonymous person mentioned in the indictment released by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that charged twelve Russian military intelligence officials with conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections, as somebody the Russian hackers operating the online persona Guccifer 2.0 communicated with, and who the indictment alleged was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign.[127]

On January 25, 2019, in a pre-dawn raid by 29 FBI agents acting on both an arrest warrant and a search warrant[128] at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida home, Stone was arrested on seven criminal charges of an indictment in the Mueller investigation: one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.[129][130][131] The same day, a federal magistrate judge released Stone on a USD$250,000 signature bond and declared that he was not a flight risk.[132][133] Stone said he would fight the charges, which he called politically motivated, and would refuse to “bear false witness" against Trump.[134] He called Robert Mueller a "rogue prosecutor".[135] In the charging document, prosecutors alleged that after the first WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails in July 2016, a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and determine what other damaging information WikiLeaks had regarding the Clinton campaign. Stone thereafter told the Trump campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by WikiLeaks, the indictment alleged. The indictment also alleged that Stone had discussed WikiLeaks releases with multiple senior Trump campaign officials.[136][137]

On February 18, 2019, Stone posted on Instagram a photo of the federal judge overseeing his case, Amy Berman Jackson, with what resembled rifle scope crosshairs next to her head.[138] Later that day, Stone filed an apology with the court. Jackson then imposed a full gag order on Stone, citing her belief that Stone would "pose a danger" to others without the order.[139]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Stone

Let's look at one piece here:

In the charging document, prosecutors alleged that after the first WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC emails in July 2016, a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and determine what other damaging information WikiLeaks had regarding the Clinton campaign. Stone thereafter told the Trump campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by WikiLeaks, the indictment alleged.

So might the Mueller report say that the Trump campaign was colluding with WikiLeaks instead of Russia? That's hard to believe given that Roger Stone and Manafort owned a company together that did lobbying for foreign governments, including Russia. The Russia ties are all over this thing and so one would think they were aware that WikiLeaks was a middle man for Russia. Also, with all the rumors about Guccifer being a Russian agent, Stone would have known he was probably dealing with Russia. And then there's the Trump tower meeting which Don Jr "loved" to get info on Clinton from the Russians...and which Manafort also attended. Now, supposing some of this is circumstantial and Stone just won't crack, he's still a co-conspirator on the WikiLeaks thing, or an accessory after the fact, or a co-conspirator of future illegal activity he was hoping for and so are other campaign members, at least according to indictments.

The point being that any summary report by Mueller is going to include conclusions based on these indictments which means it's not only about obstruction, like the recent talking points and Internet memes by the GOP are trying to claim.

The Republican Party is going to protect Trump and Roger Stone. They are going to continue to frame this as "no one from the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia" but the fine print of the Mueller report will include the traitorous work by Roger Stone working with WikiLeaks...which they will not mention publicly. If they mention it, it will get people thinking about WikiLeaks and then if they have time to think about WikiLeaks they might remember its connection to Russia.

ETA: Let's not forget he also had contact directly with Guccifer 2.0, an alleged Russian agent, which he claims was after the fact but his story isn't reliable and is contradicted by multiple other persons. This is part of why there are obstruction and false statement indictments against him. His knowing intent to work with Russia isn't proven yet because it is harder to prove intent and Stone is making up stories...

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

So might the Mueller report say that the Trump campaign was colluding with WikiLeaks instead of Russia?

Damn, son, I think this is exactly it! Well spotted. Though I think it's even subtler.

Here's a snippet from What to Make of Bill Barr’s Letter in regard to anything Stone might be indicted on:

Barr’s letter is divided into two main sections, corresponding to what the attorney general characterizes as the two components of the report itself. The first concerns “collusion”—as it has come to be called, though the letter never uses that term—between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Barr’s account of Mueller’s finding is not quite the “No Collusion!” that the president has so often crowed. Barr does not indicate affirmatively that Mueller found that collusion didn’t happen. The report, rather, makes clear that Mueller did not find evidence of conspiracy to the rigorous standards of the criminal law.
...
Depending on what’s actually in Mueller’s report, the news could get better still for the president. This section of Barr’s summary, after all, is broadly consistent with the Trump campaign’s having had very little to do with Russia’s conduct. While the summary says that there were “multiple offers from Russia-affiliated individuals,” its language is consistent with no one in the campaign having taken the Russians up on it—beyond the public hints and the untoward meetings and communications that are already part of the public record, that is. Yes, the contacts were suspicious, even quite inappropriate, and some people did commit crimes in lying about them both during the campaign and during the transition. But this section of the summary is consistent with a report that says that Mueller looked everywhere yet couldn’t find any knowing engagement on the part of Trump’s campaign with Russia’s interference in the election.

But Barr’s summary would also be broadly consistent with many other possible reports. It would be consistent with, for example, a report that finds lots of “evidence of collusion” that for one reason or another falls short of criminal conduct. It would be consistent with a report that describes conduct that falls short of the criminal standard by the barest of technicalities. It would be consistent with a report that finds that individuals associated with the president’s campaign were aware of the Russian efforts to interfere in the election, welcomed such assistance, and did not in any way warn the American public about it—but who did not take the requisite step of entering into any criminal agreement to assist the effort either. It would also be consistent with a report that suggested that Trump’s principal engagement with the Russians was not over hacked emails at all, but instead about the tower he was negotiating to build in Moscow even as the campaign was going on.

Our point here is not that that report suggests any of these things or that if one squints at Barr’s summary long enough, it is actually bad for the president. It isn’t. The point, rather, is that there is a huge range of conduct and findings that would be consistent with this top-line summary. How good the outcome is for the president—and to what extent it puts L’Affaire Russe to rest—depends on what the underlying facts look like.

But here's something the piece overlooks. Stone was actually fired by Trump in August of 2015:

As speculation swirled that Trump was considering another presidential run, Stone became an informal adviser to his longtime associate, eventually joining Trump’s official campaign. In a moment of high political drama, Trump fired Stone in August 2015 for being a “publicity seeker,” but Stone continued to support the candidate’s election efforts. In a December 2015 interview with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, which was set up by Stone, Trump called his longtime associate “a good guy … so loyal and so wonderful.”
...
July–October 2016: Stone tries to get his hands on information that would damage the Clinton campaign

One year after officially leaving the Trump team, Stone made several moves that eventually put him on the radar of Robert Mueller.

In the months just before the 2016 presidential election, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails hacked from the account of the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and from the servers of the Democratic National Committee. Stone, who had been trying to find damaging material on Clinton from multiple sources, had sent a series of tweets predicting such a release about the Clinton campaign. “Julian Assange will deliver a devastating expose on Hillary at a time of his choosing,” he wrote in one message. “I stand by my prediction.”

Now go to Barr's letter (from the Lawfare piece; emphasis mine):

Barr describes Mueller’s report as outlining the “Russian effort to influence the election” and documenting “crimes committed by persons associated with the Russian government or in connection with those efforts.” He notes that one of the special counsel’s primary considerations in investigating Russian interference was “whether any Americans—including individuals associated with the Trump campaign—joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a federal crime.”

Mueller’s top-line finding with regard to Russian interference, as Barr quotes it, is that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” In a footnote, Barr specifies that the Mueller report defined “‘coordination’ as an ‘agreement—tacit or express–between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference.’”

It is specific to "members of the Trump Campaign." Stone was not a member of the Trump campaign at the time he nevertheless acted. And, further, as you noted, Stone did not conspire or coordinate "with the Russian government." He conspired/coordinated with Julian Assange, who was conspiring/coordinating with the Russian hackers, NOT the "Russian government."

With that in mind, we see (emphasis mine):

The attorney general then provides a brief, high-level summary of Mueller’s indictment of members of Russian military intelligence: “Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks.” Those activities, says Barr, led the special counsel to bring criminal charges against “a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election.” Barr again emphasizes that “the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspirated or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”

It may or may not be significant that Barr does not here make references to U.S. persons not affiliated with the Trump campaign, as he did when describing the special counsel’s investigation of the IRA’s efforts. Nor does he address the possibility of conspiracy or coordination with the “various intermediaries” to which he previously referred.

More importantly, Barr also leaves unanswered whether Russia’s “multiple offers” of assistance to the Trump campaign refer only to events Mueller has already chronicled (including Joseph Mifsud’s efforts to reach out to George Papadopoulos and attempts by Russian nationals to reach out to Michael Cohen in late 2015), if the report will also include events previously reported in the press (such as the Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign associates including Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort and Russian government associates offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton), or whether it will offer an even more substantial history of efforts on the part of the Russian government to engage and aid the Trump campaign.

Not only was Stone fired (VERY publicly no less, but over behavior that Trump could not possibly have personally cared about all things considered), but he was fired in early August of 2015. That was only two months into the primary bid for Trump.

All of the following is taken from the former Bill Moyers hosted Trump-Putin Timeline that Dan Rather has taken over. The IRA is formed in 2013. All throughout 2013, Trump publicly praises Putin and inexplicably just decides to hold the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. That (imo) is when Putin "activates" Trump (to use spy vernacular) for the express purpose of putting him into the WH. Around this same time, Steve Bannon creates Cambridge Analytica.

Here, however, is the key bit as it relates to Stone and the fact that he was brought on board and then two months into the official campaign was fired (emphasis mine):

Beginning “at least as early as 2014” and continuing through Election Day 2016, Russian government-affiliated actors undertake a wide variety of intelligence-related activities targeting the US voting process,” according to a May 8, 2018 Senate Intelligence Committee Report.

Specifically, in April of 2014:

The 'Translator Project' Begins; Supports Trump; Exploits Divisions Among US Voters

Russia's Internet Research Agency forms a department dubbed the “translator project.” Its purpose is to interfere with the US political system, including the 2016 presidential election, by spreading distrust in 2016 US presidential candidates and the political system in general. It focuses on the US population and conducts operations on social media platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. By July 2016, more than 80 IRA employees are assigned to the translator project, and it is actively supporting Donald Trump.

According to the Washington Post’s later reporting on an independent study for the Senate Intelligence Committee released in December 2018, “[T]he efforts to manipulate Americans grew sharply in 2014 and every year after, as teams of operatives spread their work across more platforms and accounts to target larger swaths of US voters by geography, political interests, race, religion and other factors.”

The report states that all of the messaging “clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump… Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”

Discussing the findings, The New York Times notes, “The voter suppression effort was focused particularly on [Sen. Bernie] Sanders supporters and African-Americans, urging them to shun [Hillary] Clinton in the general election and either vote for [Green Party candidate Jill] Stein or stay home.”

We have numerous confirmations directly from Trump that he had been in personal contact with Putin in late 2013:

Trump Says Putin Contacted Him in November 2013

In a Fox & Friends telephone interview, Trump talks about Vladimir Putin: “When I went to Russia with the Miss Universe pageant, he contacted me and was so nice. And, you know, I mean the Russian people were so fantastic to us. I can say this. They are doing — they’re outsmarting us at many turns.”
...
At the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump says: “You know, I was in Moscow a couple of months ago. I own the Miss Universe pageant and they treated me so great. Putin even sent me a present, a beautiful present.”
...
Speaking at a National Press Club luncheon [May 27, 2014], Trump says, “I own the Miss Universe [pageant]. I was in Russia. I was in Moscow recently. And I spoke indirectly and directly with President Putin who could not have been nicer. And we had a tremendous success.”

June, 2014:

Massive Facebook Data Leak Underway; Cambridge Analytica in Contact With Russians

Seeking to develop psychographic tools that would identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior, Cambridge Analytica hired Russian-American academic Dr. Aleksandr Kogan to harvest personal data from Facebook. To obtain Facebook’s data, Kogan discloses to Facebook only that he is using an “app” that he has developed as a user survey to collect information solely for academic purposes. Steve Bannon, vice president, secretary, and board member of Cambridge Analytica, approves the company’s strategy and expenditures for the project, according to Cambridge Analytica’s former research director, Christopher Wylie.
...
Russians Visit Us

Using false information to obtain US visas, two Russians working for Internet Research Agency’s translator project travel throughout the US to gather intelligence for their interference operations.

July 22, 2014:

Giuliani’s Law Firm Warns Cambridge Analytica

As legal counsel to Cambridge Analytica, a partner in Rudy Giuliani’s law firm—Bracewell & Giuliani—writes a memo to the company’s CEO Alexander Nix, vice-president Steve Bannon and financial backer Rebekah Mercer warning about US laws limiting the involvement of foreign nationals in American elections: “To the extent you are aware of foreign nationals providing services, including polling and marketing, it would appear that unless it is being done through US citizens, or foreign nationals with green cards, the activity would violate the law.”

Summer 2015:

Dutch Intelligence Notifies US Intelligence About Russian Hack of DNC

Dutch AIVD (General Intelligence and Security Service) notifies its American counterparts that Cozy Bear, a hacking group believed to be tied to the Russian government, has hacked into the Democratic National Committee.

And June 2015:

BETWEEN JUNE 2015 AND AUGUST 2017

150 Million Americans See Social Media Content From Russian-Government-Linked Troll Farm
In written testimony provided to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism a year after the election, Facebook’s general counsel says that 29 million people were served content directly from a Russian-government-linked troll farm — the Internet Research Agency — on its platform between June 2015 and August 2017.
...
BETWEEN JUNE 2015 AND NOVEMBER 2016
Russian Twitter Accounts Back Trump

According to a later analysis by The Wall Street Journal, “Russian Twitter accounts posing as Americans began lavishing praise on Mr. Trump and attacking his rivals within weeks after he announced his bid for the presidency in June 2015… In the three months after Mr. Trump announced his presidential candidacy on June 16, 2015, tweets from Russian accounts reviewed by The Journal offered far more praise for the real-estate businessman than criticism — by nearly a 10-to-1 margin. At the same time, the accounts generally were hostile to Mrs. Clinton and the early GOP front-runner, Jeb Bush, by equal or greater margins.”

Much, much more of course, but the point is firmly established that by the time Stone was brought on, ALL of this had been going on in full force and the machinery/actors/logistics were all apparently well-established. Which necessarily means that they had to have been set up and given their orders and prepared the strategy, etc., long before (i.e., 2013).

What was needed then was someone exactly like Stone to be the coordinator, so they bring him on officially and then perhaps reveal the full extent of what's going on and what his role will be, or maybe he's never told the full extent (but I doubt it). That's the point of the indictment.

Regardless, he can't remain part of the campaign in any official capacity no matter how much he knows about who is behind it all. Hence the firing. And since he only coordinated with Julian Assange, there is no direct link to anyone in the Russian government and therefore everything in the Barr letter that carefully avoids such connections is technically (legally) valid.

He just omits all of the relevant parts and, like all lawyers, obfuscates through careful word choice.

I think the code has been cracked! Nicely done.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I just went back over the Barr letter with this in mind and it all tracks perfectly. He's Mueller's Rosetta Stone!

I knew Stone was the key to it all somehow and this just proves it. Motherfucker.

 

[PyramidHead]

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Fun, but accurate. At the end of that movie, all of the clues do indeed point him to finding the hidden treasure that he believed was there all along.

 

[James Brown]

Someone else suggested to me that if the Mueller Report really did fully exonerate Trump as he would have us believe, then Barr would have released the full report immediately. He would pay Amazon to automatically download it to every Kindle in the world.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Well, this explains one missing element:

Special counsel Robert Mueller and members of his team informed Attorney General William Barr three weeks ago that they would not reach a conclusion on whether the president had obstructed justice, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

Both Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was also at the March 5 meeting, were surprised by this, the person said.

"It was unexpected," said the source.

The readout from the meeting partly helps to explain why Barr was able to make a decision on whether the president had obstructed justice just 48 hours after receiving Mueller's final report.

- - - Updated - - -

Someone else suggested to me that if the Mueller Report really did fully exonerate Trump as he would have us believe, then Barr would have released the full report immediately. He would pay Amazon to automatically download it to every Kindle in the world.

Exactly. Which is just further proof that it does not, beyond the fact that Mueller apparently directly stated as such.

 

[Keith&Co.]

three weeks ago that they would not reach a conclusion on whether the president had obstructed justice,

So, when was it that Trump suddenly said that everyone should see the report?

 

[Angry Floof]

It could be that even if some individuals are not of the corrupt and compromised variety, they may not have the teeth left to do anything to stop the onslaught of corruption, including within our judicial system. I've been holding out hope, not on Mueller himself, that's moronic, but on the DOJ and judicial community across the country. Then we see the FBI now broadcasting in neon lights that they are also not the adults in the room. If there are any adults left other than the House, which also may not have the teeth we need if the courts no longer actually serve justice, it seems to be just us, and we are swimming in violence-loving right wing Manchurian candidates operating on animal brain fear aggression blindly supporting whatever and whomever they perceive as dominant, chest puffing powers.

We shall see. Maybe I'm just in a pessimistic mood.

 

[PyramidHead]

It could be that even if some individuals are not of the corrupt and compromised variety, they may not have the teeth left to do anything to stop the onslaught of corruption, including within our judicial system. I've been holding out hope, not on Mueller himself, that's moronic, but on the DOJ and judicial community across the country. Then we see the FBI now broadcasting in neon lights that they are also not the adults in the room. If there are any adults left other than the House, which also may not have the teeth we need if the courts no longer actually serve justice, it seems to be just us, and we are swimming in violence-loving right wing Manchurian candidates operating on animal brain fear aggression blindly supporting whatever and whomever they perceive as dominant, chest puffing powers.

We shall see. Maybe I'm just in a pessimistic mood.

 

[Angry Floof]

Is it funny that our institutions are corrupt and owned by conscienceless oligarchs or something? I mean, good for you that you personally get to spooge over insults to liberals and everything. Is there anything of holding power accountable in the minds of people who think they are above politics? Or do you think liberals are the "power" you should be questioning?