Donald Trump

[Papsmear]

Thanks cashto, I appreciate you taking the time to provide a summary of the Special Council's report.
I highly doubt Congress will push to impeach Trump unless they can guarantee a conviction, so that probably won't happen.

[zombywoof]

The quote I was going off of wasn't "I can prove it's a crime but I can't indict" it was literally "It's reasonable to conclude that something happened here which could very well have been extralegal but I can't prove it because I don't have the right evidence for it." I'm curious now how YOU read it.

[Broodwich]

i think he stated it pretty clearly

[zombywoof]

https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1119331293467152384

[cashto]

QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Apr 19 2019, 12:22 PM) The quote I was going off of wasn't "I can prove it's a crime but I can't indict" it was literally "It's reasonable to conclude that something happened here which could very well have been extralegal but I can't prove it because I don't have the right evidence for it." I'm curious now how YOU read it.

Not sure what part of the report you are referring to.

With respect to the first volume of the report (regarding conspiracy/coordination), there definitely is a section (on page ten) that says that although he was able to gather a lot of evidence, obviously there was evidence that may have been destroyed, hidden, or protected due to Fifth Amendment reasons and so it's entirely possible new information might come up in the future. Which is something, of course, that applies to EVERY investigation, so I regard it as a sort of pro forma statement, not an invitation for Congress to go dig further.

I think the facts of the case are pretty clear at this point. There was a Trump Tower meeting where agents of the Russian government offered to share stolen emails with the Trump campaign. That's completely uncontroversial at this point. What is less controversial is the interpretation of these facts. While this may fit the everyday definition of "coordination' or "collusion", it doesn't meet the legal, criminal definition -- according to Mueller anyways.

I imagine if the Trump campaign had taken a more active role in the leaking of the emails -- if they had directly hired hackers, or ordered or directed the Russians to start hacking, or helped materially with the actual hacking -- then that is the sort of situation that conspiracy charges are intended for. Trump's "I hope you find the emails" falls short as a direct command as at that point the hacking had already been done. But as passive recipients of already-hacked information, Mueller felt there was no charge there, EXCEPT perhaps as a campaign finance violation, and even there he felt it would be difficult to prove the value of the contribution exceeded the limits for a felony, as well as the "willfulness" elements of the statute.

So, I'm fine with Mueller's conclusion here. No crime was committed. Still, a totally shady thing to do.

Now with respect to the second volume of the report (regarding obstruction), there is no place that I can see where Mueller says he doesn't have enough evidence to bring a case. Rather, on page 1, he explicitly states that no matter how much evidence he has or doesn't have, he would not be making a prosecution recommendation (other than to exonerate, if that were possible from the evidence) due to the OLC guidelines.

Now, on page 157 there is a sentence that starts out, "In this investigation, the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference". And then goes on to speak about the "corrupt intent" element of the obstruction statute. I think this is frequently being misread as saying, "since Trump didn't commit any crime, he didn't have anything to cover up, so it's hard to prove corrupt intent". But if you read it together with the immediately preceding paragraph, you'll see that Mueller is making the exact opposite point: "[o]bstruction of justice can be motivated by a desire to protect non-criminal personal interests, to protect against investigations where underlying criminal liability falls into a gray area, or to avoid personal embarrassment. The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong".

Basically, volume 2 is a recitation of the facts of ten different episodes which each could be deserving of an obstruction charge considered individually, let alone all together. Then he follows that up by about a 40-page smackdown of the presidential counsel's arguments that the president has the right to hire and fire as he pleases, the obstruction statute doesn't cover such actions and even if it did Congress has no right to interfere. I think it's pretty clear that Mueller doesn't think there are any "difficult issues of fact or law", to use Barr's phrase, on the topic of obstruction -- that literally the only reason why Trump is not awaiting trial right now is that the DOJ cannot indict the president, only Congress can.

[ryujin]

I find it interesting neither of you mentioned the fact that a lot of it is redacted because there are ongoing investigations. 2 out of 14 people being charged have been publicly announced. SDNY is taking a lot of this further than we see right now.

Cash, I agree with most of your assessment, with the exception of Barr doing his job correctly. He is not the defense attorney of the president, but the whole press conference timing, and his repeated claims of no collusion/no obstruction show that he is a partisan hack.

[cashto]

QUOTE (Ryujin @ Apr 19 2019, 06:33 PM) Cash, I agree with most of your assessment, with the exception of Barr doing his job correctly. He is not the defense attorney of the president, but the whole press conference timing, and his repeated claims of no collusion/no obstruction show that he is a partisan hack.

So, my feelings on Barr are pretty mixed.

Despite the popular demand, I think it was proper for him not to release the Mueller report publicly as soon as he got it. I think it was proper for him to redact it. I think the reasons he gave for redacting it were proper. I think the amount of redacted material is actually quite minimal. I don't see any evidence that he redacted any material on the basis of it being embarrassing to the president or his case. There is plenty there that he could have redacted if he so chose. I think he was up front with his intentions the whole time and he did what he said he was going to do, and it was all done in a timely manner. I think it was also for him to initially publish a summary or synopsis of the report while that work was being done.

But I also feel page 3 of his summary -- regarding the second volume of the report regarding obstruction -- was very weaselly worded. I can't say that any single sentence was an outright lie. But he completely omitted the reason why Mueller declined prosecution and tried to make it sound like it had nothing to do with the OLC memo, that it was fundamentally a marginal case, and it was his proper role to "break the tie" and issue a final judgment.

A more accurate summary would been more like, "The Special Counsel declined to issue a prosecution recommendation in accordance with the OLC opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted. We too agree with this principle. But even apart from this, Rod Rosentein and I have reviewed the report and have made the determination that the facts described in the Mueller report do not justify bringing a charge of obstruction. We will shortly publish the Mueller report so that the American people and Congress can come to the same conclusion".

I won't deny that he is trying to protect the Trump, and that he is a partisan hack. And I'm not terribly surprised at this, to be honest. Actually given the people that surround the president, I'm more surprised that he hasn't been more evasive and more dishonest, when that would have been very easy to do.

[Broodwich]

I feel like Barr is trying to walk the line between being honest and staying employed. He might just be another guy trying to make sure the presidency doesn't go completely off the rails, and even though his synopsis of the report is definitely what the president wants to hear (ie propaganda), he also isn't hiding the truth from the rest of the world. That is a lot more than you can say about the rest of the administration.

What congress decides to do in this case is another story, but he is giving them all the material they need if they want to actually do something with it. I feel like impeachment wouldn't ever go forward, and would probably be damaging to Democrats to try. The whole public frenzy with the report is about collusion, not obstruction, which isn't nearly as big. It's like promising an apple pie then only getting a bite, you're still getting something but you're not nearly as excited about it. If public opinion is kinda meh, Dems would lose votes in the next election by proceeding

[Weedman]

The Russians are loving this.

Putin probably has 15 minutes set aside every day to watch 'the mericans'

[Bunnywabbit]

Also, three words that should stifle any fantasizing about impeachment:
'President Mike Pence.'