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The Robert Mueller Investigation


Hugo Stiglitz

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47 minutes ago, Jhawk said:

Oh so now you don't want justice equally applied?

It seems Trump's lawyers were right to have him respond only in writing which he should thank his lucky stars for. Since there was no collusion (a point oddly downplayed in this article), the only thing Mueller's team could get Trump on would be either obstruction of justice (despite the lack of an actual crime being investigated) or perjury.

Obstruction being a hard reach, given the President's Constitutional authority to hire and fire Executive branch employees, despite Mueller's team's assertions discussed here, the team opted to make  innuendos but then not attempt to make a definitive case.  As far as that goes, since when does innocence need to be proven?

By limiting his responses and letting his lawyers vet them before sending them to Mueller, they avoided the perjury trap and didn't let Mueller twist the meaning of some response by Trump to indicate intent to obstruct. This is a lesson to anyone who is ever compelled to testify in the cross hairs of some prosecutor or even just interviewed by the authorities.

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2 minutes ago, zork said:

Mueller confirms that in many cases Trump did hire the best people.  Those who knew the law or protocols better than him so they did not do as he asked.

Better than Trump does not equal the best people.  Trump is about the lowest bar you can find. 

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1 minute ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

It seems Trump's lawyers were right to have him respond only in writing which he should thank his lucky stars for. Since there was no collusion (a point oddly downplayed in this article), the only thing Mueller's team could get Trump on would be either obstruction of justice (despite the lack of an actual crime being investigated) or perjury.

Obstruction being a hard reach, given the President's Constitutional authority to hire and fire Executive branch employees, despite Mueller's team's assertions discussed here, the team opted to make  innuendos but then not attempt to make a definitive case.  As far as that goes, since when does innocence need to be proven?

By limiting his responses and letting his lawyers vet them before sending them to Mueller, they avoided the perjury trap and didn't let Mueller twist the meaning of some response by Trump to indicate intent to obstruct. This is a lesson to anyone who is ever compelled to testify in the cross hairs of some prosecutor or even just interviewed by the authorities.

Yeah, that lesson is to coordinate with a 3rd party on the timing and release of stolen documents.

Edited by kevwun
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1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

Alphabetical listing.  One before Cohen.  Two between Cohen and Craig. The rest later in the alphabet. 

Blavatnik still in play.  Keep the faith. 

I think Muller filed that under "Illegal Campaign Contribution Scheme."  you're welcome.

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Just now, Biff Tannen said:

How is this ok?  A crime is a crime, whether you know it or not.  It's the fucking Costanza defense.

Maybe the intent standard is different for PotUS or spouses of former PotUS'?  A deference to the office if you will.

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16 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

oh.

This is immaterial.  Surly Trumpkins have already completed several victory laps.  No collusion.  Everyone from Icono to Anastasis have declared there is nothing more to see, and only Hugo and the deluded think otherwise.

Sarcasm aside, impeachment is about all things political, and not criminal, so it will depend on the poll numbers and how the public thinks about this new info.  I think most folks already think Trump lying scum, so the needle  will not move so much, and so impeachment will not be formally undertaken.   There will be a shit ton of oversight hearings to dig up dirt and get clarifications while they await the 14 investigations and any indictments.   If they get some actual indictments, and poll numbers support impeachment, so be it.    But I think it less likely than more likely.    Unless his kids get indicted by the Sovereign District of New York AG, like I keep saying.  Trump's efforts to obstruct will make the Mueller report look quaint. .   

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Yeah, I don't understand the discussion re: Jr's knowledge and how that gets him off the hook.  The intent element goes to your intent to actually do the thing that is illegal. Not to the illegality itself. I suppose some offenses are defined to require knowledge of the illegality but those are generally rare.

Someone got the elements of the particular conspiracy charge at issue?

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2 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

This is immaterial.  Surly Trumpkins have already completed several victory laps.  No collusion.  Everyone from Icono to Anastasis have declared there is nothing more to see, and only Hugo and the deluded think otherwise.

Sarcasm aside, impeachment is about all things political, and not criminal, so it will depend on the poll numbers and how the public thinks about this new info.  I think most folks already think Trump lying scum, so the needle  will not move so much, and so impeachment will not be formally undertaken.   There will be a shit ton of oversight hearings to dig up dirt and get clarifications while they await the 14 investigations and any indictments.   If they get some actual indictments, and poll numbers support impeachment, so be it.    But I think it less likely than more likely.    Unless his kids get indicted by the Sovereign District of New York AG, like I keep saying.  Trump's efforts to obstruct will make the Mueller report look quaint. .   

 

I agree with your take.  While impeachment is about all things political, arguably this Mueller report is crafted in a way that confronts that reality.  This report is kicking a boulder down the hill, making it politically untenable for Trump to try to stop its accelerating roll by standing in the path of 14 ongoing Mueller related investigations.  

 

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The collusion section has some glaring omissions regarding the FBI and Fusion GPS
 

Quote


via [link=(SeanDavis)]http://twitter.com/seanmdav[/link] twitter

- For example, the Papadopoulos/Downer meeting, which we're told sparked the *ENTIRE* 2016 anti-Trump investigation, is barely a footnote.

-In the Carter Page section, the report never discloses that Page previously served as an FBI informant in 2013 and helped DOJ snag several unregistered Russian foreign agents. Instead, the language in the report makes it sound like he was a co-conspirator.

-The section on contacts between Roger Stone/Michael Caputo and Henry Oknyansky aka Henry Greenberg also failed to disclose that federal court documents indicate Oknyansky was an FBI informant using his FBI work to justify his continued stay in the U.S.

-The Mueller report section on the Trump Tower meeting somehow never mentions that the Russian lawyer who requested the June 9 meeting was at that very moment a top client of the Clinton campaign contractor which fed false information on Carter Page to the FBI and DOJ.

-The Mueller report discusses Natalia Veselnitskaya's work against Bill Browder and the Magnitsky Act, yet somehow forgets to note that her PR partner in the matter--Fusion GPS--was working for Hillary Clinton and met with her before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

-The report also notes Veselnitskaya's work for Prevezon, which was charged with money laundering and sanctions violations, yet fails to note that Clinton campaign contractor Fusion GPS was working for her and Prevezon on that issue. How does a collusion investigation miss that?

How do you report on this topic of an investigation as exhaustively as this was written up and completely forget to include these facts that have already been established via other investigative outlets?

Regardless of what side of the aisle you are on, this is blatantly unacceptable.

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49 minutes ago, zork said:

CNN is basically saying Congress should move forward because the 10 items are enough to show intent woven together even if the advisors didn't follow through with the requests by the PotUS.  Your play now, Pelosi.

Robert Mueller is saying Congress should do its job. This is a road map. 

The fun is just starting thanks to this report.

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Just now downloaded it as I was on a plane. 

Seems to me that the entire reason mueller didn’t make a recommendation on obstruction is because of the DOJ policy of not indicting a sitting president.

Am I reading that correctly and doesn’t that completely contradict what Barr said in his original letter? Or am I missing something?

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3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Robert Mueller is saying Congress should do its job. This is a road map. 

The fun is just starting thanks to this report.

Yep.  And that's exactly what they'll do ... just so long as it doesn't hurt them politically.  Fucking whores, the lot of them.

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This seems pretty fucking damning:

 
 
 
Quote

 

While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges. Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any Campaign official as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal. And our evidence about the June 9, 2016 meeting [at Trump Tower between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer] and WikiLeaks's releases of hacked materials was not sufficient to charge a criminal campaign-finance violation. Further, the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign conspired with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.

[T]he investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters. Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference. The Office charged some of those lies as violations of the federal false statements statute. …

The Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated—including some associated with the Trump Campaign—deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records. In such cases, the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts. Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps, the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/mueller-report-release-barr-trump/587176/

Edited by bolverk
for emphasis
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On npr they had Liz Harrington, RNC spokesperson. Her take was exactly what you’d expect...Clinton was the colluder, Obama started it as a political weapon, the report fully exonerates Trump. Even the mostly neutral hosts had an awkward pause trying to process it.

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8 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Just now downloaded it as I was on a plane. 

Seems to me that the entire reason mueller didn’t make a recommendation on obstruction is because of the DOJ policy of not indicting a sitting president.

Am I reading that correctly and doesn’t that completely contradict what Barr said in his original letter? Or am I missing something?

correct.

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