The Mueller Investigation.

[Proteus_MST]

Now, that it turns out that the Mueller report is far from an exoneration of Trump regarding collusion and, especially, obstruction of justice,
Devin Nunes (you remember, the guy who was chairman of the republican dominated intel commitee of the house last year), tells his followers via Twitter, that they should not read the Mueller report, but rather should read the exoneration of Trump that the republicans in the Intel commitee fabricated last year
(funny enough it is doubtful that Nunes has read a meaningful number of passages of the report himself )


https://hillreporter.com/devin-nunes...py-novel-31949

Reminds me of the thing that Trump told his followers some months ago:
Don't believe what you hear or see, only believe what I tell you


The republican cult of Trump

[Dinner]

It is telling they are afraid to have people read the actual report.

[Dauphin]

I don’t think Trump voters or potential voters are inclined to read it anyway.

Too much hype by the Left before has resulted in a huge anti-climax of no smoking gun - which has neutered the outcome. Trump was so incompetent he couldn’t even obstruct justice competently enough to be guilty of it. Big whoop.

[-Jrabbit]

FTFY: I don't think Trump voters are inclined to read.

[BeBMan]

The Bilbo-Report, subtitled "There and Back Again", found no evidence of collusion between the Saruman campaign and the Dark Lord. Only when the DemEnts besieged Saruman Tower the full extent of the Sauron-Saruman conspiracy was revealed...

Just sayin'

[Elok]

Going after someone for obstruction of justice in an investigation that ultimately turned up bupkus is kind of like arresting someone just for resisting arrest. Sure, the whole thing was overhyped bull**** from the word go, he obstructed nothing meaningful, and it's therefore little different from Clinton lying about getting sucked off by an intern, but he should have--

No. Nothing but clear and unequivocal evidence of treason would have had a prayer of getting GOP senators to turn on Trump, and we were never going to get that. It's all been a waste of time, nobody without partisan skin in the game was paying attention past the first five minutes, and it doesn't make sense to keep doubling down on this losing bet, even from a cynical political-capital perspective. Move. On.

(yes, Trump is still an immoral jackass; that makes it all the more damning that a year and change of investigation found nothing worse than paying off his mistress with the wrong money)

[Proteus_MST]

Going after someone for obstruction of justice in an investigation that ultimately turned up bupkus is kind of like arresting someone just for resisting arrest. Sure, the whole thing was overhyped bull**** from the word go, he obstructed nothing meaningful, and it's therefore little different from Clinton lying about getting sucked off by an intern, but he should have--

Considering that Mike Pence would become PotUS in case of an Impeachment, it surely is for the better if no impeachment takes place

Still I would rank "trying to abuse your office for obstructing justice and only being stopped by not complying subordinates" to be a much more serious offence than just lying to some police officers or judges.

No. Nothing but clear and unequivocal evidence of treason would have had a prayer of getting GOP senators to turn on Trump...

Not even that, would have made most GOP senators to turn on Trump, IMHO

[Elok]

Every analogy breaks down somewhere, of course. But I wasn't comparing it to lying. You ever hear of those cases when the cops hassle the hell out of some guy for no good reason, and he makes enough of a ruckus that they can charge him anyway because he resisted an arrest that never should have happened in the first place? That was what I was thinking of. You've got the competing perverse-incentive-creating precedents of, one the one hand, encouraging disrespect of the law by letting it go, and on the other, encouraging abuse of power by making it easy for law enforcement to secure a conviction for virtually anyone just by being dicks and trusting the suspect to have limited patience. The latter worries me more. Again, this is far from an exact parallel, but Trump being a ****head does not justify using the law for fishing trips*. It now appears that he had no need to obstruct justice because he wasn't actually criminally culpable of anything; he was only being ornery because he's too dumb to do anything but act up when he thinks people are disrespecting him. Okay. Let's move on. Everyone agrees he's violating the emoluments clause, right? The GOP won't play ball on that either, but at least that's clear, comprehensible, and real. Big step up.

*I've had a couple of fairly well-informed people tell me that it doesn't necessarily mean all that much when the FBI gets someone to turn for them; basically they're trained to methodically ask endless questions until they catch you in some kind of contradiction, large or small. Once they've got that, they've got you over a barrel for lying to the feds, and you have no choice but to play along or face jail time. This is, to put it mildly, kind of scary.

[Lorizael]

I think where the analogy breaks down here is that Mueller wasn't hassling Trump needlessly. Trump got on national television and said, "Yeah I fired Comey because of the Russia thing." From the get go, there was considerable evidence that Trump and his campaign had dealings with the Russians they knew were shady. And Trump actively attempted to interfere with the investigation into his shady dealings. Mueller didn't charge or indict Trump because he specifically took the stance that a sitting president can't get a fair trial, but the report nevertheless lays out a list of clearly unethical, potentially criminal acts carried out by Trump and the campaign, and mentions that oh by the way of course Congress can impeach him. Within the framework Mueller established for the report, it's as damning as it could be.

[Elok]

I never found any of it all that plausible.

Trump went after Comey because his stock response to any perceived sign of disrespect or disloyalty (or any kind of failure whatever) is to demand heads. This administration has had a phenomenal turnover rate. The fact that he fired someone who hurt his feelings does not indicate any cause for deeper suspicion by itself. As for the Russians, they were saying "hey, we have dirt on Hillary," and Team Trump said "oh goody, let's hear it." I would expect Hillary to do much the same, only with vastly more subtlety because she is not a hamfisted orangutan, were she put in a similar position. Probably legally dubious, and morally revolting, but not a sign of treasonous intent or collusion with Kremlin agents--if it were, wouldn't they (the Russians) maybe try to maybe disguise it as something else? Even street-corner drug dealers know to use euphemisms in written communication. Trained government spooks should at least be able to set up a non-threatening front organization when attempting to foment treason. Nor would even Trump's associates be silly enough to leave electronic documentation for meetings with Russian agents describing the purpose and outcome of their communications with spies.

And, as I've said before, it made no sense from Putin's perspective. He didn't need Trump's cooperation to leak the e-mails, and he would have to be quite stupid to trust Trump to keep his end of any bargain, or even to keep the dealings a secret. Trump was already vastly preferable to Hillary, and he's already shown himself to be astonishingly easy to manipulate--simple diplomatic fellatio suffices to get what you want from the man. Also it started with a bizarre and still unsubstantiated story about paid bedwetting, nobody has yet explained how the Russians could have "hacked" the election in a way Americans couldn't have done more effectively if it were really that frickin' easy ... I thought the whole story failed Occam's razor on a number of levels.

We already knew Trump was unethical; we have decades of documentation for his lack of ethics in essentially every sphere of his life to date. Everything he does or touches is unethical, and everyone knows it. He got elected anyway, and he's not going to be dislodged by this kind of brute-force attack.

[Elok]

I mean, I can get why it appeals to people, but big sexy secret conspiracies aren't that common IRL, and Trump is not the kind of man who can pull one off. I am still surprised that he has not been caught inadvertently tweeting state secrets. He is temperamentally the worst man possible for such a job. Or, yes, most any other job, except "social media influencer," which is regularly done by spoiled teenage girls.

[pchang]

It is not a conspiracy theory.

The Federal Election Campaign Act states in unambiguous terms that any contribution by a foreign national to the campaign of an American candidate for any election, state or national, is illegal. Likewise, anyone who receives, solicits, or accepts these contributions also violates the statute.

Donald Trump Jr. solicited help from Russians in his response to their offers of dirt on Hillary Clinton. It says so right there in his e-mails. He was directed in this by his father, Donald J. Trump. In addition, Donald Trump very publicly asked for the help of Russia and Wikileaks many times and they obliged.

Mueller was never going to indict or charge Donald Trump. He clearly stated that he was constrained by the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel. The headline being: The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.

[Elok]

If listening to foreigners' gossip constitutes a "contribution," I take it the British spy guy's wild bed-pissing stories are only in the clear because they were not given directly to a Clinton staffer? Or is it the part where he's British, not Russian?

[Jon Miller]

I don't understand why you think that Obstruction with no proven underlying crime is not Obstruction. Just because Trump has a severe case of Affluenza does not mean that he can not commit crimes.

I understand saying 'I don't think that this is enough Obstruction to convict an impeached president and so I don't support impeachment'. But that is very different than saying nothing was there.

JM

[Jon Miller]

If listening to foreigners' gossip constitutes a "contribution," I take it the British spy guy's wild bed-pissing stories are only in the clear because they were not given directly to a Clinton staffer? Or is it the part where he's British, not Russian?

We do give citizens the right to do things that campaigns do not have the right to do. Even after Citizens United. I personally would constraint things even more, but still, the difference is real and useful. It is also a useful distinction between private foreign citizens and a foreign power. Although I understand in Russia that the difference between private citizens (the oligarchs) and the power (Russia) can be minimal at times.

JM

[pchang]

If listening to foreigners' gossip constitutes a "contribution," I take it the British spy guy's wild bed-pissing stories are only in the clear because they were not given directly to a Clinton staffer? Or is it the part where he's British, not Russian?

No. It was the part of it being a CONTRIBUTION. Steele was PAID for his work. The whole point of the law is to prevent unreported influence by foreigners on our elections. Campaign expenditures are reported. If Steele's work were not reported, that would be illegal too.