The Robert Mueller Investigation

[yoladu 4066]

13 hours ago, EuroHorn said:

 

damn, he looks bloated.

In this clip he is advocating redaction of the Starr Report before it can be released publically.

If you think this is some sort of gotcha moment, i think you are barking up the wrong tree.  He is requesting today that Congress get to view the unredacted report with the support evidence documents, just as Congress  was privy to with the Starr Report.

The Mueller report for public consumption is a completely different issue. It needs to be redacted.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

I'm kind of curious why Mueller himself wouldn't step forward and say this is bullshit.  It doesn't seem his style to leave it to his minions.

Mueller isn’t exactly the loquacious type. 

And yet, he wrote a 400 page report no one can see. 

[David Dennison 18651]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Right, I'm going by the speculation and how it doesn't gibe with my ordinary experience.

I'm kind of curious why Mueller himself wouldn't step forward and say this is bullshit.  It doesn't seem his style to leave it to his minions.

He knows he'll get a chance to talk to Congress.

[triplehorn 2664]

The above information would be consistent with Mueller's findings at this time of 1) indeterminate of conspiracy with Russian govt and 2) not exonerating of Trump on obstruction.  It goes back to Barr's backwards bullshit non-summary rationale that due to the absence of an underlying crime in Mueller's findings re conspiracy w RU govt, he is absolved of obstruction.  Obstruction of justice is charged every day in our country without an underlying crime and can be motivated by such things as threat of embarrassment, for example.  When it's glaringly obvious that a pathologically narcissistic Trump is beyond fixated on the legitimacy of his election win, you only have to travel the distance of a synapse to see why he would obstruct justice to defend against any appearance of a fraudulent win.

 

 

[TexEx15 17456]

9 minutes ago, Skyline said:

Question for @TwiceHorn or any other legal people: If there was no collusion, does it hurt any case that argues Trump obstructed with the investigation?

Not a lawyer but common sense says no.  Obstruction of justice can relate to simply the investigation itself, which does not have to result in an indictment.  Trying to interfere with an ongoing investigation regardless of the outcome of said investigation would still be obstruction I believe.

[Captainant 27442]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

Right, I'm going by the speculation and how it doesn't gibe with my ordinary experience.

I'm kind of curious why Mueller himself wouldn't step forward and say this is bullshit.  It doesn't seem his style to leave it to his minions.

Because he is still ultimately a DOJ employee - even as special counsel. Meaning, he is still bound by the bureaucratic procedure of DOJ and subject to all the penalties normally in place if you go around that process or violate the law. Unlike trump and his goons, Mueller respects procedural norms and institutions, so he's not likely to go over his boss's head to call him a shill. Because that's not how DOJ is supposed to do things.

At this point, folks that Mueller hired and utilized in investigating and writing these reports are no longer DOJ employees and no longer bound by the same constraints. They can be subpoenaed by congress and there's not a damn thing DOJ can do about it now. I have a feeling that's why Muellers "minions" are doing it instead of him.

[David Dennison 18651]

I'm thinking the report is brutal.

[Anastasis 23393]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

I'm kind of curious why Mueller himself wouldn't step forward and say this is bullshit. 

Mueller and Barr are both trying to thread a needle.  Mueller punted on the obstruction issue. Barr doesn't want to pull a Comey. I think that Mueller should have probably come out with some sort of tight statement to make his intentions known wrt to the disposition of the report. He could have controlled the narrative related to the next steps completely.  He appears to have demurred from doing so. 

[yoladu 4066]

1 hour ago, GW Hayduke said:

And I think this gets us back to what is “sensitive information” and what needs to be redacted from the public. It is probable that Barr’s standard is much different from the SC’s office.

Barr, a political appointee who’s past actions have all been political theatre to minimize damage to POTUS, is undoubtably applying as stringent a standard as possible (infringement on reputational interests of peripheral third parties, etc.).

no kidding.. Is the "sensitive information" Barr is wanting to redact "sensitive" because it makes the President look like a bad actor?

This is why an unredacted version needs to be seen by the proper people with proper security clearance beyond the walls of the Justice Department.

Edited April 4, 2019 by yoladu

[Captainant 27442]

Just now, Anastasis said:

Mueller and Barr are both trying to thread a needle.  Mueller punted on the obstruction issue. Barr doesn't want to pull a Comey. I think that Mueller should have probably come out with some sort of tight statement to make his intentions known wrt to the disposition of the report. He could have controlled the narrative related to the next steps completely.  He appears to have demurred from doing so. 

So, you're saying his team should have written carefully crafted summaries of key findings from the report? 🤔🤔🤔

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

2 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

No shit?  Who could have seen that coming? 

[David Dennison 18651]

The Director of the FBI has not read the Mueller Report.

WTF???

[TwiceHorn 31262]

4 minutes ago, TexEx15 said:

Not a lawyer but common sense says no.  Obstruction of justice can relate to simply the investigation itself, which does not have to result in an indictment.  Trying to interfere with an ongoing investigation regardless of the outcome of said investigation would still be obstruction I believe.

I think that's right. Don't know all the ins-outs and what-have-yous of the various obstruction statutes, though.

[Anastasis 23393]

Just now, Captainant said:

So, you're saying his team should have written carefully crafted summaries of key findings from the report? 🤔🤔🤔

I think that they already did that and they are part of the report.  As far as the statement you quote, I think a statement along the lines of "The SCO has concluded its investigation into the 2016 election and potential coordination between the Trump campaign and agents of the Russian government. The SCO produced the final report is such a way as to facilitate timely redaction to protect intelligence materials and methods, and we anticipate that the AG will complete this process quickly so that the report can be released broadly to Congress and the American people."

[triplehorn 2664]

7 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Right, I'm going by the speculation and how it doesn't gibe with my ordinary experience.

I'm kind of curious why Mueller himself wouldn't step forward and say this is bullshit.  It doesn't seem his style to leave it to his minions.

I think it's much more of a signal to Congress where to look and who to call for testimony.  This is headed straight towards Mueller having his time front and center at the appropriate venue.

[TwiceHorn 31262]

5 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Mueller and Barr are both trying to thread a needle.  Mueller punted on the obstruction issue. Barr doesn't want to pull a Comey. I think that Mueller should have probably come out with some sort of tight statement to make his intentions known wrt to the disposition of the report. He could have controlled the narrative related to the next steps completely.  He appears to have demurred from doing so. 

I wish I had saved the link, but theres a story out there analyzing Starr's book and the lessons that Mueller likely took from it.  It was interesting.  Starr, to his admitted detriment, began to see his appointment as a commission to make a case of impeachment for the President, and he did all kinds of stuff that Mueller has conspicuously avoided.  The article was written before the Report, but it could form a basis for Mueller not taking a hard position on the evidence against the President and his reticence on the deal.

[TwiceHorn 31262]

1 minute ago, triplehorn said:

I think it's much more of a signal to Congress where to look and who to call for testimony.  This is headed straight towards Mueller having his time front and center at the appropriate venue.

Perhaps Mueller is trying to get his testimony to occur after the report.  As any lawyer knows (for example expert witness reports and depositions), testimony can be kept "tight and concise" when the questioner has your report in front of them.

I don't think anybody sane believes that Mueller isn't going to testify, but as I am sure he doesn't relish sitting in front of Congress for 30 days straight, he knows his report might cut that down to 10 or 14 days.

[triplehorn 2664]

New letter from Barr's people:

 

[Captainant 27442]

Just now, triplehorn said:

New letter from Barr's people:

 

Huh, so the gambit is to treat releasing it to congress and to the public as the same thing. I don't think that's gonna get them very far.

[triplehorn 2664]

1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

Perhaps Mueller is trying to get his testimony to occur after the report.  As any lawyer knows (for example expert witness reports and depositions), testimony can be kept "tight and concise" when the questioner has your report in front of them.

I don't think anybody sane believes that Mueller isn't going to testify, but as I am sure he doesn't relish sitting in front of Congress for 30 days straight, he knows his report might cut that down to 10 or 14 days.

The Mueller report is one thing, but Barr's conduct has now sprung new questions about a potential cover-up as a separate matter.  It will be important to have Barr testify first.

[Homercles 10205]

damn, he looks bloated.
 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

1 hour ago, triplehorn said:

It will be important to have Barr testify first.

Seems to me getting the facts of the Mueller report out first is most important.

Not sure how Barr testifying helps in that effort. 

[TwiceHorn 31262]

11 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

The Mueller report is one thing, but Barr's conduct has now sprung new questions about a potential cover-up as a separate matter.  It will be important to have Barr testify first.

 

9 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Seems to me getting the facts of the Mueller report out first is most important.

Not sure how Barr testifying helps in that effort. 

Totally with Hugo on this.  If Barr is a bad actor, no reason to believe he's going to stop being one just because he's hauled into congress.  Get the redacted report out ASAP,  get judicial review after that ASAP.  The rest is a sideshow.  Fuckin summaries.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

31 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I think that's right. Don't know all the ins-outs and what-have-yous of the various obstruction statutes, though.

A judge pointed out that if an underlying crime were to be a prerequisite for obstruction, it would actually encourage obstruction.  The better you obstruct, the less likely a crime is found.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

The reason people obstruct justice is because sometimes it works. 

[Anastasis 23393]

44 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

No shit?  Who could have seen that coming? 

imgur

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13546]

HJC: Can I look at it?
Barr: No.

Sent from my LM-X210CM using Tapatalk

[RomaVicta 29775]

15 hours ago, XingTheRubicon said:

ZOMG!  \///Super Good Source/////  Trump's goin down, guise!!

Trump and his followers are trying to run out the clock with ten minutes left in the third quarter.

[XingTheRubicon 134]

3 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Trump and his followers are trying to run out the clock with ten minutes left in the third quarter.

Probably due to the game you're referring to being imagined in your heads.

 

I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the president isn't a Russian double agent.  We need to stop pretending we're all this stupid.

[Horn Dog 9671]

33 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

A judge pointed out that if an underlying crime were to be a prerequisite for obstruction, it would actually encourage obstruction.  The better you obstruct, the less likely a crime is found.

Also, everyone is assuming the obstruction only pertains to the crime of specific interest  (collusion if such a thing even exists).  What if the obstruction is to hide other crimes not even under investigation or other people’s crime?  Is it logical that that would be legal?  If there is a murder that you had nothing to do with, but you went out of your way to fuck with and obstruct  the police investigation ....is that legal?

[triplehorn 2664]

More WaPo today:

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/04/plot-just-thickened-mueller-report

"...For the entirety of its probe, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team has been leakproof. When we learned things about its Russia investigation, it was almost always through people who found themselves mixed up in it. Mueller lived up to his by-the-book reputation. 

Which makes what we saw Wednesday night all the more notable. The New York Times broke, then The Washington Post matched, the news that investigators on Mueller’s team were grousing about how Attorney General William P. Barr has handled summarizing their report. 

Even if the leaks weren’t deliberate — the Times initially reported this secondhand as the Mueller team complaining to associates, not them — the fact that the investigators are complaining enough that this would leak is significant. It suggests a serious level of dissatisfaction and concern, if not a concerted effort to send a message before Barr’s big reveal of the Mueller report this month. These investigators may feel liberated to vent now that the probe is over (and some of them have even left the Justice Department), but you have to think this represents a very serious level of concern about Barr’s conduct, rather than just a few offhand comments..."

[triplehorn 2664]

4 minutes ago, Horn Dog said:

Also, everyone is assuming the obstruction only pertains to the crime of specific interest  (collusion if such a thing even exists).  What if the obstruction is to hide other crimes not even under investigation or other people’s crime?  Is it logical that that would be legal?  If there is a murder that you had nothing to do with, but you went out of your way to fuck with and obstruct  the police investigation ....is that legal?

I mentioned it above, there is no requirement of an underlying crime to obstruct justice.  People to it to avoid embarrassment, especially politicians, where non-criminal revelations stand to end their political careers.

 

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

19 minutes ago, Horn Dog said:

Also, everyone is assuming the obstruction only pertains to the crime of specific interest  (collusion if such a thing even exists).  What if the obstruction is to hide other crimes not even under investigation or other people’s crime?  Is it logical that that would be legal?  If there is a murder that you had nothing to do with, but you went out of your way to fuck with and obstruct  the police investigation ....is that legal?

The most logical reason he was obstructing is because the findings of investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election might make him look very bad and possibly delegitimize his presidency.  It has always been about HIM and his control over the public’s perception of HIM.  

He probably knew an exhaustive investigation into Russia’s efforts to get him elected would undermine his image/legitimacy.

It might not have been about concealing any underlying crime at all. 

What this means, if true, is he is willing to jeopardize national security just to protect his image.

That should be concerning.

Edited April 4, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[RomaVicta 29775]

16 minutes ago, XingTheRubicon said:

We need to stop pretending we're all this stupid.

imgur

Indeed, Kenny!

[triplehorn 2664]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Why not done?

[Skyline 325]

There's the trinity. This is a whole mess. 

[4th&Five 41457]

one way to solve it rather quickly...

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Thread by Jared Yates Sexton on the breakdown of our system and the media’s complicity in it.

So. We need to talk about some really troubling things at the heart of this Mueller Report situation, because it's just a complete breakdown on every level and the ramifications couldn't be larger. 

First of all, this is just another in a long line of Trump's attempts to slip his way past consequence. It isn't a hard pattern to notice. He denies it, lies, gets caught, denies it a little less, lies in a different way until he gets caught again. This is how he works. 

If you remember, this is what happened with the Trump Tower meeting denial with Trump Jr. You lie, you get caught, you lie in a different way that seeks to minimize damage. You don't have to be an expert to see this, and yet, journalists keep falling for this. 

And the reasons the media keeps getting Trump wrong are an indictment of the industry. They keep failing because the lies Trump peddles mean clicks and ratings. It's a ready-made story for an industry that needs ready-made stories. It's easier to regurgitate than investigate. 

If you repeat Trump's lies, you get the attention of people who support Trump and you get the attention of those who hate him. This clickbait/hateclick industry is proven, and it wins no matter what even as it erodes public trust. 

But there's another element that we don't like to talk about, and it's the society of media in which those who report the news are most often people from backgrounds that have benefited from the status quo and are thus less likely to critique the status quo. 

Donald Trump isn't an aberration. He's the personification of the problems plaguing this country. To really go after him and examine him is, for several media members, the equivalent of unpacking the very privilege that got them their jobs and livelihoods. 

For these media members, examining how Trump could've colluded with a foreign adversary or how he could get away with obstruction of justice would mean questioning whether the system that raises them up on high is corrupted and failing. It's a personal thing. 

It's so, so, so much easier to just regurgitate Trump's lies, which are designed to give reason to think that everything's fine besides Trump's vulgarity, than to do the hard work of looking at themselves and their own privilege and determining that huge change is necessary.

Whatever happens, the media in this country is complicit, whether it's in pursuit of ratings or the neverending desire to maintain a system that has benefited them, in not only electing Donald Trump but in maintaining him and the flawed system that birthed him. 

The only thing that's clear now is that to get past Trump, to have a better and more humane society, we're all going to have to reexamine what we thought our lives and our worlds were. We have to do a lot of soul searching, a lot of questioning, and it has to start now.

[GW Hayduke 1952]

One statement that worries me from the NYT piece.

”Mr. Barr was also wary of departing from Justice Department practice not to disclose derogatory details in closing an investigation, according to two government officials familiar with Mr. Barr’s thinking.”

Imagine taking a black marker and removing everything derogatory to trump, his campaign, or anyone around him.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

31 minutes ago, Skyline said:

There's the trinity. This is a whole mess. 

I like that it is from the WSJ, but that's not exactly a primary source.

A person that was informed about a person's conversation with another person about that person's thoughts.  So Mueller's team talks to friend at bar.  Friend at bar tells her roommate what Mueller's team thinks.  Roommate calls WSJ.

[4th&Five 41457]

 

[DDD Dad 14250]

16 hours ago, Horn Dog said:

Que the “I’d like to see Trump get out of this mess unscathed” meme.

They really should make a 80’s style TV series out of the Trump Presidency.  Every week he gets is some kooky mess and then escapes in the nick of time.  Like a modern day Dukes of Hazzard.

Que?

 

[Skyline 325]

13 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

I like that it is from the WSJ, but that's not exactly a primary source.

A person that was informed about a person's conversation with another person about that person's thoughts.  So Mueller's team talks to friend at bar.  Friend at bar tells her roommate what Mueller's team thinks.  Roommate calls WSJ.

You're right about that. But there could be different sources talking to all three publications. 

[hayden_horn 11360]

19 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

I like that it is from the WSJ, but that's not exactly a primary source.

A person that was informed about a person's conversation with another person about that person's thoughts.  So Mueller's team talks to friend at bar.  Friend at bar tells her roommate what Mueller's team thinks.  Roommate calls WSJ.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

I guess it's pretty serious.

[triplehorn 2664]

This take from a former DOJ Director Office of Public Affairs is spot on:

 

 

[Horn Dog 9671]

I have read the Bible.  Although I can’t show it to you I have prepared a summary of the important parts.  Yada, yada, yada... and Jesus says Ceasar can do whatever the fuck he wants.

— Barr

[TwiceHorn 31262]

1 hour ago, Horn Dog said:

Also, everyone is assuming the obstruction only pertains to the crime of specific interest  (collusion if such a thing even exists).  What if the obstruction is to hide other crimes not even under investigation or other people’s crime?  Is it logical that that would be legal?  If there is a murder that you had nothing to do with, but you went out of your way to fuck with and obstruct  the police investigation ....is that legal?

This seems highly likely.  The trumpy folks may have lied about their contacts with rooskies not to hide some political or election-related collusion, but to hide some aspect of money laundering for them.

[TwiceHorn 31262]

8 minutes ago, Horn Dog said:

I have read the Bible.  Although I can’t show it to you I have prepared a summary of the important parts.  Yada, yada, yada... and Jesus says Ceasar can do whatever the fuck he wants.

— Barr

But really that applies to any summary, so arguing about summaries is dumb.  Let's get the source doc out, redacted at first and in full later, if legal and get on with it.