Attorney General Barr appeared with Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to give his “final” report about the presentment of the Mueller Report to Congress and the American people. The report in full (with minimal redactions for legal purposes) was released 2 hours later to Congress and the public.
We are NOT going to go through the details of the report. This story today is simply to point out some facts about the process and how those facts and the process itself play into the future of the U.S. To that end, let me say this: the Mueller Report and Mueller’s entire process of putting his team of attorneys together, the methods they used for interrogations, grand juries, and even making arrests have never been seen in American history in past Special Counsel or Special Prosecutor cases.
We did predict here the release of his findings would certainly NOT end the noise about Donald Trump and his alleged collusion with Russia and also alleged obstruction of justice. In fact, Mueller’s findings and the structure of his report left the door open for all those on the Left to simply ratchet-up their investigation threats, subpoenas, and more allegations. In our Summary, we’ll detail exactly where we are. Let’s put all this in bullet points to make it easy to follow (and keep it brief):
♦Collusion
“The Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations.
“First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.”
The report said there was no collusion found between Donald Trump or any member of his campaign and the Russians regarding manipulation of the 2016 election.
♦Conspiracy
The report said there were numerous contacts between members of Trump’s circle and Russia and that the campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
But it said the efforts did not amount to criminal conspiracy.
“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.
“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
♦Obstruction of Justice
The report said the special counsel investigated numerous actions by Trump “that raised questions about whether he had obstructed justice.”
These included “public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”
“The president’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.
“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the president’s conduct.
“At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.
“Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.
“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
♦Efforts to Remove Special Counsel
The report detailed an effort by Trump to have the special counsel removed.
“On June 17, 2017, the president called (White House counsel Don) McGahn at home and directed him to call the acting attorney general and say that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed.
“McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.”
The determination by the Special Counsel was that President Trump could not be legally implicated in any action to remove Special Counsel Mueller.
♦The “Rest of the Story”
I know, the above is really brief. And what it does is summarize all of the “meat” — if one can call it meat — in the report. But, believe me, there’s plenty more “stuff” in the Mueller Report.
Again, we will not detail it all — there’s a bunch of stuff that basically seems to be included to in some way justify the $25 million + of taxpayer dollars spent and the 2 years of constant daily political uproar regarding the president and nothing more.
The report highlights most of the areas of question American have had and still have, even with the release of the report. Questions regarding the possible influence many felt the President tried to use to “influence” Michael Cohen in his multiple testimonies to Mueller’s team were included in the report with “no finding of wrongdoing.
Conventional wisdom states that in spite of the bottomless budget of taxpayer dollars used in this investigation, in spite of millions of pages of documents, numerous subpoenas, and testimony, 37 indictments (none of which implicated Mr. Trump or his campaign for Russian collusion), Donald Trump is walking away with no “baggage.” But is he?
Mueller may be done, but Congress is not. Members of Congress — all Democrats — who hold very critical jobs heading committees are still beating the drum of “Collusion and Conspiracy.”
♦“Russia, Russia, Russia!“
Who’s guilty of still carrying the “Russia” torch?
Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA)
March 27, 2017: The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on MSNBC there is evidence that is “not circumstantial” of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
August 5, 2018: Rep. Schiff said there is “plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight” regarding the Trump campaign and Russia.
March 25, 2019: “There’s a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the special counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy,” Schiff told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.”
Congressman Jerold Nadler (D-NY)
March 24, 2019: “Obviously, we know there was some collusion,” he said during an appearance on CNN. “We know the president’s son and campaign manager were involved in a meeting with the Russians to receive what they thought was information stolen by the Russians from the Democratic National Committee, as part of the Russian government’s attempt to help Trump in the election.” (It was later shown in sworn testimony that the meeting was called to make available “Opposition Research” materials to the Trump team which was perfectly legal and used by every campaign in the 2016 election)
(One note here since we’re speaking of Congressman Nadler: in the Clinton Impeachment Starr Report that Starr released without redactions to the public. Nadler and 13 other Congressman currently still in the House all fought AGAINST its release at the time. But Nadler’s committee is demanding continuously for the Mueller Report to be released without any redactions)
Calling the comparison “apples and oranges,” Nadler said his remarks on the Starr report concerned the release of grand jury information to the public rather than to Congress.
Nadler did not take a position on whether the full Mueller report could contain grounds for impeachment, saying “there could be grounds for impeachment, there could be grounds for other actions, there could be things the American people ought to know.”
Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA)
March 25, 2019: Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, is quoted from a March 2018 interview on CNN saying, “In our investigation, we saw strong evidence of collusion.” He was referring to his panel’s Russia investigation. That inquiry took place when the House Intelligence Committee was in GOP control and concluded there was no collusion.
March 26, 2019: Swalwell told Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, that all the evidence points to the president being a “Russian agent” and that he has not seen “a single piece of evidence that he’s not” a Russian agent. He stood by those claims on Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum.
Senator Mark Warner (D-VA)
March 4, 2019: Senator Mark Warner said there are “enormous amounts of evidence” linking the Trump campaign to Russia — the same day House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said there’s “direct evidence” of collusion between the two.
Senator Chris Coons (D-DE)
March 6, 2017: Liberal Delaware Senator Chris Coons caused a stir when he indicated during a televised interview that yet-undisclosed transcripts of recorded phone conversations conclusively prove that elements of the Trump campaign explicitly colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA)
March 24, 2019: “Here you have a president who I can tell you and guarantee you is in collusion with the Russians to undermine our democracy,” Waters said.
Waters predicted in December 2017 that Mueller’s report is “going to lead right to, not only collusion, obstruction of justice, money laundering.”
♦Summary
As we warned, Democrats are just getting started. And their attack dogs — the Leftist Media — moments after the completion of Barr’s presentation summary of the now released report showed America what Democrats are totally about for 2020: NOTHING NEW. Sadly for their base, they have nothing to offer the nation other than “Get Donald Trump.” STILL!
We close today with the most troubling revelation in the Mueller report. There is stark proof that the President’s terminology of the Mueller investigation as a “Witch Hunt” was and is warranted. It’s contained in the following statement from the report:
“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the president’s actions and intent present difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.”
By making this statement as THE basis — not for their findings but for their NO-findings — Mueller and his staff of “13 angry Democrats” (as termed by Sean Hannity) have categorically reversed a fundamental guarantee given in the U.S. Constitution. According to Mueller, the inability of such a mass of investigators with such a mountain of evidence never before seen in any other federal investigation could not find evidence to justify charging President Trump with a crime. Yet they end the report by saying they could not conclusively determine that no criminal conduct occurred!
It either DID occur or it DIDN’T occur. If it happened, a crime was committed. If it didn’t happen, NO crime was committed.
The Mueller gang just stomped all over the fundamental that millions of people charged throughout American judicial history in civil and criminal trials alike have relied on for fundamental fairness in their prosecution: The Presumption of Innocence. That presumption clearly states that those charged are “Innocent Until PROVEN Guilty.”
It’s sad that a sitting president who in the 2016 presidential election demolished a career-political opponent who was a shew-in for the White House was NOT given the Presumption of Innocence.
Maybe that is the “new” way for the Judiciary in America to operate now. Maybe it’s so just in politics.
Or maybe — just maybe — this was Robert Mueller’s parting shot at President Trump for NOT offering him the FBI Director’s job in that Oval Office meeting with Rod Rosenstein which was purportedly a job interview for Mueller.
Is that what Due Process in America has come to?
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