The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Lois]

I don't need a report to know that Trump is easily manipulated by flatery, and has been.  I also don't need the report to know that Trump is dangerous and has acted treaonously.

[Athos_131]

Unless there is something to hide there is no reason not to release the entire report.

Barr's letter is his -and Rosenstein's- own opinion on the matter.

I wonder if Yellow Wall supports the release of the entire report.

It would prove ironic if it did not, considering many times it has cheered for the release of reports on President Clinton and Secretary Clinton.

The investigations via the SDNY inregards to the Trump Campaign finanace violations continue.

The investigations into the Trump Organization and tax evasion by Donald Trump via the State of New York continue.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Legal experts question William Barr’s rationale for exonerating Trump

A big question hanging over William P. Barr’s nomination to be attorney general this year was whether, once he got the job, he would do President Trump’s bidding. Barr had made statements critical of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, and he even wrote a long memo rejecting the need for the obstruction of justice portion of Mueller’s inquiry. Trump also repeatedly made clear his desire for a loyalist to oversee the investigation.

On Sunday, Barr made a big decision in Trump’s favor. And he did so in a way legal experts say is very questionable.

In his four-page letter describing the report’s major findings, Barr noted that Mueller didn’t conclude that Trump committed obstruction of justice but that Mueller also said, pointedly, that he wasn’t exonerating Trump either.

Then Barr stepped forward to offer his own exoneration.

“After reviewing the Special Counsel’s final report on these issues; consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions,” Barr wrote, “Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

He further explained. “In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that ‘the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,’ and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction.”

There are a few reasons this conclusion is problematic.

The first is Barr’s rationale. Legal experts say it’s odd that he emphasized the lack of an underlying, proven crime, given that’s not necessary for obstruction of justice.

“I think this is the weakest part of Attorney General Barr’s conclusions,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “You do not need to prove an underlying crime to prove obstruction of justice. Martha Stewart is quite aware of this fact.”

“For example,” added former federal prosecutor David Alan Sklansky, now of Stanford University, “if the President wrongfully tried to block the investigation into Russian interference in the election because he wanted to protect the Russians, or because he didn’t want people to know that a foreign government had tried to hack the election in his favor, that would constitute obstruction.”

Gene Rossi, another former federal prosecutor, said the lack of an underlying crime does matter. “However, the existence of an underlying crime is not an essential element of the crime of obstruction. End of story,” he said. “To the extent the attorney general suggests such an element, he is dead wrong.”

It’s important to note that Barr doesn’t quite say this means there can’t be obstruction of justice, but it is a point of emphasis.

But even then, is it really true? Although Mueller determined that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, he was able to charge and prove other crimes by Trump associates. Former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and Trump allegedly requested that then-FBI Director James B. Comey be lenient on Flynn. That’s an actual crime Trump could be trying to cover up.

The same goes for longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, who has been indicted in connection with attempts to contact WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. Stone’s indictment notably said that “a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE” about the matter. Some have suggested that it might be Trump who did that directing. Even if it wasn’t, Mueller clearly sees an actual crime here, which Trump’s actions vis-a-vis his investigation could affect.

Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to 7½ years in prison. Former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen got three. Cohen has implicated Trump in Cohen’s felony campaign finance violations, and Trump has engaged in very public conduct that some have alleged was meant to intimidate Cohen as he testified before Congress.

Barr’s argument is that the lack of an underlying crime suggests there’s less reason to believe Trump had a “corrupt intent” behind his actions regarding the investigation. But if you set aside collusion, there would seem to be plenty for Trump to want to cover up. Even if these proven and alleged crimes didn’t involve criminal activity by Trump personally, he would seem to have a clear interest in the outcomes of these investigations, both because of his sensitivity about the idea that Russia assisted him and because of the narrative it created of a president surrounded by corruption.

“You don’t need to be guilty of an underlying crime to obstruct an investigation — especially one that might, and in fact did, implicate a number of close associates and aides,” said Jens David Ohlin, a law professor at Cornell University.

And the last point is that this is not a determination Barr necessarily needed to make. Justice Department guidelines say that a sitting president can’t be indicted, so as attorney general, Barr’s conclusions about Mueller’s report weren’t really needed. Congress is the ultimate arbiter here, through potential impeachment proceedings. The fact that Mueller opted not to make a specific recommendation on obstruction of justice may have convinced Barr to weigh in, but he could have just left it at Mueller opting not to accuse Trump of a crime.

Instead, Barr made a determination based on reviewing Mueller’s report for less than 48 hours. In doing so, he invited Democrats to accuse him of going above and beyond for the man who appointed him — and who had, for months and months before then, very publicly resented the fact that his previous attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had recused himself from the investigation.

Ultimately, Congress will make its own determinations, and Democrats have signaled that they are not going to let this lie. But Barr’s statement is an important one when it comes to whether Republicans would ever go along with impeaching or removing Trump — and whether voters might support Trump in 2020.

This is what Barr’s critics feared when the Senate voted to confirm him two months ago. It’s why they urged him to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. And it’s going to be a significant point of contention in the hours and days ahead.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The Many Problems With the Barr Letter

On Sunday afternoon, soon after Attorney General Bill Barr released a letter outlining the Mueller investigation report, President Trump tweeted “Total EXONERATION!” But there are any number of reasons the president should not be taking a victory lap.

First, obviously, he still faces the New York investigations into campaign finance violations by the Trump team and the various investigations into the Trump organization. And Mr. Barr, in his letter, acknowledges that the Mueller report “does not exonerate” Mr. Trump on the issue of obstruction, even if it does not recommend an indictment.

But the critical part of the letter is that it now creates a whole new mess. After laying out the scope of the investigation and noting that Mr. Mueller’s report does not offer any legal recommendations, Mr. Barr declares that it therefore “leaves it to the attorney general to decide whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime.” He then concludes the president did not obstruct justice when he fired the F.B.I. director, James Comey.

Such a conclusion would be momentous in any event. But to do so within 48 hours of receiving the report (which pointedly did not reach that conclusion) should be deeply concerning to every American.

The special counsel regulations were written to provide the public with confidence that justice was done. It is impossible for the public to reach that determination without knowing two things. First, what did the Mueller report conclude, and what was the evidence on obstruction of justice? And second, how could Mr. Barr have reached his conclusion so quickly?

Mr. Barr’s letter raises far more questions than it answers, both on the facts and the law.

His letter says Mr. Mueller set “out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the special counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of law and fact concerning whether the president’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction.” Yet we don’t know what those “difficult issues” were, because Mr. Barr doesn’t say, or why Mr. Mueller, after deciding not to charge on conspiracy, let Mr. Barr make the decision on obstruction.

On the facts, Mr. Barr says that the government would need to prove that Mr. Trump acted with “corrupt intent” and there were no such actions. But how would Mr. Barr know? Did he even attempt to interview Mr. Trump about his intentions?

What kind of prosecutor would make a decision about someone’s intent without even trying to talk to him? Particularly in light of Mr. Mueller’s pointed statement that his report does not “exonerate” Mr. Trump. Mr. Mueller didn’t have to say anything like that. He did so for a reason. And that reason may well be that there is troubling evidence in the substantial record that he compiled.

Furthermore, we do not know why Mr. Mueller did not try to force an interview with the president. The reason matters greatly. Mr. Mueller could have concluded that interviews of sitting presidents for obstruction matters are better done within the context of a congressional impeachment investigation (perhaps because a sitting president cannot be indicted, the Barr letter says this legal argument didn’t influence Mr. Barr’s conclusion but again is pointedly silent as to Mr. Mueller).

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Or Mr. Barr could have concluded that the attorney general, not a special counsel, should carry out such an interview. The fact that Mr. Barr rushed to judgment, within 48 hours, after a 22-month investigation, is deeply worrisome.

The opening lines of the obstruction section of Mr. Barr’s letter are even more concerning. It says that the special counsel investigated “a number of actions by the president — most of which have been the subject of public reporting.” That suggests that at least some of the foundation for an obstruction of justice charge has not yet been made public. There will be no way to have confidence in such a quick judgment about previously unreported actions without knowing what those actions were.

On the law, Mr. Barr’s letter also obliquely suggests that he consulted with the Office of Legal Counsel, the elite Justice Department office that interprets federal statutes. This raises the serious question of whether Mr. Barr’s decision on Sunday was based on the bizarre legal views that he set out in an unsolicited 19-page memo last year.

That memo made the argument that the obstruction of justice statute does not apply to the president because the text of the statute doesn’t specifically mention the president. Of course, the murder statute doesn’t mention the president either, but no one thinks the president can’t  commit murder. Indeed, the Office of Legal Counsel had previously concluded that such an argument to interpret another criminal statute, the bribery law, was wrong.

As such, Mr. Barr’s reference to the office raises the question of whether he tried to enshrine his idiosyncratic view into the law and bar Mr. Trump’s prosecution. His unsolicited memo should be understood for what it is, a badly argued attempt to put presidents above the law. If he used that legal fiction to let President Trump off the hook, Congress would have to begin an impeachment investigation to vindicate the rule of law.

Sometimes momentous government action leaves everyone uncertain about the next move. This is not one of those times. Congress now has a clear path of action. It must first demand the release of the Mueller report, so that Americans can see the evidence for themselves. Then, it must call Mr. Barr and Mr. Mueller to testify. Mr. Barr in particular must explain his rationale for reaching the obstruction judgment he made.

No one wants a president to be guilty of obstruction of justice. The only thing worse than that is a guilty president who goes without punishment. The Barr letter raises the specter that we are living in such times.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Barr was on record way before the report was released on this.  He never would have charged Dolt 45.

There is zero reason to trust Trump's lackey.  Unless of course you're a racist yellow wall poster.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

https://nypost.com/2019/03/24/we-should-all-be-celebrating-the-collapse-of-hillarys-big-lie/

$30,000,000 minimum cost of Mueller SC investigation, likely far more

Yes, the Mueller investigation is costly. But the millions seized from Manafort have it on track to break even

WASHINGTON – Some time soon, federal authorities will begin selling off what's left of Paul Manafort's life, a small fortune amassed through a decade of illicit lobbying work. When they do, the investigation into Russian election interference stands to breach an unusual milestone: bringing in more money than it has cost.

But first, lawyers working for special counsel Robert Mueller must reach a deal with another set of opponents, including the Trump Tower condo board.

A handful of banks and the Trump Tower Residential Condominium Board have lined up to argue that they're entitled to parts of the properties and investment accounts valued at about $26.7 million that the former Trump campaign chairman has been forced to give up as part of plea agreement with Mueller's team. Included in the package of New York real estate is a $7.3 million compound in the Hamptons and a $3.8 million apartment in Manhattan's Trump Tower.

Many of the claims could be resolved as early as this week, according to court documents.

When they are, the investigation Trump has dismissed as a witch hunt and a waste of money will more or less have paid for itself. Mueller's probe has posted costs of about $25 million so far. Exactly how much the government stands to collect will turn on how much of his property must be turned over to banks and others, and to New York's fluctuating real estate market.

In addition to Manafort's fortune, the government stands to collect about $1.9 million from other people charged as a result of Mueller's investigation.

Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who oversaw complex organized crime cases, said the leftover money, while substantial, represents "icing on the cake for the government whose overriding priority is always a conviction."

"Rarely is there money sufficient to make a big recovery," said Cotter, who is not a party to the Manafort case.  "It's only when all the fighting is over involving the banks, family and every other creditor do your really know what the leftover assets are really



Among those picking at the multi-million-dollar leftovers:

• Citizens Bank in New York has reached a deal with federal prosecutors for the possible recovery of up to $3.2 million in loans on a Soho apartment owned by Manafort, pending its sale by the government.

At Manafort's August trial on financial fraud charges, prosecutors offered evidence that he had falsified the loan application, including inflating his income by $1.5 million. A mortgage loan assistant at Citizens later testified that even as Manafort presented the application for the property listed as a second home, she found the same apartment listed for rent during an online search. (Manafort stood to obtain a better loan rate by classifying the property as a second home.)

• Under a separate agreement with the government, a property management firm linked to the same Soho property stands to collect more than $2,500 in back condo fees, dating to last fall.

• The Chicago-based Federal Savings Bank, whose chief executive expedited approval of $16 million in loans for Manafort after he and the former Trump campaign chief discussed a possible role in the Trump administration, is seeking to claw back some of the loan's proceeds. Two of Manafort's New York properties, the Hampton compound and a $4.1 million Brooklyn brownstone, were offered as collateral for the loan package, which is now in serious default. The claim is pending.

• The assistant secretary of the Trump Tower condo board asserted an interest in the anticipated sale of unit 43G, which once served as the Manaforts' stylish pied-a-terre in New York. The board, according to court documents, seeks an undisclosed amount in uncollected condo fees related to the property that once established Manafort and his wife as neighbors of the president. Separate property listings for the apartment show condo fees of about $2,000 per month.

"Any sale of a residential unit in the condominium is conditioned on the claimant being paid all common charges due on a residential unit as of the date of conveyance," the board said in a court filing.

In court documents, prosecutors said they were in possible settlement discussions with the board, and that a resolution could be reached as soon as this week.

• In one of the more obscure disputes, a federal judge has given a general contractor until March 8 to support his claim for $585,991.85 related to work on Manafort's Brooklyn brownstone.

Prosecutors have argued that the claim lacks "standing" and should be dismissed.

Manafort was found guilty of fraud and other charges by a federal court in Virginia, and pleaded guilty to related charges in another federal court in Washington. He hasn't been sentenced in either case, but has already agreed to give up a chunk of his fortune that he gained through illicit lobbying work for a pro-Russian faction in Ukraine.

That fortune represent by far the bulk of fines and fees assessed against all targets in the Mueller inquiry so far.

Michael Cohen, the president's former personal attorney; Richard Gates, former Trump campaign deputy; Michael Flynn, former Trump national security adviser; George Papadopoulos, former campaign foreign policy adviser; and Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch attorney whose firm was linked to Manafort’s work, all have been either assessed fines and fees or face financial penalties related to their convictions in the Russia inquiry and related investigations.

 Exactly how the final balance sheet for Mueller's investigation will even out may not be fully known for months. Trump has used the investigation's price tag – albeit an inflated one – to disparage the inquiry as a "witch hunt." He falsely claimed that its costs had topped $40 million.

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who handled international drug trafficking and fraud cases, said it would be "unusual" indeed to hope than any investigation as complex as Mueller's could turn a profit.

“In (most) fraud cases, while there may be forfeitures, most of that money first goes towards restitution,” Weinstein said. “In drug trafficking and money laundering cases, where there is no restitution and the government can actually recover the forfeited funds, those are cases where the government can hope to break even.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Hold off on your victory laps, conservatives

Pundits are treating Attorney General William P. Barr’s letter summarizing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report as the final official word on the matter. It is, in fact, far from it. The letter contains clear clues that Barr will release much more of the report’s contents soon — and that the president may not like everything he’ll read.

Lawyers are trained to write very precisely, and as a former lawyer I read Barr’s letter with that in mind. It appears there are at least three items we should keep in mind as we digest its contents.

First, Barr is quite clear that the guiding law prevents him from releasing “material that is or could be subject to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e).” That rule makes it a crime to disclose “certain grand jury information in a criminal investigation and prosecution.” The attorney general states that he is reviewing the report to identify any such information, as well as “any information that could impact other ongoing matters, including those that the Special Counsel has referred to other offices.”

Subject to those caveats, however, the attorney general signals that he will release much, if not all, of the remainder of the report. The key sentence thus reads: “My]goal and intent is to release as much of the Special Counsel’s report as I can consistent with applicable law, regulations, and Departmental policies.” That means there could be a lot of information to digest regarding the president’s and his campaign’s activities.

Of particular interest should be the special counsel’s descriptions of the case for and against the president obstructing justice in regard to the investigation. Barr writes that “for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question.” While the letter states that most of the president’s actions relating to potential obstruction “have been the subject of public reporting,” he is silent about whether most of the evidence has been previously reported. He surely chose those words carefully, and from that we should presume that there is potentially quite a bit of evidence regarding potential obstruction that has not previously been discussed or come to light.

That both the special counsel has chosen not to pursue any further indictments, and that the attorney general has decided the evidence presented does not “establish” that the president committed obstruction, work in favor of public disclosure. Since the president is not at risk of indictment, he cannot be criminally prejudiced by disclosure of any information. Such evidence would be withheld according to the principles set forth above only if it came to light as a result of a grand jury investigation rather than the special counsel’s own digging or if it would prejudice an ongoing case referred elsewhere. Given the personal nature of the obstruction charge, this strongly suggests that unless someone else is being investigated for potential obstruction in relation to this matter, any evidence pertaining to Trump’s own potential obstruction is not protected and hence open to disclosure.

This evidence could have a quite different effect on public opinion than it would in a legal proceeding. Criminal prosecutions require proof “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and Mueller clearly saw a strong case against Trump under that standard. While Barr decided he did not, reasonable observers could conclude differently. They could also conclude, perhaps, that they have reasonable doubts but think Trump did obstruct justice under the more lenient “clear and convincing evidence” or “preponderance of the evidence” standards. Prosecutors would not look at a criminal case through those lenses, but politicians and pundits are sure to do so.

Barr’s section labeled “Obstruction of Justice” is essential here. Every sentence is extremely precise and carefully worded. The matter of the president’s intent is key, as a prosecutor would have to prove that such a crime was committed with “a corrupt intent.” Barr writes that the special counsel’s finding that the president was not involved in an underlying crime bore “upon the President’s intent” regarding obstruction. In plain English, that suggests there is evidence that people could conclude constitutes criminal obstruction, but that Trump’s saving grace in the law is that he also could not be proven to have colluded with the Russians. Political observers could disagree.

Third, one should note that Barr twice states that the special counsel’s report was, by federal regulation, a “confidential report" to the attorney general. While he implies that he shared the report with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, he is silent about whether he shared it with the president himself. Based on the careful invocation of “confidential . . . to the Attorney General,” we should presume that he has not. Which seems to mean that the president’s blanket statement that Barr should release the entire report is based on neither he nor his lawyers having the slightest idea what it contains. Oops.

Barr’s subsequent release is highly likely to contain much more detail, much of it at least unflattering to the president, than most pundits surmise. With respect to the issues of Russian collusion and obstruction, we have clearly reached the end of the beginning. We are nowhere near the beginning of the end.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump won with illicit help. He abused his power. His AG is blocking a full reckoning.

Let me say at the outset that I fully accept one core conclusion reached by the special counsel’s investigation, as described in Attorney General William P. Barr’s letter to Congress: The probe did not establish any criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to sabotage the 2016 election.

That is genuinely, if narrowly, exonerating for the president on the “collusion” question.

But even if you accept that to be the case, the following three things are also true:

Donald Trump got elected president in part due to a massive foreign attack on our democracy.
Even if Trump’s campaign didn’t collude with that act in a criminally chargeable manner, he committed extraordinary abuses of power to try to prevent a full accounting of that attack on our democracy from taking place.
Trump’s attorney general is in the process of preventing a real public airing of the full dimensions of both of the above points.
Multiple news organizations are pushing variations on the idea that a “cloud” has lifted from Trump. The president himself claims “Complete and Total EXONERATION.”

This is nonsense. Indeed, one of the most important takeaways from Barr’s brief summary of Robert S. Mueller III’s conclusions is that it underscores the above three points with fresh urgency.

On collusion, Barr writes, Mueller’s investigation “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in its sabotaging of the election on Trump’s behalf, via massive cybertheft and disinformation warfare. As the Lawfare team notes, while this is certainly exonerating, it’s possible Mueller documented collusion-like behavior that fell just short of criminality, but we can’t know without seeing the full report.

On obstruction of justice, Barr’s letter says that Mueller declined to decide whether Trump had committed crimes. Instead, Mueller’s report “sets out evidence on both sides of the question,” and explicitly says that it “does not exonerate” Trump of criminality. That left the decision to Barr, who says he and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein determined that the evidence developed by Mueller is “not sufficient to establish” obstruction.

Multiple legal observers have been scaldingly critical of Barr for making this decision, because of its haste, and on substantive grounds. Marcy Wheeler points out that during his confirmation hearings, Barr flatly conceded that certain types of conduct Trump has actually committed would constitute obstruction of justice. So why the absolution?

Underscoring that point, former prosecutor Ken White notes that Barr is silent on a crucial question: whether he concluded Trump didn’t interfere in the investigation in an obstructive manner based on the evidence, or, by contrast, that Trump didn’t obstruct justice because interfering inherently cannot be obstruction when done by the head of the executive branch.

Barr made this latter argument in an unsolicited memo that has been sharply criticized by legal experts. Crucially, this is also the theory advanced by Trump’s own lawyers. The question is whether Barr based the decision on this theory. If so, as Neal Katyal suggests, this would put Trump above the law.

But we cannot even evaluate Barr’s decision unless we see the evidence that Mueller laid out “on both sides of the question.”

Guess who decides whether we get to see that evidence: Barr does.

Barr could release the obstruction portions right now

We do have some sense of the evidence Mueller amassed from reporting on Trump’s efforts to derail the investigation. They include firing his FBI director after demanding “loyalty”; pressing him to lay off his national security adviser; leaning on other intelligence officials to corral him; and Trump’s effort to bully his former attorney general into protecting him from the probe. While establishing criminal obstruction is tricky, those are all flagrant abuses of power.

It’s all but certain Mueller has established substantially more about those episodes than is publicly known. And as Katyal points out, Barr’s letter notes that Mueller investigated numerous potential acts of obstruction, not all of which have been publicly reported, meaning there are episodes we still don’t know about.

Mueller amassed all this evidence without exonerating Trump on obstruction. Barr looked at all of this evidence and did exonerate him — allowing Trump to claim vindication on obstruction as well.

“Barr gave the president a powerful talking point that Mueller didn’t,” former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller told me.

But what’s stopping Barr from releasing the facts Mueller established, so we can evaluate this decision for ourselves? Nothing, Miller argues, because this evidence wasn’t gathered via grand jury, which could require the maintenance of secrecy.

“There’s never been any sign that Mueller used the grand jury for the obstruction inquiry,” Miller told me. “The White House produced documents and witnesses voluntarily. If there’s no grand jury involvement, then Barr could release that portion of the report today.”

Let’s remember what this is really about

Trump’s efforts to derail the investigation weren’t merely about halting scrutiny of “collusion.” They were also about halting an accounting of the Russian attack on our democracy irrespective of whether “collusion” happened. Barr’s letter reminds us of this, by noting that Mueller’s report documents Russia’s extensive efforts to swing the election, including a concerted campaign to divide the country along social lines.

We already know a great deal about this from Mueller’s indictments of Russians. But Mueller’s report would likely tell us much more.

We know Trump has long opposed a full accounting of that Russian attack — not just because he denies collusion but also because he reportedly saw the very existence of that attack as undermining the greatness of his victory. Indeed, it’s been documented that this is why he did so little to secure the country against the next Russian attack.

Thus, what Barr’s letter really tells us is that, without the Mueller report, we are being denied a full reckoning into that subversion of our democracy and a full public airing of Trump’s efforts to prevent that reckoning from happening.

Barr’s letter promises more disclosure to come, and perhaps we will get it. If not, perhaps Congress can force it. But until then, none of those efforts at public accountability are taking place. And the implications of that are terrible to contemplate.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The Russia investigation is over, but there’s a lot we still don’t know

It might be hard to imagine, but despite dozens of criminal charges and wall-to-wall media coverage, the end of the Russia investigation has left a lot of unanswered questions.

Few of them were addressed in the bare-bones, four-page summary that Atty. Gen. William Barr sent to Congress on Sunday, and it’s unclear whether there are more details in the full, confidential report that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III submitted to Barr on Friday.

Here’s what we still don't know.

The professor
The first person to plead guilty in the nearly two-year investigation was George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy aide to President Trump's campaign. He admitted to lying about his conversations with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who allegedly told him that Russians were collecting dirt on Hillary Clinton and had thousands of emails. This conversation took place in April 2016, before Moscow started releasing hacked Democratic Party emails. Did Mifsud have inside information from the Kremlin? And did he share it as part of the Russian covert operation?

The Russian
Before Paul Manafort began leading Trump’s campaign, he worked in Ukraine with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian whom prosecutors have repeatedly described as connected to Moscow’s intelligence apparatus. However, they have not disclosed any evidence of these ties.

During the campaign, Manafort provided Kilimnik with polling data and later lied about it when asked by the special counsel’s office, another red flag. Yet no charges were filed in connection with the decision to share the data. What was Manafort’s goal? And did Kilimnik provide the information to anyone else?

The dirty trickster
Roger Stone, a longtime political advisor to Trump, allegedly spent the campaign trying to learn more about WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic Party emails. According to the indictment against him, Stone reached out to the organization's leader, Julian Assange, through intermediaries, but it's unclear whether he ever made contact. (Stone has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and faces trial later this year.) The indictment also said “a senior Trump campaign official was directed” to contact Stone to talk about WikiLeaks after the first email release during the Democratic National Convention. Who besides Trump was in position to direct a senior official to do something like that?

The Trump Tower meeting
Donald Trump Jr. didn’t hesitate when he received an email from a British music publicist offering to arrange a meeting with a Russian lawyer who was said to be part of the Kremlin’s effort to support his father’s candidacy. Promised incriminating information on Clinton, Trump Jr. responded, “I love it.” Also at the meeting, which took place in Trump Tower in June 2016, was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, and Manafort, the campaign chairman.

However, no charges were filed in connection with the meeting, and participants have said no campaign assistance was provided. Did the Russian lawyer, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, actually have a role in Moscow’s covert campaign? Mueller has never said.

The lies
More than anything, Mueller uncovered an epidemic of lying among Trump’s associates. Michael Flynn, the president’s first national security advisor, lied about discussing sanctions with the Russian ambassador during the transition period after the election. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, lied about Trump Organization plans to build a luxury skyscraper in Moscow. And, as noted, Papadopoulos lied about his conversations with Mifsud, and Manafort about his dealings with Kilimnik.

Mueller apparently did not find evidence of a conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia, yet why all the lying? Cohen testified that the president wanted him to mislead Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow proposal to avoid raising questions about Russian ties. Did others also lie to serve Trump?

The obstruction allegations
Since Trump took office, media reports have uncovered a series of his attempts, behind the scenes, to blunt or end the Russia investigation. James B. Comey testified to Congress that Trump asked him to go easy on Flynn when he was FBI director, in February 2017. The Washington Post reported that Trump asked intelligence officials to get Comey to back off the investigation in March 2017. Comey was then fired by Trump that May, leading to Mueller’s appointment as special counsel. The New York Times reported that Trump wanted to fire Mueller as well in June 2017, but backed down when Don McGahn, then the White House counsel, refused to carry out the order.

Did the special counsel’s office substantiate any of these reports, or even learn more? And what might that mean for House Democrats’ own investigations into whether the president abused his power?

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Stone with WikiLeaks

Washington (CNN)Prosecutors said for the first time that they have evidence of Roger Stone communicating with WikiLeaks, according to a new court filing from special counsel prosecutors.

During its investigation of the Russian hack of the Democrats, "the government obtained and executed dozens of search warrants on various accounts used to facilitate the transfer of stolen documents for release, as well as to discuss the timing and promotion of their release," the prosecutors wrote Friday to a federal judge.
"Several of those search warrants were executed on accounts that contained Stone's communications with Guccifer 2.0 and with Organization 1," which is WikiLeaks.
Previously, the prosecutors had only outlined how Stone attempted to get in touch with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange through intermediaries. Stone sought to learn about what the hackers had stolen from the Democratic Party and how he hoped for its release so it could help Donald Trump's campaign, prosecutors have said.
The new filing provided no further details on what was contained in the communications.
There is one known exchange of messages between WikiLeaks and Stone. In February 2018, the Atlantic reported Stone exchanged direct messages via Twitter with the WikiLeaks account in which Stone was asked to stop associating himself with the site. Both denied they were in contact about the release of Clinton emails.
The prosecutors have not yet explained in full the extent to which Stone actually reached WikiLeaks or Assange, or levied public charges against them for their role in the distribution of the hacked data.
Friday's filing is the strongest detail yet provided by the prosecutors that Stone and WikiLeaks were in touch.
Prosecutors stated that in obtaining the accounts, they found communications between Stone and WikiLeaks, which is only described as Organization 1, as well as Guccifer 2.0 which is the alias used by Russian intelligence to disseminate the documents.
Stone and his legal team will have access to these search warrants as they review evidence in the case to prepare for his trial. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of witness tampering, obstruction of justice and lying.
Case will not be reassigned
Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Friday denied Stone's attempt to get a new judge in his case, by alleging that his charges are unrelated to a case about the Russian hack of the Democrats. Prosecutors say they are indeed related, partly because they both hinge on some of the same search warrants.
Gag order
Jackson also placed a gag order on Stone and attorneys involved in his criminal case, though Stone's ability to speak publicly isn't completely restricted.
Lawyers "for the parties and the witnesses must refrain from making statements to the media or in public settings that pose a substantial likelihood of material prejudice to this case," Jackson wrote.
They, their clients and even Stone are also not allowed to speak in and around the courthouse.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump’s legal troubles are far from over even as Mueller probe ends

For 22 months, Donald Trump’s presidency has been haunted largely by one legal foe, a Washington prosecutor with seemingly unlimited power but who was also a single target for Trump to portray as the leader of an unfair “witch hunt.”

Yet even as one legal cloud lifts with the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, others loom large on the horizon — creating additional threats to the president’s standing as he seeks to shift attention toward his 2020 reelection campaign.

Nearly every organization Trump has run over the past decade remains under investigation by state or federal authorities, and he is mired in a variety of civil litigation, with the center of gravity shifting from Mueller’s offices in Southwest Washington to Capitol Hill and state and federal courtrooms in New York, the president’s hometown and the headquarters of his company.

Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating hush money paid before the 2016 election to two women who said they had affairs with Trump. Prosecutors in that office are also probing Trump’s inaugural committee, which raised and spent record amounts of money.

The president’s personal conduct will also be under the microscope in the coming months, when he is scheduled to sit for a deposition in a lawsuit filed in New York state by a former contestant on his reality television show who alleges Trump groped her in 2007 and then lied about it during the election.

Authorities in New York, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey are investigating a variety of issues related to Trump’s private business and charity.

Congressional Democrats have already issued dozens of requests for information about various topics related to Mueller’s investigation, the operations of Trump’s White House and Trump’s private business, and they have signaled they will press forward with those matters — even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said she does not favor impeachment. Their focus will probably be guided at least in part by Mueller’s findings, which were not yet known on Saturday.

“It’s the end of the beginning, but it’s not the beginning of the end,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters Saturday. “It’s important to remember that whatever is concluded by Robert Mueller doesn’t mean that the president and his core team are free of legal jeopardy.”

Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani said Saturday that he is not worried about the litany of ongoing legal issues.

“The president didn’t do anything wrong, and he will be vindicated on those issues, just as he has been vindicated after months of his critics talking about collusion,” Giuliani said. “They’ll be wrong again, and they have a compulsive desire to go after the president. It’s sad.”

Trump told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Friday that he and his lawyers were in the dark about any investigation other than Mueller’s. “They say there are lots of things, but I don’t know about these things, okay, just so you understand,” he said.

Nonetheless, Trump, his company and his administration face challenges from the remaining investigations and lawsuits, particularly as the Democrats angling to run against him next year seek to portray the president as self-interested and corrupt.

In New York, federal prosecutors have been active on two investigations that could cause problems for Trump, his family and other close associates.

Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in August to breaking campaign finance law by arranging pre-election payments to two women who said they had extramarital affairs with Trump. Cohen told a federal judge his actions were intended to silence the women to help Trump win the election. Cohen said he had been directed by Trump, who was referred to in court documents drawn up by federal prosecutors in Manhattan as “Individual-1.”

The status of the investigation is not clear. Cohen in May will begin serving a three-year prison term for his involvement in the scheme, as well as various financial crimes and for lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. When Cohen was sentenced, prosecutors announced they had reached a settlement with American Media Inc., the company that publishes the National Enquirer, for its role in paying off one of the two women — a possible sign the investigation into the payments had been concluded.

Cohen told Congress in public testimony recently that he was aware of potentially illegal behavior by Trump that he could not discuss because he believed it remained the subject of ongoing investigation by New York prosecutors.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said department policy is not to confirm or comment on the existence of investigations.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in Manhattan in February also issued a wide-ranging subpoena to the presidential inaugural committee, the entity that organized Trump’s $107 million festivities when he took office in January 2017. The request sought documents covering nearly every aspect of the committee’s activities.

In addition, the committee has also received subpoenas from attorneys general offices in New Jersey and the District, which are each investigating whether the not-for-profit committee’s spending fulfilled its charitable aims.

Federal prosecutors are also scheduled to try one of Trump’s oldest friends and confidantes, Roger Stone, in Washington in November. Stone has been charged with lying to Congress about his efforts to find out what material WikiLeaks held before the 2016 election. The anti-secrecy site upended the campaign by publishing emails from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta that prosecutors have said were stolen by Russian operatives.

Stone was charged jointly by Mueller’s office and prosecutors in Washington. With the end of Mueller’s probe, it appears likely the case will be taken over entirely by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Stone has pleaded not guilty. While Trump is not implicated in the case, the trial will showcase evidence of the Trump campaign’s inner workings.

Trump and his company are also facing a battery of investigations from state authorities in New York.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) is suing Trump in state court because of what the state called “persistently illegal conduct” at Trump’s 30-year-old charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The suit says that Trump used the charity’s money to buy paintings of himself, to pay off legal settlements for his for-profit businesses and to give his own presidential campaign a boost during the 2016 Republican primaries.

Trump and his children Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric have also been sued; they were all technically members of a charity board that hadn’t met since 1999, the attorney general’s office says. Trump has agreed to shutter the foundation, but the case is still pending.

In addition, Trump’s company appears to be the focus of two new state inquiries that followed the congressional testimony by Cohen. Cohen told a House committee in February that Trump had submitted inflated summaries of his assets to both insurers and would-be lenders, seeking to mislead them about the state of his net worth.

After that, state authorities sent subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and another bank that loaned money to Trump, and to Aon, Trump’s longtime insurance broker.

State investigators in both New York and New Jersey have spoken to an attorney for undocumented immigrants who worked for years at Trump’s golf clubs, according to the attorney. In January, the company fired at least 18 workers — many of them longtime employees — after an audit found that their immigration documents were fraudulent. Neither the New York nor the New Jersey attorney general has commented, nor have they confirmed that they had opened investigations.

Trump is also facing two federal lawsuits alleging that he has violated the Constitution because his private company continues to do business with foreign governments.

Trump’s D.C. hotel, down the street from the White House, has already hosted parties put on by the Kuwaiti, Azerbaijani and Philippine embassies, and it rented more than 500 rooms to lobbyists for the Saudi government starting just after the 2016 election. Trump’s hotel in Chicago has also hosted a national day celebration by the Romanian consulate. The Trump Organization has said it made $191,000 in profit from foreign governments last year and donated that amount to the U.S. Treasury. It has not specified who its foreign customers are and how much they paid in total.

The Constitution prohibits presidents from taking “emoluments” from foreign states or the governments of individual U.S. states.

One of the lawsuits was filed by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia. A lower-court judge said the attorneys general could ask the Trump International Hotel in Washington for information on its foreign clients, but that “discovery” process has been halted while a higher court considers Trump’s appeal.

Trump has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended only to bar outright bribes and not business transactions conducted at market rates.

Another lawsuit, filed by congressional Democrats, is also proceeding but is at an earlier stage of the legal process. If either succeeds, the plaintiffs could bring to light the Trump Organization’s list of foreign-government customers.

One of Trump’s most pressing legal perils comes from a lawsuit filed in New York by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant.

A New York appellate court earlier this month denied a request by Trump to dismiss the suit, allowing it to move forward.

His lawyers have said they plan to appeal, but if the ruling stands, it means Trump would probably have to sit for a deposition in the matter in coming months. He would face questions about Zervos’s allegations — she has said that Trump groped her and kissed her without consent during a 2007 encounter in a Los Angeles hotel room that she had believed was supposed to be a business meeting.

Her lawyers would probably seek to ask the president questions about his treatment of other women.

Trump could face serious consequences if he were to lie in the deposition. After all, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton began after he was accused of lying in a deposition in a civil sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

AFTER MUELLER: AN OFF-RAMP ON RUSSIA FOR THE VENAL FUCKS

We don’t know what the Mueller report says, though given William Barr’s promise to brief the Judiciary Committee leaders this weekend and follow it with a public summary, it’s not likely to be that damning to Trump. But I can think of five mutually non-exclusive possibilities for the report:

Mueller ultimately found there was little fire behind the considerable amounts of smoke generated by Trump’s paranoia
The report will be very damning — showing a great deal of corruption — which nevertheless doesn’t amount to criminal behavior
Evidence that Manafort and Stone conspired with Russia to affect the election, but Mueller decided not to prosecute conspiracy itself because they’re both on the hook for the same prison sentence a conspiracy would net anyway, with far less evidentiary exposure
There’s evidence that others entered into a conspiracy with Russia to affect the election, but that couldn’t be charged because of evidentiary reasons that include classification concerns and presidential prerogatives over foreign policy, pardons, and firing employees
Mueller found strong evidence of a conspiracy with Russia, but Corsi, Manafort, and Stone’s lies (and Trump’s limited cooperation) prevented charging it
As many people have pointed out, this doesn’t mean Trump and his kin are out of jeopardy. This NYT piece summarizes a breathtaking number of known investigations, spanning at least four US Attorneys offices plus New York state, but I believe even it is not comprehensive.

All that said, we can anticipate a great deal of what the Mueller report will say by unpacking the lies Trump’s aides told to hide various ties to Russia: The report will show:

Trump pursued a ridiculously lucrative $300 million real estate deal even though the deal would use sanctioned banks, involve a former GRU officer as a broker, and require Putin’s personal involvement at least through July 2016.
The Russians chose to alert the campaign that they planned to dump Hillary emails, again packaging it with the promise of a meeting with Putin.
After the Russians had offered those emails and at a time when the family was pursuing that $300 million real estate deal, Don Jr took a meeting offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” At the end (per the sworn testimony of four people at the meeting) he said his father would revisit Magnitsky sanctions relief if he won. Contrary to the claim made in a statement authored by Trump, there was some effort to follow up on Jr’s assurances after the election.
The campaign asked rat-fucker Roger Stone to optimize the WikiLeaks releases and according to Jerome Corsi he had some success doing so.
In what Andrew Weissmann called a win-win (presumably meaning it could help Trump’s campaign or lead to a future business gig for him), Manafort provided Konstantin Kilimnik with polling data that got shared with Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs. At the same meeting, he discussed a “peace” plan for Ukraine that would amount to sanctions relief.
Trump undercut Obama’s response to the Russian hacks in December 2016, in part because he believed retaliation for the hacks devalued his victory. Either for that reason, to pay off Russia, and/or to pursue his preferred policy, Trump tried to mitigate any sanctions, an attempt that has (with the notable exception of those targeting Oleg Deripaska) been thwarted by Congress.
We know all of these things — save the Stone optimization detail, which will be litigated at trial unless Trump pardons him first — to be true, either because Trump’s aides and others have already sworn they are true, and/or because we’ve seen documentary evidence proving it.

That’s a great deal of evidence of a quid pro quo — of Trump trading campaign assistance for sanctions relief. All the reasons above may explain why Mueller didn’t charge it, with the added important detail that Trump has long been a fan of Putin. Trump ran openly on sanctions relief and Presidents get broad authority to set their own foreign policy, and that may be why all this coziness didn’t amount to criminal behavior: because a majority of the electoral college voted (with Russia’s involvement) to support those policies.

Whatever reason this didn’t get charged as a crime (it may well have been for several involved, including Trump), several things are clear.

First, consider all this from the perspective of Russia: over and over, they exploited Trump’s epic narcissism and venality. Particularly with regards to the Trump Tower deal, they did so in a way that would be especially damaging, particularly given that even while a former GRU officer was brokering the deal, the GRU was hacking Trump’s opponent. They often did so in ways that would be readily discovered, once the FBI decided to check Kilimnik’s Gmail account. Russia did this in ways that would make it especially difficult for Trump to come clean about it, even if he were an upstanding honest person.

Partly as a result, partly because he’s a narcissist who wanted to deny that he had illicit help to win, and partly because he’s a compulsive liar, Trump and his aides all lied about what they’ve now sworn to be true. Over and over again.

And that raised the stakes of the Russian investigation, which in turn further polarized the country.

As I noted here, that only added to the value of Russia’s intervention. Not only did Trump’s defensiveness make him prefer what Putin told him to what American Russian experts and his intelligence community would tell him, but he set about destroying the FBI in an effort to deny the facts that his aides ultimately swore were true. Sure, Russia hasn’t gotten its sanctions relief, yet. But it has gotten the President himself to attack the American justice system, something Putin loves to do.

We don’t know what the Mueller report will say about Trump’s role in all this, and how that will affect the rest of his presidency. We do know he remains under investigation for his cheating (as an unindicted co-conspirator in the ongoing hush money investigation) and his venality (in the inauguration investigation, at a minimum).

We do know, however, that whatever is in that report is what Mueller wants in it; none of the (Acting) Attorneys General supervising him thwarted his work, though Trump’s refusal to be interviewed may have.

But we also know that Russia succeeded wildly with its attack in 2016 and since.

Democrats and Republicans are going to continue being at each other’s throats over Trump’s policies and judges. Trump will continue to be a venal narcissist who obstructs legitimate oversight into his mismanagement of government.

Both sides, however, would do well to take this report — whatever it says — as the final word on this part of the Russian attack in 2016, and set about protecting the country from the next attack it will launch.

An unbelievable swath of this country — including the denialists who say all those things that Trump’s own aides swore to doesn’t amount to evidence of wrongdoing — have chosen for tribal reasons (and sometimes venal ones) to side with kleptocratic Russians over the protection of America. Now that the report is done, it’s time to focus on protecting the United States again.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

No One Who Matters Has Read the Mueller Report Yet

Attorney General Bill Barr’s summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report—released on Sunday to Congress and the public at a slim four pages—was greeted as putting to rest the questions that have swirled around President Donald Trump’s campaign and its relationship to Russia.

But reports of the end of this chapter of Trump’s presidency have been greatly exaggerated. The only document that has so far become public is Barr’s highly truncated summary of Mueller’s report—which is not the same as the report itself. This is a time of suspended animation, after the investigators have finished their work but before it’s clear precisely what the conclusion of that work means.

The debate has shifted out of the legal playing field and into the realm of politics without any of the political players knowing what information they’re dealing with. The problem is that Mueller’s report itself is not yet public. So while the matter at hand is definitively no longer one for the courts, members of Congress and the public at large—who will need to decide what is and is not acceptable in public life—don’t yet know the things they need to know in order to make an informed decision. Between the idea of Mueller’s report and the reality of its appearance, in other words, falls the shadow.

Barr’s letter certainly offered new and even important information. Mueller’s investigation, he quoted the special counsel’s report as saying, “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Barr also wrote that Mueller “determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment” as to whether or not the president had obstructed justice, declining both to implicate the president in the commission of a crime and to exonerate him.

President Trump, never one to linger on nuance, was predictably gleeful: “No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION,” he tweeted, inaccurately. The press, meanwhile, seemed ready to declare the story of the Russia investigation over and done with. “A Cloud Over Trump’s Presidency Is Lifted,” read a New York Times headline. The Washington Post took a similar approach: “Mueller’s findings seemed to dispel the cloud of conspiracy that has hung over the administration since its inception.”

Barr’s letter is both so vague and so dense with possible conflicting interpretations that one has to have at least a little sympathy for the headline writers tasked with distilling it into a few words. Any careful examination of the material provided by the attorney general ends up snared in double negatives. Consider Barr’s description of the special counsel’s conclusions on whether associates of the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. As Robert Litt, the former general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has noted, neither Barr nor the portion of the Mueller report quoted by Barr states that the special counsel’s office found there was “no collusion.” Rather, Litt argued, “saying that the investigation did not establish that there was collusion is not the same thing as saying that the investigation established that there was no collusion.” Likewise, this determination hinges on the relatively narrow definition of coordination that, Barr wrote, the special counsel’s office used for legal purposes.

This doesn’t mean that there are other shoes yet to drop. But, however frustratingly, it also doesn’t mean that there aren’t. What it does mean is that, whatever new information Mueller’s report does or doesn’t contain on what has come to be called “collusion,” the final determination of whether the Trump campaign’s connections with the Russian government were or weren’t acceptable will not be made in a court of law.

Perhaps the most baffling portion of Barr’s letter, though, is the section on obstruction of justice. According to Barr, Mueller’s report sets out evidence for and against viewing Trump’s conduct as obstruction of justice, but ultimately declined to make a call one way or another—which is, certainly, highly unusual. Why? What made Barr himself decide it was necessary for the attorney general to make the call that Mueller’s evidence was “not sufficient to establish” that Trump had committed obstruction? To what extent was Barr’s decision—and, for that matter, Mueller’s—shaped by Barr’s aggressive view of the interaction between presidential authority and the obstruction statutes, under which an action definitionally cannot be obstructive if it is authorized under Article II of the Constitution? To what extent did that view mean that Barr wrote off presidential conduct that the FBI worried might be both obstructive and a benefit to Russia—such as firing James Comey as FBI director?

These are important questions, and they are impossible to answer without seeing Mueller’s report itself, rather than Barr’s topline. The questions are even harder because, though Barr’s letter includes quotes from Mueller throughout, each quote is somehow edited or truncated. Or as the legal reporter Adam Klasfeld put it: “The public still has not read a single complete sentence of the Mueller report.”

One possible explanation for Mueller’s decision to neither prosecute nor decline to prosecute, my colleagues at Lawfare and I theorized, is that the special counsel “determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment” because the evaluation of the president’s conduct turned out not to be one for a prosecutor to make. That may be in part because of Justice Department guidelines against the indictment of a sitting president—which, Barr wrote, did not factor into his decision as to the strength of evidence on obstruction, though he is silent as to whether they factored into Mueller’s. It may also flow from the problems posed by how Article II interacts with the obstruction statutes—possibly the “‘difficult issues’ of law and fact” that Barr describes, quoting Mueller.

Again, it’s impossible to know in the absence of the Mueller report itself. But whatever the reasoning, the effect is to pass the matter to Congress and the public. The issue is not a legal question but a moral one: Whether or not the evidence is sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this person obstructed justice, is he really the kind of person who is fit to be president?

It’s questionable whether this was ever truly a legal matter in the first place. There was a comfort, though, in imagining that the law was capable of reestablishing the primacy of facts and even accountability for those in power. Barr’s letter makes clear that this is no longer in the cards.

Congressional Democrats have long punted the question of whether to open an impeachment inquiry to after Mueller finishes his investigation. “We have to wait and see what happens with the Mueller report,” said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in January. Now that that investigation is complete, the ball is squarely in Congress’s court. Though some people—most notably the perennial Trump defender Alan Dershowitz—have argued that impeachment requires criminal wrongdoing on the part of the president, this is by far a minority position.

A better guide is Charles Black, who argued in 1973 that impeachable offenses constitute “serious” acts of wrongdoing “against the nation or its governmental and political processes, obviously wrong, in themselves, to any person of honor.” This is a reasonable standard by which to measure the presidential conduct described in the Mueller report—on behalf of both the House Judiciary Committee and the public.

But the report itself is not yet public. The result is that the country floats in a state of suspended animation, an informational hinterland. That may be over soon: NBC reported on Monday afternoon that the FBI was preparing to brief congressional leadership on Mueller’s counterintelligence findings. Meanwhile, according to Barr’s letter, the attorney general is continuing to work with the special counsel’s office to determine how much of the report can be released to the public. How long that will take, though, is anyone’s guess.

After the release of Barr’s letter, Comey posted on Twitter a pensive picture of himself alone in a forest. To me, it recalled Dante Alighieri’s description of fear and uncertainty at the beginning of Inferno, before he meets the poet Virgil, who will guide him through Hell: “I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.” Or as Comey wrote: “So many questions.”

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

Right, we have the conclusion of Bill Barr, who decided that Obstruction of Justice was impossible BEFORE HE GOT HIRED FOR THIS JOB.  He was basically hired to determine that the president was not guilty.  We're reading articles on the Barr report, on the Muller report.  Not the Muller Report.

And again, "Collusion" isn't the crime, it's an element of the crime of Conspiracy, and you don't have to prove Collusion to prove Conspiracy.  The co-conspirators don't have to know of each other's actions, merely work toward the same goal.

For example, if Donald Trump says "I sure wish somebody would burn down the Capital Building," a Nazi burns down the Right Wing, and a Klansman burns down the Left Wing, it is by definition Conspiracy to Commit Arson, even if the Nazi, and the Klansman were unaware of each other's actions, AND take credit for the entire fire.

[Athos_131]

No Criminal Collusion. Lots of Corruption.

The Mueller investigation is over, and the only people close to Donald Trump who have been criminally charged are his former campaign chairman, former deputy campaign chairman, former personal lawyer, former national security adviser, former campaign foreign policy adviser and Roger Stone, the president’s longtime friend and strategist. The report written by the special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a quotation in a brief summary issued by Attorney General William Barr, says that “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Naturally, the president and his allies are claiming, as one of Trump’s tweets said, “Complete and Total EXONERATION.”

I won’t pretend that the weekend’s news was not very good for Trump and dispiriting for those of us who despise him. Whatever else is in the Mueller report, it says, according to Barr, that the investigation “did not establish” that anyone from the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its 2016 election interference. The overtures we all know about — the Trump Tower meeting, Trump’s public call for Russia to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails, which Russian hackers tried to do that very day — were not part of a crime, or at least not part of a crime that the special counsel could prove. There will be no deus ex Mueller bringing this wretched presidency to an early end. On the contrary, Trump is emboldened, and his foes momentarily defensive.

Until the Mueller report is publicly released, however, it’s impossible to tell how much of Trump’s victory is substantive and how much is spin. The report, evidently, leaves open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. In his letter to Congress about the report, Barr said that he and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, made the determination that no obstruction of justice occurred. Of course, last year Barr wrote a memo calling Mueller’s obstruction investigation “grossly irresponsible” and “fatally misconceived,” which is surely why Trump appointed him in the first place. There is no reason for anyone to take his finding seriously.

Even some of the underlying questions about Trump’s relationship with Russia remain open. Here, those of us who’d hoped for more from Mueller should be mindful of the temptation to grasp at straws. On Friday, when the news broke that Mueller wasn’t recommending any more indictments, many of us immediately asked whether there were sealed indictments. There weren’t. As we parse Barr’s letter, we should be aware of the human tendency toward motivated reasoning.

But we should be equally aware of the media tendency to capitulate in the face of Trumpian triumphalism. (Recall the pressure to give Trump credit after his first meeting with Kim Jong-un, despite the emptiness of the resulting agreement.) So we shouldn’t overlook the fact that when it comes to Trump’s relationship with Russia, Barr’s letter speaks only to very narrow questions about Trump campaign involvement in Russian information warfare operations in 2016.

Barr wrote that no Trump associate conspired or “knowingly” coordinated with the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm that spread pro-Trump and anti-Clinton propaganda. Did any do so unknowingly? Barr also wrote that the special counsel didn’t find that Trump associates “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s computers, but few thought the campaign had a role in the actual digital break-in.

Still, assuming Barr’s summary is accurate, it means that while Trump was installed with Russia’s help, neither he nor his campaign assisted Russia in committing the crimes that aided his ascent. (If he cheated his way to victory, it was through more pedestrian alleged violations of campaign finance law.) We’re still in the dark, however, about all the steps Trump took to thwart the investigation and about the extent of his vulnerability to compromise.

On Saturday, the left-wing writer Matt Taibbi published a widely shared essay calling Russiagate “this generation’s W.M.D.,” a national security hoax, abetted by a credulous media, akin to the one that justified the Iraq War. “The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star,” he wrote.

That’s silly. The biggest thing this affair has uncovered is that throughout much of the presidential campaign, Trump was seeking to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The deal had the potential to make hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump Organization, and Trump’s lawyer solicited the Russian government’s help to get it done. After the election, Trump lied about the deal to the American people. Vladimir Putin knew the truth, giving him leverage over Trump. Is that the only leverage he had?

It now falls to Congress to find out, and it’s important that Democrats not allow themselves to be intimidated by right-wing chest-beating, particularly if Republicans try to quash the report’s release. Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Representative Devin Nunes, a devoted Trump lackey, called for the report to be burned. Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers, has said he would “fight very aggressively” to stop the president’s written answers to Mueller from being made public. Republicans may be gloating, but it’s Democrats who should be on the offensive. If Trump thinks he has been vindicated, then what is he hiding?

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist