MUELLER REPORT JUST DROPPED

[_huckelberry]

I, for one, am reassured to know that President is probably not knowingly a Russian agent. I'm a little disappointed that the prosecutors don't think they could make the obstruction charges stick, but I'm content to accept their judgement on the matter.

Overall, the results of the investigation were very satisfying. Quite apart from nailing several administration cronies for perjury and money laundering, Mueller indicted many Russian spies and exposed much of Russia's effort to compromise our democracy.

Now that Trump no longer has anything to fear from Mueller's findings, I'd like to see him and Congress work together to safeguard our elections from Russian interference and come up with a strategy to win this clandestine war we're fighting.

These are comments thatI am glad to hear.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'm still interested if the report will at least answer questions like:

Why did Trump's Campaign Chairman and Deputy Campaign Chairman meet with a former Russian intelligence officer?

Why did the Trump Campaign meet with Russian operatives during the 2016 Presidential Campaign at the Trump Tower?

Why did senior Trump Campaign officials direct Roger Stone to find out about Wikileaks releasing illegally hacked damaging information on the Clinton Campaign?

President Trump repeatedly lied about doing business with Russia. It is an irrefutable fact that his personal attorney lied . The question is why?

Why did President Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen lie to Congress about the Trump Organization pursuing an incredibly lucrative Trump Tower project in Moscow during the 2016 Presidential campaign?

Whatever the case may be, it's a little bizarre how quickly the media is like, "Welp! Guess everything's kosher if the partisan AG says so!"

- Doc

[_Res Ipsa]

I’m disappointed that Barr chose not to release a summary of Mueller’s factual findings. I approach politician’s summaries of what’s in a report with a ton of skepticism. We’ve seen pretty good examples of misleading summaries during the investigations attempting to discredit the investigation before it was completed. And I have a healthy level of distrust for an administration that looks in the camera and lies on almost a daily basis. So I’m doubting Thomas until I see the report.

I hope the summary is fair and accurate. I would feel better knowing that the AG put the country and not the President first.

RI is this summary what you are wanting or am I not understanding?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/24/politics ... index.html

Nope. That is Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report. I want to see Mueller’s, or at least the section of Mueller’s report that summarizes his findings.

[_honorentheos]

I'm still interested if the report will at least answer questions like:

Why did Trump's Campaign Chairman and Deputy Campaign Chairman meet with a former Russian intelligence officer?

Why did the Trump Campaign meet with Russian operatives during the 2016 Presidential Campaign at the Trump Tower?

Why did senior Trump Campaign officials direct Roger Stone to find out about Wikileaks releasing illegally hacked damaging information on the Clinton Campaign?

President Trump repeatedly lied about doing business with Russia. It is an irrefutable fact that his personal attorney lied . The question is why?

Why did President Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen lie to Congress about the Trump Organization pursuing an incredibly lucrative Trump Tower project in Moscow during the 2016 Presidential campaign?

Whatever the case may be, it's a little bizarre how quickly the media is like, "Welp! Guess everything's kosher if the partisan AG says so!"

- Doc

To be frank, the combination of what we already knew and the AG's summary report leads me to believe the stories coming out in 2017 suggesting the Trump campaign was too incompetent to actually collude with Russia ended up being right. There was a story at the time that Jared Kushner said as much when asked in a closed door meeting.



Anyway, it certainly makes the details of Mueller's report much more interesting rather than less as it's very difficult to reconcile the idea the Russians were actively offering to assist the Trump campaign according to the summary, the Russians were successful in executing THEIR aims of interfering, and all of the evidence presented publicly to date shows Trump and fam were eager beavers to get any edge they could over Clinton. Trump said on TV he fired Comey to end the Russia investigation, and the AG statement today basically says the reason no further action is being taken isn't because of a lack of evidence for attempted obstruction of justice but because the SC did not conclude a crime had been committed. Quite the opposite, really.

What a bizarre first round of post-submittal outcomes this turned into.

[_Kevin Graham]

Maklelan on Facebook made some interesting points:

I’ve seen a handful of posts saying people are relieved the Mueller investigation didn’t find evidence that Trump conspired directly with Russia to influence the election in Trump’s favor, but if anything, I think that should make us more concerned. What it means is that we know Russia was engaged in multiple large-scale campaigns to influence our election and that they made their intentions known to Trump’s campaign and repeatedly sought cooperation, but it also means Trump’s campaign never reported any of it, publicly encouraged it, never lifted a finger to stop it, repeatedly promoted Russia’s interests, lied to the public about it the entire time, BENEFITED DIRECTLY FROM IT, and most disturbing, WILL GET AWAY WITH IT. We just don’t have evidence they happened to directly coordinate with them. This is not a relief, this is the failure of our republic on a fundamental level.

[_EAllusion]

Maklelan on Facebook made some interesting points:

I’ve seen a handful of posts saying people are relieved the Mueller investigation didn’t find evidence that Trump conspired directly with Russia to influence the election in Trump’s favor, but if anything, I think that should make us more concerned. What it means is that we know Russia was engaged in multiple large-scale campaigns to influence our election and that they made their intentions known to Trump’s campaign and repeatedly sought cooperation, but it also means Trump’s campaign never reported any of it, publicly encouraged it, never lifted a finger to stop it, repeatedly promoted Russia’s interests, lied to the public about it the entire time, BENEFITED DIRECTLY FROM IT, and most disturbing, WILL GET AWAY WITH IT. We just don’t have evidence they happened to directly coordinate with them. This is not a relief, this is the failure of our republic on a fundamental level.

This is a very common take, but one that seemed very likely both before and after Barr's summary statement was released. The only thing likely to take Trump down is conviction in the Senate, and partisanship prevents that from being a live possibility. Nothing has changed there. Barr's statement on obstruction deserves an eyeroll in my opinion, but it seems that the underlying report did not find sufficient evidence of direct coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government at least narrowly defined in terms of existing criminal statues. Other forms of coordination, such as advance cooperation with Wikileaks, we haven't heard about yet. The kind of implicit quid pro quo behavior concealed with deception described in this quote was already known by the publicly available evidence. We didn't need any further evidence to know that happened. That some respectable mainstream news outlets report that as, "Looks like Trump is in the clear!" shows how completely broken our press is.

I've seen this dynamic described as a consequence of, "The letter [being] perfectly crafted to give Trump the headlines he wants from reporters unable or unwilling to do the proper parsing," but I think it's more about how relentless insincerity from right-wing media prompts biased coverage in their favor when there is the slightest opportunity to do so. Maggie Haberman types are always just a hair's breath from being a gullible hack, which she has proven time and time again.

[_Water Dog]

This thread, like so many before it, only demonstrates how you can take the man out of Mormonism, but taking the Mormonism out of the man is a different thing entirely. Smart people, but wow, so much TBM-style lunacy. Someone spun a story. A story which was objectively idiotic from the onset. But you really really wanted it to be true, for whatever insecure and mentally weak reasons, and clung to it like a calming security blanket. Because you just couldn't handle reality. Yep, that's right, Hillary lost. Fair and square. Well, actually, it wasn't fair and square. She had all the unfair advantages. And still lost. And thanks to your inability to accept that reality, you've dug your own political grave going forward.



Plus: 533,074 articles published, 2,284 on air minutes

NO COLLUSION

I feel like I've experienced this before. Oh, yeah. I did.

The Steele report occupies the same role in #Russiagate the tales spun by Ahmed Chalabi occupied in the WMD screwup. Once again, a narrative became turbo-charged when Officials With Motives pulled the press corps by its nose to a swamp of unconfirmable private assertions.

This has been the main reportorial difference between Russiagate and the WMD affair. Despite David Remnick’s post-invasion protestations that “nobody got [WMD] completely right,” the Iraq war was launched against the objections of the 6 million or more people who did get it right, and protested on the streets. There was open skepticism of Bush claims dotting the press landscape from the start, with people like Jack Shafer tearing apart every Judith Miller story in print. Most reporters are Democrats and the people hawking the WMD story were mostly Republicans, so there was at least some political space for protest.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagat ... -a-million

There will be a reckoning.

[_Water Dog]

This.

While we're all dealing with the fallout from the Mueller report, let me get something off my chest: Of all the despicable things that happened in the last two years, I'm perhaps most galled by the constant refrain that the American media was this VITAL INSTITUTION currently manning the DMZ between American civilization and chaos, and as such had to be spared from any serious criticism at this time ("this time" being the dark age that descended immediately upon us when Hillary Clinton lost a free and fair election).
I heard this loudly from those on the right, as well as the left. Media criticism had been a significant portion of my work as a journalist, and this sudden and entirely unwarranted reverence for the media actually affected my career negatively because I didn't stop trying to point out that large swaths of the media were clearly acting unethical and irresponsible.

Meanwhile, mainstream journalists were taking talking points straight from the likes of liars such as Brennan and Clapper (and trying to intimidate critics behind the scenes -- I got a lovely personal story about that), claiming the Logan Act was a real thing that merited law enforcement investigation, lapping up self-serving leaks from a thoroughly corrupted FBI, and generally engaged malpractice and groupthink across the board. This may prove to be the most credibility damaging episode of the modern era.

But no! You can't dare criticize the media, even if you couch it in an acknowledgement of Trump's own issues with the truth and plead for a course correction instead of tearing the media down.

(Having ranted about all this personally, NOW IMAGINE WHAT MY WIFE ENDURED for being correct when everyone around her was wrong and extremely self-righteous about it.)

Everyone who said that the media are above criticism only made it so much worse. If you were worried that those nasty Trumpers would tear down the media two years ago, prepare to reap the whirlwind.

https://Twitter.com/Heminator/status/11 ... 7834437632

[_Water Dog]

And this.

What we won't hear is an apology, or an introspective review of the mistakes and professional lapses that brought us all to this point. There will be a reckoning, but that reckoning won't be televised.
Instead, the reckoning will take place in the hearts and minds of the millions of Americans outside the Acela corridor who've been watching this slow-motion train wreck of a self-absorbed, hopelessly biased legacy media beclowning themselves in pursuit of the admiration and legitimacy of their peers, and of the Democratic politicians with whom they share secrets, lies, and tactics in furtherance of their mutual ideological objectives...


[Their] audience saw through the attempts of Reps. Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ted Lieu to represent innuendo as evidence, all the while silently urging the journalists hosting them to simply ask them a pertinent follow-up question....


And they knew why.

...

As much as I'd like to close with a quick word of advice for the media, for the Democratic politicians who pushed the treason narrative, and for the Comeys, Brennans, and Clappers, et al. who engineered this debacle, I honestly have no advice to give. It's over. There is no recovery from this.

The reckoning may not be televised, but it will be this: You will no longer be believed.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/24/pub ... televised/

[_Water Dog]

The Twitter threads are as funny as they are shameful.

https://Twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/stat ... 6620363777

Really liking this guy Greenwald. Politically I probably don't agree with him on much, but he's honest. And damn, how sad is it that this is the rubric? I mean it doesn't take much to impress me. Just honesty. That's it. We can hold differing opinions on every possible subject. But “F”, if you'll just be an honest journalist I can dig your work.

https://Twitter.com/ggreenwald