Trump lies about everything all the time. I mean, I can see Barr maybe putting things in the best light he can for his boss. But the conclusions of the report pretty much have to be what he said they are.
And, it’s been like, one business day since the report was submitted. Nobody’s hiding the report yet.
They all do.
Not if we never see it.
Maybe you missed this:
Basically McConnell is saying that Barr should be the sole arbiter of what we learn.
When Ken Starr was done with his investigation we got a 445 page document. For a blowjob.
It was released in 2 days and it only took that long because Congress was debating what to do with it.
In this case the House voted unanimously to release it, before it was even submitted and then McConnell said, “nah, let’s let Trump’s guy handle it all, he’ll tell us what we need to know, no need to have votes around here.”
So what do you think the report says? And if it is the exact opposite of what Barr is telling us what it is, why wouldn’t Mueller say that when he goes in front of a House committee, which will definitely happen?
I have no idea, which is why I want it released.
He probably would. These are people who lie about shit that is live on international television.
I suspect Barr is playing down things, not overtly lying, though if he was blatantly lying it wouldn’t surprise me much. I think he’s omitting lots of obstruction of justice stuff and saying “Well Mueller said it was fine,” when the likelihood is that Mueller is saying, “Do what you will with this information, I’m just stating the facts not making calls.”
Another Twitter thread along the same lines:
I guess this is what being gaslit feels like, because I have no idea what to think about this anymore.
I left it in my other jacket.
Mueller also conducted the investigation into the NFL over the Ray Rice affair. In that report he concluded that the NFL did nothing that rose to the level of criminality - but then went on to detail what the NFL did wrong.
I never thought Mueller would be able to find anything that would be sufficient to prove criminal behavior in a court of law, because no matter how incompetent trump et al may be, the Russians are a little better at this. There was always going to be the probability of plausible deniability. Also our campaign finance laws are shit, and things we might intuitively feel are criminal are in fact legal. Maybe some of those things need to change, but it would be useful to know what those things are. Or maybe the trump team actively rebuked Russians efforts. Thing is, we don’t know. All we know is what Barr summarized in a four page letter. That’s a disservice to everyone one of us.
It’s like when Nunes released some of those memos a while back trying to make the FBI look bad. When we saw the actual memos then we saw the facts, not the spin the shitlickers wanted us to see.
Beyond all that though whatever Mueller found deserves to be aired in the public space. This is our government, and everyone in the government ultimately work for the American people. We know for instance Manafort gave the Russians propriety campaign data. What did the Russians do with that data? What and how did Roger Stone interact with Wikileaks? Etc et al. There are still a lot of unanswered questions. And it is beyond laughable that we would leave a determination of obstruction of justice to Barr alone.
Finally, what does this mean for the 2020 election? Is the same thing going to happen again?
But I guess we already know the answer to that question.
Almost assuredly. Even if they fail or get caught, it still works in Russia’s favor.
At this point I’d argue chaos might be preferable for them, though Trump’s complete capitulation to them on everything they want probably still has some value for them. Then again they can push through those concessions before Nov 2020 and the chaos would likely keep anyone from responding to them anyway.
It need not be the exact opposite. It’s just almost certainly the case that Barr is trying to put what it says in the best light.
For example: I have no problem believing that Mueller found a ton of evidence of obstruction of justice and decided that the way to deal with it was not to recommend prosecution or no prosecution but instead to hand the evidence to Congress with an implicit instruction that Congress do their job. I have no problem believing that mostly because that is what happened in Watergate, in Iran-Contra and in MonicaGate.
But if that is what happened, that is not the way it was conveyed by Barr’s letter. Barr’s letter makes it seem as if there was not enough evidence even to really consider prosecution, which is almost certainly not what Mueller said.
The whole point is to set the narrative first. So that when the eventual details of the report start to come out, no one will give them any real importance because everyone will already know that there is nothing there. It is the exact same thing Trump has done all along. Remember, he never even met any or heard of any Russians, and they never even did any hacking at the start.
They are. Even Barr’s letter raises the prospect of hiding the report; the last two paragraphs are an argument for why it would be illegal for him to release much of it.
We don’t have to go back far to see precedent here. Hillary Clinton’s email investigation saw her conduct not rise to the level of criminality, but we received a scathing press conference that went into details about her misdeeds. Then we spent 4 months hearing about it some more. Then we got a letter the week reopening the investigation with even more details.
This is far bigger and far more serious. We deserve to see the report and Mueller should be called to answer questions regarding the findings.
Coal emissions are up this year. Coal.
Dude, it’s clean coal. Clean!
Soon to come because the nuclear is too complicated – you need to be Einstein to understand it! – steam-powered battleships running on beautiful, clean coal!
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote here. When people have been groupthinking for 2 years that Mueller is undoubtedly (easily?) going to expose Trump for the criminal that he is, there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance when he comes up short. Unsurprisingly, instead of accepting its, a lot of people are digging in even harder that there’s a huge conspiracy that just hasn’t been exposed yet. It’s the exact same shit Trump supporters do. “The Resistance” is never going to move on from this, but for the sake of the country I really hope Democratic candidates are able to pivot away from conspiracy theory in favor of good policy ideas.
Accepting what? Have you seen the report?
Scratch that, have you seen the list of illegal/ shady shit that people up and down his administration have been caught and charged with? Or the illegal and shady shit that they’ve done openly, but no one has bothered to do anything about?
The scale of graft and corruption in this administration is unprecedented, it shouldn’t take the Meuller report to show that.
On the other hand, because I can’t be arsed to type it all up myself:
Only 6 or 7 people from Trump’s team have been convicted of crimes!
It’s weird that I keep seeing the media and prominent figures saying we need to accept the report, when we haven’t seen it. Plus the obvious fact that just about everyone in Trump’s orbit will lie incessantly to protect him. Why on earth would we believe one of his appointees? Is he the one honest person working for Trump? Seems doubtful.