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Monday, March 25, 2019

The End Of The Mueller Investigation - Day 1

Attorney General Barr reduced Robert Mueller's report to four pages [link goes to Barr's report] which he gave key Congressional committees.  In response, Seth Abramson, who's been following all this closely for years now tweeted today:


So before people fall for this, "nothing to see, keep moving" interpretation from Barr, here are a couple of others who seem to agree with Abramson.


From Marty Lederman's "How not to think–and what the Mueller Report won’t tell us–about Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation "at Just Security today:

". . .That’s why you’re already familiar with many of those acts:  Trump pressured Comey to back off on Michael Flynn.  He fired Comey in order to take off the “great pressure” he faced “because of Russia” (as he said in his contemporaneous boasts to Russian officials!).  He constantly disparaged, and called in into question the impartiality of, Mueller and his team of lawyers.  He insulted countless career and Trump-appointed DOJ and FBI officials of extraordinary integrity.  He said he wouldn’t have appointed Jeff Sessions if he knew Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation, tried to get Sessions to reverse his decision to recuse, and humiliated Sessions when he wouldn’t budge.  Eventually he fired Sessions and then displaced Rod Rosenstein as Acting Attorney General with a lackey, deviating from centuries of practice.  He persistently referred to the critically important Russia investigation as a “witch hunt.”  And on and on.
These things have become so regular, so commonplace, that we’ve come to take them for granted.  Make no mistake, however:  They are not things any other president would ever do.  Any other president would–of course–do everything in his power to support, praise and cooperate with his own officials as they were engaged in an investigation of one of the most serious foreign threats to the nation in recent years.  And any other president would abide by the decades-long norms prohibiting presidential interference with, and commenting, on, DOJ investigations–especially when DOJ is investigating the president himself and people in his orbit.
Trump’s behavior with respect to the investigation has been deeply deviant, and inexcusable.  Moreover, it has been–quite obviously–part of a concerted, multiyear effort to obstruct, and undermine the legitimacy of, the Russia investigation.  No serious person would dispute that.  (Indeed, Trump virtually boasts about it.)  And most of it has been out there in plain view already–which is why the Mueller report to Barr is unlikely to contain any great surprises or revelations. . ."

From "Trump Aided and Abetted Russia’s Attack. That Was Treachery. Full Stop. The scandal may not be a crime. It’s a betrayal."  by David Corn in Mother Jones today:

"On Sunday afternoon Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress noting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The message also noted that Mueller could not exonerate President Donald Trump of obstruction of justice, but that Barr himself had decided that the evidence Mueller developed was “insufficient to establish” that Trump had obstructed justice. Trump proclaimed it was “complete and total exoneration.” And Trump champions popped the cork and declared case closed, nothing to see, end of story, no need for further investigation, Trump did no wrong.
Well, that is fake news."

There's so much more that we've seen that Trump has done and as some are telling us to move on now that the report is in, while they didn't say that while Trump demanding Obama present his birth certificate and that we should "Lock her up!"  

When I think back to when the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes he'd recorded of all the meetings in the oval office, times were really different.

  • First, it was pretty clear that the tapes showed that Nixon had lied.  There had been a cover-up and it went all the way up to the top. 
  • Second, the idea that the president had lied about this mattered.   
  • Third, the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate - but Nixon didn't have the hold on the congressional Republicans that Trump has.  



Well, here's a later tweet from Seth Abramson:

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