Just read it, no criminal conspiracy by trump campaign, standard of evidence for obstruction not clearly met in the opinion of the attorney general

[Edited on March 24, 2019 at 3:59 PM. Reason : ]

3/24/2019 3:54:47 PM

withholding judgement until the full report gets released

certainly feels like the handpicked AG cherrypicked what Trump would want to hear/pundits to delcrare him innocent, which is already happening

3/24/2019 4:00:05 PM

The full report is going to be interesting, doesn’t make sense to me trump and his people would lie about the meetings with russian agents at every turn, or Manafort would give Russia election data, and there’s nothing there.

But unless Barr’s statements are WILDLY at odds with the report the details don’t matter. I can’t see how this isn’t a dead issue at this point, and it’s not really in the Democrats MO to chant “lock him up” for 2 years despite the DOJ clearing him.

3/24/2019 5:29:24 PM

So glad I didn't waste two years of my life absorbing the dull minutia of this horse shit that amounted to absolutely nothing.

If this doesn't disillusion people to the bankruptcy of our democratic institutions and their utter inability to reform/correct themselves, then nothing will.

3/24/2019 6:26:37 PM

They didnt clear his obstruction of justice, but it would take a democratically controlled Senate to do anything about it. Now it's up to SDNY.


Democrats shouldn't run on a lock him up type campaign because they dont have the media on their side to make it work.


Our democracy is still broken, nothing changed

3/24/2019 6:27:42 PM

Quote :

"Our democracy is still broken, nothing changed"

Well, except "ThE ResIstaNcE" wasted two years fixating on Russia Russia Russia instead of proposing policy solutions that would ameliorate the conditions of the working poor and galvanize popular opposition. Two years have passed, and the opposition party to Republican hegemony have nothing else to talk about because they squandered every opportunity to organize and educate their base on how best to defeat Republicans.

That's a loss. The party is now two years behind schedule. And you best believe that party insiders are cooking up a way right this very fucking instance to somehow blame this on the Left, and will weaponize this loss to undermine the policy agendas of Bernie, AOC, or Illhan Omar.

3/24/2019 6:37:44 PM

It's a huge issue with a lot of smoke, and it has hardly been an issue anyone is organizing over

3/24/2019 7:13:32 PM

The talking points that should come out of this brief is that the report once again confirms Russias direct action to attack our democracy, multiple investigations are still ongoing, and there is evidence of obstruction of justice by the president

3/24/2019 7:16:57 PM

Spend the next two years pointing the finger at Russia and Trump will win re-election.

3/24/2019 7:18:38 PM

I mean if we are stuck in your forced dichotomy where we cant also do anything else then maybe

3/24/2019 7:37:18 PM

Quote :

"So glad I didn't waste two years of my life absorbing the dull minutia of this horse shit that amounted to absolutely nothing."

Amounting to absolutely nothing would be the many Republican inquires on Benghazi and emails.

This investigation resulted in dozens of indictments and many convictions.

3/25/2019 1:19:35 AM

Here’s my predictions at this point, which really aren’t worth anything since i was expecting Mueller to find conspiracy:

-Trump will see his first ever above water approval rating in the next few weeks
-Muellers report will be much stronger on obstruction that Barr let on
-Dems will hold hearings delving into the report to try and create more negative news cycles
-The other crimes Barr references that Mueller referred to other agencies will continue to drag on trump until the election and possibly be more damaging than the collusion investigation

3/25/2019 2:04:06 AM

I’ll accept the conspiracy findings at face value but I still can’t understand why all the public lying all along from everyone? It’s truly bizarre.

As for obstruction, that is a partisan opinion from Barr. I mean, we all saw obstruction in plain sight constantly. I guess the argument is criminal intent wasn’t there which is basically just saying Trump is just way too stupid to understand what he was doing.

** and I’ll reiterate again, the “party” spent very little time on Russia aside from Swallwell and Schiff. It barely factored in the midterms and both the establishment and progressive wings actually tamped down expectations since taking office. The Greenwald, Tracey, Taibbi wing is gaslighting by saying the opposite.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 8:11 AM. Reason : Gotta get that sweet Tucker/Ingraham spots tho]

3/25/2019 8:08:57 AM

Barr seems to think that if you are very public with your obstruction then it's not criminal


^ If Trump didn't collude then he is simply a "useful idiot," either way I can understand wanting to pretend like Russian connections didn't exist. Active collusion was always less-likely, I think from the beginning most thought he was simply a useful idiot who was too compromised to do anything about it.

3/25/2019 8:30:33 AM

Clinton lost because she was Clinton. Democrats need to get over it and run on something other than "Republicans are bad" and identity politics. I was born in 1980. In my lifetime no party has taken the White House for more than 12 years in a row. Trump is the 7th president that has served in my lifetime. So far only 2 of them haven't gotten their 8 years. Trump will probably win reelection and then a Democrat will serve in the White House for 8 years after that. The majority party generally loses a few seats in the house in midterms too. Democrats just need to quit crying and wait their turn again.

3/25/2019 8:37:47 AM

JFC. Imagine a Trump supporter maligning identity politics in 2019.

The entirety of the GOP platform today is white identity.

3/25/2019 9:09:54 AM

Quote :

"Democrats just need to quit crying and wait their turn again."

are you actually special needs?

3/25/2019 9:16:00 AM

Quote :

"If this doesn't disillusion people to the bankruptcy of our democratic institutions and their utter inability to reform/correct themselves, then nothing will."

Umm... How do you get that from this? The democratic institutions worked pretty well here. A potential crime by the President was investigated, not suppressed; and when it didn't find anything damning, the investigators didn't make up some shit to get the desired outcome. I'm reasonably satisfied with the democratic institutions on this one. (In other areas - gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, etc. - less than satisfied, but those had nothing to do with Mueller.

But I do agree with you that the opposition wasted a lot of time obsessing over this report and hoping it was going to save them. It was never going to, and now there's going to be a one-two punch of backlash and disillusionment.

3/25/2019 10:09:52 AM

^

Plus I would still like to know what in God's name all of the lying was about.

I do wonder if the tower/sanctions stuff was just kind of swept under the rug because sanctions we're never actually lifted.

3/25/2019 10:24:44 AM

I know this is crazy, but hear me out.

We actually don’t know what is in the Mueller report yet. Nor does any pundit. I suspect Mueller does contextualize a lot of this and I suspect it’s not as black and white an “exoneration” as we are being led to believe.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 10:32 AM. Reason : X]

3/25/2019 10:31:35 AM

^^^ it's broken because congress is supposed to be the check, no one is supposed be be hoping that a special investigator is the one who can stop a fascist.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 10:32 AM. Reason : .]

3/25/2019 10:31:55 AM

I mean, I agree with your, but I still don't see a broken institution here other than the Republican party. Congress as a whole hasn't been totally useless. They protected the investigation better than might have been expected, and there's every reason to believe that the House will keep digging. Honestly I'd prefer them to legislate some stuff instead - at this point nothing they find is going to get him out quicker than winning in 2020 would - but they are trying to check him.

What failed here wasn't an institution, it was the good sense of many within that institution (and many without, too). Playing up the investigation was short-sighted politics, which is a problem that is bound to affect any political system.

No, I'm sorry; I can get down with saying that maybe American democracy has failed in a lot of ways, but this time it seems to have worked ok.

3/25/2019 10:56:56 AM

Pretty good take here from Matt Taibbi. It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million

Any clear headed examination of the last two years makes the media at large look very bad.

To make matters worse, the way most big media is reacting to the news is even worse. When you're crying on national television because they didn't find collusion, what does that say? I think it removes any doubt or plausible deniability that you're politically motivated.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 10:59 AM. Reason : ]

3/25/2019 10:57:33 AM

congrats adultswim, d357r0y3r is now your people

3/25/2019 10:59:20 AM

Taibbi is a Seth Rich truther, right?

3/25/2019 11:03:54 AM

https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/1110197491608231937?s=21

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

3/25/2019 11:12:46 AM

^^^^ that’s an absurd take

Some very serious, high-level people in the trump campaign are in jail now because of crimes, Cohen is going to jail for finance fraud that he has directly provided evidence trump committed with him, if it wasn’t for the expectation that the climax would be trump knowing and approving the crimes, this would still all be a serious scandal.

WMDs were obviously a manufactured intent and result, but the Russia conspiracy thing was a result of where the evidence pointed. A lot of people, myself included, were skeptical about the trump Russia connection until the Comey incident.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 11:13 AM. Reason : ]

3/25/2019 11:13:24 AM

On top of that, it's just a stupid cliched statement too. Do you know what the "WMDs" of our generation is? WMDs.

3/25/2019 11:17:56 AM

Quote :

"-Trump will see his first ever above water approval rating in the next few weeks"

Why? You think he is going to start doing a good job? You think people disapproved of him bc of this report being prepared?

3/25/2019 11:30:25 AM

AG Barr was Bush's AG when he pardoned people involved in the Iran-Contra affair, that was our generation too

Quote :

"Why? You think he is going to start doing a good job? You think people disapproved of him bc of this report being prepared?"

they will absolutely go up

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 11:35 AM. Reason : .]

3/25/2019 11:34:19 AM

Quote :

"Some very serious, high-level people in the trump campaign are in jail now because of crimes, Cohen is going to jail for finance fraud that he has directly provided evidence trump committed with him, if it wasn’t for the expectation that the climax would be trump knowing and approving the crimes, this would still all be a serious scandal. "

People associated with Trump are in jail for things that have nothing to do with Russia. Tax crimes and process crimes. These are the sorts of crimes that you could probably charge tens of thousands of Americans with if you put them under the scope of a mobilized government apparatus. We invaded Iraq, and we didn't find WMDs, but we found other bad stuff! And Hussein was a bad guy, so we totally had casus belli, right?

The seriousness of the charges is what matters. When you follow it back, where did these rumors of Russian collusion come from? Essentially, it was bad intelligence planted by politically motivated actors.

Obviously, the metaphor doesn't work on every level, but I think the content of what he's saying is irrefutable: this ordeal has damaged the reputation and credibility of the media.

3/25/2019 11:44:18 AM

I like Matt Taibbi, but I don't agree with his take here.

With regard to WMDs, the media was furthering a narrative that was being pushed by the George W. Bush administration; if anything, the media taking Attorney General William Barr's summary of the Mueller Report at face value is more akin to its behavior regarding the Bush administration's WMD narrative.

With regard to the media's treatment of the Russian Collusion story, the media seems to have been following the minimal evidence that was available to the public, for example: Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort meeting Russians in Trump Tower, expecting compromising information about Hillary Clinton; Roger Stone's alleged communication with Wikileaks; details describing how the IRA performed a hacking operation on the same day that President Trump publicly urged Russia to pursue/provide Hillary Clinton's deleted emails; a federal judge suggesting in court that Michael Flynn had committed borderline treason; a revealed argument by federal prosecutors stating that Paul Manafort providing Trump campaign polling data to a former Russian operative went to the heart of a case; etc.

The list really could go on and on, and a lot of this information wasn't pushed by an administration in order to pursue its own ends, as with WMDs; most of this information was revealed as portions of criminal indictments and sentencing hearings. I'm not sure what else the media was supposed to assume other than that there was actual fire beyond all of this smoke.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 11:53 AM. Reason : ]

3/25/2019 11:49:58 AM

Quote :

"they will absolutely go up"

8 points?

3/25/2019 11:51:29 AM

^^^trump being a "useful idiot" instead of an active collaborator does not make the russia issue any less serious


the collusion issue came up from everyone lying about russian connections and meetings, roger stone's wikileaks connections, paul manafort sharing polling data with russia, etc... a lot of smoke worth investigating

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 11:51 AM. Reason : .]

3/25/2019 11:51:35 AM

Quote :

"8 points?"

he was net 0 in the feb 11 poll (and that was right after weeks of double digit net negatives) and has had 50% total approve plenty. I could see him having record polling if they continue to win the media narrative.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/trump_approval_index_history

3/25/2019 11:58:07 AM

Quote :

"With regard to the media's treatment of the Russian Collusion story, the media seems to have been following the minimal evidence that was available to the public, for example: Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort meeting Russians in Trump Tower, expecting compromising information about Hillary Clinton; Roger Stone's alleged communication with Wikileaks; details describing how the IRA performed a hacking operation on the same day that President Trump publicly urged Russia to pursue/provide Hillary Clinton's deleted emails; a federal judge suggesting in court that Michael Flynn had committed borderline treason; a revealed argument by federal prosecutors stating that Paul Manafort providing Trump campaign polling data to a former Russian operative went to the heart of a case; etc."

The problem is that the media invited the public to connect the dots, and in fact, encouraged them to connect the dots. This would be expected on Infowars, but you'd hope for a higher bar for journalistic excellence with your CNNs and MSNBCs.

Quote :

"details describing how the IRA performed a hacking operation on the same day that President Trump publicly urged Russia to pursue/provide Hillary Clinton's deleted emails"

Just wondering: did you hear this secondhand, or did you actually listen to the bit where Trump does this? I ask, because if you've watched it, it would be impossible to take it as anything other than a joke.

3/25/2019 12:02:11 PM

I watched it when it happened and thought that it was incredibly irresponsible for him to do at the time. Why are you so certain that it was merely a joke?

Also, it was totally awkward; he breaks from his previous manner of speaking and tone and doesn't invoke any sort of jocular inflection when saying it.

For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kxG8uJUsWU

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 12:14 PM. Reason : ]

3/25/2019 12:06:11 PM

How can you be sure if anyone is joking? I'm not socially inept and can read facial expressions and tone like a normal person. It was told like a joke, the content of it was a joke, and the audience laughed. Whether it was irresponsible is sort of a different issue, but to think that Trump was giving out marching orders in a packed arena in front of a bunch of cameras is silly.

3/25/2019 12:10:47 PM

destroyer is gaslighting or has a short memory

3/25/2019 12:17:22 PM

So this pretty much guarantees he will be reelected, right?

3/25/2019 12:45:05 PM

Quote :

"So this pretty much guarantees he will be reelected, right?"

Just makes it more likely, I think.

The Russia investigation was a high-risk, high-reward strategy. If it worked, it would guarantee that Trump would be ousted. If it didn't work, Democrats wasted two years where they could have been building the case against Trump the policymaker.

From here, Democrats can either turn on Mueller and say he was part of the Russian conspiracy, or they can let go of it and attack Trump on the myriad of issues where he is unpopular. If they were tactically competent, they would go with the latter.

3/25/2019 12:48:31 PM

He flat out said he was not joking to Katy Tur later that day.

Doesn’t mean anything but let’s not revise history.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 12:50 PM. Reason : ^ so continue what they are doing and have been since before]

3/25/2019 12:50:19 PM

Quote :

"he was net 0 in the feb 11 poll (and that was right after weeks of double digit net negatives) and has had 50% total approve plenty. I could see him having record polling if they continue to win the media narrative"

You are having a different discussion then. I had assumed Moron meant something like 538s aggregation of all polls. I could be wrong but Moron was clearly not talking about Rasmussen since he said "first ever above water approval rating".

538 hasn't had him above 45% since his inauguration.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 12:53 PM. Reason : E]

3/25/2019 12:53:22 PM

Quote :

"I know this is crazy, but hear me out. We actually don’t know what is in the Mueller report yet. Nor does any pundit. I suspect Mueller does contextualize a lot of this and I suspect it’s not as black and white an “exoneration” as we are being led to believe. "

Pretty much this.

We don't really know shit, and just a few months ago everyone was freaking out after the midterms saying the Dems 'barely' won the house and got blown out in the Senate, and look where were are now.

I think the biggest takeaway I have from this is being reminded how dumb it is to get sucked into the TV drama aspect of this presidency. The CNN hype machine can go fuck itself.

3/25/2019 1:08:45 PM

Make no mistake, these findings were bad for any opponent of Trump, and certainly all but kills any chance he leaves before the end of his term. The good news is the timing of the release, post-midterms but still 20 months from the next election, means there's really no way for him to capitalize on it in the short term. He'll got a positive news cycle and maybe a bump in approval rating, but like everything else Trump it'll be short lived. The birds eye view of this whole saga is still hugely negative for him despite the lack of prosecutable criminality.

3/25/2019 1:21:56 PM

It was bad for opponents who were screaming for impeachment without having any concrete proof, but a fair number of us saw this coming a while ago, so I guess maybe I'm just not as angry or disappointed as others. My guess is that the majority of people who've been trying to follow all angles of this ordeal aren't terribly surprised; it's the people who don't really read a variety of sources or who don't really understand the difficulties of impeaching a sitting a president that are shocked. And FWIW, I lump the latter in the same group of people who are declaring this a PWNT of the libs and acting like this was on the level of a Benghazi fishing expedition.

3/25/2019 1:41:47 PM

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1110240177643872256?s=21

Super cool that Louise Mench is now press secretary.

They are going all in on treason. Which is so ridiculously dangerous. Only the fringiest of the fringe said that about Trump but now his own staff is throwing it around.

3/25/2019 2:20:17 PM

Wouldn't colluding with Russia to win an election be treason?

3/25/2019 2:24:43 PM

No.

Words have meanings. Legal terms can’t be twisted around and changed.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 2:30 PM. Reason : Conspiracy, sure. But treason? No.]

3/25/2019 2:29:15 PM

Treason is a rarely charged crime, but it has several meanings that ring true here. What a grand jury would convict on is a question for legal scholars, but some definitions from the internet:

"In law, treason is criminal disloyalty to the state."
"the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government."

If the suggestions were to be believed, conspiring to put oneself in the most powerful political position in the world as to become a puppet of the Russian state sounds like treason to me.

And, no, it wasn't just fringe activists calling for treason. Maxine Waters and Adam Schiff are not fringe in the modern Democratic party.

[Edited on March 25, 2019 at 2:43 PM. Reason : ]

3/25/2019 2:42:26 PM