I hate to start out yet another post talking about Attorney General William Barr, but, as I’m sitting here, making my way through Robert Mueller’s incredibly dense 448-page report, I find myself with renewed appreciation for just how absurd the conceit behind Barr’s 4-page summary was. The notion that anyone could adequately sum up this report in 4 pages is just so laughably absurd. I mean, a lot of us said it at the time — cautioning the press not to give Barr’s assessment too much weight — but, when you start reading through the actual report, and think about the summary that Barr attempted to pass off if in its stead, it’s just laughable… So, with that said, I’m not going to try to summarize the report. Here, however, are a half dozen observations that I think you might find of interest.
1. GUESS WHAT? THE WHITE HOUSE LIES.
There are a lot of White House lies outlined in the report, but here’s one of my favorite examples. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders apparently confirmed to investigators that she’d lied outright, when, after Jim Comey’s termination from the FBI, she told members of the White House press corp that “countless” FBI agents had reached out to the administration, saying that they had lost faith in his leadership. [As you’ll recall, they were trying to spin his termination as having nothing to do with the Mueller investigation and his refusal to pledge his loyalty to Trump.] Here’s the passage.
While we’re on the subject of lying, I should note that this report also verifies literally hundreds of news items that were reported by the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post, which members of the Trump administration referred to at the time as “fake news”. Here, from CNN’s Jim Sciutto, are three examples; “Trump claimed he never asked for loyalty from Comey – Mueller found he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let Flynn matter go – Mueller found he did. Trump claimed he never pushed McGahn to fire Mueller – Mueller found he did.” More on McGahn in a minute. First, though, here’s video of Sanders lying to the press about how Comey had lost the confidence of the rank and file FBI.
2. THE TRUMP TEAM TRIED A LOT OF REALLY SHADY SHIT TO GET THEIR HANDS ON HILLARY CLINTON’S EMAILS.
Before the Russians came through for the Trump campaign, Trump had instructed his people to do whatever necessary in order to acquire Hillary Clinton’s emails. In one instance, Michael Flynn, having been personally directed by Donald Trump, reached out to GOP operative Peter Smith and GOP Senate Judiciary Committee staffer Barbara Ledeen, who then attempted to obtain the emails from hackers in the employ of hostile foreign intelligence services. [Ledeen worked for Senator Chuck Grassly, who was Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.] The following is from former DOJ spokesperson Matthew Miller.
Here’s a little more color from Fortune: “Ledeen eventually obtained a trove of emails from the ‘dark web’ that she believed might have belonged to Clinton, according to the report. Erik Prince, an informal Trump adviser, gave Ledeen money to hire a tech adviser to analyze the messages, which were later determined to not be authentic, according to Mueller’s report.” [So, Erik Prince financed the attempt to acquire Clinton’s emails from foreign intelligence agency hackers. Interesting, right? One now wonders if that might be why his sister, Betsy DeVos, without any real credentials to speak of, got the job running the Department of Education. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit… Oh, and Peter Smith took his own life after this episode. I’m not sure what happened to Barbara Ledeen.]
It’s also worth noting that, once it became clear that the Russians had stolen the DNC emails, and had gotten them to Julian Assange, Donald Trump apparently directed Manafort and Gates to reach out to Roger Stone to find out when they’d be released by WikiLeaks… Put a slightly different way, Donald Trump personally instructed senior members of his presidential campaign to coordinate with a Russian front organization to release stolen documents thought to be harmful to his political adversary. [Sounds worse than a consensual blowjob to me, but apparently Republicans see it differently.]
3. MANAFORT TALKED SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF MICHIGAN WITH KILIMNIK.
OK, remember how news broke a while back that, on August 2, 2016, just before the 2016 Republican National Convention, Trump Campaign Director Paul Manafort had handed over internal polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a shady Ukrainian with ties to Russian intelligence? Well, while Mueller’s investigators apparently couldn’t prove what Kilimnik did with the data, and whether it influenced the work of the Russian Internet Research Agency, which, according to investigators, “conducted social media operations targeted at large U.S. audiences with the goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system,” we now know a little more about the conversation between the two men. Specifically, we know from Manafort associate Rick Gates that Kilimnik was told the “battleground” states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota were particularly important. As Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, by giving Trump slim victories against Clinton, essentially handed him the White House, this would seem to be an important bit of information. I mean, we now seem to know that Manafort explicitly told Kilimnik where Russian disinformation could be used to greatest effect, right? I suppose, without proof that Kilimnik couriered the data to Moscow, and gave the orders to focus on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, there’s not enough to charge criminal conspiracy, but the pieces seem to line up.
4. THERE WAS A FUCKLOAD OF OBSTRUCTION, AND MUELLER WANTED CONGRESS TO TAKE UP THE QUESTION OF PROSECUTION.
Attorney General William Barr repeated again this morning that it was his role as the nation’s lead law enforcement officer to make the call as to whether or not Donald Trump technically committed obstruction of justice. Furthermore, he said that Mueller understood that he, as the Attorney General, would be making this call. According to the report, however, it would appear that Mueller was looking for Congress to make the call, not Barr.
“With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution,” Mueller wrote in the report, “we concluded that Congress has the authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.”
And the report is rife with examples of obstruction, beginning with the firing of Jim Comey, and extending to the apparent promise of pardons. Here, on that last point, is a link to an article about how Manafort had told Gates that Trump’s personal counsel had promised that they’d be taken care of if they remained quiet.
And, then, of course, there’s all the stuff about how Donald Trump had tried to force White House counsel Don McGahn to shut down the Mueller probe.
Not only did Trump try to get McGahn to shut down the probe, but, afterward, he tried to get McGahn to swear that it had never happened. Here, with more on that particular chapter, is a clip from the ABC News coverage of the Mueller report.
…After news broke that Trump ordered McGahn to fire the special counsel, Trump pressured McGahn to deny that he had been directed to do so, even suggesting to aides that he would fire him unless he complied. Mueller concludes that there is evidence to suggest Trump acted this way to impede his investigation.
According to the report: “The President then directed [staff secretary Rob] Porter to tell McGahn to create a record to make clear that the President never directed McGahn to fire the Special Counsel. Porter thought the matter should be handled by the White House communications office, but the President said he wanted McGahn to write a letter to the file “for our records” and wanted something beyond a press statement to demonstrate that the reporting was inaccurate. The President referred to McGahn as a ‘lying bastard’ and said that he wanted a record from him. Porter recalled the President saying something to the effect of, ‘If he doesn’t write a letter, then maybe I’ll have to get rid of him’.”
Mueller concluded that “Substantial evidence indicates that in repeatedly urging McGahn to dispute that he was ordered to have the Special Counsel terminated, the President acted for the purpose of influencing McGahn’s account in order to deflect or prevent further scrutiny of the President’s conduct towards the investigation.”
In the end, it’s true that Trump’s efforts to obstruct were largely ineffective, given that many refused to do what he demanded. Sessions, for instance, didn’t un-recuse himself and shut down the special counsel’s investigation. And McGahn didn’t fire Mueller. With that said, though, these actions on the part of Trump and his people did, in Mueller’s opinion, “materially impaire” the Russia investigation. In other words, they obstructed the course of justice… And, I should add, in some instances, like with the firing of Jim Comey, Trump was actually successful in the execution of his plans to stymie the investigation. [Again, all the more reason that Congress should get involved, taking the case back from Barr.]
Here, for those of you who might be curious, are a few more examples of the President’s various attempts to stop the investigation. [Hilariously, Barr talked this morning about how supportive Trump had been of the investigation. In reality, he tried on multiple occasions to file Mueller and end the investigation. And, of course, he never agreed to testify, telling investigators what he knew of Russia’s attempts to influence the election.]
5. IT WAS TRUMP WHO PERSONALLY CALLED FOR THE GOP PLATFORM TO CHANGE IN 2016, MAKING IT MORE PUTIN-FRIENDLY ON THE SUBJECT OF UKRAINE.
Remember how, back during the Republican National Convention in 2016, the GOP platform was somehow changed to be more Putin-friendly on the subject of Ukraine? Well, we now know, at least according to one source, that it was Donald Trump himself who made the change. Following is something that I wrote at the time, followed by a clip from the Mueller report.
Just before the Republican National Convention, the Republican party released their new platform for 2016. The New York Times called it “the most extreme Republican platform in memory.” Among other things, according to the Times, this new platform outlined positions “making no exceptions for rape or women’s health in cases of abortion; requiring the Bible to be taught in public high schools; selling coal as a ‘clean’ energy source; demanding a return of federal lands to the states; insisting that legislators use religion as a guide in lawmaking; appointing ‘family values’ judges; barring female soldiers from combat; and rejecting the need for stronger gun controls — despite the mass shootings afflicting the nation every week.” This apparently came to pass largely because Donald Trump, who would go on just a few days later to accept the party’s nomination for President, didn’t push back. With one notable exception, Trump and his team, accepted everything that was suggested without debate.
According to Talking Points Memo, “The Trump Camp was totally indifferent to the platform. So party activists were able to write one of the most conservative platforms in history. Not with Trump’s backing but because he simply didn’t care. With one big exception: Trump’s team mobilized the nominee’s traditional mix of cajoling and strong-arming on one point: changing the party platform on assistance to Ukraine against Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine.”
That’s right. They didn’t push back against any of the retrograde domestic policies, but, curiously, they insisted that proposed wording about our need to arm the Ukrainians to fight Russian and rebel forces be stricken, “contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington,” according to the Washington Post…
Well, now we know who made it happen. The question remains, why? Why would Trump go out of his way to do a favor for Vladimir Putin?
6. MOTIVES AND ECUSES.
As for why Donald Trump would work so hard to subvert the special counsel’s investigation, I think the answer is pretty clear in this quote from Jody Hunt, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff. According to Hunt, when Donald Trump was told that a special counsel had been appointed, he slumped back in his chair and said, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.” And, it would appear, he wasn’t just upset about the prospect of losing the presidency. Donald Trump had every reason to believe that other crimes would come to the surface during the investigations, like the fact that he paid-off multiple lovers in violation of campaign finance law. Here, with more on that, is another excerpt from the report.
I know that Barr said this morning that the President’s obstruction was defensible, as Trump had his feelings hurt — seeing as how he just wanted to Make America Great Again, and a bunch of angry Democratic sore losers kept trying to investigate him unfairly for collusion — but that’s not the way the law works. Obstruction is obstruction, regardless of whether or not your feelings are hurt. And, despite what Trump and others might think, a person can still be found guilty of obstruction, even if he or she is ultimately found not-guilty of the underlying crime being covered up. And it’s not a valid argument to say, “They made me obstruct justice by being mean to me.”
Here’s Barr making the ridiculous “But He Was Frustrated” case.
For what it’s worth, a lot of people on the right are now making the same case, saying that Trump wasn’t obstructing justice so much as he was fighting back against a cruel and unjust system. In fact, Donald Trump just tweeted out the following from Fox News personality Jesse Watters. “Donald Trump was being framed (and) he fought back,” he said. “That is not Obstruction.” [Again, even if this were true, it would not be a legal defense for obstruction.]
OK, I COULD GO ON FOR EVER, BUT I HAVE TO STOP.
There’s a ton that I still wanted to tell you about, like the fact that Donald Trump Jr. was apparently found to be too stupid to be arrested, but I’m going to have to call it quits for the night. Before I go, though, I just want to say two things. First, while it may be true that Robert Mueller couldn’t prove criminal conspiracy related to the Trump campaign’s involvement in the Russian hacking, I think it should be incredibly clear to anyone reading this with an open mind that there was collusion. Donald Trump wanted Clinton’s emails stolen. He openly urged the Russians to steal them. And, after the fact, once the emails had been stolen and disseminated, he lied repeatedly, saying that our national intelligence agencies were wrong, and that the Russians hadn’t been behind the hacking. As Congressman Adam Schiff said today, “Regardless of whether the obstructive acts described by Mueller was criminal or whether the litany of illicit contacts with Russia rose to the level of conspiracy, they’re dishonest, unethical, and unpatriotic. Mueller’s report is not a vindication of Trump, but a condemnation.” And, second, obstruction is against the law, and the question as to whether or not Donald Trump is guilty of having engaged in obstruction of justice should be taken up by Congress, as Mueller had intended. And we have to encourage our representatives in Congress to take up the cause. The very future of our democracy depends on it.
