Have I commented on this yet? No? Oh.
Who didn't expect Barr to say what he's said. He was appointed by Trump after all.
Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.
The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
The Special Counsel's investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election... The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election.
...the Special Counsel considered whether to evaluate the conduct under Department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion - one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as “difficult issues” of law and fact concerning whether the President's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.
Fun With Mr. Fudge wrote:Honestly, I hope he's innocent because how screwed up would it be if he were guilty and got away with it? If he's guilty of crimes, I want him to be held accountable, but I don't want him just to be guilty because I don't like him. This is the one thing that has always bothered me about people's eagerness for Trump to be found guilty of conspiring with a foreign government. This is not something you should want your president to have done.
Aquila89 wrote:Talk about overhyping. They called it this generation's Watergate when all it was was Benghazi for liberals. Or, as Matt Lewis said, the political equivalent of Al Capone's vault.
Aquila89 wrote:Trump said he's fine with releasing the full report, so I doubt there's anything seriously damning in it.
Besides, if Barr was seriously misrepresenting Mueller's findings, don't you think Mueller or members of his team would say something about it?
By now, it makes little sense to assume that Trump is beholden to the Russians anyway.
FunwithMrFudge wrote:But he lies way too often...for me not to have serious doubts
Marcuse wrote:FunwithMrFudge wrote:But he lies way too often...for me not to have serious doubts
The thing for me is that he lies like a child; in that obvious way that everyone knows damn well that he's lying and it's usually something easily provable.
Maybe he thinks he's emulating Putin, who does things we all kinda sorta know are shit but never have quite enough to pin him down on, but we usually have plenty to pin Trump down he just blusters and is obviously lying.
Fun With Mr. Fudge wrote:The possibility Abesntia mentioned was specifically about not technically lying while hiding politically damaging things. Wrongdoing and lawbreaking are not always the same thing.
Fun With Mr. Fudge wrote:I think it makes little sense to assume that Russian collusion would be the only reason Trump would want to impede an investigation into his possible Russian ties if that's what he was trying to do. Do I think it's possible that he has a history of money laundering? Well, a suspicious history of receiving money from foreign entities when he was nearly a billion dollars in debt and past interactions with people like Felix Sater, who had ties with the Russian mafia and whom Trump publicly lied about having close business ties with, suggest he may have activities and connections he wanted to hide.
Aquila89 wrote:Fun With Mr. Fudge wrote:The possibility Abesntia mentioned was specifically about not technically lying while hiding politically damaging things. Wrongdoing and lawbreaking are not always the same thing.
If he didn't break the law, he'll face no consequences. There's no way any Republican would vote to impeach him for something that isn't illegal. And for his supporters, there's no such thing as "politically damaging" when it comes to Trump.
It is of course possible that Trump committed financial crimes, but to my knowledge, Mueller wasn't investigating his finances, so the report won't reveal any of them.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 26 guests