I mean, I'm not blaming Mueller, but I am so ready for this to be done, one way or the other. At least the Russia part of it. Trump's financial crimes will go well past his presidency.
I get that years feel like decades these days, but Mueller executed what was perhaps the fastest and most professional special investigation of all time. Dude finished in under two years and his team never leaked.
*slow clap* People can theorize all the want, but the fact still remains that we know nothing about what it contains. It could be nothing at all, or it could be a fucking microburst.
I completely agree. He was as professional as could be with what was probably the most hyper charged partisan investigation in American history. Whatever the report findings, dude did his job. I think he's conducted himself in a way that as many Americans will trust the findings as could have been possible.
I'm sticking with my initial guess. Shitload of crimes, little to nothing to do with Russia. Not much would shock me though. What really can at this point? We won't know the specifics any time soon, but we should have some kind of idea by the end of the weekend. I'm guessing this is the reason for the delay from now and when the AG initially expected the report. Something along the lines of "Hey guys, there isn't a grand Russia collusion plot, but there are a lot of crimes here."
Meanwhile Kushner is happy this takes attention away from the story about him texting world leaders on WhatsApp
I doubt this just because we have seen Mueller hew pretty strictly to his mandate of Russia. Aside from obstruction of the Russian investigation itself, I would expect that any other crimes Mueller came across (money laundering, bank fraud, etc) would have been spun off to other jurisdictions to allow Mueller's team to stay on task as it relates to Russia. There are multiple other investigations of Trump currently ongoing in places like the SDNY, the NY AG's office, etc, and that's just what we the public know about. As for the report itself, it'll contain a deep dive on Russian goals and methods, although much of that may stay classified and never be publicly revealed. Trump's team was at least willing to engage with Russian overtures, so there's probably at least something in there about that, but it could be something as big as a huge bombshell, or as little as confirming what is already public. On the obstruction question, I assume it'll just be a list of the thousand times Trump has overtly and publicly tried to obstruct the investigation.
We should be realistic about this though. The fact is any politician would at a minimum hear someone out if they said they had dirt on their opponent, especially in a race as close as the last presidential election was. Collusion is one thing, but wanting to hear what someone's dirty laundry is is just normal politics. Look at the shit Hillary did to try to find dirt on Trump. Even someone like Bernie would have taken a meeting to see what was out there. Let's not pretend that *by itself* this is some huge indictment of Trump's legitimacy. If there was real collusion I very much doubt Trump could have kept it from Mueller. Trump is way too careless and Mueller is the best around. Even if there was collusion though, I'm totally in awe at how the media spent 2+ years obsessing over a conspiracy theory before proof was out there. It's been surreal to watch. Ten years ago the reporting on this would have been very different. In the racist days of the '60s the media wouldn't even mention unverified rumors about people like MLK, let alone obsess over them like this. Really says a lot about the state of this country, but that's an issue for another day.
Early news is that Mueller is not recommending any more indictments. Only significant thing to come out so far that I've seen.
If people aren’t convinced by the indictments already passed down, they’ll never be. Waiting for some grand finale from the investigation is going to be a huge letdown.
Ok, Mueller's report is done? Cue this guy: https://cummings.house.gov/ My thought is collusion is hard to prove. However, there is a lot of history between Trump and shady Russian characters, and he's been very friendly to Russia during his administration. The dude took Putin's word over his own intelligence community! Like, the people who "might be listening to every conversation everywhere ever", and he'd rather take Vladimir FUCKING Putin's word on it? There's no kind of stupid like that kind. This dude was done once the tax bill passed. Ryan knew it, and bolted once he was sure it wasn't going to be undone. He made sure McConnell was going to ride this bitch out and obstruct any attempt to undo it. All the donors got their money's worth, and the rest of it is these idiots trying to find other ways for their buddies to score some sweet government contracts. The closer we get to 2020, the more investigations are going to proliferate. Why not? What is there to lose?
If Mueller didn't find any collusion it really will be something to hear these networks talk about fake news. Like most conspiracy theories I fully expect the adherents who so completely invested themselves in this to not accept the findings from the report if it doesn't point to collusion. That's how it always is with these things. People like Maher have already said they don't give a shit what Mueller found, he 'knows', man. I have little doubt the Russia collusion plot will be the subject of history channel time slots 50 years from now.
TL;DR: No evidence of collusion; not enough evidence to determine whether obstruction occurred and no recommendation to prosecute on it from either Barr or Rosenstein. At the very least, Michael Flynn should be pardoned. The FBI agents said on record that they believe he was telling what he thought was the truth. Since there was no collusion, his charges are bunk. /r/politics is going into a full nuclear meltdown.
I'm not quite sure what to think right now. What's the probability this is accurate, unbiased, and includes all relevant details? Should we wait for the full report to draw conclusions because this summary is likely biased, or is this summary what we're running with?
Same. The two questions I have right now: The Trump Tower meeting. If the summary had said "The Trump Campaign was receptive to overtures from the Russian government, but no deal was struck." I would say, ok, that's fair. But to claim that there was nothing when we know high level members of the campaign took a meeting about dropping sanctions in exchange for dirt on Hillary? Curious what the full report says about that meeting. We've seen Trump obstruct justice out in the open. I don't know how you can conclude he didn't.
It goes back to the whole idea that obstruction of justice itself is not a crime. Elements of it are, and it can be if it's part of something else, but by itself it isn't. It's just like saying "killing" is a crime. Well, not necessarily. You can kill in self defense and that's fine. Then there's reckless homicide, murder, negligent homicide, etc. So that the summary said he didn't obstruct justice strikes me as odd. I don't imagine Mueller saying exactly that. My gut instinct is to just wait this out and not really pay attention to any media, until we see the full report.
My understanding is that there has been obstruction but due to him being President, “it’s complicated “ I just find it interesting that it’s been almost 2 days without a tweet. If he was so cleared by this he’d screaming it from the rafters. There is probably something in there that is being processed and analyzed.
Personally, I pictured more than four pages to summarize a two year investigation. If there isn’t any collusion fine, I trust Mueller fully as an investigator; but I want it from the horse’s mouth and all the other things he found along the way.