Mega-Thread: Mueller investigation

[Ripster42]

Those are different cases not handled by Mueller. The word is there are no more Mueller indictments, that's it. Nothing about the existing sealed ones. Nothing about the other investigations.

Again, some of those cases are cases still being handled by mueller. Stone, manafort, and the "mystery foreign corporation" are all being handled by mueller, and those are only the ones we know of (as they're not under seal) off the top of my head.

[Fugus]

I am a lot less confident that Biden, or any democrat, will defeat Trump than I was a while back. If Biden, or any democrat, wins, well there IS no worst case scenario and I really won't care so much what happens to Trump, especially if the Senate is also taken over by the democrats. In this case I would be more interested in moving the US forward rather than revisiting the Trump nightmare.

If you don't handle what has happened before you, it can end up again in your future in another fashion. We should move forward while also handling what is behind as us well.

We would have to address the Trump stuff along with everything else that happened and the Republicans backing him as they will still be holding office and if they aren't held to account they have no reason not to do it again in the future if they think they can get away with it if they personally don't suffer much when it backfires beyond lost votes and potentially office.

[kaelleria]

Keep in mind... While there may be no more criminal indictments originating from Mueller, the underlying evidence may be very explosive. They may not meet criminal standards or Trump can't be indicted, but they can still show really shady activity.

[CostinR]

To offer a simple example of what I mean, if they have have people working for them inside Vladimir Putin's inner circle, which is widely believed to be the case, this is the time they out and say it... not hold onto it for a rainy day. The rainy day is here.

Skroe you are an intelligent man with a good head over his shoulders, and your posts here are one of the few things worth reading on this forum and I mean this in all seriousness.

The people saying such crap that you rely on for information, and I personally read quite a lot myself on these mattes, aren't exactly the most reliable sources that you should count on. There's an entire industry out there based on speculation of such things, but it's proven extremely biased and has gotten quite a lot of things wrong over the years.

Just something I wanted to point out. Sure it's possible the IC has a mole inside Putin's inner circle that's made up of people from Russia's national security apparatus but that's as likely as the Earth having two moons.

The worst possible outcome in my view, isn't that if Trump gets off light here because Barr runs interference. That'll be a delay, at best. It's if we find out 10 years from now, when the report is declassified, that the confidential report, redacted by the IC was far far worse than the public one, and that if the confidential report was out, Trump would be asking for asylum in the Russian embassy.

If Trump did do the things you believe he did we'd have known about it by now. There's always someone that spills the truth when the institutions try to keep it hidden. It's precisely because of this I always found the notion of him being a Russian agent farcical, since we'd have known long ago if he was.

Even so one thing worth talking about, suppose there was a legitimate criminal case that Trump had obstructed justice and he could be charged for it..well in that case I wouldn't expect Mueller to go after him directly.

It's related to what the FBI has done in Eastern Europe. See one of the conditions for Eastern European countries to join NATO and the EU was that we'd tackle corruption seriously and the FBI was heavily involved in setting that up. In Romania we have a national anti-corruption directorate: DNA as we call.

The way it does things, and again with heavy involvement of the FBI here, is that it rarely if ever goes after top political leaders to put them in jail that are corrupt, and we know for certain without doubt that they are ALL corrupt, rather they strategically throw in prison some lower ranking party members, especially those engaging in massive acts of obvious corruption. This doesn't solve the corruption problem short term but it does make the situation manageable and the country more stable.

Why does it matter? Because when the whole system was being put in place in the early 2000s the Director of the FBI was Robert Mueller. So sure he could have nailed Trump to the wall if he had really wanted to, but did he want to? Or did he make strategic decisions in who he went after and why?

The world doesn't begin or end with Donald Trump. Anyone who believed for certain Mueller's purpose, or the outcome of his investigation, was that Trump was going to get nailed to floor was an utter fool.

[kaelleria]

Honestly, it's better the report wrapped up now rather than in 2020. If there is any fuckery by Barr, legal fights can happen now rather than potentially painting Democrats as just being driven by removing Trump.

I don't like fact that stuff has already started to leak, but we'll get the whole story, which I don't think will be good, in the coming months.

His approval rating is still going to be awful and he's still a terrible President. He won't be buoyed by this for more than a week before he does something stupid or more information comes out.

[Skroe]

Skroe you are an intelligent man with a good head over his shoulders, and your posts here are one of the few things worth reading on this forum and I mean this in all seriousness.

The people saying such crap that you rely on for information, and I personally read quite a lot myself on these mattes, aren't exactly the most reliable sources that you should count on. There's an entire industry out there based on speculation of such things, but it's proven extremely biased and has gotten quite a lot of things wrong over the years.

Ummm.... where the hell do you get off telling me, how I work? Are you fucking kidding me? That's my response for your arrogant presumption that you have the slightest clue about the "the people" I rely on for my information.

I'm extremely discerning in my sources. I don't buy into cranks. I don't buy into rumors. And I certainly don't take anything at face value. The people I rely on typically have served in government, are in academia, or are ex-intelligence community people. And they're straight shooters.

Don't you dare presume how I operate ever again.

I ignored the rest of your post. Didn't read it and I don't care. This is a moment for Americans. You aren't one.

[Zan15]

lock him up lock him up.


I love the mantra now is "big nothing burger"

and yet they already nailed what 7 people and 50 million dollars in fines.

8 years + of investigations and they got nothing before this

[CostinR]

I don't buy into cranks. I don't buy into rumors. And I certainly don't take anything at face value. The people I rely on typically have served in government, are in academia, or are ex-intelligence community people. And they're straight shooters.

Don't you dare presume how I operate ever again.

I presumed that you relied on exactly those kind of people, and yet they've proven many times that they too aren't immune to their own biases getting injected into their views and many of them predicted exactly the wrong things on foreign policy over the years because they wanted certain things to be true, or were trying to sell a certain viewpoint that they held.

[Shaderas]

This is pretty much what I'm expecting. As I've mentioned numerous times before, Trump always keeps a few people between himself and his dirty deeds (see: Cohen), so I'm thinking there's not going to be any damning evidence in the report directly tying him to Russia. Mayyyyybe one or two other high-ranking individuals get some indictments thrown their way, but I don't see this being the smoking gun.

My big fear from all of this is that, the above being true, Trump's popularity among the absolute idiots will swell because they haven't been paying attention to all of the OTHER shit he's been doing since he's been in office and he'll ride that wave through to 2020. You can bet your life it's going to be something he talks about with his dumb, smug face every chance he gets...and the GOP will eat it up. This wouldn't make that much of a difference if not for the fact the extensive gerrymandering the GOP has done will guarantee they win as long as their minority unifies.

Hmm, for it to be done this early (quite a bit earlier than I was expecting).. I feel like it's not going to be as damning to Trump as a lot of people are hoping.

[Skroe]

I presumed that you relied on exactly those kind of people, and yet they've proven many times that they too aren't immune to their own biases getting injected into their views and many of them predicted exactly the wrong things on foreign policy over the years because they wanted certain things to be true, or were trying to sell a certain viewpoint that they held.

Honestly Costin, you're the dude despite getting nuked from orbit over Trump's relationship with Putin undermining your own nationa,l security on more instances than I can count, you're the fraud who never misses a beat to not look like the guy-who-got-conned the biggest. You were foolish for supporting Trump before. Your justifications were bullshit to even a half-informed person. You're even worse now, because of everything else Russia has done since, and specifically what has NOT happened.

The problem isn't with those sources "biases". The problem is you fundamentally have no idea what you're talking about and just don't like what they say because they repeatedly do that.

You have nothing to contribute and are ignored until further notice.

[Wyrt]

I hope they make the whole report public. No indictments could mean Trump did nothing wrong in regards to Russia. It could also mean that Mueller doesn't think he can indict a sitting president.

[Halicia]

Those are different cases not handled by Mueller. The word is there are no more Mueller indictments, that's it. Nothing about the existing sealed ones. Nothing about the other investigations.

Who's left to be indicted outside the family at this point ?

[Edge-]

Who's left to be indicted outside the family at this point ?

Plenty of campaign and current WH staff that could be roped in. But we'll know more later, everything right now is going to be conjecture for the most part.

[Mekkle]

I'm ready to be disappointed.

[Halicia]

I hope they make the whole report public. No indictments could mean Trump did nothing wrong in regards to Russia. It could also mean that Mueller doesn't think he can indict a sitting president.

No. Its an important distinction that something can be legal, but still be wrong.

It may also be that Mueller might be of the opinion that he can indict a sitting President, but that the choice shouldn't be his. My ex-Governor got a similar treatment to a civil crime a year or two back when he got a political opponent fired. The Courts dismissed the case under the excuse that it was "political" so voters could sort it out... even though he couldn't run for re-election regardless, but you know, the Justice system defends the strong from the weak.

[Breccia]

Well, that explains the Upper Class Tweet of the Year contest going on.

[Skroe]

I hope they make the whole report public. No indictments could mean Trump did nothing wrong in regards to Russia. It could also mean that Mueller doesn't think he can indict a sitting president.

Under the SCO / DoJ regulations, he cant indict a sitting President. Under the Ken Starr-era Special Prosecutor, he could, because it was in effect independent from DoJ regulations.

More broadly than just this case though, the idea a President is immune from prosecution is absurd. One of the foundational principles of our democracy is of equal justice under the law, and that means no man is above the law, even the President.

This country is terrified of punishing wrongdoing. Not just Presidents, but at any level. We don't fire generals... we let them retire and keep their pension. We don't throw the book at executives, we cut deals. We don't throw racists out of the House, we pass non-binding resolutions that speak in broad terms.

As I've relayed before, 50 years ago, NASA threatened to ground an Apollo astronaut unless he immediately cut off his extramarital affair. They weren't going to send a guy around the moon who was less than the picture of moral fortitude. They were ready to end is career, because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants.

Nowdays though? Far from the President... we can't even get Steve King thrown out of Congress.

Our national corruption is so thick, and our standards so non-existent, all because we've become terrified of consequences.

Indicting anybody, including the President, should not be beyond thought. Other countries do it. We don't. We cut deals and let people off easy because it'll cause too much ruckus. Well, 40 years of doing that got us Trump.

Where did it begin? I'd say with Nixon getting Pardoned, sliding into Iran Control not taking down Reagan and actually ruining some lives, followed by Clinton not being forced to resign and then prosecuted for perjury, and then of course, various Iraq War figures not being prosecuted. Also did anyone actually lose their career over 9/11? Did even one guy?

The rot started at the top. My hope is with Trump, it's a beginning of a reversal of this cancer upon America.

[Dome Fossil]

Again, this is a bad reading of the facts. As we don't know what evidence those cases could turn up, any speculation about "more indictments" is very premature.

Adam Schiff says more Trump-Russia indictments are likely now that Robert Mueller's report is out. So did Richard Blumenthal. The waters of information seems to have been muddied here.

[Edge-]

Adam Schiff says more Trump-Russia indictments are likely now that Robert Mueller's report is out. So did Richard Blumenthal. The waters of information seems to have been muddied here.

Not really. No more indictments from Muellers team for this specific investigation. That doesn't cover investigations elsewhere (Virginia, SDNY etc.) nor does it cover any House/Senate referrals from their investigations that may lead to indictments.

[FeedsOnDevTears]

Is there any detail on the closed door Supreme Court session this morning?