Supposing that Barr is concealing information that there is, in fact, evidence of a conspiracy between Trump or the Trump campaign and Russian officials to influence the election in violation of a federal statute, Mueller and his team would necessarily have to be in on the cover up. If there was damning information in the report, and Barr released what he did, without Mueller on board, it would be a catastrophe. Either Mueller or one of his 19 lawyers, or maybe one of the 40 FBI agents involved, would be whispering into the ear of a journalist, and we'd be hearing about it.
This is absolutely preposterous, of course. No, the reason you see so many calls for the report to be released is not because anyone believes in this fantasy, they want the report so they can dig through it for anything usable against Trump. I'm not completely unsympathetic considering what happened to Clinton, but that whole affair is part of the reason the disclosure procedures for special council investigations changed.
If the report is ever released, you're suddenly going to hear a lot less about collusion and a lot more about random bits of embarrassing intel found within. That's all these calls for the report are about.
I really don't think that violated a federal statute. Certainly Mueller agrees, but I don't believe that being told that your political opponent has something to hide and hey, I'd like to tell you about it, is a federal crime. Even if the person is from another country.
I would suppose that if Veselnitskaya was offering hacked DNC emails, it would have been the first indictment out of the gate. Remember, Mueller had to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours running this down, and his first plea deal was Papadopoulos, who pleaded out to a process crime of lying and spent two weeks in jail. If what Don Trump Jr. did amounted to a crime, an indictment against him, or a plea deal, would have come long before that. There's a reason Mueller ignored it.
Edit: Manafort was the same day as Papadopoulos.
Last edited by Dacien; 2019-03-28 at 02:31 AM.
So, the entire premise of the meeting, with a Kremlin linked lawyer, whom went there with a folder that was supposed to contain dirt on Hillary Clinton, this is from Trump Jr's emails, not speculation, then how does it not violate the federal statute? Attempted Conspiracy Against the United States is what I would call that.
What you are describing is basically saying that if someone attempts to shoot their wife, and they miss, they can't be charged with attempted murder because the crime wasn't actually carried out. Attempted murder is still a crime, so should attempted collusion or attempted conspiracy against the United States.
This entire post is seeded with little sprouts of propaganda. Millions of dollars: implied wasted money. Thousands of hours: implied wasted time. Process crime: implied fake crime.
I honestly don't know if it's intentional or if this is just what the mind becomes after conservative media has dug its fingers so far in there.
I wasn't bummed about the investigation concluding until I saw it prompted Dacien to crawl back from wherever he was.
/s
And that's really the gist of it. Mueller and his team knew much, much more than any of us, yet even we could see that the collusion allegation was falling apart roughly mid-2017. When the first major action was Papadopoulos (aside from Manafort, which were crimes unrelated to his role in the Trump team), I read the plea deal. And it was shocking that this was what he had come up with. Papadopoulos was literally setting up legal meetings with foreign individuals, was offered stolen emails, and that was it. There was nothing in there about pursuing those stolen emails, conspiring to assist with transferring those emails to the campaign, none of that. So he got 14 days for lying. But at the time, the striking fact was that this was the best Mueller had to date, and it was almost nothing.
That's when I became about 95% sure collusion was a wash.
I figured collusion was a wash from the get-go, but I also figured the most outrageous claims of the Steele dossier were faked, because I know the chain of events of the Pee Story: Anonymous (yes, that Anonymous) -> Rick Wilson -> CNN -> John McCain -> FBI/CIA/et al. I didn't know the rest of the Steele dossier was faked in such a heinous way, that was just gravy.
I guess turnips are back in season.
Guess we'll never know what Mueller thinks since McConnell and Barr are hastily burying the report.
You know, like innocent people do.
- - - Updated - - -
Which components of the Steele Dossier have been disproved?
None of the important collusion-related allegations in the dossier were ever verified. This includes Carter Page, who was the subject of the FISA warrants in the nascency of Crossfire Hurricane. They obtained warrants in a secret court to spy on an American citizen based on Russian-sourced human intel. The whole thing was a disgrace. Which is why you're hearing so many people calling for an investigation into it, to hold people accountable who pushed these warrants without independent FBI verification, which is required for a FISA warrant.
Blah fucking blah...Barr's summary clearly stated that Russia had constantly reached out to Trump's campaign "many times." And not one ever called the FBI.