Mueller Finds 10 Obstruction Cases That Barr Says Aren't Crimes

Oh really? Name the charges Mueller mage.

 

Yes I know. That wasn't my point.

 

It is a matter of record, and Mueller has the evidence, that Trump instructed (not just recommended) his advisors cooperate with Mueller's investigation and provide whatever documents requested, he affirmatively waived any Executive Privilege. If you found anything in Mueller's Report noting the lack of cooperation, withholding of documents and claims of Executive Privilege, please provide a cite, I don't remember seeing anything like that.

 

I'm not suggesting that he didn't waive executive privilege; he obviously did.

What I'm saying here is that Bonespurs was not terribly cooperative. Unless the events which potentially constitute obstruction can be viewed as "helpful" to the investigation.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...ump-fully-cooperate-mueller-investigation-no/

 

The official who appointed Mueller and oversaw his investigation - Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - cleared Trump of obstruction, too.

An inconvenient fact that you and many others conveniently ignore...

 

He didn’t agree to be interrogated by the FBI, otherwise did not impede their investigation. With an investigatory team famous for its “perjury traps” I don’t blame him. I recall some ambivalence on this, Trump anxious to get into it, legal counsel advising otherwise.

 

Mueller team asked 38 distinct questions with 37 follow-ups.Trump offered 22 distinct answers. In 19 of those answers, he claims not to remember or recall some particular issue. Often, those failures to remember what happened constitute the entirety of his response. Questions related to obstruction of justice weren’t answered at all.

Mueller wrote, “We viewed the written answers to be inadequate.” He considered issuing a subpoena to get Trump to testify, but decided against it because of the lengthy court battle that ensued. So I think Nemesis was right when he said Trump was not "terribly cooperative".

 

I'm not ignoring it, I'm keeping score. It's 802 to 2. At this point 802 former federal prosecutors have reviewed the Mueller report and concluded there's sufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction, but for the fact that he's President. This isn't even counting former White House counsel, Don McGahn, who declined Trump's request to say Trump did not obstruct, thus earning Trump's twitter-wrath.

The fact is, there is evidence Trump committed obstruction - ample evidence to impeach. He's also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Stormy Daniels payoff, was involved in the illegal spending by the Trump foundation, is violating the emoluments clause, and has violated the oath of office. But of course, Republican senators are fine with all that, so they would never vote to remove him from office.

 

I'm getting the impression discussion of Mueller's Report, Barr's redactions, whether as yet undisclosed background information would show Trump really did collude, and if lack of any conclusion on obstruction is just due to policy against indicting a president in office; it seems now inquiry into the basis of the investigating and manner in which it was conducted are becoming more important.

Inspector General Horowitz's report will be out soon, and we know he already found the FISA warrant renewal process was non-compliant and that he's reopened the issue of the validity of the original FISA warrant due to the recent revelation the FBI had notice of Steele's unreliability, the true character of his work and the falsity of some of its claims. Barr has undertaken to investigate the origins of the effort against Trump, and now there's US attorney John Durham in Connecticut Barr is bringing in to look into whether intelligence collection activities by the US government prior to election day were lawful.

All this time the critical left has been dismissing complaints about the witch hunt, but there are just too many different questionable issues, its not just the dossier, the FISA court procedure evidently was breached, its not just the evident bias of people like Strzok, but the important role they played and those they were directly involved with, its not just the phone taps, but also the disclosure of who was called, its not just commencing the investigation without a 'predicate', but also deploying Halpern, Priestap, Downey, Mifsud and the 'honeypot' to a foreign country to entrap, long before formally justifying any effort.

There's just too much irregularity in this effort, it does appear clear the intelligence community did not want Trump elected and that they made a good effort to try to prevent that from happening. They may have just been following Obama's orders (probably), but trying to cover it up now is terrible. The people expect more integrity from top figures in law enforcement.

 

You seem to have forgotten one statement in the Mueller report, that the report explicitly says it does not exonerate the president. There's plenty of behavior, by Trump, leading up to the conclusion of the report, that warrants further scrutiny by Congress. Furthermore, Mueller, registered Republican, appointed by Rosenstein, another register Republican, said exactly zip about irregularities in the investigation of Trump's campaign. That includes exactly zip about the intelligence community.

 

I think Mueller kept the investigation going, long after he knew there was no big there there, just to facilitate claiming collusion.