The Democrats are furious because the 22-month long Mueller investigation that up to now has cost $25 million found no Russian collusion. They are also furious at Attorney General William Barr for not charging Trump with obstruction of justice. And so is the media and Hollywood.
California Congressman Adam Schiff has been out front for nearly two years saying there was evidence proving Trump colluded with the Russians and obstructed justice. On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted “Has anyone heard from slimy Adam #fullofschiff Schiff today? I mean it must be embarrassing to have spent the last 2 years as the leader of the tinfoil hat brigade and have it all come crashing down so quick. I’m legitimately concerned for his mental state.”
In an interview on Fox & Friends, Kellyanne Conway came on stronger than Don Jr. She said, “Adam Schiff – talk about an oxymoron – this man heads the Intelligence Committee in the House! He ought to resign today. Schiff has been on every TV show 50 times a day for practically the last two years, promising Americans that this president would be impeached or indicted. Adam Schiff should resign. He has no right, as somebody who’s been peddling a lie day after day after day, unchallenged – unchallenged and not under oath – somebody should have put him under oath and said, ‘Do you have evidence? Where is it?’”
Daily Mail columnist Piers Morgan says the Russia collusion hoax was a disgraceful fake news witch-hunt that shames all of Trump’s deranged enemies in the media, the FBI and Hollywood and has probably ensured their worst nightmare – his re-election.
But the witch hunt goes on as the House Democrats, who are trying to make pigs fly, have turned their hatred for Trump into a 3-ring circus.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler, House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff, and House Oversight chair Elijah Cummings issued a letter blasting Attorney General William Barr for his letter to Congress which exonerated Trump of any collusion or conspiracy with the Russians and in which he said there would be no obstruction of justice charges. They want Barr to testify before the Judiciary Committee and they want every single page of the Mueller report plus any and all pages of investigation reports associates with the Mueller investigation released to Congress and the public. We’re talking about thousands of pages here.
Hollywood is besides itself that Trump has been exonerated. Stars like Bette Midler, Alyssa Milano, Chelsea Handler, John Cusack, Rosie O’Donnell and George Takei were quick to express their unhappiness with the result. We have yet to hear from Trump critic George Clooney. Only James Woods reacted with joy, tweeting “Democrats react to the Mueller Report the way they accepted the 2016 election,” and included a video clip of a man jumping off a bridge.
The congressional Democrats will not stop in their determination to destroy the Trump presidency. Nadler, Schiff and Cummings intend to investigate everything Trump has ever done, including how many times he shit-stained his underwear.
And the US Attorneys for Southern New York, Virginia and D.C. are investigating the Trump family business dealings, both before and since he became president. So are the NY state Attorney General and the Manhattan DA, both Democrats of course.
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. We’ll have to wait while the Democrats are trying to make pigs fly for their circus act. It looks like it is going to take quite a while before the fat lady sings. One can only hope that this 3-ring circus will result in. as Piers Morgan put it, the worst nightmare for all of Trump’s deranged enemies – his re-election.
From The Atlantic:
Trump aides colluded with foreign governments.
This is a simple, straightforward statement, and by this point, it ought to be an uncontroversial one. There’s ample evidence on many fronts, from legal documents to reliable reporting. This doesn’t mean that a crime was committed, because, as Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others have pointed out, collusion is not a crime per se. But it does mean that attempts to dismiss the Russia investigation as a witch hunt that lacks any evidence are not merely disingenuous—they’re simply wrong.
What do we mean by collusion? As the Columbia Journalism Review explored last year, there are a range of meanings, but a clean synthesis would be a secret compact or conspiracy with an illegal or deceitful aim. The examples of such cooperation, between Trump aides and agents of foreign governments, abound. So far, three people have pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about it. The unresolved question, at this stage of the investigation, is not whether such cooperation was attempted; it’s how successful it proved, how large an impact it actually had, who was involved, and whether they broke any laws.
There is, most prominently, the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, where Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer they believed had damaging information to offer about Hillary Clinton. In another meeting in August 2016, also at Trump Tower, former Blackwater chief Erik Prince (the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos) brought together an Israeli social-media specialist and an emissary who said the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi wanted to aid the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos carried on conversations with at least two people he believed had substantial connections to the Russian government. Roger Stone, an on-again, off-again Trump adviser, exchanged messages with the hacker Guccifer 2.0, a Russian intelligence agent who released emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee.
This leaves out plenty of other examples of peculiar but less fleshed-out stories, including Trump campaign aide Carter Page’s mysterious trips to Russia and Hungary; fired National-Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s post-election discussions with Russia; and Jared Kushner’s reported attempt to establish a “back channel” to allow the Trump transition team to communicate with Russia outside of standard channels. There may be other examples that are not yet known to the public.
Because of the multifarious nature of the Mueller investigation, it’s possible to forget just how stark many of these cases were. In June 2016, for example, publicist Rob Goldstone wrote to Donald Trump Jr.:
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump—helped along by Aras and Emin.
Trump Jr. infamously replied, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”
Loren, you can’t make chicken soup out of chickenshit. By chickenshit I mean the phony witch hunt against Trump.
You seem to disregard the fact that Mueller probably tried very hard to get something on Trump, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner. When after 22 months he concluded there was no collusion, there was no collusion!
And you can’t make pigs fly either.
I rarely agree with Howie but AMEN!
appears loren has transcribed Rachel Maddow musings…um loren, you do know Page was working with the CIA right?
Papadopolis will have the last laugh too.
so Loren is upset Trump tried to dig up some dirt on Hillary via Russia while Hillary was funding the Steele Dossier where most on the info came from Russia? Trump is a traitor and hillary is? The mental gymnastics required to be a democrat, too much work for me.
Howie: all the Barr letter does is give us the headlines in the Mueller report. It’s not even the Reader’s Digest version. But some things are clear from the Barr letter.
First, the Russians did try to interfere with the 2016 elections. And, they probably did provide some information to the Trump campaign but the Trump campaign didn’t take part in the Russian interference.
Second, there apparently was evidence that the president did and did not try to obstruct justice. We don’t know Mueller’s reasoning on this but I think it could be two things. First would be his mens rea, that is, did he intend to corruptly obstruct justice? Intent usually is proved by the person’s actions and in Trump’s case what Mueller has may seem contradictory as to his intent. Second, can a president obstruct justice by suggesting he will do what the Constitution gives him the power to do. A few years ago, Gov. Rick Perry was indicted for abuse of office for threatening to veto appropriations to the Travis County District Attorney if the DA didn’t resign. The Court of Criminal Appeals held no crime because all Perry was saying he would do was what the Constitution gave him the absolute right to do. The same is true of the president’s pardon power. He has the absolute right to pardon or not pardon for any reason except taking bribes. As long as the president isn’t taking bribes, he can refuse to grant pardons based on the person’s race, religion or how he parts his hair. That decision is unreviewable by any court.
The Mueller investigation was limited in scope to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The other indictments were returned by Mueller to gain leverage to get people to talk.
It wasn’t a witch hunt. Mueller found plenty of witches but they all were in Moscow. Given the president’s campaign speeches asking the Russians to get Hillary’s missing 30,000 e-mails and Don Jr.’s meeting with the Russians, there was at least enough suspicion to investigate further. Turns out the president was clean.
When you were a cop, did you ever conduct an investigation that didn’t pan out? I’m sure you did. Were those witch hunts? No. Presuming you had some incriminatory facts, they were reasonable things for reasonable law enforcement officers to follow up and investigate.
The bottom line is that while the Trump campaign may have been the beneficiary of Russian dirty tricks, the campaign and the president weren’t involved.
If there had been no investigation, there would still be popular suspicion that the Trump campaign was in bed with the Russians. The president should apologize to Robert Mueller and his team for all of the nasty things he said about them. They did their job, got all of the facts they could and cleared the president.
Tom, yes I conducted a number of investigations that did not pan out. But I did not spend 22 months and $25 million while investigating them. I closed most of them out within a matter of days or a couple of weeks at the most.
As for the Mueller investigation not being a witch hunt, I’m going to respectfully disagree with you. It was all part of the determination by the Democrats to destroy the Trump presidency, and they’re still at it.
I wonder how a Mueller investigation of Hillary’s emails would have turned out? Or his investigation of the fake dossier put together by former British spy Christopher Steele that Hillary’s campaign paid for? Steele’s dossier contained the outrageous and absurd allegation that while in Moscow, Trump paid Russian whores to pee on him.
I’m sorry to disagree with you Tom, but while I think Trump is a jerk, he was the victim of a terrible witch hunt. In spite of that dark cloud hanging over his administration, Trump has nevertheless been a fairly good president.
Piers Morgan called Trump’s enemies deranged. A plague on Adan Schiff and his fellow deranged Democrats!
“the president’s campaign speeches asking the Russians to get Hillary’s missing 30,000 e-mails”
If our august crime fighting agency known as the FBI took Trump’s joke as reason to justify FISA warrants four times then they need to be disbanded. And Tom, what do you know about Don, Jr’s meeting with Russians? is it information gleaned from watching CNN and MSNBC?
There are a fair number of people who actually believe this crap, mostly because they WANT to believe it. A lot of them are in the media. They are so firmly married to it that even now, when it is clearly demonstrated to be total bullshit, they CONTINUE to believe it. These people are truly deranged and there is nothing that can be done for them. They are like the “The moon landing was faked” bozos. They wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and bit them on the ass. They just can’t accept it because they can not accept the fact that Hillary lost.
And they dont care that Hillary was/is extremely corrupt.
Reckon there is a correlation between the issues raised in this article and Wisconsin having a 12 pt swing in its electorate? A Supreme Court seat appears to have been won by a conservative yesterday. One year ago the state sent a liberal to the court by a margin of 11.5 points.
Perhaps the rule of holes is being violated with great success.
All this excitement over Mr. Barr’s book report! Let’s revisit Howie’s article and this comment thread once the _actual_ Mueller report is released, shall we? Your reliance on/preference for limited information sources is causing you to over-generalize, prematurely celebrate and slavishly follow what has been revealed to be a questionable Barr summary. Mueller’s team wrote scrubbed summaries for every section of the report so that the summaries could quickly be released to the public, and yet Mr. Barr chose not to use them and instead substituted his own. Hmmmmm.