The Official World Politics Thread

[StringerBell]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...ten-interview-inadequate-elected-not-subpoena

Mueller Called Trump Written Interview ‘Inadequate,’ But Opted Not To Subpoena


Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team was not pleased with the written interview that President Trump gave in response to their questions, but elected not to subpoena him to avoid drawing out the investigation.


According to Mueller’s report, Trump stated on more than 30 occasions that he did not “recall” or “remember” or have an “independent recollection” of the information requested of him. The Mueller team described the responses as “inadequate” and again requested an in-person interview with Trump. The President declined.

From the report:

“Recognizing that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily, we considered whether to issue a subpoena for his testimony. We viewed the written answers to be inadequate. But at that point, our investigation had made significant progress and had produced substantial evidence for our report. We thus weighed the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation against the anticipated benefits for our investigation and report”

“We determined that the substantial quantity of information we had obtained from other sources allowed us to draw relevant factual conclusions on intent and credibility, we are often inferred from circumstantial evidence and assessed without direct testimony from the subject of the investigation.”

Mueller’s team negotiated with Trump lawyers for months to try to land an in-person interview with the President on an agreed upon set of topics. Ultimately, prosecutors sent Trump questions related to the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Russian hacking efforts, WikiLeaks, the Trump Tower Moscow project and contacts with Russia during and after the campaign.

 

[StringerBell]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mueller-made-14-criminal-referrals-outside-offices

Mueller Made 14 Referrals Of Potential Crimes To Outside Offices

Special counsel Robert Mueller referred 14 cases of potential criminal activity to outside offices because the cases were “outside the scope of the special counsel’s jurisdiction,” according to the Mueller report.


We know about two of them: Michael Cohen’s alleged wire fraud and Federal Employees’ Compensation Act violations case and ex-Obama administration official Gregory Craig’s alleged FARA violations. Both were referred to the Southern District of New York.

The other 12 referrals of potentially criminal evidence were all redacted for reasons of “harm to ongoing matter”

Cohen’s been a key player in Mueller’s probe for some time. As soon as Mueller took over the Russia investigation when former FBI Director James Comey was fired, the federal prosecutors set their sights on Cohen. Trump’s former fixer ultimately pleaded guilty to a slew of financial crimes, lying to Congress, and campaign finance violations related to his role in paying a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump. Cohen received a reduced sentence for cooperating with federal prosecutors.

Craig’s indictment came just last week when he was charged with making false statements to the Justice Department about his work for Ukraine and Paul Manafort. Craig’s case was initially referred to the SDNY, but was then transferred to federal prosecutors in D.C. Investigators believe Craig made false statements to the Justice Department about his work for a Ukrainian political party. The ex-Obama administration official argued in a video released after the indictment that he didn’t intentionally mislead the agency.

A redacted version of Mueller’s report was released on Thursday, just after Attorney General William Barr gave a befuddling press conference, painting the probe as a near victory for President Trump.

Among many other things, the Mueller redacted report revealed that Barr significantly misled Congress in his assessment of whether Trump obstructed justice. Barr claimed that Mueller’s team could not decide whether Trump had obstructed justice, leaving the decision up to the attorney general. Yet thereport revealed that the special counsel’s office held back from offering a conclusion because they would not be able to charge Trump on obstruction due to the Justice Department opinion that sitting presidents could not be indicted. And the report crucially noted that if Mueller found clear evidence that Trump didn’t obstruct justice, he would’ve cleared him of it.

Additionally, while Muller did not find evidence that the Trump campaign intentionally worked with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 election, the behavior of witnesses tied to the Trump campaign “materially impaired” parts of the investigation.

 

[StringerBell]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckr...russia-probe-days-after-2017-gang-of-8-reveal

Mueller: Burr Briefed White House On Russia Probe Days After 2017 Gang Of 8 Reveal

Days after the FBI privately revealed to Senate Intel Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and other key congressional leaders its investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia links, Burr “appears to have” provided the White House information on the probe, special counsel Robert Mueller said in the redacted report released Thursday.


The detail is based on notes that Don McGahn’s chief of staff took in 2017. The report leaves open the possibility the Burr may have been briefing the White House on the committee’s own Russia investigation, as McGahn and his chief of staff later claimed. But the report’s analysis treats such a claim with skepticism, since the notes used language that doesn’t make sense in the context of a congressional investigation and that track with the background materials the FBI provided the congressional leaders in its briefing.

Burr’s spokesperson did not respond to TPM’s inquiry. However, she told Politico that Burr “does not recall this specific conversation with Mr. McGahn in March of 2017.”

She added, “however, any conversations between the two would have been in reference to the need for White House personnel to voluntarily comply with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation.”

“If specific individuals were discussed, they would have been those known to the committee, the White House, and the media. The Chairman’s stewardship over the Committee’s bipartisan and fact-based investigation over the last two years speaks for itself,” the spokesperson, Caitlin Carroll told Politico.

A spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair on the committee, declined to comment to TPM.

According to Mueller’s report, then-FBI Director Comey briefed Congress’ “Gang of 8” on March 9 2017. The “Gang of 8” refers to the leaders of both parties in both chambers of Congress, as well as the majority and minority leaders of the intelligence committees in both chambers.

A footnote goes into more detail into exactly what the notes of McGahn’s chief of staff, Ann Donaldson, said and why it was plausible — and likely — that the information pertained to the FBI’s investigation.

At the time, very little was publicly known about the FBI’s Russia probe. Comey didn’t publicly confirm it until more than a month later. However there were already concerns being raised about Republican members of Congress — including Burr — running interference for President Trump in the investigations. In February it was reported that the White House tapped Burr, and his counterpart in the House, then-Intel Chairman Devin Nunes, to engage with news organizations on Trump’s behalf and spin against stories reporting the links between his campaign and Russia.

Warner at the time expressed “grave concerns” about what the collaboration meant for the independence of the committee investigations.

However, in the years since, the Senate Intel Committee’s Russia investigation has moved forward with less public drama and more bipartisan comity than the House probe. Burr was particularly troubled publicly by Comey’s firing in May 2017.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has already issued some bipartisan preliminary findings in its investigations into how Russia sought to influence the 2016 election. However, it has not yet released its conclusions on the Trump campaign aspect of its inquiry.

 

[StringerBell]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckr...eeply-co-opted-by-russian-influence-operation

Trump Campaign Was Deeply Co-opted By Russian Influence Operation

While special counsel Robert Mueller was unable to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian government, his redacted report paints a picture of a campaign deeply co-opted by a multi-pronged Russian influence campaign.


The report details how over several months in the summer of 2016, different Russian intelligence operatives were able to alternately use the operation as an instrument for its own ends, receive inside information on the inner workings of the Trump campaign, and meet with its top officials.

Mueller documents numerous covert and overt attempts by people and organizations associated with the Russian government and Russian intelligence to influence the campaign.

In some cases, campaign officials did not know that they were interacting with Russian spies and were being used an instrument of the influence operation. At other times, Mueller says that campaign officials knew who they were dealing with and were “receptive to the offer” of assistance.

It was a central part of Mueller’s investigation. The special counsel writes that he recognized from the start that the probe “could identify foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information relevant to the FBI’s broader national security mission,” and that he met with the FBI’s counterintelligence office “regularly” for most of the investigation.

Mueller begins his narrative with a key element of the Russian operation: the Internet Research Agency, the group responsible for social media-based disinformation efforts in the 2016 election.

The group was a part of active measures,” operations designed to “influence foreign affairs” conducted by Russian security services.

While fulfilling its task of flooding American social media feeds with disinformation aimed at ramping up polarization, the IRA also sought to establish direct contact with the Trump campaign.

That effort focused on efforts to “coordinate pro-Trump IRA-organized rallies” in the U.S., all done “while claiming to be U.S. political activists working on behalf of a conservative grassroots organization.” The report says that the Trump campaign provided “signs and other materials” for rallies organized by the IRA. Crucially, the Trump campaign did not know who it was interacting with in this instance: it became an unwitting instrument in the active measures campaign.

Mueller catalogues another example, nearly contemporaneous with the IRA compromise, in which an alleged Russian intelligence operative managed to penetrate the campaign itself.

Within a month of the June 2016 IRA interaction, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was meeting with (and giving internal information to) Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort associate who the FBI accuses of being a spy.

The report says that Manafort “briefed Kilimnik on the state of the Trump Campaign,” which included providing specific polling data relevant to “battleground states.”

At the same time, Kilimnik allegedly offered something of value to Manafort in an August 2016 meeting in New York City.

That involved a ‘Ukraine peace plan’ that Kilimnik proposed, under which the pair’s former client – deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych – would be given a statelet to rule in the country’s East, while the U.S. began to remove sanctions on Russia.

The alleged Russian spy told Manafort in an email cited by Mueller that if he were “designated as the U.S. representative and started the process, Yanukovych would ensure his reception in Russia ‘at the very top level.'”

Kilimnik’s close relationship with Manafort – to the point where he was able to receive briefings on the campaign – comes as a relatively clear example of Russian intelligence allegedly making it to the highest levels of the Trump campaign.

What’s more is that Rick Gates – a close Manafort associate – suspected and warned those around him, including Manafort, that Kilimnik was a “spy.”

One month after Manafort, Kilimnik, and Gates met in New York City, Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak was speaking with early Trump supporter Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) at his D.C. office.

During that meeting – in September 2016 – Kislyak invited Sessions to a meal at his residence, while the future attorney general demurred.

After the meeting, a Sessions aide told him not to go, calling him an “old school KGB guy.”

The allegations around Kislyak build up to his now-infamous interactions with onetime National Security Adviser Michael Flynn regarding whether the then-incoming Trump administration would rescind sanctions.

The report cites an FBI interview with former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates as saying that “officials were concerned that Flynn had lied to his colleagues – who in turn had unwittingly misled the American public – creating a compromise situation for Flynn because the Department of Justice assessed that the Russian government could prove Flynn lied.”

As a footnote in the report suggests, citing Yates and other top law enforcement personnel, the situation around Flynn’s interactions with the Russian ambassador in the early days of the Trump administration “really freaked out” top DOJ officials.

 

[StringerBell]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/mueller-explains-why-made-no-decision-obstruction

Mueller Report Dramatically Changes Picture Of Trump Obstruction


Special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report released Thursday painted a strikingly different picture for why he did not reach a prosecutorial decision on whether President Trump obstructed justice than the process described by Attorney General Bill Barr.

The discussion comes at the beginning of the second volume of his report, focused on the obstruction aspect of his inquiry. Its executive summary concludes bluntly that had Mueller’s team been able to clear Trump of obstruction based on its investigation, the investigators would have done so. But based on the facts and the legal standards, they could not reach that judgement.

How Mueller got there is complicated. But the summary also suggests Barr mischaracterized how the special counsel approached the obstruction decision. In his first formal description of the obstruction angle of the report, Barr included in Mueller’s own words only the final line of the executive summary’s conclusion — perhaps to acknowledge that Trump was not getting the full exoneration he had been seeking.

But Barr’s description of the report and subsequent reporting implied that Mueller’s team merely threw its hands in the air when it came time to decide to whether Trump had committed an obstruction crime. And thus, the politically thorny task making such a call fell to the attorney general and to his deputy Rod Rosenstein, Barr’s initial letter to Congress about the report seemed to suggest. Barr had claimed that the ultimate decision he and Rosenstein made came regardless of a DOJ opinion prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president.

Mueller was “not saying that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found a crime,” Barr told reporters during a Thursday press conference ahead of the report’s release. “He made it clear that he had not made the determination that there was a crime.”

The redacted report itself, however, provides an entirely different analysis of how Mueller was approaching the obstruction inquiry from a prosecution standpoint and why he didn’t make a prosecution decision.

Crucially, the DOJ internal opinion barring the indictment of a sitting president shaped the very foundations of how Mueller approached the obstruction inquiry, his report’s executive summary makes clear.

It alludes to Congress’ ability to bring impeachment hearings against the President. The summary also emphasized how the DOJ opinion anticipated the possibility that charges could be brought against the President after he left office.

Mueller’s team thus “conducted a thorough factual investigation in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available.”

Finally, the summary thoroughly rebuts arguments, including those made by Barr himself, that presidential conduct that is authorized by his constitutional powers can be considered criminal.

Altogether, Mueller’s summary undercuts suggestions by Barr that Trump wasn’t charged with obstruction simply because the evidence wasn’t there. Mueller had determined that this was a call he would never be able to make under DOJ guidelines.

The summary begins with a discussion of what “guided” Muller’s obstruction of justice investigation. First it confirms that Mueller worked within the the DOJ opinion, by the Office of Legal Counsel, that disallowed bringing charges against a sitting President. It includes a reference to how bringing charges could preempt “constitutional process for addressing presidential misconduct,” i.e. impeachment.

But with its brief review of the opinion, Mueller, secondly notes that it allows for Presidents to be charged after their terms and that individuals around the President may be charged with obstruction now. Thirdly, Mueller makes clear that he determined not to apply an “approach that could potentially result in a judgement that the President committed crimes,” and discussed this underlying logic, including the interest in fairness.

This interest in fairness was “heightened” in the current situation, Mueller noted, as any internal report on whether the President’s conduct was criminal could become public, comparing it to the OLC opinion’s language barring even a sealed indictment against a sitting President.

This discussion may help answer the major question that has been hanging over the probe since its conclusion: why Mueller himself didn’t say one way or another that Trump’s conduct was criminal.

Everyone from ex-FBI Director Jim Comey to Barr assumed that Mueller would weigh in on this controversial question in his report. In the absence of such a clear statement, Trump crowed about his “complete and total exoneration.”

According to Barr’s initial letter to Congress, because Mueller did not prove that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia’s 2016 influence campaign, there was no crime to cover up. Mueller addressed this argument as well, as well as Barr’s emphasis in his letter that much of the behavior described took place in public view.

“If the likely effect of the public acts is to influence witnesses or alter their testimony, the harm to the justice system’s integrity is the same,” Mueller said.

Top Democrats and former law enforcement officials questioned why Barr felt empowered to have the final word on obstruction, and whether it would have been better left to Congress. While the President may not have committed a crime in blocking the Mueller probe, his conduct may well have been impeachable, they said.

Barr acknowledged that Mueller never indicated that he should be the deciding voice on obstruction. In mid-April testimony on Capitol Hill, Barr said that this was a “binary” matter of criminal law, and that it made sense for the top Justice Department official to make the decision.

The Attorney General refused to offer further details on his decision-making process until the report came out.

 

[StringerBell]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mueller-looked-into-moscow-pee-tape-rumor-determined-hoax

Mueller Looked Into Rumors Of ‘Pee Tape’ Involving Trump In Moscow

Special counsel Robert Mueller actually looked into the salacious allegation in the Christopher Steele dossier of a “pee tape” involving prostitutes and Donald Trump when he was in Moscow years earlier.

The compromising tapes were mentioned in a footnote in Mueller’s redacted report, in a section on former FBI Director James Comey’s conversations with Trump before Comey was fired. The footnote outlines communications about the tapes: Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze sent Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen a text message saying he had “stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know…”

“Rtskhiladze said ‘tapes’ referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia,” the footnote said, adding that Rtskhiladze was told the tapes were fake, but he didn’t communicate that information to Cohen.

The “pee tape” allegations were among the most salacious elements of the now infamous Steele dossier, which Trump has criticized as an erroneous document funded by his opponent Hillary Clinton.

 

[Playmaker88]

All throughout this shit I keep hearing no one was charged because of lack of intent or not willfully breaking the law.

I thought ignorance of the law is not a defense?

He has very public evidence of willfully attempting to break the law not to mention his aides saying hell no to following his orders..

But apparently when you are white rules don't apply

 

[Farris2k1]

Evidence is clear. While it doesn't raise to the level of criminality because they chose not to push his efforts were u American, immoral and corrupt


He should d be impeached.. The democrats are weak as fuck for not drawing up impeachment article because it won't get Bipartisan support .. .All in efforts to protect some bullshit sanctity put it on the record for posterity

They wont have the support from repubs to impeach so its pointless to even start up

 

[ChicagoFigure]

Lmao i been switching off between fox news and cnn

Foxnews is in straight denial and sees this as a flawless victory and time to move on

Cnn has different 4-7 person panels per show all saying the same thing circle jerking each other. These networks suck.

 

[Peace_79]

Niggas is pissed on the left, lol.

I been saying just shut the hell up until we get some actionable evidence.

Now if this report is lightly redacted and doesn't offer any additional evidence of wrongdoing by the president

 

[TheNightKing]

That was before the report we released. Pay attention to timestamps.

 

[TheNightKing]

But to my point, are the Dems going to take any action based on the report? If not, they need to move the hell on.

 

[Playmaker88]

They wont have the support from repubs to impeach so its pointless to even start up

It's not pointless fruitless yes but to ever expect for a Bipartisan support is out of this world

 

[Peace_79]

But to my point, are the Dems going to take any action based on the report? If not, they need to move the hell on.

How can we know that?

They don’t even have the full report yet.

And Muller has to answer several questions in person to provide some context.

There are also a dozen investigators that are still ongoing.




The impeachment question is a difficult one. But if you are saying that the party needs to have a broad economic message outside of Trump, I agree with you.

 

[Rubato]

The thing about the impeachment process is that it’s SLOW

They should have started a year ago, there’s no way it goes anywhere before November 2020, and if he gets re-elected good luck ever getting him to leave.

 

[Playmaker88]

The baby back bitches are like wait til 2020 and speak with the ballot ....

 

[Rubato]

The baby back bitches are like wait til 2020 and speak with the ballot ....

So we gonna trust the same voting system Mueller just proved is compromised...

Fuck it let me drive the boat

 

[Peace_79]

All throughout this shit I keep hearing no one was charged because of lack of intent or not willfully breaking the law.

I thought ignorance of the law is not a defense?

Yeah. It would appear that with sophisticated white collar crimes, Ignorance of the law IS an excuse.

Sounds like bull shit to me

 

[TheNightKing]

How can we know that?

They don’t even have the full report yet.

And Muller has to answer several questions in person to provide some context.

There are also a dozen investigators that are still ongoing.




The impeachment question is a difficult one. But if you are saying that the party needs to have a broad economic message outside of Trump, I agree with you.

I'm not saying nothing will happen with the other investigations and what not.

What I'm saying is wait until something does happen then talk.

As far as interviewing Mueller, what's that going to do? What more context can he provide that they will take action on. A bipartisan committee received a report where only the grand jury items are redacted and there's not nearly as many grand jury redactments. What context will Mueller provide outside of that?

Plus they've interviewed how many people and nothing's come of it?

I'm just saying, they need to shut up and move in silence until they have something actionable on Trump.

And yes, place more focus on shit other than Trump.

 

[Farris2k1]

I'm not saying nothing will happen with the other investigations and what not.

What I'm saying is wait until something does happen then talk.

As far as interviewing Mueller, what's that going to do? What more context can he provide that they will take action on. A bipartisan committee received a report where only the grand jury items are redacted and there's not nearly as many grand jury redactments. What context will Mueller provide outside of that?

Plus they've interviewed how many people and nothing's come of it?

I'm just saying, they need to shut up and move in silence until they have something actionable on Trump.

And yes, place more focus on shit other than Trump.

What should they focus be then? You do realize 99.9% of this shit goes back to trump right?