Elzo69Renaissance
Niggas online ratting then calling it content
This kind man they got to fall
The Official World Politics Thread
- Thread starter Herbal Kint
- Start date
This kind man they got to fall
StringerBell
OG
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/here-are-the-moments-the-mueller-investigation-was-hindered
Here’s How The Mueller Probe Was Hindered By Lies, Evidence Deletion
The special counsel investigation is over, but that doesn’t mean it’s complete.
Robert Mueller’s report lays out multiple examples of ways the investigation was “impaired,” either by lying witnesses or by successful deletion of key conversations.
“Several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters,” the redacted report reads. “Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.”
The impairments cover alleged lying by witnesses, including the well-known cases of Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, and George Papadopoulos.
But they also cover cases where Mueller was hindered by deletion of data on encrypted apps, or by the simple fact that the target was located outside the United States, as the redacted report lays out in detail.
Below are a few key instances when investigators were stymied in their probe.
Konstantin Kilimnik
During a February hearing in Paul Manafort’s case, special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann described allegations that the Trump campaign manager shared internal polling data with alleged Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik as going “very much to the heart of what the special counsel is investigating.”
The investigation’s conclusory — but redacted — report reveals that Manafort instructed Rick Gates to “periodically” sent Kilimnik polling data during the campaign.
“Gates then deleted the communications on a daily basis,” the report reads.
Later on, the special counsel writes that it “could not assess what Kilimnik” did with the data, or others that received the information from Kilimnik did with it, in part due to investigators’ limitations in obtaining evidence.
Part of that had to do with Manafort’s dissembling after entering into a cooperation agreement with prosecutors. Mueller notes multiple times in the report that he only cites Manafort when the Trump campaign manager’s words were corroborated by other evidence, or to highlight a case where Manafort’s lying is significant.
Carter Page
Bucket hat aficionado Carter Page cut his teeth at the Trump campaign in various ridiculous ways, sometimes related to Russia, but he attracted scrutiny in part due to a July 2016 trip he took to Moscow. Mueller’s team was hindered by its inability to investigate much of what took place in Russia.
“Page’s activities in Russia — as described in his emails with the Campaign — were not fully explained,” Mueller writes, after a long section that’s redacted due to grand jury material.
Page, it should be noted, is an absurd character who the Russians saw as far from the center of Trumpworld. But still, his activities in Russia are a notable omission in the investigation.
George Papadopoulos
International coffee boy George Papadopoulos prevented FBI investigators from adequately interviewing Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, who claimed to Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
Mueller writes that Papadopoulos’s lies to the FBI in January 2016 “hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question Mifsud” when he was in Washington, allowing him to leave the country before further investigation.
Wikileaks
The section of the report that covers Wikileaks, amid its heavy redactions, points towards a key question that Mueller was unable to answer, though it’s not entirely clear that Mueller was hindered by a lack of access to evidence.
Before a section describing the timing of Wikileaks’ release of emails stolen by Russian operatives from John Podesta’s email account, a partially redacted sentence says that “the investigation was unable to resolve REDACTED.”
It’s not clear if investigators were impaired in some way as they investigated Wikileaks’ activity. Republican operative Roger Stone does stand accused of making false statements and witness tampering with respect to this part of the investigation.
It is the among the most heavily redacted sections of the report, and so the reason why Mueller was “unable to resolve” the redacted question remains unclear.
StringerBell
OG
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckr...ws-up-barrs-no-collusionno-obstruction-canard
Mueller Report Blows Up Barr’s ‘No Collusion=No Obstruction’ Canard
President Trump, in his attempts to meddle with the Russia probe, was at least partially motivated by the fear that investigators might uncover conduct that Trump himself believed could be perceived as criminal, special counsel Robert Mueller said in his redacted report.
Mueller’s assessment undercuts efforts by Attorney General Bill Barr, in defending his decision to clear Trump of obstruction, to emphasize the lack of an underlying crime of collusion with Russia for Trump to cover up.
It also suggests that Mueller had found evidence of a corrupt intent in at least some of the episodes he investigated as part of his obstruction inquiry. Intent is a key question in determining whether certain conduct fits into the legal framework of an obstruction offense.
“Obstruction of justice can be motivated by a desire to protect noncriminal personal interests, to protect against investigations where underlying criminal liability falls into a gray area, or to avoid personal embarrassment,” Mueller said. “The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.”
Mueller acknowledged that his investigation had “not establish[ed] that the president was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference” — a phrase Barr took out of context to explain his own decision not to deem Trump’s conduct as criminal.
Mueller, however, determined that “the evidence does point to a range of other possible personal motives animating the President’s conduct.”
One of Trump’s concerns, Mueller said, was that the investigation was casting doubt on the legitimacy of Trump’s election.
But, according to Mueller, there was “potential uncertainty about whether certain events-such as advance notice of WikiLeaks’s release of hacked information or the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians could be seen as criminal activity by the President, his campaign, or his family.”
Mueller discussed theses other motives in his analyses of several of the obstruction-related episodes in investigated. When it came to Trump’s attempts to get rid of the special counsel himself, “ubstantial evidence indicates” those efforts were “linked” to Mueller’s oversight of probes that “involved the President’s conduct,” the report said.
There was also “ubstantial evidence” that Trump’s request that then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announce that the probe would be narrowed to just future election meddling was “intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct.”
Even before Mueller was appointed, when Trump was contemplating and then eventually fired FBI Director James Comey, there is “evidence” that “indicate” that “a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes,” the report said. That motive was in addition to Trump’s frustration that Comey wouldn’t publicly announce that he was not under investigation — a perception that the President thought was hindering his ability to govern.
In assessing the motive for the Comey firing, Mueller said that a “thorough FBI investigation” would expose the work Michael Cohen had done on the Trump Tower project in Moscow throughout 2016, even as Trump repeatedly denied he had any connection to Russia. In a semi-redacted sentence, Mueller also seemed to point to an additional motive for firing Comey: Trump’s awareness that he had privately sought information about the Wikileaks’ email dumps during the campaign even after it was publicly reported that Russia was behind the hacks.
According to Mueller’s report, the perceived criminal liabilities of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting — where his inner circle met with Kremlin-tied individuals — also may have motivated some of Trump’s allegedly obstructive conduct. Mueller raised that concern specifically when discussing Trump attempts in the summer of 2017 to convince Attorney General Jeff Sessions to unrecuse himself from the Russian probe and his efforts to install a new attorney general who could oversee the probe.
Mueller pointed to the public release of the emails disclosing the Trump Tower meeting that directly preceded many of Trump’s actions and how it was “evident that the investigation into the campaign now included the President’s son, son-in-law, and former campaign manager.” Mueller specifically cited comments Trump made about wanting an attorney general like Eric Holder or Bobby Kennedy, who, in his mind, took greater lengths than Sessions to protect their presidents.
“A reasonable inference from those statements and the President’s actions is that the President believed that an unrecused Attorney General would play a protective role and could shield the President from the ongoing Russia investigation,” Mueller said.
Finally, there was Trump’s desire to protect himself from the obstruction inquiry that may have motivated him to further meddle in it, Mueller said. Trump ramped up his efforts to fire the special counsel after the first public reports of an obstruction inquiry, Mueller noted, and that fear also may have driven his request that Sessions publicly announce that he was narrowing the probe to only future election interference.
“The sequence of those events raises an inference that after seeking to terminate the Special Counsel, the President sought to exclude his and his campaign’s conduct from the investigation’s scope,” Mueller said.
Elzo69Renaissance
Niggas online ratting then calling it content
This is not normal
Farris2k1
The true great demon
He can keep tweeting NO COLLUSION NO OBSTRUCTION all he wants, at the end of the day that report makes him look the scumbag we all knew he was, and as much as he wants it to be, shits far from over, i dunno how itll pan out and even if anything major comes from it, but its not going away anytime soon
Farris2k1
The true great demon
Only his stupid ass base
Peace_79
Black Excellence
Don’t be surprised if he pardons himself.
The pardon power in the constitution is absolute and substantial.
DOS_patos
Unverified Legion of Trill member
How can he pardon himself?
You have to be convicted first, right?
DOS_patos
Unverified Legion of Trill member
But can't he just escape to Russia when out of office?
They need to freeze his money
Elzo69Renaissance
Niggas online ratting then calling it content
Naw Nixon wasn’t convicted of anything and got a time period pardon ( forgot the proper name)
Elzo69Renaissance
Niggas online ratting then calling it content
That’s different
Lol i actually caught this live. If they play the rest of the segment the rest of the panel harped on her like vultures. Couldnt believe what i was watching.
Peace_79
Black Excellence
Peace_79
Black Excellence
Some of it is