212

UPDATE:

Kristol’s prediction looks pretty sound

 

A minefield:

 

Controlling the narrative is going to be key. The GOP won round one in a laugher aided and abetted by a compliant MSM which sounded like it was already congenitally disposed to ‘just move on’ based on Kasie Hunt’s claim that ‘people are tired of this.’

Expectations must be managed

 

 

 

 

A three dimensional minefield:

1. The response of ‘President Trump’, his legal team, and the GOP co-conspirators

 

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/09/william-barr-just-previewed-trumps-spin-over-mueller-report/?utm_term=.c3b01bf321f4

 

GOP response:

 

The report by special counsel Robert Mueller could be the biggest oppo dump in history. It could be a fizzle. Although Mueller didn’t find enough evidence to charge President Donald Trump for conspiring with Russia to win the White House, and Attorney General William Barr has concluded that it doesn’t show Trump obstructed justice, the report itself is expected to be rich with details uncovered by the sweeping 22-month investigation.

GOP response:

Nobody has more at stake than Trump and his inner circle of family members, aides, loyalists and defenders. They’ve already seen some of their former colleagues face criminal charges and jail time from the Mueller probe. With the report’s arrival, they know that any page could still contain a ticking bomb, one that could open the door to more legal scrutiny or kneecap the president politically as he mounts his reelection campaign. But the document might also have exculpatory material that would help Trump push back with his narrative that the whole probe has been a “witch hunt.”

Above all, Team Trump will need to respond. So inside the president’s world, the attention will be focused on digesting the material, and quickly.

Jay Sekulow, Trump’s media-savvy personal lawyer, said he’ll have a team of five to six people in place, each assigned a key section to read in parallel. The goal is preparing the quickest possible response to blast out to reporters—as well as to brief him and Rudy Giuliani as they fan out to talk more at length in media interviews. If it were just one analyst reading, he said, “we’d be talking to you the next day”—far too late for crisis management.”

Trump and his co-conspirators are locked and loaded. What are the Democrats’ plans to frame the narrative? Do they have a plan at all? Sure hope so but you’d be forgiven for doubt.

Like everyone outside the Barr and Mueller inner circles, Sekulow said he’s still in the dark about how the special counsel report will be structured. He doesn’t know if there will be executive summaries, a section featuring conclusions or if it will even come in an easily searchable PDF document. But he said he’s taking comfort in knowing Barr, a Trump appointee, has already read the report and decided nothing in it rose to the level of prosecution. “At the end of the day, it’s like waiting for the jury verdict, except you know what the jury verdict is already,” he said.

Like everyone else? Maybe-maybe not.

John Karl reported Sunday morning that the Trump team had already been ‘briefed’-how is ‘briefed’ being defined here? It makes a difference as it would tell us just how big a head start #TreasonTrump actually has-half a block or a mile? Karl’s article also suggested that based on these ‘briefings’ #TreasonTrump is worried and that they’ve been trying to delay the release.

But Sekulow’s saw that the ‘verdict is already in’ will be the heart of the GOP narrative pretty much whatever is in this highly and selectively edited report that could be up to 60%-70% redacted.

As Waldman says, the GOP will spin anything that is redacted as being ‘exculpatory.’

I don’t believe for one moment it’s going to be a fizzle-I’ve no doubt that the full unredacted report-to say nothing of the underlying counterintel will be a paradise for oppo researchers. The worry is will Barr redact it so heavily that it will appear to be so?

 

“Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump associate and early 2016 campaign adviser, wasn’t so blasé about it and said he has a reading strategy in place: He’ll start first with the executive summary—assuming there is one—to see how it matches with Barr’s “CliffsNotes” version of the memo, issued last month. Then he plans to go to the collusion section, since that was the main issue he found himself questioned on, before turning to the portion dealing with obstruction.”

You have to admit that Caputo’s reading strategy is pretty sound.

Caputo’s version of “the Washington read” will be to scan the index for specific top Trump aides he knows and who have been central to the entire investigation, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, longtime Trump associate Roger Stone and former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

“I’ll also read the George Papadopoulos section just to see how much it differs from his book, ‘Deep State Target,’” he said of the Trump campaign adviser who served two weeks in prison last year for lying to the FBI. “And I’ll probably poke around looking for traces of myself, but I don’t expect to see my name much at all.”

Whatever it says I’d be shocked if the Coffee Boy’s book comes of looking like anything more creative fiction which he’s shown himself to be very skilled at-like the baseless claim Mifsud is a Clinton supporter and Clinton Foundation donor.

Caputo said he’ll read every word. “I mean, they took the time to read all of my emails and texts, so it’s the least I can do,” he said.

 

 

2. The not so ‘savvy’ MSM

3. Democratic leaders as well as the overall rank and file.

In terms of tactics, several Democrats said they planned to handle the deluge of information with the quintessential 2019 reading experience: using two or even three screens. Former Obama White House speechwriter David Litt will have Twitter open while he’s making his way through the report, watching in particular for posts from several of the more prominent legal and analytical voices who have narrated the story’s plot twists as it evolved: Ken White (@popehat), Mimi Rocah (@Mimirocah1), Renato Mariotti (@Renato_Mariotti), Marcy Wheeler (@emptywheel), Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) “for the definitive word on special-counsel regs” and Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight “to think through the political implications.” “Basically I’m assembling my own panel, except there’s no yelling, thoughtful argument, and zero chance of Kellyanne Conway showing up,” Litt said.

Similarly, Ann Lewis, a former Clinton White House communications director, said she would begin by reading “carefully from the beginning.”

“But, candidly, I recognize that some very smart people will have begun highlighting what they find most important—so I will probably read with the full text on one computer and another open to tweets and summaries,” she added.

One open question for political insiders is how much to rely on news coverage. Don Goldberg, a former Clinton White House communications aide who handled investigations for that scandal-plagued Democratic administration, plans to read the news first: “I think reporters who have been covering this from the start will be far more attuned to what’s important and how it relates to other court filings, reporter articles, congressional activities, etc., and also be more sensitive to what’s new. That will be my shortcut, and I may read through it in full after I digest POLITICO’s coverage.”

I have to say I find Goldberg’s strategy quite disconcerting-give the MSM the final, authoritative word? That’s how we got here

 

 

A Clintonite there for Whitewater, Ken Starr, Vince Foster… not to mention Comeygate-see Dean Paquet’s NYT’s above-wants to put his hope and trust in the Clinton hating MSM?

Thankfully some Clintonites get it:

On the opposite side is Julian Epstein, a former House Judiciary Committee chief counsel for Democrats during the Clinton impeachment saga, who has found the media coverage so far more of a red herring than a useful guide to what matters. “Given how badly the pundits and chattering class misread the Mueller investigation, despite clear signs that caution was warranted,” he said, “I can’t imagine anyone will be able to meaningfully add to the debate without carefully reading the entire report with all its nuances—cover to cover, starting with Page 1.”

So we have GOPer-and co-conspirator-Michael Caputo and  Clintonite veteran of the Ken Starr wars with the best strategy-read the whole thing-though also drink in analysis. Ok you won’t be able to read the whole thing the first night-if you can then there are way too many redactions. But over time I certainly plan to read every word-of the redacted version for now-and the whole report in the future-Congressman Swalwell has solemnly vowed to make sure Americans get to ‘read every word’ of the MR.

I like former Clinton WH press secretary Joe Lockart’s strategy best.

And then there’s Joe Lockhart, the former Clinton White House press secretary whose ideal strategy for the Mueller report rollout turns it into more of a This Town tailgate party. “I plan to take my lawn chair and a cooler of beer and read at the end of Ken Starr’s driveway,” he wrote in an email.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/the-foreman-of-watergate-grand-jury-no-1-has-been-watching-the-confrontations-with-another-president/2019/04/14/81f2d0a0-519c-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html?utm_term=.e990d36ffc5a

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