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What do you call a Republican institutionalist? A contradiction in terms and I enter into the record support for this assertion: Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon, Bush V. Gore, the Comey Letter Circa 2016 and now the Barr Letter Circa March 2019. But more on this below.

Let us start with a crucial point Greg Sargent made a few weeks back when Nancy Pelosi may have-seemed to have, possibly had, hopefully hadn’t really-taken impeachment off the table by-possibly determining in how you read her-giving Mitch McConnell-and Sean Hannity-a veto.

“At bottom, this may turn on a deeper question: whether one believes simply defeating Trump for reelection would do enough to purge the country of the many stains of Trumpism. Though Pelosi has risen to the gravity of the moment on other fronts, she does appear to believe this. But we can’t make that decision until we know how foul the stains really are. As Ocasio-Cortez says, this all needs to be “aired out.”

Put me very much in the school which does not believe this. What concerns me is the awful precedent you have set-and when I say ‘you’ I mean the Democrats.

Some have rightly argued that if Trump is not impeachable then we need to explain why the Founders gave Congress this power at all? If not Trump then who? Pelosi’s words depending on how you read them could suggest she has a congenital opposition to impeachment period regardless of who the President is or what his/her abuses and maladministration are.

This has led some to say that we ought to just take the impeachment clause out of the Constitution-either the Founders erred or in any case we’ve decided they were wrong. But in truth that’s not the precedent failing to impeach Trump will set-that any President in the way will get away with anything.

Now that even Ken Starr is now against impeachment-or indeed releasing the Mueller report at all-it might well seem that the GOP has gone a 180 on impeachment. Not at all-they’re being totally consistent: it’s not that the President should be impeached over ‘process crimes’ a la Bill Clinton or that s/he should not even over earth shattering abuses a la Fuhrer President Trump.

The real material difference between Clinton and Trump ought to be blindly obvious-Clinton was a Democrat, Trump is a Republican. If Hillary Clinton did 1/10 of that-turning Michael Flynn on his head-that Trump did-or 1/100 or 1/1000 she’d already have been impeached-probably by the Democrats.

So the true precedent is that a Republican President can’t be impeached-a Democratic President can be impeached over trivial things like Whitewater, Emailgate, maybe even the Clinton’s Christmas list, or what really happened with Elizabeth Warren saying she had a little Cherokee in her or Obama chewing gum?

There’s a wildly different standard and the trouble is it’s not just the GOP  standard but the entire MSM-they simply have much higher expectations from Democrats-and the Dems are not 1/10 as ruthless as the Grand Old Party-you already have talk that maybe the Dems should back off on Trump because of the Mueller Report the Barr Letter-which actually quoted one half sentence from the Mueller Report-Apparently Barr wasn’t confident enough to even quote the entire sentence much less the entire report.

So if the Democrats refuse to impeach Trump-depending on where the facts lead-then they will be saying that even they hold Republican Presidents-or a ‘President’ like Trump-to a more gentle forgiving-all forgiving-standard. So terrible precedent for the Rule of Law and our democracy-it legitimizes Trump’s illegitimate ‘win’-no one denies he won with Russia’s help regardless of how much you want to believe he did or didn’t coordinate with this Russian election assistance. If a basketball team wins with a call at the buzzer and it turns out the refs were paid off it makes no difference to the legitimacy of its ‘victory’ wether we later find they were in on the fix or not.

Add to that the Comey Letter and Trump isn’t legitimate regardless of level of coordination-in light of the Roger Stone-Jerome Corsi emails and emails between Stone and the Trump campaign-Bannon, maybe Manafort, etc-there’s no way there was none.

And if Trump won his Office via nefarious means that in itself is an impeachable offense.

Speaking of Comey:

He’s right that the point of the Special Counsel is so that a political hire like Barr doesn’t make the call-particularly one who called the SC investigation ‘fatally misconceived’ at the outset-which happened to win him the job.. But of course-we wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for his own truly fatally misconceived extremely careless Emailgate investigation.

Overall the MSM is giddy with talk of the ‘post Mueller age.

This sort of article in particular makes me see red.

“Mueller, Giuliani and Me: Tales from the Russia Probe.”

“How the special counsel’s investigation took over my life.”

“Why are real Americans supposed to give a damn because the Mueller investigation was inconveniencing some ‘savvy’ MSMer’s life? Is this why they’re in such a rush to declare Trump exonerated? Because they’re tired of the story? That’s what happened with Iran-Contra too it was less what the evidence said than that the MSM decided they wanted it over-Ken Dilanian had been beating that drum for months. On Sunday Kasie Hunt gave the game away when she said ‘people have Mueller fatigue.’

In other words her and her Hillary Clinton hating savvy friends are over this. They want to be nicer to ‘President Trump’ so he sees they don’t hate him-maybe they’ll earn Twitter praise from ‘the President.’ They are apologizing to him in a way they still haven’t had over their absurd Emailgate coverage.

The entire meme around Post Mueller seems rather ironic as we haven’t seen the report yet. Ok we saw half a sentence and the MSM has already decided that while we should see the rest or ‘as much as Barr is able to’-he can show the entire thing. and don’t tell me about the regs, Trump never cared about that before-they’ve also already decided that whatever the rest of the report-that could be hundreds of pages-the half sentence already tells the entire story.

While in fairness Nate Silver is often far superior to MSM consensus-and he likes to be contrarian-here he actually perfectly expresses that consensus.

Note the ‘lonely’ allusion-ie, he’s the contrarian but in this case his view is actually the MSM consensus-that while we should see the full report-or that Barr deems ‘appropriate’-which in reality means much less than the full report-it won’t in substance change much of what we ‘already know’ from the Barr Letter-I use inverted commas as we know almost nothing from the half sentence and if anything Barr raised more questions than he answered-if he answered any

I guess what he confirmed is that there was no criminal collusion charge regarding a direct conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government-of course we know that when he was Trump’s campaign manager, Manafort gave 75 pages of polling data to the Konstantin Kilimnik who has a history with FRU but is not at this point directly connected to the Russian government today.

Although:

In fairness Silver later did rethink and elaborate:

But he still doesn’t quite get the big picture-that seems to subtle for almost everyone in the MSM-and even for Intel Democrats like Jim Himes:

I mean the desire for a smoking gun is almost always a canard but the value in seeing the report is we will see what else Mueller has beyond the public record as well as his analysis of what is a pretty large public record of coordination and collusion. The fact that collusion isn’t criminally charged doesn’t mean there was no collusion.

But then what’s now clear in retrospect is that expectations were way too high going into the Mueller report-there was a clear failure to manage them-against a clear GOP co-conspirator effort to mismanage them egregiously.

Looking at the-utterly atrocious reception of the Mueller Report Barr Letter-Greg Sargent had some some rather prescient words prior to:

“The savvy smart money in Washington predicts that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings will be a dud — that there won’t be charges for criminal conspiracy with Russia, and that the Justice Department will release limited information about his findings.”

“Meanwhile, the special counsel’s report is coming, and Trump’s allies are plastering the airwaves with the argument that no additional charges will constitute vindication. That’s absurd — immense wrongdoing has already been established, and multiple probes will continue. But are Democrats ready for this spin war?”

In retrospect we can say definitively they most surely were not ready. The GOP co-conspirators clearly won the early spin war-in a laugher, not even close. The MSM pounced on ‘no more indictments’ on Friday and then literally lost its mind over ‘no conspiracy could be established’  Sunday and it was off the races-Trump is vindicated, maybe the traitors are those who dared raise the questions.

Now there’s a meme that those of us who simply ask to see the actual report before rushing to judgment-Trump’s vindicated and exonerated-is somehow moving the goalposts. And again the MSM narrative that while we should see the report the rest of the-say-500 page report is irrelevant as we have the half sentence-implies that seeing the report is not a very high priority-after all we already know the substance, the Democrats need to ‘avoid relitigating this’-like the Democrats in 2000 were ‘relitigating’ by actually wanting the recount called for by law before declaring George W. Bush ‘President.’

Ok here’s another example of the attitude that yeah we should see the report but it’s anti-climatic–why talk about a 500 page report after we’ve seen the first 23 words?

“One way or another, there won’t be as much explaining to do, now that the Mueller circus is leaving town. Sure, there’s still a lot left to be learned and debated about his report in the coming weeks, and there are still the offshoot investigations that are underway in jurisdictions like the Southern District of New York. But the key element of suspense is gone. For MSNBC, what next? “There are shows that built their identity around this,” a journalist there told me. “Where does that go?”

“For starters, several sources told me they expect that some of MSNBC’s Mueller stars—the Malcolm Nances and Jill Wine-Bankses and Mimi Rocahs of the world—won’t be called on as frequently. Others said the network’s coverage was already beginning to shift toward a focus on 2020, which has an enormous pack of Democratic hopefuls that are like celebrities to many an MSNBC viewer. (NBC News and MSNBC are hosting the first Democratic presidential primary debate in June.)”

There’s nothing ‘next’-as we haven’t even seen the report yet-but Vanity Fair wrongly presumes that the final 500 pages will tell you nothing new. But it will tell us not just about obstruction of justice-it sounds like Mueller found a lot of obstruction but ultimately intended for Congress to decide and about collusion. No-it hasn’t all been solved. In truth none of it has. Ok so Mueller didn’t hit 90% confidence on collusion but what % confidence does he have? If it’s 80% that might not be enough to convict but it is enough to impeach.

This is a very helpful image-note that it’s simply absurd to say ‘there’s not a shred of evidence of collusion’ to even open the investigation required probable cause. So one of the many things the Mueller Report will show us-if we ever see it-will be while the evidence of collusion might fall short of beyond a reasonable doubt did it rise from probable cause to the level of proven through a preponderance of the evidence or even clear and convincing?

Clear and convincing or preponderance of the evidence may not be sufficient for criminal conviction but should be more than enough for impeachment. Then there’s just matter of fact-we have plenty of evidence that is part of public knowledge of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians-as long as you don’t construe the ‘Russians’ too narrowly which Barr clearly did-wether this was all Mueller looked we won’t know until: we see the report. Though I’m doubtful he did.

Beyond the issue of impeachment or even how much evidence is what did Mueller find? This is of great public interest. What were his conclusions of the communications between Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi? Does he have more private evidence? We know Mueller was investigating Peter Smith’s stated intent-in emails to Michael Flynn and Steven Bannon among other senior Trump campaign aides-to pay Russian hackers to hack Clinton’s emails. What did he find? What are his conclusions?

How about Manafort selling Kilimnik campaign polling data? To what purpose did Kilimnik intend to use it for? Manafort had previously emailed him about giving Deripaska a private briefing. Did Kilimnik give the polling data to Deripaska?

What about George Nader who Mueler was also investigating? Nader was at the Trump Tower meeting of August 3, 2016 that was setup by Erik Prince where they spoke to the Saudis and Joel Zamel-who owns an Israeli social media company. They discussed: how the Saudis and Zamel could assist the Trump campaign.

After the election Nader paid Zamel $2 million dollars for some clearly very valuable services. Was it the social media campaign on the Trump campaign’s behalf? If it was a totally innocent and coincidental purpose-ie, while they talked about foreign assistance for the Trump campaign they never gave him the assistance and after the election Nader paid Zamel the $2 million for an incidental and totally unrelated service?

Clearly these are not exactly boring questions and Maddow could probably plan her next 100 shows discussing just these topics-and that’s just a few of the many things Mueller has answers for. What I can tell MSNBC is that if their plan is to ‘turn the page on Mueller’ before we even see the report I’m going to turn the page on them and I’d urge the reader to to do the same-how else can we make our voices heard?

Last night Chris Hayes was talking about a bunch of other stuff and I shut him off. I fastfowarded Maddow on the DVR until she discussed the Mueller report. Hayes had Bernie on-which is sort of an automatic clickoff anyway-he made some very strange comments on the ACA

But while Trump’s attack on the ACA is an emergency the MSM has its own clear responsibility for it-because they fell for the Barr Letter fiasco hook, line, and sinker, Trump is-undersandably-feeling even more bullet proof than usual. Clearly he can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it-after all it doesn’t prove criminal collusion with the Russian government beyond a reasonable doubt either.

Well neither does gutting ACA in its entirety-or coming after those who attack him politically. That he now has turned his sights on the MSM is in a sense deserved as they were the ones who showed him he can get away with anything.

And-if-the Democrats are now backing off on Mueller-not necessarily giving up but de-prioritizing it-then they too are in their own way complicit with Trump’s attack on the ACA-after all, if even the opposition party is scared to push him and really hold him accountable he truly does have carte blanche.

As for expectations while the GOP deliberately perverted them it’s true that those of us in #TheResistance-some don’t like the phrase but I think it has a fine and proud history behind it-Trump is Hitler in the American context-didn’t do a great job of managing expectations. David Frum warned for 2 years that the things Trump may have done with Russia while terrible if not treasonous might not rise to the level of criminal collusion-rather noncriminal collusion-as collusion is not a crime.

But it seems to me that the root of the trouble is that few of us understood the distinction between a criminal and counterintelligence investigation-and why the distinction mattered.

The really interesting part of Mueller’s report may actually be not the criminal aspect but the counterintelligence investigation-which could provide a lot-more-damning facts of Trump campaign collusion. I still think we have just the tip of the iceberg in terms of communications, etc that show the full conspiracy-wether criminal or not.

As it is many seem not to be able to appreciate the subtle point that just because collusion isn’t charged doesn’t mean there was NO COLLUSION.

If there’s any silver lining at all, it’s that Adam Schiff understands the difference and he’s Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee-which no doubt is why the GOP is after him now. They know that if anyone could finger Trump for Russian Collusion it’s what Schiff will do with the information from Mueller-Schiff is particularly interested in the counterintelligence work.

Ok above I mentioned 2000 and speaking of 2000 this brings us back to my caustic comment at top of page about a GOP institutionalist being a contradiction in terms. Again look at the history: Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon, Bush V. Gore, the Comey Letter Circa 2016 and now the Barr Letter Circa March 2019.

This goes to another reason why I believe winning in 2020 while very necessary isn’t sufficient: contrary to conventional wisdom the GOP largely controls large parts of what you might call the national superstructure-we know about Wall St but  large swathes of the Justice system the intelligence agencies-at least the FBI.

We’ve seen again and again the DOJ take sides-the pardoning of Iran-Contra co-conspirators, the Comey Letter, the Barr Letter. Then there was Bush V. Gore where the GOP Supreme Court made up an ad hoc basis to simply install-or as Mitch McConnell would put it-ram George W. Bush into the WH.

Regarding the DOJ notice that the current partisan control of the WH doesn’t change things much. Barr rigged things for Bush Sr in 1992 and Trump in March, 2019 but even when the Democrats are in power the GOP still imposes its will. Think  about it-appointing Ken Starr was Janet Reno’s bright idea, -the one person prescient enough to argue against was: yep, Hillary Clinton. When Ken Starr was finished we got the full Starr Report in painstaking-and painful, graphic and explicit detail. We all got to read it immediately.

Meanwhile the NYT’s-which while not ‘failing’ really ought to be ‘the President’s favorite paper has a new bombshell today.

Even if he releases the Mueller report you suspect it will be far short of the full report-it will be doled in bits to make it sound as ‘exculpatory’ as possible-though the fact that Barr couldn’t even give us the full sentence on NO COLLUSION tells you those non-incriminating parts of it might be few and far between.

In 2016 Obama’s FBI Director stole the election from Hillary Clinton-wether or not this was his intent this is what he did. I don’t think it’s any limb at all to say that the FBI is, always has been, and remains a very Republican place. It’s an agency that’s been open over 100 years now and we have yet to have a Democratic FBI Director.  But there’s the rub-even Democratic Presidents always pick Republican Directors at the FBI.

But while we can sharply criticize Comey-as we should and the sharper the better-the fact is that even Obama’s own AG. Loretta Lynch dropped the ball-she could have reigned Comey in-simply forbade him to do either the presser or the letter-true he sandbagged her both times by only asking her after it was practically a fait accompli but she still could have said no. Only with Andy McCabe’s book has the truth started to emerge-Lynch was someone who avoided conflict making her a very ripe foil for the insubordinate James Comey. 

Meanwhile, Comey refused to respond to Harry Reid’s demand he tell us about Russia and the Trump campaign. He refused to sign a statement on October 1, 2016 because it was too close to the election. Then on October 28 the Comey Letter while he was fully aware that the Trump campaign was being investigated. 

Finally, in March, 2017 we finally have the counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and the Trump campaign confirmed and Mueller is appointed in June, 2017. But since then Mueller has been totally silent. Ok so the reaction of many is that this is great it’s as he should be but I have mixed feelings.

First of all, even if this is what Mueller should have done, it’s totally asymmetric. Ken Starr would talk to reporters from his driveway about the Clinton investigation. The Emailgate investigation leaked like a sieve the threat of which finally led Comey to write the letter that won it for ‘President Trump.’

Now that a Republican was being investigated suddenly it’s all done between the white lines. Meanwhile Barr is saying the ‘regs’ require him only to give this very short summary. Meanwhile the GOP got *00,000 pages from the Clinton investigation.

Protocol is only used when a GOPer is in the crosshairs-if it’s a Democrat it’s  no holds barred, or Comey’s ‘500 year flood.’

So looking at the totality the GOP has it both ways-if a Democrat is being investigated it’s a 500 year flood and a time for ‘extraordinary transparency’ but if a GOPer is on the block suddenly we hew scrupulously to the rules.

Beyond which it’s arguable that this Mueller was too quiet during the investigation. I’ve seen the argument made-I believe by Watergate prosecutor, Jill Wine-Banks-that Mueller has been too tightlip-that during Watergate, Leon Jaworski at least made sure he they put out information about the investigation and the investigators.

With Mueller we know nothing about him. We know his biography-which certainly seems very impressive and the legal expert types you see on cable news assure us he is of the highest integrity and ‘a True Patriot’-which is great if true though we know so little about him ourselves. I mean we have never heard the man speak before-there is such hunger for his words and then Trump’s handpicked stooge comes out and gives us 23 words and that’s supposed to be the end of the story?

Time to pivot back to ‘wow things are normal now let’s talk about normal stuff? This is a stupendous win for Trump.Why are you relitigating Mueller? Are you moving the goalposts? Nobody likes a relitigator. Sure you can see the full report but the important thing were the 23 words we already heard.’

Apparently Mueller should have done a much shorter report.

As for the Supreme Court the GOP has controlled it since Nixon’s viciously bullied Abe Fortas off the Court. Since then the Democrats have mostly missed the boat on its importance-the nadir of which being leading Bernie Bro HA Goodman who in 2016 declared Bernie or Bust!

He explicitly argued that 2 or 3 conservative Supreme Court Justices were a small price to pay for making sure that woman was denied her lifelong dream. Totally worth it.

And for HA probably was as he’s  now telling Berners to vote for Trump 2020-not even kidding, confirming he had been a Trump Deplorable in Bernie Bro clothing in the first place.

Now Trump has rained down conservative judges on the federal courts-Kavanaugh et. al.

Again, winning elections is important but it’s not enough.

 

 

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