161

First and foremost let’s not kid ourselves-if this were Hillary Clinton the full, uredacted report would be out there. It’d already have happened regardless of what the regs-28 C.F.R. § 600.8(c).-supposedly says.

Look at the history of it. The Starr Report was released within days-delivered in boxes to Congress. Comey was testifying to the GOP Congress three days after his very careless press conference accusing Hillary Clinton of being very careless. The GOP demanded and got million of documents about the Emailgate investigation and the Mueller investigation-while it was still going on. This demand was criticized by the intel agencies but Rod Rosenstein still supplied them this in the middle of the investigation.

So don’t tell me Coverup Bill Barr can’t release the full, unredacted report today because 28 C.F.R. § 600.8(c) won’t allow him to. It’s also pretty ironic that this regulation was crafted by Neil Katyal because of the excessiveness of Ken Starr that redounded to the benefit of the Republican party is now being evoked to the benefit of the Republican party. This is why under Trump DOJ stands for Department of (In)Justice.

But the lesson is also that the Democrats should learn from this and not immediately demand a change in process when something like this happens-as next time it will be used against them. Like some are now wondering if we should change the rules here-if you were to say bring back the Independent Counsel then the GOP will just hound the next Dem POTUS out of office.

For his part Katyal is saying that Barr is doing it wrong-he’s misusing his Ken Starr proof reg.

The public has every right to see Robert S. Mueller III’s conclusions. Absolutely nothing in the law or the regulations prevents the report from becoming public. Indeed, the relevant sources of law give Attorney General P. William Barr all the latitude in the world to make it public.”

Of course the real problem is the words all the latitude in the world-Coverup Attorney General Barr could release the full report without delay or redactions that coverup the full truth but he doesn’t have to-he has the discretion. We’re stuck with his dubious, biased judgment.

Ok so the headlines last night was that Barr would release the full report-which he now says is over 400 pages-to Congress by mid April. But he’s still playing a shell game.

“As we have discussed,I share your desire to ensure that Congress and the public have the opportunity to read the Special Counsel’s report. Weare preparing the report for release, making the redactions that are required. The Special Counsel is assisting us in this process. Specifically, we are well along in the process of identifying and redacting the following: (1) material subject to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) that by law cannot be made public; (2) material the intelligence community identifies as potentially compromising sensitive sources and methods; (3) material that could affect other ongoing matters, including those that the Special Counsel has referred to other Department offices; and (4) information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties. Our progress is such thatI anticipate we will be in a position to release the report by mid-April, if not sooner. Although the President would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report, he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.”

No plans has wiggle room-he has no plans now but those plans can change. While the fact that apparently we will see the report by mid April and that it’s over 400 pages might seem like progress the devil is very much in the details. Indeed in some ways he’s actually promising less now than he was on Sunday night as Rachel Maddow noticed.

Yes I mean who does the AG of Coverup consider to be ‘peripheral parties?’

Even if he’s not showing it to Trump first he’s showing it to his GOP poodle first.

Barr also continues to dissemble about publishing grand jury information.

Barr certainly could to-if he wanted to which clearly he does not. Chairman Nadler had a strong response:

I was also very happy to hear Adam Schiff’s strong words last night:

I’m very happy to hear they’re willing to go to the map over this as they’re going to have to. Coverup Bill Barr certainly isn’t going to do the right thing here because: it’s the right thing.

As I’ve argued regarding impeachment the principle here is nothing less than precedent and the Rule of Law. The Democrats need to be very careful here-they better go to the mat as if they didn’t they’d be setting the precedent that only Democratic Presidents can face any kind of accountability-with a GOP President the GOPers will defend him in lockstep and even the Democrats won’t be motivated enough to do anything about it.

To be clear it does appear they are going to the mat-Speaker Pelosi herself vowed the other day to use all the powers of the Speaker’s Office to make sure this goes public.

So this is about nothing less than a singular standard on Justice in this country-equal protection. Another example of the partisan divide on justice in this country is that Trump wasn’t compelled to give an in person interview. Again the comparison is Brett Kavanuagh’s perjury trap in 1998-Kavanugh’s memo documents that the purpose was a perjury trap-to to ask such embarrassing questions about the intimate details of Clinton’s affair that he would either resign on the sport or perjure himself. Then you had Clinton’s FB interview that the GOP made much hue and cry over the fact that she had her lawyers present-even though when you look at the IG report on Emailgate it’s clear that if anything Clinton was treated more brusquely than usual-as so many more FBI people were in the room than normally would be.

Meanwhile we’re getting some of the background on how Trump avoided an in person interview altogether:

“As Robert Mueller’s probe into potential collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia and possible obstruction of justice pressed on, Trump’s lawyers seemed to coalesce around one condition: the special counsel must not interview the president. For weeks, reports focused on the back-and-forth between the president’s legal team and Mueller’s office as they negotiated a potential interview, the collective imagination ignited by the thought of the special counsel going head-to-head with the notoriously untruthful president. On the air, Rudy Giuliani lamented that Mueller was attempting to lay a “perjury trap.” And yet, after all the seemingly tense exchanges, and even the unspoken threat of a subpoena, Mueller ended his probe apparently without interviewing its prime witness.”

“Why exactly that is, and whether Mueller’s conclusion would have been different with input from Trump, is now a matter left to speculation, in part because the full report has not been made public by Attorney General William Barr, who summarized its findings in a brief, controversial letter last weekend. But a postmortem by The Washington Post published Thursday digs into the strategy on both sides of the battle, pulling back the curtain on how Trump’s team helped him avoid an interview while flicking at some of the reasons Mueller may have backed down.”

Basically the Trump team had a two-pronged strategy:

As Giuliani and others in Trump’s corner told the Post, their strategy was something of a one-two punch: public admonition of Mueller’s efforts, while privately satisfying investigators’ document requests in an effort to build an argument that the cooperation rendered a presidential interview unnecessary. “No matter what question they would say they wanted to ask, I felt confident we could turn it over and say, ‘You already have the answer to it,’” Giuliani told the paper.

“Mueller’s team, of course, has remained characteristically tight-lipped about its decision-making, though Robert Ray, a former independent counsel, noted that subpoenaing Trump would have been precedent-setting, and could have dragged the probe into a long, bitter court battle. “That’s a major fight, and you have to decide whether, in the country’s best interests, it’s worth it,” he said. (White House officials declined the Post’s request for comment.)”

Notice how with the Clintons, precedents were set again and again but with Trump they worried over setting a precedent. Unequal Justice.

Speaking of unequal Justice notice how Mueller won’t say a word while Ken Starr and Jim Comey would never shut up.

Unequal Justice.

And the refusal of Trump to sit for an interview was in itself precedent setting.

“Still, such a fight may have been vital, particularly in the special counsel’s inquiry into obstruction of justice, which according to Barr was left an open question. Trump relentlessly railed against the investigation in public comments, and at times seemed to take direct action to undermine it, including firing former F.B.I. director James Comey, which he told Lester Holt in a televised interview was made with “this Russia thing” in mind. The president also reportedly had a hand in drafting a misleading statement for his son Donald Trump Jr. to explain away a shady meeting he took in 2016 in an apparent effort to obtain Russia-proffered dirt on Hillary Clinton.”

Mueller actually broached the idea of subpoenaing Trump on March 5, 2018:

The conflict dominated a difficult March 5, 2018, meeting. “I asked, what’s the president’s status?” Dowd said. “[Mueller said] he’s a witness-slash-subject. And I said, you mean he has no exposure? He said that’s right. So I knew then for sure, by inference, that [Mueller] had nothing to proceed on in the collusion and conspiracy area.”

Note that Dowd is saying that now in light of Trump’s alleged ‘vindication’-though we haven’t actually seen the report-with the benefit of seeing the Barr Letter.

The conflict dominated a difficult March 5, 2018, meeting. “I asked, what’s the president’s status?” Dowd said. “[Mueller said] he’s a witness-slash-subject. And I said, you mean he has no exposure? He said that’s right. So I knew then for sure, by inference, that [Mueller] had nothing to proceed on in the collusion and conspiracy area.”

Still, Mueller said he needed to interview Trump, and that he might subpoena the president.

“He dropped that on the table, and I reacted very strongly,” Dowd recalled. “I said go ahead, you’re threatening this president with a subpoena. It’s doubtful whether the [Justice Department] Office of Legal Counsel would have approved such a thing. … But beside that, I said, well go ahead. I want to hear what you tell the court is your basis to do it when you don’t have a crime, you’ve just told me [Trump] doesn’t have any exposure, so what are you going to tell a U.S. district judge? Because we’re going to move to quash this thing. And Jay Sekulow and his team were ready to do it … We’re ready to do it if you want to do it.”

“Then he backed off, he said don’t get upset,” Dowd continued.

Don’t get upset. Can you imagine what would happen if Clinton’s lawyer had ‘gotten upset’ at the prospect of having to do an in person interview?

“I said, look, what basis do you have to do it? We’re not afraid of a grand jury subpoena. You want to do it, you’ve got yourself a war and you’re going to lose it. There’s no way [Mueller] could win that. I think he concluded that, even with all the firepower he had on his side, I think they knew they couldn’t do it. I think they thought they might scare us into it, but we were not going to go there.”

The subpoena never came.

While Mueller continued to push for the interview through January, 2019 that was the ballgame as Dowd successfully intimidated him. Don’t get upset. After that there was never going to be any interview. All Mueller could do was try to cajole it but he was too skittish to actually demand it-don’t get upset. We don’t want to set a precedent.

Speaking of Mueller, never forget he was part of the Bush Sr. DOJ-run by Bill Barr that pardoned six Iran-Contra co-conspirators in the middle of Sr’s reelect in 1992. In featured picture above, there’s Mueller and Barr as much younger men hugging and kissing. 

And it was all a bluff. 

All the while, Giuliani said, the legal team was not convinced that it would have prevailed in court. “Honestly, I don’t know who would have won,” he said. “I think our argument got better as time went on. But I don’t know if we would have won.”

But Mueller blinked. Would he have blinked if this was Hillary Clinton?

Let’s give Monica Lewinsky the last word:

The Department of (in)Justice.

So Mueller backed off on subpoenaing Trump but the Democrats must not come Tuesday when Barr blithely blows through their deadline.

UPDATE:

UPDATE 2.0:

https://twitter.com/MuellerReport_/status/1112001252685213696

Precisely-so why over just a ‘rosy summary’ would counterintelligence do what Figluzzi suggests? Doesn’t add up as you don’t have to be criminally prosecuted to be a subject of interest.

UPDATE 3.0

https://twitter.com/khankiso/status/1112332924077125632

License

October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

Share This Book