393
Of course, the GOP ended the investigation in February and insisted there was ‘no collusion.’ But they came to this conclusion without even having spoken to Papadopoulos-who’s conversations with Australia’s top diplomat about damaging emails the Russians told him they had on Hillary Clinton-was the basis for initially opening the Russia probe to begin with.
The majority also didn’t hear from Michael Flynn, from Paul Manafort-or from the estate of Peter Smith. Or any other number of vitally important witnesses. The majority’s method for determining wether there was collusion amounted to literally asking Jared Kushner, Donald Jr, Michael Cohen, and friends if there was any collusion. The answer, of course, was no.
There you go the GOP concluded: there was no collusion. Now with the GOP formally having ended the probe two months ago, the Dems-who are still on the case-have obtained the documents from Peter Smith’s estate-of course, these documents and many others should have been obtained before any such talk of ending the probe.
At least the Dems are still on the case:
“Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have obtained documents from the estate of a late GOP operative who sought Hillary Clinton’s personal emails after they were deleted from her private email server, ABC News reported Wednesday.
“Peter Smith, a Republican activist, had sought the deleted emails and reportedly used the names of top Trump campaign aides in a recruiting document as part of his attempt. Smith died last year.”
“William Ensing, the attorney for Smith’s estate, told ABC News that the estate had handed over the documents to the panel at the request of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.”
“Smith had told The Wall Street Journal shortly before his death that he was not working on behalf of the Trump campaign.
“However, he had listed Trump officials including Stephen Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and former national security adviser Michael Flynn in the document soliciting help in retrieving the deleted emails.”
Smith believed that Russian hackers may have obtained Clinton’s deleted emails, and that the messages could include damaging information.
The delivery of the documents is a sign that Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are continuing to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, even after Republicans on the panel formally ended the probe into Russia’s election interference.
It will be interesting to find out what is in Smith’s documents. Presumably the Dems will let us know at some point as they agree that a big problem with how the GOP conducted the investigation was the lack of transparency-as their focus was not in informing the public about this issue of great public concern-the legitimacy of our elections-but to shield so-called President Trump from embarrassment.
UPDATE:
Regarding the public hearings I have to say that as we now enter the sixth month of Dem House rule I’m a bit frustrated-while Nancy Pelosi continues to insist on investigations not impeachment
Mueller: Here’s 448 pages on how Trump broke the law and how Congress is the remedy for this.
Pelosi: Wow, well we’re definitely gonna study this report.
*6 weeks later*
Mueller: I say again, Congress is *the* remedy.
Pelosi: Got it. We’ll definitely continue investigating.
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) May 29, 2019
In fact we have had one public hearing in six months. Remember the palpable MS fear the Democrats would ‘over investigate?’ As if it’s possible to ‘over-investigate’ Trump? Yet Hakeem Jeffries was still promising not to over-investigate this past weekend.
"The so-called Attorney General intentionally misrepresented the conclusions of the Mueller Report as part of an effort to fool the American people" @RepJeffries tells me. But says Democrats won't "overreach" or "over-investigate."
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) May 26, 2019
After Mueller’s press conference Congressman Jeffries said this:
Individual 1 claimed total exoneration.
Mueller made clear today Trump lied (“If we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so”).
The President must now be held accountable.
No. One. Is. Above. The. Law.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) May 29, 2019
But how do you both hold him accountable and not ‘over-investigate?’
Spoiler alert you can’t it’s totally contradictory.
Regarding Peter Smith the Dems haven’t yet provided us more public information-though when Nadler send out the document requests to all the Trump associates one on the list was Peter Smith’s estate.
Of all the questions the Dems need to ask Mueller none is more crucial than regarding Smith as his efforts to obtain Clinton’s deleted emails with the help of both Wikileaks and Russian hackers meets the clear textbook definition of conspiracy as Mueller defines it in his own report-while the conduct of Roger stone and Jermoe Coris and senior campaign aides-Bannon-as well as Manafort?-meets the clear definition of coordination.
FN: Interestingly in the GOP’s recently released transcripts from Papadopoulos-from December, 2018-the glorified Coffee Boy insisted he didn’t collude with Russia on the release of stolen Clinton emails-but that had he done so this would have been treason.
Find Page # Mike
In yesterday’s statement Mueller slightly changed his wording from his report.
“…he departed from the language of the report — which said the investigation “did not establish” a conspiracy — and said “there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.” The meaning is the same, but the emphasis is different. There was, obviously, a good deal of evidence that there was a conspiracy between Russia and people in Trump’s camp. Just not enough to charge.”
Of all the things you can credibly accuse ‘President Trump’ the most serious is his calling on Russia-in broad daylight-to commit a crime-stealing her emails. While Trump claimed this was just ‘a joke’ we know that Russian hackers targeted Clinton’s office the same day and with the MR we now know that Trump pushed Michael Flynn-who was Peter Smith’s most important point of contact in the Trump campaign-to get Clinton’s emails.
Rick Gates states that Trump was very frustrated about not having obtained Clinton’s emails. When the Coffee Boy was questioned about what Misfsud told him about the emails he was very vague but suggested maybe Mifsud got the idea from watching Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano who had strongly suggested the previous day the Russians had Clinton’s emails-spoiler alert, they didn’t and don’t.
Again if anything could rightly be called treason it would seem to be working with the Russian hackers to steal Clinton’s emails-and that’s what both Peter Smith and Trump himself wanted to do, conspired to do.
Yet he didn’t find a conspiracy-insufficient evidence. He needs to explain to Congress what sufficient evidence would look like.
Meanwhile Adam Schiff stated in November 2018-a little over a week after their historical wave election-that despite the GOP’s obstruction the late Peter Smith’s attempted conspiracy to commit computer crimes was one area he and his fellow Democrats had made good progress on.
However, since the Dems took over in January of this year we’ve yet to hear anything about it just yet. Presumably it’s still on Schiff’s agenda as it’s literally the most serious thing-a crime-that Trump has been accused of.