478

The GOP’s Nunes report is mostly a monument to their own shameful abdication of their role of providing necessary oversight over Trump. They have it both ways: on the one hand they wrongly claim that the fact of Mueller’s probe meant they had to scale back their own investigation. This is not what happened in Watergate where the Watergate Select Committee continued its outsize role alongside Leon Jaworski’s Independent Counsel.

But then they have it both ways by making major assertions:  that Putin did not want to help Trump; implicitly this would mean Putin did not want to hurt Hillary Clinton which is tough to square with the fact that most of the active measures were clearly calculated to do just that. How do you explain the hacks of the DNC, the DCCC, Podesta, the various active measures to hurt Clinton’s campaign?

And, of course, there was no collusion. They claim there was no evidence of collusion but it’s clear they didn’t look very hard. They excuse their failure to speak to the people you’d most want to speak to if you were even looking for evidence-Papadopoulos, Manafort, Flynn etc-by claiming that they couldn’t as this would step on Mueller’s toes. Ok but then they have no right to say there was no collusion but rather that they didn’t investigate it.

Thankfully Mueller is on the case. Comey has claimed that anyone in his shoes would have done what he did with the email probe; but this is clearly false, Mueller would not have. And while the GOP Congress has abdicated its role, we have Mueller and a very determined DOJ on the case. Rod Rosenstein stated unequivocally yesterday that the DOJ would not be ‘extorted’ by Herr Trump. 

UPDATE: In retrospect the legacy of Rosenstein is much more mixed-see Chapter A.

Recently we’ve seen a copy of 49 questions Mueller would like to ask Trump-though the list is likely not exhaustive. Despite Trump’s claim that none of the questions touched on collusion in point of fact many did, and, indeed, suggests Mueller knows a lot more than what we have in terms of public knowledge about collusion. 

FN: Of course, Mueller failed to demand Trump do an interview accepting a take home exam where Trump perjured himself multiple times in any case.

Many things that the GOP House report dismisses are of interest to Mueller like the issue of the change to the RNC platform position on Ukraine:

 

 

 

 

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

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