I have to say that the Mueller report hit me on a particular sour note. I had inteintionally left the house to go to the gym-to get away with the endless MSM speculation about when the report hit-my premise was a watched pot never boils so stop watching and maybe it will boil.
And boil it did-I took a nice long swim-I’ve been working on finishing this marathon book for 5 months and haven’t gone to the gym and I just got a reality check last week when I checked the scale. Then I was on the treadmill and CNN was on the tv up there and saw the pot indeed had boiled-the Mueller report was on. Trouble is the channels offered on the small tv you can watch while you run has CNN but not MSNBC-there’s no Fox either so presumably the gym only wants the ‘nonpartisan’ cable news network-though as much as Trump attacks it no doubt his Deplorables don’t see it as nonpartisan.
I’m not a huge fan of CNN either-I kind of hate the format-though certain anchors are very worth the watch. But as luck would have it Wolf Blitzer-who I almost never watch on purpose-was on.
FN: I hate the format as I’m pretty skeptical of the very idea of ‘nonpartisan news’ in this day and age, and I don’t see having a bunch of squabbling partisans being referred by a Wolf Blitzer at all edifying-as I argued elsewhere the cable news show you actually learn anything on is Rachel Maddow who’s format is the exact opposite. And in a way Rachel is ‘nonpartisan’ as if you watch her she very seldom introduces her own opinion-she doesn’t tell you she shows you.
Anyway, I pretty quickly saw that my avoidance of Blitzer is well placed. They read the terse DOJ-Bill Barr statements on the air. Speaking of which this is the big headline on the Washington Post’s front page this morning:
Mueller submits final report without further indictments
That’s actually a terrible headline as we will see. Now when you actually click on it the title at the top of the article is different:
“Mueller report sent to attorney general, signaling his Russia investigation has ended.”
See that’s actually a little better-it’s neutral just the facts Ma’am and has the convenience of being accurate. This just shows that the MSM outlets haven’t learned some pretty important lessons from 2016-first and foremost the headline matters more than the story as X amount of people will actually click the link and but X+Y+Z will just look at the headline.
Technically, of course, the front page headline that Mueller submitted the report without further indictments is accurate based on the statement we got last night. But putting that as the top headline on the front page gives a false impression and continues to feed a false narrative that Blitzer and friends pushed very had last night.
On Blitzer’s show-as I watched from my treadmill-MSM guest after guest declared in unisoni that ‘this is vindication for the President. There are no more indictments and Mueller is done.’
One MSM pundit declared ‘Mueller is done, he’s finished, it’d over. The Democrats want this to go on forever but this is done.’
And this just isn’t true in the least. Nothing is done-the Democrats have their own investigations that are just starting. Even if you wrongly infer that because Mueller personally won’t be doing any more indictments it means there will be no more indictments anywhere this does not mean there are no impeachable offenses. David Frum was right in one respect. From the day Mueller was appointed he had warned that the SC is only focused on if there were crimes committed. But it’s entirely possible that Trump and his campaign engaged in nefarious activity that is not strictly speaking a crime.
In saying there were no indictments we still know very little-indeed, this declaration by Barr raises questions rather than answers them. For example Wolf and Friends were popping champagne on Jared Kushner’s behalf. But-ignoring the fact that Kushner very possible could have exposure in other investigations-we still don’t know why Mueller didn’t indict him. Particularly in light of his role in everything from the Trump Tower Russia meeting of June 9, 2016 to his proposal to Kisylak for a backchannel with Russia inside the Russian embassy, to his close relationship to MBS-according to reporting one area Mueller was investigating wether Kushner’s foreign entanglements were influencing US policy. t
If Mueller isn’t going to indict Kushner-forgetting that he may well face exposure elsewhere-is it because there’s ‘no there there’-or is it that he’s only 75% confident he can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury? The standard for him to take it before the jury is at least 85% confident-a very high threshold.
Anyway after watching this clown show on Blitzer-where they did everything but throw ticker tape parade with confetti over ‘the vindication of President Trump and his family’-I drove him pretty mad. When I got home I told a friend of mine about it and she was ‘so you’re angry that Trump got away with it?’
And I told her-no there’s the irony. We really don’t know that he’s gotten away with anything just yet. What actually had me peeved was watching the story unfold on Blitzer and their slopping, shoddy job of framing it-which is why I don’t watch him normally. If I had watched it on Ari Melber-which is what I normally watch at 6 PM I’d have been in a much better mood.
Because the fact is that until we see the report-and the underlying evidence that Adam Schiff is demanding to see-Schiff rightly points out that the GOP got 800,000 pages from the DOJ about Hillary Clinton even though she wasn’t charged with anything so we should get at least the same for Trump-Russia-which has the convenience of being being 100 times more serious and important.
Kamala Harris is also on the case-which is a very good look for her as a Presidential candidate. As we saw in Chapter A, she has a lot of support on Democratic Twitter and her supporters care about this very deeply.
Candidate Amy Klobuchar also spoke to the public’s right to see the report
After I got home I watched Chris Matthews-the beauty of DVR. While many were criticizing his performance last night-I guess he was seen as even more frenetic than usual, talking over guests, interrupting them, etc-I actually found him just the palliative I needed last night after watching Blitzer’s Ticker Tape for ‘President Trump’s Most Awesome Vindication’-Trump doesn’t even need to write his own propaganda with Blitzer and friends around.
Chris is angry and concerned-so am I. But the reality is until we see the report and underlying evidence these topline numbers so to speak tell us very little.
The fact is Blitzer and friends were wrongly inferring that no more indictments from Muelller means there are no more indictments period. Not at all true.
Jerome Corsi did a victory dance. But Chuck Rosenberg had a voice of caution for him.
Im vindicated, I’m done. Corsi was probably watching Wolf Blitzer and has now gotten lulled into a false sense of security.
But it’s quite mistaken to presume that if Mueller personally will do no more indictments there will no more for Trump’s co-conspirators-we knew coming in Trump personally wouldn’t be indicted-before he left office at least.
Both Adam Schiff and Richard Blumenthal were clear they believe there will be more indictments:
The TV pundits really, really, really want you to buy into the narrative tonight that the submission of Robert Mueller’s report somehow means that Mueller didn’t find enough evidence to build a criminal case against Donald Trump. What’s this based on? Literally nothing, of course. Meanwhile, the people in position to know better are expecting Mueller’s report to set off additional indictments.”
Well it wasn’t based on nothing-there was the statement that Mueller will be doing no more indictments but this the MSM has totally misinterpreted what it means-if this were Hillary the headlines would be quite different.
First, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff appeared on MSNBC and stated that he thinks it’s “likely” there are more indictments coming; they’ll just come from the U.S. Attorneys’ offices that Mueller handed off the cases to. But this didn’t seem to fit with the doomsday narrative, so MSNBC kept pushing the notion that it’s all over, and everyone who hasn’t yet been arrested is somehow magically off the hook. That’s when Richard Blumenthal stepped to the plate.”
Richard Blumenthal, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, appeared on MSNBC and stated that there is a “high likelihood that there are indictments in this president’s future.” He explained that these indictments are likely to come from SDNY and/or other federal prosecutors. But again, this didn’t fit the prevailing MSNBC narrative, so the host cut off Blumenthal, and began asking leading questions which were aimed at painting the picture that no more indictments are coming.”
So Blumenthal is suggesting-as Schiff has also done-that after Trump leaves office he could be indicted-which is why he so desperately needs to win in 2020. Having said that, as I’ve argued elsewhere, I care less about indicting Trump the man-Individual 1-than his illegitimately gained ‘Presidency.’
I’ve noticed some have fallen into the trap where for some reason we have to choose between impeachment and indictment missing the fact that there’s no reason you can’t impeach him before he leaves Office and indict him after he does. Indeed impeachment is a form of indictment-of his ill gotten Office.
In any case the notion that this is the end of indictments for Trump and his GOP co-conspirators is quite wrong-spectacularly wrong in fact.
https://twitter.com/adamgoldmanNYT/status/1109428464426409984
The Trump friendly propaganda of CNN and the rest of the MSMers aside, ‘Mueller isn’t done’-if you understand ‘Mueller’ as more than he himself but the larger investigations into the Trump campaign’s conspiracy to successfully rig an election and other crimes and related matters investigators come across in the course of investigating.
Remember Roger Stone’s trial isn’t until November-it will be run in a DC court.
The reason why is because at every step of the way the MSM has attempted to minimize and downplay Russian Conspiracy-to say nothing of Saudi Arabian Conspiracy.
FN: In exactly the same way as they tried to maximize and exaggerate Emailgate and corruption at the Clinton Foundation at every step of the way.
Before the election the NY Times executive editor, Dean Baquet personally knocked down the story about the ping action between Trump Tower and Alpha Bank-and Betsey DeVos’-Spectrum Health, and totally ruined what should have been a bombshell article by Eric Litchblau instead turning it into a (Don’t)Think piece by the anti Clinton FBI agents declaring there’s nothing to the Russian conspiracy story.
FN: DeVos besides being the most unqualified Education Secretary in American history is also Erik Prince’s brother-who is deeply implicated both in Russian Conspiracy as well as Rogue FBI anti Clinton pro Trump agent Conspiracy.
Palmer Report also noticed the that the MSM is trying to spin this in as Trump friendly way as possible:
“We don’t know why the TV pundits are so eager tonight to push the notion that they somehow know that no one else will be indicted, beyond the obvious fact that scaring viewers is a good way to paralyze them into staying tuned in. But back in the real world, people who have been involved with the overall Trump-Russia investigation, such as Adam Schiff and Richard Blumenthal, are very loudly saying that they’re expecting more indictments. Blumenthal even thinks Trump is going to be indicted.”
They’re always eager to play Trump’s defense attorney-maybe they’re scared of the mean tweets that so upset them. I mean have the time their whole day of coverage is nothing but the same pundits saying the same ‘deeply insightful” things about yet another deeply offensive and erroenous tweet by Trump. You need to go to journalism school for that?!
The narrative never changes. ‘Sure it’s offensive and it’s totally untrue. But his base loves it and he thinks it’s helping him, the ‘President’ believes this helps him.’
No attempt is every made to even question wether this belief of ‘the President’ is even remotely well founded. The MSM seems to have decided that Trump really is a political genius with ‘exceptional political instincts’-despite the fact he only has one play and he ran it and the GOP had a worse loss than even Watergate 1974.
We’re not here to have an opinion, we’re just here to reread President Trump’s tweets to you that you could read yourself and probably already have in the first place.
We only have opinions when the subject is Hillary Clinton who has only herself to blame in using that email server and not going to Michigan and having everybody hating her.
And then conclude for the umpteenth time ‘But his base loves it so expect him to keep at it, and maybe it will work for him, are Democrats worried yet? Maybe they should be…’
With each new outrage-each that would have been enough to impeach, convict, and indict Hillary Clinton on the same day-the MSM is even quicker each new time to move from the issue at hand to ‘what President Trump’s response is…’
There’s your fake news.
So the indictments aren’t over but the MSM is telling its viewers the opposite-cable news, the WaPo headline quoted at the top-and WaPo is comparatively not nearly as bad an actor as Dean Baquet and friends.
Bacquet who finds the-totally accurate analysis of both WaPo and his own former Public Editor-Liz Spayd-as ‘fairly rdiciulous’ while continuing to insist that the lying drivel he turned Litchblau’s article into was nevertheless totally well founded and correctly predicated.
But then, as I’ve argued recently the one silver lining is that the (not so)Smart Set-those Savvy ones at Church-have lowered expectations into the basement so that it’s not going to be hard to surprise to the upside.
Abramson goes through a list of the various trials and investigations where ‘Mueller’-or at least his spinoffs will continue.
Indeed. In Chapter A I had argued that we have public evidence of Russian Coordination-the emails between the Trump campaign and Roger Stone on the one hand-and Cohen’s testifying to seeing Stone tell Trump about the DNC emails on speakerphone-and Stone and Coris on the other. Those clearly show both prior knowledge and coordination on the part of the Trump campaign-and Trump himself.
Then there is the email Peter Smith sent to senior Trump campaign staffers about his intent to pay Russian hackers and work with Wkileaks to hack and release Clinton’s emails. If this was carried out this is Conspiracy-it would involve the Trump campaign not only of coordinating on the timing and release of the emails but with the hackers who stole them in the first place.
This is why I’m so eager to see the report-and the underlying evidence. What did Mueller ultimately conclude regarding the emails of Stone and Corsi and the machinations of Peter Smith-who as we saw in Chapter A was also seen paying hackers in a hotel room and had an email after the Podesta dump about ‘happy students’ that could be read as referring to the hackers?
We need to know if he found something or not. All this is what’s not said in ‘Mueller will make no more convictions.’ Then there was the Manafort giving Konstantin Kilimnik 75 pages of detailed campaign polling data on August 2, 2016-same day Corsi emailed Stone back to tell him the next dump would be Podesta and it would happen in October.
David Corn has a lot more on Manafort.
Some last night-being Democrats-immediately thanked Mueller.
It’s interesting because as we saw in Chapter A Miller actually wrote a piece during the Kavanaugh Ram Through that Democrats should stop bowing and scraping before the FBI and learn from the GOP which criticizes and attacks it-and gets results..
Exactly right-a MSM outlet gets it right-there’s nothing of substance to digest-yet. Hopefully soon. As rightly skeptical as we need to be of Bill Barr-who the last time he was AG pardoned the Iran-Contra co-conspirators-Casper Weinberger, et al.-late in Bush Sr’s re-elect-and who unlike Elliot Richardson-refused to promise he’d release the full report, not to mention his previous criticisms of the Mueller investigation-Barr sounded fairly reassuring yesterday.
Apparently Congress could see a report as early as today-and according to him it’s quite comprehensive.
For his part, Trump has been unusually quite though Lindsay is vowing to: yep, investigate Hillary Clinton again.
So maybe today is the day. But until we see it, I’m going to reserve judgment.
The consensus is clear-the public argues they paid for it and want to see it
And Congress wants to see it.
Barr, who received Mueller’s findings on Friday evening, told congressional leaders in a letter that he was “reviewing the report and anticipate that I may be in a position to advise you of the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions as soon as this weekend.”
But to Democrats, that step isn’t enough. They have long been pushing Barr, who was confirmed to lead the Justice Department last month, to make Mueller’s report public as a further glimpse into what the Trump 2016 campaign’s Russian ties and contacts were. Last week in a sweeping bipartisan vote, the House of Representatives also said the report should be released; however, that vote is not legally binding.
The Democratic chairmen of six major House committees issued a statement Friday demanding that Barr release the report to the public “without delay given the profound public interest in the full disclosure of information learned by the Special Counsel.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said Congress should get full access to the report. He also wants all documents related to Mueller’s investigation to be preserved and made available to the appropriate committees on Capitol Hill. Finally, Warner said, the public should also have some access to Mueller’s final work product after nearly two years of investigating.
“Congress and the American people deserve to judge the facts for themselves,” Warner said. “The special counsel’s report must be provided to Congress immediately, and the attorney general should swiftly prepare a declassified version of the report for the public. Nothing short of that will suffice.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told NPR’s All Things Considered that the full report, not simply Mueller’s conclusions, should be made public.
“No one should be satisfied with what we see unless it is full disclosure of the facts and evidence, not just the conclusions but all of the findings that went into those conclusions,” Blumenthal said. “No scrubbing for executive privilege, no involvement by the White House in censoring or reviewing and no claims of executive privilege.”
House intelligence committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told All Things Considered that he “will subpoena people as necessary” based on information in the report. “We are determined that we protect the public and that we make this as transparent as possible.”
And on Friday, as the long-anticipated investigation was finally done, some top Republicans echoed their Democratic colleagues.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican who is up for re-election in 2020, tweeted that “Barr should release the report to the public as soon as possible, while accommodating national security considerations.”
https://twitter.com/TreasonHappens/status/1109517328063053825
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1109497353512333312
https://twitter.com/TreasonHappens/status/1109525611603812353
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1109499015023001601
https://twitter.com/PostOpinions/status/1109509450044456965
https://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate/roadmap
https://twitter.com/TreasonHappens/status/1109555261130395648
https://twitter.com/TreasonHappens/status/1109584315317399552