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Waiting for Mueller
At the beginning of this long investigation, I wrote that if convincing evidence is presented that candidate Trump colluded with Russians — that is, he knowingly participated in or otherwise facilitated illegal Russian interference in the 2016 election — then I would call for his impeachment.
I also wrote that I think the entire charge is a fabrication of the embarrassed and almost pathologically mendacious candidate Clinton, and that in fact it’s largely a projection of her campaign’s own shady dealings with Russia via the Steele dossier and related nonsense. That is still my belief.
However, if Mueller provides that convincing evidence, I will admit my mistake and call for the President’s resignation or removal.
But if he does not, then I will call for the resignation of most of the nation’s press, as these clowns will have, in typical print-first-ask-questions-never fashion, poisoned the national discourse for years with their relentless and baseless claims, and given comfort to the posse of corrupt and scheming apparatchiks who, until recently, ran much of our federal law enforcement.
So let’s wait and see.
P.S. No, I don’t expect the press to accept its responsibility. I don’t even expect them to significantly change their message, when and if Mueller’s report exonerates the President. Most of the press supports Democrats, the more left-leaning the better, and that isn’t about to change.
Published in Politics
Fair enough. We shall see.
After the Jussie Smollett mess, please don’t hold your breath about the press admitting a mistake.
Also, if Mueller reports that Trump actually was compromised, he should resign–for letting a Russian agent be in charge of the country for more than two years.
That would assume that Mueller knew of it for the last 21 months (not over two years) that he was the Special Counsel.
Agreed. I won’t have many complaints about Mueller’s findings, unless he does what I very much hope he doesn’t do, which is announce a lack of evidence but still leave the matter shrouded in doubt. If he found something, I want him to be very clear about what it was. If he found nothing, then I want him to be very clear about that. I don’t want an inconclusive report that allows the partisan press and all those who can’t stand Trump to continue to harbor their suspicions. He’s had long enough, and enough autonomy, to satisfy himself. I want him to commit, and I want the report to reflect that, and then for the nation to either move to impeach or move on.
I agree with Rush’s analysis that the report will declare, in hushed tones, that Trump was an unwitting (read dunce) accomplice of Russian intervention. This is akin to declaring that anyone who liked or shared a meme on FB was also an unwitting accomplice of Russian interventions. One half of the population and all of the MSM will declare how unfit, and illegitimate Trump is, and continue their pursuit of impeachment. The resistance will not end.
Hopefully you meant to say “If the Mueller report provides verifiable facts Trump is a Russian agent”. I would not be surprised if the report contains allegations with nothing to back them up.
I believe, along with some already replying, that Mueller’s report will neither convict nor exonerate. By law, he actually is compelled to say nothing. He simply hands the report to the new AG, Barr, who then decides what, if anything, he will do. The AG is charged with making a statement to Congress, but he will not release the report. That is not to say that the report will remain secret. Sections that mostly are critical to Trump will be leaked, and no one will ever know who did the leaking.
Mueller is a prosecutor and is limited to evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. But the civil standard is the preponderance of the evidence, or 50.1%. What if the evidence is not enough to convict Trump in a criminal trial, but is clear and convincing?
That’s possible, but I would still expect Mueller to provide clear documentation if that’s the case. I would want to read how specific actions of Trump’s enabled or furthered specific Russian intervention. Nonsense about speaking glowingly of Putin, advocating closer ties with Russia, etc., doesn’t cut it. I’ll want to see a causal link established.
My position, as stated in my post, is that I want to see “convincing evidence” — that is, enough to convince me. I trust my ability to be reasonably balanced: I don’t like Trump, but don’t strongly dislike him either.
Mueller will only pass his report to Bill Barr. Barr will only make it public if Mueller recommendation is that Trump committed a crime. Barr testified in his confirmation hearing that he will not make it public with out that crime element. The house has made claims they can subpoena it but it will probably leak long before that is settled in court.
What you say is true. But that’s not how things work now; someone will leak any negative information, regardless of the report’s conclusions, and that will be the Media’s story. It all has to fit the Left’s desired narrative.
$250 million law suits may help. I hope it costs Bezos a lot of money. Hopefully enough that he has to let George Will go.
Oh, only 21 months. Ah, it’s Ok then. What is the maximum time we can have a foreign agent as president?
Henry, I’m glad to see you want justice.
If there were even a hint of any evidence of “Russian Collusion”, don’t you think that such evidence would have been used and revealed by now to support the FISA warrant application and succeeding FISA warrant renewals because now as it stands with a new AG, the gang of criminal clowns at the DOJ, FBI and CIA behind the “Russian Collusion” Counterintelligence Probe, the Mueller Special Counsel, and the McCabe Criminal and other heretofore unknown Trump investigations should and likely will be prosecuted for at least lying to the FISA Court, fraud, criminal conspiracy and perhaps even Treason?
With the exception of the criminals at CNN, who colluded criminally multiple times with the FBI and DOJ to reveal criminal investigative details of the investigations with the public and who should be prosecuted , I could care less about the Press. The Press will be tried in the Court of Public Opinion soon enough hopefully if all the facts are revealed.
What I really, really care about is that the criminals at the DOJ, FBI and CIA behind all these fraudulent Trump investigations be fully prosecuted unless miraculously some serious credible evidence of a serious criminal conspiracy with a foreign power appears out of nowhere in the next month. Such wanton and destructive criminality at the highest levels of our justice system cannot be allowed to go untried and unpunished or otherwise our Justice system will not be worth crap in short order and we will see monstrous new investigations like these ridiculous Mueller/McCabe/Stroke probes over and over again likely provoking violence and maybe even a civil war.
You are assuming that Mueller had knowledge from the beginning.
Here all along I thought he was an investigator.
The best commentary I have seen on this is from Conrad Black. It is very much like the lead up to the Civil War. There is definitely an oligarchy in this country that has no conception of the Declaration of Independence. Just as the Southern oligarchy wrecked the educational system of the South prior to the Civil War, the oligarchy has wrecked the entire educational system. Just as the Southern oligarchy silenced those who talked negatively about slavery in the South, the current-day oligarchy uses charges of homophobia, xenophobia, whatever-phobia to silence those who don’t buy into their brainwashing. And just as there were traitors like Stephen Douglas, we have amoral Never-Trumpers helping the oligarchs and their grip on power.
Like the old Russian proverb -“There is no truth in “The News” and no news in “The Truth” “- or something to that effect. I find it an interesting challenge to read a news report these days and try to determine what really happened.
I watched the 1965 version of the movie ” The flight of the Phoenix” the other night. Ben-Ghazi was mentioned several times. I feel that the Russian collusion case is about as real as the attack on Ben-Ghazi being caused by some obscure film-maker’s supposed hit piece on Mohammed. They sprang from the brains of the same group of scoundrels
You mean you haven’t already seen enough evidence (Trump-related or otherwise) to call for their resignations? This is my confused face.
Here’s the scandal that I expect. I expect that the report will show that Mueller and his team concluded that there was no evidence of serious wrongdoing around July to September 2018. They withheld that information, and slow-walked the report, in order to not influence the election. But of course, withholding an exonerating report equally influenced the election.
The New York Times has a great article behind its paywall with all of the options from finding that Trump is innocent, to only writing a report to naming Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator (the Nixon option) to indicting Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/us/politics/trump-mueller-russia.html
I’m not sure there is such a thing as a civil “standard”. Opinions change from day to day, and what the general public thinks is okay one day may be treasonous the next.
I’ll stick with the court standard, maybe even for public information fed to us by the MSM. After all, we know the MSM specializes in fake news, or put another way, fake evidence (facts) . . .
I think Gary is referring to the standard used in a civil suit, which is more relaxed than that used in a criminal case.
There is no “public standard,” since there’s no legal consequence to whatever the public thinks about you.
Thank you for clarifying that. There is also an intermediate standard, “clear and convincing evidence.” To use an analogy, to win a boxing contest beyond a reasonable doubt, would be akin to a knockout. To win by clear and convincing evidence would be to win by a TKO, or Technical Knockout. To win by a preponderance of the evidence would be to win on points scored with the judges.
The Mueller report will be filled with innuendo which, while not criminally implicating Trump, will infer/imply enough kinda sorta almost collusiony things about Trump associates to where those so inclined (ie; impeachment seeking (D)’s and their fellow travelers in the MSM) could be simply ignore the Mueller report contains exactly zero evidence of a criminal conspiracy(because there never was any), and focus on the collusiony inferences. Inferences which could never see the light of day in a court room because proving and winning a criminal prosecution requires actual evidence a crime was committed.
The real exoneration of Trump will be when (or unfortunately if) the Obama DOJ/FBO/IC malfeasance is fully exposed and those responsible criminally prosecuted, at which point the MSM may actually have to do some reporting on the matter.
I’m relieved the Mueller report is done. No clue if it contains anything important about Trump. But I am certain anti-Trumpers and the House Committee’s will start looking for more dirt. Two more weeks?
Spygate is the greatest scandal in the history of the country. It deserves the greatest punishment ever handed down by government. The crimes of Comey et. al, exceed that of Tim McVie and the Rosenbergs. However, I don’t think our country could stomach the executions of a dozen members of Team Obama. We’ll have to be satisfied with life in a SuperMax.
My initial impression on this was that it’s all sour grapes regarding Trump’s unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton. So, I expect that there’s no “there” there. But we’ll see. I try to keep and open mind, unlike the press.