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John Dowd has much, much, much more to say about what was going on behind the scenes in the Trump-Russia investigation. Mueller, Manafort, Sessions, Rosenstein, Stone, collusion, Twitter, privilege, the press, and more.
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Sessions was “a miserable failure as Attorney General“; who shouldn’t have recused himself from the investigation. And if he felt he had to, he should have told Trump he was unable to do the job of AG, and to appoint somebody else.
On Fox News, former Congressman Jason Chaffetz called Sessions a waste of space as AG, who should have resigned. As I read Chaffetz’s book, The Deep State, I finally understand why he said that.
The Obama Justice Department had stonewalled many Congressional investigations for years, into things like IRS abuse, and the “Fast and Furious” scandal at the ATF. With the Republicans taking over, Chaffetz thought he was finally going to get some cooperation from the Justice Department, but with Sessions at the helm, the DOJ coverups continued.
As John Dowd points out here, Sessions loved to travel around and give speeches. For him, evidently, Attorney General was just a sinecure, a capstone for his bio. He wasn’t there to do anything.
Illuminating and reassuring. Thanks, Byron.
Full and complete cooperation existed between the Mueller team and the White House. Mueller got every interview and every document he asked for…except an interview of the President…according to Dowd. There was a handshake verbal agreement that all of this information was between members of the Executive Branch. Any release of any of this privileged information without consent of the White House would be a breach of privilege and this agreement, which is what allowed the White House to not spend years redacting every paragraph of every one of the 11/2 to 2 million documents handed over to Mueller.
Jeff Sessions was excoriated by Dowd. There was no lawyerly diplomatic smooth speaking involved. Dowd, in no uncertain terms, called Sessions worse than worthless. He was a very bad hire–Trumps worst mistake.
The investigation took way longer than it should have, given the extraordinary cooperation extended. The wee hours raids conducted by the Mueller team were the equivalent of a military assault. They were horrifyingly unnecessary. Manafort had already been investigated by Justice for these years old offenses and given a pass. Now he’s put in solitary confinement. Roger Stone was a threat to no one. The case was already over internally when they raided his home.
Incredible interview. Thanks Byron York and John Dowd.
These two interviews with Dowd are quite interesting. However, I found myself frustrated at times by Dowd’s expressions of “gee whiz, I just don’t know why Mueller dragged this on for so long and let Weissman do those awful things.” Maybe Dowd is just being obtuse on purpose to prove a point, I don’t know. It’s obvious that Mueller had bad intentions. (Dowd seems surprised that Mueller obtained 500 — or however many — warrants even though the president’s team voluntarily handed over so much information.) Mueller was running a political campaign of terror against people who had supported Trump.
Thanks to Byron York for another illuminating interview with John Dowd. Man, this whole things stinks. Who’s directing Rosenstein? It’s obviously not Sessions, and yet he’s getting his marching orders to start an independent council investigation from somewhere. He and Comey (and probably Mueller) are all following some established plan to go after Trump. The dismissive refusal by Rosenstein and Mueller to investigate Comey was disturbing as well. This 5th column of unelected appointees needs to be prosecuted. Seriously, this stuff scares me.
I will listen to part 2, but was disappointed after part 1. Byron did not press Dowd on why he was not public during the investigation with the fact that Mueller had nothing on Trump. Why allow the investigation to drag on so long when Trump knows he is innocent and prosecution has nothing? Why did Trump not order release of everything given to FISA court, which would prove there was nothing to justify the warrants? For example, release the transcript of what was heard on Carter Page’s wiretapped phone. Trump has been behaving like there are some facts that are detrimental to his case that would be released. So he has had to allow the special counsel to drag his investigation thru the 2018 elections, that way he could have attorney general block release evidence once Mueller was done.
exactly. Trump is a smart political operator. Why has he not ordered release of all info that FBI used as basis for its investigations?
and I would add, how lame are republicans in national politics? There has been little effective counter attack. When republicans held the house they got no where investigating all of this wrong doing.
He would be accused of sacrificing national security to his personal interest, which is itself grounds for impeachment. And probably “obstruction of justice“.
I hope next Byron can interview Sessions’ chief of staff who told Rosenstein he was despicable.
very
It is very frustrating for us who support Trump and are aware of how fraudulent this entire “investigation” has been. Imagine if we were Trump! He was between a rock and a hard spot mainly because of Sessions. Trump had no AG to handle the legal issues from the government perspective. He had his own team of lawyers, but the DOJ was headed by antagonists. The President was walking a tightrope because of potential obstruction charges.
Again look towards Sessions. If he hadn’t recused or if he had resigned rather than recuse, he would have had control of the information. Instead everytime Congress attempted to retrieve and review documents/evidence, they received, after months of requests, pages of blacked out redactions. A real AG could have been very effective in assisting what, at that time, was a Republican Congress. But the other dirty little fact is that many of the Republicans couldn’t have cared less about assisting their own President.