Mueller report thread - Mueller testimony July 24

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

There was not Probable Cause.  There MAY have been "Reasonable Suspicion", and investigations can begin on the basis of Reasonable Suspicion (which is a higher standard than MERE Suspicion), but much of that Reasonable Suspicion hinged on a Dossier that has been thoroughly discredited.

No part of the Steele Dossier has ever been discredited or proven wrong at any time by anyone.   Every statement made in it remains 100% factual to date.

Don't get too hung up on the Dossier. (Although Trumpers would really like you to.) It was a raw intelligence summary (or series of such summaries), put together with limited resources, under a time limit. It's a hasty map of Trump's potential compromise and conspiracies, not a hi-rez image of the terrain.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

If Trump really did something illegal, the best chance for him to be indicted is if what he did is also illegal under the laws of New York. Then he could be indicted by AG Letitia James. The thing with that is, since it'd be a state charge, he wouldn't be able to pardon himself.

I'm almost confident this is gonna happen the day he's no longer President.

Not sure if he gets reelected due to statute of limitations. If he loses, it's most likely going to happen. So, he's literally running for his life in 2020.

Yes. Which in turn means there is likely nothing he will not do to stay in office.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Three things Mueller emphasized:


1) Russia made extensive efforts to interfere in the 2016 election

2) The Special Counsel's office would have declared Trump innocent if they had reached that conclusion. They did not.

3) The Special Counsel's office could not consider charging Trump.


Reading between the lines seems straightforward.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Link to full transcript of Mueller's indictment referral and resignation:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/special-counsel-robert-s-mueller-iii-makes-statement-investigation-russian-interference

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I really don't expect much from this.

Mueller had authorization to dig wide and deep into Trump's actions and finances, which would have unearthed a veritable graveyard of skeletons. Instead, he cordoned off a tiny plot, and meticulously excavated and catalogued the contents of an even tinier hole before producing a exhaustive list of "here's what I found", but has steadily refused to even venture an opinion on said hole's contents beyond, "yep, definitely Russians in there". That isn't going to change.

I don't think Mueller will step outside his own carefully drawn limits.


It's revealing how badly Mr. Trump is losing it on Twitter, through. Trump knows what he did (or, at least, what he would have done). And it's bad enough to cause him to panic at the prospect of the man who "totally exonerated" him talking to Congress.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

"If I get loud & obnoxious, then that means that I'm right!!" -- Jim Jordan's thought process.

That would appear to be an accurate summation of the decision process employed by Republicans, both as voters and office-holders.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Which was shorter: the amount of time Swalwell allowed himself to speak, or the length of his presidential campaign?

I understand you're joking,  but let's give Rep. Swalwell the credit for realizing when it was time to end his campaign and doing so swiftly and gracefully. (Something that some of his fellow Dem contenders could learn from.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

So the entire jist of what happen was:

1) The Russian Government saw in the Trump campaign a potential government for multiple reasons, they would prefer over other viable alternatives

2) They started an espionage campaign to help him win again his rivals

3) The Trump campaign (and Trump himself) knew about the espionage campaign and asked to participate. Those in charge of the espionage campaign refused on the grounds they "would just get in the way" and when other individuals somehow related to the espionage campaigned offered to help, the Trump campaign interviewed them but decided that they would "just get in the way". So the Trump campaign repeatedly try to conspire with the Russian Government's espionage campaign but failed to do so.

4) When under investigation, Trump himself repeatedly tried to cover up his attempted conspiracy with the espionage campaign he incidentally benefited but was unsuccessful in trying to cover up the attempted conspiracy by employees who refused to cooperate.

We already know this but its good to know what this all really means and this hearing the confirms this suspicion-

Trump should be impeached and eventually charged for his attempt to cover up his attempt to conspire with a foreign government's espionage campaign to commit election fraud.

If that's true, that means they will do it again in 2020, and most likely they'll have better methods which could potentially involve actual vote altering (which they attempted in 2016 but were unsuccessful).

We don't know that.

We don't even have a strong basis for believing that.

All we know is that there is no definitive evidence that votes were successfully changed.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

And now we're back to "Trump can't be charged, so it's not fair to investigate him".

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

So the entire jist of what happen was:

1) The Russian Government saw in the Trump campaign a potential government for multiple reasons, they would prefer over other viable alternatives

2) They started an espionage campaign to help him win again his rivals

3) The Trump campaign (and Trump himself) knew about the espionage campaign and asked to participate. Those in charge of the espionage campaign refused on the grounds they "would just get in the way" and when other individuals somehow related to the espionage campaigned offered to help, the Trump campaign interviewed them but decided that they would "just get in the way". So the Trump campaign repeatedly try to conspire with the Russian Government's espionage campaign but failed to do so.

4) When under investigation, Trump himself repeatedly tried to cover up his attempted conspiracy with the espionage campaign he incidentally benefited but was unsuccessful in trying to cover up the attempted conspiracy by employees who refused to cooperate.

We already know this but its good to know what this all really means and this hearing the confirms this suspicion-

Trump should be impeached and eventually charged for his attempt to cover up his attempt to conspire with a foreign government's espionage campaign to commit election fraud.

If that's true, that means they will do it again in 2020, and most likely they'll have better methods which could potentially involve actual vote altering (which they attempted in 2016 but were unsuccessful).

We don't know that.

We don't even have a strong basis for believing that.

All we know is that there is no definitive evidence that votes were successfully changed.

We know they hacked into US voting systems, but that no votes were changed.

Why else would they hack into voting systems if not to alter votes?  Their efforts were unsuccessful but they did make the attempt.

I'm saying we have no basis for believing their efforts were unsuccessful. We have no way to know either way. Mueller made a statement along similar lines in this hearing when he said it was outside his purviewto determine if Russian interference actually changed votes.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Looking forward to Cheeto Mussolini’s meltdown on Twitter

It'll just be more of what we got this morning.

We'll get a reiteration of all the GOP talking points: allegations of a shadowy conspiracy, accusations of bias on the part of Mueller and his team, etc. (If anything, Mueller was trying too hard to be non-partisan.) There will also be vague ranting, and implications that any attempt to challenge Mangolini's godhood is treason.  Mr. Trump doesn't normally venture into the "can't indict the President so he can't have done anything wrong" circular logic, so I doubt we'll see it.

Key takeaway from the first hearing: if Donald Trump was not occupying the office of President of the United States, Mueller would have charged him with obstruction of justice.

And... Mueller walked that back during the second hearing, without clearing Trump, of course.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This exchange did not go the way Buck wanted:
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1154042949287596032

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I’m glad Trump’s boxing gloves are off today in the interviews. He knows he can now unleash after three years of hoaxes, corruption, conspiracies, and fake allegations.

Please. Let the deranged old man loose in public more without a script, teleprompter, or handler.

Maybe it will get him the help he needs before it's too late.