We're Screwed

Conspiracy: Thursday morning, flanked by a somber faced and silent Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and some bearded dude, a former Southern District of NY attorney, Attorney General Barr presented still another “summary” of Special Counsel Mueller’s Russia Report.  Mimicking Trump’s usual twitter patter he repeated several times that Mueller had found NO COLLUSION between Trump and the Russians. He then went on to say that Trump, who had refused to grant the Special Counsel an interview, who had refused to answer any questions related to obstruction and who more than thirty times responded that he “couldn’t recall” things in the written answers he had his lawyers provide Mueller about Russia, had been incredibly cooperative with the investigation and that he couldn’t be blamed for any of the many things he did that looked, walked and quacked like obstruction because he, in his own words feared that he would be f-cked by the very fact of an investigation, was mad as hell and justifiably frustrated and couldn’t help himself.  And anyway, what’s a little bit of obstruction between friends.  Okay, he didn’t say that last part, but he might as well have because he also said that by not reaching a firm conclusion on obstruction, Mueller had tossed the ball back to him and he, ever the Trump loyalist, had been justified in concluding that there was none.  The End.  Well not really the end.  A few hours later, the Justice Department released the much waited for redacted version of the Mueller report. To be honest I’ve only made it through Mueller’s summary sections and a few dozen news reports and articles, but from what I’ve read and heard it’s clear that the Russians engaged in a lot of election interference, manipulated social media, hacked into servers and reached out to a lot of very receptive Trumpkins.  Mueller’s focus was on criminal conspiracy, not collusion; though he couldn’t find any “jury convincing” evidence  he found a lot of smoke, lying and bad acts.  There were plenty of bad actors, outright criminals like Paul Manafort who really did share Trump polling data with Russia operatives, liars who got caught and were prosecuted like Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos, likely liars who didn’t get prosecuted like Donald Trump Jr and Erik Prince, and those who were smart enough to “lose” their records or use encrypted communication applications such as WhatsApp like Jared Kushner.  And all of those people who were earlier cited as either Russian spies or oligarchs acting on behalf of Putin, like Konstantin Kilimnik and Yevgheny Prizoghin, they did do all of the bad things that they were reported to have done.  Even the strange story about Peter Smith, the Republican operative who died shortly after telling a Wall Street Journal  reporter that he had worked with Michael Flynn to find Hillary’s emails, was true.  Mueller concluded that Trump and his team were receptive to the Russian outreach, that the Russian’s ramped up their activities in response to their willingness and  encouragement, but that he couldn’t find enough to prove a bullet proof conspiracy case. Also, reading between the redactions some things, probably in relation to Roger Stone and or WikiLeaks, are still being investigated   

Obstruction:  Mueller’s report addressed ten areas of  obstruction,  essentially concluding that had Trump been anyone else and had Mueller not felt constrained by the Justice Department’s practice of not indicting sitting presidents, he would have concluded that Trump had obstructed bigly but instead he threw the whole obstruction thing back to Congress while also suggesting that Trump could be prosecuted once his term ends, assuming that the statute of limitations for those obstructive acts has not expired, a big “if” that depends on Trump getting voted out in 2020.  As to all those obstructive acts, Trump tried very hard to stop the investigation.  He tried to convince former FBI Director Comey to end it, he tried to get Comey to lay off former national security advisor Flynn, he tried to get Flynn’s deputy KT McFarland to write a letter that lied about directions he had given to Flynn concerning talking to Russian Ambassador Kislyak about sanctions, he tried to convince former Attorney General Sessions to “un-recuse” from the investigation to get him to fire or hem in Special Counsel Mueller and he tried really hard to get several of his aides and former aides to fire Mueller. Most notably Trump repeatedly directed former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller but McGahn refused saying that he would resign before triggering what he firmly believed would be a Watergate like Saturday Night Massacre.  Most comically, Trump dictated instructions to Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager who wasn’t even a White House employee, directing him to tell Sessions to fire and/or restrict Mueller or else, a directive that Lewandowski stored in his safe but didn’t follow through on although when further pressed by Trump he did try to get then Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn to do the dirty deed but Dearborn also let it slide.  Though she had little to do with the actual obstruction, the Mueller report proves once and for all that Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a liar, or at least that she lies to the public.  Sanders admitted to Mueller that her public claim that “countless” members of the FBI had told her how absolutely thrilled they were that Trump had fired Comey was a total fabrication.  Sanders, ever the Trump loyalist, is still reserving her truth telling for times when she’s under oath; this weekend she was back to telling lies, claiming that her statement about Comey was just a slip of the tongue, blaming Democrats for her mendacity.  Trump’s other spokespeople were also out all weekend trying to diminish the impact of the damaging parts of the Mueller report.  Spokes lawyer Giuliani continues to insist that taking dirt from the Russians was and is totally fine and like Trump he insists that the real story is that the investigation was triggered by nefarious Democrats, that Hillary and all those Democrats at the FBI should be investigated and that Mueller’s investigation was flawed because he should have spent his time investigating Hillary and the FBI “love birds” Peter Strzok and Lisa Page instead of digging into anything Trump.  Similarly, while her husband George responded to the report by calling for  Congress to remove  the “cancer” of Trump, Kellyanne spent Sunday spinning Trump’s innocence.   Most Republicans left town for the holidays, doing their best to avoid getting caught on record saying anything about the Mueller Report but two of the usual suspects did speak up.  Maine’s Senator Susan Collins did some of her usual handwringing saying  the report provided an “unflattering portrayal” of Trump and Utah newbie Mitt Romney  aid he was “sickened” by all the Trump administration lying, a comment that earned him a Trump slam tweet.  Notably North Carolina’s Senator Richard Burr, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee remained undercover all weekend, he can’t be all that happy that the Mueller report revealed that he, like one time House Intel Chair Devon Nunes, had served as a backdoor channel of information about the FBI investigation to the White House.

Democrats:  Though there is certainly enough in the report to justify the initiation of House impeachment proceedings, House Judiciary Chair Nadler calls it a roadmap to impeachment, House leadership is likely to keep holding hearings, calling in such luminaries as AG Barr and Special Counsel Mueller, before moving forward with the big “I” largely because they know that the Republican dominated Senate would never vote to convict Trump but also because they are focused on the 2020 elections and can’t quite figure out how impeachment hearings will impact those very key elections.   For her part Senator/Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is already on record calling for the initiation of impeachment proceedings, saying that not doing so “would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future Presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways.”  For the record, Senator Warren is also a huge Game of Thrones fan, and must be a very fast reader because in addition to digesting the whole Mueller report, she also found time to write some GOT commentary, for the record she’s all in on Daenerys Targaryen.  As to 2020,  former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has taken his hat out of the crowded field, he will not be running for president.

The World: The North Korean’s are saber rattling again, playing with some of their weaponry and demanding that Trump pull Secretary of State Pompeo from  future negotiating sessions because he, unlike Trump, doesn’t do enough kowtowing to the little rocket man, Kim Jong un.  Yellow vest anti-government demonstrators in Paris are really furious with all of those super rich people who have contributed large amounts of money to rebuild Notre Dame mostly because they don’t understand why they can’t get their cut.  And a little known Islamist Jihadist Group called National Thowheeth Jama’ath has been blamed for the tragic terrorist bombings that resulted in the deaths of 290 people and the injuries to 500 more in Sri Lanka over the weekend.  On a more uplifting note, though she hasn’t had her baby yet, Megan Markle’s due date must be imminent. It’s reported that her mom Dora Ragland has arrived in London to be by her side.