Something to Talk About

Talkin’ About People:  The thing about remaining silent for two years is that when you finally decide to speak people listen.  So yesterday when the Justice Department provided ninety minutes notice that Special Counsel Mueller would be making a “substantive statement” the press, the White House and anyone else with access to a livestreaming device prepared to tune in.  Mueller spoke for only nine minutes, hardly enough time to go into the details of his 400 plus page report but more than enough to deliver his intended message.  He started by stating again, because some people need to hear it repeated, that the Russians attacked our political system in 2016 and ended with the warning that they were gearing up to do it again in 2020. In between he very, very briefly summarized the first section of his report, saying that while there had been plenty of cases of Russian and Trump team interaction there hadn’t been enough evidence to move forward with any criminal cases for any of that behavior so he hadn’t.  He then addressed obstruction, the subject of the second section of his report, making it clear that there had been plenty of obstruction, that you don’t need to establish an underlying crime to prove obstruction because “when a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.”  Then he added the zinger: that because he was bound by the long standing Justice Department policy that wouldn’t let him indict a sitting president he’d known going into the investigation that regardless of what he discovered he wouldn’t be able to indict Trump for anything,  To be clear, if his team “had been confident that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that” but since they determined that there was plenty of obstruction all they could do was detail what they found, leaving it to  Congress, the elected officials who have the authority to punish a president for his “wrongdoing,” by doing something about it, like for example impeaching.  Mueller didn’t just make it clear that had Trump been anyone else he would have gone after him bigly, his reference to the policy against indicting sitting presidents also highlighted just how much Attorney General Barr had misled the public when he claimed that the decision not to indict Trump was not at all influenced by that policy.  Before finishing his remarks, Mueller took a moment to thank his team of attorneys, FBI agents, analysts and professional staff of the “highest integrity” for acting in a “fair and independent manner,” his way of saying that all of Trump’s attacks on their character and the various investigations that Trump has ordered into their actions were unwarranted bull sh-t.   Mueller also stated that he didn’t see the point in testifying before Congress because he wouldn’t say anything there that goes beyond what is already included in the full text of his report.  Despite that, he probably will be “asked” to appear because few have actually read his report and having the public hear from him is an effective way of communicating that this White House is chock full of corruption and criminals.  Mueller’s appearance will take place on his own time because as of now is no longer a Justice Department employee.

A Little Too Loud:  Trump, who like Attorney General Barr, had been given a bit more notice about Mueller’s impending statement than the rest of us, reacted to Mueller’s comments with a modified version of his “no collusion, no obstruction” message by tweeting “Nothing changes from the Mueller Report.  There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent.  The case is closed! Thank you.”  The charming Press Secretary Sanders followed with her own no collusion, no conspiracy, no obstruction statement, adding “after two years, the Special Counsel is moving on with his life, and everyone else should do the same” and spokes lawyer Rudy Giuliani spent the evening parroting a twisted version of the same message.  While they tried to dismiss Mueller’s statement as just more background noise, some of their colleagues at Fox News were less sanguine. Host Brett Baier pointed out that Mueller contradicted Barr’s earlier statements, and added that  "This was not—as the president says time and time again -- 'no collusion, no obstruction.’ It was much more nuanced than that.”  Fox legal commentator Judge Napolitano said there is "no way to reconcile" what Mueller said today with Attorney General Bill Barr's previous assertion that the Justice Department guidelines were not the reason Mueller declined to recommend an obstruction charge, adding that he could not say exactly why Mueller decided to speak publicly, but the result would not be good for Trump because Mueller “has ginned up all the Democrats to believe there must be a there there.”  Former Governor and sometime Trump supporter Chris Christie said essentially the same thing.  As to those Democrats, a few more presidential candidates jumped on the “impeach now” bandwagon, Judiciary Chairman Nadler said that “all options are on the table” while the ever cautious and extremely strategic, freshly coifed Speaker Pelosi, continued to apply the brakes.  Sticking to her strategy of focusing on the endgame she said that “We won't be swayed by a few people who think one way or another who are running for president as much as I respect all of them …. we have the responsibility to get a result for the American people and that's where we're going."  For his part Senate Majority Leader McConnell who is on record saying that he’ll do his best to quickly quash any impeachment charges if they make it to the Senate, continues to also sit on election security legislation, because even acknowledging the need to protect the election system offends Trump’s sensibilities and McConnell wouldn’t want to do that, especially since he too is up for reelection in 2020.

A Little Rumor:  The Wall Street Journal reports that Pentagon officials went out of their way to keep the USS John McCain out of Trump’s sight during his recent visit to Japan because they know how upset he gets whenever he’s reminded that McCain was a “real” war hero. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu failed to put together a governing coalition so Israel has scheduled an election “do over” for September, not a good sign for Netanyahu’s long term viability and probably just another impediment to Jared Kushner’s much awaited peace plan, the one that he’s been busy presenting to everyone in the Middle East, that is everyone except for the Palestinians.  And though Mueller is no longer a Justice Department employee, his cases continue to percolate through the courts.  Yesterday Andrew Miller, a protégé of Trump’s long term eccentric buddy Roger Stone, who has been fighting a subpoena to appear in front of a grand jury since all the Mueller related investigations were initiated has finally agreed to appear and the fact that prosecutors still want his testimony is viewed as an indication that they need more from him for the WikiLeaks collaboration case against Stone.  Abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s debut on the twenty dollar bill has been put off from 2020 to 2028.  Last week Treasury Secretary Mnuchin claimed the delay was due to the need for Treasury to focus on more pressing anti-counterfeiting methods but who is he kidding, it’s far more likely that Trump has put Tubman into the McCain bucket and doesn’t want to see her image on any of “his” money any time soon.