| The Muller Report does NOT exonerate Trump. |
| Trump and his campaign staff were up to their ears in Russians. And they attempted to interfere with the investigation. Conspiracy
Trump and the Republicans have mounted a ceaseless and vigorous crusade of lies and spin to distract from the heart of the scandal: Trump aiding and abetting Putin’s assault on the United States. They have denied established facts, and they have cooked up diversions and Deep State conspiracy theories to draw attention from what Trump did during the 2016 campaign. Trump and his enablers have hid behind the misleading claim that the only legitimate issue was whether Trump directly colluded with Russia’s hack-and-dump operation. (And he did not! they proclaim. So case closed.) A foreign adversary attacked an American election. The candidate who benefitted played ball with that foe and provided cover for the attack. (And it is arguable that Putin’s information warfare operation was one of several factors that determined the outcome of this close contest.) This is a far more consequential scandal than the Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran-Contra, or the Lewinsky affair. Yet the fundamentals have too often been drowned out by Trump and the Republicans, with the Democrats failing to keep the essentials at center stage. Unless the Democrats make a concerted effort to tell The Trump-Russia tale—simply and powerfully—the side with the fake stories and the loud denials could win or, at least, skate past this profound wrongdoing. Those who give a damn about protecting democracy, though, also have a simple story: Putin attacked an election to help Trump, and Trump actively went along with it—and lied to cover up the attack. Source: "Have the Democrats Blown the Trump-Russia Scandal?" by DAVID CORN - Mother Jones - 5/22/2019 In 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Michael Flynn, Brad Parscale and Kellyanne Conway all shared content on social media created by the Internet Research Agency, according to the Mueller report. All in all, wrote Mr. Mueller, individuals affiliated with the Trump campaign shared “dozens” of pieces of agency-produced content. For instance, in 2016, many of the Internet Research Agency’s Facebook and Twitter posts focused on the purported existence in the United States of systematic voter fraud — a widely debunked claim, though one that candidate Trump repeated on the stump. As the Mueller report revealed, “within approximately five hours” of Mr. Trump’s publicly calling for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016 (“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”), a unit of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the G.R.U. “targeted for the first time” email addresses associated with Mrs. Clinton’s personal office. Source: "How Trump Is Helping Russia Help Trump Again" By Zach Dorfman - NY Times - 10/28/2019 Conspiracy In 2017, Donald Trump Jr. told congressional investigators that in June 2016 he had informed just two people about his upcoming meeting with a Russian government emissary during which Trump Jr. hoped to obtain incriminating information about Hillary Clinton: his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. But special counsel Robert Mueller’s report revealed a different story, noting that the president’s eldest son boasted of his efforts during a meeting of campaign staff attended by his brother Eric and sister Ivanka, among others. This apparent contradiction—and concerns that Trump Jr. also was not forthright about his knowledge of the Trump Organization’s pursuit of a Trump tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign—led the Senate Intelligence Committee to subpoena Trump’s eldest son, according to Senate sources. These discrepancies in the testimony by Trump Jr., who appeared before three congressional committees in 2017, underscore that the Trump-Russia scandal continues to pose a threat to President Donald Trump, his family, and his associates, confounding efforts by Trump and his allies to shut down the controversy. In a September 7, 2017, interview with staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Trump Jr. faced a slew of questions about his June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with that Russian emissary. One issue was whom he had told about a June 3 email he received from Rob Goldstone, a publicist for Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop singer whose father, Aras Agalarov, was a real estate mogul with Kremlin ties and who was Trump’s partner in the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow. A senior Russian prosecutor, Goldstone wrote Trump Jr., had “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father” as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. responded enthusiastically—“If it’s what you say I love it”—and agreed to meet with the Russian representative, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chair, and Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, also attended the meeting. Mueller’s report, a redacted version of which was released last month, included a different account. It stated that Rick Gates, who was deputy Trump campaign manager, said in interviews with the special counsel’s office that before the sit-down with Veselnitskaya, “Trump Jr. announced at a regular morning meeting of senior campaign staff and Trump family members that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation.” Gates said that Eric Trump, Hope Hicks, Manafort, Ivanka Trump, and Kushner also attended the meeting. Gates also recalled that Trump Jr. claimed the information came from a group in Kyrgyzstan, where Agalarov does business. According to Gates, Trump Jr.’s announcement sparked a discussion, with Manafort warning the group that “the meeting likely would not yield vital information and they should be careful.” In February, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, testified before the House Oversight Committee that he overheard a conversation in which he believed Trump Jr. told his father about the meeting in advance. If that is true, it contradicts claims both the president and his son made to investigators. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also scrutinizing Trump Jr.’s statements about Trump’s efforts during the 2016 campaign to develop a Trump tower in Moscow. As a candidate, Trump claimed he had no business interests in Russia, despite signing a letter of intent regarding this deal and encouraging Cohen to privately pursue the project until at least the summer of 2016. Cohen even sought Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support for the venture, contacting Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to seek help. (Cohen ended up talking to Peskov’s personal assistant and requested assistance in securing financing and land for the project.) Cohen recently began a three-year prison term in part because he lied to Congress in 2017 about the project, in what he says was an effort to align his story with Trump’s false claims. Trump Jr. also downplayed the deal in congressional testimony. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was only “peripherally aware” of the effort. A Senate aide says Trump Jr. made similar claims to the Intelligence Committee. Cohen, by contrast, testified that he briefed Trump Jr. or Ivanka Trump on the Moscow deal “approximately 10 times.” Source: "Why the Senate Intelligence Committee Subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr." by Dan Friedman - Mother Jones - 5/9/19 “Collectively,” the Mueller report said, the social media accounts of the Russian troll farms and bots, pretending to be American activists, “reached tens of millions of U.S. persons.” Source: "How Utopia Birthed Dystopia" by Maureen Dowd - NY Times - May 11, 2019 Obstruction of Justice Obstruction of justice is plainly an impeachable offense. It was the heart of the Nixon articles. Check out Article 3: It alleged presidential obstruction of justice and congressional process, and then assembled an inventory of different things Nixon did to block and confound the investigation, including lying, intimidating subordinates, destroying evidence, and so on. -- House Judiciary Committee member Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) Source: "Has Donald Trump Committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors?" By John Nichols - The Nation - 5/2/19 Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe agrees that this probably isn’t the time to parse legal language: “Crisis schmisis—what’s in a word? We’re under an ongoing cyberattack from a hostile foreign power that helped install an imbecilic self-seeking con man as our leader, who committed numerous felonies to avoid being held accountable for his illegitimate election, who is encouraging ongoing attacks by that same foreign power and others, who violates his oath of office daily, and who seems secure from removal by virtue of a spineless Senate abetted by a cowardly House. Our constitutional norms are in meltdown as we watch in helpless stupor waiting for the monster to steal or cancel the next election. If this doesn’t qualify as a crisis, the word should be retired forthwith.” Source: "Are We in a Constitutional Crisis?" By DAHLIA LITHWICK - Slate - 5/9/19 The president’s lawyers are particularly concerned about two episodes that {Donald F. McGahn II, who was the president’s first White House counsel} detailed to prosecutors. In one, Mr. Trump asked him to fire the special counsel but backed off after Mr. McGahn refused. After that episode was revealed, the president asked Mr. McGahn to create a White House document falsely rebutting his account. Mr. McGahn declined to go along but told Mr. Mueller about the encounters. Source: "White House Asked McGahn to Declare Trump Never Obstructed Justice" By Michael S. Schmidt - NY Times - May 10, 2019 Last week, court records were unsealed that showed that Michael Flynn, President Trump’s onetime national security adviser, gave Robert Mueller and his team a voice-mail recording of a conversation in which Trump’s lawyers tried to influence his cooperation with the investigators. This was a smoking gun of a revelation which blew yet another hole in Trump’s false “no collusion, no obstruction” mantra. And it adds weight to the House Democrats’ debate about whether they should perform their constitutional duty to impeach or whether they will allow this man to continue unchastened. Source: "An Ode to ‘Desperate Don’" By Charles M. Blow - NY Times - 5/19/19 If Trump is guily of obstructing justice, why wasn't he indicted? Mr. Mueller declined to make a determination about whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice, saying that because a sitting president cannot be indicted, it was unfair to accuse him of committing a crime. Attorney General William P. Barr stepped in and decided with his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, to clear Mr. Trump of wrongdoing. Mr. Mueller made no determination — and wrote a damning report that showed repeated efforts by Mr. Trump to interfere with his inquiry Source: "White House Asked McGahn to Declare Trump Never Obstructed Justice" By Michael S. Schmidt - NY Times - May 10, 2019 |
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