Done.

Meh, in this one instance I agree that not being able to release disparaging info is bad, but as a general rule, any ethical prosecutors office should have this policy. You shouldn’t ruin the life of someone you’ve investigated when you have no provable crime. When I was a prosecutor I had one instance where I conducted a lengthy grand jury investigation into someone who engaged in some really shady white collar stuff, but ultimately concluded there was no provable crime. That individual never knew he was being investigated by a grand jury, and had no ill effects upon him at the conclusion of the investigation. If that rule did not exist, his life could have been ruined.

Edit: There should probably be an exception to this rule for elected officials or something though.

So what happens if Mueller has what would normally be considered a provable crime committed by Trump? He can't be charged (according to Justice Dept. logic) so then do the details of the alleged crime remain secret? And how does Congress put a President on trial for high crimes and misdemeanors if the evidence is withheld from them by these rules?

The house has subpoena power and Trump has executive privilege. Ultimately the courts will decide if congress gets the report if Trump tries to bury it.

So Fox has him Innocent and CNN & MSNBC have we Don't know but if there is nothing the Southern District has more.

Shocker is no indictments on Kushner or Trump JR. Though could Mueller know that Trump would just pardon both and hand it off to the state level were there are no pardons?

Odd that Jr wasn't indicted. I don't remember Kush being a main player in the Russiagate stuff, so I'm not surprised there. I assume they both eventually get indicted by SDNY on all the family's financial shenannigans.

He wouldn't have indicted anyone if that was his logic.

Mueller could recommend impeachment if Trump committed crimes

Basically at this point if the Mueller report doesn't say that Trump or those in his inner circle did Russia-related stuff, and doesn't indict anyone else, Democrats take a huge L on this in any future messaging.

Republicans and Trump will just HAMMER them with, "It was a total witch hunt, Mueller and his 78 angry Democrats found NOTHING AT ALL NOTHING!!!! Now the Dems are doing the presidential harassment! What happened to waiting to see what Mueller found and trusting him????"

If this is the dud that it appears to be*, Dems should basically shut it down in terms of any high profile investigations. Do it quietly in Congress, but basically publicly say we all had to trust Mueller and now it's over. When Trump rails against those quiet investigations say, "The president should focus on governing. We're just doing very basic due diligence, it's not a focus of ours, we have no plans whatsoever to impeach him... Mueller didn't find anything and we're fine with that. We don't know what the old man's yelling about at this point..."

Like, the implications of this if it's the end are massive. Trump is literally completely above the law and he now totally knows it. DOJ ain't touching him. Mueller didn't touch him. He basically gets a green light to collude again in 2020, and obviously he will. It'll make Dems the laughing stock of 50% of the country if they accuse him of it again, and the investigation would never get off the ground.

What really scares the **** out of me now that he knows he can get away with anything is what happens if, in 2020, Trump "wins" 60-40 in the popular vote and takes every state that's not on the west coast (and Hawaii) or New England? And the GOP takes 67 seats in the Senate and a big majority in the House? Do we take the streets and riot over a sham election? If we do, it'll be a civil war because the right wing will honestly believe that this is what happens when you stop illegal immigrants from voting. The fact that he knows he's 100% completely and utterly untouchable for election meddling is ****ing terrifying. Because, news flash, I don't think we take the streets and riot.**

What's he got to worry about? State crimes? Has that problem already... But what's going to happen if, say, the NYAG indicts him? They aren't going to perp walk him out of the White House... He's most likely going to tell them to **** off. Are we going to have a showdown between NY law enforcement and the Secret Service? No, if they do indict, it'll almost immediately go to SCOTUS and we'll find out if Kavanaugh et al think the President of the United States can be indicted. Even if they rule against him, I think we just have a major constitutional crisis. Trump has no respect for the law and he's the most powerful person in the country, he's not just going to turn himself in and face charges.

* There's a decent chance this isn't a dud. I'm a little confused on some of the reporting and admittedly was working yesterday and didn't drill down into all of the details, but there's a difference between "there will be no more indictments, sealed or unsealed," and "there are no remaining indictments that have already been filed under seal." We also have no clue what's in the report. It could say, "Trump did it, here's the proof, DOJ doesn't indict presidents so Congress, it's up to you." I don't expect that, but I don't think it's a total dud either. I mean, if it is, Mueller is a total partisan hack. We know Don Jr lied to Congress at a minimum (we actually know more). We know Kushner was a near-lock to have committed felonies. We know that Mueller cut deals with cooperating witnesses... to what end? To NOT indict anyone else??? Was it just charity day at the special counsel's office? It's also possible that if the report is a dud, when Mueller gets subpoenaed by Congress and the first question is, "Were you ever obstructed in any way, and if so how?" The answer could be a very long one... Maybe Whitaker shut him down on a lot of stuff, maybe Barr did. We'll find out if that happened, and the **** will really hit the fan and get wild. So I'm not saying I expect the world from this at this point, but I also don't think it's just going to be a total dud.

** I'd like to think we take the streets and riot, but I was thinking about this last night... After the election a lot of experts on authoritarianism were saying, "Write down right now what would be totally unacceptable to you and make you take to the streets, because by the time it happens, you will be so used to the attacks on norms/law, you won't even think it's as bad." These people are right, because if you told me the day after the 2016 election that they'd be locking ****ing kids in ****ing cages, and asked me what I'd do about it, I'd tell you that I'd be on the fence about whether I'd be in the streets peacefully or picking up a brick. And what am I actually doing? Typing up way too many words in a politics forum on a ****ing poker website. And while that makes me a ****ty human being, I'm probably in the top 5-10% of the least ****ty human beings in the United States.

That said, if like 1,000 people were in the streets in any major east coast city over that, I'd absolutely be there with them. I'd do it every ****ing day if there were the numbers... And I have no expectation that there would be the numbers if Trump and the GOP won a Maduro-style victory in 2020. The majority of Americans would just show up to work the next day, and go about their business as long as their checks kept cashing, the economy was reasonably okay, etc...

Anyway, at this point, Dems should just be totally focused on 2020 regardless of what is or is not in the report that we may or may not see that was written by the guy who may or may not have been a joke of a special counsel. Healthcare, jobs, lower middle class taxes/higher 1%er taxes, climate change, democracy/voting reform, etc. But really just healthcare and jobs. If Dems don't do a damned thing between now and November 2020 but talk about Medicare for All, they win. If they get mired in investigating Trump even after Mueller makes it look like nothing, they lose.

At this point it's not what you know, it's what you can prove and what the public perception is. If the Mueller report is a dud, Trump wins the battle. Dems can't let him win the war because they didn't notice they lost this battle.

The one silver lining is that there could be evidence of Trump committing crimes but Mueller is going along with the DOJ opinion that you cannot indict a sitting president. But since there weren't any indictments against Don Jr. or anyone else close to Trump that may not be likely. I guess we will find out when (if?) the report gets released.

What probably happened is that Trump and his inner circle did a bunch of shady stuff and did collude with Russians. However, "collusion" isn't a crime and all the stuff they did technically did not run afoul of any laws. You'll notice that most of the indictments from Mueller are for lying to the FBI, which is a crime. They got Manafort on tax evasion.

anything that didn't lead to indictments of anyone named Trump is a huge win for him and lol anyone who expected that to actually happen.

I mean Flynn was the head of national security and tried to abduct someone for Turkey and lol nothing happened. In fact they went on the offensive.

Dems blew their whole load despite no matter what Mueller finds Trump voters won't care and so lol nothing happens--pretty much same as it ever was.

Obviously this wasn't nothing as a bunch got indicted and every f'ing one of them relentlessly lied about it, but it just shows that's the correct way to handle such things; lol @ admitting you were wrong. Ever.

The democratic nominees haven't even been talking about Russia that much before the report. Have they?

Clinton testified and was cross examined under oath in a suit brought by Paula Jones. The Special Counsel Starr's office tipped PJ lawyers to Clinton's affair with Lewinsky. Clinton lied about affair and a hostile House voted to impeach.

Trump has never been subject to cross-examination, and not sure what questions he answered in writing.

To me, it looks like Mueller used indictments as a means to gather information and is leaving prosecutions to other jurisdictions and anyone he considers political to the justice department as a whole.
If one considers Starr the most expansive version of a SP, Mueller is restricting his role to the most limited form.

They let him submit written answers. Let that sink in.

Suck it Dimms. Congrats My POTUS.

Deplorables spiking the ball before knowing whether or not they scored a touchdown.

Dobbs wants in. Can't lick those boots quick enough.

The 'Putin puppet' narrative was always liberal Benghazi. -Kyle Kulinski

True progressives are celebrating with Trump supporters today.

hostping

I assume he ran out of characters before he could ask to kiss Trump's beautiful, presidential ass?

No dem nominee has been pushing Russia afaik and they are all mostly talking policy.


He is a puppet though. Not that i think that that should be pushed. His general lack of integrity and criminality should not even be the focus but it should be mentioned here and there.


Its also a bit of a stretch to say a new cold war was started from the Russian stuff. Trump would of increased the military budget the same amount and the things the military wanted to do with that money would of been the same.

Heather Anne Campbell
@heathercampbell

has anyone considered that part of an asymmetrical warfare campaign would be using fake leftist accounts to promote the idea that there is obvious Russian-backed collusion, so that when there’s no evidence of that collusion, the left falls apart and becomes angry/defeatist?

Is it even confirmed that Mueller is writing some long, detailed summary of everything they found that will include tons of new information? What if his final report is just a short, summary of stuff that we already know?

Then it's taking Barr a long-ass time to read it.

Mueller will def have a long detailed report.

But Barr will read and decide what to release. Barr's statement could be short without detail. I'd guess he'll be under a lot of pressure to release key points if not the whole thing.

Barr is going over it with Mueller and Rosenstien to decide what to release.

Barr has to worry about Mueller going before congress and telling more than he allowed to be released.

Lol this report will be leaked in full. These ****s leak like a trailer park faucet. It will happen.