If you're reading this, admittedly you're just reading my spin, my opinion. Go read it yourself and form your own opinion.
The report runs 448 pages, including appendices, and consists of two main parts. Part One lays out what we know about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and reports on the findings related to the question of whether any Americans coordinated or conspired with Russians in their interference. Part Two examines possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump.
What struck me as I read the (redacted) report was how much of the media reporting over the last two years, condemned by Trump as "fake news", was confirmed by the report.
Quite a bit of space is devoted to laying out the evidence that Russia, in particular a division of their military intelligence service, the GRU, interfered with the 2016 election. This interference took the form of disinformation about candidate Clinton, the Democratic Party & left-leaning groups disseminated via social media; protests and rallies being organized by Russians purporting to be Americans; hacking of the databases and servers of political parties and publishing of that information (while both Republicans and Democrats had their information hacked, only the Democratic information was published) via Wikileaks; and the hacking of voter databases in several states. This included the original version of "fake news". The term, before Trump hijacked it for his own propaganda purposes, referred to websites purporting to be legitimate news outlets that existed for the sole purpose of spewing out information harmful to targeted candidates or groups. There is no question that this happened, U.S. intelligence agencies made this determination over two years ago, the only question was whether any Americans, specifically including candidate Trump or anyone working for his campaign, were involved.
Recent and frequent attacks upon the investigation by Trump and his supporters has been that the investigation itself was tainted because: it was illegal, it was a partisan hit job (19 "Angry Democrats"), it was a coup attempt, Mueller and his investigators had conflicts of interest, "hate" Trump, ad infinitum. Trumpists like to repeat these allegations, even as they pretend that the report exonerates Trump.
Despite Trumpists' hysterical and paranoid ravings, the investigation was, in my view, entirely justified. It had been established by our intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in our election. Given that the interference favored Trump over Clinton, it was reasonable that any possible cooperation with the Russian hackers by the Trump campaign be looked into. Trumpists often claim that the entire investigation was based on the so-called "Steele Dossier", information compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Steele was employed by GPS Fusion, which in turn had been contracted to do opposition research initially by a Republican group and later by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic national Committee (DNC). Much has been made of the allegation that the Steele Dossier has been debunked and discredited...which it has not. https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1121250912729751552
Steele always claimed that the contents of the dossier, which alleged collusion between Trump and Russians regarding the election, was simply "raw intelligence" and need to be reviewed and investigated, but as the above link shows, quite a bit of it was true.
But the claim by Trumpists that the investigation was wholly based on the "discredited" dossier is incorrect on two counts. First, as I have stated, it isn't discredited, and secondly, the dossier is only one of several bases for investigating the Trump campaign. In addition to the Steele information, a Trump policy adviser confided to a foreign government official that the campaign was receiving "dirt" on Clinton; the FBI, while monitoring Russian agents in the U.S., came across communications with Carter Page, another campaign official; Michael Flynn, slated to be National Security Adviser, was found to have illegal contacts with the Russian government; Paul Manafort, one time campaign manager, had several suspicious lines of communication with Russian officials, including, as was later discovered, sharing polling data with Russians; several Trump campaign officials, including family members, met with someone representing herself as a Russian government representative with "dirt" on Clinton, and finally, Trump's unusually high opinion of Putin.
Whether or not any of this would lead to proof that Trump or his people conspired with the Russian government to interfere with the election, there was certainly a lot of suspicious activity, a lot of suspicious contact with Russians by multiple officials in the Trump campaign, as well as Trump's apparent encouraging Russia to find and release Clinton's "missing emails". There is no question that the investigation was justified and that it was legal. Accusations of partisanship ignore the fact that all of the leaders and initiators of the investigation were Republicans.
Mueller's Report exhaustively details all the known contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians. In the end, the investigation was unable to determine that Trump or his campaign "coordinated or conspired with the Russian government". Much has been made about that statement, with the Trumpists concluding "no collusion". Many pages are devoted to the legal definitions of coordination and conspiracy and to how "collusion" is a term without legal meaning. After reading the around 200 pages of Part One, it is clear that the actions of the Trump campaign did not meet the extremely high legal bar that is required for a conviction of conspiracy. However, it is also clear that Trump campaign officials thought they had something to hide, since they regularly and consistently lied about their various contacts. And even though there was no actual coordination between the Russians and the Trump campaign, it has been established by the investigation that there was several attempts by the Russians to do so, and the Trump campaign never reported any of these attempts to the FBI.
The bottom line is that Trump and his campaign knew that the Russians were interfering in our election on Trump's behalf and they were totally cool with it.
A final thought on the "collusion", aka "coordination and conspiracy". It was noted in the report that several witnesses lied in their testimony, that records were destroyed or apps were used that did not leave a record and therefore some events may have transpired differently that what they were able to establish.
Take a deep breath, now it's time to look at Part Two: Obstruction
Even before the Special Counsel was appointed and the FBI was in charge of the investigation, Trump was taking actions that a reasonable observer could conclude was an attempt to end or obstruct the investigation. Firing the head of the agency responsible for the investigation and then bragging to Russians that you fired him, that he was crazy, and that the Russia pressure was now off, and then admitting in an interview that while firing him you thought the whole Russia thing was made up, a hoax...sure was a good reason to look at obstruction of justice.
One argument that Trump supporters, including Attorney General Barr, have made is that since there was no underlying crime, then there as nothing to obstruct, and therefore there could not be a charge of obstruction of justice. Mueller debunks this argument, citing numerous precedents. Getting a conviction for obstruction of justice does not depend on whether a conviction, or even a charge, of an underlying crime exists. A second Trumpist argument against obstruction of justice is that actions such as firing the FBI Director, or hypothetically firing the Special Counsel, were actions that the President was legally entitled to take. Mueller makes the case that even actions that would otherwise be legal actions under a president's constitutional authority, are not exempt from action by Congress if taken with corrupt intent.
Mueller does not make an official conclusion that Trump did not obstruct justice. In this he is deferring to Department of Justice (DOJ) policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. He also makes clear that the president has not been exonerated. Throughout Part Two of the report we are treated to example after example of Trump attempting to shut down the investigation or to influence witnesses. He is quite clear that he expected former Attorney General Sessions to protect him, rather than recuse himself due to conflicts of interest; that he expected "loyalty" from FBI Director Comey, and wanted him to go easy on Flynn; that he put a lot of time and energy into attempting to discredit the investigation and Mueller himself. The most egregious examples are his instructions to then White House Counsel McGahn to have Mueller fired and his explicit instructions to create a record indicating that he didn't instruct McGahn to so, and his instructions to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein that he lie about the reasons for firing Comey. McGahn and Rosenstein both refused to comply.
For each of the numerous obstruction examples, a committed Trumpist might dream up a plausible reason, but it's the pattern of behavior that in my view indicates the intent to obstruct. What's ironic is that, since the investigation was unable to determine that coordination or conspiracy with Russia occurred, Trump's best strategy would have been to remain silent, and the whole thing would have just faded away. He would have been able to plausibly claim exoneration. Of course it's possible that the obstructive actions, lying by witnesses and destruction of records effectively hid real coordination and conspiracy, but we'll never know. A possible motivation touched on in the report is that while Trump knew that he didn't conspire with Russia, and actually thought the investigation would "go away" after he got rid of Flynn, he was haunted by the public perception that he didn't win the election on his own, that he as an illegitimate president.
This shouldn't be the end of it. Trump wasn't "cleared", he wasn't exonerated, the report doesn't conclude "no collusion, no obstruction". There are numerous documented attempts to shut down the investigation. The main reason that the investigation wasn't shut down was that various government officials refused to follow what they thought were illegal or unethical orders.
Congress should take a close look at the un-redacted report. In my opinion, impeachment should at least be seriously discussed.
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