Russia Investigation
According to a Monday report by the New York Times: “The White House has not asked to read the report in advance, and aides are planning to speed read. They intend to all but skip the sections related to potential criminal conspiracy, and instead zoom in on two outstanding questions that Mr. Trump himself wants to ignore: why Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, was not able to conclude whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice, and what the attorney general meant when he wrote in his letter that “much” of the president’s conduct was public — meaning some of it was not.”
Wednesday afternoon The New York Times reported that DOJ has been briefing members of Trump’s team on the Mueller report. Journalists noted that Pompeo visited DOJ on Wednesday to meet with Barr, which is unusual. DOJ is also spreading the word on background that the report will be “lightly redacted.”
Wheeler released a guide to things to look for in the Mueller report, along with suggestions on how to interpret it.
Here is the Mueller Report itself, released online just after 11:00am, Thursday.
Barr and Rosenstein stepped to the podium Thursday morning at 9:34am. Barr spoke for just under 20 minutes, then took questions. In his remarks he repeated the message from his letter that there was no collusion with Russia. He was more specific about that there was no collusion with IRA and GRU. On Wikileaks he said that what Wikileaks did by dumping the stolen documents was not illegal, therefore no one associated with the Trump campaign did anything illegal by coordinating with Wikileaks. He took questions for about 5 minutes, and walked out on a question about Barr trying to provide coverage for Trump. Rosenstein did not speak.
Contrary to Barr’s statements, Mueller wrote that he had no opinion on collusion, and that while questionable campaign contacts did occur, there was no way to charge conspiracy. He also supplied evidence of obstruction but neglected to charge Trump with obstruction because DOJ regulations do not allow him to do so. Here is how the New York Times explained this aspect of the report: “Citing a Justice Department view that sitting presidents cannot be indicted, the special counsel said it would be inappropriate to analyze the evidence while Mr. Trump is in office and busy running the country because it would be unfair to accuse him of an offense without giving him an opportunity to clear his name in court.” Many note that the report suggests Congress is free to accuse Trump of obstruction based on the facts he laid out, or that future prosecutors may do so after Trump leaves office.
The New York Times compared Barr’s language to what Mueller actually wrote, highlighting the discrepancies. Some are saying Barr lied, while others are saying he was merely misleading. Nearly everyone know understand that Barr is spinning the report to protect Trump and/or the institution of presidential powers.
Here is Lawfare’s first analysis:
- “Being duped is not the same as committing a crime, and Mueller conclusively puts to rest the question of whether the Trump campaign was somehow aiding the Russian social media operation.”
- “While the report does not find criminal conspiracy between Trump associates and Russia, it describes a set of contacts that may not involve chargeable criminality but might reasonably be described as “collusion…. a large quantity of engagement that was apparently not chargeably criminal but that did involve covert attempts to engage with a hostile foreign government for the benefit of Trump’s campaign and business.”
- “Despite the overwhelming number of contacts and ties, Mueller concludes this section by noting that the investigation did not “yield evidence sufficient to sustain any charge that any individual affiliated with the Trump Campaign acted as an agent of [the government of Russia] within the meaning of FARA [the Foreign Agents Registration Act].”
- On obstruction: “though subtly, Mueller is pretty clearly deferring—at least in part—to Congress: His office chose not to evaluate whether to bring charges against the president, he suggests, both because indictment of the president while he remains in office is off limits to him and because the decision regarding how to handle such conduct by a sitting president is, in any event, more properly left to the legislature.”
- “It is not entirely clear how Mueller would apply his overarching factual considerations, discussed above, to the specific cases, but he does seem to be saying that the evidence of obstruction in a number of these incidents is strong.”
Here is Marcy Wheeler’s live reaction to reading and re-reading the full report, as she posted on Twitter.
Here is Wittes’s analysis of each section of the report, posted on Lawfare as he reads each section.
He notes: “the Mueller probe was a criminal probe only. It had embedded FBI personnel sending back to the FBI material germane to the FBI’s counterintelligence mission. But Mueller does not appear to have taken on any counterintelligence investigative function. And the report is purely an account through the lens of the criminal law. This partly, though only partly, explains why is no classified information in the report, which contains no “portion markings” anywhere. This point has a major analytical consequence for the entire way one reads the Mueller report: Don’t assume it answers counterintelligence questions.”
Wheeler goes there on counterintelligence: “it must be noted that the report doesn’t answer what a lot of people think it does: whether Trump has been compromised by Russia, leading him to pursue policies damaging to US interests. Let me very clear: I don’t think Trump is a puppet being managed by Vladimir Putin. But contrary to a great number of claims that this report puts those concerns to rest, the report does the opposite. With the limited exception of the suggestion of a tie between firing Comey and the meeting with Lavrov, the report doesn’t even mention the key incidents that would be the subject of such analysis. If anything, new details released in this report provide even further reason to think Trump obstructed the Russian investigation to halt the counterintelligence analysis of his ties with Russia. But the report itself doesn’t ever explicitly consider whether that’s why Trump obstructed this investigation.”
Lawfare provided a map of evidence of obstruction, based on Mueller’s findings. Of the 10+ cases of potential obstruction episodes, Mueller laid out substantial evidence across the three qualifying factors–obstructive act, nexus to crime, intent–for four episodes, and substantial or could support evidence for four more.
Frum argues what he has all along: that Congress, not Mueller, is the only way to learn what Russia has on Trump. As others have pointed out, counterintelligence information was completely absent from the report.
Douthat argues what he has all along: that we know Trump is an “amoral incompetent surrounded by grifters, misfits and his own overpromoted children, who is saved from self-destruction by advisers who sometimes decline to follow orders, and saved from high crimes in part by incompetence and weakness,” and Meuller only re-confirms that without adding much new damning information, and that politics should turn to trying to defeat Trump at the ballot box.
Here is David French’s first reaction: “to see the extent to which his virus infected his entire political operation is sobering. And the idea that anyone is treating this report as “win” for Trump, given the sheer extent of deceptions exposed (among other things), demonstrates that the bar for his conduct has sunk so low that anything other than outright criminality is too often brushed aside as relatively meaningless…. The lies are simply too much to bear. No Republican should tolerate such dishonesty.” (Most of the conservative commentariat are much more sanguine about the Mueller Report than French.)
Rosenzwieg takes down many of Barr’s actions regarding the Mueller Report, including the reason for waiting to release the summaries on the grounds they needed to be redacted when the ones that were finally released were not redacted.
In other news
Trump vetoed Congress Yemen pull out bill.
Barr is joining the immigration fight, issuing orders stopping asylum seekers from posting bail, this keeping them detained until their hearing.
The administration continues to slow walk the Congressional request for Trump’s tax returns, saying it is analyzing the law that allows the request.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 41.6%