:^)
Posted on 03/24/2019 6:50:08 PM PDT by jazusamo
There was relief for the White House and frustration for President Trump’s foes on Sunday when a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings was released by Attorney General William Barr.
The 22-month probe is over. Here are the main takeaways.
A big win for Trump
The president could hardly have hoped for a better outcome than the one delivered in Barr’s letter to Congress.
“No collusion,” the president has always insisted. Special counsel Robert Mueller and his team now agree.
“The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia” regarding the 2016 election, according to the letter.
The exoneration on the central question of the investigation has to be taken seriously given the resources Mueller brought to the task. He employed 19 lawyers, had the assistance of about 40 FBI agents and issued more than 2,800 subpoenas.
On the question of potential obstruction of justice, Mueller was equivocal, saying he had neither exonerated Trump nor concluded that he had committed a crime.
Instead, Mueller punted that question to Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who concluded that the “evidence developed…is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
Democrats will want to know a lot more about that.
Meanwhile, the president boasted that he had received “a complete and total exoneration” when he spoke to reporters briefly before boarding Air Force One in Florida.
Congressional allies were just as forceful.
“Attorney General Barr’s statement today should end the debate,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), one of the most fervent Trump loyalists on Capitol Hill. “There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. It’s over.”
Meanwhile, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley characterized the president as in buoyant spirits as Air Force One flew back to Washington.
“He’s in a really good mood,” Gidley said, according to pool reports. “He’s just very happy with how it all turned out.”
Democrats face uphill battle
Democrats were quick to note on Sunday that they would continue their own investigations on Capitol Hill, empowered by their healthy majority in the House.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter that his panel would be seeking testimony from Barr himself, as it sought to explore what Nadler characterized as “very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department.”
House committees on Intelligence and on Oversight are conducting their own investigations into Trump-related matters.
Democrats will argue they are engaged in the important business of holding the executive branch accountable. That’s true as far as it goes — but it doesn’t solve their larger problem.
The Mueller probe has been the main event of Trump investigations since its inception. It seems likely that voters who don’t have strong partisan loyalties will see his findings as the final word.
That makes it hard for Democrats to justify further probes and easier for Trump and his allies to cast them as politically-motivated smears.
The chances of Democrats being credibly accused of over-reaching just went up sharply.
Questions remain on obstruction
Trump’s biggest problem in the Barr letter — by some distance — is the uncertainty that hangs over what exactly Mueller found in relation to alleged obstruction of justice.
The letter is strikingly opaque on this point — and Democrats instantly seized on that lack of specificity, demanding to know more.
In a joint statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the letter “raises as many questions as it answers.”
They have a point.
The letter says that, on obstruction, Mueller “determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.” It adds that he “did not draw a conclusion — one way or another — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.”
That seems to indicate Mueller found evidence of behavior that was at least in the general ballpark of obstruction — even if Barr and Rosenstein concluded the evidence was not strong enough to sustain a criminal case.
CNN legal analyst Michael Zeldin told The Hill that he found it “very strange” that Mueller went so far as to state that the evidence does not “exonerate” Trump.
“Prosecutors don’t usually talk in terms of exoneration,” Zeldin said, suggesting this could point to disagreements between Mueller’s team and top figures at the Department of Justice.
For Trump, the danger remains that Mueller may have uncovered information that will be politically damaging, even if it does not rise to the level of alleged criminality.
The chances of impeachment fall
Pelosi created a stir earlier this month when she pumped the brakes on impeachment in an interview with The Washington Post.
She noted then that she was not in favor of an impeachment push.
Explaining her reasoning, she said: “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.”
It’s impossible to make a case that the Barr letter reaches that threshold. It lacks the heft that would be required to win over independents or soft Trump voters to the need to try to oust the president.
It’s now more certain than ever that Trump’s political fate will be decided at the 2020 election — and not before it.
Egg on the face of talking heads
It’s undeniable that the most feverish anti-Trump figures in the media — including some supposed legal experts — let their hopes outrun the facts on the Russia story.
Anyone who turned on their television in the immediate aftermath of the Barr letter would have been struck by the amount of attempted face-saving underway.
Mueller’s findings make the confident predictions that he was about to lower the boom on Trump and members of his immediate family look foolish, plain and simple.
Expect Trump and his allies to beat their anti-media drum even louder in the days and months ahead. It’s a good bet they will still be using the Mueller episode as an example of media excess as Election Day 2020 looms.
In a Sunday evening statement, Vice President Pence exulted in “a great day for America.”
He made a point to include unnamed “members of the media” alongside Democrats as those whom he said had leveled “reckless accusations.”
Hey Democrats! Does eating crow taste like chicken?
It’s coming
Trump gave them enough rope to hang themselves - and they DID!
It's hilarious that the "smoking gun" they think they can exploit on charging Trump with obstruction of justice is that he fired James Comey - the guy Rosenweasel, Hilliary, the Democrats, etc. were screaming for him to do! This has blown up in their faces bigly. I dare them to pursue obstruction charges after this.
And no, that ain’t my wife. The current one, anyway.
Yep, if they keep pursuing that path they’ll only make themselves look like sore loser nuts, the backlash will be huge.
For two long years, this has been about one thing and one thing only: a transparent, sore-loser attempt by the Democrats and their mouthpieces in the media to deny Donald Trump the victory that he earned in November 2016.
“Obstruction like PDJT calling the Mueller Investigation a witch-hunt?”
yes and more. To these asswipes whenever The President ( I love saying that when Trump is in office) said he was innocent of any wrong doing, they said that was obstruction because he was signaling to drop the case. Notice that Barr took great lengths to explain he did not obstruct not even considering whether a sitting President could be indicted. IOW, not only was there no obstruction, even if there were, he could not be indicted anyway. Mueller and his band of hombres could not bring themselves to just say there was insufficient evidence to charge obstruction when in fact that is exactly what they were saying in a round about fashion.
Not just Democrats and Fake Journalists. Don’t forget Jen, McCain, Romney, Ryan, etc.
Jeb
True.
I agree. This will not be tolerated.
DJT has sacrificed and worked his butt off and suffered abuse 24/7 for America. This injustice and travesty of the first order is not going away and justice will be served.
They are going down
That “no this ain’t my wife” comment made me smile. A LOT. Reguardless, she is singing.
“It adds that he “did not draw a conclusion — one way or another — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.”
That seems to indicate Mueller found evidence of behavior that was at least in the general ballpark of obstruction — even if Barr and Rosenstein concluded the evidence was not strong enough to sustain a criminal case.”
This is just biased thinking on the reporter’s part. “...did not draw a conclusion..” means that he either didn’t consider the question of obstruction, or that the evidence wouldn’t support it, not that there WAS evidence for it, albeit weak.
Yep. The timing is critical.
I always value your opinions when I come across them and for you to say this is encouraging.
Everyone with a lick of sense and a sense of decency knows that this cannot stand because if they sweep it under the rug, we’ve lost our country.
Trumps aide says “President is so happy it’s ‘like election night again’..
Mueller was the tip of the spear for the corrupt state, O’muslim, Hillary, rinos and neverTrumpers. He was orchestrating a coup and covering up the mountain of high crimes and high treason of the obola regime. Not giving PDJT a ‘win’.
The one take away is this ‘author’ is a farkin moron.
That’s good. He deserves all the happiness and satisfaction possible.
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