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0 pointsthe_third_wave3y ago0 comments

> III.B.3 of the Mueller report

The 'Russian collusion case' has been thoroughly discredited so why do you bring it up here, other than to muddle the issue?

If you want to have a clear case of meddling with presidential elections I'd point at the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee funding of the Steele dossier. Should that be brought up here as well? The 'dossier' was also discredited but it was used in the same way the data from Wikileaks was used to target Clinton. The difference here was that the data on Clinton was true while the 'Steele dossier' was fictitious.

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zopa3y ago

Some of people’s wilder imaginings about Trump and Russia didn’t check out, sure, but I certainly consider the Mueller Report itself accurate.

lamontcg3y ago

> The 'Russian collusion case' has been thoroughly discredited

No, "collusion" doesn't exist as a crime. It wasn't discredited it just doesn't exist as a criminal thing.

And it turns out that "conspiracy" is something that requires the participants to understand that they're doing something wrong, and Mueller couldn't find any evidence of that. When you're rich and committing white collar crimes then the defense of "I didn't know it was illegal" apparently works, unlike us plebs when we get pulled over by the traffic cops.

There was plenty of evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign, Wikileaks and the Russians. Just none of it was considered crimes by the Muller investigation. Wikileaks was actively lending support to the Trump campaign in order to attempt to get Trump elected and defeat Hillary. So were the Russians. That is on solid factual ground. But Mueller didn't find anything there that the DOJ could charge him over.

It is also pretty clear that Mueller thought that the revelations would be shocking enough that Congress would impeach and remove Trump for what he had done and that "high crimes and misdemeanors" (which really has no legal definition) would cover it, but he didn't expect Congress to abdicate its responsibility in favor of partisan politics.

This is the same President that bragged he could "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and get away with it, and that is precisely what the Republican led Congress allowed him to do.

dragonwriter3y ago

> And it turns out that “conspiracy” is something that requires the participants to understand that they’re doing something wrong,

Another problem was that the investigation was obstructed (in the broad sense, including crimes like obstruction of justice, witness tampering, etc.), both by people who were charged for that (some convicted and some remaining beyond the reach of US justice), and by Trump, who could not be charged under Justice Department policy which, regardless of its legal correctness, Mueller was bound by.

(And charging Trump after he left office for crimes related to the 2016 campaign would, given the general 5 year statute of limitations for federal crimes, have been difficult – it might be possible to argue that OLC memo on Presidents being beyond federal prosecution was correct and that the same logic tolled statutes of limitations, but that’s a dicey argument to make; obstruction would have been less problematic, but the Trump pardons and other things would also complicate that.)

93po3y ago

> There was plenty of evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign, Wikileaks and the Russians.

There is zero reputable evidence of this

mhh__3y ago

There's no evidence at all it was from anyone else.

Where is the evidence that it was Seth Rich for example? Alex Jones?

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