The Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump’s campaign team are aiming to shape perceptions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings in his favor
WHITE HOUSE
The White House’s Mueller reaction plan has a wild card: Trump
The president’s aides have prepared an extensive spin operation ahead of Thursday’s release.
By NANCY COOK
Trump typically spends the first half of his workday in the White House residence in “executive time” — making phone calls, reading news reports, keeping an eye on the TV and talking to top officials.
That’s exactly when the Department of Justice is expected to release special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report, and when the freewheeling tweeter-in-chief is likely to have the least amount of supervision.
The goal for Thursday is to use the bully pulpit of the White House to give the appearance of a president consumed by the demands of his office. Former President Bill Clinton often leaned on the same playbook at key moments during the Starr investigation — a historical example Trump’s lawyers have studied closely.
Meanwhile, a well-greased spin machine will start whirring to life at the two main arms of the president’s reelection effort — the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign, aiming to shape perceptions of Mueller’s findings in his favor. The attorney general is also planning to host a televised 9:30 a.m. news conference about the report, the Justice Department announced — and the president is contemplating holding one of his own.
Aside from the uncertainty of what will be disclosed in the report itself, there’s a second major wild card: Trump.
What could trigger the president is any hint in the Mueller report that one of his current and former aides, many of whom cooperated with the investigation
“They went in and told the truth and are now wondering how much will be in the report. How much will it be redacted, and how will that play?” said one former administration official, noting that Attorney General William Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s findings could prove more favorable to the White House than the report itself.
Mueller’s team talked to a raft of Trump aides including former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former senior strategist Steve Bannon, former top attorney Don McGahn, former attorney general Jeff Sessions and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, among others. McGahn alone sat reportedly sat with the special investigators’ team for 30 hours of interviews.
“It is an important thing to the president that these people are not seen" in the report as attacking him personally, said the close White House adviser.
McGahn and his attorney did not respond to requests for commen
No one in the White House has seen the full document yet, nor do they know how it handles the question of whether Trump obstructed justice in firing former FBI Director James Comey — or the nuances surrounding that and many other moments.
Barr’s letter noted only that Mueller had declined to recommend charges of obstruction, quoting the special counsel’s report as saying: “[W]hile this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
But reports soon dribbled out relaying the views of frustrated members of Mueller’s team, rare leaks revealing that some in the special counsel’s office saw Barr’s synopsis of their “principal conclusions” as misleading.
Inside the White House, aides are trying to project calm. Most of this week has felt like a waiting game, especially with Congress on recess and with many administration officials planning a short workweek given this weekend’s Easter and Passover holidays.
There is also a feeling that Barr’s spare summary set the public narrative early on that Trump did not collude with Russia during the 2016 election — and White House officials and the president’s allies hope that perception sticks despite whatever damaging details may be lurking in the full report.
On Thursday, White House officials including lead attorney Emmet Flood are expected to have a limited window of time to read and digest the key parts of report. One of the president’s outside attorneys, Jay Sekulow, told POLITICO that his plan is to have a team of five to six staffers to review the document as the president’s personal counsel, breaking up the report into sections and monitoring the public response to it. Flood and the White House’s top attorney Pat Cipollone are expected to then brief the president on the report’s findings.
Sekulow and the president’s other attorney, Rudy Giuliani, are expected to go on television extensively this weekend to defend the president, Sekulow told POLITICO. Sekulow said the goal was to follow a similar model to how they handled the Sunday Barr letter, where they were able to get out a statement and tee up media interviews within an hour.
Trump’s attorneys will also be wielding a “counter-report” pushing back on Mueller’s findings, which Giuliani said earlier this week had been whittled down to “34 or 35 pages.”
The Republican National Committee will play a leading role in pushing back on any potentially damaging tidbits, or Democrats’ statements. The RNC will rely on a war room to monitor the media coverage and political statements including a rapid response team, social media pushback and op-eds and TV appearances from top RNC communications officials.
The Trump campaign is also ready to defend the president and then redirect the public’s attention.
“We know that President Trump will — once again — be vindicated: no collusion and no obstruction. The tables should turn now, as it is time to investigate the liars who instigated the sham investigation in the first place,” said Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the campaign.
But as always, Trump will act as his own communications director and public relations crisis manager. Already he’s distilled the message down to a simple Twitter statement, before he’s seen the report: “No Collusion - No Obstruction!”
Eliana Johnson and Darren Samuelsohn contributed report
And afterwards?:
President Trump still facing swirl of investigations even after Robert Mueller’s probe has ended
BART JANSEN | USA TODAY | 1 hour ago
Democrats launched a sweeping new probe of President Donald Trump on Monday, an aggressive investigation that threatens to shadow the president through the 2020 election season with inquiries into his White House, campaign and family businesses. (March 4)
AP
WASHINGTON – The investigations surrounding President Donald Trump’s campaign and his presidency have not ended even though Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller has wrapped up his probe.
Prosecutors in a half-dozen federal, state and city jurisdictions are pursuing overlapping inquiries focused on how Trump operated his namesake business empire, how a porn star was paid off in the final weeks of his campaign and how his inaugural committee raised money. New York state alone has three agencies conducting investigations.
At least six congressional committees are studying Trump’s personal finances, his inauguration committee, his business practices before he took office and his conduct since assuming the presidency, seeking evidence of what senior Democrats have called corruption or abuse of his office.
The extent of those inquiries – and the jeopardy they create for Trump and those in his political orbit – is impossible to know because some of the probes overlap and some investigators haven’t revealed the scope of their work. For example, federal prosecutors in New York’s Southern and Eastern districts are each investigating Trump’s $107 million inaugural committee.
So far, none of those investigations has directly accused the president of wrongdoing, though some have come close. Federal prosecutors in New York last year told a judge that Trump had directed his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to orchestrate illegal payoffs in the final months of his campaign to silence two women who claimed to have had sex with him.
Trump repeatedly called Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election a partisan “witch hunt” and called state-level investigators “presidential harassers.”
But many of the investigations that are ongoing – including the probes of hush payments and of the inaugural committee – are closely tied to the special counsel’s work, which produced a cascade of separate investigations.
Federal inquiries of Trump’s campaign
Federal prosecutors in New York are pursuing at least two inquiries. One office is scrutinizing Trump’s inaugural committee, including whether donors received benefits in exchange for funding the $107 million celebration, according to a subpoena sent to the committee. The authorities also are scrutinizing whether vendors were paid with unreported donations or whether foreign nationals made contributions that are prohibited.
Samuel Patten, 47, was sentenced Friday to three years’ probation and fined $5,000 after pleading guilty in August to lobbying for a Ukrainian political party without reporting it to the Justice Department. Patten also helped conceal a Ukrainian national who bought $50,000 worth of tickets to Trump’s inauguration, prosecutors said. Patten “provided substantial assistance” to Mueller, who referred his case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, according to prosecutors.
Another federal inquiry in New York focuses on the hush money Cohen said Trump told him to pay to two women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations for the six-figure payments before the 2016 election to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Prosecutors said Trump and his business reimbursed Cohen for some of the payments, falsely concealing them as a retainer for his legal services.
Cohen provided the House Oversight and Reform Committee with a copy of a $35,000 check that Trump signed personally to reimburse him in a series of installments during the first year of his presidency. Other checks were signed by Donald Trump Jr. and Allen Weisselberg, chief finance officer for the Trump Organization. When a lawmaker asked whether the checks documented a “criminal conspiracy of financial fraud,” Cohen testified: “Yes.”
Prosecutors in New York opened their investigation of Cohen in early 2018 after receiving a referral from Mueller.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and called Cohen a convicted liar; the attorney heads to prison for three years on May 6. Trump questioned whether the payments even qualified for criminal charges but said he never told Cohen to break the law.
Cohen also suggested that the Justice Department might be pursuing other investigations. During his testimony to the House, he said prosecutors in New York were investigating his most recent communication with Trump. And he said he was in “constant contact” with prosecutors about other investigations but didn’t elaborate on their subjects.
Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s lawyers, has said the legal team is “fully” aware of what prosecutors in both Washington and New York are pursuing. “Cohen did everything he could to create innuendo,” Giuliani said. “I think we have no liability.”
New York probes Trump finances
Cohen’s House testimony in February spurred investigations by state authorities in New York. Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, is investigating whether Trump exaggerated his wealth when seeking real-estate loans, including while he was pursuing a failed bid for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. State investigators have issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank for documents about real-estate deals and the Bills bid.
The New York State Department of Financial Services subpoenaed documents in March from the Trump Organization’s insurer, Aon PLC, after Cohen testified that the company inflated the value of its assets.
“It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real-estate taxes,” Cohen told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in February. “That was one function. Another was when we were dealing later on with insurance companies, we would provide them with these copies so that they would understand that the premium which is based sometimes upon the individual’s capabilities to pay would be reduced.”
The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has been probing Trump’s private charity, the Trump Foundation, since last year. The foundation agreed to dissolve amid accusations that it had violated rules that constrain how charities use their money.
The department is also investigating claims of tax fraud made in an October story in the New York Times.
Congress scrutinizes Trump, business
Trump also faces a series of congressional investigations, nearly all of them being conducted by House Democrats who have been eager to pry into his business dealings and his conduct since becoming president. And they have begun demanding records that could shed light on Trump’s finances.
But House Republicans have dismissed the investigations into Trump’s personal finances and business as fishing expeditions aimed at his impeachment. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, said investigating Trump’s private finances is an “astonishing abuse” of the panel’s authority. Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said valid congressional oversight can’t be used to inquire into private affairs unrelated to legislation.
The inquiries include:
The House Ways and Means Committee has asked the Internal Revenue Service for Trump’s personal income-tax forms from 2013 through 2018, which he has resisted providing.
The House Financial Services and Intelligence committees have subpoenaed Trump financial records from Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions to learn more about his finances. Cohen provided the House Oversight and Reform Committee with Trump’s personal financial statements from 2011, 2012 and 2013, which Cohen said were given to Deutsche Bank for the potential loan to buy the Buffalo Bills.
The House Judiciary Committee is conducting a wide-ranging probe of whether Trump obstructed justice during Mueller’s investigation, or abused the powers of his office, said chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. The committee has requested documents from 81 people and organizations connected to the administration or Trump’s business and approved for subpoenas for some of Trump’s onetime top aides, including strategist Steve Bannon, former communications director Hope Hicks, former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former White House counsel Donald McGahn.
The Oversight and Reform Committee subpoenaed documents from Mazars USA accounting firm for Trump’s financial records, to corroborate Cohen’s testimony about plans for the Buffalo Bills. The committee is also investigating the federal lease for Trump International Hotel, which occupies a government-owned building a few blocks from the White House. Some Democratic lawmakers have criticized the arrangement because Trump is essentially both tenant and landlord, by overseeing the General Services Administration.
The House and Senate intelligence committees are each continuing their investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The goal is to legislate responses to reduce or prevent foreign manipulation of the 2020 election.
Contributing: The Associated Press
More about investigations of President Donald Trump:
Did Trump keep his 19 promises to insulate himself from his business? Only he knows.
Mueller report: Why so many of President Donald Trump’s aides lied to protect him in Russia investigations
Michael Cohen’s testimony prompts a new question: In web of Trump investigations, is anyone safe?
‘I am not protecting Mr. Trump anymore.’ Michael Cohen ties the president to ongoing criminal probes
© Copyright Gannett 2019
POLITICO
‘Keep your mouth shut’: Dems erupt over Barr’s Mueller report rollout
Lawmakers are accusing the attorney general of trying to spin Mueller’s findings.
By ANDREW DESIDERIO and KYLE CHENEY
04/17/2019 06:39 PM EDT
Updated 04/17/2019 08:55 PM EDT
William Barr
Democrats are in an uproar after the White House and Department of Justice officials appear to be coordinating ahead of the release of the special counsel’s report. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images
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House Democrats exploded in anger Wednesday over Attorney General William Barr’s plans to roll out special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, accusing the Justice Department of trying to spin the report’s contents and protect President Donald Trump.
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will hold a news conference at 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning to review the report, which will include redactions. Reports that DOJ officials have already discussed Mueller’s findings with the White House only further inflamed tensions.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Barr had “thrown out his credibility & the DOJ’s independence with his single-minded effort to protect @realDonaldTrump above all else.“
“The American people deserve the truth, not a sanitized version of the Mueller Report approved by the Trump Admin,“ Pelosi wrote on Twitter while on an official trip in Ireland.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee hastily convened a news conference for Wednesday night in Chairman Jerry Nadler‘s district in New York City to issue similar broadsides against Barr.
“I’m deeply troubled by reports that the WH is being briefed on the Mueller report AHEAD of its release,” Nadler tweeted before the press conference. The New York Democrat added that DOJ informed him that Congress would not receive the report until around 11 a.m. or 12 p.m. Thursday. “This is wrong,” Nadler added.
At the news conference, Nadler said that Barr “appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump, the very subject of the investigation at the heart of the Mueller report.“
Nadler also reiterated that he was likely to ask Mueller to testify, and added that it might also be “useful“ to ask members of Mueller’s team to testify. The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee made a bipartisan request last month for Mueller and his team to brief them on their findings as well.
Republicans said little about the drama unfolding late Wednesday, but Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top GOP lawmaker on the Judiciary Committee, chided Nadler for his attack on Barr.
“The only person trying to spin the report is @RepJerryNadler,“ Collins tweeted. “The AG has done nothing unilaterally. After partnering with DAG Rosenstein to share principal conclusions, Barr is releasing the report voluntarily, working with Mueller’s team step by step.“
A Senate aide confirmed that lawmakers didn’t expect to receive Mueller’s report until 11 a.m. on Thursday — after Barr and Rosenstein‘s news conference — and that a discussion about providing a less-redacted version to Congress wouldn’t begin until Friday. DOJ officials indicated that Congress would receive the redacted report on CDs, and it was unclear when reporters would receive it or when it would be posted online for the general public.
Mueller‘s probe focused on Russia‘s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election and whether any associates of Trump aided the scheme. He also investigated whether Trump himself tried to obstruct the investigation, an area that the Judiciary Committee has begun looking into as well.
Neither Mueller nor anyone else from the special counsel’s prosecution team will be in attendance at the Barr news conference, Mueller spokesman Peter Carr told POLITICO. Carr declined to say whether Mueller had been invited to attend.
Carr, however, said he will be at the news conference in his capacity as a member of the DOJ public affairs office, which he recently returned to as the Mueller probe concluded to handle criminal cases.
Democrats also were incensed that Trump, in a radio interview, revealed Barr’s press event minutes before the Justice Department officially announced it — another suggestion that the White House and Justice Department were coordinating ahead of the report’s public release.
A DOJ spokeswoman later said the news conference was not Trump’s idea. Trump said in the same interview that he might hold his own press event afterward.
“I can’t imagine DOJ didn’t brief the White House" about the news conference, said a source familiar with the president’s legal strategy.
“Pretty convenient of the attorney general to take questions on the report before anyone has a chance to read the report,” Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), a Judiciary Committee member, wrote on Twitter.
The uproar came as The New York Times reported that DOJ officials have had “numerous conversations” with White House lawyers about Mueller’s conclusions, though the report was vague about how much the Justice Department had told the White House beyond the top-line conclusions Barr released more than three weeks ago.
Barr has already been under fire from Democrats for his handling of the Mueller investigation. In his four-page summary of the report’s primary conclusions, the attorney general said Mueller uncovered evidence that Trump obstructed justice, but Barr decided against charging Trump with a crime.
In two Capitol Hill hearings last week, Barr did not answer questions about the Justice Department’s coordination or contact with the White House.
“So-called Attorney General is presiding over a dog and pony show,” tweeted House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries. “Here is a thought. Release the Mueller report tomorrow morning and keep your mouth shut. You have ZERO credibility.”
WHITE HOUSE
The White House’s Mueller reaction plan has a wild card: Trump
By NANCY COOK
Democrats’ complaints arrived just as the Justice Department confirmed plans to allow “a limited number of members of Congress and their staff” to view a version of the Mueller report “without certain redactions.”
But rather than give these lawmakers a copy, DOJ officials said in a court filing they would “secure this version of the report in an appropriate setting” only available to these few lawmakers and aides.
Barr has indicated he intends to redact four categories of information from the report: grand jury evidence, classified information, evidence related to ongoing investigations and information that could be embarrassing to “peripheral third parties.” Lawmakers have argued they should see the entire report and that Republicans received access to nearly all of those categories of information in their own efforts to probe the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
Justice Department officials also indicated that if Congress seeks its own version of the less-redacted report, they’ll lean on federal District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson — who is presiding over the pending trial of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone — to determine what to do next.
In a court filing in Stone’s case, prosecutors said they would seek her guidance should Congress ask for the report, and they sense a “reasonable likelihood” that its contents will become public.
Nadler is expected to issue a subpoena as soon as Friday or Monday for the full report and all of its underlying evidence and grand jury information.
Darren Samuelsohn, Josh Gerstein and Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.
POLITICO LLC
Mueller report release: five things to look out for
Barr has said the report has two parts: one on Russian tampering efforts and one on alleged obstruction of justice by Trump
On Thursday, the US justice department is expected to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report on Russian election tampering and the Donald Trump campaign to the public. The attorney general, William Barr, has announced a press conference at the justice department at 9.30am to discuss it.
Mueller report: redacted Trump-Russia findings to be released today – live
Barr has previously described the Mueller report as having two parts: one part devoted to describing the Russian tampering efforts, believed to include a rundown of Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials; and one part devoted to evidence of alleged obstruction of justice by the president.
Here are five things to look out for with the release of the report, which reportedly runs to nearly 400 pages and is officially titled Report on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election:
Obstruction of justice
The Mueller report “catalogu[es] the President’s actions” that could amount to an obstruction of justice by Trump, according to an earlier letter issued by Barr summarizing his view of the report’s findings. How much of this catalogue will the public get to see on Thursday?
Mueller left the decision of whether to charge Trump to Barr, who decided not to. But it appears that Mueller gathered substantial evidence of potential obstruction of justice by the president. In his letter, Barr quoted this line from the report: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
What did Mueller, a lifelong prosecutor, see or discover that led him to believe that the president might have committed a crime?
Contacts with Russia
According to Barr, the Mueller report does exonerate the Trump campaign from allegations that it conspired with Russia. In his letter, Barr quoted the report: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
But there are signs that the report contains new information about contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives. One source close to Mueller’s team told NBC News that the report “paint[s] a picture of a campaign whose members were manipulated by a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation”.
Trump’s political base appears to be unbothered by his campaign’s contacts with Russia, and by his subsequent chronic lying about those contacts. But could the report put those contacts in a new light?
Redactions
Mueller delivered his report one month ago, on 22 March. Since then, Barr and colleagues in the justice department have been preparing it for release to Congress and the public.
A big question is how much of the report will be redacted. Barr is seen as a Trump loyalist with a low opinion of Mueller’s investigation. Barr will probably be challenged to explain why certain material was deemed unfit for public view. Democrats in the House have already said they will subpoena the full report.
Barr has described to Congress four categories of material he intended to redact and said the redactions would be color-coded by category: first, grand jury information, including witness interviews; second, classified information; third, information related to continuing investigations; fourth, so-called derogatory information – information about people who were interviewed or scrutinized in investigations but not charged.
That last category could prominently include Trump.
Summaries
In the report, Mueller’s team included multiple summary paragraphs intended for quick public release after the report was submitted to Barr, according to multiple media accounts. Some members of Mueller’s team were reported to have been displeased that Barr did not release the summaries.
The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately – or very quickly”, one official not on Mueller’s team told the Washington Post. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”
Will we see the summaries? Will they be significantly redacted?
Scenes
Based on media reports and previous indictments, the public knows some of what was going on behind the scenes as the Trump campaign lurched toward victory in 2016, Russian operatives dangling off it, leech-like, on all sides.
But the Mueller report, which would draw on material not available to journalists, such as surveilled communications and seized evidence, could reveal what was really happening in some of the set pieces from the Trump campaign and early presidency.
We might find out more about what happened at a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, and whether Trump was ignorant of the meeting, as he claims. New evidence could come to light about the firing of former FBI director James Comey. We could learn more about Trump campaign contacts with WikiLeaks.
The report could contain damaging new information about the conduct of Trump family members, including Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner, who have been accused of using the campaign to try to enrich their companies and keeping up inappropriate, if not illegal, contacts with foreign operatives.
The Mueller report might weigh in on whether Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, as Cohen has alleged, or whether Trump tried at least twice to fire Mueller, only to be stopped by the former White House counsel Don McGahn, as has been reported.
But key sections of the Mueller report might remain redacted
© 2019 Guardian News
Initial person am opinion while watching Barr"s opinion before release:
Is this a method he is using: precepting his opinion , prior to substantiate his method of describing the ways the Report should be understood?
In other words, does the national legal interpretation lean toward a whitewash, or away from?
The procedure to appear by Barr BEFORE release of the report, is being heavily criticized, as well his presumptive statements before the committee he appeared before.
In fact it has been pointed out, that Mueller left open adjucation of the issue of probable proof rather then certainty in affirming the standard of criminality.
That is a known legal rule . Overlooked by many, to askew the intent of demonstrating Mueller’s transferring adjucation. to the Department of Justice, rather then to Congress.
The question revolves around the issue whether the Report implies exonoration versus vindication. where exonorarionn corresponds with obstruction and vindication with the under lying proof of collusion.
Whitewash does operates splitting intent on terms of probable cause with conflating it with intent, arguing from the prior to the later. So at this stage , the reaffirmation of filling in reasons (casual) into hypothetical (opinions), mixing the two by the reaffirmation, keying in the Kantian categorical imperative, that one does relate to the other.
Whether the direct and indirect evidence can be shown to be inferred or deducted, sets the basis of the regional for asserting redaction.
Since the Democrats are at a weakness to counter this with a similar.Congressional show of this rationale to the 'Majoritive of American’s & becomes on hold, at least until Mueller’s appearance before Congress in May.
The effects of the cyber value ias a central issue has been walled over, that is the overlooked crux of the whole case.
That borders, literally, the necessary whitewash, which was figuratively shifted the idea into social dissociation.
The way this was handled, the obstruction may have been clouded over, washed clean, by the collusive nature of the idea of the new world order, which has been an idea swirling around since the novel -1984.
Therefore, the logical contradiction between (Kant) prior intellectual motive (1984 ) and politically clarified intention-{Hegel-Heidegger), has been successfully overcome (Transvalued, Nietzsche) so as.to legitimize successfully the politocal ramifications of cyber-intelligence.
Its obvious now, that Trump is a very good actor, and he can rightfully claim now, that his degrading from winning an award has been based by politocal pressure from above, rather then by objective criteria of worth .
How the leap from good actor to effective politician plays out, now has become a viable issue laden legal PR show, which has been effectively been achieved.
Consclusion: Trump has been rescued by subliminal cyber manipulation, of whose legitimacy has become a secondary , not.primary preoccupation , to shadow the Report, by eliminating the need to foreshadow it.(inquiries into intent-more in line with the still current suspicion of intent as obstruction)
–
The Mueller report is shocking
By: CNN
Updated 6:42 PM EDT, Thu April 18, 2019
(CNN) After a news conference by Attorney General William Barr, Congress and the public can access a redacted version of the Mueller report. Commentators will weigh in here throughout the day with smart takes on the Mueller report. The views expressed in this commentary are theirs. View more opinion articles on CNN.
Elie Honig: A staggering exercise in selective omission
Elie Honig
With the redacted version of the Mueller report and the press conference he gave to help spin it, William Barr has cemented his status as a crafty partisan whose primary tricks are to cloak his political moves to shape public opinion and to protect President Trump under a thin sheen of law and process.
Imagine if, in Attorney General William Barr’s March 24 four-page “principal conclusions” letter, he had informed Congress and the public that special counsel Robert Mueller had found in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election that it “established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
That is, in fact, a direct quote from Mueller. Yet Barr chopped off this crucial language and instead gave us only the back half of the very same sentence: “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Barr’s calculated, selective quotation of one sentence of Mueller’s gave the American people a slanted and inaccurate view of Mueller’s actual findings.
View this interactive content on CNN.com
And imagine if, rather than unilaterally intercepting and dismissing the question of obstruction – without Mueller ever asking him to do so – Barr had let us know that Mueller actually referred the matter to Congress, finding that “[w]ith respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has the authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.” Again, had Barr given us even a reasonably faithful and impartial summary of Mueller’s work, the world would look much different for Trump than it does now.
Barr already proved himself decades ago as a master of manipulation through selective omission in 1989 when he omitted part of a Justice Department memo relevant to the abduction of then-Panamanian leader Gen. Manuel Noriega. He wrote before becoming Trump’s attorney general that there was more basis to investigate Hillary Clinton than “so-called ‘collusion’” and he sent an unsolicited 20-page memo to DOJ arguing that Mueller’s “obstruction theory is fatally misconceived.” Despite having pre-judged Mueller’s investigation in these stark terms, Barr declined to recuse himself. And then Barr issued a wildly misleading four-page summary – which he later claimed was not in fact a “summary” – which set the public discourse for nearly a month before today’s release of Mueller’s actual report.
Barr auditioned for his job by broadcasting his hostility to Mueller’s investigation and his loyalty to Trump. Now that he is the nation’s top law enforcement officer, Barr has shown himself to be as advertised. In his handling of Mueller’s report, Barr has done a disservice to the Department of Justice and the American people – but he has done a potentially administration-saving favor for Trump.
Elie Honig is a former federal and state prosecutor and CNN legal analyst.
Samantha Vinograd: Russia is reading — and learning from — the Mueller report, too
Sam Vinograd
Today – and every day before and after it, actually – would have been a great day for an election security meeting at the White House. The Mueller report is a critical body of information that lays out how Russia attacked us. A responsible leader would use it to advocate against Russian attacks on our democracy and to warn against behavior that helps Russia’s goals, even if that behavior isn’t criminal. Instead, a report on Russia’s attack on our democracy in 2016, will, ironically, be used by some — including the President – to continue that very attack. It is a gift to the Russians.
The report will be used to create confusion, sow divisions, to amplify partisanship and to undermine the credibility of our democratic processes.
This is a proud moment for Putin. As the special counsel lays out, Russia’s attack on our democracy began at least as far back as mid-2014. It was systematic and strategic, and President Trump was a tool for the Russians at a specific time.
We know from various officials that Russia’s attack is ongoing, which raises the question of whether President Trump would criticize other 2020 candidates for acting the way he did during the 2016 election – including ignoring warnings about Russian interference (even if Trump’s activity was not criminal, his behavior is well below the bar of what we would expect of any presidential candidate). No one – including the President – can claim ignorance about what Russia is doing.
Russia weaponizes information against us already; controversial issues are Russian information warriors’ bread and butter. And we should expect them to use this report to further their objectives. And every time the President spreads misinformation about the report, uses it to divide and cast doubt on the investigation itself – he’s knowingly aiding and abetting that attack. It is a clear sign that he’s putting his own insecurities above the security of the American people.
The Mueller report could be and should be a guide for all candidates on what to watch out for in terms of foreign contact during 2020 campaigns, and how not to act during a campaign. Instead, because the President denigrates this now public body of evidence, he is failing to behave as a leader – one who should be working with campaigns to counter Russian or other foreign influence.
Now that the Mueller report is public, we have every reason to wonder whether Trump will repeat his actions during this next election cycle. And he certainly doesn’t appear to be taking measures to advise against dangerous behavior, like communicating with hostile foreign powers, failing to accurately report foreign meetings like the Trump Tower meeting, failing to disclose foreign offers to provide “dirt” on an opponent (even if it doesn’t pan out) and any foreign activities when it is perceived that it could help a campaign’s efforts.
Samantha Vinograd is a CNN national security analyst. She served on President Obama’s National Security Council from 2009-2013 and at the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush. Follow her @sam_vinograd.
Ilya Shapiro: Don McGahn is the MVP of the Trump administration
Ilya Shapiro
One of the biggest heroes of the Mueller report is Don McGahn, who served as White House counsel from President Donald Trump’s inauguration through October 2018. McGahn sat for 30 hours of interviews with special counsel Robert Mueller. And, in the report, Mueller described him as a “credible witness with no motive to lie.”
The report reveals that soon after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed the special counsel, Trump tried to get McGahn to remove Mueller. McGahn repeatedly declined – and, in May 2017, he warned this action would appear as an attempt to “meddle in the investigation.”
When Trump called McGahn in June to prod him again to remove Mueller, the White House counsel was at his wits’ end. “McGahn did not carry out the direction,” details the report, “deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.”
Later, when Trump asked McGahn why he had told Mueller about the order to have him fired, McGahn explained that “he had to” because their conversations weren’t protected by attorney-client privilege. This latter point is important because McGahn stood up for the idea that the White House counsel’s loyalty is to the Office of the President, not to the President himself.
Trump seemed satisfied by that explanation, but then asked, “What about those notes? Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.” McGahn replied that he is a “real lawyer” and that notes create a clear record.
In that judgment, McGahn was right – and more helpful to the President than Michael Cohen, his personal attorney and fixer, or any other of the non-notetaking lawyers who made a Trump-related appearance in the Mueller investigation.
In short, McGahn’s professionalism and commitment to legal ethics under challenging circumstances shine through in the Mueller report. When you add all that to his stunning success as architect of a winning strategy on judicial nominations — including two Supreme Court justices and a record number of circuit judges – McGahn comes out looking as the early nominee for MVP of the Trump administration.
Ilya Shapiro is director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. Follow him on Twitter @ishapiro.
Jill Filipovic: Barr mansplains away Trump’s emotions
Jill Filipovic
In a news conference so obsequious it would impress Kim Jong Un, Attorney General William Barr took great pains to flout the ethical requirements of his profession and instead behave as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, spokesman and brand manager. There is, Barr said, “substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency.” When a reporter asked about the appearance that Barr was protecting the President, “including acknowledging [Trump’s] feelings and emotions,” Barr responded, “Actually, the statements about his sincere beliefs are recognized in the report.”
Men in an emotional tailspin have “sincere beliefs.” Women who simply speak from expertise and from the heart are shrill (or, in Trump’s take on Hillary Clinton, “She can be kind of sha-riiiiill”).
Wild-eyed photos of politically powerful women inevitably illustrate articles about them on right-wing websites (and sometimes even in the mainstream press). Trump is perhaps the most emotionally unbalanced national politician in living memory, tweeting semi-literate all-caps outbursts and frothing up his followers with incoherent tirades. There is great irony in the fact that this extraordinarily emotional president is cast as acting badly because of his “beliefs,” not his uncontrollable moods.
Anger isn’t just an emotion when women express it, and feelings don’t morph into beliefs just because it’s men who are expressing them. Nor, of course, is frustration a defense to the alleged commission of a crime.
Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in Washington and the author of the book, “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.”
Julian Zelizer: Now it’s up to Congress to act
Julian Zelizer
The Mueller report is shocking. Despite the attorney general’s efforts to provide exculpatory fodder for the President’s Twitter feed, Congress should be greatly concerned about the contents.
The first section does not find that there is a criminal case to be made against the President. It shows a large number of very deliberative points of contact with officials connected to the Russian government who were interfering in the election. Trump “asked individuals affiliated with his campaign to find the deleted Clinton emails,” the report says, and that Michael Flynn “recalled that Trump made this request repeatedly, and Flynn subsequently contacted multiple people in an effort to obtain the emails.”
Of course, we must also remember that Michael Cohen said in his testimony to Congress in February, Trump’s style is also to make clear what needs to be done rather than saying it directly: Campaign officials were seeking information that would help them.
The narrative in section one is a deeply troubling look at the nature of Trump’s campaign, generating questions about how this all might have shaped his policy decisions, and what the expectations are for conducting the 2020 election campaign. Incidentally, it shows there was more than enough reason for intelligence agencies to look into what was happening.
The second section is damning. It does not exonerate him from obstruction of justice – the charge at the heart of Presidents Nixon and Clinton’s impeachment process. The Mueller team found multiple instances where Trump tried to stifle a legitimate investigation into his own conduct.
Very often the only thing that saved him were advisors who wouldn’t do what he wanted done. Combined with the public record – the President’s own words – there is also ample evidence about what was motivating him. Just because he failed to stop an investigation doesn’t mean he didn’t try to do so. In fact, it is clear he did.
Indeed, if this is a “good” report for the President, it is hard to imagine what a bad one would look like.
It turns out that much of the news we have been reading was accurate, not fake – about the Trump Tower project, about the contacts between campaign officials and individuals connected with Russia, and about the President’s efforts to fire Mueller. It seems that numerous investigations spun out of Mueller’s inquiry are very much in play.
It also turns out that the Department of Justice can’t be depended upon to handle this independently, as Attorney General William Bar demonstrated this morning with his decidedly biased interpretation of the report.
The obligation to make sense of this information falls on Congress. House Democrats will be under immense pressure now to make sense of what it all adds up to and to determine whether the President abused his power. There will be great political pressure on House Democrats to avoid doing so – after all, it is time to focus on the election – but it would be a mistake to allow the activities outlined in this report to be normalized and to see accountability fall by the wayside.
Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University
Paul Callan: There’s no case for impeachment in Mueller report, but strong evidence Russians helped elect Trump
For the last two years the operation of the American government has been largely paralyzed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump. Regardless of the spin put on the detailed findings of Mueller’s probe by the political ideologues who dominate the public discussion of the Trump administration in Congress and in the media, there is insufficient evidence in the Mueller report to support the impeachment of the President based on Mueller’s findings.
Paul Callan
Whether you love Trump or hate Trump, he has the right to finish his term. In the next election, though, the American people can render their true verdict as to his fitness to remain in office. When they render that verdict, they are likely to be reminded that the underlying facts of the Mueller Investigation released today suggest that even though there was no active criminal “collusion,” Russia may well have elected Trump.
The most worrisome aspect of Trump’s election has always been the specter of Russian collusion influencing the outcome of the extremely close 2016 presidential race. Mueller’s report states that there is insufficient evidence to establish presidential “collusion” (or what lawyers would call a criminal conspiracy) with the Russians.
While Mueller’s conclusions will be quoted in support of Mr. Trump’s “no collusion” mantras, the report reveals disturbing facts suggesting that the extremely close and controversial presidential election might have been thrown to Mr. Trump by Russian interference. Even if Trump and his campaign workers did not criminally conspire with the Russians, it remains quite possible that he is the President of the United States as a direct result of the active interference of Russian operatives in the election.
Here are 7 key lines from the Mueller report
The report identifies the Internet Research Agency (“IRA”) based in St. Petersburg, Russia and funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin and companies he controlled, as the moving force behind Russian interference in the US presidential election. Mueller describes this effort as a “… targeted operation that by early 2016 favored Trump and disparaged candidate Clinton. The IRA’s operation also included the purchase of political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities, as well as the staging of political rallies inside the United States. To organize those rallies, IRA employees posed as U.S. grassroots entities and persons and made contact with Trump supporters and Trump Campaign officials in the United States.”
The report further describes “cyber intrusions (hacking) and releases of hacked materials damaging the to the Clinton Campaign. The Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) carried out these operations.”
The movement of several thousand votes in a handful of large states would have shifted the election to Hillary Clinton. Trump’s election occurred in large part because he carried Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. His margin of victory in those states was 77,000 votes out of a total of 136 million votes cast in the election. A shift of a mere 37,501 votes would have elected Hillary Clinton president.
Mueller report unable to conclude ‘no criminal conduct occurred’ on obstruction
Simple common sense suggests that Russian operatives as outlined in the report could well have engaged in sufficient covert and overt operations to have easily moved such a miniscule percentage of the voting population to Trump. Though Mr. Mueller steers clear of analyzing the likely movement of actual votes in the election and the probable impact of Russian tampering though social media, rallies and fake news, historians of the future are unlikely to be so deferential.
Mueller’s report establishes that the fact of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf is crystal clear.
Though Mueller finds no evidence of criminal collusion by Mr Trump or his campaign, there is objectively little reason for White House celebrations. Democrats can now persuasively argue that the Russians elected Trump.
Though not a “Manchurian Candidate,” Donald Trump might more accurately be described as the “St. Petersburg Candidate.” While pundits will endlessly argue about whether the Mueller evidence supports obstruction of the justice charges against the President, the nation’s greater concern should be focused on Mueller’s focus on Russia’s obstruction of American democracy and how to block such interference in future elections.
Paul Callan is a CNN legal analyst, a former New York homicide prosecutor
Shan Wu: Why there is nothing black and white about the decision not to prosecute Trump
As we read through the 400-page redacted version of the Mueller report, we should keep in mind the theme of prosecutorial discretion. Put another way: the decision to criminally prosecute is not as black and white as we might like to think. Particularly in a case as sensitive as the Mueller probe and where a decision to indict a sitting President would raise complex issues of Constitutional law, the discretion of the prosecutors becomes critical.
Attorney General Barr–sounding like many advocates for Trump, including Trump’s private lawyers—repeatedly makes Mueller’s decision not to charge the President with obstruction sound like a scientific conclusion based on legal formulas. This is simply not true. The facts revealed in Mueller’s report easily could have been charged as crimes.
Initial takes from the report suggest numerous deeply troubling actions by President Trump that a different prosecutor and a different Justice Department might have found warranted criminal charges. Here, however, Mueller appears to have been very cognizant of Justice Department policy that a sitting President should not be indicted, and specifically references the Constitutional issues and disturbance of the President’s ability to govern that a criminal case would cause.
He also recognizes the role of Congress. This is a valid and reasonable decision to have made. But it is not a decision compelled by facts or law. It is an exercise of discretion.
Shan Wu is a former federal prosecur
Independent counsel Kenneth Starr and Attorney General William Barr may both be Republican loyalists, but they approached releasing their investigative reports with completely different objectives. Starr released an unvarnished screed directed at President Bill Clinton – designed to drive him from office. Barr held a press briefing shortly before the report was actually released to make sure President Donald Trump can stay in office.
First, the law. Starr had largely unfettered power – with no White House or Department of Justice oversight. His report was released without any advance briefings for Clinton’s lawyers, and it left no sordid detail out. It was a document that almost begged House Republicans to impeach the President. In fact, Starr specifically and in writing denied Clinton’s lawyers’ access to the report in advance.
In the aftermath of Starr’s overreach, Congress changed the independent counsel law – requiring future special counsels to report directly to the attorney general, and thus paving the way for today’s farce.
In fact, the only thing missing from Barr’s performance was the Make America Great Again hat. He acted more as the President’s defense attorney than as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. To begin with, Barr said he let the President’s personal lawyers see the redacted report on multiple occasions, allowing Barr and the White House to coordinate on their basic legal talking points. And at his press briefing, he went one step further – defending Trump’s actions and saying he was motivated “by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.”
But Barr didn’t stop there. While withholding the report from Congress, the media and the American public, he subjected us to a four-page summary of his own conclusions, including his personal sympathy for what the President has had to endure.
While Starr’s release delivered a political punch to Clinton, he stuck to the reporting of the facts, as he gathered them. Barr took a different approach – he cherry picked information from the report to report conclusions that the report itself does not appear to entirely support, such as the complex issue of obstruction (for which Mueller did not draw a conclusion).
Although Starr’s rollout was painful to go through, in and of itself, it was fair. Barr’s performance, by contrast, is an international embarrassment that will permanently stain our democracy.
So, where does that leave us? While Starr’s release hurt the President, it also answered all the outstanding questions about his investigation. Barr, on the other hand, may have helped Trump in the short term – but may have buried him down the road. After the Starr report was released, reporters had no further investigative questions, leaving only political ones. Barr, however, has created as many questions as the report answers.
Here’s one thing to watch: On the day Starr released his report, Clinton’s approval rating was at 63%. Shortly after, when the House voted on his impeachment, Clinton’s rating soared to 73%. It’s hard to see Trump’s ratings jumping significantly after Thursday’s release, given that questions will linger about how political Barr has become.
Just as the special counsel regulations yielded unintended consequences on Thursday, I think the political power play by Barr may just yield some unintended consequences of its own.
Joe Lockhart, White House press secretary from 1998-2000
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report is nearly 400 pages long. As a real-world reference point, the Modern Classics version of “To Kill a Mockingbird” runs 384 pages. Even if Attorney General William Barr makes so many color-coded redactions to Mueller’s report that it looks like a pack of Skittles exploded, do not expect a standard law enforcement investigative recap. We are about to get hit with a novel-length tome.
Strategies abound for how best to read the report. Here’s my suggested first move: use the “find” function. Hit control-F and plug in these five keywords to get a quick sense of how Mueller addresses the most pressing – and mysterious – issues raised during his investigation.
Pay attention to this footnote in Barr’s letter
Less detailed attention is being paid to Barr’s description of the results of the special counsel’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian interference in the 2016 election. This includes attempts by the Russian Internet Research Agency “to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord,” as well as “the Russian government’s efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information” to influence the election. Yet, hiding in plain sight is a footnote in which Barr explains that he and Mueller are using a definition of coordination that requires proof of an agreement, which is contrary to the law and Federal Election Commission regulations and, more importantly, has been rejected by the Supreme Court. It is also a definition with which Americans should not feel comfortable.
Larry Noble is the former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission (1987-2000).
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