Update: so no strangers around here get the wrong idea: Trump should be in the Supermax with Barack Obama for genocide in Yemen. Neither I nor the Institute have any partisan favor for or even against him. Just the same bias against all presidents, especially in wartime. But truth matters, etc.
———————–
The Mueller Report is here.
The CIA and FBI swung at the king and missed. Now what?
From the very beginning they’re lying, claiming the whole thing began when the Australian ambassador Alexander Downer claimed that Papadopoulos was running his mouth about Russia and emails, which we already know is not true.
Page 1-2: Claims Russia did the hacks, claims Trump campaign expected to benefit from the leaks, but “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
The fact that they made this a criminal investigation in search of a crime and let it drag on for two years before clearing the elected president of High Treason is alone proof of an illegal FBI plot against Trump as presidential candidate, president-elect and president of the United States. If the counter-reaction to this putsch attempt is not as severe as the whole fake scandal in the first place, then it’ll be a damn shame. The news though is that the primary victim happens to be the most powerful man in the world right now, so I guess we’ll see what happens.
They say they substituted “coordination” for “collusion” as their deliberately overly broad term to describe essentially any activity, rather than only focusing on that which could be criminally prosecutable conspiracy. So don’t gimme any shit about how, “Oh well it’s only about what they can prosecute, not all of what they know,” like we’ve been hearing the last few weeks.
By page 10 it’s clear that not Papadopoulos, Page, Sessions, Flynn, Kushner, Trump Jr. or any other American ever came anywhere near “colluding” with the Russians. The whole obvious hoax is now proven to be so.
Shoot, I lost it, but it’s in here somewhere that Papadopoulos was also investigated for representing Israel without registering, though that seems to have been a setup too. [Update: I was thinking only of the Israeli who gave him a suspicious stack of money that he dropped off with a lawyer, sensing a set-up. But a friend tells me that toward the end of his interview with Michael Tracey, it is really a reference to him working with Douglas Feith at Hudson, the former deputy secretary of defense for policy 2001-2005, a man who Col. Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, said — distinguishing him from the rest of the neocons in the first W. Bush term (other than Wurmser) — was an “agent of influence” for the Israeli government. It’s also a fact that he’s been investigated by the FBI for passing secrets to Israel and to Iranian agent and neocon manipulator Ahmed Chalabi. So, okay. Looking forward to that part of it. Still only halfway through as of this update.]
Now, on to the claims of the Internet Research Agency “attack on our democracy(!)” by way of Facebook and Twitter.
“Ties.” This is the holy grail MUELLER REPORT. “Widely reported ties.”
Gareth Porter already completely debunked the idea that the INR program was anything but business or that it affected the election at all.
The following sloppy bullshit was debunked by the Italian journalist, Stefania Maurizi. The timing was a coincidence. They’d finally finished preparations is all.
Update: later on they seem to contradict themselves and concede the point:
Page 5. Pretending that Mifsud was “connected” to Russia, when it’s already clear that that’s bullshit.
Page 12, throwing a bone to the kooks with this one:
This “fewer than every negative proved” claim will surely mean ongoing truthery from Maddow and Schiff and the boys starting later today if I’m not already late.
So far at least don’t even try to prove the INR was working on behalf of the Russian state. Then they hit us with this giant pile of nothing:
August 2017? Am I supposed to be impressed by this garbage? There were trillions of tweets and Facebook posts — uh, actually during the election season. Assuming the validity of Mueller’s claims here, that still doesn’t amount to a damn thing.
Is the whole report like this? Yeesh.
Another admission that they cannot prove IRA worked for Putin’s government at all. It would be completely unsurprising if there was something to it but instead they just link to the New York Times.
Sans the massive begged question about Russian government involvement and motivations regarding actually helping to accomplish the election of Donald Trump, much less proving that it actually had that effect, the entire IRA section could simply be describing a campaign to make money. Trump voters click on dumb shit more. Don’t they? Or is Occum’s Razor now the equivalent of assuming too much?
Wow. Facebook posts saying what American partisans already think “may have reached” 126 million people. But “United Muslims of America” and “Don’t Shoot Us” sure don’t sound like pro-Trump groups to me. Oh, but see, that’s how they getcha is by doing incoherent, contradictory shit that makes no sense!
If this was a Russian govt. op to elect Trump, they sure weren’t trying very hard.
I always hate the use of that term “gaslighting” — it makes adults sound helpless and stupid and un-responsible for their own stupidity. So I guess we’ll have to call this “attempted gaslighting”:
Do I have to spell this out? This means that the whole story that IRA intended to affect the election at all is obvious stupid bullshit. Thanks.
Ah. Do I really have to read this whole thing?
Then: assertions that GRU did the hacks, references back to previous evidence-less indictment. It is possible that this part is true. I’m too ignorant to judge the Bill Binney explanation myself. So I hold open the possibility. But here they just want to redact all this stuff in the name of “Investigative Techniques” being revealed. And we’re just supposed to use our imaginations to conclude that there must be some proof behind the blackout and it’s just too bad they can’t show us. But of course they can. Could. Go ahead. Burn the source. Fuck it. This is kinda important, right? If it’s not important enough for them to be straight with us all about it, so why should we believe any of their claims at all?
And no, dummy, that doesn’t count for their _lack of a claim_ against Trump that they were clearly seeking. They had to finally put up or shut up about that so they dropped it because it was bullshit. Two years later.
…. Claims that GRU was dcleaks and Guccifer 2.0. Again, no evidence offered.
This sounds reasonable but note that they are admitting they cannot prove who these people are if they have to reach for a “tends to indicate” on this point. I thought we already KNEW it was the GRU behind both personaes? So what in the dang heck then Bobby?
(Daniel Lazare throws cold water on the whole “Guccifer 2.0 gave all the stuff to Assange” narrative. Pesky timelines.)
Heh. Wishful thinking on the liberals in Trump years. Also, what does this have to do with anything?
So dcleaks and Guccifer 2 are both the GRU but the former is easy and comes to Assange, but Guccifer was playing hard to get and Assange had to go and pester him/them about giving him stuff since he had so much more prominence? That’s kinda funny don’t you think?
Oh. Huh? What? The crux of the matter? Prove it? Well. Yeah. I mean, I could tell you. But then I’d have to kill you.
Again, possible, sure, but unproven. And is it not a little weird that plain old fishing emails were the Russian military computer spies’ most effective angle of attack? Highly sophisticated and yet so very simple.
I think Mueller is saying he doesn’t know definitively that GRU stole DNC emails. Note what he does know: “Stolen documents included the DNC’s opposition research into candidate Trump.” But as for emails: GRU “officers *appear* to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments.” pic.twitter.com/ts1sSiScWE
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 18, 2019
Mueller asserts that the GRU hacked DNC/Podesta, but he doesn’t establish a chain of custody whereby the hacked materials were transferred to WikiLeaks. In fact, he explicitly leaves open the possibility that a non-state actor (as Assange always claimed) transferred the materials pic.twitter.com/gBdCFmXnRw
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 21, 2019
Jeez. Too bad Julian Assange is locked up away from the internet today. Sad coincidence I guess. (Yes they took his internet away months ago, but he’s in jail now.)
Claims of hacks of state offices, parties and officials, again no evidence provided, references to other evidence-less claims by the FBI and DHS. Safe to assume someone just chanted Fancy Bear and that would be enough to satisfy this kangaroo court.
Nothing in here about Crowdstrike and the lack of investigation of the DNC server? Iron Felix and all that?
Uh-huh. And this was two days before you just said dcleaks ever tried to contact Assange. Okay.
And a month before the big upload?
As Caitlin Johnstone points out here, Mueller does not accuse Assange of knowingly working with the Russians, only that he worked with Guccifer 2.0 who the feds claim was a covert front for the Russians. The report does not allege that Assange knew or should have know that. (Assuming the part about Guccifer is even true, which remains just an unproven claim by the government.)
Sidebar: NYT reads faster than me. As always worst case interpretations only allowed. In this case:
The report detailed dramatic conflicts within the White House. When Mr. Trump learned of Mr. Mueller’s appointment, he slumped in his chair and said: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”
That doesn’t mean anything. They leave it there like we must interpret that as an admission of guilt, as him facing the certain doom of being found out for his crimes. But the whole rest of the story negates that in every way.
Try being “charitable” for one second and the simpler explanation is clearly that he’s going to be starting his presidency under the cloud of suspicion of a criminal investigation for what amounts to at least-lower case-t treason, in the common understanding anyway, even though he knew he didn’t do it.
This of course assumes the story that he even ever said that is true at all, which is a huge assumption for argument’s sake only.
They go on about Trump being angry at Sessions for recusing himself and allowing Mueller to be appointed. And again, the obvious reason why was because he knew he was innocent of the charges and yet his own appointee was siding with the FBI’s trumped up putsch against him. Of course.
Media, liberals, CIA, FBI making me defend a sitting president. It’s disgusting. Unforgivable.
Update: I’m still not at that part, but another story has more, and it’s just like I said:
“Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency,” Trump said, according to the report.
“It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
Back to the report. Only barely 1/8 into yet…
Trump-Cohen conversations redacted, innocence presumed.
pp. 57-59 Corsi information; goes nowhere… Meant nothing, plus “no corroboration.” Thanks guys.
Again with the debunked claim that the Podesta release was timed to the Access Hollywood tape. And what difference would that make anyway? Without unproven claims and begged questions: nothing.
Then a strange story about a guy(?) sent Wikileaks warning and a pw for a site claiming that Trump was tied to Russia (Jeez, not by way of Wikileaks?) and then Assange outed the site to Trump Jr. who seemed to have no idea what ties to Russia the guy could be talking about.
P. 61: Yes Trump was asking around about Hillary’s still-missing 30,000 emails, but no, this didn’t have a thing to do with Russia, his crack about it at that speech notwithstanding, Mueller decided. Yeah, since that was obviously a joke at her expense, rather than a secret message to his Commie KGB handlers who hadn’t thought of that yet, or had they now again or what?
P. 61: A Florida huckster tried to pawn fake Hillary claims off on Stone for a price. Stone told him no and left. Mueller found no tie between the huckster and the big Russian attack on our democracy which was like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and Kristallnacht.
p. 62: Finally evidence Saddam was going to give poison gas to Osama. I just knew it!
63- Peter Smith a GOP activist(?) type, doesn’t seem like a big player, went hunting for the missing 30,000. No evidence of Russia ties, though word of possible attempt to see if Russians had them. Even if so, no evidence that was at Trump request or indication of “collusion” or “coordination,” just opposition research. No FSB or GRU in sight.
Smith’s computer seemed to have Podesta attachments two days early, however this was debunked by the Mueller investigators. Just a left over date in the metadata from when Wikileaks prepared them. What would that mean anyway, if he’d gotten them a little early? Next.
Smith supposedly claimed to be in contact with Russian hackers. “The investigation did not identify evidence that such meetings occurred.” Next.
A Dem Senate staffer also tried to find the missing 30,000. She tried to get Eric Prince to help her. She also did not succeed.
Sorry I’m going so slow. Here’s some Greenwald.
Oh, I had read past this I guess, or not gotten to it yet. Greenwald:
Mueller said they were “brief, public and nonsubstantive.” Concerning the much-hyped change to GOP platform regarding Ukraine, Mueller wrote that the “evidence does not establish that one campaign official’s efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican platform was undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia,” and further noted that such a change was consistent with Trump’s publicly stated foreign policy view (one shared by Obama) to avoid provoking gratuitous conflict with the Kremlin over arming Ukrainians.
Okay. IV: Russia and the Trump team:
p 67 They investigated Trump’s dealings on the Moscow tower project going back to at least 2013. They quote Trump associates Sater and Cohen daydreaming about Putin himself at some Trump tower ceremony at length… to what end? Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. Cohen talked to a Russian businesslady about setting up a meeting, but he insisted it would have to be an official invite to the campaign. Then nothing happened.
Since Cohen, ahem, had no connections to the Russian government to contact, he emailed the Kremlin’s press secretary’s website’s info@.ru.etc. link. Next.
Cohen finally reached a lady the PR office. They talked about the building. It went nowhere.
It goes on like this for a while. Cohen and Sater have no Russian connections at all so they accomplished nothing.
They continue searching for anyone who knows anyone with any influence over there. Baby Jesus help me, I’m still only 1/8 of the way through with this. Yall should probably just read that Greenwald link and call it a night.
Okay, on to Papadopoulos: Starts with standard story Misfud came back to UK from Russia! and then told Papadopoulos that he had some stash! Then Papadopoulos said that to the Australian guy. Mueller looked for evidence Papadopoulos had told anyone at the campaign about this fake garbage obvious set up. No. Then, guess what? Papadopoulos and Misfud tried — did they — to arrange a meeting with “the Russian government.”
“That meeting never came to pass.”
Misfud introduced him to a lady who was supposedly a former student of his. She was not Putin’s niece. Papadopoulos thought maybe she’d arrange a meeting between him and the Russ ambassador to the UK. But that didn’t happen.
He sent a message to the campaign co-chair saying hey I think I have a connection and can set up a high level meeting — this all would be perfectly legitimate if it had actually gone anywhere anyway — and then the campaign co-chair said sounds good, since we don’t have any other established communications going on right now or anything like that, but let’s wait till we meet with UK, France, Germany, our great allies first.
Again, wholly exculpatory. Next.
(Also, is anyone is Misfud’s family going to sue over the name of this fine MI-6 agent who innocently framed-up Papadopoulos for humanitarians reasons being falsely dragged through the mud here as a Russian traitor to the UK himself? They’ve got some mean libel laws over there, you know. He knew the deal when he signed up, I guess.)
So then Papadopoulos brought this up at the photographed meeting with Trump and Sessions, and, since they did not have any other Russian connections to exploit on the matter, sounded positive about the possibility of a future meeting with Putin or maybe they didn’t, depending on whose testimony you believe, apparently.
More about further attempts by Papadopoulos to arrange a meeting through Misfud and not-Putin’s niece. Whatever happened to the emails?
(Thank God I quit Twitter. But according to Michael Tracey, the Cargo Cult remains in full force over there. Lack of facts never stopped them before.)
(Tracey’s 2 hour interview of Papadopoulos here.)
Okay, finally on page 89 Misfud claimed to know Russ had some emails. Later Popadopoulos told someone in the campaign he’d heard so. His “Russia-related communications with campaign officials continued”! He was trying to set up a meeting that never happened by passing on paraphrased invitations to meet from whom? They don’t say. Russia! Again this puts the lie to the idea that there were any real lines of “collusion” or “cooperation” between the campaign and the Russians at all. There is no indication that the Mueller team even believed that somehow obtaining those supposed Hillary emails was the purpose of his mission at all. That came up way later, and is not implied in all the writing about his further attempts to establish contact between the two parties, even at the part where he’s offering to go himself and off the record if the campaign preferred it (this was supposedly to Lewandowski on his last day anyway).
No meetings took place. Papadopoulos was fired.
Papadopoulos met with a guy name Millian who said he represented some Russian voters in New York. After that nothing happened. They met a couple more times, making no deals.
And that’s the end of the Papdopoulos section.
Carter Page: — Lemme guess, he won a 19% ownership stake in a Russian state-owned oil concern as his commission for helping to get some sanctions lifted! Right? No? Oh.
Says Russian spies had approached him for years, so not related to Trump campaign action in the first place, and “the investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”
Carter Page helped write some speeches. One of which was for the centrist, Nixon-founded, Center for the National Interest which publishes The National Interest foreign policy website (not to be confused with Phil Giraldi’s group, the Council for the National Interest).
End Page section already. The CIA and FBI pretended to believe the Steele Dossier’s claims about Page to get their FISA warrant to tap the whole damn campaign. Then they tell us nevermind.
As David Stockman likes to point out, if the feds were really worried about Carter Page they could/should have gone straight to Trump to warn him that this guy was hanging around the edges of his campaign. That they did not is proof right there the whole thing was a set up to get Trump, not protect the U.S. from “Russia,” whoever that is.
The FBI had their informant Stefan Halper on the case from early on — maybe long before Misfud met Papadopoulos. Was he not reporting back to them that Papadopoulos and Page were nobodies with no power and no connections? Was he reporting the opposite? What did Comey know and when did he know it about the fact that he had his men lie to the FISA judges about his need to pursue this further? Halper’s name is not in the document.
Here Mueller makes a big deal about Kushner approaching the head of CNI in order to “interact about Russian issues” and get advice like: form an advisory group.
Then CNI hosted Trump’s speech, the one where he was introduced by OG Straussian neocon, DPG ’92 co-author, Hamid Karzai-chooser, former ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, current head negotiator with the Taliban (bad guy; very centrist, not a Russian traitor; just like the “Soviet-born(!)” leader of CNI, Simes.)
They invited the Russian ambassador to the speech. You know, just how like if you were not begging the question and assuming Trump’s treachery, would be the perfectly wonderful and respectable and forward-looking for the betterment of all of mankind-type thing of a thing to do. Handshakes went down. It was obvious to Simes that Trump was meeting the Russian ambassador for the first time. No plots that Mueller could find. After two years of waiting to tell us he found nothing.
…Okay. Then what happened?
Well Sessions may have sat next to Kislyak at a dinner but no one remembers seeing that happen. But it was on a chart. And “Kislyak also does not appear in any of the photos from the event that the office obtained.” Next.
Sessions met with Khalilzad. Neither party represented Russia at the meeting, evidently.
Simes recalls that he instigated all Russia conversations with Kushner and that Kushner never asked him to set up a back channel of any kind. He also advised Kushner to back off Russia issues for now since the fake news was in the press and so heat was on. Again, totally exculpatory….
And it’s a complete indictment of the FBI putsch at play here. From the very beginning they were undermining real chances for a “reset,” with Russia. But what patriot could wish to pursue such treason in the first place?
p.108 footnote 651: Some Russian banker claimed to have a message from Putin. Kushner instructed Manafort and Gates to “pass” since “A lot of people come claiming to carry messages. Very few are able to verify. For now I think we decline such meetings.” Again this implies that there is no ongoing relationship and the Trump group is in no hurry to establish one.
p. 109 Simes, from CNI, not a Russian agent, tells Kushner he has dirt on Bill Clinton’s Russia corruption from the 90s that he learned from the CIA —Redacted for privacy— Kusher says, big deal, “old news.” I like this for making the blood-soaked monster Bill Clinton look bad, but why is this even in here? Because Simes was born in the USSR? Chrissakes.
End Sessions/Simes/CNI part. What’d we learn? Nothing happened.
Oh wow, now the big Trump Tower meeting that we’ve known for many months, if not more than a year, that Kushner texted his aid to call him so he could leave since it was nothing. Can’t wait to find out how much nothing really went down there that day! Tell me more about the Crown Prosecutor and his role in the election!
Okay so the son of a real estate developer hired an entertainment lawyer to offer incriminating evidence against Hillary from the Russian Crown Prosecutor — that does not exist, and hasn’t since the Reds took over in 1917. Jr. took the bait for the meeting, but there was nothing to it. There is no evidence Trump knew of the meeting. Cohen, contrary to news claims — Greenwald points the finger at Carl Bernstein on this one, for shame — did not testify that he knew Trump knew.
At the meeting, whatshername the Russian lady made claims about not emails but Hillary and other Democrats making money off of some undefined illegal scheme. She provided no evidence then immediately turned to the Magnitsky act. They said don’t call us, we’ll call you and left. Such high treason.
Even if you believed the worst bullshit about that story it still never amounted to more than attempted opposition-data collection, not collusion, not cooperation, not conspiracy, not a damn thing.
[The Mueller report I want to read is the one where he fesses up to his scores of FBI frame-up jobs of worthless idiots who never posed a terrorist threat in a million years but took his narcs’ money to say they loved Osama so Bush could have his Orange Alerts and scare your momma into supporting Iraq War II. But I guess that’ll have to read Trevor Aaronson in the meantime on that.]
Anyways…
p 116 footnote 713 Mueller takes special care to debunk Phillip Bump in the Post for implying that Trump changed the topic of an upcoming speech from Hillary to national security after the meeting, since it was the Pulse massacre that changed it, and he went on to trash Hillary as planned in another speech soon after.
Wacka, wacka, wacka …
He texted two different aides to call him to give him an excuse to leave.
One may get the idea that the author of this part of the report at least, is starting to identify with his victims.
Here’s another important part of this big stinking supposed conspiracy shot to hell:
Okay, on to the GOP arm Ukraine platform change fake story which has been long debunked but anyway:
It was stopping a proposed change demanding arms rather than rolling anything back, it was J.D. Gordon, a campaign advisor who held it back since he figured it was against Trump’s position. “The investigation did not establish that Gordon spoke to or was directed by the candidate [OR RUSSIA] to make that proposal.”
Gordon and Sessions gave speeches. Kislyak was there. More exculpatory lack of conspiring broke out:
And better:
Kislyak invited Gordon for tea. He said no thanks.
Kislyak stopped by Sessions’s office. Whoever doubted Sessions’s innocence on this? It was always obviously regular business:
Manafort polling data. Got nothing:
So Manafort’s guy Gates says:
In other words, no KGB plot here either.
In August 2016, Kilimnik, “Russian-tied,” the Ukrainian former employee of John McCain at the International Republican Institute, tried to convince Manafort to talk to Trump about a peace plan for eastern Ukraine that would have recognized more influence for Russia there. No exchange. No offer. Just, “Hey we should do this with no commitment by Manafort at all. Okay….
Then, Manafort briefed Kilimnik on his strategy for the campaign. Then they talked about how some Ukrainians owed him some money. No collusion. No conspiracy. Just business among political gangster types as usual.
As Trump was sworn in Kilimnik is still bringing up the peace plan. Manafort evidently has no leverage with Trump at this point anyway. They make it sound nefarious, or at least redundant and annoying, but still it seems to just amount to interested parties on both sides just seeking a reset. It might look bad to a Washington Post reporter who assumes all her own conclusions about the big bad Russiagate plot it’s obviously a part of. But without that, it’s nothing. (The plan, to make the Donbass region an “autonomous” zone within Ukraine, with their formerly elected leader Yanukovich as their first PM seems reasonable, regardless of its origin. Since, you know, Obama’s Nazis have made it impossible for them to really rejoin the union under Kiev, while Russia has _already turned down_ the East’s request to join the Russian Federation. But anyway.)
And there, see, Manafort didn’t even bring it up to Trump, and Kilimnik kept bringing it up, directly to the Department of State for a year and a half after Trump took office. So, even in Mueller’s debunking they make it all sound like maybe it’s some attempted cloak and dagger stuff, but nope, just lobbying, for peace.
I was prepared to find that there was some kind of something with Kilimnik and Deripaska here but no. No Putin. No election interference. No deal of any kind.
Post-Election, Transition Period Contacts:
Oh my God! I mean, Oh.
They had _no preexisting contacts._ Struggled to connect. Oy.
Here’s your giant treason plot you retards. Kushner needed to verify a congratulations note from Putin, but to authenticate it he needed to contact the ambassador. You know, good old Ambassador Whatshisname. I bet that one dude knows it.
Putin complains to banker friend — from the Alpha bank, the one that was supposedly part of this treason all along — that he has no contact with the Trump team.
A Russian named Dimitriev asked George Nader to introduce him to Trump people. It didn’t happen.
So notorious Blackwater/Xe/Academi mercenary leader Erik Prince shows up.
The Russian Dimitriev asks Nader to arrange contact due to the “need for reconciliation between the United States and Russia.” He comes to New York, is not introduced to anyone on the Trump team.
Prince and Nader and Dimitriev in the Seychelles.
Just before the inauguration Nader convinces Prince to meet Dimitriev in the Seychelles. Looks like Prince may have had the chance to discuss it with Bannon or other Trumpians, but no proof of that. Bannon denied it.
So they meet.
You don’t say, huh?
Ruskie thought the Blackwater thug was a nobody and the meeting a waste of time.
Prince briefs Bannon: This Dimitriev guy is connected, says he was interested in “improving relations” between the U.S. and Russia — get it?! Improving. Major treason here. No wonder the Marshall of the Supreme Court was going to have Bannon executed for treason.
Seriously though:
Bannon didn’t care at all vs Bannon says he doesn’t remember discussing it at all and oh well because there’s no proof either and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference anyway. Unless you’re begging the question and just dying to believe meeting with Russians to improve relations is a commie plot to attack your stupid democracy, then it’s nothing, and again, never went anywhere anyway.
Oh no. You don’t say. Turns out Kislyak ain’t so influential in the first place after all.
Kushner asks the Russian ambassador if they can use the secure line at the Russian embassy to communicate with Moscow, since they have no other means of secure communication. Kislyak “quickly rejected the idea.”
After that Kushner quit talking to him since he decided Kislyak didn’t have much influence in the first place. So then Kislyak arranged for him to talk to a banker named Gorkov. Kushner says their meeting was just about politics. Gorkov’s company says it was about business. Seems plausible Kushner would have pushed them for some cash, but it remains unproven. This is also way late in the game and only goes to show, again, the lack of any previous arrangements along these lines.
So Aven, the guy from Alpha Bank, tries to get this guy Richard Burt, a former ambassador to arrange contact since they don’t have any. Burt goes to Simes at CNI. He says no, there’s too much media spin over the currently non-existent relationship and he doesn’t want to be seen as a go between type at all.
Every one of these sections ends with some boring old let-down.
Now finally on to Carter Page. Wasn’t his Russia espionage the basis for the FISA warrant and all this investigation in the first place? Oh well, nevermind yall. Not sorry.
Mueller claims that Kilimnik claims that Page claimed in December 2016 to speak for Trump during a trip to Moscow. Kilimnik evidently didn’t believe this was so and emailed Manafort, telling on him.
At a December 9th dinner Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich met Page at a dinner and said something about helping start some “dialogue” between “the United States and Russia,” and possibly future “cooperation” between the two national governments of these countries. Cue scary music.
Perhaps Russia truthers here would want to say, yeah but see, think about what terrible things that might mean! But this is the report. If there was anything beyond the face value talk of getting along a bit better it would be in here. But they aren’t. That’s it.
The implications aren’t vast. They aren’t anything at all.
Okay, now Michael Flynn (who belongs in prison for war crimes in Afghanistan, but who’s counting?):
Same story we already know: In December 2016, Flynn asked Kislyak not to react to Obama’s new sanctions since they were being inaugurated into power in another month. He said alright then. So far so good. This is the designated national security adviser to the president-elect. This is fine. It also completely negates the idea that the Russians were controlling, blackmailing, extorting or even influencing the Trump team at all. Otherwise the call would have been from Kislyak to Flynn telling him the new sanctions better not get enforced next month. But it wasn’t.
Kislyak called Flynn but Flynn didn’t call him back right away. First he called his buddy/co-author/transition team member/certifiable insane neocon lunatic Michael Ledeen and then KT McFarland at Mar-a-Lago. The consensus was that Flynn should tell Kislyak to withhold a reaction since it would only make matters worse. So that’s what he did. Bannon, Preibus knew beforehand. Later McFarland briefed Trump and others and that commie rat traitor Siberian Candidate Trump:
Then the story of Flynn asking Kislyak to have Russia veto or delay the Egyptian UNSC resolution condemning the expansion of Israeli Jewish-only colonies on the Palestinians’ West Bank. But it was Trump’s call to al Sisi that got the vote postponed.
Then other nations reintroduced the resolution. Flynn again worked on Kislyak who told him no. Russia voted for the resolution.
Isn’t it an interesting thing that there’s nothing in here about what Israeli officials were speaking to which Trump campaign and transition team types about this question? That wouldn’t count as meddling with the sitting government’s foreign policy or anything because Israel can do whatever they want.
They promise more on Flynn later.
End Section:
Next section:
“Did not involve the commission of a federal crime” seems to apply to everything above. If there’s campaign finance related things going on that they, what?, know about but cannot prove, then they haven’t mentioned it until now. Update: p. 180. Oh this is a reference to the Trump Tower meeting where they did not in fact get any dirt on Hillary Clinton from the nobody losers they met with. Campaign finance violation? Why not call it mail fraud?
But on the rest: i.e. “collusion” i.e. whether or not the President is a guilty compromised traitor for the Kremlin — or whether anyone having anything to do with his campaign either is or was — the answer is a clear “No, stupid. What are you, stupid?”
Now back to the IRA trolls. Mueller claims some of them contacted Trump people but has not yet demonstrated that. Then he says:
Not guilty. “Did not identify evidence.” Very not guilty.
A man who had nothing at all to do with the campaign was convicted of helping the IRA trolls use U.S. bank accounts.
Again they reiterate claims from the previous Netyksho indicment, claiming the GRU was behind the DNC, DCCC and Podesta hacks. Claims GRU source for Wikileaks’ Podesta emails.
A few pages redacted — I bet that’s where the big treasonous plot must be!
But no. Mueller: In case we forgot to mention that the entire collusion narrative was all a big stupid hoax enough times to get it through your thick skulls:
Big accomplishment. A couple of nobodies under arrest for resisting arrest.
Then they say hey “collusion” really isn’t in the law, however “conspiracy” means the same thing so we looked at that. The investigation “did not establish” that any such thing took place.
Okay. Next.
Ukraine, not Russia. And nothing to do with Trump.
Gen. Flynn repping for Erdogan, not Putin.
In terms of Russia, they couldn’t even mount a FARA case against a single one of these clowns. They just didn’t have one. It just wasn’t true.
Papadopoulos was investigated for acting as an agent of Israel. As noted above, this was not just over the obvious frame-up of the Israeli handing him a pile of cash, referred to in his book and interview with Michael Tracey, but as he explained later in that same interview, seemed to have more to do with his work for Douglas Feith at the Hudson Institute. Ain’t that something? No charges.
This seems like just about a smear. After climbing all the way down from conspiracy to conspire with the Commies, now we get the lousy nothing Trump Tower meeting was criminal in what way? — a campaign finance violation? A “thing of value” — non-existent dirt from the non-existent “Crown Prosecutor” had no value and the meeting was just a bust. And Mueller says right there that he can’t prove what they did was criminal at all. (There were some false stories in the press about a “donation” being arranged at this meeting, but it’s already debunked and is not mentioned is this report.) But, like that Johnstone guy Greenwald fought with on D-Now the other day, we’re supposed to all just say, “Aha! See?! A campaign finance violation without any money really means ‘collusion,’ and ‘evidence was not sufficient’ merely means that WE ALL KNOW IT’S TRUE HE’S GUILTY ANYWAY, DUH!”: total vindication for the crazy people.
In other words, yes that’s bullshit because then we might have to prosecute the Democrats too.
Another major concession to reality: And funny:
Obstruction:
Here Papadopoulos’s lies are detailed. He started talking with Misfud after he joined the campaign, not before like he said. Well he was off by a few days. They say it was a lie. Maybe it was.
He supposedly lied about talking to “Putin’s niece” who wasn’t, Polonskaya too.
They say they talked to Misfud at a D.C. hotel and that Papa’s BS timetable messed up their interview of Misfud. They claim to be suspicious of Misfud’s explanations and omissions. So that’s why they charged Papadopoulos with lying. No indication here that they sought any further contact with this mystery man who supposedly had so much to do with the beginning of this whole story.
Flynn:
Flynn should have been more truthful about his talks with Kislyak, where the worst things he did was fail in his attempts to pressure Russia for Israel. Cough.
Cohen:
He lied about the timing of some Trump Tower things that never came anywhere near compromising Trump in a plot with the Russian state.
Sessions: didn’t lie. His meetings with the Russian ambassador had nothing to do with Trump campaign stuff. So he was not charged with anything.
So that’s the end of Volume I. There was no crime for Trump to obstruct an investigation into.
In the meantime, here’s Peter Van Buren on the obstruction bs. But he links to this summary of the 10 supposed possible instances listed here, if you want the Cliff’s Notes.
No specific mention of the Steele Dossier at all so far, though some of its claims are debunked. (Love this NYT story: the Steele Dossier was a Russian Plot too! No wonder it was all bullshit! They were trying to trick us into believing things that weren’t true! The bastards almost succeeded too.)
Volume II:
They say “Well, we know we couldn’t indict a sitting president but since he sure as hell could be indicted later, we went ahead and did a full investigation on his ass,” so don’t gimme no Dem nonsense about how they couldn’t investigate all they wanted to whatever conclusion they wanted, including recommending impeachment and/or later indictment and prosecution.
Trump tells Comey “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, letting Flynn go. He’s a good guy.” Well “see your way clear to” before the primary verb sure sounds like he’s saying under the rules, not please do something illegal. For all we know Trump knew nothing about Flynn’s working for the Turks or any side accusation here. So pressure yes, to break the law, no. Next.
Trump wanted Sessions to not recuse himself from the investigation. He wanted an attorney general who would protect him. But that’s not in quotes. (Update: later it is.) Even if it was, the implication obviously is protect him from this giant fake FBI persecution campaign against him based on cooked up garbage. Not protect him from the truth. That’s only the case if you assume your conclusion and you’re wrong because you’re stupid and believe what the CIA and FBI claim about people.
Then, Comey,
Get it? Assume his guilt and this is further guilt. But if you presume the innocence of the accused, then this is an innocent man asking men who he knows know he’s innocent to goddamn say so to the American people. (He was innocent. See Volume I above.) The director of the FBI told him he was not under investigation but refused to do so publicly, even when asked by Congress. Firing him over it was a mistake, since it led to an obstruction investigation where there wasn’t one before, but it was clearly not criminal. This scandal is boring and stupid.
Very obstructiony-like right? More like that:
Trump told Sessions to resign. He did. Trump didn’t accept it.
Trump told his guy White House Council McGahn to fire Mueller. Which he did have the power to do. McGahn didn’t do it. It’s implied that he threatened to resign first. (Update: no, they explain later that he prepared to but then Trump dropped it.)
Trump asked his old campaign manager Lewandowski to pass a message to Sessions telling him to say that Trump had done nothing wrong and that the investigation should now be about future election security. Lewandowski didn’t do it.
Trump supposedly deleted a line from a press statement by Jr. admitting that the Trump Tower meeting was with someone who had “information helpful to the campaign.” His public statement.
Trump tried again to get Sessions to “unrecuse.”
When the McGahn story above leaked Trump tried to make him deny it.
Trump praised Manafort and Flynn who did not implicate him in anything. Not that they had anything. (See Volume I above.)
Trump called Cohen a rat after he started working for Mueller. This one sounds the worst out of all of them, tweeting that maybe Cohen’s family would have some legal problems and things. Still where’s the corrupt intent when there was no plot for Cohen to snitch about and Trump of course knew that?
Let’s have an understatement contest. You go ahead first:
This is just bullshit. You’re either charged or not. True billed or no billed. “We ain’t gots nuthin’ really but you know maybe if he wasn’t president we could keep looking until we found something.” After all this. What a joke:
Then they explain obstruction law. Intent matters. They have none because there was no underlying crime.
Then they rehash every unproven claim against Trump in the media being leveled at the times of the election. Not that they’re vouching for these claims, you understand, and it’s certainly not to debunk them, but just so you remember the context of the times. Fun. And they rehash all the Flynn Kislyak stuff again…
So after Flynn told Pence and others that he didn’t discuss Kislyak the FBI pretended to believe that now Flynn was totally pnwed by the Russians since they knew otherwise too. Just presume that Flynn would now turn his every act over to their control over this supposed compromising fact.
Mr. Flynn you don’t want us to tell that you had asked us to not retaliate over Obama’s sanctions when you were the designated national security adviser to the president-elect of the United States. You know, because of the Logan Act or something. Now give us the codes!
So see they had to move to protect the republic!
The Logan Act reference is another tell. They knew they were full of shit and taking the opportunity to reach for excuses to act here. The Logan Act, forbidding private Americans making U.S. government foreign policy, has never been successfully prosecuted in U.S. history. It obviously could not apply here. Trump had won the election. It was Flynn’s right and obligation to begin talking to the Russians and everybody else about the near term future. Again, only if you beg the question and use all the other parts of your stupid theory to make each other seem true does this add up to a thing. Flynn should have told the whole truth all along. But the feds’ fake concern is clearly just that.
On and on about Trump asking Comey for loyalty at dinner. No specific request even if true.
Yeah Trump and his guilty conscience about all this treason he committed:
Then on and on they go about what Trump knew and when about Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador.
Priebus said he thought Trump wanted to fire Flynn anyway. The Times had previously claimed so as well, saying Trump got mad as hell that Flynn interrupted a conversation between him and Theresa May and some other things.
Says here Sessions recused himself not because of accusations about his meetings with Kislyak, but just the fact that the investigation was into the campaign that he was a part of. Makes sense. Tough shit for Trump though. Which is why he flipped out.
Can’t say I feel very bad for a president complaining that a fake investigation is “disrupting his ability to govern.” That’s the silver lining. …
DNI Coats says Trump asked him to tell Comey to convince him to drop the thing.
Then-CIA Director Pompeo remembers that happening in general but not specific. (Heh.)
NSA Director Mike Rogers says Trump called and complained about the thing but didn’t order him to do anything other than possibly refute some public stories.
Without question-begging about Trump’s guilt, this is just fine. He was not asking them to lie. He knew they knew the truth. He wanted them to say so. But of course investigations must “run their course.”
See what I mean?
More on the Trump calls to Comey. Not obstruction. Just asking him to say publicly what he’d been told privately, that he was not under investigation. But Comey refused.
Again, motive obvious:
More Brady Material:
Trump fired Comey with the blessing/recommendation of the top two at the DoJ.
And this then became the predicate for the obstruction investigation. More arrested for resisting arrest-type nonsense.
Even though,
He knew firing Comey wouldn’t end the investigation. Bannon, Christie, McGahn and others had all already told him so. He was just mad Comey wouldn’t clear him in public. Again, that McCabe and the others the pretended to believe that firing Comey itself was obstruction was no less of a bullshit excuse for an investigation then the legendary global espionage of 19% Rosneft owner Carter Page.
See and that’s what Mueller thinks too:
More about the president’s innocence:
Then an attack based on bullshit about the Tower deal that never was.
And another based on Trump being interested in Wikileaks’ releases.(?)
Followed by another acquittal in the same paragraph. “Sought information about them,” since he didn’t have any. Oh well, whatever man.
More Trump not worried about being caught but being unfairly persecuted.
This sounds about right:
So now they rehash, at greater length, Trump’s un-obeyed orders to fire Mueller. Trump said. McGahn ignored. Trump let it drop.
Then the Lewandowski thing again. Tell Sessions to announce that it’s all about the future now since Trump’s innocent. Lewandowski was going to but didn’t have the chance. He gave it to Rick Dearborn, a deputy chief of staff, who let it drop.
Trump criticized Sessions to the NYT.
Trump told Priebus to fire Sessions. Then he changed his mind and let it drop.
Oh please. Now it’s obstruction to obstruct an obstruction case based on the firing of the FBI director who was complicit in launching the whole giant fake investigation in the first place.
If this was because Trump was guilty of conspiring with the Russians to steal the election, then this would look pretty bad. But he didn’t. He was trying to obstruct bullshit, not justice.
Now the Trump Tower meeting thing again. Trump is claimed to have edited a public statement by Jr.. … Don’t care. Next.
The following doesn’t mean anything. Flynn flipped, pleaded guilty, cooperated, did not implicate the president in any crimes — since they had not conspired to commit any together in the first place, you see.
Then they go on at length about Trump’s public praise of Manafort and the dangling of possible pardons and such. This, next to the pseudo-threats against Cohen, seems like the most obstruction-like part of this rap, and yet, what’s the underlying crime Trump would need to be seeking to prevent investigation of, for criminal intent to be present? There’s not one.
Remember when U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said that I. Lewis “Scooter” “Saddam is Seeking A-Bomb Parts” Libby “threw sand in his eyes,” preventing the success of the investigation into who broke the law by leaking the CIA officer lady’s name?
Yeah well Mueller doesn’t say anything like that because there was no underlying crime or offense to investigate, just an investigation in search of a crime that never happened.
Mueller also finds reason to doubt corrupt motives on Trump’s part even in the dangling of a pardon for Manafort:
To think that at least some major Democrats like AOC and Warren are trying to invoke this report as a basis of impeachment is beyond embarrassing and stupid.
They’re just like the GOP kooks in 2003 and 2004 screaming about how the search teams just haven’t had enough time to find Saddam’s warehouses full of VX, sarin and anthrax and his advanced nuclear weapons program quite yet.
On to Cohen again:
Oh huh. It turns out that Cohen did not go to Prague to meet “the Russians!” like I claimed over and over again.
The human/”journalist” Greg Gordon disgraced forever. How could a grown man let other men use and abuse him this way? How can McClatchy continue to employ him? How can any of his peers look him in the face and not bust out laughing?
Anyways, same story again. They tried to move forward on negotiating a deal for the Tower. It never went anywhere. There’s nothing in here to indicate the Russian president did a thing to intervene in this process for or against Trump’s benefit in any way.
Makes for a fun story maybe: Putin hooks up Trump on zillion dollar deal, Trump lies, is owned for life by the Kremlin! Didn’t happen that way. No Putin. No deal. Lies by Cohen that amount to nothing at all.
Now, Hush money for hos. Cohen paid them. Obviously Trump was in on it. Supposedly the money was campaign money, but that’s not clear. Also as PVB says, “hush money” is just a slander for a non-disclosure agreement. Oh well. Next.
My old friend Jason Leopold should have stuck to his FOIA suits. Him and sources just don’t get along.
Trump being the president doesn’t give him legal advantage here. Mueller says the opposite.
And the law stipulates, there does not have to be an underlying crime:
But conversations took place which led to no action.
Because Trump’s people refused to carry out his crazier demands, they are not charged with obstruction:
First Trump was mad about Comey refusing to admit publicly that he wasn’t under investigation. Then, after he was, on obstruction…
Again at worst guilty of considering resisting arrest, when the whole underlying crime was bullshit.
Almost done…
Legal defenses.
The White House Office of Legal Council tried to claim that if it was a constitutional power, like firing the FBI director, that it would violate his Article II authority, whereas if there was something outside of that, like suborning perjury, that would still be prosecutable.
Mueller says that is not the law.
So don’t say that they would have indicted but for these presidential constitutional loopholes. It’s not the case.
And also they interpret the law very broadly:
Etc. like that for a while, including saying that even intent may not be relevant.
I don’t know guys. Maybe Mueller just didn’t have enough authority to charge under the strict application of the law. Maybe his legal team just didn’t have their shit together.
…….They go on like that for a while.
More deliberately broad setup here
Now to constitutional defenses against indictment or at least finding of a criminal predicate for the Congress to elaborate on if they choose:
Again, Mueller teams finds these claims lacking. Their reasoning is just elaborated on here. This all makes perfect sense. He’s just a lousy president after all. Not royalty.
And then after all that they serve up this ridiculous bullshit. We just don’t know if we have a case here or not. Our grand jury is closing down. But we refuse to report a no bill. Maybe he is guilty after all. Who could ever determine? They’re just not sure.
A perfect ending to a perfect hoax.
(Oops, I didn’t read the appendices, but I guess maybe I should have.)
Andrew McCabe insists that Rosenstein was NOT being sarcastic or joking about either of these proposals (wearing a wire and 25th Amendment). And the former FBI General Counsel James Baker says two Cabinet members were on board with Rosenstein’s removal plan pic.twitter.com/kjAyM3ISXY
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 23, 2019
