Robert Mueller investigation

[Teenwolf]

I'd prefer we don't spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on... what?
and many of the convictions were for lying under oath to investigators who investigated and found... what?
would that be a good return on our collective investment?

hopefully there's something of real substance. it's possible.

You realize the investigation has made money, right? By seizing something like $30 Mil from Manafort, they're actually making a tidy profit.

Edit to add link:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&sour...53387088865524

Seems like taxpayers might collect a small profit, with a $26 Mil outlay to return $28.6 Mil, but the return will fluctuate largely based on New York real estate prices. By the time the Fed flips Manafort's properties, you could see a very nice return.

[Judge Jude]

interesting if confirmed.

still, this whole saga has been exhausting.
rule of thumb: if you go 365 days and you don't have much, if anything, on the thing you're specifically tasked to find - maybe you start to wonder if you're ever going to find it.

[onejayhawk]

From what I read, it’s an enormously comprehensive collection of nothing.

An exoneration of Trump was expected, though it's nice to have it finished. This is much broader. No one else is being fingered, either.

IF he spent all this time and all we got was a bunch of grifters, I would want a refund. or at least a discount.

Not even that. Manafort was a known situation that they chose not to prosecute. The Russians successfully fought several things thrown at them.

I'd prefer we don't spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on... what?
and many of the convictions were for lying under oath to investigators who investigated and found... what?
would that be a good return on our collective investment?

hopefully there's something of real substance. it's possible.

Trump was always willing to call this a fishing expedition. Now he has proof which is something of substance, just not the sort of thing that was expected.

interesting if confirmed.

still, this whole saga has been exhausting.
rule of thumb: if you go 365 days and you don't have much, if anything, on the thing you're specifically tasked to find - maybe you start to wonder if you're ever going to find it.

What, exactly, was he tasked to find?

J

[Judge Jude]

he was asked to look for collusion between Trump and his aides with Russia in influencing the results of the election.

also potential obstruction of justice.

[onejayhawk]

he was asked to look for collusion between Trump and his aides with Russia in influencing the results of the election.

Collusion is not a federal crime. Mueller is supposed to be a criminal prosecutor. What crime?

also potential obstruction of justice.

When? Which investigation? Using what authority?

Was he actually tasked with finding dirt on Trump and the rest is all for verisimilitude?

J

[Judge Jude]

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russia...imes-a-million

this is a piece by Matt Taibbi, best known for writing a lot of stories for Rolling Stone and for pissing off right-wingers and left-wingers alike.

I don't agree with this entire premise - particularly because we haven't even seen the damn report yet. so this to me reads more like "pending contrary information, this is where we may wind up."

but at least a month ago, I noted that if this Mueller report doesn't produce a smoking gun, then we ought to look closer at the dossier that got the whole thing rolling (so to speak) in the first place.

if you never heard of Taibbi, read this [wiki, with references], see where he stands re Breitbart and Chomsky, and tell me that he's a bot working for Trump or the RNC:

"After the death of conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, in March 2012, Taibbi wrote an obituary in Rolling Stone, titled "Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche". Many conservatives were angered by the obituary, where Taibbi wrote, "Good! Fuck him. I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.", though Taibbi claimed that it was "at least half an homage", claiming respect for aspects of Breitbart's style but also alluding to Breitbart's own derisive obituary of Ted Kennedy.

In 2018, Taibbi began publishing a novel, "The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing: Adventures of the Unidentified Black Male," as a serialized subscription via email and a website with an anonymous partner. The novel is fictional with true-crime elements. He is writing since September 2018 a new book, "The Fairway, or Thirty Years After Manufacturing Consent, How Mass Media Still Keeps Thought Inbounds," also in a serialized form with a preface with Noam Chomsky, in reference to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent published in 1988."

.....................

"Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.

The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” to him featuring the rhymey line: “Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup.”

....................

"There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn’t. If he isn’t, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign, only this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included. Honest reporters like ABC’s Terry Moran understand: Mueller coming back empty-handed on collusion means a “reckoning for the media.”

Of course, there won’t be such a reckoning. (There never is). But there should be. We broke every written and unwritten rule in pursuit of this story, starting with the prohibition on reporting things we can’t confirm."

...................

#Russiagate debuted as a media phenomenon in mid-summer, 2016. The roots of the actual story, i.e. when the multi-national investigation began, go back much further, to the previous year at least. Oddly, that origin tale has not been nailed down yet, and blue-state audiences don’t seem terribly interested in it, either.

By June and July of 2016, bits of the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, which had been funded by the Democratic National Committee through the law firm Perkins Coie (which in turn hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS), were already in the ether.

The Steele report occupies the same role in #Russiagate the tales spun by Ahmed Chalabi occupied in the WMD screwup. Once again, a narrative became turbo-charged when Officials With Motives pulled the press corps by its nose to a swamp of unconfirmable private assertions."

......................

"The Steele claims were explosive if true. The ex-spy reported Trump aide Carter Page had been offered fees on a big new slice of the oil giant Rosneft if he could help get sanctions against Russia lifted. He also said Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to Prague for “secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers.”

Most famously, he wrote the Kremlin had kompromat of Trump “deriling” [sic] a bed once used by Barack and Michelle Obama by “employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show.”

This was too good of a story not to do. By hook or crook, it had to come out. The first salvo was by David Corn of Mother Jones on October 31, 2016: “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump.”

....................

"The sequence of events in that second week of January, 2017 will now need to be heavily re-examined. We now know, from his own testimony, that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had some kind of role in helping CNN do its report, presumably by confirming part of the story, perhaps through an intermediary or two (there is some controversy over whom exactly was contacted, and when).

Why would real security officials help litigate this grave matter through the media? Why were the world’s most powerful investigative agencies acting like they were trying to move a stock, pushing an private, unverified report that even Buzzfeed could see had factual issues? It made no sense at the time, and makes less now.

In January of 2017, Steele’s pile of allegations became public, read by millions. “It is not just unconfirmed,” Buzzfeed admitted. “It includes some clear errors.”

Buzzfeed’s decision exploded traditional journalistic standards against knowingly publishing material whose veracity you doubt. Although a few media ethicists wondered at it, this seemed not to bother the rank-and-file in the business. Buzzfeed chief Ben Smith is still proud of his decision today. I think this was because many reporters believed the report was true."

[onejayhawk]

It's silly in a way. He writes Russiagate is WMD times a million. If that were literally true, he would firmly in Trump's camp.

WMD was not fabricated and unverified. We found evidence of the existence of the WMD stockpiles almost six years later, by which time no one cared. The story that was reported was what was generally believed and supported by the information available at that time. What was not known, hence not reported was that Saddam Hussien had abandoned the program and smuggled the remnants out of the country. Reportage was accurate so far as was possible. Russiagate is 180° opposite.

Still, I have to admire his vitriol over the wasted credibility all this has caused. He may be an activist but he recognizes the need for a hearing before judgment. With no standing, there will be no hearing.

J

[B-Fly]

A fair investigation has to be open to the conclusion that certain crimes cannot be proven. Why should we demean the process of the investigation or the investigator because it/he concluded that certain crimes by certain persons cannot be proven? There's no reason to attack Mueller, here, IMO. Those of us who believe Trump is an atrocious president for the United States need to be laser-focused on the 2020 Election, and should have been all along. (And I guess all that time that Trump supporters spent trying to undermine Mueller's independence and credibility was also for naught, lol.)

[onejayhawk]

A fair investigation has to be open to the conclusion that certain crimes cannot be proven. Why should we demean the process of the investigation or the investigator because it/he concluded that certain crimes by certain persons cannot be proven? There's no reason to attack Mueller, here, IMO. Those of us who believe Trump is an atrocious president for the United States need to be laser-focused on the 2020 Election, and should have been all along. (And I guess all that time that Trump supporters spent trying to undermine Mueller's independence and credibility was also for naught, lol.)

You're an attorney. When the enabling statute requires that a crime must be specified, does that not mean that an article of the US Code must be specified?

What makes you think that was an attack on Mueller? The NY Post is calling it the Big Lie and pointing at the Clinton campaign, see below. If anyone, it's an attack on Rosenstein for going along with a political vendetta. The attack on Mueller would be in how he chose his team and that's a quibble. He was out to get his guy, which is what investigators and prosecutors do. Fairness is for higher ups.

https://nypost.com/2019/03/24/we-should-all-be-celebrating-the-collapse-of-hillarys-big-lie/

J

[revo]

What makes you think that was an attack on Mueller? The NY Post is calling it the Big Lie and pointing at the Clinton campaign, see below. If anyone, it's an attack on Rosenstein for going along with a political vendetta. The attack on Mueller would be in how he chose his team and that's a quibble. He was out to get his guy, which is what investigators and prosecutors do. Fairness is for higher ups.

https://nypost.com/2019/03/24/we-should-all-be-celebrating-the-collapse-of-hillarys-big-lie/

J

That's an opinion piece by Michael Goodwin, the biggest GOP hack around. And remember, the NY Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

[B-Fly]

Conspiracy to tamper with a federal election is more than enough of a basis to justify an investigation.

[Judge Jude]

B-Fly, I hope you can find time to read Taibbi's piece - or at least the excerpts above.
is it possible that the whole damn thing is fruit from a poisonous tree if that dossier doesn't hold up?

at the very least, the principals universally failed to cover themselves in glory in various ways.
what if there was no there there?

(I mean specifically the dossier. there's a metric shitton of 'there' overall).

[Kevin Seitzer]

Trump standing up in front of the world and asking the Russians to hack Clinton's emails is enough for any rational person to think there might be something there. Then when he fired James Comey for not stopping the investigation into Flynn and continually lambasted Sessions for recusing himself and eventually fired him and put in place an attorney general who supported his take on events, that made him look extremely guilty. If there is nothing more than that (and we have yet to see Mueller's report, so I'll reserve judgment until then), then well, I guess that's good. But what we knew without an investigation and without any access to a secret dossier was enough to make Trump look very guilty.

[Judge Jude]

"Trump standing up in front of the world and asking the Russians to hack Clinton's emails is enough for any rational person to think there might be something there."

it's kind of weird that everything Trump has ever said is a lie - except for the "locker room talk" with Billy Bush. that time, he was being very literal. very honest. 100 percent. just none of the other things.

and no chance that Trump was being sarcastic about Hillary's emails. at all.

look, I'm no fan of the guy and I didn't vote for him. but I do kinda care if all it takes for a two-year federal investigation is that comment, him firing someone, being mean to another one, and a dossier that might be completely or mostly bogus. I'm odd that way.

[Kevin Seitzer]

You don't actually believe Rod Rosenstein was the person who initiated Comey's firing.

Do you support the Comey firing? You believe it was aboveboard?