In the excerpt below, which I’ve taken from Volume 2, page 8 of the Mueller Report, we can clearly see that the Office of Special Counsel believes that Congress can and presumably should exercise its “authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.” They specifically say that Congress “may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office,” and that doing so would “accord with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”
With this determination, the Office of Special Counsel shows how they think justice can best be served in this case. They lay out a variety of reasons why the Department of Justice isn’t the ideal authority for dealing with a criminal president. They are also very clear that they do not have confidence “after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president [would be cleared of] obstruction of justice.” Since they did they most thorough investigation of that subject to date, the clear implication is that they believe he is guilty of committing corrupt and obstructive acts. They don’t reach that conclusion since they are not charging him and feel that it would be unfair to level the accusation if there is no official forum for the president to defend himself. And this is why they make the case that Congress and an impeachment inquiry is the proper forum.
To summarize: the Office of Special Counsel is saying that crimes have likely been committed but Congress should be the authority to investigate and possibly punish those crimes.
You can judge for yourself if this is consistent with how Attorney General William Barr has pre-spun this report for the American public. I think he’s been grossly misleading and dishonest.
The Democrats in the House will have to decide what to do with this information. I don’t envy them. But we should all be clear that a decision not to open an impeachment inquiry, irrespective of its political wisdom or foolishness, would be giving this and future presidents a license to commit corrupt acts and obstruct justice. The Office of Special Counsel put a big matzah ball on their plate. They can choose to do their constitutional responsibility, come what may, or they can do something less than that because they think it’s political advantageous to punt.
So what I don’t get…..I understand that Barr was playing to an audience of one and not trying to persuade anyone who wasn’t pre-persuaded, but still: He isn’t stupid, whatever else you think of him, and he has to know how his pre-buttal press conference is perceived and must realize that his lies and coverups would be exposed the minute anyone actually started to read the report. So what did he think he was accomplishing? The spin certainly didn’t work.
(a) He does work for Trump, after all, and clearly this is what he was hire to do.
(b) It may be that Barr was so blinded by ideology and ego (to vindicate his conception of presidential power), as well as by ambition (to be attorney general, where he’d supposedly be able to turn his views into policy) — that he badly miscalculated …
Barr isn’t stupid. I think they have decided the only play is to go all in on maintaining the support of the base and through that base keeping up the political pressure on Republicans in both houses of Congress to stay united in defense of the president. United they stand, and all that.
I didn’t say he was stupid. Of course that’s what he thinks, or thought. But it’s not going to work. For a start, his 4-pager and Trump’ self-vindication, echoes by he entire GOP echo chamber, produced NO Trump approval “bump”.
A lot of Republicans aren’t stupid. But, at this point, they believe their own BS, and that puts them profoundly out of touch with reality.
. . . we all collectively fall.
Unless, that is, we muster the majority will and gumption to simply defeat them.
From what I can tell obstruction was attempted but failed so there ended up being no actual.obstruction, instead attempted obstruction. So that does seem to fall under something congress shoukd take up.
I see the Barr stuff as Barr giving anyone who wants an excuse to vote for Trump.
How do you figure that? Mueller explicitly says that lies by Trump associates to Congress and special counsel “materially impaired” the Russia investigation.
List of people Trump asked to obstruct justice but refused.
He says that and a lot more …
This analysis explains very well what Mueller determined about obstruction. (Scroll down to “Findings on Obstruction of Justice”.)
Ah, looks like as get further in I see some did follow his orders. IMO that is obstruction.
The entire operation is a third rate mob movie with mobsters and criminals acting like monsters and criminals. Trump never giving orders, always making sure people are at his tempo without saying so directly. Then there are lackies who get cold feet with the illegal orders they understand as directives from Trump and pawn them off to some other schmuck in the chain of command. Putin operates the same way and it’s documented in the report (see the section involving Petr Aven taking meetings with Putin every quarter — any “suggestion” or “critique” by Putin was taken as an order/directive). Similarly, Trump directed Cohen to lie like any mob boss by establishing “there was no Russian business interests” as a directive to Cohen to lie without directly saying so.
So, too with National Socialism. It was called “moving toward the Fuhrer”.
“Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”
I think there has been a clear advantage for the president in how this was pre-spun. It’s the best they could have hoped for under the circumstances.
Exactly. The best he could have hoped for. But not really very good for him …
No, they spun far too hard. Barr looks like a co-conspirator now and everything he’s said will be discounted. If they had spun less crazily, it would be less bad for them. Still bad, but not this bad.
According to the strategy of red meat to the base, it is the best he could have done. But from the perspective of everybody else (which I think from now on will be more important), you are right.
Well, the attempted spin didn’t work on you. You weren’t the target market.
National Trumpalists (like new Head Coach Barr) likely didn’t think this squeeze play would work on us. Instead, they are playing the percentages and calculating that it will work on many, many others, and most certainly on The 46%–especially with 100% participation by all elected Repubs.
The nation’s eyes now turn to Your Lib’rul Media(tm) to see how they conceive of their current role in American society. And they most certainly were the target audience for the illicit spin of Coach Barr.
It didn’t work on me, right, but it didn’t work on anybody else either, except for those that were already on the Trump bandwagon. That’s why all this spin from Barr, Trump, et al. has failed to move the applause meter.
But you’re right, and (as I should have acknowledged), AkamaiGuy is right, about one thing: It’s designed to hold the base, the Fox News audience, together. Now that everybody else is more pissed off than ever.
Ah, but have you noticed how quiet the GOP senators are? They have an excuse not to go on the Sunday talk shows. It’s Easter and time to be with their families. That is part of their plan. It seem that there is a opening for the dems to go on the Sunday shows and just talk about what liars the donald and his entire administration were and will continue to be. Make the GOP defend the donald’s lies.
Right-wing authoritarians need to know what to think, so they can repeat it whenever their is criticism laid at the feet of the fascist they enable.
Barr provided them with what they need to know to think, so they can repeat it.
Thats it.
“You can judge for yourself if this is consistent with how Attorney General William Barr has pre-spun this report for the American public. I think he’s been grossly misleading and dishonest.”
Bingo! — He was dazzled by the emperor’s new clothes, and the fact that he had been chosen to serve this wonderful emperor. So much so that he missed the fact that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes.
As for the supposed conundrum that the Democrats have to deal with — in my view, this is grossly exaggerated. It’s not a conundrum at all, it’s spin. The House investigations will go forward. They are fact-finding investigations, not impeachment proceedings. But they will have a similar effect as far as public perception. The Repugs will accuse the Democrats of playing politics, but the fact is, they are mandated to do this, as you correctly point out, by the Mueller report itself, and ultimately by the US Constitution.
If the Democrats were to decide to cancel the investigations because they would be perceived as politically motivated, that really WOULD be playing politics. The investigations are motivated by the law.
The idea that this would prevent the House from dealing with so-called “bread and butter issues” is just more spin. The House committees can walk and chew gum at the same time.
As for the Mueller report iself, the GOP position is completely incoherent. If it’s nothing but a witch hunt, then why did Barr issue it? Answer, because he had to. He had no remotely defensible justification for not doing so.
Barr is a professional Repub courtier who saw immediately that there is a power vacuum in the woeful and below-mediocre court of this world-class clown. He also saw the personal abuse taken by the Littlest Confederate when the poor-man’s Fuhrer did not receive the required level of sycophancy and “loyalty”. So of course to advance himself Barr was going to jettison any notion of a more traditional role as an arms-length AG in favor of a more Himmler-like approach to the position. And voila, in a month he is the new star of Crackpot Cabinet.
As long as Barr abases the AG office before Der Trumper without shame, he will be entrenched without the slightest fear of oversight or challenge. Barr’s brief is to protect Der Trumper at all costs, and to prop up Trumper and his lawbreaking regime as well as he can to somehow manufacture another (anti-democratic) electoral college “win”.
That will place Barr in the pantheon of “conservative” Heroes, country be damned.
Barr is above all, a careerist. He’s a right winger because that’s where the careers are. He does not give a $hit what democratic politicians think. He’s doing this because he believes it advances his career.
That’s his prediction on the ethical standards of future republican administrations.
.
No, he’s a professional Republican hit man, not a careerist. (He’s almost 70, how much career does he have left? And why would he want it?)
I don’t think Barr was “dazzled” at all. He wasn’t chosen out of nowhere. He wrote a detailed memo advertising himself for the job and included a whole series of claims that indicated that he would clearly be Trump’s latest personal lawyer instead of a real AG.
. . . Think Ockham prefers the latter hypothesis.
I really want to be clear about this: Impeach the bastard. Sorry Nancy.
I have learned enough about this guy like the secret meeting in the WH and Helsinki. He is president of a criminal enterprise.
Listen, we all agree he should be impeached. Nancy agrees with that too.
It’s just that he would’t be convicted, so ..
They’ll conducted the investigations anyway, and the only material difference is, at the end of the day, they won’t have to hold an impeachment vote, which will only backfire anyway.
Conduct the investigations in the House Committees. Let’s see what is revealed there, not just further revelations in the factual record but what is revealed by observing the public behaviors in front of a Congressional Committee by the people whose statements and actions are revealed in the redacted report. Do you think Trump’s enablers listed in the report will present compelling defenses for themselves and the President in front of the cameras? I think they’ll do very badly. They’re accustomed to unaccountability.
We also need to see the outcome of the fairly certain legal fight to come over the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena of the unredacted report. That is a fight which should play itself out over the next few months, not years. And this is an area where time is not likely to be on the President’s side. If you’re a Congressional Republican, do you want the president to lose the court fight on the subpoena of the unredacted report this summer, or next summer, a summer when almost all Congressional Republicans will be running for re-election in November?
The redacted report is bad, very very bad, for the President politically. How much more political damage will be done when the redacted sections are revealed? How will the political calculations change for Congressmembers after hearings, revelations of the redacted info, and journalistic reports continue to bury Trump and others with damning facts and behaviors?
Also under subpoena are Trump’s taxes and his personal financial records, which we know, via Cohen, he has routinely falsified.
We are not there yet. Congress needs the unredacted report and the interview with Mueller. If it all stays the way we now understand it, I will say again: Impeach the bastard. Our children will thank us.
As centerfielddj pointed out, even the redacted report is very very bad for Trump. There’s lots and lots of stuff there for further investigation. Not having whatever is in the redactions (and I don’t think there are all that many) is not going to prevent them from running these investigations. Then we shall see what we shall see.
Yes. I have never trusted this man especially for his secret meetings with Putin and Putin’s henchmen. And his never ending lies.
By the way, just to clarify: some may have the mistaken impression that in order to get the redacted grand jury evidence, the House has to begin formal impeachment proceedings. This is not true. As explained here, the House investigative committees are entitled to see the grand jury material.
You’ll really like Steny Hoyer’s comments! See:
Profile in Courage nominee!
Trump will spin the report as exoneration for him. In fact he has already done that. Voters will hear that claim. So sitting here mute bc Hoyer or someone thinks it is not worthwhile raises another issue. What was the purpose of the investigation or do you actually believe it did exonerate Trump? Doing nothing suggests you agree with the report.
Impeach the bastard and be done with him or at least let the whole world and posterity know where we stand. Now I do agree more work needs to be done but what I heard to date says he must go.
There is plenty to impeach Trump on, even if you want to set aside the Russia stuff. And if the Democrats in DC really believe Trump is a Russian asset, why aren’t they holding immediate hearings and why didn’t they demand Trump’s tax returns the first day Pelosi retook the gavel? It reminds me of this great quote: “A liberal is someone who doesn’t know how to take his own side in an argument.” It certainly applies to DC Democrats.
It’s depressing I know.
Yep impeach him NOW
As I recall, in January 2017, Congress basically unanimously requested that a special counsel be appointed to look into Russia’s interference with the 2016 election. Ryan and McConnell’s Repubs piously declared that they would “get to the bottom of this!” As National Trumpalism took stronger and stronger hold of the country, media and the corrupt “conservative” movement, Repubs pretty quickly lost their appetite for getting to the bottom of Der Trumper’s illegitimate “election”, and we have now reached the point that apparently only the Dems sought a special counsel (one wonders how Mueller could have been appointed if that was the case, but whatever).
Anyway, this report was requested by the Congress when (after Nov 2016) the public was finally allowed in on the fact that Putin worked to elect Trump and throw the election. A special counsel certainly wasn’t something Der Trumper and the Littlest Confederate really wanted to create. So now that the long delayed report is in, of course it means that the ball is back in the Congress’ court, and it is up to Congress to come to its own conclusions as to what the implications of the Report may be.
The greatest dichotomy so far is the difference between Trumper’s “No Obstruction!!” and the (actual) finding of Mueller that if he could have concluded there was no intent to obstruct, he would have done so—but that he could not. So this is the precise opposite of “exoneration”.
A critical point in the “no collusion” overview is that at no time did Der Trumper EVER affirmatively seek to stop his campaign from promiscuously communicating with the foreign power that he and his campaign KNEW were actively (and illegally) working to elect him. That is the level of virtue that our “conservative” movement now finds acceptable in a prez.
NPR’s coverage today was quite informative and had plenty of commentators arguing that the report is a parade of horrors for Trumper. The question is how the more traditional corporate media decides to work this. So far, they have completely given up on the idea that they are an adversary press that seeks to question the actions of elected officials and not just parrot their explanations. This will determine whether there is any conceivable way that Der Trumper’s approval rating could fall below 38%.
“For the preventing of those miserable effects, which such malicious endeavors may produce, we have thought good to declare the root and the growth of these mischievous designs; the maturity and ripeness to which they have attained before the beginning of the Parliament…”
So for months, if not during the entire term of the OSC, there were those of “us” who said it was pointless to impeach because the GOP would not convict Trump in the Senate. That calling for it was “foolish” because it would be a waste of time. That if he were acquitted in the Senate, he could then declare himself innocent of all charges. Thus we should wait for the Mueller report because there might be something in there so damaging that recalcitrant republicans will somehow (magically) be forced to vote for impeachment. That was always fool’s gold, but now we get to have just how foolish that was driven home, in reality. We got the Mueller Report and Trump is still declaring himself innocent. The net effect is the same.
But wait, this is actually worse. If democrats had started impeachment and failed to convict in the Senate, we’d have a hell of a lot more of his crimes documented and publicly available, as a result of the public nature of impeachment, than we have now with the Mueller report. That would be very different from where we are right now as at least the public would know more. This is worse because we end up in the same state, with the public being kept in the dark.
The Mueller Report isn’t even cold and Hoyer has already gone out and capitulated.
https:/www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/18/1851359-Hoyer-Capitulates-No-Impeachment
Trump now has a real argument that all this was for naught, and it was presidential harassment. And this is better than having gone forward with impeachment?
The Founders must be spinning in their graves at the knowledge that Constitutional duty was avoided in this way. Trump fit the requirements for impeachment even without the damned Russia investigation. And we know full well had this been a democrat the senate would be voting on impeachment by now. Republicans refused to take responsibility, but democrats also refused to push the issue.
And some will say, but wait, the democrats are still investigating the House. But after this does anyone seriously expect the democrats to use all of the levers of power they have at their disposal, as a result of being in the majority in the House, to actually do anything of substance with that information? I surely don’t, not after this.
I can’t stand bothsiderism as a practice but I’m going to have to dip my toe into the waters to say it. In this case, it fits: BOTH DAMN PARTIES exhibited cowardice out of political expediency, democrats (somehow) found it politically expedient to not press forward with impeachment because they were afraid of political consequences (what happens to us if the republicans fail to convict??), just as the republicans did (the deplorables will eat us alive if we do what we know needs to be done!)
A precedent is being set here: the President IS above the law! When he’s a republican.
The fundamental flaw in the Constitution is that it has a hard dependency on men and women of integrity in office, who would put the nation and the Constitution above party politics and self interest. We simply do not have that today in the leadership of our political parties.
Agreed. Assemble all the facts and impeach the bastard and show the world we are serious about our constitution.
My biggest fear with this is, if the democrats figure out a way, at least in their minds, not to impeach, we may be looking at another four years of Trump after 2020. Voters came out in droves in 2018, not just because of healthcare, and not that they were just so excited about democratic policies per se, but because they had enough of Trump and the GOP House not doing their Constitutional duty to check him when it was needed, which was a lot. Voters elected democrats because they wanted them to control the House to provide those checks and balances, and let the public know what was really going on. Voters expect more from democrats than this.
Given the brazenness of Barr, and how this has played out, I don’t see how the democrats can justify making a statement that Hoyer made, that impeachment is over. If that is the case, now what? Do we just give Trump a pass and forget the whole thing? Is democrats “let’s look forward, not back” reprise?
Its sad but it looks like the net effect of the democrats message is, “we’re not republicans.” That’s not enough to win on.
Which made it hard to judge the validity of this characterization, which aroused my skepticism because I had seen the Hoyer quote (elsewhere this thread, as it turns out), and this did not seem an accurate rendering of what he’d said:
So let’s have a look at what Steny in fact said, per Manu Raju tweet posted by PP upthread (emphasis added to bits demonstrating inaccuracy of your mis-characterization above):
Yeah, Steny’s comment is annoying as fuck, not least because it lends itself to misinterpretations/mis-characterizations like yours. But they are mis-characterizations.
Personally, I’ve been impressed with how wisely Adam Schiff seems to have handled, and continues to handle his responsibilities: credible threats to use powers granted him (on behalf of the House majority, representing the American people, in fulfillment of their oaths of office) by the Constitution. Followed by carrying out those threats in the face of non-compliance (ongoing House investigations, subpoenas of [iirc] unredacted Mueller report, Trump’s taxes for last 6 [iirc] years and of all evidence generated by and underlying the Mueller report).
The valid argument over whether/when a formal impeachment process should begin has always been one of “ripeness”, first in the absence of any power to make it happen while Dems were in the minority and Banana Republicans were content to shirk their constitutional duties in “party-before-country . . . always!” violation of their oaths of office. Then while Mueller’s investigation was still ongoing.
Well now it’s done. We have the report, which is immensely damning of Trump even through redactions and withholding of the specific evidence underlying its conclusions.
Well now “ripeness” is here, baby. #ITMFA!
Although, as I’ve said, Schiff has largely won my trust and admiration, so I can be patient a bit longer as he continues nailing down the particulars to make the eventual case for impeachment even stronger and more likely to succeed. It’s not my impression he’ll be dissuaded from that course by weak-kneed blather from Steny.
If Saint Nancy Who Can Do No Wrong and her lieutenants abdicate this responsibility, as they are hastening to indicate is their full intention, then not only are they establishing a fatal precedent, they are also unmistakably signaling that they recognize Dolt And Rump’s obvious to-the-core corruption, enabled by complicitly corrupt Яepugnicans, as legitimate in the office. Once they do that, they cannot be seen as anything other than fully complicit themselves, and corrupt.
I wonder whether Saint Nancy et al have carefully considered the political costs to the Democratic Party of such conduct, let alone to the country. They certainly have given no indication of it.
My theory is that the Nancy Smash strategy is to do investigations this term, and see if that is enough to get Trump defeated in the election. If not, then impeachment can be pursued during the second term. Plan A and Plan B both in place.
Stated more broadly, it allows the Dems to move forward without closing off their options.
Well, both of you had better not think about just letting Nancy and leadership handle it, because based on Sam Stein’s reporting, leadership completely fumbled it so far and didn’t have any talking points disseminated. Me? I think they didn’t believe this much info would be public yet and/or didn’t realize how bad the report would be. They thought they could just say “oh no collusion no obstruction” and move on with what they’ve been doing. It’s certainly consistent with how they’re acting and how they don’t seem to know what to do. I don’t plan on being silent about it, though. Lots of people I know on social media think we are better off not impeaching. These idiots have no political imagination. Just cowed lambs who can’t fight worth a shit against an unpopular mob boss criminal president. It’s a little pathetic.
I have not red Sam Stein’s (Daily Beast) reporting on this. You may be right that “they didn’t believe this much info would be public yet and/or didn’t realize how bad the report would be,” but I find this rather implausible. Surely it’s people like Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, and Maxine Waters that are out in front on these issues. Surely they have been and will continue to be as well informed as anybody could be about the nature of the Mueller Report. Surely they have been and will continue to be very assertive in their public statements. Surely they have a chat now and then with Nancy, and even if they didn’t she could hardly miss them on TV.
I think I’ve been clear about my own position on impeachment, and I’m a bit concerned that none of the advocates of “impeachment now” have addressed the points I raised.
I view Trump as the greatest danger to the United States that I have ever experienced in my lifetime. I want him and his crew out of here. All the same, it neither advisable nor necessary to go for “impeachment now.” The investigations, piloted by Democrats like the above named, are what we need right now. They will keep things moving forward, uncover a lot more devastating information, and not close off any options. This is not a “weak” position, it is a smart position.
Technically, these investigations are for the purpose of deciding WHETHER to impeach. When Democratic leaders say talk of impeachment is premature, from a strategic POV they are correct. The fight against Trump can be far more effective than going straight for impeachment.
I have never been a fan of Steny Hoyer. But FYI, he has walked back his initial (and poorly advised) comments on impeachment, because of pushback from Democrats more like you and me. This is a positive dynamic, and one we’re seeing more and more of in many areas. But I still think actually instituting impeachment proceedings at this point would be a very bad idea.
This is all well argued, but it’s just not the feeling I’m getting from members of Congress just yet. They’re still too timid and holding their punches, and there’s not enough coordination and staying on message. However, if they follow your template for real and not just bullshit delay (they should have subpoenaed everything three months ago, slowwalking tax returns, etc), then I’ll have no complaints.
“…these investigations are for the purpose of deciding WHETHER to impeach”
Right on!
I also believe ALL elected Democratic people should make this clear. Say it explicitly. Bang the Constitutional duty drum. Let’s rally the liberal base for a change!
“We are duty bound by the Constitution to investigate these charges for the purpose of deciding whether to impeach.”
Can Congress (specifically, the House Judiciary Committee) hire Mueller and place some of the responsibility back in his hands? Is he still an employee of the DOJ? He’s the only Republican I trust, and I think he brings some gravitas with him. He seems to care about justice and the rule of law, and he knows where the bodies are buried.
It’s time.