Attorney General William Barr sent a four-page letter summarizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings to Congress on March 24. Quoting the report directly Barr wrote that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in 2016.
That unambiguous conclusion was reached with the help of 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts and forensic accountants, among other professionals. In pursuit of any evidence to prove Trump colluded with Moscow, Mueller issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.
But none of that was enough to satisfy or dent the resolve of the Russiagate true believers (on social media or in the mainstream media) who are still convinced that they were right all along and are coming up with new theories in a last-ditch effort to prove it.
‘Barr is lying for Trump!’
Following the letter, the first instinct of the Russiagaters was to cast Barr as the new villain. It was too early to turn on Mueller (who had been held up for two years as a Messiah-like figure who would save them from the Trump presidency).
“Barr is a Trump appointee!” they shouted on Twitter, suggesting that the AG lied or misconstrued the contents of Mueller’s report while he sat by and said nothing. Former Hillary Clinton adviser Adam Parkhomenko even accused Barr of engineering a “coverup” of Mueller’s real evidence.
This was followed by demands for the release of the report in its entirety, which is a fair request. Trump himself in the past has said he would have “no problem” with the full report being released, so time will tell whether he’ll stick to that position or not. Regardless, what the Russiagaters are expecting to find in the full report is a bit of a mystery, since we already know there was no evidence of collusion established by Mueller.
‘Mueller didn’t investigate the right things!’
Perhaps realizing that accusing Barr of spinning the report in Trump’s favor wasn’t going to cut it, collusion enthusiasts finally began to set their sights on Mueller himself. A piece in the New York Times noted the “sense of mourning” that had set in among “disappointed Mueller fans” who were now beginning to “rethink the pedestal they built for him.”
“Mueller’s scope was too narrow!” the former fans insisted, after pledging their hopes on his investigative skills for two years and hanging on every “bombshell” and “turning point” the media — including the Times — had offered them. Some were so disillusioned that they decided the whole thing must have been “a setup” from day one.
‘Forget Mueller, the evidence is in plain sight!’
Others maintained that Mueller (“a Republican!”) was simply ignoring all the “evidence” of collusion that was in “plain sight.” The “plain sight” narrative was boosted by the unrelenting Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the Democrats’ collusion charge and even claimed that he seen the evidence of collusion himself. Yet, on Tuesday, Schiff told CNN that the problem was an inability to establish proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” and promised that Congress would continue its own investigations of Trump to prove that he was “compromised” by Russia.
Some did stick by Mueller, however, insisting that they trust him and will accept whatever is in the report. Whether they will stand by that assessment if they are disappointed by the contents of the full report remains to be seen.
‘But what about *insert theory*?’
Then there were those who went back to basics and dug up all the old theories. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia Evelyn Farkas suggested that maybe Trump secretly owes buckets of money to Russians “close to Putin.”
What about that Trump Tower meeting? What about WikiLeaks? What about Trump saying nice things about Putin? Come on, there must be something they can catch him on.
Media madness
US media has taken two different approaches to the Mueller news. There are the ones who are eager to move on and forget Russiagate ever happened (no need to reflect on the role journalists played in hyping the conspiracy) — and there are those who are doubling down.
Preferring the ‘let’s all move on’ option, two CNN reporters penned an unintentionally funny article suggesting that the finding of no collusion was an opportunity to quickly “move past a dark period,” but worried that the president “isn’t prepared to let go.” One assumes they haven’t recently encountered any of the congressional Democrats who are insisting that investigations of Trump will continue indefinitely.
Coming as a surprise to no one, MSNBC’s chief Russiagate prophet Rachel Maddow is one who has opted to double down, barely acknowledging on her Monday night show that no collusion had been found and pouring ample skepticism on Barr’s letter. Poor, desperate Maddow was then unironically dubbed the “queen of collusion” in the Washington Post, which was hardly a beacon of reason and moderation over the last two years.
Anyway, best to stay tuned; who knows what new theories the Russiagate devotees will come up with next.
Danielle Ryan RT
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After a two year media circus, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report cleared President Trump of colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election, a conclusion that Trump says brings him “complete and total exoneration.”
However, constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz argued that Mueller should have never been appointed in the first place. “It was a mistake to appoint a special counsel because there was no evidence of a crime,” Dershowitz said. Rather, he argued, Mueller’s appointment by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was a knee-jerk reaction to the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
Mueller’s probe was launched just over a week after Comey was unceremoniously fired in May 2017. Before then, the FBI had been conducting its own investigation into the supposed collusion. That investigation, Dershowitz continued, was based on lies.
A dossier of salacious gossip – gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign – was presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as evidence to authorize the wiretapping of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, even though Comey later admitted he knew the dossier was unverifiable.
“I think the FISA court was defrauded,” the lawyer told RT. “You can show information to the FISA court which isn’t particularly compelling, as long as you tell the court what the source is, and alert it to the… conflicts of interest. You cannot provide material to the court, claiming it’s credible, when you yourself know that it lacks credibility.”
Troublingly, former National Security Agency leader William Binney added,
Among Republicans, talk of investigating the FBI and Department of Justice has risen above a chatter in recent days. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) told reporters on Monday that he will investigate the FBI’s alleged FISA abuse and subsequent investigation, an investigation that Trump called “an illegal takedown that failed.”
“What makes no sense to me is that all of the abuse by the Department of Justice and the FBI – the unprofessional conduct, the shady behavior – nobody seems to think that’s much important. Well that’s going to change, I hope,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) gave Graham his blessing on Tuesday, saying the issue of whether the FBI conspired to hinder Trump’s election is “a legitimate question.”
“We’re headed that way,”presidential historian Doug Wead noted.
MARCH 26, 2019
The majority of students felt Mueller’s findings were positive for America and that those who pushed the false narrative are now exposed as fake news.
With an already decaying trust in mainstream media, the public’s increasing skepticism will presumably help Trump lock-in a 2020 election victory.
By Billy House
Yet, even before the special counsel’s 22-month probe ended, Democrats were already working under a Plan B to undermine Trump going into the 2020 presidential race, through investigations led by House committees now under their control.
“We’re going to move forward with our investigations of obstruction of justice, abuses of power, corruption, to defend the rule of law, which is our job,” House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Sunday at a news conference in New York. “It’s a broader mandate than the special prosecutor had.”
The strategy poses risks for the Democrats, particularly if voters prove tired of talk of investigating Trump now that Mueller has completed his work. In addition, the probes could overshadow their agenda, particularly on issues like health care that helped the party take back the House in 2018.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the Mueller report a “two-year waste of taxpayer time and dollars” in an appearance Monday on NBC’s “Today” program. “We are all very glad it’s over and we can move forward and focus on things that really matter,” she said.
Within an hour of Attorney General William Barr delivering a summary of Mueller’s report to Congress, Nadler said his panel will call the attorney general to testify about “very concerning discrepancies and decisions at the department” in its interpretation of Mueller’s findings, particularly the decision not to pursue an obstruction of justice prosecution.
‘More Questions’
Barr’s “conclusions raise more questions than they answer given the fact that Mueller uncovered evidence that in his own words does not exonerate the president” on obstruction, Nadler said.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Fox Monday morning that Americans should breathe a “sigh of relief” at Mueller’s report.
“It’s quite clear that this group was hardly a group of Trump fans,” Giuliani said during n appearance Monday on Fox News. “It was thorough and it was conducted by people who had a bias to get him.”
Another Trump lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said on MSNBC, “It’s very hard to complain when you’ve got this letter from the Department of Justice.”
Investigations in the Democratic-controlled House stretch across six committees, including Nadler’s Judiciary panel along with the Intelligence, Financial Services and Oversight Committees. The topics for investigation include alleged public corruption, presidential abuses of power, Trump’s banking relationships, his tax returns and efforts to quash embarrassing stories about the president in coordination with the National Enquirer.
One benefit for Democrats is that it may ease pressure for now from a faction of House members who’ve been pressing to begin impeachment proceedings. With polls showing most of the public didn’t support impeaching the president even before Mueller’s findings, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been trying to tamp down that talk. Barr’s description of Mueller’s report as finding no criminality makes her caution appear savvy.
Political Attack
Republicans dismiss the House investigations as a fall-back strategy long planned in case the Russian collusion narrative collapsed, as it did, under Mueller’s conclusions. They accuse Democrats of undertaking a wide-ranging congressional fishing expedition simply to wound Trump politically heading into the 2020 elections.
The House Judiciary panel’s top Republican, Doug Collins of Georgia, said Sunday he hopes Nadler “recognizes that what may be political fodder for Democrats may not be good for our country.”
Top Oversight Committee Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio added, “I hope this will put an end to the partisan and political investigations in Congress aimed at undermining President Trump.”
Democrats argue that oversight of the executive branch is a basic and important congressional role.
Previous Probes
“Apparently the Republican definition of oversight is harassment,” responded Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia, chair of the Oversight subcommittee on government operations. “And that’s a brand new definition.”
Connolly pointed to multiple, sustained investigations undertaken by Republicans when they controlled the House and Senate and Democrat Barack Obama was in the White House.
Those cited by Connolly include the long-running probes of the deadly 2012 attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, and scrutiny of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, as well as investigations into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative or GOP-aligned political groups.
“If you’re going to be a phony, at least be sincere about it,” said Connolly of Republican complaints about politically motivated Democratic congressional oversight.
‘Fight and Win’
However, there was a political element to those investigations. Then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy boasted on Fox News in 2015 that the lengthy Benghazi investigation of Clinton, who went on to be the Democrats’ 2016 presidential nominee, was part of a “strategy to fight and win” by portraying her as untrustworthy. He said Clinton’s poll numbers dropped as a result.
Even before Barr’s letter on Sunday, Democrats were underscoring that they will fight — in court if necessary — to get Mueller’s full report, including its underlying documents. They say that material will help their probes.
“It will greatly facilitate our own investigation not to have to reinvent the wheel,”said Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, whose panel will be looking into any foreign influence over Trump. He said it would be “enormously time-consuming, and not entirely possible,” to retrace all of Mueller’s steps.
He, like other Democrats, called for public release of the entire Mueller report.
“I trust Mueller’s prosecutorial judgment, but the country must see the evidence,” Schiff said in a tweet.
Close Scrutiny
Schiff’s committee and other panels also are planning to hold public hearings to scrutinize Trump’s administration, and his personal business and finances, daring Trump to fight turning over documents and other material.
The House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over impeachment, has already sent out 81 requests for documents from the Trump administration, his family, associates, businesses and other entities. And that’s likely just the start of the demands for Trump-related materials.
Nadler said the focus won’t be limited to impeachable crimes and misdemeanors. Along with Intelligence and Judiciary, the Oversight and Reform, Financial Services, Foreign Affairs and Ways and Means committees also are pursuing Trump-related investigations and hearings.
For Trump’s allies and supporters, the continuing investigations may turn into a rallying point.
“Democrats took us on a frantic, chaotic, conspiracy-laden roller coaster for two years, alleging wrongdoing where there was none,” said Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale. “Their dirty tricks have not ended. Even today Democrats have picked up the disgraceful mantle of investigating, obstructing, and destroying the will of the American people at any cost.”
“They failed once and they will fail again,” he said.
(Updates with Sanders, Giuliani quotes starting in fifth paragraph.)
–With assistance from Erik Wasson and Terrence Dopp.
To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Joshua Gallu
By Alana Mastrangelo
“To my fellow Trump critics: Do not despair. Do not give up. Do not reduce your outrage,” tweeted actor Tony Schwartz reacting to the president’s 2017 tax bill, “Tax cuts are a fake victory that will come back to haunt him & Republicans. Mueller is closing in on Trump, I promise!”
“If true, the Buzzfeed story is a political earthquake. Caution: we really know little; Mueller knows much. Time to be steady, let facts lead us to truth — The walls do appear to be closing in.” tweeted journalist Dan Rather in reference to an anti-Trump BuzzFeed report from January, which turned out to be fake news.
Check out a few more of the politicians, Hollywood stars, and media elites who fantasized about “Mueller closing in” on the president and his family over the Russia collusion hoax.
First son Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement on Sunday that Attorney General William Barr’s letter to Congress on the Mueller report has finally proven “what those of us with sane minds have known all along.”
As for everybody else, their focus appears to be shifting onto the Attorney General and even the Special Counsel, as House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) calls on William Barr to testify before Congress, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) floats the idea of subpoenaing Robert Mueller.
Published on Mar 25, 2019
Just promulgated the biggest, most harmful fake news conspiracy theory in a generation.
What will their punishment be?
Published on Mar 25, 2019
March 25, 2019
Mueller’s team interviewed 500 witnesses and issued 2800 subpoenas in an investigation that spanned over 675 days with a total of 19 high-powered lawyers — and found no crimes.
CNN ran nearly 2,000 stories on Robert Mueller’s inquisition — what are they going to talk about now?
Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theorists from CNN were still in front of Mueller’s office Monday morning even though his report on the President is finished and concluded Trump did not conspire with the Russians during the 2016 election.
CNN has been hanging out around Mueller’s office for months — and they’re still there.
CNN crime reporter Shimon Prokupecz tweeted Monday morning, “Our CNN stakeout team still at work spotted Mueller reporting to work this morning.”
After nearly two years of investigating President Trump and his associates for so-called ‘Russian collusion’ during the 2016 election, Mueller delivered a report to the Justice Department last Friday.
Reporters were staked out and stalking Mueller at his office all day awaiting a glimpse of him on Friday.
On Friday, NBC reporter Hans Nichols tweeted, “Introducing the Mueller Stakeout Index (MSI) – a indicator of a potential Special Counsels report delivery. Moderately high reading this AM”
But no one can convince her that just because Special Counsel Robert Mueller found there was no collusion with Russia, that it’s over.
“This is not the end of anything!” Waters told MSNBC’s Joy Reid as they realized the report was a giant nothing burger for Democrats.
“This is the— well, it’s the end of the report and the investigation by Mueller. But those of us who chair these committees have a responsibility to continue with our oversight,” Waters said.
“There’s so much that, uh, needs to be, you know, taken a look at at this point,” she claimed,” and so it’s not the end of everything.”
Reuters reports:
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election did not find that any U.S. or Trump campaign officials knowingly conspired with Russia, according to details released on Sunday.
Attorney General William Barr sent a summary of conclusions from the report to congressional leaders and the media on Sunday afternoon. Mueller concluded his investigation on Friday after nearly two years, turning in a report to the top U.S. law enforcement officer.
Barr wrote to congressional leaders that “the investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president,” according to the Daily Mail.
Democrats aren’t giving up.
House Intel Committee chairman Adam Schiff insisted on “This Week” that there is “significant evidence of collusion”.
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