MUELLER: BARR DELIVERS FOR TRUMP AS PROMISED

As matters stand at the moment the President has been vindicated. Emboldened by Attorney General Barr’s whitewashing summary of the Special Counsel's report, Trump is now tweeting that he has been completely exonerated. What is missing from his short tweet diatribes is that his newest best friend is yesterday's enemy number one, Robert Mueller. Trump will weaponize Barr's spin in an attempt to blur anything else that might follow. 

However, there are many unanswered questions which may or may not be answered by the release of the full Mueller report, Congress’s ongoing investigations and the ongoing litigation of Trump and his empire. 

MUELLER WHERE YOU LISTENING?

All of which begs the question why did the President do everything in his power to stop this investigation which he so explicitly labelled, “The Russia thing”, if there was “no collusion”?

 Why did he and his “campaign team" meet on 102 occasions with the Russians holding at least 28 meetings - two of them explicitly to cooperate with them about the campaign. And why did several of them lie to the FBI about their meetings if they were not “colluding”? 

Why to this day does Trump believe Putin rather than his own intelligence agencies that the Russians intervened in the 2016 election on his behalf and why has he met Putin again and again on his own?

Why did campaign advisor Roger Stone contact Wikileaks and publicly brag about the forthcoming dumps of e mails? 

Why did Trump lie during his campaign about the ongoing negotiations Cohen and Felix Sater were having about the construction of Trump Tower Moscow and then lie that he told everyone about them?  

Why was the POTUS so angry with his Attorney General Jeff Sessions for “not protecting him” from the Russian investigation if there was “no collusion” to protect him from?

Why did The Donald eventually fire Sessions and why was his replacement William Barr?   AND ON AND ON

WHY BARR IS DE MAN

In Attorney General, (AG), Bill Barr’s four paged sanitized summary of the Mueller report he echoed the conclusion of his unsolicited 19 page opinion that he delivered on June 18, 2018 to the Trump administration. In that uncommisioned missive he lambasted the Special Counsel appointment. Furthermore Barr claimed that the President could not obstruct justice in the performance of his duties. 

Following upon Barr’s gratuitous advice Trump fired his AG Sessions and nominated Barr for the job which nomination the supine Republican Senate dutifully confirmed. Barr’s appointment was made in the context that Trump complained and attacked Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Mueller investigation. 

Trump stated again and again that had Sessions told him that he would recuse himself he would have not appointed him to the position. Apparently he had no such doubts with Bill Barr. Needless to say there is no confidence in Barr deciding how much of the report can be released. This even more so when the WhiteHouse Career Ethics Personnel ruled that the newly appointed AG needed to recuse himself from involvement in the Russia investigation. As Trump some how knew there was no way that his nominee would be hands off from the probe that he was so terrified of.

The promise that Barr’s memorandum to the Justice Department less than a year ago offered has been fulfilled . 

BARR’S RUSH TO SPIN THE MUELLER REPORT

Barr’s message following the Mueller submission was twofold: “No collusion” and that he had decided that there were no grounds for charging the President with Obstruction of Justice. His rapid conclusion of Mueller’s and the FBI’s almost three year investigation was remarkably similar to that of his June 18 memo. 

What at kindest is bizarre is the conclusion that Barr came as to the basis of Mueller decision not to indict Trump on Obstruction of Justice. Mueller’s reasons were because of “Difficult issues of law and fact”. According to Eric Holder, a previous AG, he never ever received a report from prosecutors without a recommendation whether or not to prosecute. 

So it is therefore obvious that Mueller was intimating that he was following Department of Justice policy not to indict a sitting president. What precedent there is in these matters is the Special Prosecutor legislation which was replaced by the Special Counsel Act under which Mueller operated. Under the previous Act the Special Prosecutor submitted his report to Congress to decide on impeachment proceedings. That is the precedent of Watergate. Implicit in Mueller’s phraseology is that what he intended. That is how Eric Holder, former Attorney General interpreted Mueller's lack of recommendation. Put another way why would Mueller go through this whole 2 year production for Barr, a political appointee, to decide the issue in a weekend?

  There is very little doubt that there is plenty more than is already known already of “collusion with Russia” which in Mueller’s opinion didn’t rise to a watertight criminal case of conspiracy or treason. This does not mean that Trump did not act in a manner that was impeachable as a President in his unprecedent behavior relating to "The Russia thing".

Barr’s glib dismissal of the Mueller probe that issued 550 warrants, interviewed 500 witnesses and 2,800 subpoenas is monumental.  There were 13 requests to foreign governments for information. It is interesting to note that he did not quote one fill sentence from the actual report. Nor did he share the length of the report. 

BARR’S ORIGINAL UNSOLICITED MEMORANDUM TO THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION  IN JUNE 2018

On June 18, 2018 Barr wrote to the Justice Department as a “a former Justice Department Official deeply concerned with the institutions of the Department of Justice and The Presidency”. He added that although he was “in the dark” about the facts he argued that “Mueller’s obstruction theory was fatally misconceived”. It appears that Barr’s memo might well have had some impact because Barr maintained that Mueller had no right to demand an interview with the President. (Mueller subsequently and inexplicably did “give up” on getting a one on one meeting, accepting the POTUS'S written answers to his queries). 

Barr went on for another eighteen pages arguing, with tautologous logic, that the President was in effect above the law. He limited the President’s potential liability when obstructing justice to “sabotaging a truth finding function by destroying evidence, persuading witnesses to lie" for example. He argued that Clinton lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky and telling her to deny the affair represented a President obstructing justice. This as opposed to attempting to halt a “truth finding function” by telling the head of the FBI to halt his investigation into his National Security Officer who lied about his contacts with the Russians during the campaign, then firing that FBI head for the very reason that he hadn’t listened to him - “The Russian Thing”. All this when the Intelligence Agencies had incontrovertible proof that the self same Russians had intervened in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. (That man Barr has chutzpah and he sat there in his confirmation hearings with a straight face).

The evidence of Trump’s attempts to “sabotage (Mueller’s) truth finding mission” is legion and is the very reason for Barr's appointment when the POTUS finally axed the previous AG who refused to “protect" him from Mueller’s “truth finding function”. 

REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY

What is particularly nauseating in this whole sorry saga is the hypocrisy of the Republicans who claim that there is no need for any further investigation of the President. These are the same Republicans who are still pursuing Hillary Clinton after four years fruitless persecution. They claim further that documents cannot be obtained from the Department of Justice in connection with the Special Counsel’s activities when they demanded and received 800,000 background pages into the doings of Hillary Clinton. Then as for their glossing over Trump’s lies and Obstruction of Justice they impeached Bill Clinton for exactly those transgressions over his lies about a consensual affair. 

But all of this fits into the pattern that they have colluded in the take over the GOP by a populist who according to a leader of the Conservative Lawyers group is a malignant narcissist or a sociopath. The only good news is that 87 percent of the electorate and a unanimous bipartisan House of Representatives wants the whole Mueller report released. 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

The fat lady may have sung but it ain’t over yet. There are so many questions many of which might be answered by the full report, by Congress and in the litigation Trump Inc faces. Jay H. Ell has a few questions for Mueller as well including why he didn’t ultimately insist on interviewing Trump and why he didn’t bother to subpoena Donald Jnr. and Jared Kushner. 

One conclusion for certain is that Mueller had no desire to carry the can in being the ultimate arbiter of Trump’s legitimacy - it appears he wanted Congress to decide. AG Barr had no such inhibitions. 

Meanwhile steal yourself for a rain of victory tweets and the sanctimonious Barr arguing that his prior bias had nothing to do with his sanitization of the Mueller report and any rationale he may offer for not submitting the whole report to Congress as the American society demands. 

The question democracy, at the very least, needs to answer is whether it is appropriate for a Presidential candidate to welcome a foreign country’s illegal assistance in subverting the intent of its electorate’s wishes. And then what is he doing about prevent it from happening again. 

The Democrats have to be very careful how they proceed. No talk of impeachment. Listen to Nancy Pelosi. Get the full report. It is going to be ugly. The fact that Mueller could not or would not find criminal conspiracy is one matter. The fact that is what is out there already is disgusting on its own. Mueller over two years could not have improved the story of Trump, his alleged obstruction, his campaign and "The Russia thing". 

Trump has finally got his own Attorney General "to protect him like Jack Kennedy who had Bobby". Barr will be around in the aftermath as it all hits the fan. How far will he go to "protect" the President? How much of the report will he release? 

Barr is under the spotlight to an extent he could never have imagined. As matters stand he has become the story line of the Mueller report. He will be investigated under the ying yang including why he, out of the blue, sent in a resume to become Trump's Attorney General when he knew Trump was publicly looking for a "protector".