"The Public needs to read the full Mueller Report"!

ATTORNEY-GENERAL’S ‘SUMMARY’ IS MEANINGLESS . . . 

by Selvam Canagaratna-March 30, 2019, 5:16 pm

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time"
– James Thurber, The Owl Who Was God, 1945.

William Rivers Pitt's opening observation said it all: "From the moment the Mueller investigation began to the moment Attorney General William Barr released his ‘summary’ of Mueller’s labours, Donald Trump acted like the guiltiest man on Earth."

"Trump’s efforts to obstruct the inquiry were egregious, vocal and constant," wrote Pitt, "his denials facile and unconvincing in their serial repetitions. His now-notorious Twitter eruption the weekend before the report’s conclusion was every inch the child frantically deflecting blame after pushing his sister down the stairs."

The announced completion of Robert Mueller’s investigation on Friday launched a 48-hour period of media mayhem, said Pitt. "Those expecting a detailed impeachment map to be immediately revealed endured a number of existential crises after exposing themselves to the television coverage, and no answers were forthcoming until the Attorney General William Barr released his ‘review᾿ on Sunday afternoon."

The third week in January of this year provided a perfect example of the phenomenon when it was revealed that Trump made a habit of confiscating the translators᾿ notes after every meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin before swearing the translators to absolute secrecy. "This was unprecedented behaviour with potentially staggering implications, and never mind the hypocrisy; had Barack Obama done something similar during his tenure, the outrage on the right would have been visible from space. With Trump, however, it was business as usual."

To the astonished horror of millions, Attorney General Barr’s very short "summary" announced that Mueller had found no evidence of collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and agents of the Russian government. Barr further announced that the report contained no actionable evidence to support charges of obstruction of justice against the President, and that no new indictments would be forthcoming from Mueller’s end.

Noted Pitt: "Only one scant sentence out of Barr’s entire four-page letter – "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" – serves to correctly note that Mueller did not exonerate Trump from wrongdoing. More ominously, Mueller’s office refused to endorse the conclusions reached in Barr’s letter. Perhaps they are playing it with their usual caution, but such an endorsement would have ended the discussion with a resounding thud."

Pitt recalled that William Barr’s first star turn as Attorney General came when he helped George H.W. Bush and his people get away with literal murder in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra scandal. "Before re-taking the post under Trump, Barr wrote a detailed letter explaining how it is legally impossible for a sitting (Republican) President to obstruct justice, and even if they did, they cannot be prosecuted for it while in office. His treatise went a long way toward putting his name at the top of the nomination list after Trump fed Jeff Sessions to the wolves for the crime of doing the right thing by recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

Pitt quoted Trump as telling Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo late last week: "It’s always interesting to me because a deputy, that didn’t get any votes, appoints a man that didn’t get any votes, and he’s going to write a report on me", then pointedly noted: "It does beg the question: How many votes did William Barr get? From where does the media’s absolute faith in the judgment of a lifelong partisan like Barr derive?"

"Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population," wrote Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi, "a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. There will be people protesting: the Mueller report doesn’t prove anything! What about the 37 indictments? The convictions? The Trump tower revelations? The lies! The meeting with Don, Jr.? The financial matters! There’s an ongoing grand jury investigation, and possible sealed indictments, and the House will still investigate, and . . . Stop. Just stop. Any journalist who goes there is making it worse."

"Much respect to Matt – I’m a definite fan – but this journalist is going there, because something reeks. If the moment arrives when crow must be eaten, I will devour my fair portion because it is the writer’s lot to say so when they have been wrong at the top of their lungs. We are not there yet, and Taibbi himself accidently explained why. "There will be people protesting," he wrote. "The Mueller report doesn’t prove anything!" Here’s the problem: We are not talking about the Mueller report. We don’t know what’s in the Mueller report. All we have to go on is the word of William Barr, and speaking personally, that simply isn’t good enough.

"Are we expected to believe that Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone and all the others who were indicted or prosecuted have endured all that in the name of a presidential crime that was never committed? All publicly available evidence flatly states that collusion between Trump’s people and Russian agents was obvious and ongoing throughout the campaign. Those interactions appear to have not risen to the level of "conspiracy," but again, we have only William Barr’s word on that.

"Trump’s allies are positively giddy now that Barr has weighed in and the media has chosen to accept his judgment on its face. Born-again Trump loyalist Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) ran wild at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night after the report came down with no indictments of Trump or his family. Pouring sweat in the pre-summer Florida heat, Graham raised the rafters as he (maybe) joked about Trump’s intention to build a hotel in Jerusalem and put former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina) on the Supreme Court, presumably after Justice Ginsburg fulfills a million ghoulish dreams and passes away.

"It’s going to be like that for a while and there’s little to be done about it, for now. Donald Trump isn’t acting like a man who has been vindicated. He’s acting like a man who got away with something and can’t quite believe his own good fortune. His pleasure may not last long; despite the short shrift paid to the other ongoing investigations into Trump’s dealings by Taibbi and other doubters, the fact remains that this story is far from over."

Pitt reminded those readers inclined to forget Trump’s ongoing criminality to keep in mind that:

* Roger Stone is set for trial in November;

* The Southern District of New York investigations into Trump’s payments of hush money via Michael Cohen is ongoing;

* Multiple state and federal officials are investigating the collection of a record $107 million by Trump’s Inaugural Committee;

* The New York Department of Financial Services is investigating whether Trump illegally inflated his net worth to insurance companies per Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony;

* The New York Attorney General is investigating Trump’s questionable dealings with Deutsche Bank;

* The Trump Foundation is under investigation for what that Attorney General has called a "shocking pattern of illegality";

* The New York State tax department is investigating Trump’s decades-long tax schemes;

* Federal and state investigators are looking into Trump’s hiring of undocumented workers;

"…and on top of all this are the ongoing investigations by the House Intelligence Committee, the Judiciary Committee, the Oversight Committee, the Financial Services Committee, the Ways and Means Committee, and the Foreign Affairs Committee. As maddening as all the noise may be right now, the fact remains that Trump and his pack of lickspittles are doing their touchdown dance while a large chunk of time remains on the clock."