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The Russia Investigation: Trump Pardons Flynn (7 Viewers)

Sinn Fein said:
DOJ would have had to approve whatever Mueller is going to say - if its a DOJ announcement.  Otherwise, Mueller could have done this at the end of his driveway, while doing sit-ups.
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I'm not speculating one way or the other. Just find it all very curious. I also agree with your prior thought that one side "may" come out feeling really unhappy about the statements made, while I still give pause to a possible neutral declaration.

 
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ren hoek said:
Seems like a presidential campaign being investigated and prosecuted because of a false conspiracy theory bought by his political opponents should be something a "principled" "liberty advocate" is concerned about, but he's been pretty mum on that.  This has always been political- there's tons of exposure in antiTrump fanfare and he knows it.  

That being said, his arguments about obstruction and impeachment are at least technically sound.  I think impeaching Trump for his response to a phony conspiracy theory that haunted his administration and destroyed his political capital for 2 years, as opposed to blatant war crimes and corruption and collusion with other countries, is about as bogus as it gets.  The pretenses of the investigation are so extraordinary and beyond the pale- compared to Trump's "obstruction" of an investigation that was given multiple years and unlimited resources to complete at great personal cost to his ability to conduct policy as the President of the United States, and Barr's "cover up" of a report that was released a few weeks later- that some response was warranted.  

In other words, Trump had every right to be pissed off over the origins of the collusion investigations and feel like they cast an unfair cloud over his administration.  As it turned out, there was no collusion, it was a complete myth, and his political associates were maligned as traitors to their country- for years!- based on a total fabrication.  It was based on a lie.  The notion that he obstructed the investigation into a fairy tale, while certainly relevant, is tiddlywinks by comparison.  
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So many bad faith arguments in here. Do you get paid for this stuff? 

 
Ruffrodys05 said:
I'm not speculating one way or the other. Just find it all very curious. I also agree with your prior thought that one side "may" come out feeling really unhappy about the statements made while still giving pause to a possible neutral declaration.
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My guess is it will be a statement about his desire to testify behind closed doors - hoping to explain why he thinks that is a more productive use of his and Congress' time.

 
Sinn Fein said:
My guess is it will be a statement about his desire to testify behind closed doors - hoping to explain why he thinks that is a more productive use of his and Congress' time.
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Got my alarm set so I need not speculate. 5 minutes should be enough time to warm up the boob-tube and find a station to view it on.

 
Sinn Fein said:
Interesting.  

I don't see this ending well - whatever Mueller's intentions, it seems likely that one side or the other will not be happy.
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Not going to be good for the anti Trumpers seeing AG Barr has signed off on this. Just hope and pray Mueller doesn't say anything to pull a Barr, or pull a Graham and dishonor his reputation.

 
The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will make a public statement at 11 a.m. on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

There will be no question-and-answer session following Mueller’s statement, according to the Department of Justice.

A person familiar with the matter said Mueller will deliver a “substantial” statement, but declined to provide more details. 
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And, totally unrelated you understand...

Just in from CBS: "@JanCBS will sit down with Attorney General Bill Barr on Thursday for an exclusive interview to air on @CBSThisMorning Friday, May 31... It will be Barr's first network interview."
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Sinn Fein said:
Interesting.  

I don't see this ending well - whatever Mueller's intentions, it seems likely that one side or the other will not be happy.
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I doubt this is a very controversial statement. It's probably going to be a summarization of his work (X indictments, Y interviews, yada yada) and then announcing the date he's leaving. Likely thanking his team and underlining what an enormous task this was. 

I doubt he goes into detail on the report. He and Barr don't seem to be in alignment so it doesn't make sense for a statement. And a brief with no Q&A is not how you clarify details. 

 
"substantial" could indicate that he'll deal with Barr's interpretation of his report -- either directly (by highlighting Barr's dissembling) or indirectly (by simply recounting the truth of the report in the key areas).  Not sure what else would in fact be "substantial".

ETA:  confirming Barr's interpretation would also qualify.  Maybe Mueller thinks his differences with Barr have been unfairly reported.

 
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John Blutarsky said:
How did Barr cut short Mueller’s investigation? You claim he definitely did.
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No one ever answered this and I think it's interesting. I don't think anyone has really suggested this but I do think the timeline is interesting.

We know that Trump tried to get Sessions to resign to interfere with Mueller once at least, that's in the report. That's one of the bases for obstruction.

But the actual detail of Sessions' quitting/firing is still really cloudy, especially what Whitaker said to him that led him to finally give up his job.

ChiTrib

WaPo

CNN

redux​

Trump also had repeatedly threatened or demanded Sessions’s ouster behind closed doors, only to be convinced by aides that removing him could provoke a political crisis within the Republican Party. Former White House counsel Donald McGahn urged the president to keep Sessions in the job until the Mueller probe was over, current and former White House officials said.

After an early confrontation, Sessions gave Trump a resignation letter and let him hold onto it. The move deeply concerned White House aides, including then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who told Sessions that Trump would use the letter to manipulate him.

“You have to get that letter back,” Priebus told Sessions, according to people familiar with the conversation. Trump ultimately returned the missive with a short handwritten note about how he was not accepting it.

As the president railed against Sessions through early and mid-2017, Republican senators publicly and privately defended the attorney general. But in recent months, some of Sessions’s most prominent defenders, including Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), said they were open to a new attorney general after the midterm elections.

...Despite the tension with the White House, Sessions had described the position of top law enforcement officer as his dream job, and he pursued his conservative agenda with gusto. ...
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Two close Trump advisers said the president does not plan on keeping Whitaker permanently. Among those said to be under consideration for the job are Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, former U.S. attorney general Bill Barr and former federal judges Janice Rogers Brown and J. Michael Luttig. 
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President Donald Trump, who levied extraordinary public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions in recent weeks, has privately revived the idea of firing him in conversations with his aides and personal lawyers this month, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

His attorneys concluded that they have persuaded him — for now — not to make such a move while the special-counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign is ongoing, the people said.

But there is growing evidence that Senate Republicans, who have long cautioned Trump against firing Sessions, are now resigned to the prospect that he may do so after the November midterm elections — a sign that one of the last remaining walls of opposition to such a move is crumbling.
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A source close to Sessions says that the former attorney general realized that Whitaker was "self-dealing" after reports surfaced in September that Whitaker had spoken with Kelly and had discussed plans to become the No. 2 at the Justice Department if Rosenstein was forced to resign.

In recent months, with his relationship with the President at a new low, Sessions skipped several so-called principals meetings that he was slated to attend as a key member of the Cabinet. A source close to Sessions says that neither the attorney general nor Trump thought it was a good idea for Sessions to be at the White House, so he sent surrogates. Whitaker was one of them.

But Sessions did not realize Whitaker was having conversations with the White House about his future until the news broke in late September about Rosenstein.

On Wednesday as aides began drafting Sessions' resignation letter, the distrust for Whitaker burst into the open.

The fact that Whitaker would become acting attorney general, passing over Rosenstein suddenly raised concerns about the impact on the most high-profile investigation in the Justice Department, the Russia probe led by Mueller. The Mueller probe has been at the center of Trump's ire directed at Sessions and the Justice Department. Whitaker has made comments criticizing Mueller's investigation and Rosenstein's oversight of it, and has questioned the allegations of Russian interference.

Rosenstein and O'Callaghan, the highest-ranked officials handling day-to-day oversight of Mueller's investigation, urged Sessions to delay the effective date of his resignation.

Soon, Whitaker strode into Sessions' office and asked to speak one-on-one to the attorney general; the others left the two men alone. It was a brief conversation. Shortly after, Sessions told his huddle that his resignation would be effective that day.
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prefontaine said:
My guess is he'll take on the Russian angle because it got lost in the President stuff. Russia interfered in 2016. They are going to again in 2020. It's a substantial threat and shouldn't be ignored or forgotten. 
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Meh.  Not substantial.  The adults in the room are already working on this.

 
prefontaine said:
I doubt this is a very controversial statement. It's probably going to be a summarization of his work (X indictments, Y interviews, yada yada) and then announcing the date he's leaving. Likely thanking his team and underlining what an enormous task this was. 

I doubt he goes into detail on the report. He and Barr don't seem to be in alignment so it doesn't make sense for a statement. And a brief with no Q&A is not how you clarify details. 
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There’s no reason to make a public statement about that. That wouldn’t be Mueller’s style at all, IMO.

I don’t know what he’s going to say, but I’d expect it to be non-trivial.

 
Anything could happen. Bob may say that the remaining pieces are being wrapped up and his office is at an end. Or maybe he will clarify things Barr said. Or maybe he will provide his own summary of his own report overwriting Barr's attempted 'summary'. There's also a report out over the last two days claiming that OSC had actually drawn up a draft indictment of Trump which he may want to refute. Maybe he will talk about requests for him to testify. - No way to tell.

 
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Is this where Mueller corrects all the wrongs perpetrated against his investigation and clearly states that he would have indicted, if not for the DOJ rules about sitting president's and all that jazz?

 
timschochet said:
New York Times is saying it will be “lengthy and substantial”. 
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This is bothersome.

The lengthier and more substantial the more it poses a chance that it will be intended to serve as a substitute for testimony.

Reminder: the guy is still a DOJ employee and he follows rules. He ain't going Comey rogue.

 
And I'm sure if he says things that don't specifically excoriate Trump, no one will be in here parsing the meanings of words to within an inch of their life to make it CLEAR that what he really means is that Trump should be impeached.  

 
FreeBaGeL said:
Sounds like he's basically saying constitutionally he couldn't charge Trump with a crime for obstruction while he's in office, but it might be likely that comes when out of office.
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Sounds like he is saying - very explicitly - that Congress has the authority to charge the President with wrong-doing.

 
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