I just don't get it.

[garybeck]

Mueller's own court documents show that Manafort met with Kilimnik during the campaign and gave him polling data.

Yet, the report concludes that the campaign did not collude with Russia.

how can these two facts exist simultaneously?

[Lars39]

1. Barr says the report....we haven't seen the report to corroborate that.

Why on earth do you believe Barr?

[garybeck]

7. i'm sorry, but

i think it is a stretch to say that Barr is going to blatantly lie and blatantly contradict the report.
if the report says that there was collusion, he would not come out and say the report says there is was no collusion. he will get nailed for that someday when the full report comes out.

look, Mueller recommended no more indictments. people are grasping at straws looking for something encouraging, like the SDNY will indict or whatever. but the fact is that Mueller's job was to investigate collusion. while he presented evidence in court that there was collusion he did not indict anyone on any charges related to that. the fact is that people lied to congress and people lied to Mueller's investigators and none of those people were even slapped on the wrist by Mueller.

Mueller should have known that Barr was going to parse his report and sugar coat it. the only way around that was to actually indict someone and make it clear. for whatever reason, he chose not to. for that I am disappointed.

personally i'm not going to wait with baited breath for some other investigative body to do something about it. maybe that will happen, but i'm not going to hold my breath.

[Lars39]

11. Not a stretch at all if they think they can bury it or severely restrict what is released.

[toddwv]

14. That's why we need the full report to be available.

This was the quote that Barr used from the report:

“[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

It's has legal specificity to it. In addition, it's just part of a larger sentence (the [T] indicates that the t was modified for Barr. So not only do we not have any context other than what Barr provides, we don't even have the entire sentence from the report.

Is this quibbling over a minor detail? Well, it isn't a minor detail and since we don't know if Mueller's actual report was 100 pages or thousands of pages, we don't know if this is a molehill turned into a mountain or a mountain chiseled down to a specifically shaped molehill.

[ScratchCat]

2. Barr's summary

Says they did not enter into an agreement with the Russian government. That is all it says. He is parsing words and using semantics. That has to be obvious based upon charging documents and established court record.

[uponit7771]

9. +1, I would like to know if they colluded with Russians not directly tied to the gov

[RussBLib]

10. what? there was no signed and dated collusion agreement?

Who TF would be so stupid as to create and/or sign such a document? That's not how it would work. The word goes out from above and the minions obey. There is no need for any ironclad agreement.

[gratuitous]

19. Yeah

That's why AG Barr's gloss on the report may be, shall we say, tilted to favor one interpretation of the facts over another. The Mueller investigation may have turned up all kinds of instances of apparent collusion and coordination between the Trump campaign and foreign interests. Barr may be looking for some kind of formal written agreement signed in blood beneath the light of a full moon before he's willing to commit to saying there was an agreement.

Which is a roundabout way of saying, "We don't know what Mueller's report says." Right now, the Trump administration is trying to stampede public opinion in one direction, much like the Bush campaigned stampeded public opinion after the 2000 election and the Florida result. We've seen this before, and we have to keep repeating that all we've gotten so far is Barr's gloss on the Mueller report, not the report itself.

[Corgigal]

3. Because Russia has no real govt,

just a bunch of corrupt stealing rich old guys. They stolen all they can from their people, they are now cracking the door to us.

Trump voters will be the last to know.

[csziggy]

4. Barr said the Trump campaign did not meet with the "Russian government"

Since the days of the Iron Curtain and before, the Russian secret service has been very careful to make sure that the agents who meet with Westerners cannot be tracked back to their government. All part of "plausible deniability" don't you know?

[Johonny]

15. I think that's the key here.

Trump's people meet mostly with Russian proxy agents. However, rarely do we see the links of the agents to Putin. Nor did Mueller catch enough of the Russians involved to turn state's evidence to rat out the other side of the equation. What the CIA knows ... we might never know. It certainly won't be made public until long after these events.

What we know is, Russia was mucking heavily in the election. Trump's campaign was actively seeking Russian proxy agents to look into this. I think we can assume the Mueller report details this out in full.

[Glimmer of Hope]

5. This is probably in the report and underlying evidence.

[Hugin]

6. I think we're witnessing a strategy cooked up by the Republicans...

Here's how it goes... They realized Trump was so dirty he was unredeemable. Also, Trump threatened to pardon himself and family from any federal charges. A threat there's no doubt he would have acted on if any indictments had come down concerning them, so, Mueller didn't. Leaving them open to other mechanisms like the States and House to prosecute.

But, I'm starting to see a deal forming. The deal I see is, if Trump is re-elected in 2020, soon after the inauguration, he will resign. (He doesn't like this presidenting stuff anyway) The unelectable Pence will take his place and of course issue full pardons to any Trump coming down the pike. This scenario is a win-win for Trump, the Establishment Republicans (read: McConnell), and their religiously insane gun toting evangelical base.

All in the name of civility and national unity. Plus, they get to keep all the power even longer because Pence would be eligible to be elected in 2024.

Yeah, I know this sounds crazy, but, in the land of the crazy... Sometimes, you've got to swim in it.

[ScratchCat]

12. Could be very plausible

n/t

(however, I think there is a misunderstanding about pardon power. A conviction is necessary for a pardon, because the person could be acquitted. A pardon is an admission of guilt. Pardoning someone who has not been tried would simply be an interference into an investigation because it would be no different than the person ordering the investigators to drop the charges. A President or a Governor can't issue a decree that a specific citizen can't be charged with crimes.)

[Hugin]

16. Why did Ford pardon Nixon, then?

I don't remember if he was convicted of anything.

[delisen]

17. Totally untrue Nixon pardoned without trial or conviction

Direct quote from text President Ford's Pardon of Richard Nixon

Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

[Cosmocat]

18. OK, sure

Trump is going to drop out going into the convention.
Trump is going to drop out before the election.
Trump is going to quit before he takes office.
Trump is going to quick before all the investigations bring him down.
Trump won't run for re-election.

Hard to believe by this point people don't get that he wants what he has said he wants - to be like the dictators he buddies up with, to be POTUS for life and have one of his spawn take over when he dies.

[coti]

20. No, it's much simpler than that. They're just fascists with no regard for truth. nt

[uponit7771]

8. The Russian ... ***GOVERNMENT***. Mueller's focus was very very very narrow.

[GoCubsGo]

13. We have no fucking idea what that report says.

All we have is a press release by a corrupt AG, who is making claims that may or may not be true. This does not make sense to you because you are accepting that press release as a fact. It is like NOT a fact.