Slate "Mueller Spoke and America Heard Two Different Things"
There's no end in sight
by Dahlia Lithwick
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/robert-mueller-spoke-and-we-heard-what-we-wanted-to-hear.html
Robert Mueller gave a surprise press conference at the Justice Department on Wednesday morning, in which he essentially offered up the CliffNotes of his 448-page findings. There was nothing particularly new or surprising revealed, so instead, we watched this become yet another example of the Yanny versus Laurel–ification of everything in America. By that, I mean we all listened to the same brief prepared statement, and the left heard that the president would have been cleared had the special counsel been able to determine that he had not committed a crime, and he was not cleared, which implies that perhaps the president in fact committed a crime, even though Mueller was constitutionally barred from saying so. The right heard what it has heard since the day Attorney General William Barr first “summarized” the findings in the initial report: “No collusion, no obstruction.” In under an hour, the president tweeted, again, that he had been cleared: “Nothing changes from the Mueller Report. There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent. The case is closed! Thank you.”
snip
But mostly, what Mueller proved definitively with his summary of the summary of the report is this: that if Congress opts to do nothing about foreign interference, it is Congress’ failure, not his. One clear message of Mueller’s brief statement, and indeed, the message of the entire first volume of his report, is that “Russian intelligence officers who are part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system” and that this attack occurred to the detriment of Hillary Clinton. This used to be a fact that would have united the American government behind some course of action. This no longer seems to be the case, and that is to our detriment. Again, Mueller told us all this two months ago.
Mueller also made clear that he was tasked with nothing more or less than doing a sweeping investigation. He said, in so many words, that obstruction of that investigation impaired the knowing of truth and that the president could not be cleared of such obstruction. If Congress opts to do nothing about those who obstructed or lied, they aid and abet that which “strikes at the core of the government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable,” the special counsel said today. He is, in a way, linking his own ability to finish the job to Congress’ unwillingness to do its own.
Regardless, Mueller’s tenure as America’s Facts Adult is thus over. The role of America’s Facts Adult will now be played by the House of Representatives. Whether anyone heard and understood that the handing over of the baton just happened, it happened. What happens next is solely within the control of Congress, which means we should all buckle in for a continuation of the Yanny-or-Laurel debate, with no particular end in sight.
= new reply since forum marked as read
The circular firing range is over there >>>
