[Bytor Peltor]

Of course not!

And guess what, he had a stitch before ever being elected!

He doesn’t know how to be a politician and for many, it only adds to his appeal.

The economy, Mexican border and Supreme Court Justices are his calling and I believe the voters are happy.

I’m sure a bed of embarrassments will be revealed, but I doubt they = Grab’em by the pussy!

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

All well and good, but you honestly can't say he comes out of this report smelling of roses does he?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Skuj

It's clear from the report that Team Trump knew about the release of dirt/emails on Clinton, but were not forthcoming about any of it to officialdom, and in some aspects, they lied. This is not a clear-cut definition of collusion per se, but it can be argued, and Mueller does argue, that Team Trump held hands with Russia on these activities, and concealed much.

This idea that Trump is squeaky clean on Russian interference/help is absolute fucking garbage.

amigo, much could be argued, but you cant make a legal case out of coffee shop / barroom speculations.

wishful thinking is bad for the brain

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

NOT ONCE did I say you were hocking collusion. The point I was making and you missed......the people at the news table with expressions of bitterness; just like many, they too have known for a long time that there was no collusion or obstruction of justice. Intelligent people didn’t need the Mueller Report findings to understand there was NOTHING there!!!

Maybe I’m giving him too much credit, but I always thought that’s why Skuj was always sticking his head in the sand......and only blocking those who were speaking the TRUTH!!!

lmao

okay bytor

i don’t care about the “facial expressions” of strangers

what i care about is that mueller did his job and he did it with integrity, and i believe his findings. from when he announced them weeks ago.

as for “intelligent people” and “nothing there”, everyone is entitled to their delusions i guess. stable genius has apriori conclusions of unknown facts? i wish you good luck with that!

[!@#$%!]

this copypasta is from michael gerson, republican and former dubya speech writer.

—

There is no vindication for Trump

Michael Gerson

President Trump’s claim of vindication by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report depends on some creative thinking. The president, it seems, is not guilty of conspiracy with the Russians to influence the 2016 election. He is only guilty of wishing really, really hard for Russian help and having his fondest desire miraculously granted. On July 27, 2016, Trump made a public plea to the Russians to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. “Within approximately five hours of Trump’s statement,” the Mueller report reveals, “GRU [Russian intelligence] officers targeted for the first time Clinton’s personal office.”

This, evidently, doesn’t qualify as conspiracy. But can it really be a coincidence? Maybe it was the hand of Providence. Or an answer to Franklin Graham’s prayers. Whatever the non-collusive reason, Trump is clearly a lucky, lucky man.

[Read the full, redacted Mueller report]

What is less clear is how we are to accept a detailed, damning, 448-page moral and political indictment as good news for Trump and his administration. “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” according to the report. This included a “social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump” and “computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign. Though Trump campaign officials didn’t directly coordinate with Russian intelligence activities, they welcomed and rooted for them. More than ever, the 2016 presidential election deserves an asterisk, indicating a serious chance that it was won with foreign help.

Recall that Trump, during his campaign and well into his presidency, dismissed this influence as a myth. He said it might be the Chinese at work. Or it “could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.” Trump, it turns out, is perfectly willing to minimize a national security threat for political reasons. But that isn’t conspiracy, either. Just friends helping friends.

[The Post’s View: The Mueller report is the opposite of exoneration]

The Mueller report documents an atmosphere of routine, rewarded deception at the White House. In one case, after ordering then-White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Mueller, Trump ordered McGahn to publicly deny that the request to fire Mueller was ever made. (McGahn, to his credit, refused both orders.) In another case, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders lied about the extent of opposition within the FBI to former director James B. Comey. Looking at the tape of her statement, it is remarkable how smoothly she dissembles. Obviously a valued skill in Trump’s orbit.

And the report strongly hints that obstruction of justice took place, even though the Justice Department does not believe the prosecution of such a crime is a legal option during Trump’s term in office. In case after case, Trump employed pressure or dangled pardons in an effort to avoid embarrassment or legal exposure.

Some of the apparent obstruction was done in private: “Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over . . . investigations . . . . The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels.”

At other times, the effort was not hidden at all: “Many of the president’s acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, occurred in public view.”

The evidence in the report is quite specific. In one instance, Trump “sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate.”

As I read it, the case for obstruction of justice is strong. And the report takes pains to point out a possible congressional role in examining obstruction claims. “The Constitution does not authorize the President to engage in such conduct, and those actions would transgress the President’s duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’ ”

What Congress should do with this information is a matter for another day. But congressional leaders have some major choices ahead.

So: No evidence of direct conspiracy between Trump officials and the Russians, but plenty of evidence of desired conspiracy. And: Limited ways to prosecute Trump for obstruction of justice while he is president, but strong evidence that obstruction was intended and occurred.

Already, Republicans are urging the country to move on. In this case, moving on would ignore and reward corruption on a grand scale.

Read more from Michael Gerson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .

[!@#$%!]

this one is from smellyanne’s own husband, haaa haaa haaa. yes he’s a republican too.

—

George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him.

George T. Conway III
April 18 at 8:09 PM

George T. Conway III is a lawyer in New York.

So it turns out that, indeed, President Trump was not exonerated at all, and certainly not “totally” or “completely,” as he claimed. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III didn’t reach a conclusion about whether Trump committed crimes of obstruction of justice — in part because, while a sitting president, Trump can’t be prosecuted under long-standing Justice Department directives, and in part because of “difficult issues” raised by “the President’s actions and intent.” Those difficult issues involve, among other things, the potentially tricky interplay between the criminal obstruction laws and the president’s constitutional authority, and the difficulty in proving criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

Still, the special counsel’s report is damning. Mueller couldn’t say, with any “confidence,” that the president of the United States is not a criminal. He said, stunningly, that “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” Mueller did not so state.

That’s especially damning because the ultimate issue shouldn’t be — and isn’t — whether the president committed a criminal act. As I wrote not long ago, Americans should expect far more than merely that their president not be provably a criminal. In fact, the Constitution demands it.

The Constitution commands the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” It requires him to affirm that he will “faithfully execute the Office of President” and to promise to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” And as a result, by taking the presidential oath of office, a president assumes the duty not simply to obey the laws, civil and criminal, that all citizens must obey, but also to be subjected to higher duties — what some excellent recent legal scholarship has termed the “fiduciary obligations of the president.”

Fiduciaries are people who hold legal obligations of trust, like a trustee of a trust. A trustee must act in the beneficiary’s best interests and not his own. If the trustee fails to do that, the trustee can be removed, even if what the trustee has done is not a crime.

So too with a president. The Constitution provides for impeachment and removal from office for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” But the history and context of the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” makes clear that not every statutory crime is impeachable, and not every impeachable offense need be criminal. As Charles L. Black Jr. put it in a seminal pamphlet on impeachment in 1974, “assaults on the integrity of the processes of government” count as impeachable, even if they are not criminal.

[The Post’s View: The Mueller report is the opposite of exoneration ]

And presidential attempts to abuse power by putting personal interests above the nation’s can surely be impeachable. The president may have the raw constitutional power to, say, squelch an investigation or to pardon a close associate. But if he does so not to serve the public interest, but to serve his own, he surely could be removed from office, even if he has not committed a criminal act.

By these standards, the facts in Mueller’s report condemn Trump even more than the report’s refusal to clear him of a crime. Charged with faithfully executing the laws, the president is, in effect, the nation’s highest law enforcement officer. Yet Mueller’s investigation “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of executing undue influence over law enforcement investigations.”

Trump tried to “limit the scope of the investigation.” He tried to discourage witnesses from cooperating with the government through “suggestions of possible future pardons.” He engaged in “direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.” A fair reading of the special counsel’s narrative is that “the likely effect” of these acts was “to intimidate witnesses or to alter their testimony,” with the result that “the justice system’s integrity [was] threatened.” Page after page, act after act, Mueller’s report describes a relentless torrent of such obstructive activity by Trump.

Contrast poor Richard M. Nixon. He was almost certain to be impeached, and removed from office, after the infamous “smoking gun” tape came out. On that tape, the president is heard directing his chief of staff to get the CIA director, Richard Helms, to tell the FBI “don’t go any further into this case” — Watergate — for national security reasons. That order never went anywhere, because Helms ignored it.

Other than that, Nixon was mostly passive — at least compared with Trump. For the most part, the Watergate tapes showed that Nixon had “acquiesced in the cover-up” after the fact. Nixon had no advance knowledge of the break-in. His aides were the driving force behind the obstruction.

Trump, on the other hand, was a one-man show. His aides tried to stop him, according to Mueller: “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

As for Trump’s supposed defense that there was no underlying “collusion” crime, well, as the special counsel points out, it’s not a defense, even in a criminal prosecution. But it’s actually unhelpful in the comparison to Watergate. The underlying crime in Watergate was a clumsy, third-rate burglary in an election campaign that turned out to be a landslide.

The investigation that Trump tried to interfere with here, to protect his own personal interests, was in significant part an investigation of how a hostile foreign power interfered with our democracy. If that’s not putting personal interests above a presidential duty to the nation, nothing is.

White House counsel John Dean famously told Nixon that there was a cancer within the presidency and that it was growing. What the Mueller report disturbingly shows, with crystal clarity, is that today there is a cancer in the presidency: President Donald J. Trump.

Congress now bears the solemn constitutional duty to excise that cancer without delay.

[Bytor Peltor]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

There is no vindication for Trump

Those knowledgeable of how prosecution works in the United States understand you are 100% INNOCENT until proven guilty. This is especially true for those who are under investigation. It’s the responsibility of the investigation/investigators to find where laws were broken and to file applicable charges.

INNOCENT people don’t need vindication!!!


However, the easily fooled and duped often need further explanation:

7 Ways The Mueller Report Exposed The Media’s ‘Bombshell’ Fake News Stories

1. Michael Cohen Never Went To Prague
2. Carter Page Was Not a Russian Agent
3. Donald Trump Did Not Direct Cohen to Lie to Congress
4. Cohen’s Call With a Russian Did Not Prove Collusion
5. Paul Manafort Was Not Funneling Polling Data to Putin
6. The Trump Campaign Did Not Make Republicans Soften Their Position on Ukraine
7. Jeff Sessions Was Not a Russian Spy

[!@#$%!]

fox news vomit

[Derek]

Hey look, me and symbol man are agreeing on something. At least we can agree that MAGA chuds are full of shit at the end of the day!

The 100% innocent until proven guilty thing is such nonsense. The justice system is flawed and people are barely held to account. A large percentage of rapes never end up in a trial, for example. A lot of people aren't stupid and see that Trump used nefarious means to get elected. Just because it has not been proven in a court of law does not mean that the truth is somewhere completely different (MAGA chuds seem to forget that the Mueller report didn't exonerate Trump on obstruction, though I personally don't take much stock in such things... also Manafort et al are obviously white collar criminals). I'm drunk so unable to see if this post makes sense but it makes sense to me in this moment and isn't that what posting is all about??

[!@#$%!]

innocent until proven guilty is for unanimous jurors beyond reasonable doubt in criminal cases.

for civil cases you only need a preponderance of evidence.

this is how oj simpson was acquitted of murder in criminal court, but in civil court was found liable for the wrongful deaths of his victims, and had to pay millions and millions.

so... from the report, trump looks like shit. but that’s nothing new.

 

[ilduclo]

Let’s just call Trimp “ongoing matter”, I guess that will cover the black pen work done by Roseanne Barr

 

 

[Bytor Peltor]

TRUMP Tweet:

Only high crimes and misdemeanors can lead to impeachment. There were no crimes by me (No Collusion, No Obstruction), so you can’t impeach. It was the Democrats that committed the crimes, not your Republican President! Tables are finally turning on the Witch Hunt!


Democrats split on impeachment as controversy rages over Mueller report

[!@#$%!]

orange vomit

[Derek]

How many times does Trump lie out of his ass on twitter each day?

[!@#$%!]

666

[Derek]

I'm cool with Lucifer brah, let's not bring him into this

[!@#$%!]

lucy who?

...

the planet venus?

[Bytor Peltor]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

fox news vomit

Romney says Mueller report left him ‘sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection’

 

[Derek]

Mitt Romney is literally the politician dude from Cronenberg's The Dead Zone who Walken's character has to stop cause he saw into the future and the world was a dystopia under his leadership.

[Derek]

 

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Romney says Mueller report left him ‘sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection’

“... of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the president.”

 

“i am also appalled that, among other things, fellow citizens working in a campaign for president welcomed help from russia—including information that had been illegally obtained; that none of them acted to inform american law enforcement; and that the campaign chairman was actively promoting russian interests in ukraine.”

lmao, romney is trying to have it both ways by declaring trump legally exonerated while morally condemning him and his campaign at the same time.

bytor calls that a victory.

enablers! lol

obstruction is still up to congress.