Seth Abramson in Newsweek: The Mueller report is just the beginning.

[pnwmom]

https://www.newsweek.com/william-barr-robert-mueller-report-only-beginning-1399317

Every great film needs a climactic moment, the thinking goes, so American media is positioning the release of the “Mueller Report”—essentially just a summary of a case file believed to be hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pages long—to be the single moment that either saves or damns the Trump presidency. News-watchers shouldn’t be fooled, however: the release of Mueller’s summary of his nearly two years of investigative work, while an important milestone in the most complex and far-ranging federal criminal investigation of our lives, is merely a marker in time little different from many such markers that we’ve already seen and will see as the Trump-Russia story continues to unfold. If it’s an ending, it’s an ending of one of this historically harrowing story’s earliest chapters—that’s all.

When American media was, en masse, furiously predicting the exact date of the Mueller Report’s release—getting its prediction wrong on at least eight occasions dating back to the fall of 2017—it told its readers and viewers that Mueller was “farming out” a high percentage of his investigative leads to other jurisdictions. In 2017 and 2018, media took that fact merely as a sign that Mueller was almost done with his work, and not, as we must see it in 2019, as a sign that Mueller was, well, farming out a high percentage of his investigative leads to other jurisdictions. In other words, what we read on Thursday, April 18—when a heavily redacted version of the Mueller Report will be released to Congress and the public—will be nothing more than (a) a brutally edited version, of (b) a summary, of (c) a massive case file that has itself (d) been largely sent elsewhere for investigation by other federal prosecutors. Anyone who thinks the Trump-Russia investigation can be in any sense summarized by a two-topic 300- or 400-page report that is missing a quarter of its pages in has not been following the Trump-Russia story from the start.

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Here, then, is the reality: Mueller’s April 18 summary serves the primary purpose of passing on to the United States Congress the full archive of evidence on Trump’s fifty to a hundred acts of obstruction of justice while president, with that archive useful to Congress in determining whether impeachment proceedings are warranted. As most attorneys will tell you that just the public evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice is sufficient to support conviction for that offense, and as obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense per the Republican Party of the Clinton era, the answer to the question of whether Mueller’s archive of evidence on obstruction is sufficient to support impeachment is an obvious “yes.”

On the matter of collusion, Attorney General Barr has represented that Mueller only investigated a narrow legal issue within the broader question of whether the President of the United States committed acts of pre-election, transition-period, or post-inauguration collusion (acts arising to the level of a criminal offense and involving Russians, Saudis, Emiratis, Israelis, Egyptians, Qataris, or Bahrainis): whether Trump executed an implicit or explicit agreement with the Internet Research Agency (IRA) or Russian military intelligence (GRU) prior to these two entities’ massive election-season propaganda and hacking campaigns, respectively. No one in media or anywhere else has ever accused Trump of doing this, so we’ve always assumed the answer to the question Mueller investigated would be “no.” Frankly, that Mueller will need a hundred or two hundred pages to answer a question on which we previously thought there was no evidence at all tells us that, even if conspiracy couldn’t be established beyond a reasonable doubt—as AG Barr has told us—there must be more evidence in support of the notion than we’d imagined.

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[Hekate]

1. That's what I call a nice, factual, non-hysterical presentation.

[DallasNE]

2. Great Summary

The discovery phase is to establish the facts. In some cases this progressed to trial/plea agreement but it is narrowly focused on the legal aspect. There is much to follow. How was this allowed to happen and what must be done so it doesn't happen again. That is the job of Congress and is why they need the full summary report and not some heavily redacted portion. They also need the supporting detail for the same reason. But it doesn't end there either.


Just yesterday Barr issued an order to Immigration Judges not to set bail for asylum seekers meaning they are to be held in detention until sent back to their home country, effectively ending asylum. That shows the lawlessness has not stopped and something serious needs to be done about that. Otherwise it will just continue. Impeachment is a viable option - perhaps the only option.

[lagomorph777]

3. That's encouraging. Also, I wonder whether holding back the report is smart strategy.

I suspect that delaying a lot of that content until much closer to Nov 2020 will only make it sting more when it does come out.

[pdsimdars]

4. But do we have the time? He is destroying the country, the instutitions, our world standing . .etc.

[Karadeniz]

5. I think the trump campaign conspired with Russia. Why else would it have communicated

with Russians over 100 times? Why else was the team meeting with Veselnetskaya? Why did everyone hide it...consciousness of guilt. Why did Manafort pass campaign data? Flynn promised the lifting of sanctions...what else is that except a payment for services rendered? Supposedly several attempts were made to have a secret back channel to Moscow...at a time when trump wasn't expecting to win...so it wasn't for postelection communiques. Junior emailed wikileaks to plot release strategy. Why did trump announce he'd be revealing fresh Hillary dirt...he must've thought Veselnetskaya was going to deliver on meeting day,but mysteriously no further dirt came from him.

He, the team conspired. They colluded.

[usaf-vet]

6. Mueller has unleashed a shell game that the American people can still win.

Where oh where is the winning nugget. The "farmed out" investigation nugget that will lead to charges that bring down the whole band of treasonous con men and women?

I'll bet Mueller knows. I'll bet he planned it that way.

[Kurt V.]

7. manafort got the party platform changed.