The Mueller report finds no evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian. This ought to be the end of it, but it probably won’t.
The Wall Street Journal reports Mueller Report Says ‘Fairness Concerns’ Prevented Obstruction Judgment on Trump.
Moscow extensively interfered in the 2016 presidential election, but repeated communications with the Trump campaign that year didn’t amount to a criminal conspiracy, Robert Mueller said in a report that also avoided judgment on whether President Trump obstructed justice out of “fairness concerns.”
Thursday’s long-awaited release of Mr. Mueller’s report, which runs to 448 pages, capped a nearly two-year investigation into Russian election interference in 2016 and ties to Mr. Trump’s campaign associates. It found extensive evidence that a Russian company tied to the Kremlin conducted a disinformation campaign against American voters and that Russian military officials hacked computers of people affiliated with the Democratic Partyand Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s electoral rival that year.
while citing repeated contacts between Russia-linked entities and Trump campaign officials in the run-up to the election, it found no evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign coordinated with those Russian efforts, which have brought criminal charges against dozens of entities and individuals.
Mr. Mueller’s team also looked into allegations that Mr. Trump had obstructed justice, including by firing FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 after allegedly pressing him to go easy on his national security adviser Michael Flynn, then under investigation over his contacts with Russian officials. But Mr. Mueller decided not to provide judgment on obstruction by President Trump, the report said, in part because of legal guidance that a sitting president can’t be indicted. “Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching” a judgment that Mr. Trump committed crimes “when no charges can be brought,” Mr. Mueller wrote in the report.
Nonsense Will Continue
Since the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in January, House committees have launched a number of their own investigations—into Mr. Trump’s finances, businesses, relationships with foreign states, White House security clearances, and other avenues.
Russia Hack?
I do not accept that it was a Russia hack of the DNC. Timing considerations suggest it was an inside job.
However, it could have been an inside job with the insider knowingly or unknowingly providing the information to Russian agents.
Wikileaks Saves Trump?
Intercept authors James Risen, Robert Mackey, Trevor Aaronson believe Russia’s Use of WikiLeaks Allowed Trump and his Advisors to Avoid Collusion.
The decision by Russian intelligence officials to use WikiLeaks as an intermediary in its cyber campaign against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party may have inadvertently saved Donald Trump and his advisors from charges of conspiring with Moscow to win the election. The Mueller report makes clear that there was very little contact between the Trump campaign or people close to it and DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, the two online personas initially created by Russian intelligence to disseminate Democratic emails and other documents.
But once WikiLeaks got involved, Trump and his advisors were eager to make contact with the group and its founder, Julian Assange.
In effect, the GRU, Russian military intelligence, laundered its hack through WikiLeaks, which allowed people around Trump to contact WikiLeaks without facing accusations that they were working with the Russians.
Beginning in March 2016, the GRU, hacked computers and email accounts associated with the Clinton campaign, including the email account of campaign chairman John Podesta. Beginning that April, the GRU hacked the computer networks of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The GRU also targeted hundreds of email accounts used by Clinton campaign employees, advisors, and volunteers, and stole hundreds of thousands of documents.
At first, the GRU created the two online personas, DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, to disseminate the documents. The Russian intelligence service’s Unit 26165 registered the domain dcleaks.com anonymously and paid for it with bitcoin. Starting in June 2016, the GRU posted stolen documents on dcleaks.com. The website remained in operation and public until March 2017.
On June 14, 2016, the Democratic National Committee said that it had been hacked. The next day, GRU officers created Guccifer 2.0, apparently in response to the DNC’s announcement, and the persona published its first post, attributing the DNC document theft to a lone Romanian hacker. Guccifer 2.0 continued to release documents between June 15 and October 18, 2016. ….
Mueller’s findings about the Trump campaign’s interest in what WikiLeaks had on Hillary Clinton and its efforts to communicate with WikiLeaks are heavily redacted in the report released today. But even with the redactions, it is clear that Trump and many in his circle were eager to get whatever WikiLeaks had on Hillary Clinton.
So What?
The above Intercept view makes little sense. It implies Trump would have gone to Russia for information if it could not get the info from Wikileaks. This is highly speculative, at best.
So what if Trump wanted Wikileaks info? So did everyone else.
And the Intercept article also accepts at face value that the DNC was hacked.
I don’t. More importantly, the Intercept founder Glen Greenwald doesn’t either.
Greenwald on the Mueller Report
Robert Mueller did not merely reject the various Trump/Russia conspiracy theories. He obliterated them. https://t.co/rUYk2XByRB
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 18, 2019
I’ve honestly never seen the type of media meltdown that I’m seeing on CNN. They are so emotionally invested in the storyline that they’ve been pushing for 2+ years and they know what Mueller did to it and how this will forever reflect on them.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 18, 2019
The most amazing thing is that, as a Trump/Russia skeptic from the start, even I thought they would end up nabbing at least one American, like Carter Page, for conspiring with Russia. They didn’t even get Carter Page! I *overestimated* what Mueller would find: pic.twitter.com/QqryctApjn
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 18, 2019
More Greenwald Tweets
Witch Hunt
This was nothing but a witch hunt from the beginning.
Importantly, if there was anything at all in the report, I am positive Greenwald would have discovered it.
Democrats will rely on the fact that it was heavily redacted. But look at the second Tweet above. On second thought here it is in isolation.
The Mueller Report undoubtedly contains information revealing how the US spies on Russia.
If Barr released it all unredacted, they’d accuse him of treason & helping Russia.
With redactions, they’ll claim the proof they were right all along is hidden under the black boxes.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 18, 2019
Greenwald Not a Trump Fan
Please note that Greenwald is not a Trump fan. Rather, Greenwald is a socialist AOC supporter.
Democrats Will Carry On
Nonetheless, expect Democrats to carry on. So will the nutcases at CNN.
If so, this will not help the Democrats in the next election one iota.
Trump has been totally vindicated, despite views to the contrary.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
