Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday blocked a resolution calling for special counsel Robert Mueller's report to be released publicly.  Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked for unanimous consent for the nonbinding resolution, which cleared the House 420-0, to be passed by the Senate following Mueller's submission of his final report on Friday.

McConnell blocks resolution calling for Mueller report to be released publicly | TheHill

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Here is Adam Schiff, responding to calls from the President and Republicans to quit:

“My colleagues might think it’s OK that the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign,” he said.

“My colleagues might think it’s OK that when that was offered to the son of the president, who had a pivotal role in the campaign, that the son did not call the FBI, he did not adamantly refuse that foreign help — no, instead that son said he would ‘love’ the help with the Russians. You might think it was ok that he took that meeting. You might think it’s ok that Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, someone with great experience running campaigns, also took that meeting. You might think it’s ok that the president’s son-in-law also took that meeting. You might think it’s ok that they concealed it from the public. You might think it’s ok that their only disappointment after that meeting was that the dirt they received on Hillary Clinton wasn’t better. You might think it’s OK. I don’t.”

“You might think it’s OK that the president’s son-in-law sought to establish a secret back channel of communication with Russians through a Russian diplomatic facility,” he added. “I don’t think that’s OK.

You might think it’s OK that an associate of the president made direct contact with the GRU through Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks. You might think it’s OK that a senior campaign official was instructed to reach that associate and find out what that hostile intelligence agency had to say, in terms of dirt on his opponent.

You might think it’s OK that the national security adviser-designate secretly conferred with a Russian ambassador about undermining U.S. sanctions, and you might think it’s OK he lied about it to the FBI. You might say that’s all OK, that that’s just what you need to do to win. But I don’t think it’s OK. I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt, and evidence of collusion.”

In other words, Special Counsel Mueller’s inability to prove a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in no way “exonerates” the president of any wrongdoing. The president’s wrongdoing has already been proven. A four-page letter to Congress written by an attorney general Trump appointed because his first attorney general wouldn’t do enough to undercut the investigation doesn’t nullify any of the examples Schiff listed on Thursday.  “I do not think that conduct, criminal or not, is OK,” concluded Schiff. “The day we do think that’s OK is the day we will look back and say that is the day America lost its way.”

Adam Schiff Presents His ‘Evidence of Collusion’ – Rolling Stone

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And there is quite a bit of stuff we do know, from Vox:

• The Russian government did try to interfere in the 2016 election to hurt Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and benefit Trump.
  
• It did so through a social media propaganda operation, and by hacking and leakingleading Democrats’ emails.
  
• Some Trump associates seem to have had some advance knowledge of the email leaks — but Mueller did not find that they conspired with Russian government officials about the leaks.
  
• The Trump Organization was secretly in talks for a potentially very lucrative Moscow real estate deal during the campaign, and Russian government officials were involved. Trump and members of his family were briefed several times on the project.
  
• Before the 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort organized an extensive unregistered lobbying and PR operation to benefit Ukraine’s government, involving a top US law firm and two major lobbying firms. He also laundered tens of millions of dollars from Ukrainian interests into the US, and didn’t pay taxes on it. Then, once he joined Trump’s campaign, Manafort allegedly handed over Trump polling data to a Russian intelligence-tied associate.
  
• Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about when he’d heard that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails.
  
• Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador regarding sanctions.
  
• Trump lawyer Michael Cohen lied to Congress about the timing of the Trump Tower Moscow talks.
  
• Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone allegedly lied to Congress about his efforts to get in touch with WikiLeaks to try to obtain hacked Democratic emails.
  
• Several actions from President Trump raised obstruction of justice concerns, and Mueller’s team laid out evidence about them but declined to say whether they were criminal.
  

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A pair of bombshell revelations about the upcoming release of the special counsel Robert Mueller's report in the Russia investigation sent Capitol Hill into a frenzy on Wednesday. First, the Justice Department announced that Attorney General William Barr will hold a press conference to provide an "overview" of the report, more than an hour before Congress gets a copy. Later, it was reported that Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House officials about the report in recent days, and that the talks have helped President Donald Trump's team draft their rebuttal to Mueller's findings. "The attorney general appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said in a hastily arranged press conference Wednesday evening. "The president and his lawyers have been beating the drum and saying, you know, there was no collusion, no obstruction, that this report represents a complete and total exoneration," one House Judiciary aide told INSIDER. "So why are they so concerned about what's in the report? Why are they working so hard to craft this narrative before we even see the thing?"

Democratic lawmakers, aides react to news about Barr, Mueller report - Business Insider

• Holding a press conference without the report, that has never happened.
  
• Why holding a press conference at all, Barr himself used to say that the report should speak for itself, we don't need Barr to explain it to us, he's only been involved at the very last stage anyway.
  
• Turns out, Trump and the White House already know what's in the report.
  
• Barr solicited for this job arguing in advance that Trump wasn't guilty of obstruction of justice.
  
• Barr has a history of obstructionism in his previous period as Attorney General.
  

[Admin]

Attorney General William Barr’s Thursday morning press conference on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report was a whitewash. There’s no other way to describe it. Barr, who claimed beforehand that the press conference would focus on process, spun the report’s conclusions before it was released and expected reporters to ask questions about a document they had not even seen. He literally uttered the phrase “no collusion” to describe Mueller’s conclusions — providing a perfect sound bite to play on loop on cable news in the president’s favorite phrasing.

Barr repeated this and similar talking points multiple times during his prepared statement. He put tremendous effort into explaining why Trump’s behavior during the probe should be seen as justified and in no way constituted obstruction. He even praised the president for providing “unfettered access” to documents and said the White House “fully cooperated” with the investigation, despite Trump’s refusal to submit to an interview with Mueller. At the end, when a reporter asked if it was improper for the attorney general to spin the report to the public before it was released, Barr literally walked off the stage.

William Barr’s press conference was a whitewash - Vox

Amazing stuff, but with everything going on before, not a surprise apart from the blatant nature of it all.

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One of the most prominent voices on Fox News didn’t seem to buy Attorney General William Barr’s presentation on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Thursday. Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, suggested Barr took an unusual step in defending the president during a news conference he held ahead of the Mueller report’s release. “The attorney general seemed almost to be acting as the counselor for the defense, or the counselor for the president, rather than the attorney general,” Wallace said. “I suspect that Democrats’ heads on Capitol Hill were exploding, and they are going to come down very sharply about the way that Bill Barr today laid this out.”

Even Fox News’s Chris Wallace questioned William Barr’s defense of Trump - Vox

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Ongoing effort to take stock:

• Within five hours of Trump saying in public "Russia, if you're listening.." they tried to hack Hillary's emails
  
• And his defense that this was in joke doesn't cut it, a little after he ordered Flynn to find these emails
  
• Trump refused to be interviewed, despite publicly saying he was eager to do that 
  
• His written answers didn't cut it for Mueller, 30x Trump doesn't recall (like whether he new about Don Jr. meeting with the Russians in June 2016 together with Manafort and Kushner.
  
• Manafort and Gates (campaign manager and deputy campaign manager) regularly gave private polling data to someone they knew is a Russian spy.
  
• 11 episodes of likely obstruction of justice
  
• Obstruction of Justice case would have been stronger had Trump employees actually carried out his orders
  
• Mueller didn't indite the President because sitting Presidents can't be indicted, but Congress can
  
• If you're innocent, why obstruct?
  

Sources:

• Vox
  
• NYT
  
• The Atlantic
  
• 7 Essential things to know from the Mueller Report
  

“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,” the report said. “These actions ranged from efforts to remove the special counsel and to reverse the effect of the attorney general’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony. Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance.”

Mueller Reveals Trump’s Efforts to Thwart Russian Inquiry in Highly Anticipated Report - The New York Times

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To the casual stargazer, or grand jury, the facts of the Russia case are pretty simple. An entire crew of Trump staffers worked diligently together with several crews of Russians both before and after the 2016 election. George Papadopolous, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Erik Prince, Steven Bannon, Michael Flynn: there are more than enough Trumpsters in the Mueller section on Russia to prove collusion. 

The only problem is that collusion doesn’t exist as a legal concept. Trump himself may like to yell about NO COLLUSION but in this legal space, nobody can hear you scream. As Mueller points out, conspiracy is the crime, and that depends on very clear coordination. “We understood coordination to require an agreement – tacit or express – between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference,” Mueller writes. “That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.” Without an agreement about election interference, there’s no conspiracy but plenty of what you might call COLLUSION.

Of course Trump colluded with Russia. But unfortunately that's not a crime | Richard Wolffe | Opinion | The Guardian

• Highlights the very high legal bar Mueller had to climb in order to indict the President
  
• Highlights numerous occasions of collusion, but that's not a legal concept nor a crime
  
• Highlights numerous instances of evasiveness
  

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Robert Mueller’s report effectively accused Donald Trump of obstructing justice by witness tampering, one of the offences that led Republicans to impeach Bill Clinton 20 years ago. Mueller’s team found Trump repeatedly made efforts to “encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation” into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the special counsel’s final report said. Trump “made it known” that Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, could receive a pardon, according to Mueller. The president also urged Manafort and Michael Cohen, his legal fixer, not to “flip” and help Mueller’s inquiry. In both these cases, Mueller found evidence that Trump acted with the intent of hindering the investigation – a necessary component for prosecuting witness tampering and obstruction of justice generally.

In addition, Mueller found that Trump asked senior advisers to tell Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, to “stay strong”, and asked for two senior White House officials who were witnesses in the investigation to create fake records that would help protect him. More than three pages describing Trump’s potentially obstructive actions towards yet another witness – seemingly his longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone – were completely redacted in Mueller’s report because they related to an “an ongoing matter”. Stone is being prosecuted on federal charges.

Trump tampered with witnesses. These Senate Republicans voted to oust Bill Clinton for doing just that | US news | The Guardian

The article goes on to quote detailed statements from 14 Republican senators on why they voted to impeach Clinton on the basis of witness tampering, but now you don't hear a peep from them..

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Very good summing up by David Frum, former PR man of President Bush:

But it is disturbing that, even now, the most important question about the Trump-Russia matter remains unanswered: Why? Why did the Russians do it? Just think of the risk they incurred in 2016. Vladimir Putin can presumably read a poll as well as anybody else. He had to worry that Hillary Clinton would win despite his interventions and then exact some kind of retribution during her presidency. Putin must have expected some very big payoff. What was it?

The Mueller Report Didn't Tell Us Trump's Secrets - The Atlantic

Financial ties to Russia most likely, but Mueller didn't go there.