For weeks now, anti-Trump forces like Nadler have rallied around the Mueller report. Their attacks are 100 percent political. Impeachment talk is all political. The 2020 election is only 19 months away. The idea is to impair and smear Trump.
The media continue to attack Trump constantly. The goal is to swing voters against him by making him appear as some sort of criminal and monster. The attackers want Trump on the defensive. Trump has no choice but to attack the attackers vigorously and incisively. He knows how.
Mueller’s report is long. Those who say it provides a roadmap to impeachment shouldn’t be believed. To show this in full can’t be done in a single blog. Only one example is provided here. The report reads (p. 272)
“As described above, the evidence does not establish that the President asked or directed intelligence agency leaders to stop or interfere with the FBI’s Russia investigation and the President affirmatively told Comey that if ‘some satellite’ was involved in Russian election interference ‘it would be good to find that out.'”
No obstruction. Nonetheless, the Mueller report still goes on to examine Trump’s motivations for what he said and did during the investigation. This material speculates upon “evidence” provided by people whom Trump dealt with.
“But the President’s intent in trying to prevent Sessions’s recusal, and in reaching out to Coats, Pompeo, Rogers, and Comey following Comey’s public announcement of the FBI’s Russia investigation, is nevertheless relevant to understanding what motivated the President’s other actions towards the investigation.”
Trump’s motivations were not to obstruct justice. They were to get justice. They were to get certain truths before the public to counteract lies and false impressions that were impeding his presidency.
“The evidence shows that the President was focused on the Russia investigation’s implications for his presidency – and, specifically, on dispelling any suggestion that he was under investigation or had links to Russia. In early March , the President attempted to prevent Sessions’s recusal, even after being told that Sessions was following DOJ conflict-of-interest rules. After Sessions recused, the White House Counsel’s Office tried to cut off further contact with Sessions about the matter, although it is not clear whether that direction was conveyed to the President. The President continued to raise the issue of Sessions’s recusal and, when he had the opportunity, he pulled Sessions aside and urged him to unrecuse. The President also told advisors that he wanted an Attorney General who would protect him, the way he perceived Robert Kennedy and Eric Holder to have protected their presidents. The President made statements about being able to direct the course of criminal investigations, saying words to the effect of, ‘You’re telling me that Bobby and Jack didn’t talk about investigations? Or Obama didn’t tell Eric Holder who to investigate?’
“After Comey publicly confirmed the existence of the FBI’s Russia investigation on March 20, 2017, the President was ‘beside himself’ and expressed anger that Comey did not issue a statement correcting any misperception that the President himself was under investigation. The President sought to speak with Acting Attorney General Boente directly and told McGahn to contact Boente to request that Comey make a clarifying statement. The President then asked other intelligence community leaders to make public statements to refute the suggestion that the President had links to Russia , but the leaders told him they could not publicly comment on the investigation. On March 30 and April 11, against the advice of White House advisors who had informed him that any direct contact with the FBI could be perceived as improper interference in an ongoing investigation, the President made personal outreaches to Comey asking him to ‘lift the cloud’ of the Russia investigation by making public the fact that the President was not personally under investigation.
“Evidence indicates that the President was angered by both the existence of the Russia investigation and the public reporting that he was under investigation, which he knew was not true based on Comey’s representations. The President complained to advisors that if people thought Russia helped him with the election, it would detract from what he had accomplished.
“Other evidence indicates that the President was concerned about the impact of the Russia investigation on his ability to govern. The President complained that the perception that he was under investigation was hurting his ability to conduct foreign relations, particularly with Russia. The President told Coats he ‘can’t do anything with Russia,’ he told Rogers that ‘the thing with the Russians’ was interfering with his ability to conduct foreign affairs, and he told Comey that ‘he was trying to run the country and the cloud of this Russia business was making that difficult.'”
No obstruction and no motivation to obstruct. Trump’s efforts were directed at removing the false impression that the investigation was investigating him. He didn’t want his scope of presidential power diminished. He didn’t want to be under a cloud he knew to be false.
This innocent effort carried a danger that materialized, which was another cloud, the obstruction of justice cloud. Mueller did in fact go to substantial lengths to investigate Trump, by hooking onto the process issue of obstruction of justice.
Mueller in his report publishes a great deal of material about Trump’s behavior with respect to the investigation. Mueller did investigate Trump after all.
He didn’t find obstruction of justice, but he didn’t need to. He provided enough to keep the anti-Trump movement alive.
Lies and false impressions threaten to erase reality. Before the report even came out, already there were attacks on Barr that acted as if he were going to withhold it from the public when all he was doing was going through a redaction process. Now the anti-Trump media are making a big deal out of Nadler issuing a subpoena to get the unredacted report and to get Mueller’s materials and interviews in full. The media are acting as if Mueller or Barr are withholding evidence, or that Trump has somehow engineered a coverup. This is all ridiculous. Nadler obviously wants to cherry pick the raw testimony in order to further his anti-Trump drive. He wants to stretch out the anti-Trump process and keep it alive.
Nadler and others are going to prolong the war on Trump until the next election.
10:42 am on April 19, 2019
