Was Mueller a plant the whole time?

[Progressive Pessimist]

For one thing, let's get the report first.

Secondly, can we please not go this route. Mueller did his job, and while the inconclusive declaration regarding Trump obstructing justice or not is curious, he did it his job thoroughly and with integrity.

The real problem with this whole situation is Bob Barr being the middleman and the media immediately jumping on the exoneration bandwagon along with the perceptions of Americans potentially being informed by that.

It may not change the outcome, but seeing he report will at least help us understand the conclusions better.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

For one thing, let's get the report first.

Secondly, can we please not go this route. Mueller did his job, and while the inconclusive declaration regarding Trump obstructing justice or not is curious, he did it his job thoroughly and with integrity.

Let's imagine a Democrat defeats Trump in 2020 and serious allegations against them arise. A Special Counsel is appointed to investigate it and Brian or Ed Krassenstein is appointed to lead the counsel. Then Krassenstein states the investigation completely exonerated the President.

Would you trust that report?

[Progressive Pessimist]

For one thing, let's get the report first.

Secondly, can we please not go this route. Mueller did his job, and while the inconclusive declaration regarding Trump obstructing justice or not is curious, he did it his job thoroughly and with integrity.

Let's imagine a Democrat defeats Trump in 2020 and serious allegations against them arise. A Special Counsel is appointed to investigate it and Brian or Ed Krassenstein is appointed to lead the counsel. Then Krassenstein states the investigation completely exonerated the President.

Would you trust that report?

No, because the Krassenstein brothers aren't professionals in criminal justice. Mueller being a Republican is incidental. I really don't think he gave a flying f*** one way or the other about his personal feelings towards Trump. If anything, he probably would have grown to hate him for all the personal insults and conspiracy theories that Trump flung at him. That's a sign of professionalism.

Again, we need to see the report and understand why he came to the conclusions he did. I don't blame anyone for thinking that there was some sort of smoking gun over these past two years with all the weird red flags that are now known about Trump, his campaign staff, other subordinates, and their relations to Russia. But the public report should illustrate why our suspicions were wrong, even as it kills us to reconcile with those facts.

[Blackacre]

No. Turns out that Trump is just a normal bad president, not a bottom 3 president.

[pbrower2a]

The report not being released sort of contradicts this idea. There is clearly information in there that needs to be hidden.

1. Names of investigators and informants, as is true for the names of CIA agents on intelligence data, should be redacted.

2. Material still usable in criminal investigation and prosecution, or that must be made available to the defense team.

3. Material that could be troublesome on grounds of national security. The next President may need the help of Russia on North Korea.

Protecting the President from incompetence, dishonesty, or corruption? Hell no!
 

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

No. Turns out that Trump is just a normal bad president, not a bottom 3 president.

Again, we have no basis for that statement yet. All we have is a brief summary put out by Trump's hand-picked AG. If that was sufficient, we could have had Sessions write "mistakes were made but Trump isn't a criminal or a traitor" two years ago. It wasn't then and isn't now.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

BRTD becoming a QAnon lackey was not a development I was anticipating.

[Beet]

A) The FBI, a bureau of Investigation, concludes its report which suggested no charges with James Comey calling a press conference and proceeding to harangue the object of the investigation and opine that she was "extremely careless", among other things. Comey is a Republican max McCain/Romney donor and his face and words at said press conference, directed at a presidential candidate in the middle of an election, is then used in thousands of RNC advertisements.

B) Bob Mueller, leading a special Investigation, concludes his report which suggested no charges with a confidential report to the Attorney General.

One of these two men named above behave appropriately for what an Investigator is supposed to do, and one of them behaved grossly inappropriately.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

A) The FBI, a bureau of Investigation, concludes its report which suggested no charges with James Comey calling a press conference and proceeding to harangue the object of the investigation and opine that she was "extremely careless", among other things. Comey is a Republican max McCain/Romney donor and his face and words at said press conference, directed at a presidential candidate in the middle of an election, is then used in thousands of RNC advertisements.

B) Bob Mueller, leading a special Investigation, concludes his report which suggested no charges with a confidential report to the Attorney General.

One of these two men named above behave appropriately for what an Investigator is supposed to do, and one of them behaved grossly inappropriately.

This.  And the answer is (B).

I cut Comey a lot of slack in 2016 for his handling of the situation, in that he was in an unprecedented situation regarding a Presidential NOMINEE who was under criminal investigation.  I think less of Comey's actions now, but the real problem was that the Democrats were bound and determined to nominate Hillary Clinton. 

What political party is bound and determined to nominate for President a candidate being investigated by the FBI and by Congressional committees?  The answer is:  A party where the candidate's husband came to the rescue of the Democratic National Committee after it pretty much went broke.  The Clintons pretty much took over the Democratic Party apparatus during Obama's second term (due to Obama running it into the ground financially), so is it any surprise that Hillary was the candidate and Biden didn't even run?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Yes, the collusion is in the tax evasion that wont be released. The GOP knew this all the time. The was no Watergate break in; however, the Trump admin got dirt out on Clinton. Thats why chairman Grassley and McConnell was so cordial with Mueller. Yhey knew he wouldn't ask for Trump tax, thus no collussion.

Even Mueller has a low opinion now and hasnt done justice

[Stranger in a strange land]

Has anyone here even read the actual report?

No, because the actual report hasn't been released. Only Barr's summary has, which might very well paint Trump in a more favorable light than Muller's report does.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Yes.

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

Yes.


Mueller did a disservice to our nation by letting Trump off the hook. There's no way Russia didn't intervene in the 2016 election.

Yes, Russia intervened in the 2016 election.

That doesn't have anything to do with the question of whether Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia.


I'm loving all these "liberals" who were going on and on about how great Mueller was now claiming he was a plant or secretly working to make Trump look good. you people are pathetic tbh

Mueller before 2013: a fearmongering neocon scum of the earth.

Mueller 2013-2017: forgot he existed.

Mueller 2017-2019: our great hero who will bring Trump down. I'll buy his action figure.

Mueller 2019-: a Republican plant. I want my money back.

....um, yes? Don't see anything wrong with this summary.

...annnnddd you don't see anything wrong with this manic flip-floppery?

[Sestak]

Yes.

[Proto]

Yes.


Mueller did a disservice to our nation by letting Trump off the hook. There's no way Russia didn't intervene in the 2016 election.

Yes, Russia intervened in the 2016 election.

That doesn't have anything to do with the question of whether Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia.


I'm loving all these "liberals" who were going on and on about how great Mueller was now claiming he was a plant or secretly working to make Trump look good. you people are pathetic tbh

Mueller before 2013: a fearmongering neocon scum of the earth.

Mueller 2013-2017: forgot he existed.

Mueller 2017-2019: our great hero who will bring Trump down. I'll buy his action figure.

Mueller 2019-: a Republican plant. I want my money back.

Mueller 2020 -  has been a  Russian plant since 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_(Gestapo)

[Proto]

Yes.


Mueller did a disservice to our nation by letting Trump off the hook. There's no way Russia didn't intervene in the 2016 election.

Your Trump picture is outdated. There are no four-star generals in Russian army. And Russian generals don't wear such caps.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

There is no evidence of Russian collusion! Get over it! Trump won because the people in the rural areas throughout the country had enough of far left politics that Obama had to offer.

You are conflating Trump and his campaign's complicity with Russian interference (for which there is ample public evidence, irrespective of what AG Barr may claim)  with the effectiveness of Russian interference, which was decisive.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump

Politicians may be too timid to explore the subject, but a new book from, of all places, Oxford University Press promises to be incendiary. “Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know,” by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, dares to ask—and even attempts to answer—whether Russian meddling had a decisive impact in 2016. Jamieson offers a forensic analysis of the available evidence and concludes that Russia very likely delivered Trump’s victory.

The book, which is coming out less than two months before the midterm elections, at a moment when polls suggest that some sixty per cent of voters disapprove of Trump, may well reignite the question of Trump’s electoral legitimacy. The President’s supporters will likely characterize the study as an act of partisan warfare. But in person Jamieson, who wears her gray hair in a pixie cut and favors silk scarves and matronly tweeds, looks more likely to suspend a troublemaker than to be one. She is seventy-one, and has spent forty years studying political speeches, ads, and debates. Since 1993, she has directed the Annenberg Public Policy Center, at Penn, and in 2003 she co-founded FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan watchdog group. She is widely respected by political experts in both parties, though her predominantly male peers have occasionally mocked her scholarly intensity, calling her the Drill Sergeant. As Steven Livingston, a professor of political communication at George Washington University, puts it, “She is the epitome of a humorless, no-nonsense social scientist driven by the numbers. She doesn’t bullsh**t. She calls it straight.”

Indeed, when I met recently with Jamieson, in a book-lined conference room at the Annenberg Center, in Philadelphia, and asked her point-blank if she thought that Trump would be President without the aid of Russians, she didn’t equivocate. “No,” she said, her face unsmiling. Clearly cognizant of the gravity of her statement, she clarified, “If everything else is a constant? No, I do not.”

Conspiracy or not, Trump is President of the United States only because that was the outcome Putin preferred.



(You are a great example of Poe's Law. My reply presumes you are sincere.)