Something doesn’t compute about this part of the Mueller report
Attorney General William Barr issued a four-page summary a few weeks ago summarizing the Special Counsel investigation report. In it, he included few quotes, but one of them was, “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Lawyers and everyone else wondered what began the sentence. We now know, with the redacted Mueller report having been released.
The paragraph from which the referenced quote came in the Barrshit summary states in full: “As set forth in detail in this report, the Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents. The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Reading that paragraph and the rest of the actual Mueller report, something does not compute. The sentence before the highlighted language literally states “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” existed. The report talks about Trump and his orbit repeatedly hiding or misstating those events, including directing his then-White House counsel McGahn to lie about things. Yet, it concludes that it couldn’t establish any collusion or coordination. The House must investigate why such discrepancies exist.
We must review all of this and try to figure out what is going on, because this example and many others do not add up to a clean bill of health for Trump or his administration. We know there were numerous links and numerous subsequent lies about meetings and those links. Truth and justice must win out, and as Palmer Report has reiterated, Trump should go to prison.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.