Mueller Report Submitted to AG

[SlugSlinger]

Matthews Fumes over Mueller: ‘How Could They Let Trump off the Hook?’
‘We were told for weeks by experts you cannot deal with an obstruction of justice charge or investigation without getting to motive’
EXCERPT:

MATTHEWS: “Why was there never an interrogation of this president? We were told for weeks by experts you cannot deal with an obstruction of justice charge or investigation without getting to motive. You don’t get to motive until you hear from the person himself who’s being targeted… How can they let Trump off the hook? So far tonight, we have no reason to believe Trump is going to be charged by rhetoric in the document itself, in the Mueller report, he will not be charged with obstruction or of collusion, without ever having to sit down with the special counsel and answer his damn questions. How can that happen?”

 

[SlugSlinger]

Byron York: Five things that didn't happen in the Mueller investigation
by Byron York
| March 22, 2019 06:42 PM

Byron York
| March 22, 2019 06:42 PM

Robert Mueller has delivered his report on the Trump-Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr. Sometime soon, perhaps within hours, Barr will send the report's "principal conclusions" to Congress. It will first go to the chairperson and ranking member of both the House and Senate Judiciary committees. It is unclear what will happen after that, but certainly other lawmakers will see the document, and there will be a steady stream of leaks of what is in the report.

The Mueller investigation is over, and it is apparently the case that Mueller does not recommend any new indictments.

At this point, it is not possible to say what is in the report. But even at this early moment, it is possible to note some things did not happen during the Mueller investigation.

1. Mueller did not indict Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, or other people whose purported legal jeopardy was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

2. Mueller did not charge anyone in the Trump campaign or circle with conspiring with Russia to fix the 2016 election, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

3. Mueller did not subpoena the president, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

4. The president did not fire Mueller, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

5. The president did not interfere with the Mueller investigation, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year. In his letter to Congress, Barr noted the requirement that he notify lawmakers if top Justice Department officials ever interfered with the Mueller investigation. "There were no such instances," Barr wrote.

So Mueller is finished. Not long after the news broke, Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts said, "The feeling [at the White House] right now is that this is finally over." Yes and no. Mueller's decision to file a report and not to recommend any more indictments does not mean that the broader Trump-Russia investigation is over. Anticipating just this possibility, House Democrats ramped up new Trump-Russia investigations in recent weeks to make sure that it will never be over. There is little doubt that such investigations will still be going, at least until the 2020 elections.

 

[kirk1978]

Can all of these "Trump" folks go after the Government and Media for slander or such?? I'm no lawyer and try to stay away from court....seems to cost me $$ every time I'm there.

 

[okierider]

How can some on the right, or the Trump camp, accept this report either? The amount of hate, derision, and accusations of incompetence directed at Mueller makes it impossible for anyone in that camp to accept this report with a shred of integrity.

It's hysterical that some of y'all would be screaming "LIES!" to the heavens if Mueller had tried to indict Trump, but now you are accepting the as-yet unseen report as gospel and saying "thank god that's over!" because the media is reporting no more indictments are recommended. Take a look at yer'selves.

The left is looney tunes in bed with Mueller, y'all are looney tunes against Mueller, and that compromises the integrity of both sides.

After all the money spent on this thing. I'd like to see the entirety of it released for public consumption and analysis.

This whole investigation was started because a discredited dossier payed for by Trumps political rival!! Mueller and everyone else knew this a year and a half ago. BUT he still decided to waste time , resources and money on zero actual evidence, he ignored FBI standards, set forth by the FBI years ago,and hired only politically motivated investigators. So yes , when the man in charge of the investigation goes against the set rules put in place to ensure impartiality, I tend to believe his motivation is less than noble.
I do not care for Trump, never have never will, but this charade has made the Country as a whole , look foolish. The whole thing looks like a really bad 3rd grade playground fight and all the "grownups" are egging the children on!!
I do not accept the report, I think it never should have happened...

 

[SlugSlinger]

John McCain’s Role In Fake Trump Dossier Revealed
By Gary Maher -
January 12, 2018
0
1604



Sen. John McCain hasn’t been shy about detracting from the Trump administration after him and the President had several public battles that ended in harsh insults on each side. Then came the chance to appeal Obamacare and when McCain sided with Dems, we knew exactly why.

Not that the brain cancer-stricken senator is worried about future votes, but he’s going to take another massive hit from conservatives after they find out what his role was with the discredited, fake news Trump dossier. This is huge…


Breitbart reports:

EILAT, Israel — The founders of the controversial opposition research firm Fusion GPS admitted that they helped the researcher hired to compile the infamous, largely discredited 35-page dossier on President Donald Trump to share the document with Sen. John McCain.


The goal of providing the dossier to McCain, the Fusion GPS founders explained, was to pass the information contained in the questionable document to the U.S. intelligence community under the Obama administration.

The disclosure raises questions about whether McCain knew that the information he delivered to the intelligence community was actually an opposition document reportedly funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

McCain’s office did not reply yesterday to a Breitbart News request for comment on the matter.

Last December, it was revealed that it was McCain who notoriously passed the controversial dossier documents produced by the Washington opposition research firm Fusion GPS to then FBI Director James Comey, whose agency reportedly utilized the dossier as a basis for its probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Writing in a New York Times oped last Tuesday, Fusion GPS founders Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritch relate that they helped McCain share their anti-Trump dossier with the intelligence community via an “emissary.”

“After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary,” the Fusion GPS founders related. “We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power.”

It was not clear from their statement whether McCain knew Fusion GPS was behind the dossier. Fusion GPS paid former intelligence agent Christopher Steele to do the purported research for the document. Steele later conceded in court documents that part of his work still needed to be verified.

Breitbart News sent the following questions to McCain’s office but did not receive a reply before press time: “Given that Fusion GPS is openly an opposition research firm, did Sen. McCain know that he was sharing political opposition research on Trump with the intel community? Did he know the dossier was partially funded by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign?”

In October, the Washington Post reported that in April 2016, attorney Marc E. Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS to conduct the questionable anti-Trump work on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Through Perkins Coie, Clinton’s campaign and the DNC continued to fund Fusion GPS until October 2016, days before Election Day, the Post reported.

On January 10, CNN was first to report, based on leaked information, that the contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings one week earlier to then-president Obama and president-elect Trump.

Just after CNN’s January 10 report on the classified briefings about the dossier, BuzzFeed published its full unverified contents.

In October, McCain denied providing the dossier to BuzzFeed and said that he only gave the material to the FBI. “I gave it to no one except for the director of the FBI. I don’t know why you’re digging this up now,” McCain told the Daily Caller during what the news website described as a testy exchange.

While the Fusion GPS oped sheds some light on the manner in which McCain obtained the dossier, the Fusion founders did not name the “emissary” who delivered the document to McCain.

A January 11 statement from McCain attempted to explain why he provided the documents to the FBI but did not mention how he came to possess the dossier or whether he knew who funded it.

“Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the director of the FBI,” McCain said at the time. “That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.”

Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, said McCain first consulted him about the claims inside the dossier at a security conference in Canada shortly after last November’s presidential election.

Wood stated that McCain had obtained the documents from the senator’s own sources. “I told him I was aware of what was in the report but I had not read it myself, that it might be true, it might be untrue. I had no means of judging really,” Wood further told BBC Radio 4 in January.

Last Month, Wood related that he served as a “go-between” to inform McCain about the dossier contents. “My mission was essentially to be a go-between and a messenger, to tell the senator and assistants that such a dossier existed,” Wood told Fox News.

In March, Vanity Fair raised questions about the alleged involvement of David J. Kramer, a former State Department official, in helping to obtain the dossier directly from Steele. The issue was also raised in a lawsuit filed against Steele by one of the individuals named in the dossier.

The dossier contains wild and unproven claims that the Russians had information regarding Trump and sordid sexual acts, including the widely mocked claim that Trump hired prostitutes and had them urinate on a hotel room bed. It also claimed there was an exchange of information between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.

Those allegations remain unsubstantiated following numerous public hearings. Indeed, former CIA Director John Brennan made clear in testimony last May that after viewing all of the evidence that was available to him on the Russia probe he is not aware of any collusion between Russia and members of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Dossier was reportedly basis for Obama administration moves

According to the BBC, the dossier served as a “roadmap” for the FBI’s investigation into claims of coordination between Moscow and members of Trump’s presidential campaign during the Obama administration.

In April, CNN reported that the dossier served as part of the FBI’s justification for seeking the FISA court’s reported approval to clandestinely monitor the communications of Carter Page, the American oil industry investor who was tangentially and briefly associated with Trump’s presidential campaign.

Senior Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have reportedly requested that the FBI and Department of Justice turn over applications for any warrants to monitor the communications of U.S. citizens associated with the investigation into alleged Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In testimony last May, former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly refused to answer questions about his agency’s ties to the dossier.

In further testimony to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey admitted he pushed back against a request from President Donald Trump to possibly investigate the origins of “salacious material” that the agency possessed in the course of its investigation into alleged Russian interference.

Dossier discredited

Major questions have been raised as to the veracity of the dossier, large sections of which have been discredited.

Citing a “Kremlin insider,” the dossier, which misspelled the name of a Russian diplomat, claimed that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen held “secret meetings” with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016.

That charge unraveled after Cohen revealed he had never traveled to Prague, calling the story “totally fake, totally inaccurate.” The Atlantic confirmed Cohen’s whereabouts in New York and California during the period the dossier claimed that Cohen was in Prague. Cohen reportedly produced his passport showing he had not traveled to Prague.

In testimony in May, the FBI’s Comey confirmed that the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia allegedly wanted Trump in office was not because the billionaire was, as Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) claimed during a hearing, “ensnared in” Russia’s “web of patronage” – just as the dossier alleged. Instead, the FBI chief provided two primary reasons for Russia’s alleged favoring of Trump over Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.

One reason, according to Comey, was that Putin “hated” Clinton and would have favored any Republican opponent. The second reason, Comey explained, was that Putin made an assessment that it would be easier to make a deal with a businessman than someone from the political class.

Comey’s statements are a far cry from the conspiracies fueled by the dossier alleging Putin held blackmail information on Trump.

Citing current and former government officials, the New Yorker reported the dossier prompted skepticism among intelligence community members, with the publication quoting one member saying it was a “nutty” piece of evidence to submit to a U.S. president.

Steele’s work has been questioned by former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who currently works at the Hillary Clinton-tied Beacon Global Strategies LLC.

NBC News reported on Morell’s questions about Steele’s credibility:

Morell, who was in line to become CIA director if Clinton won, said he had seen no evidence that Trump associates cooperated with Russians. He also raised questions about the dossier written by a former British intelligence officer, which alleged a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. …

Morell pointed out that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Meet the Press on March 5 that he had seen no evidence of a conspiracy when he left office January 20.

“That’s a pretty strong statement by General Clapper,” Morell said.

Regarding Steele’s dossier, Morell stated, “Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can’t judge the information — you just can’t.”

Morell charged the dossier “doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think.”

“I had two questions when I first read it. One was, how did Chris talk to these sources? I have subsequently learned that he used intermediaries.”

 

[p238shooter]

This whole investigation was started because a discredited dossier payed for by Trumps political rival!! Mueller and everyone else knew this a year and a half ago. BUT he still decided to waste time , resources and money on zero actual evidence, he ignored FBI standards, set forth by the FBI years ago,and hired only politically motivated investigators. So yes , when the man in charge of the investigation goes against the set rules put in place to ensure impartiality, I tend to believe his motivation is less than noble.
I do not care for Trump, never have never will, but this charade has made the Country as a whole , look foolish. The whole thing looks like a really bad 3rd grade playground fight and all the "grownups" are egging the children on!!
I do not accept the report, I think it never should have happened...

I for one think this has been Trump's plan from the start of the accusations, expose the deep state swamp tactics for what they are, dangerous games by power hungry bullies. Meanwhile, our President Trump has been taking care of the business of MEGA in the back ground while the Dems are attending the mud wrestling event down at the swamp. Now starting to feed on their own as the playground gets smaller and smaller.

 

[TerryMiller]

Keep in mind that this mess really started when James Comey gave information to his professor friend to leak to the press. If I remember right, Comey even admitted that he did it so that an investigation would be started. And, I've heard the cost was close to $30 million, so let's have Comey and his professor friend reimburse the government.

 

[JD8]

 

[p238shooter]

Also, Sen John McCain played a large part in promoting the discredited dossier that has sense been totally discredited. That and McCain being the vote to continue Obama care is part of Trump's rub with him, so when the press jabs Trump with him, Trump jabs back rather than acting like a mealy mouth politician.

 

[DavidMcmillan]

or like a mature adult...