I long ago predicted the results of the Mueller report and I am confident they are indeed exactly as Barr describes them. Emphasis on exactly. Conservatives often fail at reading comprehension. So they trip and faceplant right at the concept of that.

Mueller won’t have found enough evidence to convict Trump of criminal collusion (not the actual legal word applicable, but Trump’s favorite colloquialism). But they actually did find plenty of soft collusion, the kind everyone actually expected. Liberals often suck at understanding technical distinctions of whether something bad a President is doing is actually illegal. So they trip and faceplant right at that concept.

Meanwhile, many are overlooking the fact that Mueller did find plenty of evidence Trump is a criminal; they just weren’t crimes Mueller was tasked with investigating, so he handed those off to the authorities in New York. And I’m pretty confident Trump will be arrested and tried for those crimes after he leaves office—and probably convicted (or, more likely, he’ll “make a deal” and pay a fine or some standard rich privileged shit, but in any event he’ll be a de facto felon).

If you want to understand all this, here’s a primer. With some links that will provide expert perspective and assemblies of evidence. I’ll start with something I posted on Facebook a few months ago; but then expand on that with some curious facts about the Barr letter and the Mueller report we now have learned since.

Trump the Likely Criminal

I often post thoughts and observations on Facebook that are too brief or speculative to be suitable for my blog. (So if you want to catch all that stuff, you might want to follow me on Facebook; and I mean Follow, as I can’t accept most friend requests.) Back in February I posted the following:

This may actually do Trump in.

I’ve long concluded Trump will never be impeachable for “collusion” because he’s too stupid to have colluded. Insofar as Russia planted soft agents in his entourage to influence and get intel from him (which I do expect the Mueller investigation to confirm; and that investigation has already caught numerous criminals, and netted a lot of wins in rooting out Russian hackers, influence peddlers, and manipulation channels to already fully justify that investigation, even apart from what may yet be revealed in its final report), Trump was almost certainly a total dupe in that enterprise. 100% clueless.

Even if Trump asked for dirt on Hillary sourced by Russian hackers (which he did: we have him on video in public speeches asking Russian hackers to disseminate this intel; and his campaign definitely asked WikiLeaks about their releasing it) the Senate will just call that oppo research, if unwisely sought. Weak tea as far as criminal acts go. Certainly not enough to impeach anyone for. And we never convict presidents for perjury or lying even if we vote to impeach them (cough…Bill Clinton…cough), so Trump’s vast archive of thousands of documented lies will at worst nix his reelection (if even that).

But I’ve just seen two things happen in 2019 that now actually look serious. You might not realize why.

There is an evident case for RICO charges against Trump that’s starting to build in a serious way, i.e. felony conspiracy, the law we use to prosecute mafia lords; we wrote the RICO statutes specifically to get crime lords who try to always work through agents to avoid prosecution. All that’s required for a conviction for conspiracy is an illegal act, coordinated by persons acting on your behalf, serving your interests. It’s really hard to effect a defense of “I didn’t know they were doing it”; many a crime lord has tried that and failed.

This isn’t about Russia. This is about good old fashioned crookery: money laundering and blackmail; in other words, racketeering.

Example number one:

A lawyer has now laid out how the inauguration fund investigation looks to be heading that way, in particular how some fifty million dollars or more doesn’t seem to have been spent on any legitimate use, money laundering tactics were used (like getting donors to buy whole blocks of tickets they won’t even use as a means of funneling large sums of cash), and foreign nationals may have illegally funneled millions to Trump’s campaign in this and other ways (a few examples of many more have leaked already). This will be hard to dodge. Money always leaves a trail. And they will find where it all came from and where it all went. And it isn’t looking like it will come out square. And this would implicate Trump in a massive criminal conspiracy of a very straightforward kind, standard white-collar crime (plus effectively the bribery of public officials), that no one can lie or silence their way out of. The evidence will all be documentary.

And now the Bezos thing has exploded. Jeff Bezos has published evidence that the The National Inquirer tried to blackmail him (and through him The Washington Post) on behalf of Donald Trump (and again, involving foreign national influence on the President, in this case from Saudi Arabia). That’s a crime. They claim they didn’t do it. But if Bezos hasn’t been duped, they left a paper trail. So it seems unlikely they can get out of this (this article covers what’s going on, with links bearing more evidence; more has since come out, and a federal investigation is ongoing). And as this was in the service of Trump’s interests, and we have ample evidence The National Inquirer often acted as Trump’s agent in similar capacities (e.g. in the paying off of his mistresses to get him elected, now an admitted fact), this implicates Trump in a criminal conspiracy to commit felony blackmail. Another RICO charge.

This isn’t trivial ambiguous shit like the collusion charge was going to turn out to be. This is serious criminal shit. And the evidence appears to be in documents, so lying and silencing witnesses won’t evade prosecution here. Trump might actually be screwed. Worse, the investigations of these two conspiracy charges will likely take longer than he has left in his term, so the Republican Senate won’t be able to shield him. He’ll very possibly be a civilian by the time he is indicted. He’ll have to be tried by a jury. In New York. Ouch. The thread holding up Damocles’ sword is fraying.

And remember, Trump has already been caught committing crimes (and further exposures of criminal conduct seem inevitable; indeed, close at hand), and surrounding himself with convicted criminals and appointing more staff who had to be dismissed for shady misconduct in office than all six of the last Presidents combined—filling the swamp, not draining it. So shady is this guy, that his documented crimes and legal shenanigans have their own Wikipedia page (including four corporate bankruptcies, numerous exposed cons, bribery, sexual harassment, violations of fair business laws, and his active destroying of evidence). And he is so intent on pushing us further toward an Imperial Presidency that throws away the United States Constitution to make the President a de facto monarch that he has been told by United States courts sixty three times now that his acts as President were unconstitutional—those courts now the only thing standing between us and autocracy; because though Congress is finally starting to rebuke him for his abuses of power, his criminal conduct still has too many supporters there to overrule it.

So What’s With Mueller & Barr?

So I’d long ago predicted the Mueller report’s conclusions even as reported by William Barr. But I still see Conservative media completely getting wrong what just happened, in ways that resemble Christian apologetics: falsely dichotomizing the result. And this is politically dangerous. I’ll explain why.

To get the analogy, think of that lame angry argument, “Jesus was either Lord, liar, or lunatic.” And yes, this is always framed as angry, with emotional outrage that we’d even suggest Jesus was a liar or lunatic, so, like Conservative politics, it plays on emotion in the hopes that it prevents you applying reason. But anyone who sets emotion aside and calmly thinks about it will realize: those aren’t the only three options, nor even the most likely ones.

Lewis’s trilemma (as it’s called) falsely leaves out “mistaken” (as Wikipedia summarizes John Beversluis’s point, “good-faith mistakes resulting from his sincere efforts at reasoning”) and “misreported” (or the “fourth option,” as Bart Ehrman called it: legend). It also falsely dichotomizes “lunatic” as either “totally sane or raving mad,” when in fact we know mental illness and delusion exist on extraordinary ranges across numerous axes. Most insanity, and by far most delusion, does not constitute “raving mad.” Most delusional people are completely functional, indeed in all other respects totally competent; indeed that’s what makes them dangerous as demagogues and cult leaders. And ignoring that possibility is precisely what makes this kind of reasoning dangerous in general: all “Lord, liar, lunatic” type arguments are tailor-made to trick you into following any future Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Marshall Applewhite. Christians should be terrified that they think this is a good argument.

The same thing is happening with the extremely emotional, and ultimately irrational, Conservative responses to the Barr letter (particularly on Fox News). The best two articles on that letter yet written are by actual experts in intelligence operations: one authored by an actual former officer of the CIA who actually ran counter-intelligence ops (Alex Finley, writing for Vox), and the other by a professional journalist who specializes in foreign intelligence and espionage (Natasha Bertrand, writing for The Atlantic). (Both women, BTW; so I’m just waiting to see how long it takes for some dude to mansplain to them their own expertise.) You really need to read both articles. This is what you can learn from real experts.

As Finley and Bertrand both astutely explain, the Barr letter does not in fact say the Mueller report exonerated anyone of anything. This has been desperately pointed out a lot in liberal media, of course. But it also happens to be true. Even apart from the plain fact of it (“could not prove” does not mean “found innocent”), you have to look at the carefully selected wording and punctuation used in Barr’s letter. In particular his use of ellipses (the “…” in direct quotes that signal something has been left out). Barr quotes the original report, but leaves out words. Pay attention to that. And in footnotes he defines terms in very specific ways that have a crucial importance.

With respect to collusion, Barr’s letter only says Mueller did not find proof of an explicit agreement with the Russian government.

Read that sentence again so you understand the point.

As those intelligence experts point out, this is almost always the case in every real collusion case in history. Because intelligence agencies hide government connections using cutouts, private citizens acting secretly on behalf of a government, without any paper trail or record of their doing so. In almost every actual collusion case in history, we can’t prove to a standard required in a court of law that a cutout is a cutout. And that is precisely why national governments use cutouts: to avoid getting caught.

I am quite certain that when we get to see the whole of it, the actual Mueller report will establish extensively that Trump staffers were colluding with Russians. That is actually beyond doubt at this point; and the Barr letter conceals this admission behind cagey wording. And Conservatives are endangering our country by ignoring this: because they who ignore it, are granting foreign agents unlimited license to influence our politicians through this same device, the cutout. To protect our national security, we must not tolerate this.

What Mueller’s report says (as quoted by Barr) is only that they could not prove to a criminal standard that the cutouts the Trump campaign were colluding with were actual government agents. And “colluding” with private Russian citizens is not a crime. So Mueller could not act on that evidence, no matter how much he had of it (and he has plenty). Liberals are the ones often guilty of the confusion here: thinking that any collusion “with a Russian” is criminal collusion “with Russia.” No. But Conservatives are making exactly the same mistake now, which is ironic because they are yelling at Liberals for having made that mistake before now. Horseshoe theory: Liberals and Conservatives are really, in the end, the same stupid people making the same stupid mistakes, only in aid of different goals.

The Mueller report I am certain will show all the ways Trump staffers colluded with Russians. We know they did. It will also no doubt explain why his team couldn’t confirm whether or not those Russians were working at the behest of the Russian government. Which is the only reason his report concludes a lack of finding; not because he disproved collusion with the Russian government, but because as much as he might suspect it, he couldn’t get behind the curtain to prove it. But intelligence agencies don’t decide questions by a criminal court standard: if agents suspect collusion but can’t prove it, they will report that collusion is likely occurring and recommend we should deploy counter ops against it, post haste. In this case, the only counter ops that can be led here are by the American people; because, after all, a President is not going to deploy counter ops against himself. And Congress is too criminally complicit to do it.

Moreover, even if Mueller had proved that the Russians that Trump’s team colluded with were not working with or for the Russian government (I’m pretty sure he won’t have, but even if he did), Trump’s team still colluded with Russians. Just, as private citizens. Which is not a crime. But it is fantastically disturbing. And Trump should not be let off the hook for it. Can you imagine the reaction of Conservatives had they found Obama doing this? Can you imagine the Republican Party in 1962 discovering Kennedy was doing it? Think this through. Seriously.

Hence Mueller could issue no indictment for collusion. Just as Barr says. Not because there wasn’t collusion; Mueller’s report I am certain will prove tons of it. But rather, only because Mueller couldn’t prove the collusion was criminal. Which is not as comforting as the Conservative media want us to believe. And they have no business being outraged at Liberal media for pointing this out. It is in fact those who don’t think this collusion is real and disturbing who are endangering the national security of our country. Denying it existed, denying it’s dangerous and alarming, on the mere “technicality” that it wasn’t explicitly “against the law” (or was, but the evidence was inaccessible), is head-in-sand thinking. It’s “Jim Jones must be the Savior, because Lord, liar, or lunatic.”

So much for collusion.

The second matter, of obstruction of justice, is also being misreported.

As the Barr letter notes, it is actually not clear that Barr even can issue an indictment against a sitting President, even had the report conclusively demonstrated obstruction. Barr thus says instead, hypothetically, if it were within his purview (for example, if this involved any other subject than the President), he would choose not to pursue prosecution owing to the inability to prove the required elements of the crime—not because the evidence proved Trump’s innocence.

Obstruction requires proving motive, and Trump is so clueless and incompetent that most of the means by which one would prove motive are not available to a prosecutor. You can’t argue in court, “The accused is certainly a shrewd and competent man, so he would surely have known…” Eeesh. No unbiased jury would buy “Trump is a shrewd and competent man.” So the inference can’t go through. And in many other respects, as Barr’s letter outright says, Mueller clearly said he found ample evidence for obstruction, just that none of it could rule out “alternative explanations” (e.g. incompetence). After all, he can’t deploy a mind-reading device to conclusively determine what Trump was thinking each time he did some obviously obstructive thing.

Moreover, the actual motive Trump would have had is complex, and that requires decisions by a prosecutor that Mueller felt unable to make for himself, clearly intending to instruct Congress to decide them instead. I doubt Mueller expected Barr to make the call. After all, in point of fact, it is only Congress who can prosecute Trump. Constitutionally, only the House of Representatives can indict him (that’s called “impeachment”); and only the Senate can try him (which is the only way he could be “convicted” of any crime). Barr only stated his personal recommendation, not an actual decision. Barr doesn’t have the authority to decide this—as he is well aware. And here Barr was honest enough to tell us the main reason Barr would not pursue the case, were it his to pursue: that the inability to prove collusion, takes a key argument for motive away from the obstruction charge.

And this is the reasoning that is actually flawed. First, Barr incorrectly assumes the obstruction was deployed in aid of covering up criminal collusion with the Russian government; in fact, we know Trump was trying to avoid all kinds of other crimes being exposed. He was trying to protect his empire and his friends from collateral damage. And this we know for a fact: all the criminal convictions that resulted from the Mueller investigation, and now the criminal cases against Trump being investigated in New York, and no doubt other crimes Trump would rightly fear might have been exposed by a free running investigation even if he got lucky and they weren’t. So Barr’s reasons for recommending a no-indictnment are not valid. And the House of Representatives is well within its rights to find so and impeach anyway.

IMO, Trump probably genuinely believed he never colluded with Russia or even Russians. It was his staff who did, who I suspect were essentially recruited as Russian assets to manipulate him and deliver to Russia abundant intel on him. It seems pretty clear Russia planted numerous agents in Trump’s entourage and thus gained full access to intelligence on a U.S. President as well as a direct channel of influence upon him (just check out Wikipedia, which has a whole page on “Links between Trump associates and Russian officials“; Politico has some handy charts; and The Moscow Project warehouses a ton of evidence on the point). All without his being aware of it. Because he’s stupid. Trump is a “useful idiot.” Which isn’t a crime. But it is a threat to national security.

So when Trump was trying to obstruct justice, his motive wasn’t to avoid being caught colluding with Russia—which he probably was barely even aware of. To the contrary, his motive was all those other crimes he was trying to hide, his own and his friends’. Although he might also have been worried he could get charged with collusion; Trump, after all, is so massively incompetent I seriously doubt he even knew what the elements of that crime were. He may have feared he had unknowingly committed the crime, and therefore it would be better it not be investigated.

Which makes two reasons Barr’s logic is flawed [and now hundreds of former justice department officials agree; and that was before further evidence of tampering emerged; and Mueller’s rebuke; and much else besides]. Hence his reasons for recommending a no-indictment are invalid. Which means the House of Representatives could justifiably reject his recommendation and impeach. It depends on what’s actually in Mueller’s massive 300+ page report, and whether the House thinks there is enough evidence in it to establish these motives which Barr’s reasoning illogically ignored. Of course the House could just impeach fully aware the Senate will never convict, exactly as happened to Clinton. But I’m playing around here in the imaginary hypothetical world where the House would only indict if there was a good reason to convict and the Senate would surely convict if the evidence warranted. In the real world, neither House nor Senate are that honest. They always vote politics, not truth.

Conclusion

And yet, even failing to convict does not exonerate: Bill Clinton was guilty as fuck, yet was acquitted. Trump claiming “no conviction” as if it were exoneration is rather hilarious in that context. Everyone knows Presidents guilty of high crimes never get convicted for it. They rarely even get impeached for it. Presidents never see justice. Even Nixon escaped impeachment. As did Reagan despite his treasonous Iran-Contra scandal. And the only two Presidents in history ever to actually be impeached (Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson), were acquitted. Yet both were guilty (though Clinton far more so than Johnson, whose actions would be vindicated, albeit half a century later; Clinton’s won’t be).

Yet despite this, Conservative media are dangerously playing a “no indictment” recommendation as “exoneration.” Despite Mueller having uncovered serious threats to our national security fully aided and abetted by Trump’s decisions and behavior, and extensive evidence of attempts to obstruct justice. Everything Adam Schiff has listed as disturbing is 100% true—and yet is only a fraction of the disturbing things we’ve learned that Trump and his staff did. So why aren’t Conservatives outraged?

I think Trump is fully impeachable: if politics were not what decided the outcome. If robots were running both houses of Congress, who had no emotions or political affiliations but simply decided whether or not to convict solely on the evidence and statutory elements of a crime (such as gross incompetence in the pursuit of the duties of office), Trump would probably be convicted and removed from office. Even just on what we already publicly know; the Mueller report, Barr’s own letter reveals, only adds tons more evidence to that. But as we all well know, impeachment proceedings are only decided by politics, not reason or evidence, so I have no confidence there would be any value in trying.

What we should be worried about is what actually happened, which is two really scary things:

Russia surrounded a sitting President with Russian agents; and that President foolishly played right into it and never admitted it or did anything about it, instead continually leaking intel to Russia through his confidants and letting himself be manipulated in policy decisions by those confidants—confidants working for Russia. As cutouts. With all kinds of leverage over him. If the public (and yes, the Liberal media) had not cried foul at this from the start, he’d still be surrounded by these jokers. As it is, we at least goaded Trump into firing them all. Thank Trump’s Ego for small favors. But Conservatives should be the ones most outraged by all this. Russia, a criminal tyranny that has long been and remains an enemy of our nation, almost placed agents and influence peddlers directly in the Oval Office, with soft control of an actual sitting President. Instead, Conservatives are denying this, and thus enabling it, ensuring it will happen again. That’s dangerous. They need to wake the fuck up.

When our system then did what it was supposed to do, and check whether this had happened (to at the very least be sure it hadn’t), by arranging an independent investigation of it (and contrary to Conservative media’s irrational claims to the contrary, investigations are often needed to confirm something isn’t true—not just to confirm they are—so at no point was this investigation improper or a waste of resources, even had it not uncovered numerous crimes and secured numerous convictions and exposed and shut down a foreign criminal effort to manipulate American elections), Donald Trump, an actual sitting President, engaged in extraordinary and shocking efforts to obstruct that investigation (and others), and thus criminally attempted to obstruct justice. Even Barr had to admit Mueller’s findings did “not exonerate him” on that point. And it’s really worse than Barr makes it sound. Conservatives, being as they are supposed to be the party of law and order and honest justice, should be extraordinarily outraged by this President’s actions on this count. And again to grasp this point one need merely ask what they’d be doing had all this evidence turned up under Obama. There would be hell to pay.

So why isn’t there?

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