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?
Spot on. I have referred a link to this post to my favorite site (Naked Capitalism) and hope that it gets some extended visibility. I think that your other readers should also recommend this link to their favorites. I share your belief that direct Russian Collusion is a nothing burger that has been at best a political and media football. It is what is behind the curtain that needs exposure.
Finally – a rational analysis. My only quibble – I think you are spot on about Barr’s incorrect judgment on obstruction. But the evidence for this can’t be found in the Mueller report – which has a limited brief. It must lie in all the outsourced cases to other districts.
Oh no, the Mueller report is not brief. It’s over 300 pages. And read the intel analyses I linked to: Barr’s letter uses an ellipsis to remove reference to all the evidence of collusion in that report; and Barr himself references all the evidence in the report on obstruction—and only dismisses it for want of provable motive, just as I explain. The report most definitely is full of tons of evidence of soft collusion and obstruction. Just as I explain. We already know a lot of examples of that evidence that was gleaned from Mueller court filings before now, in fact the links I provided analyzing that evidence comes from those documented Mueller findings; the complete report will have even more (vastly more, apparently; hundreds of pages worth). The only things sent to other jurisdictions were financial and white collar crimes not involving Russian collusion or obstruction.
Concerning this statement:
“this implicates Trump in a criminal conspiracy to commit felony blackmail.”
Is that evidence that he committed blackmail or was in fact a victim of blackmail? It seems to me that it would be the latter.
I don’t follow you.
A tabloid that frequently in the past suppressed stories on Trump’s behalf (and even at his payment) attempted to blackmail Bezos to control the output of The Washington Times to protect Donald Trump from exposure on his collusion with Saudi Arabia. That’s Trump’s cronies blackmailing someone on his behalf. That’s like a mafia boss sending his goons to threaten someone into not investigating his criminal enterprise. That’s committing blackmail. Not being a victim of it.
“A tabloid that frequently in the past suppressed stories on Trump’s behalf (and even at his payment)”
It seems to me that the only way that Trump would become aware that a tabloid had stories on him that they were about to release is if the tabloid had contacted him (in blackmail fashion) and threatened to release the stories unless he paid him. That would make him a victim of blackmail and only guilty of giving into it. Otherwise the tabloids could’ve just released the story without first making him aware of their plans to do so as they presumably do with stories on other high profile figures.
Oh dear no. That tabloid already admitted it had an ongoing agreement to help him (with a regular catch-and-release policy). He didn’t pay the tabloid! He paid the tabloid the money the tabloid then used to pay off the women. That’s Trump using the tabloid as an agent of his policy. Thus when that same tabloid blackmails someone to shut them up about Trump, very obviously they are acting for Trump—not thereby “blackmailing Trump”!
The conservative view reminds me of what the US has said many times about puppet dictators it put in place… “he’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole.”
Well, to be fair, that principle is sound when it’s not a criminal we’re talking about. The world needs some assholes, as long as they obey essential laws and are pointed in the right direction. And we can’t always have the perfect asshole, so we always have to back someone who 20% sucks even by our own measure, simply to prevent someone taking over who 80% sucks. So it can be valid reasoning to say “He’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole.” That really describes nearly all (even honest) politics.
But your point I think is that when this sound reasoning is extended to support even tyrants, we’ve taken a principle too far, and are now threatening the health and security of our Republic merely for superficial access to power. That never ends well.
Atrocius misleading and mendacius article.
On a par with your appaling slandr of Lauren Southern as racist if not wurse.
“Russia surrounded a sitting President with Russian agents”
Utter Bollux. U havn’t got wun iota of evidence for your libl.
Shifty schiff is a russian shill. He claims to hav ixplicit proof… but so far nothing. zilch. Schiff and the Dems beat evun Hiroo Onodo. Schiff gullibility at being prankt by russian comedians says a lot.
After $30mn dollars, 19 anti Trump lawyers (including teary eyed wuns whu attended crookid hillary’s wake),
2800 subpenas, 500 search worrunts, 500 witnisis..with President Trump submitting over 1 milliun documents
Mueller ‘thoroughly inverstigating’ states ‘the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian guv in its interference activities’ (‘tacit or exprest’).
Hopefully the IG Huber report will soon be in, President Trump will declassify the FISA abuse and Powers unmasking, and Obama’s sending in spies to the Trump campaign. Obama’s ‘flexibility’; Hillary’s shocking guilt and selling Uranium etc will soon come to a hed. I hear Clapper dropt Obama in it.
Luv t see libs scream at the sky again. KAG 2020!
Trump will be re-elected in a landslide – and your cullusiun delusiun will parallel the rapturists.
Tons of evidence linked in the article.
I know you like ignoring evidence. But I can’t help you.
And pulling a tu quoque on Schiff is a fallacy.
I know you like fallacies. But I can’t help you.
It’s all the worse that your tu quoque proves my entire thesis: when Schiff was told by those pranksters that they had compromising information, he immediately said even to them that this needs to be sent to the FBI. He did not collude. He turned them in. Exactly what no one in Trump’s team did. This is the very point.
Then for you to completely ignore my entire article’s point about the wording of the Mueller report? Priceless.
You’re clearly not very honest or bright.
It might be fun for you to do a post about QAnon and the people like the commenter above who wallow in its delusions.
I have even less interest in QAnon tinfoil hat than I do in flat earthers—whom you’ll notice I’ve never wasted a page on either.
Update: The Washington Post just revealed…
Apparently they had already written a summary for Barr to include. He didn’t. He buried it.
This matches what the intelligence and legal experts said that I referenced in my article. We could tell Barr did this from his cagey wording and use of ellipses; but now we know he did this. Confirming just what I said.
If this looks tl;dr, you can skip to the end for the quick but possibly impolite version.
Trump being a crook in his business life is very much like voters being told Clinton was a womanizer. They elected both men. It is true that Clinton’s affair with Gennifer Flower was heavily publicized right before the New Hampshire primary, while Trump’s criminality was buried as much as possible. (The customers for advertising are rich men, and they are turning right, and favored someone like Trump.) Nonetheless those who cared to know, knew.
It is also true that being a crook seems to be more of a threat to the nation than being a philanderer. Nonetheless, both men were elected. The thing about that is, impeachment should be considered not just as an stupid substitute for criminal indictment and trial forbidden by presidential immunity from prosecution, when the constitution neglected to state that the president was immune. The whole point of a separate impeachment procedure requires the president be immune to ordinary prosecution, lest malicious prosecution undermine the republic. That’s why parliamentary immunity to prosecution is so common to constitutions, including a for in the US constitution.
But impeachment also has to be considered a a political remedy for the refusal of the president to accede to the people’s will, to attempt to subvert the system. It is true that people have been very reluctant to actually do so. I would suggest that democracy however is not law in itself, and that precedent is not authoritative in representative government in the same way as a courtroom. There is a place for the people’s judgment, as well as their representatives. The presumption is that the act of election is an endorsement of the winning candidate. The purpose of impeachment is not to undo the people’s will, but to ensure the constitutional system can continue to function. Impeachment is a criminal process to remove an incumbent committing crimes. And it can be a political process to keep the system working. What it cannot do is subvert the system by rejecting the voters’ judgment (for good or ill,) on things they already knew.
Impeaching either Clinton or Trump for things that were known prior to their election are not proper uses of impeachment. Impeaching Clinton for perjury in a constitutionally dubious civil trial with the malicious goal of embarrassing him doesn’t serve any proper use of impeachment to serve a constitutional end. It satisfies prudes, but that’s it. And everybody knew Trump asked Putin to hack the Democrats. Obstruction of justice when the justice is a ploy to reverse an election is not clearly a constitutional use of impeachment. Again, for better or worse, the people have basically judged the charge supposedly being obstructed. The feeling that this is a kind of double jeopardy is part of the constitution too.
On the other hand, impeachments for breaking the democratic system are always justified. The notion that Andrew Johnson’s support of white murders of freedmen was ever vindicated I find shocking. I think you mean to say, it was later agreed, in Jim Crow times, that it was tyranny to oppress the noble Southern race by jumping up their inferiors and to tear apart the nation in a vain crusade for an illusory equality. That Congressional Reconstruction was a tragedy where our perfect Constitution was threatened by latter-day Jacobins. who were fended off by just! one! vote! I disagree. I think it was a national tragedy Andrew Johnson was acquitted.
As to modern day presidents, abuse of war powers should serve as a valid charge for impeachment and conviction. After all, what good is a democratic system where the people are in charge of if, when and where the nation makes war? The true corruption of a system lies in what has been made legal and is commonly accepted as business as usual. The impeachment charges against Nixon didn’t specify impoundment of funds, expansion of executive privilege, the “secret” bombing of Cambodia. But they were in a sense subsumed (even if in a disguised form, lest an embarrassingly democratic precedent be set) in the charges of abuse of power and contempt of Congress. I think the same charges already could be (and should be) made against Trump. But, the system is already corrupt. The people who own the country are more reactionary than in the days of Nixon.
My opinion of course.
tl;dr version: Shame on you for defending Andrew Johnson, the man who wanted to use the presidency to undo the Civil War!
Note I actually mentioned Johnson’s vindication. And disparaged him in no other way.
I respect the views in this blog. As a conservative American, I have concerns about all the political figures in this country. I would be interested in a blog, by you, that encompasses views on all. What do you think about the last main three politicians running for office? Clinton, Obama, Sanders. Your views on Trump are obvious. He is a bafoon, but from what information I can obtain he hasn’t done all that terrible of a job. Convince me otherwise. Thank you for your honesty
Trump has done a ton of really incompetent things that would have been handled far better by any of the other three you name. Obama and Clinton are Establishment Politicians I could wish to have better alternatives to but there are none; and we can only choose the best available to lead us. Although Obama is better than Clinton on policy values (equal in competence), and Sanders better on policy values than even Obama but much weaker in competence than either. If I had to choose one of them right now for President (and no other conditions prevented it and no other options were available), I’d elect Obama. As to who I’ll vote for in 2020, I have no idea. A lot of vetting remains to be done of those running before I’d even have a clue.
Apart from what I already linked to as evidence of this (Trump’s bizarre penchant for lying, criminality, and obstructing justice, informing to and manipulation by Russian agents, cozying up to dictators, and well-documented extremely poor choices of cabinet members and staff), here is just a random sample:
Fucking up immigration policy
Fucking up consumer policy
Fucking up White House security policy
Fucking up constitutional law (and wasting millions of dollars and hours fighting to subvert it)
Fucking up the budget (and skyrocketing the national deficit)
Cozying up to Saudi Arabia (and doing nothing about its crimes)
Cozying up to North Korea (and doing nothing about its crimes)
Fucking up human rights domestically
Fucking up human rights abroad
Fucking up transparency
Fucking up trade policy
Fucking up labor policy
No, seriously, really fucking up labor policy.
I mean, fucking over workers fifteen ways from Sunday
Fucking up abortion rights abroad
Fucking up abortion rights domestically
Fucking up economic policy
No, seriously, really fucking up economic policy
Fucking up administrative policy
Fucking up national dialogue policy
Fucking up tax policy
Fucking up regulatory policy
Fucking up education policy
Fucking up disaster relief policy
Fucking up science policy
Fucking up environmental policy
Fucking up virtually everything
In fact fucking up almost literally everything
Supporting literal slavery
Doing every fucked up thing he complained Clinton did
And…
Corruption up the wazoo (like, deep up the wazoo)
Thanks for writing this. I have been struggling to sort through the mess of Republican and Democrat spins that distort the real issues in service their cartoonish narratives. This does a lot to clarify things.
Given that the best argument conservatives have to defend their guy is that he’s so brash, incompetent and possibly even mentally ill that he can’t stop his government from being infiltrated directly by foreign agents and he actively stands in the way of the necessary intelligence responses, what do you think of the use of the 25th Amendment? As for myself, I think that is becoming increasingly appropriate to discuss.
The thing about the 25th Amendment is that it sets criteria. If those criteria actually are met, then it did its job. If they can’t be met, then it doesn’t apply.
IMO, it won’t be met under Trump because it was designed to operate for Presidents who were literally incapacitated; it was not written to account for ideologically biased corruption and non-extreme mental incompetence.
The only way it could ever function on such terms is if even Congress and the VP agree Trump has gone off the rails and needs to be removed; which would require him to do something far more extreme than has hitheretofore happened.
Not a very Baynesian analysis, something I would have expected. But, surprisingly, you expound a series of beliefs and opinions more akin to a religion than a structured logical examination aimed at getting to the truth. Where are your priors? Why so ready to believe intelligence experts? Why such ingrained preconceptions? Very strange given your rigorous scholarship on religious beliefs.
It’s actually entirely Bayesian. It would in fact be irrational to say Bayesian reasoning leads to any other conclusions than those I just articulated. It’s perhaps just as ignorant to assume reasoning isn’t Bayesian merely because the word “Bayes” isn’t included, nor numbered weights stated.
I do not state any beliefs or opinions in this piece without backing it with extensive evidence that reasonably warrants no other conclusion. Likewise the experts I cite. You might want to try paying attention to the evidence instead of the conclusions you don’t like. Rejecting well-evidenced conclusions because you don’t like them is emotional reasoning by definition.
When I mentioned that I your blog piece did not seem very Bayesian, it was not do to the lack of equations, and explicit heuristic devices, but rather because of the lack of logical rigor to your assessment of the Trump-Russia affair and what appeared to me at least unconscious or otherwise biases, apriori beliefs and assumption that are not solidly grounded in logic or facts. You appear to base much of your analysis on opinion.
I was rather impressed by the thoroughness and methodology employed in your Historicity of Jesus, so I expected to see, at least the backbone of such an approach to the Trump-Russia controversy.
Let me confess straight away that I am no Trump supporter, and I agree with you that there is a lot out there pointing to his nefarious activities, but I do not believe collusion with Russia is one of those.
You made several important points in your piece, so let me take them one a t a time and show you my take on each.
Evidence of Russian soft agents and influence on Trump.
You said “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.”
I doubt there are any soft agents or evidence there of, the Mueller report may confirm it though, let’s wait and see.
Mueller’s investigation did catch some criminals but ironically they had nothing to do with the Russian government or collusion with it. Manafort was convicted of crimes committed at least ten years before the election for work with the Ukrainian government, not registering with the Feds as a foreign agent and tax evasion.
It had nothing to do with Russia. In fact, he was trying to persuade the then Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to take a more anti Russian and pro Western stance. The Podesta Group, with ties to the Democrats, was also involved in this effort. This is well documented. Here is one example: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/13/manafort-podesta-emails-lobbying-823868
The other main criminals were (on the US side) Flynn and Cohen, but both of these were prosecuted for process crimes during the investigation, essentially lying to the FBI, and had nothing to do with Russian collusion. Flynn in fact was talking to Russian government officials, but, ironically, not in some collusion scheme to influence the US election, but to try to get them to soften their stand on Israeli at the UN.
Russia’s hacking DNC servers.
You said: “and netted a lot of wins in rooting out Russian hackers”.
Actually there is a lot of controversy over the alleged Russian hack of DNC computers. Only one private computer consultancy said the Russians were behind the hack. Others contend it was an inside job by a disgruntled DNC staffer. (https://theintercept.com/2017/11/07/dnc-hack-trump-cia-director-william-binney-nsa/) (https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/) Still other reports say that it was not a hack but just a test to see whether the DNC was sufficiently protected. (https://www.vox.com/2018/8/22/17769938/dnc-hack-test-voter-fbi-again)
Curiously, the FBI never examined the DNCs server (I am not sure that means anything) to determine that the Russians were the culprits.
Finally, Wikileaks, the entity that actually released the DNC/Hillary emails said they did not get the emails from the Russians. (By the way, Wikileaks in all its history of leaking documents has never been know to lie. Its releases have time and again been faithfully republished by leading news outlets. So they appear to be a source with a history of integrity.)
Still, in the end Mueller indicted (and remember an indictment is not proof of anything. It is an accusation.) the top echelon of Russian military intelligence who, of course, would never be tried, and he knew that. So the jury is literally still out and will always be out on this one.
Trump the Liar
You stated:
“so Trump’s vast archive of thousands of documented lies will at worst nix his reelection (if even that).” Yes you are absolutely correct.
Trump, indeed, is a liar story teller, bloater. He is very unconventional for a head of state.
But one needs to understand one important thing about Trump. He has two faces. One is his political face that he uses to play to his base, to manipulate the media and his opponents. The other is how he deals with other insiders, other heads of state, and even his prosecutors.
It is probably not wise to conflate the two faces. One is schtick, the other is real. That is why I do not think one will find much evidence of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report. My understanding, in spite of what he says to his base about fake news and hoax etc, is that his legal team has been very cooperative with the Mueller team, quite the opposite of obstructing the investigation.
Other areas of criminality.
You mentioned: “There is an evident case for RICO charges against Trump…” I absolutely agree with you on this point.
There has been such a history of the organized crime in the building and gambling businesses that it is hard to imagine any big developer or casino owner being as successful as Trump without being in someway involved with criminals. Still, it does not seem to me at least that Mueller ever pursued this angle. We may find out when the report come out.
You further state that “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”.
Correct, but his use of funds from the Trump charity is really small potatoes and, as I already indicated, the people already found guilty were found culpable of crimes that had nothing to do with Russia and (2) were process crimes also having nothing to do with Russia. Even Cohen said under oath to Congress that he never saw a hint of collusion within the Trump campaign. “During his House testimony Wednesday, Michael Cohen offered new details about several matters of importance to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — but said he knew of no direct evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.” (https://www.vox.com/2019/2/28/18243151/michael-cohen-testimony-mueller-russia)
Expert opinions.
You pointed out: “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.) ”
Yes these are experts but not unbiased ones, not the only ones, and, more immediately, their beliefs aired in the two articles are speculation, albeit informed.
Other experts, including other ex intelligence officials, have voiced expert opinions skeptical of any collusion with the Russians.
In fact one of the most renowned scholars on the Soviet Union, and Russia, is Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. He has written at least ten book on Russian/Soviet history and current affairs and hundreds of articles. It might be interesting to get his take on the Trump collusion issue. (https://www.thenation.com/authors/stephen-f-cohen/) He is no conservative, and, in fact , is a contributing editior to one of the country’s most progressive journals, The Nation.
A few excerpt from one of his recent pieces:
“At the core of the Russiagate narrative is the allegation that the Kremlin “meddled” in the 2016 US presidential election. The word “meddle” is nebulous and could mean almost anything, but Russiagate zealots deploy it in the most ominous ways, as a war-like “attack on America,” a kind of “Pearl Harbor.” They also imply that such meddling is unprecedented when in fact both the United States and Russia have interfered repeatedly in the other’s internal politics, in one way or another, certainly since the 1917 Russian Revolution.”
…
“In the post-Soviet era since 1992, at least until Russiagate allegations began in mid-2016, almost all of the “meddling” has been committed by the United States. During the 1990s, under the banner of “democracy promotion,” there was a virtual American political invasion of Russia. Washington openly supported, politically and financially, the pro-American faction in Russian politics, as did American mainstream media coverage. US government and foundation funding went to desirable Russian NGOs. And the Clinton administration lent ample support, again political and financial, to President Boris Yeltsin’s desperate and ultimately successful reelection campaign in 1996. (For more on the 1990s, see my Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia.) Conversely, there was almost no Russian meddling in American politics in the 1990s, apart from the pro-Yeltsin lobby, largely made up of Americans, in Washington.”
…
“As for Russia under Vladimir Putin, since 2000, again there was virtually no notable Russian “meddling” in American politics until the Russiagate allegations began. (Not surprisingly, in light of the history of mutual “meddling,” Russian social media were active during the 2016 US election, but with no discernible impact on the outcome, as Aaron Maté has shown and as Nate Silver has confirmed.) American meddling in Russia, on the other hand, continued apace, or tried to do so. Until more restrictive Russian laws were passed, US funding continued to go to Russian media and NGOs perceived to be in US interests. Hillary Clinton felt free in 2011 to publicly criticize Russian elections, and, the same year, then–Vice President Joseph Biden, while visiting Moscow, advised Putin not to return to the presidency. (Imagine Putin today advising Biden as to whether or not to seek the US presidency.)”
Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/the-long-history-of-us-russian-meddling/
So what does this show.
In modern times at least, the Russians do not have a prior history of meddling in US elections or colluding with US presidential candidates, but interestingly the opposite appears to be true.
So I wonder why are you so ready to believe that Russia colluded with Trump to fix the last presidential election. What are your base assumptions and apriori beliefs that you lead you to so easily believe that Russia colluded with Trump when there appears to be no priors for this, and no real evidence?
Looking forward to your thoughts on this.
Another word wall that simply ignores everything actually said in my article.
I think quite the opposite. I believe my rebuttle destroys your argument, show how you are not logical but emotional and, as such, are unable or refuse to respond to it. In all sincerity, you should consider my points.
You ignored what I described as the collusion—and spoke instead of something else I never discussed. Thus you argument doesn’t even address my article. So there is nothing to respond to.
You then cited a bunch of editorial speculations, as if those trump the actual Mueller report and prosecution, which established Russian involvement in the hack of the DNC. Thus completely ignoring my actual evidence and links (but if you need more: here here here). All of which you ignore.
Hence my point: you wrote lots of words that actually had nothing to do with my article’s actual statements or that ignored all its actual evidence in favor of biased or uninformed speculations.
Just as I said.
You are thus lost in a delusion. You can’t even read what I said. And you ignore all actual evidence.
I can’t help you with that.
For me the big question is why the US main stream media, especially the “liberal”, have pushed this “Russia collusion delusion” as hard as they did. In the end, it only gives the Orange President ammunition to attack them even further accusing them of fake news – and the Orange One would be right ! – and make him stronger for his re-election campaign. They should have criticised him on his concrete policies – or his criminal shenanigans as dr. Carrier points out – not for a totally wacko conspiration theory.
This is something the comedian Jimmy Dore has exposed from the beginning. Check out his YouTube channel. Warning : for American standards, he’s a hard core extreme left socialist. In Europe where I live, he would be considered moderate leftwing (Free or very affordable education & healthcare, acknowledgment of manmade climate change, progressive taxrates, tendency to diplomatic rather than military solutions, etc. Totally crazy ideas in US, totally accepted in Europe & Canada)
First, they’ve always been criticizing him on his concrete policies, so your claim they didbn’t is false.
Second, they narrative they were pushing I just demonstrated has consistently been true all along, not false. At most you can say they over-stated how certain we can be that Trump himself consciously collaborated with the Russian government, or how much they mistakenly thought his collaborating with Russian citizens is specifically a crime rather than merely disturbing and dangerous. That Trump himself consciously collaborated with Russians is a well documented fact already; the Mueller report we know contains extensively more evidence of that fact. But that that’s not a crime is not as important a distinction; it’s still seriously worrying. And that it’s not conclusive proof the Russian government was behind the agents Trump collaborated with is also not as crucial a distinction, because “can’t prove it in court” is never equal to “can’t be sure enough it happened to direct our counter-intelligence agencies accordingly.”
So in fact very few liberal media actually went for any “wacko conspiration theory.” Some did winge over its possibility, but that’s not the same as saying it’s true; and those who only winged over the actual likelihood of Russian manipulation of Trump (and not his conscious conspiring with Putin) were pretty near correct.
I’m sorry, but you are the perfect example of what Jimmy Dore predicted what would happen : lefty people back-peddling on the Russia-gate story.
There are many ways to do that, and yours is to make minute distinctions in words and meanings, a trick done by sophists. Perhaps although philosophically, logically and semantically correct, the purpose remains to take away the eyes from the ball, just as any good magician does.
What is the ball in this case ?
The Mueller investigation was specifically targeted towards Russian collusion. Such a collusion is now shown to have no evidence.To say in your words that “This isn’t about Russia” is intelectually dishonest. It was ALWAYS about Russia. And it proved to be wrong. So any story that pushed this narrative was indeed a conspiracy theory and a total waste of time.
Hi, Dr. Carrier. First of all, happy birthday.
Second of all, and most importantly on the topic of Trump, It’s commonly claimed that he’s racist. Do you think he’s racist? If so, why? If not, why not? I’m personally not sure.
I think I’ve seen you debate/discuss/argue this with someone in one of your comment sections but I couldn’t find it to save my life (hopefully you can answer again or help me find it).
Third of all, (I’m not sure if you’re willing or allowed to talk about this, so feel free to ignore) who did you vote for in this most recent election? Why?
Trump is definitely a racist. See my comments here and here and the heavily-sourced articles at Vox and The Atlantic. There’s even a whole Wikipedia Page (in which the only substantive defense made of him is refuted by the careful analysis of Shaun in How PragerU Lies to You: Charlottesville; see also the more recent article at NPR). The impact side of the equation is covered by The Brookings Institute.
Imagine the unmitigated gall of Donald Trump—yes, Donald Trump—presuming to judge who are “good people.”