The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has delivered a report on his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election to Attorney General William P. Barr, according to the Justice Department, bringing to an apparent close an investigation that has consumed the nation and cast a shadow over President Trump for nearly two years.
Mr. Barr will decide how much of the report to share with Congress and, by extension, the American public. The House voted unanimously in March on a nonbinding resolution to make public the report’s findings, an indication of the deep support within both parties to air whatever evidence prosecutors uncovered.
As of right now, we the public don't know yet, so there's still tons of speculation about what's in it. Back to the NYT:
Since Mr. Mueller’s appointment in May 2017, his team has focused on how Russian operatives sought to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race and whether anyone tied to the Trump campaign, wittingly or unwittingly, cooperated with them. While the inquiry, started months earlier by the F.B.I., unearthed a far-ranging Russian influence operation, no public evidence has emerged that the president or his aides illegally assisted it.
The nerve-wracking thing about this all: There are still key figures from trump's 2016 campaign - above all his family members like donnie junior and son-in-law Jared - who had documented interactions with Russians who likely talked about (and maybe acted on) deals that led to a foreign power interfering with our elections... and there are no signs of them getting hit with indictments about those acts... Or even indictments trying to lie to investigators the way the ones already pleading out have done. Those reports about junior facing indictments? Where the hell did those go? This feels incomplete...
Back to the article:
Nonetheless, the damage to Mr. Trump and those in his circle has been extensive. A half-dozen former Trump aides have been indicted or convicted of crimes, mostly for lying to federal investigators or Congress. Others remain under investigation in cases that Mr. Mueller’s office handed off to federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere. Dozens of Russian intelligence officers or citizens, along with three Russian companies, were charged in cases that are likely to languish in court because the defendants cannot be extradited to the United States.
Even though Mr. Mueller’s report is complete, some aspects of his inquiry remain active and may be overseen by the same prosecutors once they are reassigned to their old jobs within the Justice Department. For instance, recently filed court documents suggest that investigators are still examining why the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort turned over campaign polling data in 2016 to a Russian associate whom prosecutors said was tied to Russian intelligence...
This is a key point. Mueller's investigation had multiple parts to it - there were actually TWO grand juries, one focusing on Russia's interactions with trump and another focusing on Russia's breaches of our nation's security - and one thing he's done has been to farm out parts of his case loads to other federal DoJ offices (for example, the Cohen mess getting sent to the SDNY). It is still likely Mueller will pass along findings encouraging indictments on criminal matters he himself couldn't issue (as his scope was limited to catching liars interfering with his probes).
I'd been keeping up with Emptywheel when it comes to Mueller's investigation, so lemme head over there and...
Update: DOJ is now saying that there are no outstanding indictments, and no more expected.
Well, fuck.
I'll wait for the full release... IF it gets released. If AG Barr or trump's White House blocks the report going public, better raise hell until they do.
Update (3/24): Barr hasn't released the full report, just his 4-page letter summarizing the full report. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu---
1 comment:
The trolls are all crowing that Fergus is vindicated, and I keep saying that we haven't seen the damn thing yet.
The Rude Pundit advises to bail off of cable news until they at least know more than we do, which they don't yet, because they have 24 hours a day to fill with something, and that something is only likely to piss you off and raise your anxiety levels until such time as someone has actually, you know, read the damn thing.
-Doug in Oakland
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