Monday, May 17, 2021

Revive the Mueller Findings. Charge Barr AND trump with Obstruction

It's been awhile since I wrote about the Mueller Report. It's been enough time for me to look back and kick myself for putting too much hope into what the investigations into trump's ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign would lead to. 

I had hoped by now we'd see harder sanctions against Putin for his meddling, more laws making it harder for foreign powers to intervene in elections, stuff like that. I don't think I've seen much activity from either the Biden administration or from Congress on those fronts.

I had hoped that Congress would have acted on Mueller's recommendations, on the evidence he found that trump obstructed the investigation at least five times, to impeach trump and have that on record. Granted, the Republican-led Senate back then would have given trump a pass like they did on the two Impeachment trials trump DID face, but for some reason Pelosi's Democratic House refused to go there. Instead, they impeached trump on other acts of misconduct he did in office, such as extorting Ukraine to interfere with the 2020 elections using a faked "investigation" into Joe Biden's son Hunter; and impeached trump for inciting insurrection when Congress tried to confirm the Electoral College votes on January 6th.

I understood back in 2019 when the Mueller Report was released that then-Attorney General Barr would redact and underplay the findings as much as possible: That Barr would weaken the impact of Mueller's work to spare his Overlord trump as much as the twisted Justice Department could allow. As a result, whatever value that Report had for America and for our legal system got diminished and buried.

Until earlier this May, when one of the judges still overseeing the legal handlings of Mueller's prosecutions tore Bill Barr a few holes and demanded an accounting (via Michael S Schmidt for the New York Times):

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court in Washington said in a ruling late Monday that the Justice Department's obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Mr. Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation.

The department had argued that the memo was exempt from public records laws because it consisted of private advice from lawyers whom Mr. Barr had relied on to make the call on prosecuting Mr. Trump. But Judge Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, ruled that the memo contained strategic advice, and that Mr. Barr and his aides already understood what his decision would be...

She also singled out Mr. Barr for how he had spun the investigation's findings in a letter summarizing the 448-page report before it was released, which allowed Mr. Trump to claim he had been exonerated.

''The attorney general's characterization of what he'd hardly had time to skim, much less study closely, prompted an immediate reaction, as politicians and pundits took to their microphones and Twitter feeds to decry what they feared was an attempt to hide the ball,'' Judge Jackson wrote...

Essentially, Jackson's ruling - obstensibly to force the Justice Department to release the internal memos that covered Barr's actions - makes the case that Barr was covering for trump, had already made the legal decision to find in favor of trump, and was going out of his way to ensure justice would not prevail in this matter.

I'm not a lawyer, but to me that sounds a lot like Barr obstructed justice to protect trump from HIS obstruction charges.

We have a new President in Joe Biden. We have a new Attorney General in Merrick Garland.

We should have time on the clock for any and all Obstruction of Justice charges to get issued against William Barr and against donald trump.

This is an Accountability Moment that MUST be answered. Otherwise we risk another round of criminal acts by a corrupt Republican President without any means to stop him.

DAMMIT. Justice demands it. HISTORY requires it.



1 comment:

dinthebeast said...

Well, at least the County prosecutors have said that DeSantis can't stop Fergus from being extradited.
Barr needs to be disbarred at the very least.

-Doug in Sugar Pine