Mueller breathed life into Democrat impeachment push, and may have just reelected Trump
Nancy Pelosi has been under enormous pressure to green light impeachment proceedings. I don’t see how she holds off now. Mueller likely forced Pelosi to go to a place politically she didn’t want to go.
Robert Mueller’s statement today could have served only one purpose — to breath life into Democrat attempts to commence impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Mueller didn’t add any substance to the 400-page report, and most of his statement was related to procedures, including his resignation, the closing of the special counsel’s office, and his desire not to testify about the report beyond the report itself.
The substance of the statement on Russia collusion/conspiracy was brief and shut the door. There was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy as to Russian interference.
But most of the substance was on obstruction. Mueller reiterated that the Office of Special Counsel could not clearly determine that Trump did not commit a crime, or it would have said so. “‘If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
This is a completely unfair standard and not what prosecutors normally due — investigations are not to find that a person did not commit a crime, but to find if the person did commit a crime.
More important, Mueller made clear that he considered the Special Counsel’s Office bound by DOJ policy against charging a sitting president with a crime, so his office never reached a determination one way or the other. Mueller made clear that under the Constitution, there were other mechanisms for dealing with a president accused of wrongdoing. Without mentioning impeachment proceedings, Mueller certainly must have intended to suggest it.
If that is Mueller’s view, that his office’s hands were legally tied from even reaching a decision, then why investigate at all? And why issue an opinion that he could not find “with confidence” the president was not guilty? Mueller could have expressed an opinion on guilt short of charging the president, much as he expressed an opinion that he could not find the president clearly not guilty.
This entire media appearance was a hand grenade thrown into the political process.
Nancy Pelosi has been under enormous pressure to green light impeachment proceedings. She has resisted it because of the political damage it likely would cause to Democrats in 2020.
I don’t see how she holds off now. Mueller likely force Pelosi to go to a place politically she didn’t want to go.
Mueller breathed life into impeachment, but in doing so may have reelected Trump for the very reasons Nancy Pelosi did not want to go the impeachment route.
UPDATE:
I appeared on the Tony Katz Show to discuss my take, just minutes after Mueller’s statement:
“What I took away from what Mueller just said is that Nancy Pelosi is going to have an extremely difficult time holding off the portion of her caucus who want to impeach Trump – or at least start formal proceedings.
What [Mueller] did is he basically said, ‘We are not exonerating the President on obstruction of justice, but we’re also not saying he committed a crime because we are prohibited from saying such a thing. And therefore, it is up to others under the constitution to look into that.’ And there’s obviously at this point Congress and the impeachment process.
So while Mueller did not say Trump committed obstruction – he didn’t even say there was sufficient evidence – he basically said ‘that’s for Congress.’ Therefore, my big takeaway from this is that I don’t see how Nancy Pelosi keeps on plugging the dyke on the calls to start formal impeachment proceedings.”
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Comments
Mueller….what a weasel.
That’s an affront to weasels.
Mueller is what I said 2+ years ago, a crook. Slimy and corrupt to the core, he belongs in a jail for the rest of his crap life.
He cares nothing about freedom and liberty. He cares nothing about democracy or the rule if law.
Dearest Mr. Barry. LOL! Perhaps I should have compared him to a feral hog.
Heh, no need to dis the poor hogs…
I’d compare the sob to pond scum perhaps, or the bubonic plague.
Could Mueller have used the 2+ years of investigation to cleanse out all of the wrong doing by the Democrats? I would not doubt it one bit. The whole thing was to destroy a duly elected President. Dirties Government north of the equator.
NOW…..”IF” THIS WERE TRUE…..WOULDN’T THAT JUST BE “POETIC JUSTICE”….:o}}}}
Mueller, & his cronies, “all” should be in a one jail cell institution, & film them 24/7….Just think….the immorality of them all, & sexual lust, uncontrollable….what “A SODOM & GOMORRAH”….MOMENT!
It looks like, to this non legal person, that while the Special Counsel could not charge the President’s campaign with any crime, Mueller has inuendoed the possible/maybe/almost actions by the R’s did something the Dems/Progs don’t like.
Charge? Yes. Indict? no. He could have easily said Trump did such and such… Look at Comey with Hillary… listed all the true crimes and punted.
Mueller’s statement that there was insufficient evidence that the Trump campaign cooperated with the Russians means what? That he had evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, but it was insufficient for an indictment? Where is this evidence? It’s not in the Mueller report which is supposed to be the complete investigation. Why not exonerate Trump if there was no evidence?
I have been the most surprised by that, “We found insufecient evidence to conclude collusion”, statement and that no one seems to be holding it up to the light. WTF kind of statement is it? Show us ANY evidence that you had on Trump or his team colluding with the Russians. This is nothing but a semantic backstabbing of POTUS. This is one reprehensible person! He is also a coward because he knows the kind of questions he would have had to answer if he had taken questions. This is the best the Dims could hope for from him. Smearing POTUS but not allowing the other side to question his corrupt tactics.
Finding zero evidence of Russian collusion would certainly qualify as “finding insufficient evidence” of Russian collusion, but for Mueller to state that he found zero evidence is a definitive declaration that would leave his fellow Trump-hating Democrats rather disconsolate. Saying that there was insufficient evidence is a more tantalizing way of wording it, and keeps hope alive.
Disgusting. Guilty until proven innocent.
Only for Americans. Mueller went out of his way to deem the Russians indicted are innocent until proven guilty
“More important, Mueller made clear that he considered the Special Counsel’s Office bound by DOJ policy against charging a sitting president with a crime, so his office never reached a determination one way or the other.”
EXCEPT: Barr covered this in his press interview, and shot down any Dem conspiracy about the OLC opinion blocking charges Mueller might have wanted to bring. And you can be (censored) clear that Barr has notes and witnesses about that meeting with Mueller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNEQK-Jd3IU
In fact on two (2) different occasions Bill Barr has stated that St. Robert Mueller had told him three (3) times that the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel decision played no part in their decision making. Now St. Robert apparently declared, through innuendo, that Bill Barr has lied about that point.
Which is exactly what NeverTrumpers like Joe Walsh are claiming.
Mueller should have known from day one that there was no collision with the Russians. So question Bobby, why did you spend twenty-two months and thirty-five million taxpayer dollars to investigate a matter for which you felt you could not reach a conclusion?
There have been stories that Mueller had determined that no collusion had occurred before the 2018 elections.
There have been a number of activities held up waiting for Mueller, or so it goes. If so, Mueller’s procrastination could be a form of obstruction of justice, especially if any statue of limitations issues arise.
Mueller did know there was no collusion from the outset.
This was a $30 million dollar fishing expedition (that coincidentally paid for Mueller to go fly fishing for bonefish in the Sechylles.)
Yet, 40 FBI agents and 10 Democrat prosecutors could not find any real dirt on Trump, even after they raided his lawyer’s office.
He’s well aware that events that occurred on his watch as Director of the FBI are now under scrutiny by the Justice Department. He’s just covering his a$$ by being able to claim political retribution when that occurs.
So Trump will not allow any of his people to testify to Congress due to executive privilege. Pretty much all of the other major players will have been indicted or are under investigation themselves. Others have been convicted liars. And that’s before the fact that there was and is still no crime.
.
As I like to point out, if I say that I’m so mad I could wring that guy’s neck and people nearby can confirm me saying that, if I never wrung anybody’s neck there is no crime and if I try to keep you from investigating me for something I never did, have I done anything wrong? Choking somebody is clearly a crime but if you don’t choke somebody and don’t make a threat directly to that person it’s just blowing off steam.
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Congress will not uncover anything new no matter how many millions of dollars they throw at it and The People will not like it one bit.
I think about 40% of the people will like a continued investigation or impeachment. Those people voted for a person who managed to lose to an opponent she considered beneath contempt.
Mueller will only appear on Capitol Hill under a subpoena.
Gerry Nadler has said that Mueller doesn’t want to answer “Republican questions” .. and hell no under oath. In fact he has said nothing about Russia under oath.
Mueller a Chinese asset ?
I can’t prove it, but I can exonerate him either.
Impeachment for what? Being innocent of the slanders invented by Hillary’s losing campaign? Of insisting on his innocence?
Impeachment for:
1) Not being Hillary
2) Not being a Democrat
3) Not buckling under pressure like RINOs
4) Being an American rather than a “citizen of the world”
5) Being for the American Constitution rather than the EU’s
6) For seeing it through to find out the real conspirators and the
real collusion.
When the heck is it a prosecutors job to find a person INNOCENT?
I always thought in America it was their job to try to find them guilty.
What slimy lurker votes down innocent until proven guilty?
There used to be someone with the screen name “trousersnake” or something like that. May be him/her/xe.
Believe it or not, we do have quite a few people in this country who feel “innocent until proven guilty” is an outmoded concept. You see, they decide guilt or innocence based on their feelings towards the accused and everyone knows that for a leftist, emotions hold much more weight than concrete evidence.
Unethical and cowardly. Should someone be required to prove their innocence? If there was no role for a prosecutor and the avenue was impeachment then why the hell was he investigating the president? And wasn’t this a confidential report? The AG has discretion to discuss it or release it, not this sleaze. A cowardly weasel who doesn’t even have the guts to answer questions from the press let alone Congress.
Why didn’t Mueller just paraphrase Comey and say, “No reasonable prosecutor would bring charges against Trump for obstruction.” The media accepted that for Hillary without question. Why not Trump too?
And remember, Comey said that after reading a laundry list of Hillary’s misdeeds, a list supported by facts and evidence, not wild, unfounded conspiracy theories paid for by Republicans. Yet somehow the Dems interpreted this as an “exoneration,” while the Mueller report, which appears to be absent any facts concerning the possibility of “Russian collusion” condemns Trump because it wasn’t able to prove him innocent.
“That makes a lot of sense. A lot of nonsense!”
Dale Gribble
A special prosecutor who wanted to charge a president but had no evidence, on the heels of the head of the FBI, who had the evidence against Hillary but didn’t want her charged.
What the hell happened to this country?
I’m pretty sure Joseph McCarthy was on to something.
Hope and Change happened.
Special Worm Mueller soils himself on his way out the door.
His statement turns the whole premise that you are innocent till proven guilty on it’s ear.
His job was to get Trump. He failed. So, he is punting this, and as daveclay states, this is also to give him some protection to be able to say he is being punished by Trump if he is investigated for his crimes.
Where are any media people who find what he pulled reprehensible? He pissed on the presumption of innocence, he pulled a fast one using weasel terms to keep the fires burning for the leftist coup members.
Why is there no actionable means to go after him for doing this? There certainly should be.
At the very least, someone should bring an attorney ethics complaint for his disparagement of an uncharted party in violation of the code of professional responsibilty.
As Andrew McCarthy has sagely observed, all of these greasy statements from Mueller and his team about not “exonerating” POTUS are purely political statements that have no basis in fair-minded and ethical prosecutorial conduct. A prosecutor either charges a suspect, or, does not, but, if he/she does not charge, it is unethical in the extreme to state that the suspect wasn’t “exonerated.” This running mouth commentary tactic smacks of totalitarian smear tactics and partisan bias.
Mueller is attempting to throw the Dhimmi-crats a bone and salvage his reputation, in light of the imminent IG report and the ongoing DOJ investigation into the dirty, partisan origins of Crossfire Hurricane.
Mueller needs to be brought before the Senate and asked under oath when he knew there was no collusion.
On that answer he than needs to be asked why he spent so long writing a report.
The truth is that Mueller knew very quickly that there was no collusion because even the people working for him were saying it to each other before Mueller showed up on the scene.
Mueller is just doing more damage to the country with this talking out of both sides of his mouth. It’s not his job to exonerate anyone. If the evidence is there you charge. If it’s not than you don’t charge.
Mueller talked about being unfair to Trump but Mueller is being extremely unfair to Trump by continuing this nonsense.
If there is evidence to charge Trump Mueller could have put in the report we have evidence but we can not charge Trump and that is up to Congress to impeach and remove.
Also if Barr has recordings and transcripts of his call with Mueller than Barr needs to release it.
Barr said Mueller told him three times on that call that the OLC guidelines had nothing to do with not charging the President with a crime.
I am impressed that Trump survived these corrupt and unethical snakes. No member of the swamp could do that.
Mueller makes me sick…again.
All Mueller did today was reiterate his failure to do his job as a prosecutor:
1) Bring charges
2) Don’t bring charges
There is no option 3) of “Well, I wanted to bring charges under a newly invented theory of Andrew’s about obstruction of justice, but Dept. guidelines prevent that, so instead, I’ll make statements that make the president look guilty of some crime in the hopes that the House will impeach, even though there’s no chance the Senate will convict, and the only real purpose will be to give the Democrat Party a political club to beat President Trump with for the next year-and-a-half and to whip leftists to the polls next November.
But don’t you dare call it “political”.
Oh, and if Barr does in fact have transcripts, witnesses and recordings of Mueller saying the DOJ guidelines about not indicting a sitting president with crimes were not the reason he chose not to try to attempt to indict President Trump, he needs to make them public right the BLEEP now.
If he has it on tape, double right the BLEEP now.
“Office of Special Counsel could not clearly determine that Trump did not commit a crime,”
So, as per typical logical and rational process, they could not prove a negative. Water is also wet.
“they could not prove a negative”
This is a completely incomprehensible concept to a Democrat voter.
NPR’s Steven Innskeep was in full-throated primal ecstasy this morning. I think he smoked an unfiltered Pall Mall immediately after the presser and then briefly crashed after dopamine burst.
His whole emotional world is in orbit around the Mueller-Trump binary constellation.
Pretty sad way to lead a life of ease and comfort.
Karma is going to be bitch, Bobby. Start loosening you bum now before it’s to late.
From your mouth to every prisoner’s ears . . . for the whole crowd: Comey, McCabe, Stzrock, Hillary, Loretta, Bill, et al . . .
He went to St Kitts, do we have an extradition treaty?
it is absolutely clear that the WHOLE special counsel team were antiTrumpers and will everything they can to get him out of office and into prison / G-d forbid /.
What I take from this is that the Deep State is extremely panicked that Barr is going to uncover, reveal, then prosecute all the criminal spying that was conducted by Team Obama.
Mueller: “If Trump was definitely not guilty of a crime we would have said so since we found no evidence that did not cause us to believe that no reasonable prosecutor would not decline to not to bring charges legally accurate orange man bad nothing to add to the report depends what the meaning of is is resigning going to private life no questions decline to testify did not prove no guilt Constitution does not allow us to not decide to refuse to decline to avoid deciding to not bring no charges I have nothing to say report was clear.”
if Mueller was to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election why did he focus on Trump???
Because his mission was to get rid of Trump
We thought mueller was a sleazebag, and now he’s proved it. If there’s any further proof of the dangerous fascist mentality of democrat prosecutors, we need look no further than this malignant a-hole.
His vanity photos continually released during the two years he basked in the democrat media sunshine was the second tip-off. The first was his horrendous human rights record. The third was… Well, same as the fourth, fifth, sixth, etc.
Roland Freisler would be proud of him.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/roland-freisler
What if everyone accusses Mueller of a sexual crime, going back several years. By this creep’s own standards, let him prove he didn’t do it. Now THAT would be fun.
Someone had to save CNN… so Herr Mueller did.
Sheryl Atkisson has a great example of this whole case. She said “Suppose there was a person who did commit murder and then was being investigated for it. Think of all the things that he would do to prevent or stop the investigation including calling it a witch hunt and politically motivated. He would declare that the investigators were biased against him and their role was to convict him. This is how a guilty man would act. Now take the same case where the same man did NOT murder anyone and imagine how he would react to this inquisition. He would call it fake and a witch hunt. He would go along with the rules of it but protest daily. He would cooperate with all of the investigator’s request including allowing ALL of his p[eople to be interviewed by the prosecution and his own lawyer to give over 30 hours to them. He would get nastier as time wore on knowing that ALL of the team was against him including the msm. But he was innocent so how else could he have been expected to act?
Mueller was always on a mission to destroy Trump by any means necessary. He failed. This was his last-ditch effort to pass the baton to the Democrats in Congress.
I’d like to see him questioned under oath. If he didn’t take the 5th, he just might get caught in a perjury trap.
Dike. Please.
The deep state/cabal/swamp, whatever you want to call it, didn’t form overnight. It has been entrenched in American politics and the government for decades. meuller has been a swamp creature for a long time, and was theoretically the hit-man of choice to take out President Donald J. Trump. The problem with mueller’s hit, is there was/is too much of a paper trail exposing him and his swamp buddies. The paper trail exists because SHE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO LOSE. Had she won, all of the evidence would have been washed away. Winners get to write the history books, not losers like hrc. Compare and contrast AG Bill Barr’s relaxed, confident sworn testimony to bob mueller’s un-sworn, terse, nervous, sad presser. To paraphrase AG Barr, smiling: ‘I’m not worried about my legacy.’ To paraphrase mueller, look of fear on his face: ‘I am going to disappear under a rock and shall never speak of this again, so leave me alone.’
Now there are three standards for breaking the law. First, under civil procedures, the preponderance of the evidence. Second, under criminal procedures, beyond reasonable doubt. And now folks, the new third standard. “We couldn’t exonerate”.
Trump is going to be the first president to be impreached and then win a 2nd term for office. You think lub heads are exploding now?? Wait until he gets vindicated in the Senate and wins reelection. Its going to be a 4 year SLOG of heads popping.
“‘If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
So…. after 2+ years of investigations, they found nothing. Yet his PERSONAL opinion based on….. is that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice. So why did we have an investigation if findings don’t matter? It’s all about feelings and political partisanship.
Sometimes you just have to hang the traitors on sight. Too many lawyers getting mired in legal niceties is destroying any sense of justice we may have in the system. Either get the system to work or we may to do this ourselves.
“‘If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
That´s Comey-style weasel talk. Since is law enforcement in the business of proving somebody´s innocence?
Somebody this a55hole a copy of the Bill of Rights.
This whole thing seems orchestrated and too convenient for Mueller and the Dems. It is well known that Nadler was in negotiations with Mueller to appear before the judiciary committee for the past few weeks. Mueller didn’t want to have to answer questions under oath (especially from the republicans) and Nadler desperately needed a implication from Mueller that Trump is worthy of impeachment. Mueller gets to ride off into the sunset and the Dem’s get their reason to impeach and another couple of years to talk about it. How interesting that they each got their wish.
Herr Müller should be summarily shot for his actions.
In the face.
https://mobile.twitter.com/almostjingo/status/1134574689592832000