Mueller Should Be Arrested For Lying - No Collusion Was A Lie

[DanieRains]

It was a lie and we knew it.

He knew there was collusion.

Mueller was just a smoke screen to shield Trump.

Yes some criminals went to jail. Sacrifices to shield the boss.

Mueller said while testifying there was no collusion so the Trumpscum could pretend he was innocent and it was all a witchhunt.

We watched Fitzgerald do the same thing.

Maybe if he was arrested they would start telling the truth.

Ya think?

[flying rabbit]

1. I could be wrong

but I think collusion was not what the investigation was going for. No collusion was the cry to distract from that.

[brush]

8. Yes, the scope of the investigation was limited by Rosenstein

He could've indicted trump as there's no law against that, it's just an agreed upon no-no. He didn't have to agree as we all suspected at the time that trump and his crew colluded and Mueller's people found out.

But remember, Mueller was past his prime and we didn't find that out until he had to appear before a Congressional hearing. I think whoever appointed him knew of his condition and that's why he was put in charge.

And then of course there was Barr who hi-jacked the rollout of the finished report with lies that made it look like trump was exonerated, resulting in trump escaping justice once again for his life time of skating from being held accountable for crimes.

[pnwmom]

10. Collusion isn't a word that appears in any Federal statute. n/t

[peppertree]

2. Goes to show that once a Bushie, always a Bushie

What a disappointment he turned out to be.

[SoCalDavidS]

3. America Is A Constant Disappointment nt

[SoonerPride]

32. ☝🏻This ☝🏻

Sigh

[SunsetDreams2]

4. I don't agree..AP fact check

THE FACTS: Allegations of “collusion” were not “proven false” in the Mueller investigation, nor was the issue of “collusion” addressed in the report.

The Mueller report said the investigation did not find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, saying it had not collected sufficient evidence “to establish” or sustain criminal charges.

The report noted that some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the 5th Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings.

The report also makes clear the investigation did not assess whether “collusion” occurred because it is not a legal term. The investigation found multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, and the report said it established that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

https://apnews.com/article/f9c0ab20229140f18ea34e1f15a9f597

[riversedge]

6. Thanks. I had forgotten about this article-but recall it as I read it. great review

[SunsetDreams2]

7. You're welcome

“No Collusion” was Trumps term.

[stopdiggin]

13. thank you. that's what I was looking for as well.

This is the way I remember it. 'Collusion' is, and was, a red herring trotted out by the apologists. The Muller report had nothing to say about 'collusion' -- because they were looking toward a legal standard called 'conspiracy.' Neither did Mueller "lie" before Congress while testifying. And -- Mueller took the rather unprecedented step of issuing a public rebuke of Barr's inaccurate summation of his report -- making an effort to clarify for the public just what the report said and meant.

You can be disappointed in Mueller and the report if you want (and many were and are) -- but let's not mischaracterize the words said and the actions that actually took place.
----- -----

[Hortensis]

41. Right. Danie and others are repeating AG Barr's spin on what Mueller said.

The Mueller Report never said there was no collusion. Barr and Fox etc did.

So, btw, did Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes RIGHT after Barr did. Something worth remembering.

[pnwmom]

9. Except Mueller never said there was no collusion, which isn't even a legal term.

He said that he hadn't found enough evidence to prove a legal case of CONSPIRACY, which has specific requirements. Please lay out the case that Mueller should have made for a conspiracy. I'd love to see it.

Also, there had been a longstanding justice department rule that a sitting President couldn't be indicted, but Mueller pointed out that that wouldn't prevent an ex-President from being united.

[Skittles]

11. you should delete this

Mueller did NOT lie

[eShirl]

12. No.

[DanieRains]

14. He Said Those Exact Words

I saw it.

[pnwmom]

15. Prove it. Give us the link

The link below describes his testimony before Congress. Maybe what you heard was Trump's skewed version of what Mueller said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/24/robert-mueller-kneecaps-president-trumps-no-collusion-no-obstruction-mantra/

Robert Mueller kneecaps President Trump’s no collusion, no obstruction mantra[/i]

“We did not address ‘collusion,’ which is not a legal term. Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not.”

That’s an important distinction, between a colloquial term, collusion, and what Mueller’s team sought to determine, which was whether there was enough evidence to prove criminal conspiracy. Mueller is pointed: There was no determination on “collusion” — and there may have been at least some evidence pointing to possible conspiracy.

[MerryHolidays]

16. I haven't gone back to the Mueller Report

I'm just focusing on the WP link you provided. Why did the he need to say this, if Mueller was so unequivocal in saying that conspiracy crimes might have been committed?:

“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Mueller said. But: “We did not address ‘collusion,’ which is not a legal term. Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not.” (emphasis added)

"It was not." That is a phrase that helped Barr and Trump obfuscate the findings, and also twist collusion and conspiracy. Let's focus on conspiracy and jettison the word "collusion". Mueller clearly indicated in his report that witnesses lied and/or withheld evidence during the investigation. Why exactly would he say "it was not" under these circumstances?

Mueller could have stated the obvious, which could have re-phrased this way: "Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. Unfortunately, we reach no conclusion on this point as potentially relevant information was withheld during the course of our investigation".

That is more accurate, isn't it? And it's a COMPLETELY different meaning than "It was not." Bobby Three Sticks is far too seasoned of a white-collar investigator not to understand the difference. And it was this kind of language that allowed Barr to obfuscate.

That being said, I would urge Attorney General Garland to release the most completely unredacted version of the report that he can, so we can understand what Mueller truly meant. Mueller's hesitant July 2019 Congressional testimony, coupled with statements like the one above, did no one any service except Trump.

[pnwmom]

17. He needed to say it because of how William Barr had falsely described the report

weeks before it actually came out.

It was William Barr who said, weeks before Mueller issued his report, that the report said "no collusion." That was never a term that Mueller would have used. It's not a legal term -- and it's also not true. He found much evidence of collusion, but it's not a term in criminal law and his job was to find evidence of crimes.

You say: "Mueller could have stated the obvious, which could have re-phrased this way:. . ." And your summary is basically what Mueller DID say. He didn't end his report with the words, "It was not."

Also, one of the elements of a conspiracy is to prove an agreement between two or more people. The Trumps refused to provide evidence and Mueller couldn't prove such an agreement with the evidence he had.

https://time.com/5610317/mueller-report-myths-breakdown/

Myth: Mueller found “no collusion.”

Response: Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.

While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

SNIP

To find conspiracy, a prosecutor must establish beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the crime: an agreement between at least two people, to commit a criminal offense and an overt act in furtherance of that agreement.

[MerryHolidays]

19. But he did in oral testimony....that's my point. nt

He need to state WHY the evidence was not sufficient. It was because it was withheld. Conspiracy to obstruct justice is just one of many conspiracy-based crimes that come to mind.

[pnwmom]

20. He said it both in the report and in his testimony. n/t

[MerryHolidays]

22. Mueller could have been much more direct on how obstruction impeded his investigation

I do agree it was in the report, but this should have been the focus of his testimony.

Like Watergate, the substantive issues are bad enough, but the obstruction is even worse. Mueller didn't reference that obstruction was the reason that he couldn't find sufficient evidence. He needed to be unequivocal about this. He clearly was not in his oral testimony.

[pnwmom]

23. Mueller answered the questions asked of him. And he gave Val Demings a very direct answer.

I think people let Trump's characterization remain in their memories longer than what Mueller said in the report and in his testimony.

https://time.com/5635276/mueller-testimony-obstruction-conspiracy-analysis/

Link to tweet

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1154050132947718144%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftime.com%2F5635276%2Fmueller-testimony-obstruction-conspiracy-analysis%2F

In Volume I of the report, p. 10, he reveals that some witnesses used the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying, while others lied or offered incomplete testimony. Still others destroyed evidence. He concluded, “while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete … given these identified gaps, the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable evidence would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.” In the low-key fashion we have come to expect from the former special counsel, this is an acknowledgment that obstruction may well have impacted investigators’ inability to charge conduct that the public has watched unfold over the last two years.

And remember, Mueller made a point of saying that his report did not exonerate the President -- which infuriated the R's, who heard that even if some of us didn't.

During yesterday’s hearings, a number of Republican members were outraged by what they called Mueller’s unprecedented decision to “not exonerate” the President on obstruction. They argued it was not a prosecutor’s job to exonerate. But the situation Mueller faced is not one federal prosecutors typically encounter because the main tool in the prosecutor’s toolkit, bringing charges via indictment, was not an option here.

As Ohio Republican Mike Turner pressed him near the end of the Intelligence Committee hearing on whether DOJ had the power to exonerate people and whether it was appropriate for him to say that the investigation had not exonerated the President, Mueller suddenly pushed back. He told Turner that he included his conclusion on the lack of exoneration in the report because the Attorney General might not know this was their conclusion and “he should know it.” Mueller was not writing a report for the public. He was writing the confidential report to the Attorney General that the special counsel regulations called for.

The Attorney General ignored Director Mueller’s conclusion. In fact he navigated 180 degrees from it to declare that the investigation had given the President a clean bill of health – no collusion, no obstruction. But that is not the case in either regard, and in fact, it may be that it was the obstruction that led to the absence of conspiracy charges. We would do well to take Mueller’s unheeded warning to the Attorney General to heart as we move forward.

[MerryHolidays]

24. That's not exactly forthcoming, is it?

Most of Mueller's answers were monosyllabic, and even in this clip he hesitates at the end.

I don't disagree with your point that he wrote about it in the report and answered specific questions when asked. But not detailing the massive efforts to impede his investigation before Congress, when those acts of obstructions undermined precisely what he was tasked to do, is not exactly heroic.

Again, I refer to his opening statement at July 2019 hearing. He barely touches on it and refers Congress to the report. That's it. These obstruction efforts clearly undermined his ability to get out all the relevant facts. Even if he didn't want to go after Trump because of the OLC opinion, he sure could have gone after others who impeded the investigation with specificity.

He did not do that. Instead, his very opening statement impliedly suggested that there were insufficient grounds to find chargeable conspiracy, when, in fact, it was the obstruction by those being investigated that stopped those facts from being developed. That was the real story here, and Mueller did nothing with it.

It seems to me that he did the bare minimum and nothing more. And this was in a case where the future of our country depended on getting the facts out.

[uponit7771]

25. +1, Mueller was more of a functionary when it came to the investigation not someone screaming from t

... top of their lungs democracy is in danger

[pnwmom]

26. I thought he was clear. He wasn't allowed to indict a sitting President.

But he produced a small mountain of evidence on obstruction and collusion and explicitly failed to exonerate Trump.

After that, it was the job of Congress to impeach and convict him, and it was Congress that failed to act on the evidence, not Mueller.

[MerryHolidays]

27. He was clear when he was asked a question. That's it

He reminds me of Earl Silbert, the Acting US Attorney in DC, who led the original 1972 Watergate prosecution against the five Watergate burglars, Gordon Liddy, and Howard Hunt. Silbert limited the prosecution to just these seven and no higher.

It was because of Judge John Sirica, who was fed up with Silbert's very narrow prosecution, that we got to know that there was far more than just these 7 original criminal defendants. And it went up to Nixon.

Today, Mueller is Earl Silbert, both of whom did the bare minimum, when there was a much bigger story. What we don't have is a Judge Sirica.

Mueller conducted a 2 year investigation, his own chief deputy said that the Mueller team was afraid of being disbanded so they curtailed their investigation, and he was lied to over and over again. I cannot understand how he could not be screaming to the high heavens in July 2019 to Congress that his investigation and its findings were severely compromised by obstruction. And this testimony was AFTER Barr's and Rosenstein's own massive obfuscation of the report. Mueller should have been outraged. Instead, he was like a hostile witness, giving single sentence answers to the D's questioning.

I did a control F/find on his testimony and found something like 265 times the word "obstruct" was used in the questions or answers. Most of the time, it was the questioner using "obstruct". And most of the time Mueller's response was limited to three or four or just a few words.

Much like Watergate, the obstruction is at least as bad as the underlying substantive issues. Unfortunately, Mueller wasn't close to the heroes of Watergate like those from the Special Prosecutor's office between 1973-1977. And while Watergate was awful, Russia's involvement with our election process is a quantum leap beyond that.

[MerryHolidays]

28. Please see post 27 and this link from the WP

Mueller and his team are clearly not heroes:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/andrew-weissmann-book-mueller-trump/2020/09/21/6a7967e8-fc10-11ea-b555-4d71a9254f4b_story.html

Mueller prosecutor says special counsel ‘could have done more’ to hold Trump accountable


By
Matt Zapotosky and Spencer S. Hsu
September 21, 2020 at 11:00 p.m. UTC

A former prosecutor on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team writes in a new book that the group failed to fully investigate President Trump’s financial ties and should have stated explicitly that they believed he obstructed justice, claiming that their efforts were limited by the ever-present threat of Trump disbanding their office and by their own reluctance to be aggressive.

In an explosive tell-all that offers the most detailed account yet of what happened behind the scenes during Mueller’s two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Andrew Weissmann writes of his frustration that the special counsel failed to subpoena the president and otherwise pulled punches for fear of incurring Trump’s wrath.

He lays particular blame on Mueller’s top deputy, Aaron Zebley, for stopping investigators from taking a broad look at Trump’s finances and writes that he now wonders whether investigators had “given it our all,” knowing they left many important questions unanswered.

“As proud as I am of the work our team did — the unprecedented number of people we indicted and convicted and in record speed for any similar investigation — I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more,” Weissmann writes.

[pnwmom]

37. I didn't say he was a hero. I disagreed with the OP, who said he should be "arrested for lying."

There is a huge gap between those opinions.

[MerryHolidays]

38. I agree with that. I don't think he came close to lying

Mueller is a complete straight arrow, and I don't think it's possible for him to lie!

But I feel terribly let down and confused as a result of what he did/didn't do, how Barr and Rosenstein completely distorted things even then, and how Trump seems to have gotten away with things. And one of those things was how our country is being torn apart by a foreign government via a cyber-invasion.

They always say that Watergate proved the system worked. While Nixon didn't go to prison (and he should have), he still resigned, and most of the folks accountable did go to prison. That was largely a result of heroes like Judge Sirica, Archibald Cox/Leon Jaworski and staff, and Sam Ervin (and, I guess, Woodward and Bernstein).

Here, the system DIDN'T work (or maybe it hasn't just yet).

I am not sure we have anything like those Watergate folk heroes anymore; but, while I breathe, I hope. If we do have such people, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. And I hope Joltin' Joe Biden will be that hero, along with Merrick Garland, to set the record straight as to what happened with Russia, trump, and the 2016 election. Our country's fate is riding on it.

[pnwmom]

40. That was much closer to how I felt -- disappointed and let down.

And I take seriously the reports that his age has been wearing on him. He's not as sharp as when he was younger.

[secondwind]

18. In his report, towards the end, Mueller said

IF THERE HAD BEEN NO COLLUSION, he would have said so.

[pnwmom]

21. And he spent 100 pages describing it. nt

[Tommy Carcetti]

30. Oy. No.

Mueller never said that there was no collusion.
He actually said there was evidence of collusion, and documented it quite well, but it didn’t rise to the levels of indictable behavior within the very narrow parameters of investigation that were set by Rosenstein and Barr.

He also said there was evidence of obstruction by Trump that could have risen to an indictable level but he didn’t want to upend DOJ policy of not indicting a sitting President.

I read the report and watched his testimony. You should too.

Mueller was guilty of being very “small c” conservative and a “by the book” type, but his report on Trump was still very damning and not a whitewash at all.

Don’t be a fool.

[GoCubsGo]

31. Oh, FFS.

SMGDH.

[Kaleva]

33. Nothing is stopping you from making a citizen's arrest.

"When Can a Private Citizen Arrest Someone?
A person can arrest someone that they reasonably suspect of committing a felony, even if the felony didn't occur in the presence of the individual making the arrest. As long as a felony was actually committed and the individual making the arrest knew of the crime, a reasonable suspicion about the identity of the perpetrator will justify their arrest. However, if the crime did not in fact happen, the person making the arrest could become civilly and criminally liable."

https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-procedure/citizen-s-arrest.html

Let us know how the arrest turns out or maybe make a post explaining why you won't do it.

[MerryHolidays]

39. Citizen's arrest in practice

[brooklynite]

34. I think this is a lazy conspiracy theory, or a rant, which should be ignored.

[panader0]

36. Unrec.